“Aw, God. My jacket! My mom’s gonna kill me! She’s gonna kill me!”
He looked like he was going to cry. I felt like crying too, but instead I told him to give me the coat. I’d sew it up. I’d fix it. He started to say no—then slid out of it and handed it to me, ran off to the far end of the blacktop. He must have been cold; it was October, which can be cold in Chicago. He could have stayed in the stairwell.
I took the jacket home that afternoon. I had sewn buttons back onto my skirts before—I was always popping them, running and wrestling with the boys. But the jacket hadn’t ripped along a seam; the actual leather had ripped. I did the best I could, choosing dark brown thread that matched the color of the leather, sewing the tiniest stitches. It took more than an hour, but when I was done, it still looked awful. The tears were near the armpits, though—maybe no one would notice. I didn’t know what else to do.
I gave Jesús his jacket back the next day, in the morning, while we waited for the bell. He was shivering in a sweater; he’d told his folks that he’d forgotten his jacket at school. He said thanks, quickly, and then he went off to join the boys again. I didn’t know what to do; usually we played a little soccer before school started. I just hung out by the stairwell. Eventually, the bell rang and we all went in.
That night, Appa and Amma came up to the room I shared with two of my sisters. Jesús’s mother had called; she had immediately noticed the tear, and he had told her everything. Amma started shouting at me, but Appa didn’t say anything. He wouldn’t look at me. I wanted him to look at me, even if he was shouting while he did. But he wouldn’t. He said he’d pay Mrs. Gonzalez for the cost of a replacement jacket. A hundred dollars we couldn’t afford easily. Amma always worried about money. When she started shouting again, he said, “Let her be, Shanthi.”
Amma said, “Kissing boys—she’s going to ruin herself!”
He said, “She’s just a child. She didn’t know what she was doing.”
“You’re too soft on her—you’re always too soft on this one…”
“Please, Shanthi, kunju…”
Amma looked like she wanted to yell some more, but she wouldn’t argue with him in front of me. She always waited until she thought we were all asleep before she started shouting. Amma shut her mouth tight, lips pressed flat and thin. He took her arm and led her downstairs, leaving me alone.
I didn’t speak to Jesús again; it was easy, because he avoided me after that. And I stopped playing soccer with the boys. I spent my recess breaks doing homework, and my grades went up.
Appa avoided me too.
THE AIR INSIDE THE STAIRWELL WAS CHILL, EVEN IN JUNE. TO MY surprise, Sue led me up instead of down. We climbed up a flight. At the top of the stairs, there was a door. She pushed it open, and there was sky beyond it.
“They never seem to lock this. I think they’ve forgotten it’s here.” She grinned again as she pulled me out onto the roof. The tiles were slanted, and we balanced precariously, looking down across campus. The business school and the divinity school before us, the social science and humanities buildings to either side. “C’mere…,” she called. She had let go of my hand and walked across the tiles, heading over the peak, toward the view south across the grassy strips of the Midway. She seemed to have no trouble at all walking; my right hand still clung tightly to the doorknob. “Don’t worry, it won’t lock if you let it go…”
“We’re going to get in trouble, Sue.”
She turned and came back across the tiles, looking annoyed. “Please, Leilani. Can’t you just enjoy something for once in your life?”
“But it must be against the rules to be on the roof.” If my father finished the exam he was giving and decided to come and take a little nap in the library; he often took naps in Harper…
“We’re not hurting anything! I come up here all the time. No one ever notices—nobody ever looks up. Leilani, please. For ten minutes, just relax, okay?”
I felt trapped—I hadn’t even come fully out onto the roof. One foot was still on the inside landing, one hand tight to the door. I glanced down at the grass far below; my stomach was churning, and I felt dizzy. I didn’t know why I hadn’t already fallen. Sue must have seen that on my face, because suddenly she was beside me, her body blocking my view of the grass, her hands firm around mine.
“Hey. Hey…I’m sorry. I’m so stupid. Sit down. Just slide down…yeah, that’s right. Put your head between your knees. Take a deep breath. Just breathe.”
