The Year Of Uh

by Jud Widing

  Hyun-Woo stood in the doorway, clutching a bundle of downy white towels with a hook-fingered intensity that invited Nur to pry them from his cold, dead hands. Hope alighted on his wan face. “Would newspaper soak it up better, you think?”

  Standing motionless between them, Nur shook her head from side to side. She didn’t understand everything Hyun-Woo had just said, but context and tone supplied what language didn’t. Without really looking at either, Nur instructed Deirdre to instruct Hyun-Woo to go ahead and put the towels down, unless he was hoping to disguise the bloodletting by surprising his parents with a set of matching pink linens. This was the first time Nur had something so baldly sarcastic to say to Hyun-Woo, and in a less sensational situation, they all three might have taken a moment to appreciate this. Instead, Deirdre conveyed the message without thinking about it (she had more than enough on her plate), and Hyun-Woo received the message without hearing it (his plate was similarly weighted), instead parlaying it directly into another loss of virginity: he thought of his first English-language pun, based on a popular idiom he had heard.

  “When life gives you lettings, make linen-ade,” he chirped to himself. The De Dernberg sisters looked at him as though he’d gone insane. It probably didn’t help that he was giggling at his own joke, and making a poor attempt at concealing it by burying his face in the towels. He had always marked fluency in a language by the ease with which he could play with words. That particular witticism was rough. He knew that, and couldn’t afford to go easy on himself, as none of the present company understood enough to groan and throw small objects and appliances at him. But he’d made his first pun, and it made a kind of sense, and it sort of worked.

  So he had a number of reasons to be chortling into his doilies, none of which were apparent to Deirdre or Nur, who were smeared to their elbows in their own blood and watching, respectively.

  Here was the fourth first of the night, then. Nur had never seen Hyun-Woo so uncomposed, so undignified, so…exposed. The idea that his delicate tittering was humanizing was strange, because it implied that Hyun-Woo was in some way inhuman, or at least had room to be made more human-ish, but humanizing was all she could think as the hee-hawing ran itself down into tee-heeing on the way to a volatile silence that could, at any moment, reignite into shrieking peals of circular mirth.

  She wanted to take Hyun-Woo, right then and there. Kick Deirdre out, bloody blankets and all, and have at it on the naked mattress. His smile, his smile, his smile had always been radiant. But that shrill, staccato laugh that dipped and drooped as each breath left him, like a roulette wheel on helium…that was a supernova, and she was a nearby planet, inhabited by a highly evolved, responsible and enlightened civilization, there one moment and gone the next, wiped suddenly from existence by the sweeping laughter at a cosmic punchline, for which they would never hear the set-up.

  Which, alright, perhaps a slightly more tragic metaphor than was called for. But sometimes you look at the one you love and feel so much, so deeply, that the only way to make sense of it is to compare it to intergalactic genocide.

  And it was then, with Hyun-Woo cradling a bundle of towels and trying not to start chuckling again, with Deirdre grimacing as she snapped open a trash bag to force feed it sheets blushing with her vitality, that Nur felt she finally understood the only thing she’d ever really need to know about love: it didn’t make any goddamned sense. She’d been trying to parse her feelings for this entire trip, why am I feeling why does this make me why in this moment, and she’d finally found the answer to all of these questions and more.

  Why, as we’re standing around here, all feeling embarrassed for various reasons, do I feel such overwhelming love for these people? ‘These people’ plural because these feelings extended to Deirdre too: humanizing, that was how she looked at her sister’s struggles with the sheets, though she felt significantly less uncomfortable with the implied inhumanity that ascribed to Deirdre. Why now, more so than at other times?

  Because it doesn’t make any goddamned sense. This is the whole of Love, Nur decided. The rest is commentary.

  “Oh, fuck!” Nur exclaimed apropos of nothing two days later. The curse came in English, and Deirdre rolled her eyes at the obvious affectation. She knew her big sister wasn’t yet at the point of effortless profanity, because she herself still wasn’t there yet, much to her chagrin.

