The Newlyweds (11 page)

“Don’t worry,” her father said. “The cool weather is coming. I’m going to take her to the village and fatten her up. Shondesh and bananas, shondesh and bananas, morning, noon, and night.”

“I miss you so much,” she told her mother, when she got on the phone to say good-bye. “I missed you at my job today.”

“English, English!” her mother insisted. “I am practicing.”

And so Amina had to keep it simple. “Four bananas per day,” she instructed her mother. “Four bananas and five plates of shondesh.”

16
She showed George her badge as soon as he came in the door. “It says ‘Pittsford’—as if they think I was born here.” Carl knew where she was born—she’d had to give him a photocopy of her green card—but she thought someone else was probably in charge of making the badges. It was possible that this person couldn’t spell “Bangladesh” or, like Lisa, had never even heard of it.

“It doesn’t make a difference where you were born,” George said. “It’s where you live now that counts.”

She was making a chicken pulao, even though there was leftover curry in the refrigerator. She wanted to show George that things wouldn’t change now that she was working, and so she had decided to make something fresh. The curry would last for days in their enormous GE refrigerator, and you never had to worry about the current going out.

“Lisa is my colleague, and her badge says ‘Greece.’ But I think she’s been living in Rochester for some time.”

George laughed out loud—a rare thing. “Do you know where Greece is?”

Amina was offended, and she added too much paprika to the rice. “Of course. Underneath Italy, in the Aegean Sea.” By the time Amina was seven, she could find every country on the tablecloth. (The cloth
didn’t have every country in the world, because it had been made from outdated maps; for example, Bangladesh was missing, still one wing of bright green Pakistan.) One day she’d come home from school to find that her father had covered all of the country names with thin, white tape; after that, she’d had to do it from memory.

“Nope,” George said. “Let me show you.” He went out to the garage to get the Rand McNally
StreetFinder
, and put it down in the least convenient place, right where she was slicing the vegetables. She was still irritated as he flipped through the pages, but it turned out he was right: in the top, left-hand corner of the map, bisected by highway 390, was a town called Greece.

“You’d probably meet some Bengali people if we lived there.”

“There are Bengalis in Lisa’s neighborhood?” She had seen a lot of Indians at Wegmans, and once on the sidewalk near Home Depot she had passed an old woman in a sari and sweater, speaking Bangla into a cell phone, but she’d never actually been introduced to anyone who wasn’t white.

“There are more immigrants there than in Pittsford.”

“How much does an apartment cost there?”

“Depends. You know that.”

“An apartment for your mother, when she gets old.”

“She’d want to be here, or in Brighton.”

“But if she wanted to live in Greece.”

George shook his head and tugged playfully at her braid. She plaited her hair at home now because he’d said he liked it, although she hadn’t worn it that way for years. “Little Miss Curious. Maybe eight hundred dollars a month, if it was just one bedroom. My mother might want two.”

As George revealed these facts, Amina stored them up, so that she wouldn’t have to ask again. She knew that together they would pay 25 percent of their income in taxes each year, and that some of this money was deducted from her paychecks in advance. The rest was called her take-home pay. If she continued sending half of this to Bangladesh (my “send-home pay,” she joked to George), it would take years to save enough so that her parents could rent their own apartment in Rochester. If she had to pay their rent, she would never be
able to contribute anything toward the cost of college, nor would she be able to cut down her hours once they had a child without relying heavily on George for her parents’ maintenance.

They had been eating in silence for several minutes when Amina remembered the other question she’d wanted to ask.

“It’s an expression,” George said. “You can figure it out—it just means a second plan you come up with in case the first one doesn’t work out.”

“Is there any other kind of Plan B? A kind you can buy at a store?”

George looked up from his plate. “Oh my God, Amina. Are you—?” Her husband didn’t finish his sentence, and she didn’t know how to do it for him. Something she’d said had drained what little color there was from his skin.

“You
are
?”

“I am—what?”