WHEN YOU RUN, REALLY RUN, YOU HAVE TO BREATHE PROPERLY. Little quick breaths will make you light-headed; huge, gasping breaths won’t do you much good. You need to breathe normally, just as if you were walking, or standing still. If you can’t breathe normally, you need to slow down.
I started really running at fourteen. My breasts were small, and I had long legs. No one was surprised, though my sisters teased me and said I’d never get a date if I acted like a boy. Amma wasn’t sure it was a good thing for a girl to do, but Appa said to let me be. That’s what he always said about me, and Amma was enough of a traditionalist that, at least in public, his word ruled the house. So I got to do what I wanted, and what I wanted to do at fourteen was keep running.
I ran at school. At home. I’d get up in the early morning, even before Amma rose to iron our uniforms and make our hot, sweet milk. I walked out the door when the sky was cold and dark and dry, the air so clear that even an hour later, it was amazing that you could still breathe. I started running when the tip of my sneaker touched the bottom of the last step—with a push from those toes, going as fast as I could.
I never ran far. Down the street, to the small patch of woods that still existed back then, through the woods between the trees, ignoring scratches on my arms that would later have Amma squawking and casting reproachful looks at Appa over his toast and fish curry. Through the woods to the lake. I’d stop there, sit down on the shore. Sometimes, if it was early enough, if I had time, I’d take off my sneakers and socks, slip dirty brown feet into even dirtier water. Watch the sun rise. Wipe off my feet on the grass, put the socks and sneakers back on. Turn around. Start running. There wasn’t much time.
Less than two miles to the lake and back. I was always back before any of my five sisters had woken.
At home, I removed my shoes, threw the socks in the laundry basket, washed my body and my hair. I’d cut it short when I started running. It was too much trouble brushing it afterward, and I never had the patience to braid it the way Amma wanted me to. Amma took her hairbrush to me that day and got in a few good smacks before Appa intervened. “Please, Shanthi, please let her be.” And she did.
I ran all through high school. At home. At school. I was the best sprinter on the team, and when I won my first trophy, Amma was there at the ceremony, in her blue and silver sari, with her hair up and her glasses in her purse. She was almost blind without them, but she hated wearing them in public. She wouldn’t even wear them to teach; she memorized her math lectures and hardly used the blackboard at all. When I came down after receiving the trophy, she looked right past me.
The summer after my senior year of high school, my breasts suddenly grew two sizes. I couldn’t run the way I had, pounding through the woods, hardly noticing the ups and downs. Even with my oldest, tightest bra, they jiggled and distracted. They had gone from barely plums to grapefruit. The family doctor didn’t know why, though he seemed to think it was wonderful. Maybe it was all that hot milk.
I took up tennis instead, when I started college at Chicago. Amma had new complaints; my arms were getting unfeminine, too muscular. I ignored her. Tennis was good at first, slamming the ball across the court, the competitive charge. But the audience at games was distracting, and even my opponent was more than I wanted; it wasn’t the same as running alone. Tennis didn’t give me the same rush of blood through my body, from my toes to the top of my head. Eventually, I stopped bothering to cut my hair; I let it grow long, like my sisters, and braided it.
In the fall of
my second year, I dropped tennis. I was too busy studying to practice daily, to make every scheduled meeting, every event at home and away. Amma was happy.
I WAS SHAKING. MY EYES WERE PRESSED TIGHTLY CLOSED, MY HEAD was tucked between my knees, and Sue’s head was pressed against mine. Her hands were wrapped around mine, and I could feel her breath on my calves; I was wearing a knee-length skirt, though my father didn’t really approve. My mother had convinced him to allow all of us to wear them, since they were still longer than the miniskirts all the white girls were wearing. She said we had to adapt—but not too much. We had to remember where we came from.
It was difficult remembering anything with Sue’s breath warm and quick against my shivering skin.
I took deep breaths, trying to slow my thumping heart. Left ventricle, right ventricle, aorta, pulmonary artery…Names, words were calming. That’s what I knew, all I knew. I had forgotten the language of my body. All I did those days was read and write and study the words. Right atrium, left atrium, inferior vena cava…The dizziness faded; I lifted my head—and promptly became dizzy again.
