“How come?”
“It’s my way of having a Ganesh necklace.”
“What’s a Ganesh necklace?”
“A Hindu god that hangs around your neck and removes all obstacles.”
“You know, half the time with you I have no idea what’s going on. But I’m game.” Joshua gets up and turns off the overhead light. Then he turns off the lamp by the chair, too.
“It’s completely dark,” I say.
“Wait a moment.” Joshua stands still. “Can you see my silhouette now?”
“Yes.”
“I can see yours, too. And even in the dark you’re beautiful.”
He couldn’t have said anything worse. I can’t do this. In an instant I’m all new resolve. “Will you sit with me and talk?”
“Sure.” He comes and sits beside me. He doesn’t touch me, not even with his leg.
“I’m not beautiful.”
“Isn’t that a subjective matter?”
I try again. “I almost got a tattoo yesterday.” It seems like so long ago—but it was just yesterday.
I hear him suck in air. “Is this a… I don’t know… some kind of confession or something?”
“Sort of.”
He’s silent. Finally, he says, “You sure didn’t act like that last weekend.” His voice is quiet and sad.
“Like what?”
“Like what you’re telling me.”
“What do you think I’m telling you?”
“What are you telling me?”
“That I almost got a tattoo to hide behind.”
“Oh.” He gives a little laugh. “I thought you were saying you were lesbian.”
“What?” I give a laugh. “Why would you think that?”
“Some of the lesbians at school started that last year. Didn’t you know? They got pink triangles on their ankles, with junky little things inside.”
I wonder if Melanie’s a lesbian. “I didn’t know. No.”
“I mean, I don’t care. I’ve got nothing against lesbians.” He laughs. “They like doing a lot of the same things I like doing, after all. I just don’t want you being one.”
“I’m not.”
“Good. That’s very good.”
I should tell him. I was just about to. And this is the right time. I should tell him. It’s ridiculous not to.
But it will be too brief as it is. I won’t make it briefer. I can’t. Even if he hates me later. Even if I hate myself. I want to have Joshua as a boyfriend for however long I can.
Silence hums in the air.
“I don’t like tattoos much,” whispers Joshua. “In fact, they give me the chills. My grandmother had a long number tattooed on her arm. She was in Auschwitz when she was a little girl. I used to stare at that number when I’d sit on her lap, but I was afraid to touch it.” He breathes really hard. “But if you got one, I’d do my best to learn to love it.”
I can’t speak. I blink back tears.
Silence again.
Finally, Joshua lets out a long sigh. He takes my hand. “I want to hold you, Sep. I want to kiss you. I want to… I want to do whatever you want to do. I want to know you.”
I bring his hand up in front of me and press my face into it.
And we lie down and kiss. Slow and then fast and everything soft and hard. Like Ovid’s idea of the creation, a whirl of everything, a universe emerging from chaos. Only I don’t feel like I’m coming together. I feel like I’m coming apart. Falling into nine hundred little pieces. Like snowflakes. How far can you fall into a kiss?
Joshua rolls so I’m on top. His hands go up and down my back. Those big, wide hands. They press my ribcage. And I remember Ms. Martin making us lift up our own ribcages, telling us to feel the happiness inside. Right now there is happiness inside me. Joshua’s hands give me happiness, they become my happiness. Up and down, never straying toward my sides, so firmly up and down. Up and down till I’m almost crazy, begging him inside my head.
And then they tug at my shirt. They pull it up. Slowly. Agonizingly slowly. But steady. This is happening. It’s real. Maybe there is a Lord in heaven.
I straddle his waist and lift my arms up high and my shirt comes off over my head. He sits partway up and kisses my neck and throat and the hollows above and below my collarbone. He kisses at the top of my breasts. And his hands fumble with my bra clasps, but only for a second. My bra slips down my arms. He untangles it from my wrists and cups my breasts with both hands. I gasp at how good it feels.
I am here.
