The heat that night had no use for anyone. It sat on the skin and waited.
I had been upstairs enough times now to know he would not give me Umaiyal as dirt. That had not cured the window. What he had left on her face still lived behind my eyes. Three years, he had said, in one of the coins. I still did not know what I was in that arithmetic. I told myself I did not care. The memory disagreed. It turned in the gut — disgust, and a heat I would not own.
“Why her,” I said. “Why is she so into you.”
He froze the way he froze when the landing held a third person.
“Life is full of surprises.”
I asked if she was happy. I asked what he held her with. Every answer tangled. Anger came hot and stupid: the Amma I had built, clean, and this man speaking as if she still could not be smudged.
Then the picture rose and I could not keep my face. He held me. Long enough that I felt him trying, through my shoulder, to put her back into some order. For a second I almost took the calm as if it belonged to me. I pulled away. The hug was comfort and a ranking. He was stitching her, not choosing me.
Later I stood at my own mirror with the clothes off.
Nineteen, and the body I had was not a disaster. It also was not hers. Twice I had seen Umaiyal without cloth — once from the bath, once in the dark I still lied about — and the comparison did the work by itself. She had married young, borne me, and still kept a fullness I did not have. I looked at my chest, the waist, the marks on my legs from old falls. If I showed him this, would he still go up the stairs for her.
The hair was part of the ranking. I skipped months and lived with it. She did not. The panty line in the power cut had been a decision. I put the razor down on the shelf and used it before I could turn the threat back into talk.
It was as unpleasant as I remembered. The pull, the nicks, the heat after. In the morning the skin looked only bare, not new. I had not become her. I had only spent the excuse.
Days later I asked him to a gathering. A friend. I had dropped someone and did not want a pair I had to explain. “You’re close enough in age. Come.” The same short skirt. The same T-shirt. The blade’s work was hidden beneath them, though to me it felt advertised. He said crowds were not his. I said the pub had the music he actually liked.
The place was half empty and still loud enough. Pitchers in the middle, glasses collecting around them like a small accident. Someone beside me sang the wrong line and did not stop. Losing My Religion came through the speakers, old enough for the room to know it without listening. I did the trick I always did in noise: lifted the song out of the talk and lived inside it.
I leaned into him because the table had already become a crush of people against people. Then I leaned harder than the table required. A wink I could still blame on the pitcher. Friends went out to smoke and came back smelling of the lane. One of them watched us without remark, which was a remark. The table grew louder by degrees.
When Summer of ’69 gave everyone permission to become sentimental, I pulled Visu into the narrow gap they were calling a dance floor. His hand found the denim at my hip. Nothing under it. I felt him know that and not move away fast enough. The song ended. We were back at the glasses. Shots. I stayed in them longer than he did. Someone told the story of a boy from campus and a car; I heard it and did not keep it. Tequila I could carry now. He stopped. I did not.
On the steps outside the language went.
The exact words returned later. In the moment I heard only their ugliness: Amma’s name joined to mine, an offer shaped like an accusation. I can do what she did. Thicker than that. The window used as a knife.
He did not take the offer. He put me in an auto. He had stopped drinking before I did, but his rule was absolute: no bike after alcohol, not even for the short distance home. Halfway there I shoved his hands off, then put my head in his lap and went out.
At the gate, as I understood only in the morning, he must have decided that taking me downstairs would wake Amma and demand an explanation. He guided me back up instead.
I woke in his room with no clothes on and a head that had a pulse of its own.
He gave me water and a tablet and no theatre.
“Did we.”
“No.” Flat. “You took your clothes off. You said what you said on the steps. You touched yourself. You finished more than once. Then you slept.”
It came back in pieces, which was worse than not remembering. The T-shirt. The voice. The sofa. The show I had made of my own hand because he would not be the hand. The carpet. The stupid triumph of having done it in front of someone.
Tears first. Then a crooked heat I despised and would not lie about, even to myself.
I dressed before I trusted myself to stand. Then I hugged him, briefly and too hard. Thanks and insult. He returned neither.
“Don’t tell Amma.”
I went down the stairs before the house woke. Outside, the heat was already starting. He had seen me. He had not taken me. That ranking was not finished.
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