The Tender Loins

I look at the time on my cell phone as I stand inhaling another Marlboro- I’ve taken to chain smoking again since I’ve returned to San Francisco- and decide five more minutes. I’ll give him five more minutes before I call. I long for a green tea frappuccino from Starbucks, but remind myself that its way too early in the morning for whipped cream. I look up at the building one more time, and then down the street. I am wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, my feet clad in flip-flops, not much to differentiate me from the street urchins, I worry. No. I don’t worry. It’s just a thought that crosses my mind. I am standing in the middle of the tender part of the Tenderloin, at 10:13 in the morning, obsessively smoking my Marlboro Lights Menthols one by one, very obviously waiting for someone, and I hope no one mistakes me for a prostitute or a druggie waiting for her pusher. The last thing I want to do is worry. Or look like I’m worried. Another thought crosses my mind: Am I going to feel this way every time I walk through this neighborhood? Cause maybe that means I shouldn’t be looking for apartments here.

Behind the grilled entryway, footsteps shuffle down the corridor and come to a rest. I turn around.

“Hi,” a male voice calls out. Surprisingly younger than I expected. “Are you waiting to be let in?”

“Hi, are you the manager? I’m here to see the studio,” I respond, trying to peer through the ivory-colored grill.

“Oh, no I’m not the manager, did you call him?” the voice answers, yet I still can’t see who I’m talking to. It’s bright outside, being morning and all, and dark behind the grill.

“I’m sorry I can’t see you. It’s kinda dark in there,” I reply, narrowing my eyes to look past the gate to the other side.

“Yeah. I’m black. That happens,” he says as he lets me in. My cheeks are burning and I feel ignorant. I worry I might have come across as racist, and I try to think of some apology that would make sense but nothing comes to mind. So I just laugh. It was a funny thing to say. But it’s a weird, self-conscious laugh. And as soon as I see who I’ve been exchanging words with, I become even more self-conscious. He is tall and thin and well dressed in an athletic kind of way, and very good looking. Next to him is sitting someone who makes me worry again. And this time I won’t retract my words. It is another black male, sitting cross-legged on the floor next to a wagon- yes, a wagon- full of broken furniture, including a wooden coffee table, a small bookcase, a chair, a tiny TV-and-VCR-in-one. The man is drooling, his chin resting on his palm, his elbow resting on his knee. His eyes are looking straight at my face and he is quiet.

“So my friend here is moving out, you want to see his apartment? It’s really nice,” the cute guy asks.

“Oh, no, I’ll just wait for the manager; I think he should be down any minute.”

“Hey you want to buy some furniture?” the guy asks. “It’s all new and Reggie here needs to get rid of it.”

I look back at the wagon and wonder how many times the man might have sat on the chair butt naked and jerked off at some porn rented from across the street, his cum spraying the TV screen.

“No, thanks,” I say and take out my phone to dial the agent who was supposed to meet me at 10 to show me a studio.

Old Photographs

That’s me. Third one in from the right; the giggling one with her head down. The pattern of henna on my palms has not yet started fading. The gold jhumka earrings hang heavy on my earlobes and I am proud of them. They are the first piece of real jewelry I’ve owned, an heirloom my grandmother gave my mother for her wedding and now my mother has given to me. The folds in my sari are weighed down by the gold thread embroidery and sequins that adorn it; one tiny glimmer of light catches my eye, a sequin that has come loose and I have to make an effort not to pick at it. The sari is hot and difficult to walk in, but now that I’m married, I finally have the freedom to wear one and so I do. At every step, I worry the whole six yards of the delicate chiffon will come undone and slide right off my body. I try to stay still, not get up unless I have to so that the chances of that happening are slimmer; the less I move, the less the sari will.

It is the day after my wedding and I have returned to my parents’ house for the ritual morning-after brunch. My cousin, the one in pink to the left of me, can’t stop cracking jokes. It is no secret that I am no longer a virgin, a fact I am embarrassed of as my father stands in front of me taking the picture. Later this evening is the Valima reception to formally celebrate my deflowering, a successful consummation proven by the blood on the white sheet that my mother-in-law grabbed this morning while I was in the shower, and set on display in the courtyard, hanging on a clothesline. When my husband and I left this morning for the brunch, she was still sitting on the phone boasting to her friends, mother-in-laws who had not been so fortunate.

But a week after the wedding, my husband leaves to finish his engineering degree in America. He promises to send for me and in his absence I am expected to live with his family, my in-laws, instead of with my own parents in my own room in the house I grew up in.

As though living with strangers isn’t enough, my mother-in-law, has decided that since I am living with them, she no longer has to do any housework and everything is left for me. I cook. I set the table for lunch and dinner. I wake up early to make their breakfast. I iron their clothes and I wash them. I wash the dishes. In barely two weeks the henna on my palms has faded to a pale, almost invisible orange. I am no longer a bride. Just a wife, abandoned indefinitely by the man I am to live the rest of my life with.

Babu Ji, the respectful term my husband addressed his father with and I adopted, still calls me bahu; bride. No one refers to me with my name. My mother-in-law is Aapa. My husband is nameless, too. I know his name and have only uttered it in my bed at night as I sleep by myself. I roll the letters in my mouth. I repeat the name. I whisper different tones I will say his name in when I am with him in America. In America everyone says each others’ name. Husbands, wives, sisters, brother, mothers-in-law and fathers-in-law.