By Kimarlee Nguyen, Hyphen Magazine
I wake up to snow.
Snowflakes (PATRICK SEEGER/AFP/Getty Images)
I know this before I even open my eyes. There’s hissing from the heater but still, the wind finds its way in from the corners of the window. When I sit up, he’s already awake and sitting on the far edge of my bed. His broad shoulders cast a shadow on the empty wall.
Across the room, on the bed closest to the door, Theda hugs herself into a tightly wound ball underneath her red blanket. When Theda is like that, curling her five foot body in on itself, it’s easy to imagine her young, like someone’s daughter but her long hair is streaked through with white.
Over the heater and the uneven toll of his breathing, she mutters mantras. When I first came here, I thought no one would keep up the old words, not after all that happened. But Theda did and still does to this day. Underneath the blanket, bouncing off the window, her words crawl up my arm and circle his bowed head. She speaks in Pali, the old language. I can’t follow along, but the words bring with them the heat of summer, the smell of incense and the saffron robes the monks wore, all gathered in a line.
He sniffles once, twice; I think he’s crying and I am momentarily touched. His back is laced with red pimples, the only part of his body that’s marked in any way. Even the back of his hands and legs are hairless, smoother than smooth, and when he turns to look at me, the corners of his blue eyes are tinged red.
His voice is lower than any other man’s voice I’ve ever heard and it sends shivers up my body. Over Theda’s words and the heater that’s now spurting water, he takes a handful of my hair and says, Better hurry up before you’re late for work.
He tugs at the ends and smiles, his teeth too large and too yellow and too crowded together in his mouth. He knows me well enough by now not to lift the bed sheet until I can pull my sarong straight on my hips and fix my shirt. Even though it’s still the half-dark before a proper sunrise, even though Theda faces the opposite wall, I’m still embarrassed.
When he reaches for me, I smell the soap on his hands. A year now and his hands never smell like anything else. He places a heavy hand on the back of my neck and pulls me to him. His mouth’s quick and hungry to bite my own. I try to relax into it, the way all the women do on the lakorns Theda and I watch while eating dinner, but I’m unbending, my back a straight line even as he runs his hands up my shirt to touch my breasts. He pulls lightly on my nipples and smiles down into my face. When he finally lets me go and gets up from the bed, the fitted sheet lifts up from the corners and spring back to the center of the mattress. He stumbles a bit in the darkness. I can feel the cold ripple and bend around his bare shoulders.
As I watch him dress, I swing my feet over the side of the bed to the floor, my feet stinging the moment I hit the cold wood. He pulls on his jeans first, one leg at a time and I can see that overnight, the denim grew stiff with cold. I’m shaking with nothing on but my sarong and an old, long-sleeved T-shirt of his that he playfully gave me the first night we slept together.
He said, Over here, it’s how we men show that we like you. He laughed but I was shivering back then and that was when he climbed all over me, putting his lips to my neck, my breasts, my hips. I was shivering then and I’m shivering now.
You have to tell the landlord to turn on the heat, he says.
He pulls on a button-down shirt stained with coffee and then a fleece sweater. It’s the law, he adds as he gets up, looking for his shoes. He always sleeps with his socks on, spends the whole night running his feet up and down my legs until I start to get itchy but even then, I don’t move. I stay lying on my back and staring at the ceiling, only wrapping my hands around him when he nudges me in his sleep.
Now he’s awake and unfolding, taller than me, than Theda, so tall his head almost hits the dangling light bulb. He picks up his jacket, pockets heavy with unknown things, and the chair topples over. He tries to catch it before it crashes to the floor but he moves too slow and the sound echoes violently around the room. Theda can’t help it; she flinches and the red blanket slips off her head. Her hair falls across the bed, long and thick, a liquid silk against the old brown sheets. I watch his eyes travel the length of her spilled hair all the way to the top of her head.
He shakes his head. You okay over there?
His voice booms and his jacket crinkle itself to fit against his bent elbows. When Theda says nothing, he shakes his head again and smiles at me. His teeth look like something good to eat, corn maybe, sweet in my mouth. He pulls on his shoes without tying the laces and grabs his wallet, gloves and hat from my side of the dresser in one long gesture. I stand next to him, the cold wrapping around my legs underneath the sarong. I smell his soap scent that drifts from underneath his nails and the center of his palms.
He suddenly turns and pulls me to him. His beard scratches my face, opens up the small cut near my mouth. I take in his breath, his tongue flickers against the side of my cheek and then, he closes the door behind him. He stomps, heavy and slow, down the stairs and out the door.
Don’t, Theda says but I do it anyway. I watch him sweep snow off the windshield of his car, I know his jacket isn’t warm enough for the winter and he’s not really all that tall when standing in all that white. I watch him climb into the car and turn on the radio, probably to that station that plays all rock music, the same station we listened to the first time I took a ride with him and the drums and the guitars blasted through the one good speaker, shaking everything from my feet up to the middle of my legs.
He honks the car twice and waves. I don’t wave back but I watch him drive off, navigating the snow the way all Bostonians know how to and I keep watching even when the new snow covers all of his footsteps. I keep watching out the window even when the smell of him, the soap and the sweat, disappear. It’s still dark out and the bottom right corner of the window has a curl of ice.
When Theda starts to pray again, I say too loud, Not today, please.
She doesn’t say anything else and we stay that way, her; just a quiet curled ball on the bed and me, standing by the window. I watch the grey sky crack with the first weak peak of light and then, I turn to get ready for work.
Read the full article HERE.
