Every night under Jamal feels strange and burdening. It starts with a kiss on my forehead, then wandering hands, intentional hands. He searches for my thoughts. He swears I think up the best thoughts. He is amused most times at how my mind works. How I cannot stand the taste of olives but will have a whole plate and add a thank you because they are supposedly healthy. Amused by how the last thing I wanted was art school but couldn’t resist once it was suggested by my father.

I tell him I have no mind of my own. Cannot fathom my own dreams or caress my own desires. It is simply that I do not know what I want, so I let others want for me, dream for me; I dance around with the desires of others until the intimacy purges me of my source of air and leaves me breathless. Still, J doesn’t see this crippled individual I seem to be. Or maybe he wilfully chooses to ignore my lack of self. Or maybe he is mad?

Next, his hands curve at the dip of my back. I tell Jamal I prefer the lights off. It’s very anticlimactic, but would you rather I let him see as the bile curls up in my stomach, turns everything stale, and regurgitates out of my nostril? Would you rather I let him see the disgust as I recoil from his touch and fight against his embrace?

Ten years ago, and pounds bigger, rolls of skin lie where his hands now are. In them I accumulate loaves of hot-rolled bread, deep-fried buns, and oiled pieces of steak. I store the fat in my bum, my love handles, and the bulges of my cheek. I eat for ten people—thousands of calories, enough to sink me under and bury me within the cold, dirty floor. And it does. Early onset pre-diabetes.

To encourage me, Mother throws out all my comfort meals; she immerses me in the yin of green leaves and the yang of the sweet, pulpy shit of pawpaw and berries. One day I get tired of the tasteless meals and gut-wrenching runs, and I grab her favorite vegetable knife, the same one she uses to cut me slices of fruits and very alive lettuce, and I try to shed the fat away. Snip, snip. Never again let others see your flaws.

Jamal calls me sexy during his bouts of ecstasy. He is enthralled at how such a beautiful woman could love him and move in with him in his one bedroom and barely anything else. But the first and only man I’ve ever loved did not love me back.

It was foolish to crave love from a jolly boy, a beautiful boy who existed in an abundance of love that told him he was allowed to have things like selflessness, kindness, self-worthiness, and so on. When he smiled, he held the promise of a possibility that a girl who hid her growing tits behind layers of oversized shirts could one day be a “Lori Harvey.” I was not beautiful by any matrix, but at nine, if this jolly boy let you see his smile, surely you were much more than you cared to credit yourself. You were gold, and sometime in the future, you would wed with children to make up for your inabilities. Sometime during class recess, another boy called me ugly, said my tits were too big for my age, and said I looked like a monkey, and the jolly beautiful boy laughed. He gave me the same large smile he always did that made the world around us sunny with promises and warm with feelings. The same smile now tightened around my throat and threatened to burst open the dam of my tears.

That day I realized a smile was a vacant little lie told by cowardly people to hide their true feelings. That day I went home, and in the corners of my diary, like page numbering, I wrote the words “monkey” and “ugly” alternately, first like a whisper, then loudly and boldly, along with loud sobs, until I had no tears left for another beautiful boy.

When Jamal touched me, he said he wished I let him do so with the light, at the very least, dim. He said my skin was the first thing he noticed the day we met. Every time we are asked how we met, he urges me to tell it for us. It is unusual given that he is quite the talker, the exalter, the one who obsesses over every single detail of our lives and punctuates it with affection and desire. I say it like a recited piece off a nursery rhyme.

It was in the warm days of November just before school vacation. I had on a sultry blue gown that I intentionally let fall with nothing below my knees. It had flower patterns and a cinching waistline. I stepped out of class for a quick smoke as I usually did when I got bored of them boys flocking and bidding for my attention. There he was on the stairwell, the least bit interested in my legs, or hips or my very obvious push-up bra. He caught my interest immediately, and for the next one month all I could see was red as I doubled down to nab this strange man that seemed immune to my charm.