  “What?” Deirdre inquired, more for form’s sake than genuine interest. The inquiry came in Seychellois Creole, the subtext being just speak your language, don’t be an asshole. Interesting fact: the only three universal languages are mathematics, industrial sounds and subtextual swearwords.

  “What ever happened to Kamal? How did he take the, um, what happened?”

  An awkward silence would have descended just then, had they not been in the heavily-trampled winter wonderland of the Boston Common, sipping steaming cups of coffee. Nur had gone to Dunkin Donuts, while Deirdre had gone to Starbucks, and each thought the other had done so simply to be difficult, but in point of fact the two establishments were caddycorner from each other, and the two sisters had differing tastes, and it was really not a big deal and bespoke nothing more profound than said differing tastes. But, anyway, since they were sitting in the Boston Common sipping coffee, awkward silence was shouldered out of the way by laughing children and barking dogs and tweeting birds and the open-mouthed hum of an urban area smothered by snow.

  So Nur repeated “What,” the subtext being ever happened to Kamal? How did he take the, um, what happened?

  “He, ah…” Deirdre took a long, stalling sip. “You can’t tell anybody I told you this.”

  “Unless you can find me somebody else who speaks Creole, I don’t think you have to worry about that for quite a while.”

  “Mhm. Right. Well, he…when he saw the blood, and it looked like there was a lot of it, more than there was, because I don’t think either of us were expecting it, because it was his first time too, and he wasn’t expecting it to hurt me so much, which, neither was I, but, so, when there was blood, which is to s-“

  “He fainted?”

  “Straight away.” Another long, artificially drawn-out sip. She pulled the cup away from her mouth, revealing the slightest arc of a smile. “He was still inside me,” she said in a voice so quiet it was nearly lost amongst the hushed cacophony of the Common.

  Nur’s shoulders tensed as she saw the Talking About Family and Talking About Sex circles drift towards one another. Two avenues of effort lay before her: make an effort to keep the circles apart, or make an effort to loosen her shoulders and roll with it.

  She chose to defer the moment of decision for at least a few moments. The sip lasted at least as long as both of Deirdre’s combined. And then it all went wrong. The plan backfired.

  Deirdre continued, “I was trying to get him off of me, but then he…he was unconscious when he ca-,” and Nur spat her coffee out into the morning in a fine mist, which was picked up by the wind and carried across the path, where it splattered onto the face of a young boy who had just knocked over his friend’s snowman and so had it coming, because sometimes there is justice in the universe.

  Then Nur spotted a dog, at which she pointed as she shouted “look, a dog,” leapt up, and ran towards it – which was, not accidentally, away from Deirdre and this dialogue she into which she had unwittingly inserted (pick a different word! Insinuated? Sure!) herself. She hadn’t gotten a straight answer about what ended up happening with Kamal, but at that moment all she wanted was to pet a fuzzy puppy and forget Kamal and all his works.

  The puppy was a corgi, and it was very fuzzy, and she gave it a little rub behind the ears and the world was set aright for a time.

  CHAPTER 31

  The time for which the world was set aright kept on rolling, even after Nur had stopped petting the fuzzy puppy. A happy equilibrium had obtained between Nur and Deirdre, and between Nu
r and Hyun-Woo, and to a lesser extent between Deirdre and Hyun-Woo. The younger De Dernberg sister was still recruited for her translational capacities from time to time, but Nur felt her to be increasingly unnecessary. Not because she was making such dramatic leaps and bounds in language acquisition – the need for absolute comprehension simply felt less and less pressing. When one is resigned to things not making any goddamned sense, well, one is less frustrated when that’s precisely how much sense things make.

