Jess Row - Your Face in Mine

You going to be okay getting out of the airport? he asks suddenly. Because I’m not staying overnight. My flight’s in two hours.

Back to Bangkok?

Almaty. Kazakhstan.

What’s in Kazakhstan?

I don’t know. Fur hats? Lamb skewers? Mostly an oil pipeline, that’s what I hear. Oil going to China. No, seriously. Potential clients. And investors. It’s been in the works for months. No point canceling when we could be on the cusp of something new.

The alert bell pings again. We’re on the ground, we’ve taxied, without noticing it, and bumped up against the boarding gate. We stand up together, or rather he lifts me up, by the elbow. Careful, he says, watch your head. Here. He binds my hands around the handle of my laptop bag.

Martin, I say, suddenly overcome. You thought of everything.

Don’t worry about it. What else was I supposed to do? Go on, I’ll be right behind you.

These are my last few minutes, I’m thinking, or, more precisely, the thought wandering through my mind, looking for a feeling to settle on. Goodbye, Kelly. I ought to hug myself. Instead, I reach up and lock him in an awkward, grappling, swaying embrace. And then I turn and find the back of the next seat, pulling myself into the aisle. In front of me, it seems, to the left, at the exit door, is an intense brightness, and there’s a cloud of some floral perfume, as if someone’s dropped a duty-free bag. It doesn’t matter. I hear the babble of voices, dialects, accents, the toddler saying lift me up! lift me up! The wife calling, old man, don’t forget the camera, it’s right by your foot.

Excuse me, the flight attendant is saying, in Chinese, of course, coming down the aisle toward me, excuse me, we have a disabled passenger here. To me she says, loudly, taking my elbow, sir, follow me, I’ll take you through.

Is this happening? Can this be? My words. My world. I’ve been addressed; I’ve been seen. The knot of fear at the back of my neck — how long has it been there, I’m wondering, has it been there my entire waking life? — dissolves.

You’re going to make it, right? Martin asks a moment later.

I turn against the tide of shoulders and elbows. Biezhaoji, I almost say, turning the words on my tongue. I mean, don’t worry about me.

You’re here now, right? You’re home.

I’m home.

To Sander Gilman, for Creating Beauty to Cure the Soul ; Jonathan Ames, for Sexual Metamorphosis: An Anthology of Transsexual Memoirs ; Rebecca Walker, for Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness ; Fred Moten, for In the Break: The Poetics of the Black Avant-Garde ; Spike Lee, for Do the Right Thing ; David Simon and all those involved in creating The Wire; Maxine Hong Kingston, for The Woman Warrior (and particularly “Thirteen Stanzas for a Barbarian Reed Pipe”); Paul Beatty for The White Boy Shuffle ; Adam Mansbach for Angry Black White Boy ; Cornel West for The Gifts of Black Folk in the Age of Terrorism , and above all to James Baldwin for Another Country and for his words to white Americans, in anger and love.

To the doctors, scientists, lawyers, and their staffs who generously answered my questions: Alan Engler, M.D., Ryan Turner, M.D., Steven Cohen, M.D., Pichet Rodchareon, M.D., Chettawut Tulyapanich, M.D., Professor Victor Hruby of the University of Arizona, Professor David Gray of the University of Maryland School of Law, Professor Byron Warnken of the University of Baltimore School of Law, and David Waranch, Esq. Also to Ruangsasithorn Sangwarosakul, Matt Wheeler, and Justin McDaniel for their help making connections in Bangkok. And to Bobby Sullivan for clarifying a point of Rasta etiquette.

To Major Jackson, Martha Southgate, and Sonya Posmentier, who read early drafts and shared immensely helpful thoughts.

To Rosalia Ruiz, Laura Hill, and the teachers of U-NOW Day Nursery, Little Missionary Day Nursery, and PS 3.

To my friends and colleagues at the College of New Jersey, Vermont College of Fine Arts, and the City University of Hong Kong, for their encouragement, and in particular to David Blake for helping me secure a sabbatical when I needed it most.

To Denise Shannon, who believed in this project before I did, and Megan Lynch, who saw it through to the end.

To my parents, for their unwavering support.

To Sonya, Mina, and Asa for sharing the life that inspired this book most of all.