“Pregnant?” It came out as a whisper. “But why would you want to—”

“Want to?”

“Use Plan B!” George exclaimed. “I thought we said we wanted a child.”

“We do,” Amina said.

“But when did you miss your period?”

“I had it three weeks ago.”

“So why do you think you’re pregnant? Did you take a test?”

“I don’t think I am.”

George managed to look both relieved and exasperated at once. “Then why are you asking about Plan B?”

“Lisa mentioned about it. She says another colleague bought it for his girlfriend.”

“ ‘Mentioned it,’ ” George said. “No ‘about.’ God, don’t scare me like that.”

“But what is it?”

“It’s an abortion pill. You use it after you have sex, if you think you’ve had … an accident.” He set down his fork and put one of his hands on top of Amina’s. “I’m sorry, but you really threw me. I thought you were saying you wanted an abortion. I didn’t think your religion even allowed that.”

She always felt slightly offended when George referred to Islam as “her religion,” failing to acknowledge that it would eventually belong to both of them. He hadn’t gone back on his promise to convert, but he still often spoke of Islam with the same kind of timidity his mother and his aunt employed, as if her faith were a wild animal whose behavior couldn’t be reliably predicted.

“In Islam you may use contraception for good reason,” she said. “Financial hardship or the mother’s health. Most people I knew at home used it. But abortion is very bad.”

“I don’t believe in it either,” George said firmly. “It’s all right for other people—I’m not a maniac like Cathy—but not in my family.”

“Aunt Cathy does not believe in abortion?”

“No way—she’s a crusader. She marches and everything.” George adjusted his glasses the way he always did when he was getting ready to explain something. “The issue’s been blown out of proportion in this country, because it’s simple enough for everyone to understand. It’s just a way to choose sides. I understand that people make mistakes, and I respect their choices. But that kind of thing won’t happen to you and me.”

She didn’t tell George that she had been an accident—a happy one, her parents always said, but nevertheless an accident that had almost killed her mother. The birth, which had happened in the village in the traditional manner, without her father present, had been so difficult that they had feared for her mother’s life. She had presented in the breech position, and after nearly two days of labor, the midwife had suggested that the baby be dismembered, sacrificed so that her mother might live. No one had said “live to bear sons,” but at that point it was already clear that the baby was a girl. Her mother had been beyond speech, and if not for her brother Emdad, the midwife might have been allowed to make the decision. Emdad had suggested that they wait another hour, and ten minutes later Amina had been born, not only alive but screaming.

Her mother often said that she had been a miracle, and it wasn’t fair to expect God to provide them another in their lifetime. They had made their plans themselves, exhausting A, B, C, and D before they had finally hit on one that worked. And now here she was in America, serving her husband a second helping of chicken pulao. In another
three years her parents might be here, too, with a baby asleep in a solid American cradle upstairs. It was not impossible, she thought, as George complimented her on the meal. There were several paths to everything, and some of them were hidden when you started out. Her mother would say that God created those paths, but to Amina it seemed as if the paths were there; it was only that you needed God to help you find them.

17
Once she started working they got into a pattern, having sex twice a week: once over the weekend, and once during the week. It wasn’t always on the same days, but the intervals were similar. If it happened on a Sunday, it would often happen again on Thursday; if it were Friday, the next time would be a Monday or Tuesday. Normally it began with George suggesting they go to bed earlier than usual. Once they were there, in their pajamas with their teeth brushed, he would turn to her and ask if she was tired. If she didn’t want to, she could simply say that she was, and he would accept it without protest. Normally, though, she didn’t refuse. It didn’t hurt the way it once had, nor did it give her any kind of physical pleasure. Her satisfaction came instead from the knowledge that she’d mastered a previously intimidating facet of adult life.

They had done it on Sunday night, and so she was surprised when he turned to her on Monday, later than usual.

“Are you tired?”

