Black Silk (21 page)

Neon arrows point her through the night to
DE CLUB—DANCING.
Nudging her way into the press of women, she begins to dance, not alone but with herself. Her body, exalted, trances into
the pulsating pump of the music, vibrant still from the tremor left by a bartender in a corner. And then someone is there,
intruding. Long-lashed onyx eyes, hair falling smoothly to her waist, bare shoulders, brown as Jesse’s. She dances in close
to Jesse’s ear to ask her simple, predictable question. “What’s your name?” The deep, smoky voice is accented by England.
When it is the woman’s turn to name herself, Jesse can’t make it out. Something Indian. Jesse has to ask again. Vijaya.

They dance, each watching when she thinks the other isn’t. Jesse eyes the Indian’s broad shoulders and thrusting hips, her
sleeveless cotton sweater, corduroy slacks and boots, all black, all carefully considered. Sweat collects on Jesse’s forehead
and runs into her eyebrows and down her face. As the music changes they walk to the bar, not touching. The wall clock shows
four
A.M.
They share beer and talk of New Delhi, of New York. From an old woman she buys a rose, hands it to Jesse. Jesse accepts the
cliché. They stroll to the dance floor, emboldened by the promise of each other. Jesse’s thigh is between Vijaya’s and that
is how they stay, pushing against, grinding into, yearning for. The music slows. Vijaya licks sweat from Jesse’s neck and
Jesse feels down Vijaya’s back, then lower. Something more urgent takes the place of their dance. Vijaya’s arms wrap around
Jesse’s neck, she is pushing back and forth against Jesse’s groin. They are already lovers.

A faster track comes on but neither dances. They stand, then leave the floor. Vijaya climbs onto a stool and parts her knees.
Jesse steps between them. “Can I see you again?” asks Vijaya, pulling Jesse closer.

Jesse feels her partner’s desire. “You can see me right now.”

“Let’s go then, Jesse.”

They stumble from a cab in front of Vijaya’s apartment, still panting and kissing. Vijaya closes heavy drapes against the
rising dawn. Jesse strips immediately, unable to bear even a moment’s pause. She stretches out on an immense, unmade bed.
There is no talk and no light. Vijaya eases next to her, naked, and moans instantly at the shock of soft skin. In utter darkness
Jesse finds and strokes her hair, neck, shoulders, breasts. Vijaya moans, raising her hips to Jesse’s hand. Jesse rolls onto
her and tongues down to her firm stomach, farther down, curled hairs. Vijaya is breathless, passive, waiting. Jesse tastes
everywhere Vijaya is wet, along her neck, below her breasts, inside her elbows, between her legs. “Do me. Please. Now.” Jesse
does, her tongue deep inside a complete stranger whose fingers, deep in Jesse’s hair, hold Jesse’s head to her sex, insistent.
Vijaya cries out and floods onto Jesse’s tongue. She comes, groaning. Jesse comes, untouched. “That was so good,” sighs Vijaya,
pulling Jesse up to lie on top of her. In an instant, she is snoring. Jesse wraps up in the blanket.

When Jesse awakens Vijaya is already up making coffee for herself and tea for Jesse. The drapes are wide open, and the blaring
daylight hurts Jesse’s eyes. “Everybody thinks all Indians drink tea but I don’t. I like coffee.” She moves around busily
in a thick bathrobe, takes a couple of phone calls. Her black hair is tied back. Jesse remembers its smell, Vijaya’s taste.
A current jolts her and Jesse squeezes her legs together beneath the blankets.

She feels lazy and lingers in bed, hoping Vijaya might return. There has been no touch, and its absence feels awkward. “Thanks
for having me over,” says Jesse, to remind her morning hostess that a few hours earlier they’d been passionate lovers. Vijaya
laughs. “Don’t thank me! I wanted you. This wasn’t a charity case.” Jesse blushes into her tea. Nothing more is said about
their morning together. She dresses while Vijaya showers. Her clothes smell like stale cigarettes and her mouth is dry. She
can only imagine what her uncombed hair looks like. No wonder Vijaya doesn’t want… They exchange phone numbers and kiss each
other’s cheeks. Jesse promises Vijaya that she’ll be back. She dials Vijaya’s number a few times. All that awaits her is a
woman’s voice speaking Dutch. Jesse isn’t even sure it’s Vijaya’s. Ungenerous.

