Yasmeen

by Carolyn Marie Souaid

  He slapped the book shut and lifted his eyebrows. She insisted she’d be just a minute but he followed her into the kitchen anyway. He slid out a chair and sat. She felt his eyes on her. In her haste to prepare the cups, she accidentally spilled sugar all over the counter. “I hope you don’t mind coffee reheated in the microwave,” she said, trying not to reveal how flustered she was.

  “Fine, no problem, anything hot is good,” he said.

  She tried to think of other things to talk about while the coffee was getting zapped. “By the way, I forgot to thank you for letting the class interview you,” she said. “They super loved it.”

  “It was fun.”

  “Yeah. Tonight was fun, too.”

  “I hope you don’t mind my saying this, but you’re a better teacher than a dancer,” he said. They carried their mugs into the living room and sat facing each other, cross-legged, on the couch. She was relieved that he had finally said something.

  “So, which one are you?” he asked. He blew over his coffee to cool it.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Which of the three M’s are you?” He was half joking, half serious.

  “Sorry, I don’t get what you mean.”

  He looked away and said, “I don’t quite know how to put this.” He glanced up again sheepishly. “You know, the three kinds of white people who come to the North.”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I still don’t get it.”

  “You really don’t know? Well, there’s the Mother Teresas, the misfits, and ….”

  “And?”

  “And the motherfuckers.” He blushed. “So which are you?”

  Yasmeen’s eyes flared, though she sensed he was only playing with her. “Wow, what a way to ruin the moment.” She set down her coffee cup and whacked him with her book of crosswords.

  Joanasi ducked, using his hands to defend himself. “Ouch, ouch! Down, girl!” he hollered while she continued bonking him over the head.

  A small part of her wondered whether he actually believed the thing he had said. The rest of her sort of enjoyed the flirting. She brushed casually against him. He bumped back, a little harder. She didn’t mind that his fingers were yellow with nicotine.

  “Okay, okay, I know you’re teasing. But I’ll bite,” she said. “Who are the motherfuckers?”

  “Oh,” he said. “I thought you would know that.” He pushed a strand of hair out of her face. “The motherfuckers are the construction guys. They make their money, fuck our girls and then they hit the road, Jack.” He held her in his dark gaze, straight-faced.

  It unsettled her. She stared down at her fingernails, wondering how to respond. His expression changed suddenly. “I’m kidding,” he reassured her. “I know you’re none of those.”

  “You definitely had me going, there.”

  “How about some music?”

  She was glad for the opportunity to lighten the mood. He flipped quickly through her shoebox of cassettes until he found something that suited the moment. “Yeah, this.” He held out his selection for her approval.

  “Let It Be. Excellent choice.”

  They listened to the album straight through, slurping their coffee, belting out their favourite lines. They consumed an entire box of Whippets, though it was mostly him. She wondered what would come next, after the record ended, whether they would continue to stall or if he would make his move. It was like being on her first-ever date. At the first bars of “The Long and Winding Road,” she laid down her mug and pulled her knees into her chest. “Lennon or McCartney?” she asked, expressionless.

  “McCartney.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  Joanasi tipped the last drop of coffee into his mouth and set the mug down by his feet.

  Yasmeen noticed a twitch in his right eye, made worse by his refusal to pursue the discussion. He seemed easily offended. She rushed to fill the silence. “Come on, everyone knows that John was the brains behind the Beatles. I’ll take ‘Revolution’ and ‘Across the Universe’ over ‘Hey Jude’ anytime.”

  He shrugged, non-committal. “Well, maybe. Could be. Who knows.” He took her hand into his lap and leaned forward to kiss her hair.

  She asked him what he was doing even though she knew darn well what he was up to. She gazed longingly into his eyes. The room was spinning.

  “What am I doing?” he said. “You’re a smart girl, figure it out.”

  “It’s just that, I didn’t think, um, well, I mean I’m …”

  “Shh,” he said. He brushed a circle around her mouth with the tip of his tongue.