Colors don’t show in the dark. And you can’t feel them. Colors don’t matter now. My breasts feel as good as anyone’s. I am as good as anyone. In this moment I am worthy of him.
And it isn’t unfair to Joshua. He’s doing what he wants to do. He’s a hands guy, a happy hands guy. I’m not hurting him. Please. I can’t be hurting him.
We are kissing and his hands keep stroking me. It just keeps getting better. And now, at last, his head moves toward me. I can feel the wet heat as he opens his mouth.
This is the meaning of exquisite.
I AM STANDING BESIDE my bed in the second warrior pose. I have been practicing this pose on and off all morning—to the right, then to the left, equal amounts of time on both sides. It takes strength. My arms ache. My thighs shake. But being a warrior is worth it.
At first I just counted in my head, to make sure I was holding the pose the same amount of time on both sides. Symmetry matters. It’s part of balance—and balance is part of harmony and harmony is good. I want good. But now I have a feel for how much time has passed. So I just hold the pose without counting.
Mr. Dupris has filled my head with archaea. If any living creatures are true warriors, it’s archaea. So it’s right that they should fill my head while I do this pose. I don’t think I ever even heard of them before this year. Tiny, one-celled creatures, similar to bacteria, they’re everywhere. Some archaea are found at the North Pole in temperatures that go down to minus eighty-five degrees Celsius and never go above freezing. Or, at least, never used to, before global warming. Some archaea live at the bottom of the sea, miles below the surface, near places where heat from the earth’s core spews out, so that the water temperature goes up to one hundred and ten degrees Celsius. That’s more than boiling—but the pressure down there keeps the water liquid. Some archaea live in salt and some live in acid. They are tough warriors, strong in accepting their own worth and the worth of the world. Because the two are the same. We are all the same, we are all part of everything. That’s what Ms. Martin says.
I change to the left side: right leg straight, left leg bent now. I hold the pose and line up my body parts correctly and look over my left arm. Slowly my ears buzz with a high-pitched E and I don’t feel anything in my legs really, or even my arms. Tension leaves, dissipates just like that, and I feel like I could stand here forever. I want to. I’m floaty, free of worry.
I come out of the pose and stand tall like a mountain, and let what just happened to me sink in. I’m lucky. Me, the girl with vitiligo. I can be a warrior, if I let myself. I can move beyond into someplace where I’m strong.
I climb on my bed and cross my legs and sit quietly. The way I felt a moment ago is gone. Like rain ceasing in an instant. It’s a disappointment. I’m Sep again, the screwed-up girl who’s lying to her boyfriend and who feels sorry for herself in the process.
The funny thing is, when I’m actually with Joshua, when we’re all tangled together, I feel like I did in the warrior pose. Like I could do it forever. Like nothing else is pressing on me, nothing else matters.
This morning I finished reading a sex novel. It’s my third. And two other novels with sex in them are under my pillow. I borrowed them from Devin. The way things progress in them is predictable. As though there’s an order to sex—first you do X, then Y, then Z. I wanted to know. But now I don’t like it. What happens between Joshua and me is too good to be formulaic. And I don’t like how the girl just waits for the guy to make all the mo
ves. He’s the leader, she’s the follower. I won’t read the other two—I’ll give them back to Devin.
It dawns on me that Devin had these novels. And read them. Is she sleeping with Charlie? So fast? But she would have told me. Only maybe I never gave her the chance.
Mamma comes into my room. Silently. She stands by my bureau and looks at me. And I was just thinking of sex novels and Devin’s possibly racy sex life. Can she see it in my face?
“I’m waiting.” She puts her fists on her hips, arms akimbo. For other people that would be hostile. For Mamma it’s just the way she waits. She doesn’t look hostile. In fact, she looks vulnerable.
“I don’t have anything to tell you, Mamma.”
“Yes you do.”
And suddenly I know: “Dad told you Joshua came over to babysit with me last night.”
“Yes.”
