Desire

Leaves linger, clinging color to branches. They die, falling from trees outside my window. A cat rolls atop flaky piles. Amber and burgundy, maroon and sienna, fleck the cat’s sides. The cat flips upright, its back twitching, tumbles again. Pale, soft belly exposed, fur silvered, alight with sun. I haven’t touched a cat in years. What I feel when I see cats: loneliness, shame, the hunger of longing.

I never knew what a cat could do until I met my roommate’s pet. Sheena was a girl from my college in Michigan, looking to share rent. A thin girl, she had startling green eyes in a narrow, bronzed face. She ate mainly rice cakes and salads, was friendly, polite. She rarely stayed home; I wished she did more often. She lived at her boyfriend’s much of the time, though he wouldn’t let her actually move in. He liked the illusion space exclusively his.

As if to assure him she hadn’t actually moved in with him, she left her cat with me. For weeks, months. To thank me cleaning the litter, Sheena gave me a poster: Ruth Orkin’s “American Girl in Italy.” She hung it across from the living room window. A young woman, pale and lovely, shawl slipping off, rushing through streets filled with men, not acknowledging their leers. The men, young and old, at exuded a certainty of belief born from arrogance: the girl must want them. I felt the woman’s shame as she evaded them; I imagined their hands upon her.

The American girl poster reminded me of a painting in a handicrafts store in Bangalore I’d spotted during a visit to India. The story it depicted was atypical amongst the store’s other art. I’d never seen one like it. It showed Draupadi, in the Mahabharata, being gambled away to a cunning king by one of her five husbands.

My mother had told me the tail: The king, Draupadi’s new possessor, ordered she be dragged through the royal court by her hair as her helpless husbands silently watched. He commanded she be stripped of her sari before a roomful of spectators who’d witnessed the corrupt dice game and its results. The beautiful Draupadi begged and pleaded; no one dared defy the king.

Finally, she called out to Lord Krishna who appeared to her in a vision. He cast a spell that transformed her sari into an endless ream of cloth. As she was disrobed, the sari unrolled, leaving yards upon yards on the floor, until the King collapsed from exhaustion.

Whenever I heard this story, I shivered at how Draupadi must have felt as strange men’s hands tugged on her clothing. I imagined Draupadi’s horror when she realized no one watching would help her.

I had nightmares about being naked in public. Unlike Draupadi, in my dreams no divinity appeared to save me. The nightmares ceased for a while when my roommate’s cat began falling asleep on my chest.

My roommate named her Fifi. The cat didn’t match the name. She was dark, lean, and petite, with sensitive whiskers, intelligent eyes. At first she only observed me as I observed her. A staring game during which I’d catch myself slipping into a trance.

Then, Fifi teased me, willing me to pet her, only to nip my fingers when I did. Finally, she found her place—nuzzled beneath my chin, sleeping with her head curled into my skin. I grew accustomed to her murmuring warmth.

The cat slept against my collarbones or snoozed in my lap until Sheena breezed in for a new batch of clothes. When Fifi heard Sheena’s key in the lock, she leaped off my chest and stood by the door howling, managing to make herself look even thinner, as though nearly starving, though she ate perfectly well.

My roommate fussed over her until it came time to leave. She had to pry Fifi off her chest and hand her to me so she could escape. The cat sulked, refusing to chase the light circles from my watch as they glided over the broken blinds, blank walls, and the American girl poster.

Even when Fifi didn’t go after it, I flashed reflected sun from my watch back and forth over the body of the girl pinned, forever, in the gaze of men, her fear as palpable as their desire.

When I was eleven, I visited India with my parents. We went shopping in a suburb of Mumbai. The heat and the noise soon wore me out. My male cousin offered to take me back to my grandparents’ house on the other side of the city. We rode returned to their home on the local train.

The compartments were split by gender. My cousin was at a loss. I was too young to travel alone, and didn’t know the language, so I couldn’t ride with the women. I had to ride, standing up, with him in the men’s compartment. I could see the brown smears on the walls, the filth littering the seats and floors, even before I entered.

It came time to board. A throng of sweat-stained men swept me up through the gaping doorway. My cousin grasped my hands and placed them on a grime-slick pole. “Hang on,” he said.

As the train lurched, I felt myself squeezed tight. I tried to glimpse the passing scenery, but I could see only thin, button-down shirts exposing tufts of curling black hair, polyester trousers, buckles of leather belts. I tried to move, but found myself wedged. The heat increased as the train swayed and rocked. The hot-body smell nearly made me pass out.

A man’s hand touched my hip, then went to my thigh, and then slowly between my legs. It stopped and gripped through my light cotton pants.

I didn’t move. I couldn’t tell to whom the hand belonged. No one noticed me beneath their bearded chins. My mouth filled with spit. I couldn’t tell if it was me who was trembling, or if it was the shivering of the train over rough tracks. I couldn’t let go of the pole; I couldn’t lower my hands. Everything went silent and still, except for the hand, which kept circling—moving, like the train itself.

