“How are you?” he asks, his usual way of starting.
“Fine.” I smile nervously, wondering if I am the least bit alluring. After nine years of marriage, I still don’t have any moves. What if I were to say, “I’m on fire for you!” or the opposite: “I have a headache”?
He kisses me, the peppermint on his breath reminding me that our dentist appointments are next week.
His hands rove over my back and then under my nightdress. I copy his movements, feeling for the waistband of his boxers and the fine hairs on his slim buttocks. He rolls on top of me, sucks each of my breasts, always the left, next the right. I like it when he does that, and I breathe deeply, getting caught up in the moment. His mouth travels over my belly and lingers a few moments lower down. I think about the bottle of lube I recently bought and that I haven’t yet overcome my shyness to tell Murtuza about.
“Ready?” he asks, cupping my right breast.
“Okay,” I reply.
I try to relax. My friend Anita showed me her copy of a self-help book called Mating in Captivity, and I imagine that Murtuza and I are a pair of orangutans at the zoo. Then I feel weird for getting aroused by imagining we are orangutans at the zoo.
After a few minutes, Murtuza grunts and rolls off me, panting.
“Want to try the toy?” He purchased the vibrator years ago. He’d read an article about how, after having a baby, it was good to spice things up in the bedroom. We’ve tried it a few times, and while the sensation is pleasant, it is uncomfortable to have Murtuza apply the device to my vulva and wait expectantly for me to climax.
“No, I’m satisfied. That was good, Murti.” I peck him on the cheek and get up to use the bathroom. When I return to bed, he lifts the covers and wraps his arms around me.
Early on, when Murtuza sporadically asked about my lack of orgasms, I reassured him that it was because we were still new. Then I said it was because I was pregnant, and then because I was a sleep-deprived new parent. And then he went out and brought home the vibrator and I finally admitted that I’d never had an orgasm, ever, not with anyone. This revelation soothed him somewhat, the problem clearly not about him but me. He’s never said so, but I suspect that he’s had much wilder sex with all the women he was with before me.
In my twenties, I read books about it. Attempted various positions. Insisted on oral sex. Spent a hundred dollars on toys. Now, I find it easier to accept things as they are, rather than perseverating on an unfixable problem. I can enjoy sex for what it is instead of looking for what’s missing.
After my confession, he encouraged me to try again. “You’re in your thirties now. Maybe it’ll be different.” Over the next couple of years I went along with his experiments: new books, new positions, new toys. I held a thin, golden thread of hope that maybe he was right and things could change.
Each effort was embarrassing, and the more we tried, the less I enjoyed myself, my bits the subject of his prodding and probing. “Look, I like it best when we do the regular stuff,” I insisted.
And so here we are, post-coitus, sleepy. The sex was fine, and he is always considerate to check if I want more, and I always say no, happy enough to curl up with him afterward. I sniff his sweat, a mix of his deodorant and something else warm and musky, and fall asleep.
THREE
I’m on my way to meet Mom for a stroll through East River Park. After selling our Edison, New Jersey, house, and buying a Murray Hill condo last year, she’s wanted to explore the city and go on excursions with me.
The bus is packed, its passengers a study of mobility and dislocation. If I could get everyone’s attention, the way I used to do in my classroom, having to yell twice before they’d stop and listen, I’d do a hands-up exercise: put your hand up if you speak a language other than English at home? If you were born outside of the U.S.? If you are Muslim? Jewish? Hindu? Buddhist? Druze? A brown lady in a bright blue hijab sits in front of me, fanning herself with her Vogue magazine. An African American youth beside me slumps over his phone, his fingers typing furiously. He giggles, perhaps in response to a joke, and then glances self-consciously at me. I smile at him and turn my attention to the middle-aged white woman across the aisle surrounded by half a dozen plastic grocery bags. On this late August day, I smell sweat, floral dryer sheets, coconut oil, curry, and pizza.
Who are all these people? I never tire of this exercise.
I did attempt the hands-up activity in my classroom at the beginning of last year, during an introduction to the history of immigration.
“Isn’t it amazing?” I asked them.
“So what, miss?” Maria, from El Salvador, queried. The rest stared back at me with trademark teenager demeanours: a combination of blank and sullen.
I told them it wasn’t like this when my family arrived over thirty-five years ago. Toby, whose family originated from Ireland, screwed up his face and shot me a look that said, Wow, you’re old.
While diversity is not exactly celebrated, things have changed. When we immigrated, we had to assimilate but just the right amount — my parents didn’t want me to become too Western. I wasn’t ever sure where the balance point was on that see-saw, but I followed their lead the best I could. We attended the masjid a few times a year. I figure-skated and snuck smokes and beers with my friends. I wore shalvaar kameez to social functions on the weekend and jeans to school.
I’m glad Zee has the opportunity to grow up with the kind of mix on this bus. Perhaps she won’t wonder where she belongs (the U.S.? India? Nowhere?), the way I did, and sometimes still do.
I know that the upcoming trip to India will be complicated, as travelling to the “homeland” has always been. I’ll breathe it in and cough it out. I’ll feel grounded just in time to come home and be disoriented. It’s not culture shock as people typically understand it, but its reverse: when I return to the States, the place I’ve lived almost my entire life, India will have made me a foreigner again. It will remind me of my outsider status, disrupt the forgetting, wake me up to the fact that the balancing act does require effort. For a time, I will be as self-conscious as the teenager beside me, trying to remember how to be invisible as I venture through the city.
Mom meets me at the door in lavender and teal spandex. While she fills a water bottle, I wander into her solarium and peek at a watercolour-in-progess.
“Hey, this is good, Mom! You’ve really captured the sunset.”
“Oh, it’s just my homework for class this week.” She pushes off the compliment.
She and Dad retired a few years back, both from high-level banking jobs, but it wasn’t until after he died that she learned how to enjoy her non-working time. Before that, the two of them were aimless in retirement. They planned cruises and safaris but didn’t take them. They puttered around their expansive home, cleaning and making small repairs. Twice a week they dropped off large plastic containers of the food Mom cooked but they couldn’t consume. And then Dad collapsed while he was out in the garden, and she was in the shower. His heart stopped long before she could phone 911.
I drove to the house that day, missing the highway exit on the way there. I pulled open the screen door, half-surprised to not find Dad sitting at his spot at the kitchen table. A numb shock got us through the first few days.