She of the Mountains

by Vivek Shraya

  Or better, he could forget about himself completely. If only the connected dots materialized into a mask and cape that allowed him to transform into That Guy. To be able to fill out his clothing like That Guy, instead of having fabric gliding down his bony build like oversized drapes. To be able to walk with a sway-free, heterosexual coordination, in full military control of his shoulders, arms, hips, quads, and heels. To have a slim but elegant nose, one that conveyed confidence, instead of the gluttonous mound with two giant open windows for nostrils he had inherited via his dad from the motherland. To be learning the secret language of Law, which would lead to a model future championing justice by day and resting in a three-storey home at night, instead of pouring over the work of dead English poets, searching for (or, more accurately, hiding from) the answer to the most important question in the world: What do you plan on doing with your Arts degree?

  To be the guy that another guy waits for, every Wednesday, from 12:30 to 12:33 p.m.

  You are going to be my boyfriend.

  These were the first words Smith said to him, the first time they met at a mutual friend’s birthday party.

  This forwardness surprised him, but the prophecy itself did not. Smith was a celebrity dancer, often featured in the local news, and with each Smith sighting, each mention of Smith’s name in conversation, it never felt like a random occurrence, but rather a step toward each other. It wasn’t a feeling of destiny, of future promise, as he was certain that Smith was out of his league, but a feeling of familiarity, as though maybe in their childhoods they had attended the same school or had played in the same park.

  In person, Smith was even more attractive—the magnetism of his physicality enhanced by his character. His brown hair was precisely parted and his matching brown eyes were surrounded by lines of kindness, as though his eyes genuinely cared about every subject upon which they fell. His hands gestured delicately when he spoke, adding an element of dance to everyday conversation, and though he was a commanding six foot three, he never seemed unapproachable, always the first person to say hello.

  He wasn’t sure if hanging out with Smith qualified as “dating” because, when Smith wasn’t talking about how much he adored his border collie and his family, he talked about his ex-boyfriend. It had not been an amicable breakup, and Smith was brokenhearted. But Smith was the first boy he had ever hung out with/dated, so it was easy to ignore Smith’s condition and start imagining their shared life. He would work at the downtown library during the day while Smith rehearsed. On Wednesdays, they would meet for lunch at the Korean restaurant where Smith used to be a server. Their evenings would be spent reading, his head on Smith’s shoulder, on the second-hand loveseat in their small but well-designed apartment. He would get over his fear of dogs and stock up on lint rollers. He would attend Smith’s every performance, watching from stage-side with a bouquet of pink roses to give to his man.

  The first time he saw Smith’s penis, they were on Smith’s couch, arms around each other, lips against each other’s. Oops! Smith said, signalling down with his eyes. Poking out from the waistband of his pants was what looked like a large pink thimble. He wasn’t sure what to do at this point, if anything, aside from observe. Even that he wasn’t sure of, and he had to remind himself: It’s okay to look.

  Smith recognized his paralysis and pulled down his own pants and white briefs. It stood proudly between them. As he gazed at Smith’s penis, he couldn’t help but think of his own. This comparing and contrasting seemed to be an inevitable by-product of having sex with a man.

  Many of the differences in their physical attributes could be explained by their racial differences. When Smith took off his black T-shirt, he nodded with a feeling of déjà vu. Every shirtless male body he had seen, save for the males in his own family, had looked like Smith’s: lean but muscular, smooth chest, hard stomach. Smith’s body was every man’s body. In GQ, the Sears catalogue, movies, and porn, he had digested copies of it countless times. He expected it. He worried about Smith’s expectations, given that Smith had most likely never seen a naked brown body before. Before her, just the idea of the words naked and brown together had seemed incongruous, even to himself.

  Being brown meant he had much larger nipples, two puffy Hershey’s Kisses, and an abundance of hair everywhere. When Smith later jerked off both of their penises, he was uncomfortable with how much darker his penis was than Smith’s. He was convinced that if their penises were at war, his penis would be typecast as the evil one, the villain.

  What bewildered him most about being intimate with another man was the absence of the Eureka! moment he had been anticipating and had even been promised by gay males he knew, now that he was finally with the right sex, the same sex.

  Don’t worry. Once with you’re with a man, everything will make sense, they had said.

  But there was no great confirmation of his homosexuality with

  Smith either through

  more frequent orgasms,

  or harder erections

  or the sound of trumpets

  or a sweeping feeling of superior satisfaction

  or freedom

  or truth

  or home

  or peace.

  When he put his lips around Smith’s penis or pushed his own penis into Smith’s firm ass, he felt an undeniable pleasure, but not undeniably more than the pleasure he had experienced with her.

  It was just different.

  In the minutes before sunrise, when Smith’s desk, bookshelf, and their pile of clothing on the floor would gradually bear the light of a new day, he found himself thinking about her. Missing her. Her face, the colour of palaces in Jaipur. Her upturned lips that smiled even while she dreamed, her crown of curly hair, her eyes that were stars in their own right.

