Hannah Tennant-Moore - Wreck and Order

“You must loose your hair for sleep,” Suriya says, brushing her knee-length black mane, resting one swath at a time over her forearm. “To make long your hair.”

I leave my hair in a messy topknot, exasperated by Suriya’s preening. She’s always smoothing out my shirts, brushing imaginary dust off my shoulders, asking if she can braid my hair. As if I need even more unwanted attention from men like Ayya. “I’m traveling,” I say. “I’m not trying to impress anyone.”

“But we must always look our best, no?” Suriya says. “For Sri Lankan peoples, if you dress a dirty shirt or messy hair, it is like a beggar. You understand?”

“Yes.” It’s wrong of me to insist on my right to comfortable slovenliness. But Suriya’s obsessive grooming makes me think of photos of my mother dressed like a little woman in the second grade, with her starched dress and permanent. Her mother made her sleep in rollers every night, just because that’s what one did then, even if one was six years old and tossed and turned all night because the rollers were too tight. To make a child suffer discomfort in order to appear a certain way: a mild form of barbarism. Now that children are free to dress however they want, they begin gleefully objectifying themselves in elementary school, courting power through miniskirts and high heels. I dressed that way, too. Freedom and power are not the same thing. It’s always refreshing to see a little girl haphazardly clothed, her hair messy, her eyes distracted by a million things besides how she looks. I feel like that girl in Sri Lanka, the one I should have been when I was eight. I understand this is a privilege denied to Suriya, and I know that I am exploiting it when I tell her I could care less how long my hair grows, I’m just trying not to die of heatstroke. She laughs. I love when she gets my jokes.

She combs her shiny hair through her fingers, staring at something I can’t see, her lips parted. “One time I brushed my boyfriend’s hair with my fingers,” she says. “He said, So gently. Your hands move so gently.” Her voice moves far away from the snoring cousin and the sloppy American visitor. “I was just thinking about that.”

I used to have those thoughts. It stings to remember that there was a time when I lay awake at night worrying about what bra to wear the next time I went to my boyfriend’s house.

“Do you still have that same boyfriend?” I ask. “The one you wrote me about?”

“Of course! I only love one.”

“Is he still working in Qatar?” When I met Suriya, he had just finished university and taken a computer-ish job abroad.

She nods. “I miss him more.”

“You haven’t seen him this whole time?”

“No. But we write letters. Sometime we talk on the phone.” The loose ends of Suriya’s straw mat grate across the concrete floor as she settles into bed. I roll onto my back. A spider disappears into a brick cave at the top of the wall. I wonder if Suriya’s calm goodness will survive her first contact with sex. Maybe it will. The first time will be with her husband, and it will hurt as it’s supposed to and she will be relieved when he finishes. Maybe she will never have orgasms and never miss them. She will never know why the snore of a man who has just climaxed inside you is the loneliest sound there is.

Suriya yawns. I raise myself on one elbow and whisper down. “You realize I’ve had sex before, right?”

She bolts upright. Her hair spills into the basket of her crossed legs. “You have done the sex?”

We stay up late, whispering over the snores and stirrings coming from the main room. I tell her about losing my virginity to my high school boyfriend, how happy I was during and afterward, and how I told my father and he brought me to the gynecologist and paid for my birth control pills. I explain birth control pills and condoms and IUDs. I tell Suriya that I love having sex. “I know your words are true,” she says. “But I cannot believe.”

Just as it is hard for me to believe that Suriya has never kissed her boyfriend on the lips because she is afraid it will lead to pregnancy; that there will be a white sheet on her wedding night and if there is no blood on it, her husband can demand an immediate divorce; that her married cousins all brag about being pure on their wedding night; that she knows it’s perfectly normal for some virgins not to bleed at all and her only feeling about sex since her big girl celebration is fear that she will be one of these godforsaken girls; that she thinks some boys in Sri Lanka do the self…(she grimaces, unable to complete the phrase), but girls would never, ever do the self…because they have too much fear for their wedding night; that she has a friend who had love for an older man and that man tricked her and made her to have sex and the girl became pregnant and the man’s family made him marry the girl and now she is nineteen and she has two kids and her husband is drunk and mean and angry that he is made to marry this poor girl; that where that girl went is a hell and Suriya will not go to that hell; that her boyfriend never tries to French kiss her or touch her body because he is protecting her until marriage, when she will be his forever and ever. She runs her hand down the side of her neck and kneads her collarbone.

In the middle of the night, I shake Suriya awake and ask her to come with me to the outhouse, saying I’m afraid of the dark. It’s not a lie. No longer surrounded by Suriya’s bustling family and oppressive sunshine, Ayya feels like a real threat.

—

I have been promised a lake. Ayya and Suriya walk on either side of me, our towels tied around our waists. I have no swimming costume — the long-sleeved bodysuit and knee-length skirt that Suriya wears over her bra and underwear — so I’ve covered up my bikini with running shorts and a T-shirt emblazoned with a map of the U.S., something I’d never wear at home. My sandal straps dig into my feet, puffy from the heat. Furry grasses form an arc over the narrow entrance to the lake. Women scrub saris with large brushes and take turns washing themselves under their sarongs, resting the bar of sun-colored soap on a rock when they’re finished. Their hands still as Suriya, Ayya, and I drape our towels over a tree branch. I hurry into the water to hide my Nike shorts, which I fear look ridiculous to the women and sexy to Ayya.

The shallows are frothy with laundry detergent and soap. But as the mouth of the passageway yawns into the open lake, the water becomes cool and clear. Tiny waves lap so rapidly against my chest that it feels like the same wave in endless dialogue with itself. Where? Here. Where? Here.

Suriya turns to me as the water covers my shoulders. “Akki, this lake very danger, okay? Have crocodile, okay?”

“Right now?” I splash wildly, hopping toward shore.

“Not now. Sometimes have. It’s okay. My brother knows crocodile mantra.” She smiles and gestures me into the body of the lake, where the stares that had felt hostile as I waded in become curious and open. I dive and place my palms on the sandy bottom. Sun washes my pointed toes. When I emerge, Ayya is grinning, wide-eyed. “Married?” he asks, the first time he’s addressed me directly. I say no curtly and turn toward Suriya, floating on her back nearby. Surely he already knows from Suriya that I’m not married; this is just the come-on line that all Sri Lankan men use, usually followed by, “You come with me, madam.” Instead, Ayya shouts, “Single rocks forever,” the first English sentence I’ve heard him speak. My surprise makes me laugh. He imitates my handstand, his feet paddling the air. I wish I could relax and be friendly toward him. But he’s made it impossible. I swim away. Water tickles my wrists. I lean backward, squint at the sky, go under.