Chapter 11: Asma (1989) - The Daughters of Rosebud

Asma rushed back to her dorm to drop off her backpack and brush her teeth. She and Ruby were going to see the newest addition at the zoo, a baby elephant named Raj. Asma had promised Salma that she would come to Mamoo’s for her second and last weekend before her parents returned, but that was before she’d learned that Ruby was off work. She would have to make up some excuse, but she was okay with that payoff.

She pulled her shirt off and caught sight of herself in the mirror. The bruise had finally come to the surface. The further she moved away from the punch, the more her body insisted on reminding her of what had happened. Apple-size and deep purple-black, it erupted under her skin, rippling out in a radial pattern of smaller yellowed dots. The pattern reminded her of one of those mandala patterns. It was quite beautiful. But by then, she was already deep in the throes of Ruby, and everything seemed beautiful.

It had been only five days since Asma found Ruby waiting outside of her dorm, but it already felt like she was living two different lives. The one where the reds were more red and the smell of the autumn leaves more pronounced, and the other that was blurred, as though she was watching her life pass by through the window of a speeding train.

The day Asma had returned from Mamoo’s—the First Day, which was how she thought of it—Ruby had risen from the bench and, hands in her pockets, coolly sauntered to Asma.

“I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Do you personally check up on all of your students who get too drunk and make idiots of themselves?”

“You’re not my student,” Ruby said cheekily with a grin.

Asma’s insides heated so suddenly and quickly that her face flushed red. They had wandered around campus for hours, her backpack still full of her overnight things from Mamoo’s. It felt as though her family accompanied them, strapped to her back and stamped on her body.

Since then, Asma had seen or talked to Ruby every day. They walked, ate in the student union, and studied at the library. Asma tried to concentrate on her classwork, and Ruby studied for the GRE. She was thinking about becoming a nurse practitioner. Sometimes she was waiting on that same bench outside Asma’s dorm, and on those days, Asma felt like she had conjured Ruby with her pervasive thoughts. On days Ruby worked, they talked late into the night after Ruby’s shift.

Asma had no definition for what they were to each other. They never spoke any feelings or touched, not even a glancing brush. After the awkwardness in Ruby’s bathroom, which felt like years ago, Asma was wary of presuming too much. All she knew was that from the First Day, their stride had been in perfect cadence and their conversation unabated.

Asma felt permanently damp. She had never before had to change her underwear in the middle of the day and again before bed. Her T-shirts, socks, sheets, anything that rested on her body, felt like it carried current, microdosing her with electricity. Sleep was elusive. When she finally succumbed, Ruby was everywhere, always wearing a different-colored lipstick. In her dreams, she permitted herself liberties she did not dare in real life.

Asma waited outside her dorm for Ruby, astride her Trusty Steed. It was one of those beautiful fall days awash in golden light, when the weather didn’t know whether it was commencing summer or winter. She rode in wide circles on the quad, wheeling through piles of colored leaves and enjoying the crunch and puff. She considered whether she should tell Ruby the name of her bike. Would she think that was cute or immature? Ruby was only four years older than her, but it felt like she was already a full adult.

Ruby rolled up slowly on her ten-speed. She wore a helmet, and her already strong features were even more exaggerated. Her round, hooded eyes even larger, her cheekbones even sharper. She was wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt; her arms were spectacular. Toned and muscular, they flexed while she balanced on the handlebars and slowly dismounted. She swung one leg behind the seat until both feet balanced on one pedal and the bike coasted to a full stop. My God, she was smooth.

They stood facing each other, touching wheel to wheel.

“Hi, you,” Ruby said in her velvet tone. “Am I late?”

Asma simply shook her head. Sometimes, Ruby took her breath away, and she was afraid of what her voice might reveal.

“Did you bring your jacket? The temperature is dropping,” Ruby asked.

Asma nodded and patted her backpack.

They biked leisurely through backstreets. They talked about the architectural styles of each turn-of-the-century home they passed, which were the most splendid, which they could see living in, and which were most likely to be haunted. In the soft breeze, orange-and-red leaves drifted down on them as though the universe was showering them with confetti.

