All about Skin (38 page)

And so they continued on for forty days and forty nights, until Tamara missed her woman's flow and there was an unsettling in her body, and Tamara grew afraid. But to bring forth her fear would turn it into a truth, and so she kept her silence. Jude said to her, “My parents want to meet you.” And Tamara said to Jude, “Okay.” And she dressed in a more conservative manner than usual for the evening, knowing that Mary, mother of Jude, and Saul, father of Jude, were very religious. And she was received with a handshake from Saul and a hug from Mary, who welcomed her into their abode, not knowing Tamara had slipped inside many times before. When Tamara saw the cross on the door and the painting of Jesus hanging above the mantelpiece, Mary saw her looking and said to her, “That's Jesus. Do you know about Jesus?”

And Jude said to his mother, Mary, “Mom, stop.”

And Mary laughed at her son and said to him, “I'm just kidding! Everyone knows about Jesus. He died for our sins.” And Tamara smiled uncertainly, and said nothing. Soon they were all gathered around the dining table, where they bowed their heads in prayer and Tamara mimicked them. And then they ate and talked and laughed, and Tamara felt out of place and mostly fake-laughed. And then Mary said to Tamara, “I knew a very nice African American woman back when I was teaching grade school; her name was Melinda and she was as sweet as could be.”

And Jude said to his mother, “Tamara is Cambodian. The prettiest Cambodian girl I've ever seen.” He smiled at Tamara, who fake-smiled back.

And his mother said to Tamara, “Oh, what is that?”

And Tamara said, “It's Southeast Asian.”

And Saul said to her, “Were you born over there?”

And Tamara said, “No, but my parents were.”

And Saul said, “Can you say something for us? Say, ‘This meal is delicious.'”

And Tamara looked at Jude, who changed the subject. And suddenly Mary was talking about wanting grandchildren once Jude was married and Jude kept looking at the ground and Tamara felt ill and asked to be excused. And later that night she went to the pharmacy alone and bought three tests that told her what she already knew.

Tamara sat on the seat of the toilet and thought, I am not the kind of girl this is supposed to happen to. And then she realized, she was exactly the kind of girl this would happen to. Sex had been a faraway country to her once. She accidentally had her mother sign her out of sex education in middle school, and ended up stuck in the receptionist's office for a week reading about talking mice while her classmates diagrammed penises. She hadn't even known there was a separate hole for urinating until she started college. Her last encounter with sex before Jude was the Harlequin Romance books she would sneak out of the top cupboard of her home when she was younger, the ones her pervy male cousin had dropped off before he moved down to Long Beach, the ones her parents had assumed were dictionaries or textbooks of some kind, affectionately calling her “smart child” when they saw her reading them.

Tamara was pregnant and there was no one to tell except the boy she dreaded telling. In the three years she had been at college, she had not met anyone she would call a friend. She kept to herself, focused on her studies. There was her high school friend Kendra, but she could not keep secrets, and if she were told, then everyone in the Cambodian community would know.

You're showing cleavage

Why don't you just show your pussy

and let any man have at it

Go out on the streets and sell yourself

Americans these days

Cambodia was never like this

Look at those sucking lips

Look at them having each other

Disgusting

Filth

Go ahead, be a whore

That's what you want to do, isn't it

She pushed down her mother's words from adolescence and called Jude through the bathroom door. And Tamara told him through the bathroom door that she was with child, and Jude cried to her, “Let me in. Let me in.” And Tamara said no.

Jude said to her, “You could move in with me, and we could get—”

And Tamara said no.

Jude said to her, “We could make this work. My parents—”

And Tamara said no.

Jude said to her, “I'll quit school, get a job, and—”

And Tamara said to him, “I don't want this.”

And Jude said, “What about the baby?” And his voice seeped through the door in a flood that drowned out the whisper that said,
But what about me?

