The Newlyweds

by Nell Freudenberger

  At night he watched television until late, which made it easy for Amina to get ready for bed by herself, since she needed to get up for school and work in the morning. Once she was in bed, however, it was often difficult to fall asleep, and there were many nights when she would still be lying awake when George came up to his room at eleven thirty or midnight. She turned off her light when she heard him on the stairs and resisted the urge she sometimes had to call his name. If George had any of the same feelings, he also kept them to himself.

  George had said that her own salary was so negligible that it wouldn’t make a difference to their situation, and so she continued sending the monthly allowance to her parents. Her father spent it on buses, taxis, and rickshaws, as he traveled within the district and then back and forth from Satkhira to Dhaka, trying to obtain the documents the American consulate required for the visa. It was strange—having won this concession from George at such cost—not to be able to deliver the good news to her parents, who had always believed they were coming. Amina had concealed the real hurdle, and now her mother busied herself inventing imaginary ones.

  “The problem is not once we arrive in Rochester,” her mother said. “If we arrive safely, then there are no problems.”

  “Why wouldn’t you arrive safely?”

  “Your father is disputing with his relatives again.”

  “What kind of dispute?” Amina wondered if the old antagonisms with her father’s cousins could have been stirred up when her parents had gone to check on her dadu after the storm. But those men had been interested only in her father’s land; now that there was no more of it to sell, she couldn’t imagine what further motive they might have for harassing her parents.

  “They’re envious,” her mother said. “They want a share of whatever profits we make in America.”

  “What profits?”

  Her mother hesitated. “I mean, if we set up a business. Import-export, maybe, all types of jute handicraft. Or a catering business—we could call it Indian food, since no one there knows Bangladesh.” Amina had to control her temper. It wasn’t the first time her mother had mentioned opportunities for making money in America, allowing herself to become infected by her father’s credulity. Each time Amina had explained the practicalities of the situation, and each time her mother had quickly pretended to understand, in a way that made her doubt she was paying attention at all.

  “You can’t set up a business in Rochester. You don’t know anything about the laws here. They’re strict about everything—all kinds of paperwork. You wouldn’t be able to get a work visa, even if you wanted one. You can tell Abba’s people that.”

  Her mother hesitated for a long moment, and then she lowered her voice so that it was almost impossible for Amina to hear her.

  “They think we stole from them.”

  “You mean the land Abba inherited?”

  “Your grandmother’s coming in—I can’t say anything. If she thought your father’s people were after us, she wouldn’t want us to stay. They might come here, and who knows what they would do?”

  “To Nanu’s place?”

  “How are your classes?” her mother said loudly. “Are you still getting one hundred percent in math?”

  “I don’t think Nanu would ever make you leave.”

  “Keep studying just as hard,” her mother continued, in the same bright tone. “Don’t get lazy, even though you’re at the top. Life is so unpredictable, Munni—you never know what might happen.”

  3Amina did have to study harder than she’d expected for her statistics midterm, and she didn’t speak to her parents for five days while she prepared. She had heard about Cyclone Nargis, but expected her parents wouldn’t be any more worried than they had been about Sidr last year. And so she was surprised when she called to check up on them the day after the exam.

  “Alhamdulillah,” her mother said when she answered. “The storm is moving toward Burma. It isn’t going to hit us after all.”

  “Thank God,” Amina said. “And everyone’s fine otherwise?”

  “We’re fine,” her mother said. “The connection is clear—can you hear it? Where do you think we are?”

  The line was indeed clearer than usual, and she wondered if Moni and Omar could have invited them for a visit. She knew that living with her nanu drove her father crazy and that both her parents might be grateful for a holiday in the city.

  “You’re at my aunty’s place in Dhaka?”

  “We are in Dhaka, you’re right!” her mother said. “But not at my sister’s. Here—your father wants to say hello. He’ll tell you.”

  And then her father got on the phone and explained how they had come to Dhaka to stay with Nasir.

  “Your cousin called to ask if we were going to be all right. We told him everything was fine, but he insisted. He’s always thinking of us.”

  “I’m always thinking of you, too,” Amina reminded him. “I had an important test in school today, but I was distracted.”

  Suddenly her father’s voice was full of concern. “You didn’t do well? Will it affect your grade?”

  “Let me talk to Nasir, Abba,” Amina said firmly, and she was surprised when her father didn’t protest. He put him on immediately, as if he’d been standing right there listening. She hadn’t written to Nasir for more than a year, not since she’d argued with him about her failure to fast. Now she was ashamed of the e-mail she’d sent and the secret pleasure she’d taken in his inability to find a bride. She hadn’t even thought to ask him for help, but he was the one who was looking after her parents in her place.

  “I want to thank you,” she said formally. “You’ve been very kind to my parents.”