  SATI

  Even in my human life, my heart belonged to Shiv.

  Long before Ganesh and Muruga were born, I chose to be born to a human family. For years, they had had difficulty conceiving, and I was a gift, unbeknownst to them, for their generations of great piety. They named me Sati.

  From an early age, I was captivated by the stories of the recluse god who lived in the mountains, even though my human father despised him:

  He wears only the skin of a leopard.

  And the crescent moon in his hair.

  He refuses to speak—to anyone! How arrogant!

  Why is he a god? What is so great about him?

  Being mortal clouded my memory. I didn’t know who I was or who Shiv was, but I knew I was drawn to his alien-ness, perhaps because he embodied the disconnection I too felt to my human body. Every night, I prayed:

  Dear Lord Shiva:

  Please appear for me.

  I adore you.

  Another reason that I had adopted a human life was that we both agreed it would be a new way for us to experience each other, love each other. From the day I was born, Shiv was equally captivated by my human form and its vulnerability, and watched over me from above like a second father. He was amused by my devotion to him and couldn’t help but entertain himself further at my expense. Occasionally, he would appear in my peripheral vision and then suddenly disappear so that I would think that I was imagining him everywhere. This only heightened my yearning for him.

  To celebrate and bless my coming of age as a woman, my father arranged a ceremony and feast, and everyone from the town was invited. The gods were invited. For every day that passed, I added one brightly coloured flower to my hair in anticipation of meeting Shiv. On the day of the event, my entire head was covered in a crown of flowers.

  My father walked me into the hall toward the blazing sacred fire, which was surrounded by priests cloaked in cream-coloured robes, chanting loudly in unison. I scanned the hundreds of faces, friends and distant relatives, trying to find the one blue face that mattered.

  Before I sat down, I whispered to my father:

  I don’t see Shiva. Do you think he will come?

  Shiva? Ha! Why would I invite that fr
eak?

  He wasn’t invited? But all the gods were invited. It would be a grave insult …

  Sati, now is not the time.

  You are just jealous that his greatness surpasses yours, aren’t you!?

  The fire rose and crackled with the sound of my voice.

  Silence, Sati. My father motioned me to sit at the front of the hall next to the chief priest.

  As the prayers continued, I gazed at the fire ahead, comforted by the only presence in the room that understood my burning sense of betrayal and disappointment.

  How could my father be so cruel? And so foolish? Without Shiv’s presence, the ceremony would be inauspicious. Cursed, even. Surely now I would never meet Shiv.

  Contemplating my misfortune, I became mesmerized by the streaks of blue in the flames until all I could see was blue.

  Shiva! There you are! I knew you would come, I said. I stood up and walked into the fire, arms open. This was the end of my human life.

  Shiv, who had been watching the ceremony from above, swept down to pull me out of the fire, hoping to bring me back to life. Wake up, Sati, wake up! he yelled, lifting my body into the sky. His own body vibrated like thunder, trying to re-energize mine.

  Shiv circled the earth with my lifeless body folded over his shoulder for years. He forgot who he was, forgot the commonness of death, and in the process, forgot who I was. Although my human body had died, I of course had not.

  I waited patiently for him in Kailash, not wanting to disturb him. I was fascinated by—perhaps even jealous of—his strange attachment to this human body. What was so special about it that it had deluded him? What was so special about it that he had forgotten that his beloved Parvati still lived?

  Every morning, when the sun arose, my first words were to him, in my heart: Wake up, Shiv, wake up …

  He never heard me. As I watched day after day surrender to darkness, I pushed against the urge to do the same.

  As years turned into decades, the other gods and demigods began to lose their own sense of self and purpose watching the Lord of Destruction so confounded. For the sake of order, my brother Narayana intervened. He shot his golden discus into the air and sliced Sati’s body into pieces. Seeing the hideousness of the human body cut up, Shiv remembered its expendability and immediately returned to his mind. And to me.

  The first thing he said, without my even asking was, I needed to know what it would be like to lose you.

  What are we doing? His eyes were determined and focused on her.

  We are talking? She was just as focused, but on her plate, her closed mouth moving leisurely in a circle, savouring the slice of pumpkin cheesecake they were sharing.

  Don’t you think this tastes like … clouds? she continued, her tone as light and airy as her metaphor.

  No, seriously. What are we doing? He stayed on course, dropping any lightness in his voice.

  Eating cheesecake?

  No. I mean you and me. Us, he said slowly, careful not to exude impatience.

  Oh.

  She put her fork down.

  I miss you. Like, really miss you.

  She looked up.

  What are you saying?

  They had always blamed biology, namely his biological gayness and the destiny that implied, for their inability to be together, to stay together.

  I am saying, what if we gave this a shot? A real shot.

  It was also biology—their elevated heart rates, their perspiration, and the dilating of their pupils when in each other’s presence—that had made being just friends impossible.

  How would that be different from before? How would we not end up in the same place? You’re gay …

  Their explicit physical responses to each other’s pheromones, appearances, voices, and brains: her wet vagina, his erection.