Jesse waits to feel hurt and angry. But those emotions elude her. In truth, she is fascinated, almost impressed. A woman who
takes what she wants and moves on, with neither guilt nor shame, unburdened by any sense at all of debt. Jesse concludes she
was wrong. Vijaya was indeed generous, in her honesty. Something to consider.

In her skin and on her tongue Jesse carries back to New York the ways of the Old World, to the consternation of her friends.

“Girl, what are you doing? This is a public place. I’ll be your dance partner but don’t get carried away.” Carried away. That
is exactly what Jesse craves, to fly off, lifted by wind, swept by waves, blown by breath.

“Why shouldn’t we, isn’t that life’s pulse? In Amsterdam, a breathtaking bartender inhaled me right there in…”

Mica flinches almost imperceptibly. Jesse notices. She’s out to her straight classmate, who claims to be “cool with that.”
So why does Mica still recoil at details? Hypocrisy or ambivalence?

“Do you see any wooden shoes on this dance floor, because I don’t. You aren’t in Amsterdam anymore, so get your hands off
my…”

“All right, all right! But really, Mica, you would not believe how open they are in their so-called Old World. It seems a
lot newer than ours.”

“Oh, but I would believe how very open they are. So spare me, please.”

Weeks have blurred by since Jesse’s return to college. She recognizes her body in the mirror but not this feeling, a yearning,
new to someone for whom fear shadowed every desire, however muffled. Fear of words, the judgments used to choke off a woman’s
sexuality, words like
whore
and
promiscuous
and
slut
—or, even worse,
dyke.
Jesse, gay yet untouched by any woman’s hand but her own, a lesbian-in-waiting with no queen to serve. But that was before
the black Dutch and Indian Brits of Amsterdam, before her discovery of a world made rich by indifference, by people simply
not caring what others do or whom they love. Summer, a short sigh away, will take Jesse back there. And again, she will go
into details, explore the particulars of her heart.

_________________

by Kiini Ibura Salaam

Warmth takes over my body. I spread my arms and tilt my chin to the sky. My face breaks into a smile. If I could embrace the
sun, I would. Yesterday I wore layers. Yesterday snowflakes stung my cheeks. Seven hundred dollars and twenty hours later,
I am here—in this city, in this heat, on this balcony— surrounded by crumbling buildings painted pastel. Clay tile roofs sprout
in irregular patches like weeds. Across the street, a fat vendor sits leaning against a tiny table, absentmindedly fondling
his produce. Black letters on torn pieces of cardboard advertise onions, peppers, tomatoes, eggs. A vagrant loiters on the
corner, begging coins. The vendor yells at him, a string of curses streaming from his mouth. The coffee boy comes speeding
down the slender footpath. His flip-flop-shod feet are a blur. My gaze travels up skinny scarred legs to the spread of bare
brown chest. One bony hand rests on a mini steering wheel. He navigates pedestrians and potholes with expert flicks of the
finger. His thermoses clink and clank. His wheels creak.

“Cafezinho,” he cries.

“Caaafffeeeezzziiinnnhhhooo.” A hand lifts from an open window. He halts. Resting his foot on his homemade cart, he tosses
coffee into a tiny plastic cup. Coins fall into his palm. He drops them into his pocket and, with a quick upturned thumb,
is gone. A tiny bundle of brown fur wanders the sidewalk. It bounds and leaps, pouncing after some invisible foe. It pokes
its nose into the trash pile, then tumbles off the curb. My body tenses as a bus roars around the bend. Just as I am covering
my eyes and turning away, a hand reaches into the street and lifts the kitten by it neck. I sigh in relief, grateful for the
thick muscled arm, the rippling chest, the kitten mewing in its cradle of safety.

Crowning the neighborhood is a wide expanse of sky. No clouds, its blueness goes on forever. Voices full of drunken belligerence
drift up from the bar on the corner. Somewhere, a radio is blasting.
Pagode
notes bounce in the air. On the street below me, an old man pushes a wheelbarrow full of fruit. He lowers his load and wipes
his face with a rag. He shades his eyes with shaking fingers and looks up at me.
Menina,
he calls out, you want some pineapples? “No,” I say and wag my finger in the Brazilian way. Bananas, mangoes? I smile at
his upturned face. I shake my head and say,
não, não.
I know his tricks well. If I come down for a pineapple, I return to the kitchen with papaya and passion fruit, too. He lifts
the handles of the wheelbarrow and continues on. I watch his crooked back drifting down the steep street.