  “Why should you thank me?” Nasir responded in English. “You are becoming a bideshi over there—‘thank you’ this and ‘thank you’ that. Of course I will invite my aunty and uncle if I am afraid for their safety. And I am enjoying having them. I learn all sorts of things about you—stories from when you were a little girl, all your nicknames.”

  Amina felt defensive. “My parents weren’t worried. My mother believes she can see the future.”

  “And you see, she is right—the storm didn’t come. But she wanted to come here anyway. She is worrying about other things.”

  “I know,” Amina said. “But what? She won’t tell me.”

  Nasir put his mouth away from the phone to cough. “Some problem after the visit to your dadu. Your father says these are family matters. To do with his family only.”

  She could hear her father saying something in the background, and she wondered whether he could follow Nasir’s half of the conversation. It occurred to her that Nasir had chosen to speak English not to show off, but in order to talk to her privately.

  “You can tell me,” she encouraged him. “If you say it fast, my father won’t understand.”

  “Something to do with jewelry,” Nasir murmured.

  “E-mail me,” Amina said. “Can you send a message today?”

  Nasir hesitated, but when he spoke his voice was resolute. “You should talk to your parents yourself, Munni. You’ll be here soon enough.”

  She would’ve asked him to put her father back on, but she had less than three minutes left on the card.

  “How long will they be staying with you?”

  “They can stay as long as they like. Your father has some business here, with the visa paperwork. It is more convenient to be near your uncle’s office.”

  “Tell them I need to talk to them tomorrow. Tell them to call at seven a.m. here in Rochester.” Nasir didn’t say anything, and so she repeated the instructions, trying to keep the irritation from her voice. It wasn’t his fault that her parents were being difficult, inventing reasons to move from one place to the other.

  “Yes, okay, Munni,” Nasir said. “I am praying for you.”

  “Thank you again,” Amina said, without thinking.

  Nasir laughed. “Okay, little memsahib. So long.”

  4George didn’t g
et so much as an interview in May or June. He filled out his unemployment forms every Sunday night and periodically went downtown to check the bulletin board at the Rochester Works! Career Center. When she heard the car pulling back into the garage after one of those visits, she couldn’t help imagining that he might come hurrying through the door to tell her about a job that was perfect for him, that he could interview for right away. She’d once done the same with her father. But in spite of his optimism, her father was never surprised when one of his schemes failed to deliver; nothing in his past had led him to expect a steady income. George had grown up with the idea that such a job was his right, and so he was both shocked and angry when it was taken away.

  She didn’t tell her parents about the disaster that had befallen them; they were consumed by their own worries, and she hoped that in the three months before their arrival, George would find another job. Her father told her that her mother had been acting strangely ever since they’d returned from Nasir’s to the village. She talked more and more about her sister Moni and how she secretly envied their emigration plans, and she often turned down food, saying she was afraid to eat. Once, her father had woken up because he was being bitten by mosquitoes and discovered that her mother wasn’t in their bed: she’d neglected to close the mosquito net, and her father’s arms and legs were swollen with bites. He’d gotten up and gone out into Nanu’s courtyard, where, after a few moments, he heard splashing from the pond. He said that he knew it was her mother even before he saw her, her head going under again and again, as if she were looking for something on the bottom. When he tried to bring her out, she’d resisted, and only the threat of all of her relatives waking and finding her bathing in the middle of the night was enough to make her climb the stone steps, wrap herself in a shawl, and allow her husband to lead her back to bed. Amina’s mother wouldn’t speak at all that night, but in the morning she had told her father that she’d heard Kwaz, the water saint, calling her from the bottom of the pond.

  “I want you to come now,” her mother pleaded on the phone, and Amina had to explain again that her citizenship interview was in two weeks. Every night after dinner, while George was watching television, she studied the hundred questions, memorizing the branches of government and the names of U.S. territories. Some questions were easy (“Why does the American flag have thirteen stripes?”

  “Who was the first president of the United States?”), but some tripped her up every time (“What stops one branch of the government from becoming too powerful?”

  “Name one American Indian tribe.”) She invented mnemonics, especially for the questions involving numbers: twenty-seven was the number of constitutional amendments and also the age she was last year. Her nanu was one of nine children, enough to fill every seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. The last three digits of her father’s phone number were 435, which was also the number of voting members in the House of Representatives.

  Words were more difficult. She had the same trouble with the strange-sounding Native American tribes that she often did with the Italianesque names of the drinks at Starbucks: her head was so full of English that there was no room for another language. Once she had even failed to remember a word in Bangla. She had been at school, walking past the dry fountain where students gathered to study and eat their lunch, and for a few seconds, no matter how hard she searched, she couldn’t bring those two syllables—jharna—to mind.

  “That makes sense,” George said. “One language pushes the other out.” He didn’t offer any solution in the moment, but a few days later their Netflix came in the mail, and she saw that he’d ordered The Last of the Mohicans.