And she told him not to tell his parents and he said he wouldn't and she wanted to trust him but wasn't sure and she said again I don't want this thing and he said you mean baby and she said it's just a fucking clump of cells and he said baby don't say that and she thought it was funny, baby with a baby, and suddenly she was sick and he was pounding on the door and she shouted at him to stop, her suitemates would hear, and finally she let him in and he held her and said I love you and she said don't say it because of this don't say it at all and he said no I mean it and she said I want it out and he said don't think that don't say that at least keep the baby for now c'mon Juno did it and she said yeah, cuz when a white hipster gets knocked up she's quirky and cute and cool but if I do it I'm a dirty slut and he said you're being ridiculous and then she realized she didn't even know the month and day he had been born.

After seven hours of fighting, Tamara said to Jude, “I'll keep it.”

Therefore it grew inside her, and she no longer felt at home in her body. And for forty more days and forty more nights Jude kept reassuring her and holding her hand and saying babe, baby, babe, this is going to work, this is going to be all right, but she stopped listening and withdrew inside herself where she imagined seeing the knot of cells grow little stubby arms and legs that she would snip off with nail clippers. Maybe she was a monster. Then how could she be a mother? Tamara tried to see into the future, to use her fabricated powers of divinity, but it was difficult and all she could picture was a life she did not want: trapped in the house of Mary and Saul, parents of Jude, and held hostage by a mistake no one wanted her to take back. She wanted to graduate college, she wanted to move out of Altanero, she wanted the time and space to fuck up her life without baggage. She wanted an empty uterus. Thus her grades suffered and she suffered and the relationship suffered. But Jude kept saying, baby, baby, baby, and he was going to quit studying engineering and get a job someplace and care for her, but Tamara's love for him was not as steadfast. Nor did she think it was love. And she was not ready to raise up anyone into this world but herself.

And so Tamara said to herself, “Enough.” And she called the clinic to set her life on track again. And after Tamara did this she waited for Jude in her dorm, and he crawled into her bed and pulled up her shirt and traced circles around her navel though she did not show. And Tamara said to Jude, “I made the appointment.”

And he said nothing.

Tamara said to him, “I can't do this anymore.”

And he said nothing.

Tamara said, “I'm sorry.”

And he said nothing.

And finally Jude said to Tamara, “So, you're gonna kill our baby, just like that?”

And she said nothing.

And Jude said, “I guess this is it then.”

And she said nothing.

And Jude stood up and left and the door slammed shut behind him, and Tamara felt both empty and whole.

On the day of the appointment, Tamara still needed someone to go in with her and drive her back to her dorm afterward. And her parents were out of the question, for if they ever found out, they would kill her and pray for her and she was not sure how to say what she wanted anyway. And her sister and two brothers had their own lives to wrestle with. And she was contemplating this dilemma in her human evolution class instead of paying attention to the lecture of her professor, staring at her classmates and hoping one of them would reveal to her their spirit of understanding. And someone looked up and smiled back at her, and it was a girl named Miriam, and Miriam had been in five of her classes not counting this one and worked with her on a project once, and so Tamara felt relief and smiled back.

After class, Tamara approached Miriam as she was gathering up her things, and said to her, “Hi, Miriam. I don't know if you know me, but …”

And Tamara was startled by the bright eyes of Miriam, so unsettling were they, and stopped. Miriam smiled, saying, “Oh, I know you. We've had a lot of classes together. What's up?”

And Tamara said to her, “Can we talk someplace more private?”

And Miriam grew concerned and said, “Sure.”

Thus they went somewhere private, and Tamara told her what was inside her and what she needed to do, and that she had no one else to turn to and was sorry for burdening Miriam, but Miriam touched the hand of Tamara and said to Tamara, “Okay.”

And when Tamara was but seven years old, she went to her mother and tried to ask where babies came from. For her classmate Veronica said to her, “Babies get born either by your mom having sex with your dad, or your mom kisses your dad, but she has to do it every day.” And Tamara wanted to know if this was true. But her broken tongue could not form those words in Khmer, and so instead she asked her mother, “Where was I born?”

