by Sharon Heath
With Assefa by my side my insecurities dissolved. I had to admit we were a stunning pair, his skullcap of short black coils glistening beside my long wet waves. His erect washela was seconded by my aroused nipples.
There we were again, staring at ourselves in a mirror. But this time, the bed that Assefa led me to was my mother’s, which failed to diminish the sensation of fireflies flitting madly inside my belly.
Our foreplay was as I’d remembered and dreamed about almost every night since his departure, his tongue a quick serpent slipping into the folds of my dark mystery, his member’s Roquefort cheese and cinnamon smell pungent and beguiling as I circled it with my lips. But when he inserted his washela into me, it was as if he’d stabbed me with a knife. I screamed at the unexpected pain.
“What is it?” he cried, pulling away.
“I don’t know,” I whimpered, stunned. “It hurt.” Without thinking, I curled up and rolled to the other side of the bed. “This has never happened before,” I said wonderingly. “It felt awful.”
There was no way I was going to try it again to see if my tweeter really meant it. Instead, we cuddled awkwardly for a while before rising to dress in an imperfect silence. I let him plant a kiss on my cheek before he drove away.
I fled Mother’s house, but abruptly interrupted my drive to pull to the side of the road and put in a call to my gynecologist Dr. Elspeth Hurdly. She fit me in that very afternoon (pathetic pun unintended), for which I was intensely grateful. I was sure I had a raging bladder infection. But after testing my urine in a variety of ways, she pronounced that infection wasn’t an issue. She also, with a simple blood test, ruled out pregnancy, at which point I nearly fainted with relief and something else that I determined only later was grief. There is no accounting for the folly of the human heart.
Once I regained my equilibrium, she had me climb onto the examining table and felt around—gently, but nonetheless excruciatingly—inside my tweeter and even my butt, patiently tolerating the yelps and table-bangings she was familiar with from my previous pelvic exams.
None too soon, she let me get down. While I recovered my breath, wiping glops of examining gel from my tweeter and hurriedly throwing my clothes back on, she busied herself washing her hands. Turning from the stainless steel sink to face me, she said cautiously, “I’m trying to decide whether I should do a further diagnostic test.” Seeing my eyes widen, she signaled me to relax. “Let’s not do anything precipitous. Why don’t we give your body a few days to calm down and see if it doesn’t right itself? Actually, let’s have a chat in my office, shall we? I’ll have my assistant Delvy bring us some tea.” As she led the way out the door, she looked back. “Will chamomile do?”
Sitting in her consulting room, its walls covered with photos of her skydiving, windsurfing, white water rafting, and climbing what was undoubtedly Mt. Everest, I wondered if all that astounding athleticism helped her to be strong when she had to be the bearer of bad news.
But as she looked up at me from the computer she’d been fiddling with, she seemed anything but tough. “Here,” she said softly, scooting our teacups to the side and sliding her iMac around so I could see the screen.
“There’s a slight chance you might have the beginnings of I.C. Here’s a little graph I often find helpful. Interstitial Cystitis is a condition that mostly women get that can produce pelvic pressure and pain. It’s not dangerous. It doesn’t affect lifespan. But it can be uncomfortable. One way to rule it out would be a potassium sensitivity test, where I place two solutions—water and potassium chloride—into your bladder, one at a time. If you feel noticeably more pain or urgency with the potassium solution than with the water, it’s generally interstitial cystitis. People with normal bladders can't tell the difference between the two solutions.”
Needless to say, this was a Grade One emergency. I reached for my cell as soon as I left the office. Sammie’s voice was like a salve. “Oh, Fleur Beurre. Of course, you’re scared. The test sounds miserable. I’m home. Do you want to come over? I hate to sound like a cheerleader, but I just can’t believe you’ve got some disease. Why did you go to the doctor in the first place? I try to avoid them like the plague myself, but I suppose that’s not exactly comforting to you just now.”