  She could hardly believe what was happening to them, what was happening to her. She cupped her hands on his shoulders and moved toward him. The room disappeared and it was only the two of them and the sound of their breathing.

  •

  An hour later—or whenever it was, she had no idea—Yasmeen woke up and found him staring at her. The last thing she remembered was cuddling with him.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “Are you ever gonna take that shirt off?”

  She took his hand and guided it underneath, laying his palm on her belly. The roof creaked as though a large animal were pacing back and forth across it. The wind was howling.

  “Maybe it’s a storm,” he said. He moved his hand in slow circles under her shirt.

  “Maybe.”

  “Wanna know something?” he asked.

  “I want to know everything.”

  “When you’re out there, in that weather, you have to keep moving. If you stay too long in one place, the snow builds a wall around you. It locks you in. You can’t even see your own hand in front of you.”

  “I guess you’ll just have to protect me then,” she said.

  He licked the fingers of his other hand and pushed her hair behind her ears. He pulled her toward him and smelled her scalp. He breathed across her cheek. She wondered what his hand would feel like on the other parts of her. She imagined him not stopping, not holding back.

  She pulled away and fell back on the couch, making a big deal of it. She lifted her arms over her head to help him get her shirt off.

  He removed his too, sniffing around her neck and at the sparse growth of her underarms. He eased down her jeans. It almost made her come. Through the window she could see walls of snow blowing horizontally.

  He touched the tattoo on her hip and asked what it was. “Who’s Lipo?”

  “Are you jealous?” She smiled and stretched out like a cat. “You aren’t, are you?” When she saw that he might be serious she reached up and touched his nose and said it’s nothing you need to worry about, the guy’s long dead. She felt the dampness through his jeans as he climbed on top of her and rocked his hips in a fluid motion.

  •

  When she woke up the room was flooded with the harsh light of the sun reflected off new white snow. Except for a slight chill in the air, all signs of the blizzard had vanished. Yasmeen peeked over at Joanasi, buck-naked on his side, arm bent with his palm curled up near his face. He was snoring softly. She held her arm up against his to compare their skin, saw how pale she looked next to him. She covered him with the blanket.

  A spidery lattice webbed the windowpane, fine silvery threads catching the sun and intensifying it. She couldn’t believe all the loveliness around her. Holy fuck, she felt great. Only the intermittent sounds of men shovelling and clearing the road reminded her that there was indeed a world out there and that everything about it was right.

  ELEVEN

  The two spent the entire lazy weekend holed up at her place, but now it was time. Joanasi insisted Yasmeen meet his mother.

  “I already did. We sew together,” she said. “Remember?”

  “You know what I mean,” he said. The sun was radiant on his face. “I want her to really know you.”

&nbs
p; “Then I guess I’d better put some clothes on.” She laughed.

  He kissed her hard.

  As they ploughed through the newly fallen snow, he told her what he remembered about the old days, the winter camps, ice fishing with his uncle. He told her about his father who had died years ago, of lung cancer, and how it suddenly made him the man of the house. Everybody at home relied on him, he said—his mother, his brothers and sister and a grandmother called Minnie.

  An aluminum cauldron was bubbling on Pasha’s stove, infusing the kitchen with a gamey bouquet. Yasmeen wondered how half a dozen of them slept in this one place, even with the spare mattress in the living room. As if reading her mind, Joanasi explained that his family was on the waiting list for one of the new government houses going up, trimmed in bright Lego colours.

  He splashed tea into a pair of mismatched cups and they squeezed in on the couch next to Pasha. The light of the television was flickering in her eyes, but she was more attentive to the sewing in her lap. She squinted through the eyeglasses perched low down on her nose, stabbing a length of embroidery thread through the oblong eye of a needle. Joanasi said something in Inuktitut and she replied, “Aah,” pulling her thread through. Yasmeen noted how she did it so easily. Joanasi hooked his arm around Yasmeen’s shoulders and transferred his attention to what was playing on TV, a sci-fi adventure movie that someone had left in the video machine. Pasha laughed at all the parts Joanasi laughed at with her lopsided set of yellowy teeth.

