Diana Abu-Jaber - Birds of Paradise

“Well, a little maybe.” He gives her a subtle smile. “Nothing big.”

“Brother.”

“Are you jealous?”

“Eww!” she erupts. “Oh my God. You are just so queer and gross.” But she doesn’t leave the hammock. She remains, pressed shoulder to shoulder, side by side. It’s like catching a glimpse of something distant, to feel her body spark with attraction, and even better, to not have to act on it. They rock drowsily. The air smells of the ferns and dirt and stone, the before-rain. Her mother used to open the front door and ask, Smell the rain? She’d hold a conch shell to Felice’s ear and say, Hear the ocean? And Felice did, both her hands gripping the base of the whorl.

Without warning, Hannah Joseph comes into her mind. Felice turns her head as if she could brush the thoughts away, but it’s too late. She remembers how Hannah hated everything about Miami — even some of the best things, like the hooked-nosed white ibises roaming around in the grass and the flowers that blew up into winter foliage — a tree or bush opening overnight into flower like perfumed flames. All of it bothered Hannah, who’d walked around with her arms folded against her chest, complaining, “It isn’t like this in Connecticut. The grass is softer there. And the trees are normal and leafy .” At first everyone wanted to be like her. Felice and Bella and Yeni, the most popular girls, replicated even the way Hannah folded her arms.

Felice remembers Hannah saying, This isn’t even like America!

That’s what she’d say, in the cafeteria, at recess, in class. “You guys don’t realize how not-American you are…” she’d begin. Even the teachers would chuckle, a cowed, embarrassed look on their faces.

Pressing the heels of her palms against her closed eyes, Felice waits until the image of Hannah fades into the gray dissolve behind her eyes.

GRADUALLY THE RUMBLING comes closer and the humidity builds until Felice and Emerson are caught in a powdery, confectionery shower. They climb out of the hammock and run through the door to the kitchen. Derek is sitting at the table with a pad covered with columns of numbers. “Where you two been?” Derek mutters, not looking up.

Emerson walks past him into the guest bath, then returns with a big towel. He seats Felice at the table, chair turned out, and begins to run the towel along her arms and legs, rumpling it around her scalp. Felice doesn’t move while he does this, her back straight and head lifted. Even Derek is silent; he puts down his pen, as if a ceremony of some sort is taking place. No one has touched her like this since she was eight or so years old: she feels a fine, prickling heat on her skin as he finishes.

There’s a muffled snort: Derek, his tipped smile. “Nice.”

She turns away, infuriated — just another street kid, wrecking everything; acting as if some sort of performance has been staged for his pleasure. She wants Emerson to smash him, but he hangs back as if abashed. She stands. “I’m getting the fuck out of here. And you two homos can go fuck yourselves.”

“Woo-hoo!” Derek leers. “Nice mouth.” Emerson shoves him so hard his chair scrapes back a few inches. Derek grabs the arms of his chair. “The fuck, man?”

Felice goes to the living room, seizes her deck and her bag as Emerson runs after her. “Felice, what?” He follows her out the front door. “Hey, talk to me.”

It’s still sprinkling; her clothes wither with moisture. She tosses back the damp cables of her hair, ducks a branch of sea grape tree, then opens the iron gate. “You could’ve just told me you were gay.”

“Felice. Jesus. I’m not gay.”

Felice stops and slaps her deck on the street. “Then that just makes it worse, doesn’t it?” She’s yelling. She can’t help it. The feelings seem to come from outside of her body, possessing her, tightening her lungs, her rage like a screw tightening in her temples. So angry she’s crying, the tears nearly springing from the corners of her eyes. It doesn’t make sense; it’s like some feathery thing beating the air around her, all betrayal and humiliation. He puts his big, dumb hand on her, which enrages her more. She trips as she tries to kick away on her board, her vision speeding, unraveling. She trips again and nearly falls. Emerson follows her.

“Of course I want to — I want — Jesus… Please just listen for two seconds.” He trots in fronts of her, momentarily stopping her. She glares at his blond lashes and red cheeks. She thinks: Why do I even care?

“I want to be with you. Of course I want… you know. But I also want more than that. I don’t want to just… screw around.” Now he’s blushing, his face a dark, bruised color. “We’re more than that, Felice — we’re for real. I’ll take care of you and we’ll watch each other’s backs.”

Felice can barely hear him, thinking, Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you… a tattoo in her head. She doesn’t want to hear any more. She forces herself to lower her voice, to contain herself enough to say, “That’s just wonderful for you, Emerson.”

“Please, just, let’s try to—”

“No.” Her voice is scalding. Thoughts open in her mind, a thin white band, widening: he wants her to go backwards, to do things in that stupid, weak way. She will never be that way again. “No, Emerson . You aren’t listening right. I think you’re a big fake loser and Derek is a scumbag. Okay? Do you hear me yet? Are you getting that? That whole thing about Portland and strongman stuff — it’s never going to happen. We both know the reality. Just stay the fuck away from me.” She turns her back on his stricken face. Gets on her board and kicks away as hard as she can. A big silence behind her. She’s so furious she can’t tell the difference between the vibrations of her board and the powerful quaking that’s broken inside her body. As she rides, the unwanted image comes back to her: a girl’s face — streaked, hollowed out by shadow — she seemed to be crouching on the sidewalk. Even though Felice knows that isn’t right, it’s the way she remembers it.

FELICE FIRST NOTICED the starry spill of the girl’s hair when she appeared in French, the way it trembled with light when she answered questions or gave a toss of her head. The girl always had her hand up and knew more French than the rest of them — including Madame Cruz — actually correcting the teacher’s accent—“That’s tre-s ”—gently crushing the r in the back of her throat. “Not ‘trres,’” a Catalan roll off the tip of her tongue. The rest of the class tittered but the girl stared at Madame Cruz because, Felice realized, she was simply right.

Hannah was a year and a half older than Felice, in ninth, but the eighth and ninth graders took electives together. Felice ran into her in the hallway. It was easy for her to be bold — she was so pretty everyone wanted to be Felice’s friend. But Hannah was shy and self-possessed and even a little stuck-up, which attracted Felice. Not as easy to conquer as the other kids. Felice started sitting in the front of French class as well. Afterward the two girls walked to lunch together and Felice asked questions which Hannah answered in a low voice — hard to hear over the din in the corridors, her head lowered, books hugged to her chest.

“Where did you come from?”

“Litchfield.”

Felice lifted her eyebrows: almost everyone in her school had started from someplace else — usually their parents’ country.

Hannah said, “Before Litchfield, other places.”

“What do your parents do?”

“My dad’s a surgeon. My mom is an ophthalmologist.”

“Why did you move here?”

Hannah scrutinized Felice a moment before she replied, “Dad thought it was too white. In Litchfield.”