“Well, I’ve been peeing a lot. But, listen, I’ll be there in ten minutes and then we can ....” I got off the phone as quickly as I could, having the honest excuse of needing to dig into my purse to give my ticket to the parking lot attendant, whose stunning face looked suspiciously Ethiopian. But the truth was that I’d suddenly realized I was going to have to confess to Sammie how I’d discovered I had a problem.
How many times would it take me to learn that best friends—not unlike the dog lovers Adam had teased me about—might judge you, but they don’t judge you. Sammie gave me a Nana-worthy hug as soon as she opened the door. She led me through the incense-redolent hall into the modest kitchen, where she’d already begun to prepare us a can of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup. Which, needless to say, made me think immediately of Adam.
I’d never told Sammie how much I adored the smell of him—there are some things not to be shared with even a best friend. But we’d discovered early on that, despite growing up in the disparate worlds of London and Pennsylvania, we had in common memories of having been comforted when we were sick by Campbell’s signature soup. Despite its dubious nutritional value, we were both still suckers for its vaguely tinny taste and gooey texture.
“So,” she said, as we tucked our bare feet around the kitchen’s two kitchen stools (much as I’d done on the Main Line, watching Dhani concoct the spicy dishes that wreaked havoc on my belly and butt a decade ago). “Is this something to do with a bladder infection? I hate the bloody things.”
“Noooo,” I replied cautiously, blowing on my spoon before taking a sip of the salty broth.
Sammie wasn’t stupid. She carefully placed her own spoon down in her antique ceramic bowl. I noticed that hers had a pink rose design while mine bore a horizontal twining of what looked like purple and blue morning glories. “Okay. Out with it.”
“You’re going to hate me.”
“There’s only one thing I’d hate you for, and that’s having sex with Assefa.” I blanched. “Oh shit. You did.” She put a hand on my forearm. I noticed it was tanned to an even richer chocolate by our current faux-summer. Patting me rather forcefully with each word, she emphasized, “Of course, I don’t hate you. I love you more than anyone, except p’raps my mum.” I noticed she’d left Jacob out of the equation. I think she realized it herself, for she pulled back her hand to hit her head with it theatrically. “Criminy. I should talk.”
“He’s really not a bad man.”
“Jacob?” I shook my head. “Oh right. Assefa. I know, I know—they never are, are they? Except when they are.” God, I loved her. Even when she was trying to be cynical she merely sounded sad.
She stepped down to retrieve the pot from the stove and poured us each some more soup, slopping it a bit over the edges of our bowls. As she returned with a paper towel to wipe away the overflow, I couldn’t help but notice the contrast between the new stainless steel cookware Aadita had excitedly purchased on sale at Williams-Sonoma and the china soup bowls she’d inherited from her British husband’s mother. Different eras, different sensibilities. Granny Schwartz might have forgiven the sleekness of the pot, but she would surely have pursed her lips when Sammie’s cell burst forth with Jacob’s Acid Thunder ringtone.
I gestured for her to go ahead and take the call.
“Really?” she asked. “I don’t have to.” But I nodded emphatically. It occurred to me that we were both way too preoccupied with the men in our lives.
As she greeted Jacob with a tense, “Please tell me you didn’t mean it,” I let myself down from my stool, grabbed my purse, and motioned to her that I’d be fine, mouthing, “I just remembered I’ve got to get to the lab. I’ll call you later. I’m okay now.”
None of which was true.
It was a good thing I’d gotten Riku of Riku’s Righteous Tattoos to remove the No Bullshit emblem from my lower back. (No matter that he’d misheard my original request for a tattoo to read Nobelist.) But I did tell myself that no thirty-minute potassium sensitivity test could equal the ongoing torture Sammie was undergoing with Jacob. I just prayed she’d come to her senses before actually marrying him.
I felt mortified that I’d fibbed to Sammie, but I knew I had to drive somewhere. I could hardly march across the street to the Fiskes and leave my car out in front. On automatic pilot, I let the Prius take over. Who knew why it drove me to Sister Flatulencia’s apartment in South Pasadena, except that I’d been feeling guilty that I hadn’t visited her there since the accident. When the door opened, I had to take a few steps back before rallying and entering. Mother’s erstwhile companion greeted me in an effluvium equal in impact to an overspraying of Patchouli. Poor woman, she’d developed an allergy to Beano, and her original condition had returned in full force. As usual, her frizzy hair was peeking out from her signature bandana like pubic hair from a bathing suit.