  Yasmeen joined in though she found the story about a dog named Digby who consumes a bowl of liquid growth formula and becomes a giant sheepdog rather silly. She wished she could converse with Pasha in her language and thought about asking Joanasi to teach her. Her students had taught her how to say ullaakut (good morning) and tuttumik takuvunga (I see a caribou) but these, she knew, would only get her so far. She tapped Pasha gently on the arm to get her attention and smiled at her from a deep place. “Iviit kamik uvunga?” she said.

  Pasha stopped what she was doing and looked quizzically at her.

  “What do you want to say?” said Joanasi, trying to conceal a smile.

  “Just, nothing, forget it.” Yasmeen felt silly and embarrassed. She took a deep breath before continuing. “I thought maybe she could make me some sealskin boots. I’ll pay her, of course.”

  Joanasi translated. When he finished, Pasha looked at Yasmeen and answered in a way that took her a long time. Yasmeen turned to Joanasi for an explanation.

  “She said it would be better for you to learn to make them yourself. She said she could help you.”

  Yasmeen smiled at Pasha, trying to convey her deep gratitude through touch and body language. Pasha nodded and continued with an afterthought, which Joanasi dutifully passed on to Yasmeen. “The next week’s sewing circle. It’s at Sarah’s.”

  At the commercial break, he took Yasmeen’s teacup to the sink and said, “Let’s lie down on the bed.” She followed him into the bedroom, the one small window of which was boarded up with plywood and covered over with a flowered bed sheet. Joanasi switched on the lamp and threw a pillowcase over it. It gave the room an aquarium glow. She noticed his unmade bed, his crooked dresser with a half-open drawer and underwear sticking out of it. She didn’t feel anything in particular about it. It was an adequate room.

  For a long time they lay together in silence, the muffled sounds of the household filtering in, the babble of TV, the opening and slamming of the front door, visitors coming and going. She stared at the fluttering pulse of Joanasi’s neck.

  “Tell me a story from your life,” he said.

  “No, you first.”

  He propped himself up on one elbow and gazed into her eyes as he undid her shirt, one button at a time, slowly and with purpose. She could tell he was thinking about his story.

  “My father was a good teacher,” he said. “When I was seven years old, he brought me out on the land. He asked me what direction the wind was coming from. He said if I could tell him, then he would teach me everything he knew. I was so afraid to disappoint him, so I thought and thought very hard about it, and he told me stop thinking, just feel it. And after I relaxed, I got it right and then he handed me his special knife and said ‘Now, Little Man, it is up to you to build our igloo for the night.’”

  Joanasi touched the very tip of her nipple with his fingernail. It felt like fire and ice at once. He raked his fingers slowly up and down her breast. She opened her mouth to speak, to ask him how she had been so lucky as to find a man like him, a man not afraid to be a real man. He put his finger to her lips, meaning the time for talk was over.

  •

  At supper, Yasmeen devoured everything that was put in front of her. Even Pasha was surprised. Not altogether sure what the food was, she ate it anyway. It tasted rich in oil and fat and she decided that having the waist and hips of a white woman would never be enough for Joanasi. From now on she had to eat well. Hers had to be the body he desired, it had to be of a certain abundance for him to flash that rare, brief smile at her.

  Eating on the floor with his family, accepting the meat from Pasha’s hand, learning to wield the traditional ulu, cutting away the sinew and putting the food between her teeth, was like starting all over again, from zero. It was about learning the tongue, the incisors, the molars. The throat, the stomach. She wanted to unravel the mystery of her body, its infinite capacity; she wanted to understand its language the way he understood his.

