by Zaina Arafat
We took the Q train into Manhattan, and as it hurtled across the bridge over the East River, I had a brief image of it derailing. Wouldn’t that make things easier? I felt nauseated with worry at the thought of the three of us sitting there, attempting to have a normal dinner, my mother potentially piecing things together. Before that night I’d tried coming out to her once; after things ended with Kate, my college roommate and secret girlfriend, and I was desperate for comfort. “I like both,” I’d confessed into the phone. I could practically hear my mother weakening down the line; all the strength she seemed to normally possess had disintegrated. “Is it official?” she’d asked.
I was unsure of what “official” meant, in the context of sexuality. I imagined it to mean “are you sure” or “is there no way you could just not be that way?”
She hung up before I could respond. In the weeks after, she would complain to me about her life, as though I were an objective observer. “I should’ve had better,” she’d say. “I deserved so much more than this.”
I supposed my phone confession counted as official, but still I couldn’t imagine how my mother would handle it, face-to-face.
“What are you thinking about?” Anna asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
It was dark by the time we ascended the subway steps onto Canal Street. We passed vendors folding up their makeshift shops selling fake designer bags and sunglasses. We turned the corner onto the narrow street where the restaurant was. We walked in and I looked around for my mother. She wasn’t there yet, a temporary relief. I checked my phone and saw a text from her: Still shopping. Will b there in 15.
We put our name down at the hostess desk. It was still relatively early; we wouldn’t have to wait too long for a table. We sat down at the bar and ordered drinks: me prosecco, Anna a beer. “You seem nervous,” she said.
“I am,” I said.
“I wouldn’t be upset if you wanted me to leave,” she said. “I would understand.”
I considered taking her up on it, but I knew it would make me feel terrible. I touched her arm gently. “Of course not.”
We didn’t speak much, and soon the hostess called out Anna’s name. “Are you all here?” she asked.
“Almost,” I said. “The third person’s a few blocks away.”
She led us to our table. I sat down, giving Anna the booth side. My eyes glazed over the menu without processing anything. Moments later, I could feel my mother’s presence as she entered the restaurant. “Hello!” I heard her call out to no one in particular, in her thick Arabic accent, which hadn’t subsided in the twenty-seven years she’d been in the States. As she made her way toward me, I watched her reflection in the mirror above the booth: her almond-shaped eyes flanked by Palestine-reputed cheekbones, her thick brown hair reaching the small of her back and framing her face. We caught eyes in the mirror just as she approached. We greeted each other with a kiss on each cheek. Anna stood up to introduce herself, but my mother preempted her. “Hi, I’m Laila Abu Sa’ab,” she said in one breath. I had already told her that Andrew couldn’t make it, and that Anna would be joining us instead. “Why can’t he?” she’d asked over the phone, suspicious that something was off.
“Another business trip,” I’d said, then quickly changed the subject.
“So, ladies!” she draped her coat over the back of the chair beside me before scooting into the booth. “What shall we order?” She assumed we would want to share, which Anna and I usually didn’t. Part of eating-disorder recovery meant controlling your portions, which was easier to do with individual meals. “I’m open to anything!” Anna said, trying to be flexible. We chose two salads and two pizzas—arugula and beet, margherita and prosciutto. Until the food arrived, my mother talked about her work. Anna pretended like it was all new to her. Our waitress brought everything all out at once, overwhelming the table. We piled salad onto our plates while the pizza cooled. As we were taking our first bites, my mother mentioned a friend whose daughter was getting married. I felt a burn of jealousy. Anytime I heard of another Arab girl’s engagement, it immediately snapped me out of my gayness. “How’d she meet him?” I asked.
“Through the community,” she said. Years ago I’d drifted away from the community, which consisted of Syrians, Lebanese, and Palestinians living in the D.C. area. When I moved back to D.C. after a year in Italy post-college, I’d taken part in weekends of pregaming at posh lounges followed by bass-pumping, douchebag-frequented clubs, an activity I would’ve gladly traded for, say, cleaning toilets. “He’s from a very good family.”