  “I didn’t think you could forget if you watched a whole movie about them,” he told her, and so she’d taken a night off from studying to sit on the couch and watch it with him. She had just finished her shower and had plaited her hair; she was wearing sweatpants and a tank top, but she hadn’t put on a bra. She allowed herself to think of what could happen, but she didn’t change into anything more modest. She didn’t know if she wanted to have sex with her husband, but she knew she wanted the comfort of sitting on the couch with him without the pressure of speaking or even really of thinking, of allowing herself two hours to change her own situation for the fantasy on the screen.

  About three-quarters of the way through the movie, for an experiment, she allowed herself to lean against George the way she once had: he adjusted his position to accommodate her head on his shoulder. The British woman was trapped behind the waterfall with the adopted white son of the Indian chief, kissing in the dark.

  “Like Niagara.”

  “Except about one-twentieth the size.”

  “I’d like to go someday.”

  “It’s not expensive,” George said. “When I’m working again. We could take your parents.”

  This generous suggestion moved Amina, as did the scene in front of them. Now Hawkeye vowed to leap into the river to conceal himself so that the French soldiers would have mercy on Cora and her party. Even in the face of peril, however, Cora didn’t want him to go. It was in such situations that the strength of love revealed itself; although their own situation was less picturesque, Amina doubted it was any less dramatic. Their backgrounds were as different as Hawkeye’s and Cora’s—perhaps more so, since the onscreen hero and heroine had at least their native race in common. She had escaped a broken country, and George a broken heart; they had chosen each other in spite of warnings from both sides, and she thought those naysayers had made them both more determined that their union would succeed. He’d written to her for all the wrong reasons—deceptively at first, and then in desperation over another woman. But hadn’t she been desperate, too? Even if neither of their motives had been pure, wasn’t it possible that something pure had come of them now?

  It gave her pleasure to imagine George’s surprise and his eagerness, when he found out he wouldn’t have to wait any longer. Between the movie and her own emotions, she felt ready, almost eager for something that had once been a duty. The scene onscreen had devolved into fighting, and she had trouble following the plot.

  “Do they get married?” she asked George.

  “Does who?”

  “Hawkeye and Cora.”

  “I’m not going to spoil it for you.”

  “I haven’t been paying enough attention.”

  “Do you want to go upstairs? You won’t forget the Mohicans, will you?”

  “I’ll remember the Hurons now, too.”

  George got up and switched off the television, and they climbed the stairs together for the first time in several months. He turned for a moment on the landing, as if he were going to say something, and then hurried into the bathroom and closed the door. Instead of going to her own room, she went into the one they used to share and sat down on the bed. Was it possible she was more nervous than she had been the first time? She could feel her pulse in her ears, and when George turned the handle on the bathroom door, something made her jump to her feet.

  “What are you looking for?” he asked, not looking at her. “Your phone is downstairs on the table.”

  “I was thinking we could …”

  He looked up. “Really?”

  She nodded.

  “Oh, Amina.” He sat down on the bed, but carefully, as if she were something that might break.

  “I want the light to be out.”

  He switched off the lamp with its pleated shade, and their skin was suddenly the same dark blue in the dim room. Then he smoothed her hair in a way she liked and kissed her, hesitantly at first, on the mouth. But when he touched her breasts he groaned. “I missed this so much.”

  She had always found it disconcerting when he talked during sex, as if the language was a bridge between this act and the rest of their lives. She thought it ought to be separate, undiscussed. They undressed themselves, as they always had, and she lay down beside him.

  “I want you to come this time.” He was on top of her, trying to be inside her, but he could f
eel she wasn’t wet enough. “Let me try this,” he said, and suddenly he was moving down her body, kissing her there. She knew what he was doing: she’d heard about it from the girls at Maple Leaf and knew that some people believed it was haram, while others said that because it wasn’t expressly prohibited, it was all right between husband and wife.

  But we are not husband and wife, she thought—not really. What George was doing felt so strange that she couldn’t imagine taking pleasure in it, and she was relieved when he returned to his normal position on top of her. And yet once he was inside her, she found that it was altogether different, as if he’d unloosed something with his mouth. She wondered if this was what Ashok had done to Kim, and then she thought that the worst thing to do right now would be to think about Kim. She concentrated on pushing back against her husband, and she was surprised by how fast and hard he came.

  George rolled off of her and lay down on his back. “You didn’t?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You would know.” He was disappointed, and she thought she ought to have lied. She wondered why it mattered so much to him.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  She nodded, and then remembered he couldn’t see her in the dark.

  “Was this because you feel sorry for me?”

  “No.”

  “You wanted to?”

  “I missed it, too.” Her guilt about lying compounded the guilt she felt about violating her own conditions; she had thought that this hiatus in their sexual life might make it possible to begin the marriage again on firmer ground. Now she saw that the interval had actually made things more difficult.

  George rolled over and looked at her. “I feel like I never know what you’re thinking anymore. Or whether you’re still angry at me.”

  “I’m not angry right now.”

  “I’m going to get another job.”