I burst into tears.
“Dear girl, what is it?”
She watched in dismay as I fell into the old green velour sofa she’d only last year shared with the woman who’d more or less raised me. “She’s really gone, isn’t she?” I bawled. “And there’s nothing we can do about it. People just go. We’re so helpless about anything that matters. And I’m going to have a horrible test because of this pain in my tweeter. I’ve had bladder infections before, but this was so much worse.” I kept babbling along those lines, vaguely aware that it was a kind of sacrilege to equate my little miseries with Nana dying. Despite myself, I blurted out, “It all started when Assefa tried to insert his member.”
Sister Flatulencia paled but said nothing, instead marching over in her mannish brown shoes to stroke my head, making odd little clucking sounds that were surprisingly soothing. Nonetheless, I berated myself. Why had I brought up Nana’s death in front of the woman who’d traumatically witnessed it, and why in the world had I chosen to tell an ex-nun about my sex life?
It took both of us a moment to register that she’d inadvertently released several bursts of wind. Full of apology, she fled to the bathroom. I walked over to the window and lifted the sash to air out the room. Outside, two noisy crows were on the ground harrying a third, who lifted off and flapped right past the window before lighting in raucous retort onto a branch of a nearby sycamore. My heart ached for the old days on the Main Line, when all my angels were still alive and Grandfather and I would sit together for hours considering the changing patterns of birds in our favorite tree. What kind of father would cut down such a glorious living thing out of spite? I felt sick. I had to get out of there.
Emerging from the bathroom, Sister Flatulencia was kind enough not to fuss when I said I had to go. I wondered if it had been part of the novitiate to learn when to be silent and when to intervene.
Needless to say, Gwennie wasn’t nearly so restrained when I arrived home revealingly red-nosed. In the end, I was no match for what Stanley liked to call Gwennie’s third degree. (I’d of course been compelled to look that one up the first time he’d used it, which had in turn acquainted me with the Freemasons, whose oral third degree of training led to a mastery of building and heaven knew what secrets pertaining to the Great Architect of the Universe, all of which struck me as an ingenious system for filling the void. I’d come away from entering this particular metaphor into my Diary of the Origins of Phrases with a renewed respect for how daunting it is to be human and subject to powers beyond ourselves.)
I ended up going through the drill all over again with Gwennie, who kept on interrupting my attempts to rush through the details with such questions as, “Were you sufficiently lubricated?” and “Do you think you could’ve just been tense and tightened up before he tried to penetrate you?” All this from the woman Sammie liked to describe, more lovingly than you might assume, as “a modern day Vestal Virgin.”
As if she’d had the same thought, Gwen asked, “Have you spoken to your mother about this?”
I clapped a hand to my forehead, rose up from the couch and grabbed my car keys. I couldn’t believe it. I’d left Mother’s house without making her bed. The bed Assefa and I had disarranged with our abortive lovemaking. Making my excuses to Gwennie, I raced to my car and arrived just in time to see Abeba letting herself into Mother’s house. Really, this was too much. I’d managed to avoid Abeba since calling the house looking for her son. What did she know about Assefa’s time in Ethiopia? Of Makeda? Of what had transpired between him and me? I certainly wasn’t about to ask. I drove away, praying she hadn’t seen me.
As for Assefa, I met up with him again after I’d completed the potassium sensitivity test. The last thing I want to be in my life is a complainer, but the test itself had to be one of the lowest circles of hell. The only thing to be thankful for was that I couldn’t tell the difference between the two solutions my gynecologist flushed through my tweeter, so I didn’t have interstitial cystitis after all.