“A little,” she said, not looking at him. Did he really mean to do it again tonight? Mondays were always the hardest for her; she was shyest with Lisa and Carl, as if there was a part of her that started a new job all over again at the beginning of each week. She made a point of preparing food in advance on Sunday afternoons, so that she wouldn’t have to cook when she got home the next day. She had a book open on her lap,
The Secret Life of Bees
, which George’s mother had recommended, but she hadn’t really been reading; she was just waiting for him to finish with his own book and turn out the light.

George put his hand on hers so that she had to meet his eyes. “You don’t like it.”

“I have always enjoyed reading novels,” she said. “It’s only that Mondays are tiring for me.”

“Not the book,” he said impatiently. “I mean, you know, us—together—having sex.” She could see that he was embarrassed because the lines on his forehead deepened and joined in the middle. “I’m doing something wrong.”

This idea was so surprising that Amina failed to say anything.

“I don’t have a lot of experience either,” he said. “I’ve never told that to anyone, but I guess I should now. There were only three girls before you.”

“What is the normal amount?” She didn’t mean to tease him, but George looked stung.

“It depends. One of those girls had been with ten people before me—and she was only twenty-five.”

“And is she married now?”

“Oh yeah,” George said. “She got married way before I did. And moved away.”

“Who was she?” Amina asked eagerly. She had always been curious about George’s sexual life before he met her; it was something her mother had wanted her to ascertain in advance, but Amina had drawn the line at that kind of question.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” George said. “I just wish I knew how to make you—you know, when we’re doing that.”

“I am doing something wrong?”

George shook his head. “Make it good for you. I wish I’d asked someone—I mean, before. But American girls expect you to be experienced. And I hate talking about it.”

“Me, too,” Amina said. “I didn’t even like when my girlfriends talked about it at home.”

“That’s how I feel—it’s private.” They had turned off the overhead light, and only the reading lamps were lit. “I like your shoulders,” he said suddenly.

“My shoulders?”

“They’re so small and perfect. And then—” He touched her shoulder, and ran two fingers down over her collarbone, very gently along the side of her left breast. She needed a small in everything in Rochester,
but she’d observed that American women her size didn’t have breasts like hers; they pressed against the thin cotton in a way she knew excited him.

“That shape. Don’t worry—I know we did it last night. I’m just saying—you’re really beautiful.”

“We can,” she said, and was rewarded by his expression.

“But I want to do something for you—I mean, I want to make you come.”

“Come where?”

George looked at her. “Are you kidding?”

She thought he was about to laugh at her and she resented it. “No.”

“You know—what happens to me.”

“What?”

“I mean, at the end.”

“How could I do
that
?”

He did laugh. “It’s different. Look.” He pulled her down on the bed so they were lying next to each other. Then he put his hand inside her underpants.

“Could we turn out the light?”

“Could we leave it on?” he said. “You’re so pretty. You can close your eyes if you don’t want to look at
me
.”

“I didn’t mean—” she began, and then she closed them. What George was doing didn’t feel bad, although she wished he weren’t watching her. She tried to think of something else, and what appeared was a picture that had come to her sometimes at home, when she was in the apartment alone, studying. She had imagined a man coming toward her through the lush green fields of a tea plantation—she thought she must have gotten it from an old movie. The man didn’t have any recognizable features; she was rather seeing herself through his eyes, as they sank down to the ground and caressed each other. First the man would unbutton her jeans (in this fantasy, she had always been wearing the jeans she did not yet own), sliding his hand between the denim and her panties. She tried to concentrate on George here in her bedroom in Rochester, but the stranger returned; somehow the fact that she was picturing the wrong man, in the wrong place, increased her excitement, and she moaned audibly.

“Oh my God,” he said. “You’re going to come.”

But she did not. When he was finished she could tell he was disappointed he hadn’t managed to do what he’d intended, and she put her head in the hollow just below his shoulder, so that they might lie together without having to look at each other. He took her hand and wrapped it across his chest, so that they were even more closely intertwined.