“Nearly two dozen disembodied mouths are kissing one another, rendered in black on a white background. They surround a handwritten quote from a Dexter Palmer novel: ‘So if it mattered that a kiss meant something in your head, and everybody had a different idea of what a kiss meant and no one had the same idea, then every time any two people kissed each other they’d be lying to each other.’”
“You sat next to me on the sofa, and asked to take off my shirt when I told you it was wet from wandering in the rain. I unbuttoned it without removing it, because in Boston it is cold even inside.
You caught my accent. I had never met someone so excited to meet a Nigerian. Your grandparents, you said, fled during “the military regime” because their life was in danger.
“Which military regime?” I asked."
“I spotted you walking past our table. You were with a friend, both holding graffitied skateboards and wearing cuffed pants and Vans. We locked eyes for a moment. You walked to the counter to order coffee. I offered to order for my friends, a strategic move for a chance to talk to you.”
“Your hands touch my bare skin. They press, stroke, rub.
“Pressure okay?” you say, the English heavily accented. I recognize the intonation immediately.
“Khon Thai ka.” The words leave my mouth in a strange way—muffled from the pillow pressed around my face, and rusty from disuse.
“Japan struck me as a generous and lonely place: strangers offered an umbrella in a downpour, a seat at a full izakaya counter, an extra pour of sake. I received each gesture from a respectful distance. In a basement dessert shop, I sat in communal silence around a pot of zenzai, speaking only to say “sumimasen.” Excuse me. The owner said I was a rare foreigner, and I did not ask what he meant. I thought of uchi–soto: the division between in-group and out-group, familiar and foreign, me and you.“
“Were you already walking around Paris together that Saturday afternoon as my train pulled into the Gare du Nord? Or were you locked away from the rain somewhere, lost in the vastness of loving each other? My own room in a hotel near the train station had two narrow beds and a Juliet balcony overlooking a bar whose red neon sign flashed “Le Cheval.” In the dark gray evening, I put my damp suitcase in the corner and swung open the windows. I looked out on the rainy street and thought, as I did every day that year, about hell.”
“I tried not to look at you, but then you’d stand up and stretch or gesture big with your hands, and I’d turn my head, and there you were. Maybe 16 or 17 years old, you wore the standard Midwestern teenage-girl uniform: sweatpants hugging your butt and thighs, a bright graphic t-shirt, and well-worn Ugg boots. I wasn’t sure if your shirt was a crop top or if you had simply outgrown it, but now and then I caught a glimpse of the strip of skin just below your belly button. You were already showing, while I, 6 weeks or so along, imagined I looked only slightly bloated.”
“Their dusty mausoleums have become Instagram-able backdrops for kid’s birthday parties and family picnics on the expansive lawns, the dark niches in the walls surrounding their tombstones now offering privacy to canoodling young lovers. I got the sense that such karmic ironies of life amused you.”
“You always appeared in the playground alone, dressed in a black t-shirt and dark jeans, the only brightness a thin gold chain around your neck. Tall and lanky, you looked about nineteen. You went to the park early weekday mornings, as I did with my infant daughter, when the playground was relatively empty.”
“You looked to be in your 70s, or even 80s. The skin of your arms was stretched taut with the weight of the grocery bags you carried. If this was home, Uganda, I would’ve jumped to my feet and relieved you of your load. Or better, your grocery shopping would’ve been taken care of by someone young and agile in the family.”
“Technically you were not a stranger to me, as your gynecological profession creates an intimacy between the prodder and the prodded, but you were foreign to me emotionally: someone I admired and feared during my six years abroad. Your Paris office was light-filled and patrician with high-pile, oriental rugs on chevron flooring.”
“We have driven from London in the rare October sun, the suburban sprawl dissolving into the Lake District and then into the moors, Scotland unspooling itself before us. An unease fell over the car somewhere around Northumberland, and by the time we were whizzing past the illuminated golf courses of Gleneagles, it settled into my stomach—a stone sunk by the force of memories, though not my own.”
“There is a duality that comes from living with a language you did not acquire by birth. When I began dreaming in German during those first few months, I noticed that a separate version of myself was starting to grow, almost like a new child. I spoke haltingly at first, then recklessly, caring less about mistakes even as they tumbled out of my mouth.”
“You have to understand that I was livid. The indignity. The injustice. I had bloody murder so hot on my tongue I could taste the iron. The image of Alex and me in Kashgar—the aroma of freshly baked bread, exploring Old Town by bike, burning bright into the auburn sunset—had suddenly been extinguished. It was outside, as I squinted my eyes into the blistering sun searching for Alex, that you chose to approach.”
“Three days in the morgue and the chemicals released in death had turned your skin the color of rust. Your torso was stiff and torqued to the left, where I happened to be standing. One of your eyes, now filmy yellow, was open, and appeared to be trained on me as though suspicious of my motives.”
