Tahmima Anam: The Bones of Grace

I tried to grab the cup from Kyung-Ju’s hand. I knew she had a crush on Brian and I didn’t want her to embarrass herself.

‘My mom was so mad,’ Kyung-Ju said, dodging me. ‘It was bad enough I wanted to study palaeontology, but I couldn’t even be the best at it.’

‘I just got lucky.’

‘Don’t sweat it, Kyung-Ju,’ Brian said, ‘you get to stay here with the rest of us, while Miss Glamourpants gets her hands dirty.’

Brian threw his arm casually around me, his unshaved chin bristling against my cheek. I smelled whisky. His beard reminded me of the concert, your fingers entwined in mine. I let a small sound escape my lips. Brian lingered, leaning towards me, and I thought about kissing him, because I wanted so much to kiss you. Brian had asked me out during our department orientation, and I had laughed it off, saying we had only just arrived, there would be plenty of time for romance. He hadn’t repeated the offer, and soon everyone knew about Rashid. I pushed him away gently now and wrestled Kyung-Ju’s paper cup from her hand. ‘That’s enough,’ I said. ‘Here, eat some cashews.’ I steered her towards the sofa, supporting her head as she leaned against the armrest.

‘I wanted it more than you,’ Kyung-Ju said, her voice cracking.

‘I’ll whisper your name into the dust,’ I said.

I wandered onto the porch, wishing you’d given me your phone number. I would call and tell you about the party, the people spilling onto the tiny patch of grass in front of the house, Kyung-Ju’s head rolling forward onto her arms, the smell of cigarettes and baked fruit. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and started sending Rashid a text. It was a few lines long before I gave up, unable to capture the thread of feeling that had begun to unspool inside me: a sadness at having to leave this place, which I had always treated as temporary, and a parallel restlessness, an eagerness to go because the conversations were folding back onto themselves, and I was thinking about the woman who gave birth to me, tucked away in some part of my country, and that, out of loyalty to my parents, I would probably never know, because the word biological was terrifying to them, and had never been uttered.

Bettina came through the door with two of her fellow anthropologists, Suzu, who wore her blonde hair in a pile of dreadlocks, and Chandana, an Indian woman I had never particularly liked. I wondered who had invited her. ‘Hey girl,’ Bettina said, ‘we’ve been looking for you.’

‘I was dealing with Kyung-Ju. She’s drunk.’

‘I know. She threw up in the kitchen.’ Bettina leaned against the railing, while Suzu pulled a red packet out of a small purse she wore around her neck. Chandana joined me on the porch step, sitting a little closer than I wanted her to.

‘Brian’s taking her home now.’

‘I don’t think she’s used to drinking,’ Suzu said. ‘What did you put in that sangria?’

‘Nothing,’ Bettina said.

‘She’s rebelling,’ Suzu said. ‘Do they drink where you come from, Zubaida?’

‘Yes and no,’ I said, recalling the parties I had gone to in high school, where the booze was in plain sight. ‘Officially, no. But everyone drinks.’

‘Everyone? Surely not everyone. Not the farmer, or the rag-trade worker,’ Suzu said, lighting a cigarette.

I rolled my eyes. ‘When I said everyone, I meant everyone I know.’

‘Zubaida doesn’t like us to have stereotypes about Bangladesh,’ Bettina said.

‘Like what?’

‘Like that it’s full of fatwas and poor people,’ Bettina said, looking to me for approval.

I was feeling contrary, so I said, ‘Except that it is.’

‘Oh, fuck that. You spend three years lecturing me and now you’ve what, changed your mind?’ The scent of Suzu’s clove cigarette enveloped us in a spicy, acrid fog.

‘Suzu,’ I said, ‘it’s like 1993 in your mouth.’

‘So you’re saying your country is portrayed accurately in the Western media,’ Bettina persisted.

‘It’s exactly like that. Political in-fighting, radicals on the loose, child marriage, and climate disaster around the corner. No one should want to go anywhere near it.’

Suzu turned her thumb ring around and around. ‘I have no idea what you guys are talking about,’ she said.

‘That’s because you’re smoking that shit,’ Bettina said, waving her hands in front of her face. ‘Zubaida met someone.’

Suzu dropped her cigarette and pressed it into the grass. ‘I thought you had a boyfriend.’

‘I did. I do.’ I wanted to change the subject, so I turned to Chandana. ‘What about you?’ I asked. ‘Dating anyone?’ She was one of those Indian women who adorned herself with enough silver jewellery to set off a metal detector. Her ears were pierced in multiple locations, her nose had a ring with a chain that connected to her earring, and her bangles chimed every time she raised her arms. Bettina hadn’t given herself permission to make fun of her until I started calling her ‘full bridal’, because, as far as I knew, only a fully decked out Indian bride would wear a nose-ring like that. I assumed Chandana had many sexual conquests, that she would marry an ethnomusicologist or a sculptor, but she said, ‘Oh, my parents will only approve if I marry a Tam-Bram.’

I knew what she meant, but Suzu and Bettina did not. ‘A Brahmin boy from my home state, Tamil Nadu,’ she explained.

‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ I said.

‘Doesn’t it?’

‘So how does it work?’ Bettina asked.

‘Every few weeks I get a phone call, and it’s some banker or doctor on the other end, and he’s the nicest guy in the world, and so boring he could put a rabid dog into a coma. And then we go out on a date to an expensive restaurant, and then I go home and tell my parents he’s not the one.’

‘Do they mind?’ Suzu asked.

‘What restaurant?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I’ve been to them all. Craigie on Main, Aujourd’hui. They like their French food, even if they’re vegetarian and can only order the cheese soufflé. Once a guy even flew me to Miami. And my parents like to see me trying.’

‘How do you get anything done?’

‘It’s very time-consuming. I almost failed my comps.’

‘What happens if you fall in love with someone?’ Bettina said.

Chandana and I rolled our eyes at each other. ‘I was dating this white guy last year, and my parents found out and they totally freaked. I mean, my mother had to double up on her blood pressure medication. It wasn’t worth it.’

‘That’s terrible,’ Suzu said.

‘Oh, it can’t be that bad,’ I said. ‘Craigie on Main is a really good restaurant. Rashid took me last year.’

‘So you’re going to marry this guy or what?’ Chandana asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. That moment of clairvoyance was finally catching up with me. ‘I’ve known him my whole life, my parents adore him. And he’s sexy as hell, everyone’s always telling me how lucky I am.’

‘You should’ve broken up with him years ago,’ Bettina said.

‘It just gets harder when your parents are attached,’ Chandana said.

I put my head on Bettina’s lap and thought for a moment about what it would’ve been like if I had ended it with Rashid. We had been together since high school. When he’d gone to college in London the year before I left for America, I had told myself I would give it six months, but I found Dhaka dull without him, and when I left for college myself, I found his telephone calls, made precisely on time every morning before I went to class, comforting through that first, long New England winter. In March, which your people call spring, but when the ground is still as hard and white as a funeral, he had come to visit, renting a car and driving up from Boston, bringing a suitcase full of things he had smuggled through customs and cooking khichuri and potato bhorta in the tiny kitchen in the basement of my dorm. That was when I think I decided — watching his fingers casually wrapped around the top of the steering wheel as he drove me through snow-banked roads. After he finished university, he moved home to join his father’s business. He was always there when I went back for the holidays, taking my parents out for their birthdays and anniversaries, filling something of the emptiness I had left behind. There were sometimes men I liked, men I flirted with, but no one I could ever imagine bringing home, because home is where I knew I must eventually end up, no matter how long or sweet the wandering.