  •

  Gradually Joanasi moved his clothes into her house, a few items at a time. She cleared a drawer for him and made space in the cupboard and told him to consider it their place from now on. She loved having him in her bed at night.

  Life with him ate up much of her time. Leaving in the morning was always a big production, him begging her to stay home so they could have sex all day, Yasmeen tempted but always finding the strength to pull away—usually about ten minutes before the first bell. They struck a compromise. He shortened his hours at the radio station and she stopped hanging out at the coffee machine during her spares. She fulfilled her obligations at school but stopped doing all the extras. She kept her private life private.

  Every day at noon Joanasi plugged in his headphones and charged up the turntable in his booth at the radio station, playing songs with hidden meanings, which she listened to religiously as she spooned something raw or hot into her belly for lunch, something he had hunted himself or offered her from the community freezer, slivers of beluga whale or seal or caribou meat. As soon as the four o’clock bell sent the children vaulting home through the snow, she raced back to be with him for the rest of the night. She wrote letters to Morgan trying to articulate her feelings. Dear you, one of them said. Summer or winter, it’s a cold place. Almost nothing grows here. It’s lonely outside. It’s lovely outside. I am a small person on so much land.

  One night before they dropped off to sleep Yasmeen heard what she thought was the arrival of the great caribou herds. She ran to the window. Joanasi got out of bed and stood behind her, arms circled about her waist. “You’re very sweet,” he said. “But caribou don’t come this close to the village. Come back to bed, now.”

  They settled in again under the covers. She laid her head on his chest. “That story you told the children at school, about the man who changed into a caribou, what did you mean by it?”

  He stroked her hair. “My father told it to me when I was a boy. To teach me a lesson.”

  “Lesson?”

  “To be the man you are and not somebody else …” He kissed her on the mouth. “Now, your turn. Tell me about the tattoo of the dead man on your hip.”

  “It’s nothing, really,” she said. “Trust me, you’re going to be disappointed.”

  “Tell me, and then I’ll tell you if I’m disappointed or not.”

  “And what do I get if I win the bet?”

  “I’ll give you a bath that w
ill make you forget every other man you’ve been with.”

  “Wow. That’s an offer I can’t refuse. But don’t go telling me it wasn’t worth a bet.”

  “Please,” he said. “Don’t laugh at me.”

  “I’m not laughing, really I’m not. I just find your jealousy surprisingly … sweet. And slightly territorial.” She paused, worried that maybe he’d find her territorial comment offensive. When he didn’t react, she continued. “Don’t get me wrong, though, it’s fine with me. It’s nice to know that passionate men still exist out there.” She liked the idea of a guy who would resort to desperate measures like slicing off a digit or jumping from a bridge if he couldn’t have the one person in his life he truly wanted.

  Her compliment drew a smile from him.

  “Okay, here it is,” she began, in a tone that suggested don’t say I didn’t warn you. “Li Po was a Chinese poet who was in love with the moon.”

  “The moon?”

  “Yes, the moon. One night he was walking home dead drunk. As he crossed a bridge, he saw the moon’s reflection in the water, and when he jumped in to embrace it, he drowned …” She paused for dramatic effect. “Oh yeah, one more thing. This all happened in the eighth century. You’ve got absolutely nothing to worry about.”

  “That’s it?” His eyes narrowed. “Why is he on your hip, then?”

  “What do you want, I was young. I thought his death was kind of tragic. And romantic.”

  •

  On the days they got water delivery he spoiled her, filling the tub to excess, bathing her, soaping her ptarmigan-white body with his rough palms. Sometimes he carried her shimmering wet into their bed. “Take me,” she would whisper in his ear. “Every way.” She wanted nothing forbidden between them. She wanted to disappear inside of him, to slip into him whole and stay there forever. She wanted to be dressed and fed and looked after.

  In return he taught her about his culture, warned her about the things outside that could pose a threat to her, a certain kind of snow, the kind you could fall through, snow that was crusty on top but soft inside. He said he would protect her.