Anna silently observed this interaction. I could tell she felt left out; my mother had taken no interest in her, hadn’t asked her a single question. She was selectively observant—a female roommate’s background was of no consequence. In a misguided attempt to ease the tension and make Anna feel included, I decided to broach the topic of our relationship. I started with a hypothetical. It was a risky one, but at the restaurant that night, I felt safe with my mother. “How would you feel if I married a woman?” I asked. It was too much—I could’ve started with “dated”—but for some reason I chose to go extreme.
My mother dragged a slice from the plate in the center of the table and placed it onto her own. “I would be very upset,” she said, avoiding eye contact. She took a bite and chewed it slowly, her breaths getting louder and deeper, her eyes blinking faster. Her instincts were onto us. I was becoming increasingly nervous—I knew all the signs. “Why?” she asked. She looked directly at Anna before turning back to me. “Are you planning on it?”
I panicked. “I was just wondering—”
“Because if you are, then stay away,” she threatened. “Stay away from me and the rest of my family.” In her mind, her lineage didn’t trickle down to me.
Her breaths now sounded like crashing waves. She began to twitch. I tried to backtrack. “I’m not saying I’m going to.”
“You know what . . .” She stood up, pushing the table forward, knocking over a glass and soaking the kitschy checkered tablecloth with red wine. “Do whatever you want.”
Anna immediately grabbed napkins and started mopping up the wine. The people seated beside us looked over, then scooted in the opposite direction before turning back to their conversation. I gave them an apologetic look.
My mother ran out of the restaurant, forgetting her coat. I grabbed it before pulling on my own. “Can you get the bill?” I asked Anna. “I’ll pay you back.”
She nodded. “Just go.”
I burst out the door and spotted her in the distance ahead. I tried to catch up. “Mama, please,” I cried. “I’m sorry. I won’t. I’m not!” By the time I caught up to her, I could see a tear streaming down her cheek. I could think of nothing more shameful—why was I doing this to her? At the time I thought the same thing: she should’ve had better. She didn’t deserve this at all.
I REMEMBER FALLING DOWN THE STAIRS WHEN I WAS two and looking up to see my parents laughing at the top. They claim to have laughed so that I wouldn’t cry. But I rarely cried. “You were a happy baby,” Teta used to tell me, back when she could still remember my infancy. “You used to wake up singing in your crib. And you had such a healthy appetite.” Once, when I was still in diapers, a friend of my mother’s came over with a falafel sandwich. At the sight of it I crawled off the changing table and scurried over to the friend. I poised myself at her feet like a puppy and waited for scraps to fall.
I also remember when my mother asked me to tell my father she was in labor. I was three years old. He was in the living room of our house in the D.C. suburbs, watching the news; the Iran-Contra scandal was covered on every channel that year. Back then my father wore a black suit to work each day, with a white button-down shirt and a shockingly bright tie. “You need to find a way to distinguish yourself, to stand out,” he’d say to my mother whenever she suggested a more demure color. He would spray a heavy cologne every morning that mixed with the scent of my mother’s perfume, delicious and thick.
I would monkey around as they got dressed, collecting pennies off the bureau and trying on my mother’s heels, stabbing the carpeted floor with the spikes. My father wore only tighty-whiteys as he shaved, craning his neck with pursed lips as he dragged the razor through shaving cream like a plow through fresh powdery snow. I would pump Gillette into the open palm of my outstretched hand and watch it poof before patting it onto my cheeks. Having heard from my mother that shaving could cause hair to grow where it hadn’t before, I resisted the temptation to drag the razor across my smooth face. Instead, I would derive satisfaction from dipping an index finger into the shaving cream cloud and holding it to the end of my nose, dotting the tip before smearing it onto my chin and upper lip. I’d watch myself in the mirror, unsmiling.
At my mother’s request I ran down the stairs to tell my father it was time to go to the hospital, gripping the wooden banister and slowing down when I arrived at the knob that marked its end. “Baba!” I screamed.
“What! What!” The coffee table squeaked as he jumped up from the couch. Within seconds he was in the hallway.