“He can’t keep a secret.”
“If it was a secret, why did you tell him?”
She’s right, of course. “So you know. So don’t ask.”
“Pina, it’s like I don’t even know you. In a matter of days, you’re someone new. What’s gotten into you?”
“I’m sixteen, Mamma. Isn’t that what adolescence is supposed to be all about?”
“I don’t think it’s that simple.”
“What ever is?”
“Don’t get smart with me, Pina. Talk to me, please. Tell me about Joshua.”
“You know him.”
“I knew him. I don’t know him now. Is he nice?”
“He’s very nice.”
“Do you know how to…”
“I’m learning.”
“What I want to say—what worries me—is do you know how to be careful?”
“You mean birth control?”
“Has it come to that?”
“It’s not your business whether it has or not.”
“It is my business whether you’re safe, Pina.”
“Who’s ever safe, Mamma?”
“I hate this thing you do now, this answering me with questions. They aren’t even good questions. Some of us are safe, some of the time. Safe from doing something dangerous.”
“What’s not dangerous, Mamma?”
“I will slap you if you keep that up.”
I can’t remember when Mamma last slapped me. “I’m sorry.” And now I really am. She’s just trying to be a good mother. “If I need birth control, I’ll get it.”
“It isn’t just that. It’s who you are. What are you trying to prove?”
Oh, no. This is not the direction I’m going to allow us to go. No. “I have homework.”
“I think we should talk about your vitiligo. Dr. Ratner says it’s important to talk about it.”
I push up my sleeve so she can see the new spot on my elbow. It looks like a big splash of grease cooled and congealed into white slop. “That won’t make it go away.”
Mamma looks at my elbow and blinks. “Of course not.” Now she looks at my face. “But it may make it less frightening to you.”
“How? Come on, Mamma. Get real. I wish I had Daddy’s coloring so it wouldn’t show so bad. Instead, I’m even darker than you. And you know what else, you want to know what else I wish sometimes?” I clench my teeth.
She blinks again.
“I wish Devin had gotten it instead of me. She’s so much lighter than I am. It wouldn’t be as bad for her. And then I hate myself for wishing that. Vitiligo is hideous for everyone.” I feel a tear rolling down my cheek. Then a flood. “I love Devin, and I still wish it sometimes.”
Mamma rushes to the bed and holds me and rocks me and I’m crying so hard that I’m unable to catch my breath. I fight her, push at her. But she keeps holding me, rocking me, and we’re both sobbing now.
“You need to refocus, Pina.” She smooths my hair away from my forehead, over and over.
“Don’t tell me there’s good ahead. Devin said that the other day and I thought of stabbing her.”
“I don’t mean ahead. I mean now. You need to look at now, and what is good. You need to focus on what is good now.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do, Mamma. Joshua’s good.”
“Does he know?” She doesn’t have to add what about.
“No.”
She pushes me back so she can look in my face. “How good could he be, if you don’t trust him enough to tell him?”
“It’s my fault I don’t trust him. Not his.”
“You’re making things more difficult than they have to be, Pina.”
“I don’t think so, Mamma. I think this is how they have to be.” I bury my head against her again. “Mamma?” I whisper.
“What, baby?”
“I used to be normal.” I’m breathing now, but it hurts—it hurts like a frozen spike in my sternum. “I’ll never be normal again. It’s spread on my chest. And belly. And I know it will be all over my face soon. I know it. And there’s nothing I can do about it—no amount of being good or following rules or anything else can save me.” All I can manage is a whisper. “You saw the photos in those medical books. Strangers will do double takes on the street. Nice people will look away to not be rude.”
“Maybe strangers. But others will adjust.”
“How will I ever even have a successful job interview?”
She hugs me hard. “You’ll go to a top college and have whatever jobs you want. You’re the best student in your class.”
“That’s not true. Owen is.”
“That’s your opinion.”
I squeeze her arm. “Who will ever love me?”