Their time spent with Raj was short. Ruby had forgotten her bike lock, and most of their time was spent struggling with how to mate two bikes with only one lock. They giggled while their hands touched and bodies bumped, trying to find the best combo of wheel and frame. At the elephant compound, they stood closely, arms lightly touching, and watched Raj throw dust all around. They marveled at how, notwithstanding his size, he looked like a little baby.

After the zookeeper led Raj away, Ruby asked, “You want to get dinner?”

“Sure.” Asma hadn’t brought any money and wondered if this was a justified emergency warranting the use of Mamoo’s credit card and quickly decided it was.

“Do you like Thai?”

“I’ve never had it.”

“Then that’s what we’re doing,” Ruby said and started pedaling.

They rode single file through city streets with few lights and large potholes. The air rushed in Asma’s face, swirling eddies of balmy and brisk as night descended. Ruby kept looking back over her shoulder to check on Asma. Asma drafted behind Ruby, inhaling the faint, tart fragrance of lemons. At the restaurant they clumsily locked their bikes together, once again laughing while tripping on each other.

The dining room in the restaurant was covered with decorative wood paneling carved with rural Thai scenes. Asma had no idea what anything on the menu was but loved the smells proliferating all around her. “You order. I eat everything but pork. And I want something with ice.”

“What a night,” Ruby said. “We went to the zoo and dinner so we could learn how to lock two bikes with only one lock.”

“And see Raj.”

“For five minutes . . .”

“It was totally worth it. He’s adorable.”

“There’s no other way I’d want to spend my night,” Ruby said with that smile.

Ruby ordered for both of them and handed the menu to the waiter. Again, Asma was caught by the definition of her arms, the ridges and shadows all the more pronounced in the burnished light of the restaurant.

“How do you get your arms to look like that?” Asma asked breathlessly.

Ruby leaned across the table, her hooded eyes at half-mast. “Swimming.”

“Oh.” Everything she said sounded like an invitation.

“Do you swim?”

Asma sat up straight. “Uh, no.” Asma’s first instinct was to give context and explain her family, her culture, and its rules. But an explanation of that part of her history almost certainly required an explanation of everything else.

The waiter placed two glasses in front of her—one tall with ice and the other short with two-tone liquid and a top-hat-looking metal thing. Asma thought they had brought whatever it was to the wrong table, but Ruby said, “That’s your Thai iced coffee.” She leaned over and removed the top hat contraption from the short glass, stirred the coffee and milk, and poured it over the ice in the tall glass. Asma watched, mesmerized.

“Do you want to?” Ruby asked.

“Do I want to what?”

“Swim?”

Salma took a sip of the cold, dreamily sweet liquid and felt little windows and doors inside her opening wide. “Yes, but I don’t know how,” she said shyly. After a long pause, she said, “I don’t have a suit.” She felt like she was on the edge of revealing too much. What American didn’t have a swimsuit?

Ruby frowned like she was thinking hard about something. “That’s the easy part. If it’s not too weird, you can borrow one of mine.”

The offer felt familiar, like something sisters would do and, at the same time, intimate. It made all the sense in the world. They were almost the same height and had similar body types, lean and small-chested. “It’s not weird.”

They met the next day at 2:00 at the rec center because Ruby said, at that time of the day, they could have a lane to themselves. Asma handed the attendant her rec-center pass and then put her hands in her pockets.

As they walked to the locker room, Ruby asked, “You nervous?”

Asma gave what she intended to be a casual laugh, but it sounded more like a bark.

In the locker room, they found a small corner of lockers away from the main room. “We don’t have to do this, Asma. If you’re worried about . . . something.”

“I . . . I . . . just don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m going to teach you.” Ruby had a look on her face like “duh.”

“I don’t want to look stupid.”

“To who?”

Asma bent down to untie her shoes. “Anyone, I guess.” And while that was true, it was also true that Asma wasn’t sure if she was supposed to undress in front of Ruby or go to a stall. The idea of Ruby seeing her undress terrified her. There was no hiding her stomach.

When Asma lifted her head, she saw Ruby holding out a black swimsuit to her. She had already taken off her sweatshirt and was wearing a swirly multicolored Speedo underneath.

