Thirteen
In these years I stay away from men; I stay away from women. I avoid love; I shun desire. I am creating the purest monogamy. My body belongs only to myself. My heart is as contained as a creature hidden deep in its shell. I know that the hungers of the body, its needs and impulses, are dangerous. They can maim unnamed but important parts of you. It’s easier and safer to break the body into its working parts, to learn the names of bones and the functions of organs, the uses of chemicals to stunt or stall the advent of disease. These are the only acceptable ways I can delve into the physical.
There are men who like my slim tallness. They like the tumble of hair that releases when I refashion my ponytail. There are men at the hospital who look at me—doctors, sometimes recovering patients, a fellow nurse. They ask if they can come over and cook me dinner, maybe a spicy curry. I would like that, wouldn’t I? They make it easy to reject them. I am a hunger artist in the realm of love.
Amma, who has guarded my virtue like a dragon at the door, is now obsessed with its end. She calls to say, “Yes, it’s good for a girl to have a job, to be able to take care of herself. Good-good.” I can hear Catney Houston purring next to her; the cat is ancient now, half blind and mangy, but still alive, still passionately in love with Amma. My mother goes on. “You’ve done really well … But…” I wait for her to pick up the thread she has left dangling from our last conversation and of course she does, “You need to start thinking about settling down before you get … you know…”
“Get what, Amma?”
“You know, dried up.”
“Amma! I’m not a sponge.”
“Yes, darling. But good to have someone, no? Look at me. All alone. You mustn’t end up like me. You can’t be happy all alone. With no one to take care of you.”
“I’m fine, Amma. I am happy. I have my work, my place. I like my life.” I say this emphatically. Later after I hang up, I think about what it must mean to her that I live alone. In the place she came from, the only reason for this solitary state would be widowhood.
If we had stayed in Sri Lanka, there would be a hundred voices a day reminding me to find someone, to get married and settle down. Everyone from the aunties to the fishmonger would be asking where my husband was. If I revealed that he didn’t exist, they would pantomime shock and proceed to tell me about their father’s uncle’s grandson who had just returned from abroad and was looking for a wife. Here, thank god, only my mother calls to harangue me and warn me against getting “dried up.” I know that she doesn’t mean I’m getting wrinkles. She is referring to a more intimate sort of desiccation. I look out of the window at the city street and laugh.
*
If love is absent, belonging is not. This apartment poised above the Mexican grocery is where I have felt the most at home in years. It is my small kingdom, my patch of earth. A tumble of green vines spills over the bookcase; an anatomy map in lurid detail rests on the dining table; a globe sits on the side table so that I may spin it and come to rest a finger on that single spot of green island in the wide blue sea that was my home a long time ago.
On a dresser by my bed is the aquarium, a two-by-three universe lush with plant life, a stream of silver bubbles constantly rising. It was once populated by a kaleidoscopic array of flitting fish, tiny red shrimp, snails who slid across the glass and participated in huge snail orgies, their shells turning this way and that as they fucked in whatever way snails can be said to do that. But over the years a few careless overfeedings on my part, a few ammonia blooms, have made the fish arc themselves out of the water. I would find them later, tiny and dried as wood chips on the floor. I mourned over each minuscule life and couldn’t bear to replace them.
But one has survived. One shrimp has outgrown his kin by inches and outlived all his kind. In his red carapace like a king’s mantle, his antennae bristling, he moves about the aquarium, climbs rocks to survey his kingdom, brings pincers to his face to feed himself. I call him Godzilla for his ability to survive devastation. He reminds me of those days when the river was my life. The days before water became dangerous, but here water is small and contained. Here I can watch Godzilla in his busy life and wonder if he too watches me as I come and go. He is my closest companion in these solitary days.