“Anyone who knows you.”
“But I won’t be me anymore. I’m not even me now.”
“You’re you, Giuseppina.” She kisses me as soft as air. “You’ll always be you.”
Maybe that’s the real problem. Because I hate me—liar me.
I CLOSE JOHN STEINBECK’S novel The Red Pony. The first part of it haunts me. The boy’s pony gets sick just from being out in the rain, and winds up dying. What kind of animal dies because of rain? Why does nature screw up so much?
I open my calculus homework for the second time and stare again at the sentence that made me stop last time: A logarithmic function is the inverse of an exponential function. I reread it three more times, and I’m still not sure what it means. And I’m good at math.
But maybe I’m not as good as I think. And I’m in a rush—I’ve got plans. I swallow my pride and text Owen: “hey, Owen. u there?”
“ur alive! and talking to me! will wonders never cease?”
And I realize, I haven’t heard from him since I was so mean. Six days without hearing from Owen—I think that’s the longest we’ve ever gone except in summer vacations. I type: “sorry about last Wednesday.”
“good.”
“you dont sound like you mean it. i mean it. im really sorry.”
No answer. I count the seconds. So many seconds. What a terrible, mean person I was to him. Vicious. I deserve for him to walk away and never come back.
He’s not answering.
Don’t walk away from me, Owen.
He’s still not answering.
Please.
It’s three whole minutes before his words show again.
“its ok. i was being a jerk.”
I type fast: “no you weren’t. i was. i was horrible. im sorry.”
“i still love u. so whats up?”
I could cry from relief, but his words make me smile instead. Owen always goes straight to the point. He’s so easy to understand. Such a good guy. “i have a calculus Q. how r exponential and logarithmic functions inverses of each other if they give the same graph?”
“One is in terms of what x equals. The other is in terms of what y equals. So theyre inverted ways of stating the same relationship.”
God. How obvious. I type: “thnx.”
“one more thing. the mind is a drunken monkey bitten by a scorpion.”
I type: “r u completely fried?”
<
br /> “i read it. the point of yoga is to still the mind… the crazy monkey. if you find that quiet place you wont get so angry.”
I feel challenged. I type: “yoga has lots of points.”
“no doubt. walk u home tomorrow?”
Tomorrow’s Wednesday. Jazz Dance Club. I type: “k”
The rest of the math homework goes fast. Good. Time is passing. I’ve got to rush. I have somewhere to be.
I open Ovid to the story about Philomena. And, oh my God, this is not a happy tale. Hideous acts lead to unbelievably hideous acts, until a mother kills her son and bakes him in a pie she feeds to her husband. It’s worse than a pony dying from rain. Ovid is demented to have made that tale into poetry. And Mrs. Reynolds is demented to have assigned it.
I search around for my biology text. It always makes sense. But I glance at the clock for the nine hundredth time. It’s almost eleven. The evening is gone. My arms go weak, my legs and back, weak. I let myself drop softly to my knees.
I have managed to keep my mind off what’s coming next purely by racing at full speed, swift that I am, tuna that I am. Which is appropriate, because this is a race. Vitiligo waits for no man. Or woman. Forget biology. Time’s up.
It’s Tuesday night. Exactly two weeks since I woke up with white lips. Two weeks—I can’t believe so much has happened between Joshua and me in only two weeks. We’re on fast forward.
But really it hasn’t felt fast. It’s felt like an eternity. As though Joshua and I have really been on this track since we were kids, we just didn’t know it. And once we realized that, we picked up where we’d left off. It’s been almost slow motion, looked at that way. Slow and inevitable. Tonight’s inevitable, too. Or I hope it will be.
I creep downstairs and out of the house, and run flat out to the gazebo in the Weisskopfs’ backyard, next door.
“Joshua?” I whisper loudly. It’s very dark. Clouds cover the moon and the stars. Perfect.
“Here I am.” He steps off the edge of the gazebo and hugs me.
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