Sue’s softly rounded face was just an inch or two away from mine, and the words had fled. All I could think about was how warm and solid her lips looked, how the curve of them contrasted so sharply with the empty air behind her, the sharp angles of tilted roof and vertical wall and hard horizontal ground three stories below. I couldn’t breathe, and I could feel my eyes widening, my throat swallowing convulsively. She looked frightened, with blue eyes gone dark and stormy—and then she leaned forward and pressed her lips against mine.
WHEN WE WERE LITTLE, MY SISTERS AND I RAN FREELY AROUND campus in the hours after school and before dinner, making friends with the students and teachers. We watched each other, and everyone kept an eye on us, so my parents didn’t worry. They were busy with their teaching schedules. Appa was a mathematician, in Eckhart Hall on the main quadrangle; Amma was a few streets away at the Lab School. We weren’t supposed to bother them while they were working.
I hadn’t meant to bother him. I was eight, and I liked to run. That day, I was running from the Reynolds Club fountain to the tennis courts, just running back and forth, seeing how fast I could go. There was a tricky bit, crossing the open archway between Eckhart and Ryerson Halls. Three steps up, four steps across, three steps down. I could skip steps, but I didn’t actually go faster then. So I usually hit them all, thump thump thump. My head down, and my arms at my sides, pumping to help me run faster. I must have run it a hundred times that day before I tripped and fell.
I cut my forehead on the stone. It didn’t hurt much. But it was bleeding, blood running down my face, onto my favorite blue dress. Appa’s office was right there—just inside Eckhart, up two flights of stairs, three doors down. I pressed my hand over the cut, trying to stop the bleeding. I ran inside, up the stairs, down the hall. And when I got to his door, I pushed it open, without knocking.
He was kissing a woman. A blonde woman, with long, straight hair that fell down her back. It looked just like Amma’s hair—but the wrong color. And she was much younger than Amma. I turned around and ran away, leaving the door open behind me.
I didn’t tell anyone.
I COULD HAVE PULLED AWAY AND PULLED MYSELF INTO THE STAIRWELL and run down the stairs and away. But instead I slid forward, just an inch, but an inch further out onto the roof. I slid forward and pressed my lips back against hers, tentatively opened my mouth and I was breathing her breath, swallowing her air, and I could breathe again. I was still dizzy but her lips were so warm and solid and her mouth was wet and her hands tightened on mine as if she would pin me to the roof, pin me down so that I couldn’t possibly fall off. I was grateful for their pressure, because my body felt light, my bones felt hollow, as if I could fly away on them.
Her hands slid up my arms. They slid up to my shoulders and wrapped around, pressing against my spine, pulling my body against hers. She was crouching now, her knees pressed against the outside of mine, and I could feel the heat of them, the damp sweat cooling in the breeze that blew across the roof. They slid against my own sweaty skin; and I didn’t dare to look down. I knew that her skirt must have slid up and up. Sue kept kissing me. That was what we were doing. She was kissing me, and I was kissing her back. I was kissing Sue on the roof of the college library, the college where my father was currently giving an exam; we were kissing on the roof where anyone who looked up could see us.
Her mouth moved hard against mine, her tongue licking out in tiny licks against my tongue, my teeth, the inside of my lips. Then she started sliding her mouth down, down my chin, and I tilted my head back. Sue was licking my neck, sucking on the hollow of my throat, and I was sure there was a name for that part but I couldn’t remember what it was. The blood was still thumping through my heart, the aorta filling and pulsing and pumping it along. Her hands were still tight against my spine, grounding me against her solid body, keeping my skin attached though my bones wanted to fly. And my hands were off the ground and on her bare legs. My hands were sliding up and down her damp thighs and she moaned in her throat, and at the sound of it a burn started between my thighs, a quick convulsion shook through me.
Sue pulled away; she started to open her mouth to speak.