  I don’t know what I am. I know that I have dated boys and slept with boys, and I still want you. My body craves you.

  Based on the evidence, it wasn’t logical to consider biology as the reason to continue living in the shadow of The Great Love That Couldn’t Be.

  If anything, it was a reason to get back together.

  This will be the last winter I spend in Edmonton.

  While he shovelled his parents’ driveway, refusing to wear the toque his dad had given him because it would mess up his hair.

  This will be the last winter I spend in Edmonton.

  While he waited for a bus that he had most likely missed and anticipated waiting another thirty minutes for the next one.

  This will be the last winter I spend in Edmonton.

  While he sat on his hands in her parents’ car, desperate for heat, knowing that neither his hands nor the car would ever be truly warm again for the next six months.

  This was his attempt at what his mom called manifestation, a technique he resorted to out of desperation. Edmonton’s cold grip felt inescapable as he watched his friends and peers already buying property or cars or starting their full-time jobs or their master’s degrees at the University of Alberta. He didn’t know what came next for him, but he knew whatever it was, it began with a departure.

  He entered Toronto for the first time on the packed airport shuttle. It was a grand but intimidating welcome, the city guarded by billboards, skyscrapers, and glass condos. He couldn’t figure out if the city was trying to keep its inhabitants in or keep visitors out or both. Looking through the window, he felt himself disappear into what he saw—the endless concrete and the traffic.

  It was this feeling of forgetting himself, or rather the version of himself that had never fully adapted to Edmonton, and the possibility of creating a new and better version of himself, that cemented his decision to move to Toronto a month later.

  Convincing her to move wasn’t difficult. She shared his frustration with living in a city where there was only one street, one bar, and one theatre where you would inevitably run into the one person you didn’t want to see. She couldn’t move right away because of her work contract but promised to join him as soon as she could.

  He signed the lease for a decently priced bachelor on Huntley Street with the hope that the large balcony, which was half the size of the unit, would have space for a small swing where she could read and rock, facing the sunset. He furnished the apartment minimally, not just because he knew this place would be temporary.

  In his parents’ home, the furniture and accessories were the real inhabitants, a vase or frame or chair compulsively planted in every corner, as though there was an underlying fear of empty space. He suspected it had to do with his mom’s obsession with not appearing poor, every piece declaring their family’s financial respectability. He felt a sympathetic suffocation for their house and told himself that he would always place importance on function first, that his future homes would be built around needs, his needs, versus appearance. He bought a futon that acted as a couch by day, a bookshelf that was also used as a workstation, and a coffee table where he ate all of his meals. The sole decorative presence was the sheer silver curtains, which let in just enough daylight and reminded him of her large collection of silver earrings.

  Three months later, when she walked into the apartment, now their apartment, for the first time, he watched her face carefully, hoping she would approve of the choices he had made.

  I love it.

  But?

  I really love it. It’s perfect. But …

  He laughed.

  We can’t sleep on a futon. We are adults. We need a bed.

  A bed seemed to him a luxurious purchase. As he assisted her with the assembly of the headboard, he tried to ignore the futon behind them, now reassigned to play solely the role of couch. He was convinced the decision was less about adulthood, comfort, and her supposed back pains, and more about a personal grudge she had against the futon. Whenever they watched a movie, she would wriggle around on it for minutes, tackling different poses before settling with a loud sigh. But he was so happy to have her around all the time that he would have been delighted to
throw the futon over the balcony if she so desired.

  He loved seeing her toothbrush leaning on his, like miniature figurines of themselves with clear, bristled faces. It pleased him to know that, from nine to five, while their physical bodies were functioning in distant cubicles, acquiring money to pay their bills, their toothbrushes stayed still and close in that steel cup. It didn’t matter that the cup itself was filthy at the bottom from the dried-up water because they were in it together.

  The toothbrush feeling, however, was sometimes interrupted by the dishes feeling or the laundry feeling.

  I thought it was your turn?

  I thought it was your night?

  Together they were learning not to underestimate the catastrophic power of a stack of soiled plates and cutlery or a basket of unsorted, clean socks and unfolded towels.

  Under the strain of the necessary, everyday duties, they regressed, reverted.

  She became a woman who was born in Tanzania and later banished from her home country. A woman who fell in love with a solemn and graceful man who sometimes preferred his solitude to her efforts to captivate with her daily account of a compilation of facts acquired from People magazine, The View, and word of mouth. A woman whose bustling bordered on comedy and who was therefore easily dismissed. A woman whose response to friction, or to her own sadness, was to walk away, shut the door, hole up.

  He became a woman who was the second youngest daughter but the most responsible and therefore overloaded with tasks from her parents and siblings. A woman whose idea of loving was rooted in a quiet sense of duty, even when the request was unreasonable. A woman who often said yes either out of a sense of karmic obligation or a genuine inability to say no. A woman whose kindness and generosity were unmatchable and therefore caused a perpetual resentment which, at times, was volcanic, her love bursting out as lava.