  One bad thing happened in the “time” in question, and it wasn’t even bad. Just concerning. Hyun-Woo ascended to the very highest class offered by the Crabshoe School For The Language Of English. Riding high on pun-inspired confidence (he tried to make something along the lines of ‘punfidence’ work in is mind, largely because he hadn’t yet developed the groaning twins of decency and shame by which even the most reckless wordsmith plies their disreputable trade), he once again approached Tuppence Crabshoe, fixing to once again retake the placement exam. She relented, and he took it again, and scored near the top. The top, of course, being the point at which Tuppence would sit a student down and explain that they probably didn’t need to be enrolled in a language school at all anymore.

  And then where would Hyun-Woo go?

  That was a bridge still in the distance, but one that was approaching with greater haste than Nur would have liked. Except the bridge wasn’t the one doing the approaching – Hyun-Woo was. It annoyed Nur, ever so slightly, than Hyun-Woo was forcing his way up the pedagogical ladder prematurely. She had no right to feel that way, and she knew it. Rich as he seemed to be, attending this school was costing him money, and if the money stopped being well-spent, it wouldn’t make any goddamned sense for him to stick around just for Nur.

  Not any goddamned sense at all.

  Which was what annoyed her. More than ever so slightly, if she was being honest. If he loved me, wouldn’t he try to stay here with me, rather than trying to matriculate?

  It wasn’t fair to frame things so simplistically.

  Clearly.

  She knew that.

  Obviously.

  But still.

  Anyway, it only bothered her for a day or so. She knew it was unreasonable, and her anxieties about the future had a way of evaporating when she was spending the present with Hyun-Woo. It would continue to niggle away at the back of her mind, but the joke was on It, because she’d never be able to hear It back there. The niggledome was already quite crowded.

  The hours turned to days turned to weeks, time rushed forward and all things changed, yet they remained “time”, the time when the world was aright. Nur and Hyun-Woo went on dates, and had sex, and often those two things followed one another, but sometimes they existed independently, and it was great fun and ‘aright’. Nur and Deirdre made concerted efforts to hang out, talking walks and going sledding and even engaging in some of the touristy stuff they’d neglected, like riding to the top of the Prudential center or hopping on one of the amphibious duck boats for a ride around the harbor (this in the blistering winds of mid-March, which turned out to be one of the worst ideas either of them had ever had, made an itsy bit better by the fact that both had had it). They didn’t exactly grow closer, because in Nur’s opinion they were already a little bit too close - the Boston Common was nearly ruined for her, so vivid were the flashbacks to the mental image of Deirdre and Kamal covered in ohgodpuppiesthinkofpuppies – but they found the Goldilocks distance at which to hold one another and strengthened the slightly elastic bonds to just that length. Room to maneuver, a bit closer or a bit further as the situation dictated, but always springing back to a happy medium. That was reassuring and ‘aright’.

  Aright things were as the snow piled high on the corners and aright they stayed as the mercury rose in its place, aright was the washing away the stupor of winter to make way for the timid lustiness of spring, first in the rivulets of snowmelt that raced through the streets, and then in the showers that promised flowers, now that March had peeled back for April’s sake, it was all aright and Nur was aright with the world, and none of it warrants particular attention because it’s a wonderful thing when all is aright, but it’s not the most interesting thing. That would be when things go awrong, which is what started to happen in late April.

  Unfortunately, Nur’s time in America would never again be as aright as it had been for those three-almost-four months. But times like that never last, because there isn’t actually justice in the universe. Things just happen, and sometimes the things that just happen to people are the things those people deserve, like a little snowman-demolishing turd getting a face full of second-hand coffee. But most times good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people and there’s no rhyme or reason because, as Nur would come to realize in the twilight of her American trip, love wasn’t unique in not making any goddamned sense.

  CHAPTER 32

  Two things happened in rapid succession. The first was Nur’s birthday, which fell on a Thursday. Hyun-Woo had a lot of pun-fun with that one, and everyone else was very patient with him.

  The shindig thrown for the occasion was small, just snacks and soft drinks at Uncle Bernard’s. It was, much like the preceding several months, generally pleasant and devoid of conflict, and therefore not especially interesting. It was noteworthy for marking the introduction between Hyun-Woo and Nur’s extended family, an introduction about which she would soon enough have mixed feelings.

