Tanya Tania (15 page)

May 24, 1992

Bombay

Dear Tanya,

Last night I had sex with Arjun and I'm still shivering.

Okay, I've said it. Don't ask me any questions. I don't want to talk about it.

That sucks man that you can't go to America for the summer holidays. Why didn't you even ask if you can go? I don't get it. Maybe they like forgot. And just because you didn't ask you don't get to go. I don't get it. You could have just asked.

Fuck it. I have to talk about it.

Every minute every breath every smell.

I want to write it all and then learn it by heart and say it like a poem before going to sleep at night without him.

Without him. I can't live my life without him. It hurts so much.

I mean not there though that hurt a LOT which no one tells you and I am going to tell everyone. But I mean how much it just hurts the whole thing but it's like it is not of this world or this life. Like I've never believed in heaven or hell and then this happens and you feel like someone has opened a curtain and you realise it's not about heaven or hell, it's about this world and how much there can be in it.

I can't stop shivering.

It was at the Taj. He had always told me it would be at the Taj because it's the best hotel in the city and also because it's the only hotel where he knows someone who knows someone who wouldn't check ID.

It was in the evening right after sunset. I felt damn nervous even though I was wearing my lucky bra and my hot boots. We kind of just stood there looking at each other and we both sort of giggled. Then he came close to me and touched my arm just my arm and his hand was shaking. He looked at me and there was no one no one in the whole world who has wanted me so much who has loved me so much except maybe my dad. And I remember being grossed out by thinking that and then he pulled me close and held me and he was shaking. Arjun was shaking. I started crying.

It happened very slowly. He switched off the light and I wanted to say no because I wanted to see everything but I had forgotten how to talk and I could do nothing except look at him looking at me. He tried to close the curtain but it was a mechanical curtain and he didn't know how.

I thought he'd have moves you know. I thought he'd pick me up and take me to the bed and I thought that it would be passionate and wild. But in the end, I held his hand and walked to the bed and he just followed me.

He told me later that he had meant to have music. He had a whole cassette of songs that he had like prepared specially for this. But he forgot to put it on.

You know how in the movies the clothes come off so perfectly and everything is just passion passion passion? It wasn't like that. It took ages and things got stuck. But when I saw his chest and his arms and I knew he had worked out that morning because of the veins that were popping near his wrists just how I like it I began to cry again because it was so beautiful and he was so beautiful and the way he looked at me the way he touched me it was as if everything was for the first time. (Even though it was actually the ninth time he was seeing me naked.)

I had shaved down there because I was too scared to wax and there was a nick and it hurt when he touched it and he freaked out and said that if that was going to hurt then how were we going to have sex and then I told him it was the nick and he was so sweet he bent down and kissed it and kissed it and licked it and I thought my heart had stopped beating, it got so strange and I couldn't breathe and it seemed to go on forever and I focused on the lamp in the corner of the room which was green and had orange tassels all around the rim and I think maybe I had an orgasm.

He really liked that and then it got hard as in painful because he was pushing and I got really scared because it was still just with his hands.

He took his hand away and then I let him take off his shorts which I never had before and it looked so weird and so beautiful and he got upset when I said that because he said dicks aren't meant to be beautiful so I didn't say it again but it was beautiful and I wanted to touch it and hold it and never let it go.

Then he took out the condoms but his hands were shaking so it took a long time to open it. I wanted to open it for him because it was all going away but I wanted to be feminine and sexy so I just lay there and did nothing. He tore the first one and the second one snapped on his penis which really hurt so for some time we just lay there holding each other and that was really soft and I felt like my heart would burst the way he started touching me and the way his body felt under my hands as if it was water. He has no hair anywhere which makes me want to hold him like a baby.

And then he began to put it inside and it wasn't at all easy and we were like totally surprised because every time we've fooled around it just got to that point so quickly and both of us dying to do more and yet this time with everything in place with the condom with the hotel with the sea outside and the green lamp but it wasn't going in.

We stayed like that for a long time with him on top of me and we just kept kissing and kissing and kissing and his hands were in my hair just like how I like it and I was holding him close on top of me and I felt like the world would end if he moved even just a little bit and then slowly slowly it was like really painful he went inside and then once he was inside totally inside it was the best feeling I've ever had in my whole life and that was the point when it felt like I was seeing something I had never ever seen before even though the whole time I was really just looking at the green lamp with the orange tassels.

He came and his hands were so tight on my breasts that they hurt now. His face looked frightening like a mad person his eyes weren't blinking and he was sweating even though it was so cold in that room.

And then afterwards he just held me and shivered and I held him and shivered and we were both crying and saying I love you I love you I love you. I knew then that we were born to have sex because it is the best feeling of anything in the whole world to be joined like that with someone. I was born to have sex with Arjun.