The train finally stopped. The light broke, and the hand released me. When the men rushed by, I searched their faces in vain for a sign of who might have touched me. My cousin pulled on my arm, urging me to hurry and climb down before the train departed. Panting, I clung to the pole and thought of water, hearing its roar in my ears.

Sheena slept in our apartment when she was on her period. Her lavender scent filled the rooms and I found long, silky hairs on the floors and counters. I liked hearing the murmur of her on the phone with her boyfriend, the sound of her voice when she said hello in the mornings. The apartment felt less cavernous, as if someone had added furniture while I’d been out.

If my roommate slept at our home, Fifi would engage in subterfuge—a curious kind of cheating. She fell asleep on my roommate’s belly, and then, late at night, she slunk to my bed, licking my face with her sharp tongue.

At daybreak, she slid, spirit-like, back to my roommate. Sheena never knew her cat deserted her every night, preferring to sleep with me. I laughed, felt both elated and betrayed. Shamed by a cat’s whims.

We made another trip to India when I was thirteen. My uncle, a Minister of Railways, sent an employee to meet us at the airport to help us through customs and inspections.

The man was tall, his skin a lemon custard color, with thinning hair and broad shoulders. He wore small spectacles over his close-set eyes. He bowed a namaste to my mother, shook hands with my father, and gave me a wide smile. I stared at his khaki uniform, at his glittering gold buttons.

“Attend to your luggage,” he said to my parents. “I’ve instructed the custom officers not to harass you. We should get out of here quickly. I’ll watch your girl.”

My mother smiled at him. To me, she said, “Hold on to him tight. There are untrustworthy types lurking about. He’s your uncle’s close friend. He’ll guard you.”

The man grasped my fingers with his damp, wet hands. He herded me closer to the wall. “Don’t want to get run over by those luggage carts,” he said, tilting his head toward the haphazardly balanced suitcase piles being rolled across the floor. His grip was too hard.

At the wall, he slipped behind me and pressed me into his thighs. He crossed his hands over my chest, like a father protecting a child. His fingers wandered over my small young breasts. I didn’t know if I was supposed to escape. No one had told me.

When my parents returned, he dropped his hands and stepped to the side. My nails had dug half-moons into the flesh of my palms.

Halfway through our year together, I went with Sheena to a downtown Chicago dance club about an hour from campus. It was called Sin Temple and its motto, “Release the goddess inside,” blazed across the doorway in neon lights. I wasn’t the dancing type—much too public.

“You need to get out more,” she said. “You’re always holed up inside.”

Sheena insisted—her boyfriend was “out with the boys.” Waving away my excuses of being tired and having too much homework, she said that we should hang out more together, and wondered why we hadn’t. She told me I was too withdrawn and didn’t get out enough, and asked why she’d never seen me go on dates.

I didn’t tell her I was afraid of men, and that sometimes bile rose in my mouth in their presence. Sheena persuaded me to dress in her burgundy miniskirt, tight black shirt, and three-inch heels. She painted my face until I couldn’t recognize myself in the mirror, and told me I’d meet a guy for sure that night looking the way I did.

My skin felt chilled and exposed in the cool night; when we left, I insisted on wearing my hip-length jacket.

Men whistled as we walked past the long waiting line. The bouncer looked hard at my long, black hair, at my bare, brown legs. He told us to proceed past the line.

“Check out that bitch,” a girl in a gauzy white dress said. “Who does she think she is?”

My heels clicked on the red-glitter, faux marble slabs lining the entrance. It was loud and dark inside, and I hung back until I felt the bouncer’s hand on my back, guiding me further within.

Painted silhouettes of large-breasted women in suggestive poses recalling the Kama Sutra decorated the walls. The shadow-women held out their hands and spread their legs, while sweaty young men, sweltering in their leather, leaned against them. A bronze statue of a near-naked woman with thimble-sized nipples stood near the coat closet. I wished I could cover it up.

More figurines adorned the hallways. They had pointed breasts large as their heads, tiny waists, supple thighs.

It was hot in the club, but I refused to remove my jacket.

I was standing close to Sheena, in line at the bar, when I felt the back of my jacket being lifted, and a pair of hands encircling my waist. I grabbed the fleshy fingers that had interlocked over my belly and yanked them off, making a sound piercing enough that Sheena heard me over the music. I saw her turn around just as I jabbed my elbows into the man behind me.

“Hey, sorry” he said, backing away. “Take it easy, honey.” He wasn’t much taller than me and had a plump body and a moon-shaped face some might have called pleasant. “I didn’t mean . . . seriously, I thought you were someone else. You’re Indian, right? Let me buy you a drink to make up for it?” He lifted one hand, palm up, in a gesture of friendship.

“I’ll meet you outside,” I told Sheena, my body shaking. I waited for her across the street, imagining how that man must have seen me: as an exotic statue come to life.