  “This is Hyun-Woo…” she mumbled quietly, after realizing that she had never learned his last name. Or his first name? She knew enough about Korean names to know that she didn’t know enough about Korean names. She didn’t know one of his names. Nor did she know the English words to explain their relationship with the nuance she felt it deserved, so venturing that her Uncle’s fear of her parents would ensure discretion, she concluded her introduction with “I’m seeing him.”

  Uncle Bernard made the face of a man who awakens on the subway to find a rat on his chest, while Aunt Amy made the face of a woman who films a man awakening on the subway to find a rat on his chest, knowing that she’ll be able to monetize this video on the internet. In a stunning display of marital synchrony that did more to answer Nur’s background inquiry of how did these two end up together than anything else over the last eight months, Bernard and Amy’s faces slid towards a mutual neutral and arrived at the same time, a feat Nur and Hyun-Woo had yet to manage, though for not lack of trying.

  “Hi there,” Uncle Bernard grumbled with exaggerated good humor. Behind that carnival barker’s smile and the proffered used car salesman’s hand, Nur saw that she and Bernard were on the same page: her parents would never hear of this from him. She grinned as Hyun-Woo took her Uncle’s hand and gave it a little shake. Not the most forceful handshake, as demonstrated by Bernard’s enthusiastic double-pump prior to disengagement.

  Why forcing her Uncle to keep her secret should bring her such pleasure, she couldn’t begin to imagine. Well, she could begin to imagine. Her concern was more in not being able to stop imagining. There were so many plausible explanations.

  A few other stray friends from the school were invited, though they were more acquaintances than friends. This was the first time Nur had spent time with many of them outside of class.

  She’d also encouraged Deirdre to invite Kamal. Deirdre felt quite certain that Kamal would decline the invitation, and so declined to invite him, just to be safe.

  That was the first thing that happened in rapid succession, though it hardly would have made sense to say it happened ‘in succession’ without the second thing that happened.

  The second thing that happened was that, while having sex, the sweaty torsos of Nur and Hyun-Woo slapped together in just the right way to make a comical little fart sound. As the snowflake leads to the avalanche, as the straw breaks the camel’s back, as the butterfly flaps up the hurricane, so too did the comical lit
tle fart sound lead to catastrophe.

  It wasn’t even a big one. Just a delicate, tooting pplbt noise. And at first, the noise passed without comment, because both Nur and Hyun-Woo were preoccupied with the activity that gave rise to the noise to begin with.

  But then Nur started laughing. She couldn’t help it. There were a few things that would always and forever make her laugh. Young children falling down, you couldn’t go wrong with that one. People’s voices cracking in public speaking scenarios, those moments were small treasures to be savored. And farts. Farts were hilarious, and Nur fundamentally distrusted anyone who held otherwise. They were either liars or clinically humorless, and it was a toss-up as to which type of person was worse.

  The laugh started softly, a subtle hitching of the chest that she tried to disguise by timing with Hyun-Woo’s less-subtle motions. And for a time, it seemed as though she had it under control. All that was left was to hope he didn’t notice her pursed, upturned lips.

  But he must have, because he brought his head down for a kiss, and dropped it lower still to the nape of her neck. His chest couldn’t help but come along for the ride, slapping into hers and announcing the connection with an alto voce refrain.

  PPLBT.

  And then, explosive decompression.

  “HA!” Nur shouted. She added, “hahahaha.”

  She knew there would be problems when Hyun-Woo asked her what was funny. He had stopped moving to phrase the question, and Nur became acutely aware of how silent the room was. Would it have killed them to put some music on? The mood had been sustained by their exertions, and she could feel the mood packing up with an eye towards the door, now that they’d fallen into a false-flatulence lull. Music might have carried them through, or at least put something in their ears beside the echoing remains of a chesty cheese-cutting.