IN THE FALL OF MY THIRD YEAR, I WOULD SWITCH MAJORS TO English lit. I would write poetry and win a few awards. I wouldn’t tell my parents what I’d done until Christmas, when the grades would arrive, with my straight As in the wrong field. Amma would say that I had never been a very good science student, and that science had only given her heartache anyway. Appa would not say anything.
I would graduate in June. Three of my sisters would have married, and Harini would be pregnant. I would have already turned down half a dozen arranged proposals; though I was not beautiful, I was not ugly either. Some of the proposals would have been from Ceylon; I would tell my parents I didn’t want to marry a boy who just wanted a green card. Some would be from local boys whom I had known my whole life; I would tell my parents that it would have felt like marrying my brother, if I had had a brother. I would hold them off until graduation with such excuses. My mother and I would fight about it, often. Once, she would get so angry that she would throw a pot of boiling crab curry at my head. She would miss, but the splashing liquid would burn us both.
On graduation day, with my degree safe in my hand, I would tell my parents that I had a job as a secretary at the university, and that I was going to move out, to share a house with other girls. I would tell them that I was hoping to be a poet. I would not tell them how many lovers (mostly female, a few male) I had had. I would tell them that I might never marry.
They would say nothing. Amma would turn and walk away. Appa would hesitate and then follow her. I would not talk to them, or they to me, for some years.
I would be maid of honor at Sue’s wedding. I would dance for her.
I REACHED OUT AND PULLED SUE TO ME AGAIN. I CUPPED MY HANDS around her thighs and pulled her legs against mine, between mine. I arched up and placed my mouth on hers and kissed her hard. Her tongue slipped into my mouth, her teeth bit my bottom lip, and sound climbed up from my spine to my throat to my tongue to hers.
Sue captured my moan with her lips and tongue hard against my throat, and then she was pushing me back, tilting me back against the tiles, laying my body down and kneeling above me. Her hands were on my arms now, still holding me, still grounding me, and then her teeth were on my shirt, pulling buttons open with such skill that I knew she had done this before, many times, and then my shirt was open, my bra pulled down and my left breast was in her mouth, my heart was under her lips and tongue and my skin was naked to the air and I was lost and found and nothing would ever be the same again.
The shudders shook through me, as her lips tightened on my breast and her fingers dug into my arms; my thighs clenched and my heart opened.
I was not running. I was not falling.
Was this the adventure I’d been searching for?
; I was holding very still, and flying.
Lakshmi’s Diary
Chicago, 1969
JULY 2, 1969—MY WEDDING DAY.
Today I’m getting married. Raksha is a handsome man—smooth skin, nice cheekbones. He’s cheerful, generous, and owns his own business, a sari shop. Easwari Aunty has done well by me, though I thought she was going to have a heart attack when I wrote to her and asked her to find me a husband. She protested—of course my parents, both teachers, would object to my getting married instead of going to college, but I can be just as stubborn as any of my five sisters when I need to be. And she knew it. Aunty also knew there wasn’t much else for me. The dark horse of the family, the one who didn’t get into U of C, or Northwestern, or even UIC—who didn’t get into college at all. Dark-skinned too, which made Aunty’s job harder. But she agreed that I had better get married.
I’m going to have babies. That’s one thing my sisters have done little of. Only three of them married so far, and only two babies in the lot. I will have hundreds of babies.
Maybe not hundreds. But seven or eight or nine or more—my grandmother had thirteen living children, and that was in Ceylon, without the benefit of modern medicine! I will have many children, and a beautiful home, and I will cook perfect meals for my Raksha—at least I can cook. I will sing Tamil songs to him when he comes home tired from work; that’s something Leilani can’t do. She croaks like a frog. And none of them can dance. I will take good care of my husband, and I will be happy.
LATER—ALMOST MIDNIGHT.
Easwari Aunty said it would hurt a little, but then it would get better.
Raksha was different tonight. Maybe it was all the wine and champagne at the wedding. The men were drinking hard liquor too. He wasn’t himself. He didn’t give me time to think. Maybe there’s something wrong with me. If this is what it takes to make many children—maybe I’ll wait a while.
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