The Best Travel Writing 2011 - James O'Reilly [20]
You remember a happy childhood: cajoling your brothers to play games with you, learning to read, borrowing books from an old man on your road. Your father visiting you in the hospital when you were sick, the roar of his motorbike engine as he pulled up outside your window every day. You remember a terrible childhood: beatings, fights. Your father slapping your mother, throwing a pot of food across the backyard. Watching your dinner fly into the dirt, the pot dented, another night with an empty stomach.
Our first date was in an empty Indian movie theater. We sat alone in the high balcony by the fans, clasping our hands tightly in the dark. Later, we went to a small roadside restaurant in town, a slight breeze rippling across our legs. We touched hands and knees under the table, laughed at the fat, drunk men slamming dominoes. You looked so beautiful: our secret was hot in my mind.
Across the street we heard boys yelling at each other, beginning to fight. We were far enough away to be safe, surrounded by the light of the restaurant. They yelled threats I could hardly understand. I did not notice your face tightening until you said, That’s how my family was. On a trip to Kwakwani, we heard a man and woman fighting outside our window, their curses getting louder and louder. I was holding you, my knees curled into your knees; I could not see your face. My parents were like this, Mommy yelling at Daddy until she got licks. We closed the window to shut out their noise.
Sometimes I would mine for the past, pressing my unanswerable why’s on you, and sometimes the past would push itself between us. The night you told me you had lived in an orphanage I thought you were kidding. Do you think this is the kind of thing you joke about? you whispered to me in the dark. You were not angry, just sad. No, I just can’t believe we’ve known each other a year and you haven’t told me. Stroking my hair: Well, here, I’m telling you now.
You whispered the story to me, as if ashamed. I was young, two or three, and my parents were too poor to keep me. Reverend Sun Myung Moon had set up a church in Georgetown with an orphanage. They sent Aloma and me there to live so we would have enough food to eat. On Sundays Mommy and Daddy visited. We sang in a choir called the “Seraphim” and watched The Sound of Music, over and over. There had been a picture of you singing in the angel choir, now lost. I felt this from the beginning: you were always an orphan.
You returned to your parents’ home a few years later. You grew up to be beautiful and then the boys came around. One visited you on his bike, prompting Rowena to emerge from the house with a warning. Y’all listen to dis, she said, Ardis ain’t ready fuh no man, ya heah! I could see it clearly: your mother’s hands on her hips, you skulking back to the house, the chastened boy weaving off down the road. What did your mother say when the boy came? I asked you over and over. You imitated the same sing-song cadence, until finally I could hear Rowena and agree with her. Ya ain’t ready fuh no man! I liked to say to you. But you’re ready for me.
And when did you know you loved women? I asked. There had been no language for this. One morning on your way to school, you heard someone calling from an upstairs balcony and looked up, expecting what? To run to the store, maybe, deliver a message. It was the code of law to be respectful of adults; you could be beat for less. A woman stood above you wearing a sheer robe, silhouetted against the darkness of the doorway. She looked, what? Beautiful, yes. Young, but older than you, and you were no longer a child. Her robe was low between her