His muscles kept quivering and it wouldn't stop being hard but it hurt too much so we didn't do it again and he whispered in my ear that he didn't even want to, he just wanted to lie there with me forever. Which is what I always want with Arjun but he has never wanted that with me.

The funny thing is I understand now why Nusrat didn't want me to do this. I am a different person. I loved Arjun before but now I belong to him. I know him like no one else knows him and he knows me like no one else knows me. Nothing compares to this kind of love.

I am shivering. It hurts everywhere and I think I have fever. I love him so much I almost want to die right now so I never have to feel anything else.

Don't say anything. Just please don't say anything.

Love,

Tania (lover of Arjun)

7

April 26, 1996

New York, NY

Dear Tania,

You know what I like to do in New York when I feel sad? I like to watch nannies in the park.

New York is full of nannies. They are dark black, light black, milk black, hazelnut black, almond black. The children are blue eyed, green eyed, light brown eyed, strawberry blonde, golden blonde, chestnut blonde, ginger. They wear polka-dotted tights with boots. They wear darling little fur and leather jackets with matching hats and gloves.

I watch the nannies wheel the babies up and down Park and Fifth, Central Park West, Central Park South, Columbus and Amsterdam. They pick them up and croon to them. The babies sigh and tuck their heads into their shoulders, their miniature porcelain hands curled tightly around dark, ungloved fingers.

The older children play on the swings in the park. The nannies sit on the periphery watching them. Sometimes they talk to each other but not often. You can always tell the mothers from the nannies. The mothers are young and dressed in designer sweatpants. The mothers wear knee-length leather boots with double wool peacoats and soft pastel cashmere scarves. The mothers grow smaller every time I see them.

The nannies are large. They're usually in white Keds. Sometimes they wear uniforms. They wear polyester puffy jackets with red and white striped fleece scarves. They wear tight jeans with many pockets. They wear thick gold earrings that the babies like to pull at.

The nannies are usually from the Caribbean. Some are from Mexico and Guatemala and Peru. The ones from Jamaica and Trinidad are paid more because they speak English. The ones from Haiti are paid the least because their French is Creole.

The nannies leave behind families and children of their own to come here and work. Many of them come here illegally and they can't go back for years and years and years. They watch their own children grow up through photographs. They bring up other children here, one after another.

Many of my friends at Columbia have been brought up by nannies. Some talk about them like a loved but second-tier aunt. Others screw up their faces and try to remember names. She used to make an excellent pear tart, they'll say, in an effort to be helpful. She used to smell of cinnamon.

You never asked me why I did it, Tania.

Do you know how I used to wait for your letters? In the muddy, darkening swirl of days that was my last year in Pakistan, your letters were a talisman against the dark. Your letters made me feel normal. And yet, it began to be that when I had the envelope in my hand with its red and white borders and Mahatma Gandhi stamps, I would not want to open them. Her name crowded every page.

Nusrat, Nusrat, Nusrat.

Now I read your letters I can see that it's not true. But my mind was not normal then, Tania. You know that. You knew that then, didn't you? My mother scrabbling in the dirt, my father absent, just absent and Navi retreated into an inner world. And I, I was left. No one worrying about me. No one thinking of me first. No one putting me first. No one just for me.

I wanted you just for me.

I used to count the number of times you mentioned her in your letters. Five, seven, ten. Nusrat this and Nusrat that. I gloated when you didn't tell her things that you told me. I burned to show you my school certificates when you described hers.

It never made sense to me. She seemed so vastly good, so outside the sphere of you.

If you had asked me then why I did it I would have said, I wanted to be your best friend. If you ask me now why I did it, I would say the same thing except perhaps in more abstract words. Grown-up words. I would talk about primacy. I would talk about belonging and ownership. I would talk about bond creation.

I wanted to matter. That's all Tania. I thought that with you at least, I should matter first, matter more than a servant girl.

But that was all. It's pathetic that there isn't a deeper reason but there isn't. All I ever wanted was to come first. Everything else was a mistake, a circumstance that I could never have dreamt because who has that kind of black magic, who can conjure up what happened, that collective death of sanity?

You were my best friend, you know. The best friend I've ever had. Ever will.

Sometimes I feel like you think I should have been wiser, I should have been older. I could say the same to you. You mattered and you knew it. You could have taken better care of me.

Nannies matter and then they don't. They float from one family to the next. And yet, you see them in the park and they look so much in love. They watch the babies learn to walk with wonder in their eyes. They love and they leave and they love and they leave.

Nannies give me hope.

Love,

Tanya

June 6, 1992

Bombay

Dear Tanya,

Dude, did you get my letter? How come you haven't responded?

I haven't told Nusrat. I haven't told anyone but I feel like it's written all over me that I did it.