Esmé Wang - The Border of Paradise

How about this: as an amateur apothecary at the age of eight, I convinced Gillian to pick flowers with me. I took a ceramic bowl from the kitchen and mashed the petals into water. Even now, walking past a rosebush, I’ll rub my fingers over a petal with my eyes closed. I do find that the feel of flowers is unbelievably erotic. Was that what did it? How did I fall for her so very completely and all at once, like diving off a cliff? Dear God, how will I approach her for that intimate act?

These lustful years continued without much acknowledgment until the week when Ma came into the bathroom in her kimono, calling my name as I crouched in the tub. I hadn’t yet removed my clothes as I penciled a reply to Gillian on the wall (which is, and has been for years, littered with little messages between the two of us, including A grout time for soap, Grout to see you, and my newest addition, I’m agrout to take a shower ). “Are you busy, guai ?” Ma asked. I was, in fact, agrout to take a shower, but said it could wait. She pulled down the toilet lid and sat.

“You and Gillian played the most beautiful polonaise this morning.”

“She seemed pleased,” I said, finishing the s in shower. The polonaise had been Gillian’s idea, a sort of aesthetic compromise. When we duet Ma sits on the sofa with hands folded and leans forward, eyes closed, and she never applauds at the end of anything. David thought applause was tacky. He said that when a man clapped, he was producing the sound of an idiot covering up the lone marble rattling around in his head.

Ma said, “Well, of course. You’re both marvelous players, and she loves you as much as you do her. I know everything about you two, don’t you see.”

I turned in the tub, crouching, with pencil in hand.

“Why do you look so surprised? Such a beautiful, charming girl — of course you would be stimulated by her presence. And we’ve known since you were children, haven’t we? You were always meant for each other. You know this.”

My silence must have indicated concordance, because she stood then and began to fish through the medicine cabinet, the long arms of her garment dangling. A baggie of cotton swabs fell off a shelf and into the sink, which she ignored. “Daddy wasn’t too keen on the idea of having another child after you were born. Not because of you, but — oh, well,” she said, and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, which she proceeded to begin to smoke with the aid of a matchbook from her deep red pockets. Waving her hand in front of her face, she said, “But you seemed lonely, and so we had Gillian to keep you company. Just like with my girlhood friend — who ended up being quite happy, I’ll add. Such arrangements have their advantages over matchmakers, or the American way. But now you truly love her, don’t you? You feel sick inside when she says your name, just as you feel incredibly happy when she does it, too, and you don’t know how the two mean the same thing?”

“Well,” I said, my hands twisting at this bit of monologue-as-explanation, with parts of it blurring into nonsense, and not knowing what to say next.

Ma moved on to say, kindly, “I couldn’t be happier at the way things have turned out. Love is a beautiful thing…”

Here a plume of smoke approached me, and I coughed, grateful for any excuse to postpone a response.

“… and so I’m making a trip to Sacramento. Longer than usual. Because Gillian has officially reached maturity. And so this is the week of… your honeymoon. At last.” (“Honeymoon” spoken in English.)

“Honeymoon,” I echoed. What I really meant was “Honeymoon!” but I was also shocked, and surprised. I knew what a honeymoon was. I’d heard glorious stories about David and Ma’s honeymoon, when they’d taken the Buick to places I couldn’t possibly imagine, and had sex in all of those places. It was a romantic idea, and one that I couldn’t replicate, but the house would be a place better than all of those other places. I would finally get to lavish my adoration upon Gillian; this idea pleased me.

“A week should give you plenty of time. I expect that things will be very different between you two by the time I come back, hmm?” And I pictured Gillian moving down the cold hall in a silk slip, the white fabric clinging to her small breasts.

“Is that all right?” I asked. “I mean, for Gillian? Will she be all right with that?”

She told me that Gillian knew that the time had come. She told me not to worry about that. But I had all sorts of questions, the step-by-step sex act itself being foremost. From the bloodied tissues in our shared wastebasket, combined with our excellent education in human biology, I also knew that Gillian was now, finally, fertile, and I couldn’t bear the thought of impregnating her yet, because the idea of Gillian becoming swollen and heavy went against all the lovely limpidness I loved so. And I certainly wasn’t ready to become a daddy myself, lacking so many basic skills required for the position, including how to write a check or open a bank account, let alone drive myself to the bank in the Buick.

Still, I was self-conscious enough to stay quiet about these matters, and I was relieved when Ma reached into a pocket beneath her kimono and said, retrieving a box, “Birth control, so you don’t get her pregnant. You must be careful. Pregnancy would complicate things. You could go to prison — understand? Are you listening?” With utter matter-of-factness she removed a foil square from the box, opened it, and pulled out a disc, which she then unrolled onto two fingers of her other hand. I nodded. “You put this on your penis when it’s hard. When you squirt out the white substance, you pull yourself out of her body before your penis becomes soft, and you roll this, the condom, which is the birth control, off. You tie off the end and you throw it away. Very easy.”

She tucked the box into the medicine cabinet. “Is there anything in particular that you want me to get from the city? Some sort of food? Razors?”

“No,” I said, “no, no.”

“I’ll get you some pears. You like pears.” She paused, staring at her reflection. “But besides the condom, there are other things you should know. You take off her clothes. You kiss her on the mouth while you take off her clothes, you kiss her wherever you want, until you put your hand to the place between her legs and feel that she is wet. This is when she’s ready for you to put on the thing I just showed you, the condom. Yes?”

I nodded.

“You put the thing on. You don’t have to go so fast, although you might want to go fast. There might be blood, the first time, when you put yourself inside of her, where the wetness is. The wetness should help you get inside. It helps the movement. You move so that it feels the way you want it to. Okay? Any questions? You’re not stupid. Neither of my children are stupid.”

“No, we’re not. Don’t worry.”

“But you’re concerned. You’re holding something back. Don’t think you can hold anything back from me. I know you best.” And she pulled out another cigarette and lit it, as if to signal that she was settling down for another round. I was afraid to ask her what I was truly thinking — that Ma seemed to want this very badly, although perhaps not as badly as I did, and I didn’t understand why.

“It’s a good thing,” I said.

“Of course it is,” she replied.

“Yes, a good thing.” I looked at the faucet. My face was swollen and distorted in the silver. “I think I’ll take that shower now,” I said, and she, who was leaning against the sink with her hip, nodded, shifted upright, and left, still puffing at her cigarette, and I began to worry about everything. In my ardor I dug through the bathroom garbage can. I found Gillian’s damp and drying bloody tissues and crushed them to my face. I loved her so. I love her.