“The baby’s coming!” I felt both important and scared.
Hours later I was staring at newborn Karim through the glass partition, thinking him superfluous and knowing things would now be different, my mother no longer mine entirely.
3
A WEEK HAD PASSED SINCE THE RESTAURANT INCIDENT. Anna and I had been trying to act as though nothing had happened, but the memory of that night was still thick between us. That evening we were both at home, reading on opposite ends of the couch—me a novel, and she leather-bound law books—when my phone buzzed. My heart leaped when I saw who the message was from: the professor.
“I’m tired,” I said to Anna, lying. “I’m going to bed early tonight.” I looked up from my book and we made eye contact. She held my gaze for a few moments, as if she knew something was amiss and wanted me to crack. “Cool,” she finally said. “I’ll join you once I’m done.”
I got up, cradling my laptop in my arms, then kissed her good night, shut the door to our bedroom and immediately opened the professor’s email. It was just one line: “Where do you live?”
We’d met the previous summer, almost a year earlier. She taught French literature at the Alliance Française in Midtown East, in between semesters at Columbia. The class was on Thursday evenings, before my shift began. I was taking it to practice my French, a language I’d been learning since fifth grade and that seemed worth keeping up for the intellectual stimulation DJing failed to provide. On the first day, she’d announced that past students had told her she didn’t smile enough. “So . . .” She placed her palms on the edge of the desk and leaned forward smiling, as if to say, “Here you go.”
I’d loved her since the day she kept me after class and suggested I was too harsh on Emma Bovary for her childish fantasies and for cheating on Charles. “Emma’s pathetic, sure,” she said, pressing a polished fingernail to the word méprisable on my paper. From the dinosaur Band-Aid on that same finger I surmised a husband and kids. “But this is melodramatic.” She looked at me, paused, then offered an effortful smile.
For the first time I noticed the dimple that appeared above her lip when she smiled, like a second, smaller smile. While we stood there, I began to fall into its span. As I gathered up my things and walked toward the classroom door, she asked, “Is it so bad?”
I stopped and turned toward her. “Is what so bad?”
“To have an affair?”
Her question seared—it felt both suggestive and forgiving. At the time, a photo of Eliot Spitzer and his scorned wife, Silda, adorned the front page of the New York Post. I felt myself blush. “I don’t know,” I said. “But it is in this country.”
She laughed. Her laugh was deep and started in the back of her throat, getting increasingly lighter as it worked its way forward. “True.”
My body surged with heat. When I got home after my set that night, I googled her. I discovered that she wrote fiction. A short story with her byline came up, a simple piece about a woman struggling to keep her marriage intact as the other couples in their circle divorced. I wondered if it was based on truth, and I searched for details that matched her reality as I knew it. During class the following week, I made a point to mention it.
“I read your story,” I said, nervous to admit it and tingling with excitement, as though I’d accessed some part of her that was now laid bare between us.
“Oh,” she said. She nodded once, then offered the smile. “Thank you.”
She appeared not to care whether I liked it, confident that it was good without my approval. Still, I felt encouraged to say, “It would be nice to meet up sometime. Maybe after the class is over.”
She nodded in return. “It would.”
We met in early September, at the Nespresso store in Midtown East, three blocks from our classroom. I showed up in a pencil skirt and a silk sleeveless shirt. We sat down and ordered cappuccinos, and I resisted asking for skim milk so I wouldn’t seem too weight-conscious or too American. The conversation flowed. She talked about walking her daughter to school, her husband’s startup, their vacation home in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, on the Cote d’Azur. I tried to match her level of privilege and exposure. “I’ve been to Nice once,” I said. “For a week.” I didn’t mention that I’d gone with Kate, toward the end of our relationship. Nor did I mention Anna, worried that, as a straight French woman, the entire concept of queerness would make her uncomfortable. I felt slightly tipsy as we left, though we hadn’t had anything to drink. When the bill came I hesitantly asked if she would send me some of her unpublished writing to read.