Now under him I made a joke about that day, my version of routine involvement in foreplay. “The same day you pretended not to see the gorgeous woman in front of you, eh?” He paused, and reflexively I held on to my last breath. Had I been too harsh with my delivery, had he noticed my stiffening muscles, had he finally realized he was in a loveless relationship but one that I couldn’t live without? He resumed the dance he performed with his hands down to my thighs. Good. He wasn’t angry. Then what was it?

By now you must understand that I hate myself, right? I hate that I am short. Shorter than my sister even though she is younger than me. I hate the color of my skin. Boys like their woman a lot of shades lighter—too light, enough to be compared to the sun and to that stupid pawpaw fruit. I hate the texture of my hair and the size of my eyes, how large and expressive they are. One boy said they were too big and ugly, and he hated to look into them. I hate my voice, deepened from years of growing up around brothers. I hated my mannerisms. I hated that I could speak pidgin English fluently. I hated my breasts, so obvious yet so ugly they forced me into the center of every conversation and proceeded to degrade me. Fuck my breasts. I hated my thoughts. They were shallow, empty things devoid of extensive reasoning and critical thinking, like “the impact of fonts on the enjoyment of reading” or “the politics of culture.” It simply preoccupied itself with the idea of pleasing others. What would other people think of this or that or that? My perceptions of myself became warped in others’ opinions of me. So, I allowed myself to hate everything, and then I allowed myself to change everything for the satisfaction of others. If I couldn’t love myself, surely, I could get other people to at least love me.

Beautiful things are not conjured in a day. Or in a hurry. By the time I met Jamal, I had undergone three minor and three major surgical procedures. I used the blonde hair dye and started seeing a professional to touch up my roots every month. I slathered myself in layers of brightening creams and body milks impregnated with hydroquinone. I got a breast reduction and hip implants. I took a course on “becoming feminine: the ins and outs of seductive prowess.” Forget being an ideal lover, I wanted the deadly charm of the mystical siren.

Nights, when I am alone, I step out of my body and will the mirror to tell me a lie, to reflect the beauty people were starting to see in me. I willed and I begged and I fought for a chance. But the problem with mirrors is that they are painfully truthful. All I get back are more faults, more cracks that need cementing. Is that a new wrinkle above my brow? Dammit, I walked around with a smudged lip all day. The roughness needs more sanding till I am smooth as honey. When I allow myself to cut at the rubbish and excesses on me, I make sure it is in places no one else will see. I cut underneath my new breasts, close to the already healed scar. Then I cut into the hollow of my back, enough to draw blood, enough to conjure the pain that’ll remind me that I am a fool to dream, that I am an ugly little monkey that no one should ever see. When I am done, I wash my tool and smile at the reflection. Fuck it if I don’t see the beauty. Everyone else will.

Jamal lets his mouth roam everywhere but my mouth when we are tangled up. He says he intentionally saves it for last. Because he likes to savour it, taste it, draw blood from it. He gives me all of his love and I let it float above us and into the sky. This prayer he is making won’t save us but maybe it will sustain us, protect us. Protect me.

Later, Jamal fishes a picture he kept tucked in the fold of his diary. It looks rather familiar. A picture probably 10/15 years old. He has on spectacles that is humorously larger than his head. He has his gaze turned, like he is distracted. His eyes bear that same boyish warmth and softness he reserves for me. Like he’s read my thought, he takes my index finger and traces it first from his eyes then along the path towards his distraction. And there I was, ugly still. But also, calm. Like I was basking in a fantasy before I could see myself clearly. I hear Jamal begin to speak and this time I try not to zone out like I tend to do.

“The first time we met was at this tech retreat. I remember wondering who this incredibly smart girl was who talked about robots with such providence in knowledge that I felt even your words could will the inanimate to life. You were beautiful then, just as you are beautiful now. And that day on the stairwell, I realised you did not recognise who I was and it hurt. Still, I vowed to make an effort to never lose you again.”

A sigh then a stretch of silence.

“I just wish you could see yourself the way I see you”

I stare at the picture, at myself, blankly. Then hard. Then harder still.

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Lily Kenyi on Unsplash