Alas, hell seems to come in a variety of shapes and sizes. When Assefa came to see me, only Jillily and I were home. Stanley was out with his old Harvard cronies and Gwennie was leading a MoveOn.org planning meeting over the hill. We sat in a living room littered with Stanley’s sunflower seed shells and petted my cat. Assefa covered the front half, scratching Jillily’s neck as she bent her head back for him, and I took care of raking my nails across her back toward her tail. Her rear was raised like a cat in heat, and she was motoring like a house afire.
The discussion went something like this:
Me: “Well, I think my tweeter was telling me I need to take things very slowly.”
Assefa (frowning and letting his hand fall away from Jillily, who jumped off the couch and turned her back to us, her tail thumping resentfully against the floor): “Ah. What are the stats?”
Me: “My urethra, bladder, and ureters are normal, and I don’t have any polyps, swelling, bleeding, or strictures. She doesn’t think it’s I.C. and is betting that, whatever it is, it’ll go away. She wants me to avoid acidic foods for a few weeks ... and sex, too.”
Assefa (the expression on his face uncommonly stony): “Oh, God. “
Me: (Silent. Worried.)
Assefa (taking me into his arms so stiffly, it ended up being more awkward than comforting): “I feel very badly about this, Fleur.”
Me: (Silent. Wondering if he was thinking what I was thinking. What if this doesn’t get better? What if I’m never able to have sex again? Will pain keep my tweeter off-limits forever?)
Assefa: (Well, actually, Assefa said nothing now, but his stomach did make a series of rather alarming sounds. Loosening his arms from me, he clutched his belly. And then, finally, he muttered a bit, as if he were speaking to himself and not to me.) “Dear God, the irony. I have brought a curse back here with me. What foolishness to think that one world can be kept separate from another, or that betrayal only affects the betrayer and not the betrayed.”
Me (very nervous at this point): “Assefa, what do you mean?”
Assefa (rising up and crying out): “It is a sign, dukula. I must go.”
And then He Has Increased Our Family By Coming Into the World walked out the door.
The shame that washed over me was hot and prickly. It felt an apt accompaniment for the pain in my tweeter, which suddenly felt like it had been raked by a cheese grater. Assefa was leaving me a second time because I could not please him.
The void opened before me, and I leapt in.
But then it spat me out again.
No! I could not let him do this to me. Not again. I rushed to the door and caught him just before his car pulled away from the curb. Actually, I stood in front of the Honda, daring him to hit me.
I managed to convince him to come back in. Tightly holding his hand, I brought him into my bedroom. I gestured with my eyes and he obediently lay back on my bed, his he
ad on my pillow, his expression a mix of confusion and something else I couldn’t read. I proceeded to light the orange spice candle he’d given me last Christmas before reaching over to dim the ceiling fixture almost completely, leaving just enough light for him to watch me slowly remove everything but my lace bra and panties. I was about to approach the bed when I had a thought, swerved over to my iPod, and found the song I wanted. As the haunting strains of Teddy Afro’s Tizita filled the room, I climbed onto the bed and approached Assefa on my knees. He grabbed me with an unfamiliar ferocity and set me under him, and before my tweeter even had a chance to get wet, he unzipped his fly, pulled aside my panties and was pushing himself inside me.
I screamed, “No! Stop!” I was hurting with that same stabbing pain. Hurting terribly and crying. But Assefa was not stopping. If anything, he was holding me down roughly as I struggled to get out from under him.
And then the door to my room was flung open and Stanley H. Fiske was grabbing Assefa and shouting, “You black son of a bitch! Oh no, you don’t! I’m not going to let this happen again!”
Somehow Assefa ended up standing in the middle of my room with his pants pooled at his knees. I managed to persuade Stanley to leave us, and Assefa hastily pulled up his jeans and unceremoniously zipped them. His eyes darted to my iPod, where the final strains of Tizita were playing. He laughed a little maniacally, and his voice was thick with emotion. “So that’s it, is it? The black beast? It all comes down to that?” I blanched, mortified. How could Stanley have said that? How could Assefa have done that?
As if he could read my mind, Assefa added in a choked voice, “I hope you can forgive me, Fleur. I don’t know who I am anymore.”