And her mother said to her, “You were born here.”

And Tamara said to her, “No, where was I born?” And she emphasized the words uselessly to get her mother to understand her nuanced meaning.

But her mother said to her, “You were born here. What, are you deaf ?”

And Tamara said to her, “Where am I from? Where am I from?”

And her mother grew angry and shouted, “You were born here, stupid!” And looking back, Tamara pondered whether or not her mother had truly misunderstood. Nevertheless, Tamara grew up and learned where babies came from, and learned this through a health pamphlet given to her by a nice white lady.

Now Tamara and Miriam journeyed forth to the clinic, and it was a hazardous journey, for there were many protesters outside and they were screaming and waving signs that read CHOOSE LIFE and ABORTION KILLS and END THE SLAUGHTER. And Tamara held her head high and she met their hate-filled stares and thought, will you deliver this baby and provide for it? And she knew either way she was a whore in their eyes, and that it was just a matter of being a welfare queen or devil queen, and she had been told the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And as Tamara journeyed to the doors, she saw a familiar face among many faces, the face of Mary, mother of Jude, and Mary saw her and spat into her face and the gobbet of spit ran down the cheek of Tamara, and Miriam grabbed Tamara and said, “Fuck off,” before guiding Tamara away, saying to her, “Ugh, she goes to my church. Ethnocentric bitch.”

Now Tamara was inside the clinic, and as they waited and she filled out paperwork, she saw that the skin of Miriam was like coffee with creamer and the skin of Tamara was like coffee, and that Tamara was blacker than the black girl, and she laughed on the inside at this. Then her name was called, and Miriam squeezed her hand, and the lady who met her at the door was so kind and good that Tamara wanted to weep. The lady had Tamara remove her clothes and put on a backless gown and then she waited in another room, shivering and alone, until she was called into one more room, where they poked and prodded her and told her things she nodded to and laid her down and put her feet in stirrups.

And Tamara looked up into the glaring light fixture as they jostled and jabbed her and she ached and thought, whoever is up there, what are your thoughts on this?

But there was no answer. And Tamara quelled her thoughts as they plucked the seed out of her, and she saw that it was good.

Jacqueline Bishop

A
s if by magic it appeared there: the small wooden house with shuttered jalousie windows rising out against the dark green bushes. Emanuel was sure it hadn't been there Friday evening as he made his way home from the fields for the weekend and he was confused as to how an entire house could have been built in a matter of days. Even more confusing was the garden with its purple Joseph's coats and giant red ginger lilies. In the back, a huge Julie mango tree spread its gnarled branches over the roof.

Pale curtains blew at the windows and Emanuel was able to make out the sounds of someone moving things about inside the house, rearranging furniture and carefully setting things in order. There was a happy feeling to the place and it seemed as if the sun shone directly down on the house, casting a soft yellow glow over the yard. Emanuel was still looking at the house in astonishment when the back door opened and someone stepped outside.

Without knowing why he quickly hid behind a large breadfruit tree, peering out every now and again to see who was coming out of the house.

Immediately he felt foolish for hiding. Hadn't he walked the footpath of these bushes on the way to his fields for the past however many years? Hadn't he bragged to the other men in the district that this was the best land around for miles, the reason why his bananas were always so full and handsome? His cocoa and coffee beans so rich and fragrant? In some ways he felt he owned the land, for there would be weeks at a time when he'd be the only person to come this far into the bushes.

A woman stepped out of the house balancing something emeraldgreen on her shoulder. Emanuel passed his hands quickly over his eyes to make sure he was not seeing things and looked again at what was on the woman's shoulder. It was a parrot! A yellow-billed parrot! He could not remember the last time he'd seen one in the district!

The woman carried the bird as if it were the most natural thing in the world for it to be resting there on her shoulder, nudging her, playing in her long, dark hair.