She placed her credit card on the table as I reached for my wallet, waving my hand away. “You want to read more from me?” she asked, sounding almost suspicious.
I panicked—until then I’d felt emboldened, but her response made me embarrassed. “I thought I’d ask,” I said. “If that’s okay.”
“Sure,” she said. She smiled again; it was starting to feel more natural anytime she did so. “I’m just surprised, is all.”
We stepped outside the café, and I felt overwhelmed as we walked off in different directions. I wanted her, I wanted her life, I wanted to live inside her life while still living inside my own. I wanted, above all, for her to like me.
Two days later, when she still hadn’t sent any of her work, I followed up. Three essays arrived in my inbox that night. She seemed to be a guarded person, so reading her unpublished writing was like cutting to the front of a long line. She wrote about her French Colonialist guilt, which as a Palestinian I felt uniquely qualified to absolve. She wrote about reading La Fontaine fables to her daughter. She wrote about middle-of-the-night despair, about wanting more. I couldn’t believe how much her inner world resembled mine.
The problem, as always, was asymmetry. Not only was she straight, but she had a husband to share her inner world with. I presumably had Anna’s world, yet somehow hers was never nearly as captivating.
I read each of the essays several times. “They’re nice,” I wrote in response, still afraid to shatter a veneer of detachment.
A month later we went to lunch, but I couldn’t eat. I wore a dress that once belonged to my mother, her gold hoop earrings, her Michele watch. Anything beautiful that’s mine was once hers. Now that I’d read the professor’s writing, now that her sapphire wedding ring was refracting light from every surface, I was too conscious of my motions to land the fork in my mouth, so I stopped trying. “Sorry,” I said, laughing dumbly. “I can’t eat and talk at the same time.”
She had chosen a place on the Upper West Side known for its burgers, but I ordered a salad. I imagined she was judging me in that moment. I’m familiar with that judgment, after years of anorexia. I was past it by then, but still, how could I eat something so unsexy as a cheeseburger in front of the sexiest woman in the universe? She continued to look attractive and in control as she ate her burger, chewing with unapologetic authority. I had the ri
diculous salad packed up though I knew I’d never eat it. When the check came I offered to pay. I’d looked up the place beforehand—cash only—and I fumbled self-consciously through bills fresh from the ATM. My eyes began to blur, I put down too much for the tip. We got up and left, and the minute she turned the corner from the restaurant tears spilled down my cheeks. I was certain that I’d given myself away, though I admit: by then, a part of me wanted her to suspect.
I assumed that would be our last encounter. But in the spring, I heard from her again. We exchanged a few emails, mostly about writing, and eventually developed a frequent correspondence, delving into what I perceived to be intimate and pointed subject matter, including love. Though usually we discussed it theoretically, rather than applying it to either of our specific relationships—I continued to keep Anna out of our conversations. When she needed a reader for an essay she was planning to send out, about Laclos’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses, she came to me. I immediately bought a copy, bypassing a second viewing of Cruel Intentions. The central theme of the piece danced around the question of marital infidelity and its moral implications versus its permissibility. “Maybe you should come out and say what you think,” I suggested in my feedback. “As of now, it’s hard to tell where you stand on the issue. I’m sure readers are curious to know!”
Where do you live? As I sat in our bedroom, Anna on the other side of the closed door, I repeatedly read the professor’s question, which I interpreted as an imperative. I imagined her sitting in front of her computer, staring at me from behind her Prada glasses. It was a direct challenge—was I ready to pluck her from possibility and encounter her reality? Sometimes I closed my eyes and pictured her while kissing Anna. It was always somewhat awkward and not as exciting as when I pictured it in the abstract, devoid of hideous circumstance. What if our sex was clumsy? I was in between post-anorexia plump and all-night double sets, with no snack breaks—what if she didn’t like my body? My mother had recently impersonated me, puffing up her cheeks and holding out her arms beyond her stomach like an ape. Maybe I could love her from a distance and keep myself intact. Maybe I needed to protect myself against debilitating and devastating heartbreak. Maybe I thought that was possible.