At the corner a mean-faced old woman sits in the shade. She stirs a moist cornmeal mixture with clawed hands. Undaunted by
her gruffness, the fruit seller throws a friendly greeting into her lap. She nods and keeps stirring. The fruit man pauses.
The woman ignores him. She deftly coaxes bits of mix into round
acaraje
balls with a huge metal spoon. He rifles through his fruit, testing the ripeness of the sugar apples. She flicks the
acaraje
into a big metal bowl of hot oil. The flames flare. The fruit man hands her a chunk of jackfruit. She hesitates. He insists.
She takes it with a spare-toothed smile. He goes on down the road. She leans back and pops a piece of fruit into her mouth.
Her eyes wander up to the balcony, over my shoulders, and land on my face. She cuts her eyes at me. I feel a quick flush of
embarrassment. My lips lift into a smile and I turn away.

A light breeze blows me back into the apartment. Just as I reenter the living room, a lizard falls off the ceiling and plops
on top of my suitcase. It sits frozen and disoriented. I wait for it to wander off. It finally slinks to the floor and waddles
away. I roll my suitcase down the long hallway. Then I hesitate. A spider scurries across the closed door. My suitcase slips
out of my grasp. I nudge the door open with my toe. Delight explodes in my chest. The walls are exactly as I remember them:
clumsily painted in glowing layers of yellow and orange. I drag the suitcase to the middle of the room and sit on it. My eyes
roam over every crack and corner. A wounded cockroach staggers through the doorway. I jump to my feet. The cat tumbles in
after it. It pounces and jumps and bats the roach with its paws. The roach rustles its wings and stumbles. In a gulp, the
game is over. The cat has the creature clamped in its jaws. Get out, I say. The cat stares at me, roach legs wiggling in its
mouth. Out, I repeat and point to the door. The cat streaks out of the room. I slam the door behind its swishing tail.

The walls beckon me, vibrating with memory. I spread my fingers and approach the timeworn surface. I bend my knees into a
squat and press my palms flat against the cool plaster. My fingertips dip into crumbling holes until they find the familiar
grooves. There carved beside the socket are three English words, spelled in Portuguese:
AI LUV U.
Bilingual love. The doorbell rings. My heart drops into my gut. I fall to my knees and push my ear against the door. With
stilled breath, I listen. I can hear the cat tearing through the house. I can hear the little girl downstairs screaming at
her big sister. Then I hear the sounds I’m searching for. The creaking of hinges. The drag of wood against marble floor. The
front door is opening. Laughter rings through the house. I suck my teeth and bang my fist on the floor. The door slams shut.
It is a woman’s voice. It is not you.

From beneath the door a determined line of ants marches across the floor. I crush a few out of spite. I watch the ants take
stock of the death and, briefly, panic. Then, as I am untying my shoelaces, they cut a path around their comrades’ corpses
and resume their journey. I tug off my boots and crawl beside the insect trail. I follow them all the way across the room
until they disappear into a crack in the wall. I free my feet of my socks and wiggle my toes. My jeans are next. Sweat seeps
from my pores as I peel the heavy fabric off my sticky skin. I lean over my suitcase and click open the locks. In my underwear,
I straddle it and wrestle it open. Tightly rolled bundles of summer clothes burst from inside. I finger through shorts, halter
tops, mini skirts, until a small orange-and-red sundress jumps out at me. In seconds, the dress is dripping from my shoulders
and I am fanning myself with its hem. I slide my hands to my hips and look around.
I’m here,
I think,
I’m really here.

Buried at the bottom of my suitcase is a box heavy with gifts. My host rips it open, her eyes wide in anticipation. She hugs
the cheese and chocolate to her chest, squeezes the batteries in her fist. She skips into the kitchen for a knife. My eyes
leap to the door. Jesse went back to the States, she yells from the kitchen. She returns with a tray of crackers. In the middle
of the tray is the new block of cheese, glowing like a golden treasure. We sip mango juice and breathlessly tell tales of
life. What we’ve written, who we’ve spoken to, who we never want to see again up. Under the table my legs jiggle nervously.
The one person missing from her report is you. My heart feels as if it would burst. Are you seeing someone? Are you safe?
Are you here? I wonder if she can see the questions beating under my skin. I don’t dare say your name. She looks at me, eyes
shining, and lapses into silence.