“I’m going to go stretch on the deck. Meet me out there when you’re ready.” With that, Ruby put her bag in a locker. “Oh, I also brought you a towel because the rec center’s ones are tiny.” She handed Asma a beach towel with an orange sunset on it and the lock.

Asma sat for a moment on the bench and watched Ruby’s departing back, lithe and ripply with muscles Asma didn’t even know existed. Ruby had thought of everything and planned each detail, not once making her feel awkward or dependent or weird. Asma felt she was in the kindest and steadiest of hands and thought of Mamoo.

There was a part of her that wanted to tell Mamoo about Ruby. But what was there to tell? What would he think? She had grown up thinking there was nothing she could do that he would reject. But was there a line? In their culture, where speaking about love between a man and a woman was off limits, was there even language for love between women? She was sure that Mamoo at least would understand what the word lesbian meant, which was more than she could say for her mother, who didn’t understand the most basic things.

Asma remembered her mother’s confusion about what a teacher wrote on her report card in junior high. She had returned home one day to see her mother tapping the heavy cardstock paper on the kitchen table.

“Read what your science teacher wrote. Out loud,” her mother had said, passing the heavy cardstock paper to her.

Asma scanned the words crowding the paper, pivoting it sideways to read the writing sloping across the margins. “‘Asma is an exceptional student. She is a quick study, always participates in classroom discussion, and demonstrates a depth of understanding of the materials. Challenges arise when she finishes her work before everyone else.’” Asma paused for a long moment. “‘It is already difficult at this age to maintain focus, but especially for Asma, to whom the boys are drawn like honey.’”

“What does that mean?”

Asma looked at the report card lazily, caught between bemused indifference and her instinct to protect her mother. She had choices. She could placate by creating a story that sounded believable in the moment, deny understanding of the note’s meaning, plead ignorance, distract, or prepare for a fight.

“I have no idea,” Asma said. “I didn’t write it.”

“But that phrase. It means something. Would a teacher write that a friend who’s a girl is ‘drawn to you like honey’?”

Asma was taken aback by her mother’s uncharacteristic persistence and opted for cajoling. “It’s nothing, Ami. Just that there are boys I’m friends with.”

“Yes, but what does it mean? You girls don’t tell me anything!”

She had felt sorry for her mother, who knew enough to be suspicious but not enough to jump to conclusions. Her translators to the culture and the language couldn’t be trusted. There were conflicts of interest all around.

Asma walked out on the pool deck and tentatively stepped into the shallow end of the water. She gasped at the cold and raised her arms.

“Go under all the way. Your body adjusts faster than doing it little by little.” Ruby wore a swim cap, which accentuated the sharpness of her cheekbones and the plushness of her lips. She had already gone under and popped back to the surface, water dripping down her face. She reached out and slipped her finger under one of Asma’s shoulder straps and traced it over Asma’s shoulder. “Your strap is all twisted.”

Asma forgot the chill of the water. The nerve endings from her entire body rushed to where Ruby had touched her, a tingling strand of burn. Ruby held Asma’s hand under the water and with the other gently pushed her under.

They practiced in the shallow side for thirty minutes. Asma felt like she should be listening to Ruby’s verbal instructions but instead dazed out and listened only to the tone of her voice. It was all she could manage, feeling Ruby’s hands on her—her back, her stomach, her arms, her head—and instinctively responding. There was no fear. Ruby was there, guiding her. Arms outstretched, neck relaxed, she floated on her back, looking up at the industrial metal beams above. She was amazed. This felt like the most natural thing in the world, like she was born for this. She had never felt so rooted in her body, so aware of every muscle and tendon and nerve.

Ruby swam laps while Asma, wrapped in a towel, watched rapt from the deck. Stroke, stroke, breath. Stroke, stroke, breath. The rhythm lulled her.

She had never before felt such a sense of power and agency emanating from within. This was her body, and what she decided to do with it was her choice. The simpleness of this basic truth thrilled her, leaving her slightly boneless. It felt radical and dangerous. If this is what her religion was so fearful of, then perhaps her parents were right to be concerned, after all.