While growing up in rural Pennsylvania, I longed to blend in and belong, to not be the only brown face in a crowd. My family often traveled through the Midwest and South on road trips to seashores, parks, relative’s homes, and to Hindu temples. During rest stops, men stared at us, chewing gum like cows. Local mothers dragged their children away as if we could infect them with foreign germs. When we’d stop to eat in small towns passed during long drives, I’d get served half the ice cream received by other customers, the women behind counters not meeting my gaze.

Sometimes, people mistook us for other Indians they had met. Bellboys and waiters pressed their hands together; they said “Namaste” and told us how they just loved Indian movies, as if they expected us to get up and perform.

I went to a party with Sheena on the south side of campus—a twenty-minute walk from where we lived at the northernmost border—a few weeks after we went to that club. I’d barely seen her since then and was happy to have her back.

Before we left our room, she persuaded me to drink shots of tequila with her. I didn’t drink, and had never tasted tequila, but because she asked, and I was curious, I agreed.

We walked down the main campus road through a muggy fog, streetlights illuminating slants of faint rain that dampened our clothes. I could see only a few feet in front of me before the fog blurred the world into gray. Dizzy and nauseous, I stumbled often.

The party was in a house that may have been attractive fifty years ago, but now sagged and creaked. The fraternity brothers who lived there had cleared out the living room, put in a large sound system throbbing with techno music, and dimmed the lights to near darkness. Bodies packed the room, and mud-soaked beer stains streaked across the floors.

Sheena went to the kitchen to get a drink from the keg. I pressed myself into a wall at the corner of the dance floor. I felt a hand pull me into the middle of the gyrating forms.

A man who looked old enough to be a graduate student held my hips and moved them to the music. He smiled when he looked down at me, and his hands squeezed harder. He was tall with full red lips, and skin a few shades lighter than mine. Thick wavy hair rippled onto his collar. He looked over my head to someone behind me and laughed, exposing large white teeth with pointed incisors.

His head bent to mine and I felt his wet lips. I was startled into stillness. With his nose inches from mine, he told me I didn’t know how to properly kiss; he proceeded to show me. His tongue entered my mouth, and I gagged from the taste of warm beer.

Continuing to kiss me, he backed down a small hallway into a room a few feet from the dance floor. By now, the tequila’s effect had intensified. He shut the door behind him.

The walls in his room were bare. He brushed a pile of clothes off the bed and maneuvered me onto it. “Has anyone ever told you how sexy you are?” he asked, his lips humming against my shoulder. With pink-tipped fingers he traced patterns onto my shaking arms.

“You should show more of that pretty skin than this,” he told me. He took his time unbuttoning and tugging off my blouse.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to keep going, or to stop.

He said, “I like how you look so dark against me,” and showed me the contrast between myself and the pale underside of his arm.

As he examined my body, I held my breath and tried to wrap my arms around my chest. He leaned in to kiss me, his torso blocking my arms. He kept the low lights on, but he wouldn’t look me in the eyes. I told myself to run out of the room and into the thick fog outside, but my body wouldn’t respond. At least he likes me, I thought. If he didn’t like me, would he be pressing his lips to mine?

“I want to touch you,” he said. He was stronger than me and my arms buckled when I placed them on his shoulders to push him back. He wrapped his fingers around my wrists, and I went down onto the white sheets.

I smelled starch and musk cologne, felt sweat, the hard bed. He told me this was what I wanted. I didn’t say no; I didn’t say anything. I thought: He must be right. I thought: Maybe I should believe him.

He broke me as I lay without moving in the cage of his arms.

After he finished, he slept. I crept from his room. What I left behind: my blood on his victory-sheets and trickling down his legs.

I never told my roommate what happened. I claimed to be sick with the flu for a week. Fifi continued her nighttime charade, coming to me even on the night when Sheena came home crying. Her boyfriend was cheating with a redhead from his biology class.

I missed the cat when the boyfriend came back weeks later, kissing away his mistakes, proposing marriage. Sheena took Fifi to his place. After a month, they moved in together, leaving me in alone in the apartment.

Sheena came back to gather some things and to pay her share of the remaining lease. The movers would come the next day, she said, to pick up the bigger items.

As she drifted through the apartment, I lifted Fifi from her carrier and stroked her whiskers against my cheek. The cat made a sound somewhere between a moan and a purr, and I felt the vibrations travel from her sleek, dark body into mine. Sheena finished a final survey. She wished me luck and enclosed my fingers in her soft hands. Smiling, she returned Fifi to her carrier and left.

I walked through the echoing rooms. The screen door with the tear in the mesh from which hung wisps of spider web, as usual, didn’t quite close. The lowering sun cast my distorted shadow over scratched wood floors dotted with paint chips. The peeling walls and built-in shelves glowed with dust.

Mellifluous afternoon light yellowed the apartment to a shade of warm honey. A fur-ball blew like tumbleweed past my feet and settled in the corner. I wanted to stretch out and embrace the floor, to spread myself across it, and let my fingers take root.

I thought about Fifi, about how she’d stretch on my lap, feeling safe enough to expose her tender underside. I could still feel the weight of her on my chest.