Movement (15 page)

It was an abrupt fall. She hadn't noticed that she was sinking until she struggled for thirty or forty seconds. Then it seemed to take him minutes to hear her calling, hours to come running back across the sand.

His voice was ages above her. It said not to fight. Stay still. Reach out for his hand. She sank further and further. Then there was a strap, a belt, which she caught and gripped. She felt something holding on to her. She saw the camera sinking in the quicksand. She saw it and thought, I ought to reach out and save it. Save it. I ought to. But she was too exhausted for anything except being held.

“Let's go and wash off all this grime,” she heard a voice saying and followed him to the water.

They must have been lying on the beach for an hour before she awoke to find her head on his arm, her face toward the village. She didn't want to move. She didn't want to worry about how old she was, how old he was, what people would think, what she ought to think. Yesterday that anxiety had been impossible to see through or to write through. Now she turned to him and smiled wanly, wary of mirage.

“Do you feel well enough to walk?” he said.

“Yes,” she said, surprising herself with laughter. “I want to see the pirate's castle.”

The sun rode lower now, dodging behind the walls of the ruin. As they walked and ran a broken line across the sand, Morocco seemed miles behind them. The ship treading out there in the distance—Long John's or Matsui's—was their only company. Astonished by her energy, she climbed high to broken turrets. He chased her and she chased him around the outside. They caught each other and held on, laughing until they were both breathless. They kissed and held, like accomplices in a dream. The sun creased a thin red line between the pink sky and the ocean.

The sickness descended as they walked back to town. Susan threw up twice before they reached the hotel. Mohammed said not to worry. It was probably the fish. And the high wind. He wasn't feeling so well, himself. He ministered with toilet paper from her bag. They walked more and more slowly.

It all went too slowly. Step after step. She had to be careful about where to place each foot, about which part of the foot to put down first, to see that her shoe didn't fall off. She lost patience, and fell out of step. The film picked up speed. She watched with panic. She could not get back inside the film. She was too tired, too old, too late. Now. She must do something NOW. But in Berkeley it was still yesterday and in the film it was already tomorrow. Where was now?

Now the ache at the back of her head seemed to encompass her brain. So many odd dreams. Eerie. She must try to remember. So many. So weary. Soooooo sick. Her whole being seemed filled with poison. She rushed to the sink and barely finished vomiting before she felt the pain of shit coursing to her rectum. He woke and drearily asked how she felt. She rushed out the door and down the hall to the toilet. Down to the smell of other soft movements, evidenced by the greenybrown tissues tossed in the stinking basket next to the toilet. She examined the color critically in comparison to her own. She was not, after all, alone. She answered his knock on the door cheerfully, as if she were expecting friends to tea. Fine. She was fine. Why didn't he go back to his own room? He needed his sleep. She would be fine on her own.

Susan spent the next four hours between her sink and the toilet. She tried to console herself by translating the multilingual graffiti, by gauging the pounds she was losing, by planning her itinerary. She could pick up a secondhand Instamatic in Marrakech. She didn't want to leave him, but she
had
to get going on the article. Maybe around American Express she could find a camera; kids were always running out of money and selling things. Maybe Mohammed could do some travelling with her. She had two weeks to get down to the desert and back up to the Rif. He would enjoy being a guide. And she could return the favor when he came to California; she could introduce him to her friends. They would notice the change in her. She noticed it already.

His eyes were heavily shadowed, as if he were the one who hadn't slept. She must tell him she was really all right. She wasn't the sick tourist he saw. She was really all right.

“I think you ate something unfamiliar,” Mohammed said once again. “Probably the fish.”

“I'll be OK,” she whispered.

“If you're sure,” he said. “I might go to see my cousin.”

Susan considered his earnest face and tried not to see a student asking permission to leave the room.

“I'll be fine alone,” she said.

But after five minutes, she realized she didn't want to be alone. So she pulled out the letter to Hilary.

“Sorry this has been so fragmented. Have decided to postpone menopause for a while. I'm no longer a hoary witch. I know this will offend your feminist sensibilities, but this man makes me feel so alive.” Susan took frequent intermissions at the sink and the toilet. It became harder and harder to continue. However, she needed to stay awake, away from the nightmares. She had to sort it out now. She fought off the drowsiness. If only Hilary could understand. If only she could convince Hilary.…

“Mohammed makes me feel like I have a right to be young.” Hilary would have to agree that she shouldn't be ageist. And anyway, what is young? Certainly not someone who has moved all around North Africa since he was thirteen working for different uncles and grandfathers. Not someone who has enough determination to get an American scholarship. Not someone gentle enough to sit up the entire night with me. What is old? Susan could barely keep awake.

She imagined or saw or dreamed,
Hilary, lotus position in her jeans on a conveyor belt. Singing spirituals to the sisters in the factory. Giving the women a chance to rest while she's on the assembly line. Hilary reaches over and hugs Chrissie Moore. Gives Emma Dickson a male doll for the baby. Hands Maud the address of a safe abortionist. She raises her hands and conducts them in hymns of consciousness. She is approching Susan. “All those who see the light step forward,” she sings, “join me on the Kotex belt.
”

“
Come on, Susan, swim. Catch me. Come on, further out. Don't you have waves in California? Come on, just to the other side of the castle. Come on. Don't give up. Don't give up.
”

She woke up exhausted; vomited; shat; fell back into the race.
Different this time. The wind moved her. She never dreamed she would make it to the Olympics. Crowds were cheering. She thought they were cheering. She ran faster, but she still couldn't hear. She couldn't recognize the faces of the spectators now: Hilary, Mother, Mohammed, Guy, her little brother and a very young, unfamiliar boy were all waiting on the other side of the tape. Panic gripped her heart. Whom was she running against? Where was she running to? She could hardly breathe. What were they yelling? To go a different way? To speed up? To take longer strides? Where were the other runners? Maybe close behind. She would not turn around. Instead she kept her eyes ahead, looking past the spectators, looking beyond their mute faces, oblivious to everything except the power in her own legs. And the silence.

Her legs ached. Everything ached when she awoke. But she no longer felt nauseated or cramped. Nothing left to vomit or shit. She was still tired, but
so
much better. Warm winds gathered outside, lapping the sidewalk with waves, splashing the flowers in and out of the open window.

Mohammed appeared out of nowhere with some boiled rice. He said she would be all right. His cousin, the doctor, said it was just the forty-eight hour tourist tummy. She would be all right.

Yes, she nodded, gobbling the rice with surprising appetite. She said she felt better already.

He put his arm around her shoulder and together they watched the still sleeping village. Two tourists, wearing irridescent orange backpacks, climbed the hotel steps. The maid wiped mucky circles with her rag. Otherwise, the streets were quiet. Wheelbarrows leaned against the scala. The pier was vacant of fishermen and sardine chefs. Ships bobbed lazily in the now crowded harbor. She kissed Mohammed and they lay back on the bed together.

Susan had been closed so long that she was afraid she was locked. But the slopes of his body smoothed her hands. The hard muscles of his calves gripped her thighs. His arms roped around her back. He hardened against her stomach and she allowed herself to want. They filled the bed with relief, joy, hunger, surprise. She had lied to herself, by herself, so long. Afterwards, he slept like he had not allowed himself to do during her illness. Susan lay awake, soothed by that even breathing.

And she played with a splinter of fear. Was this real? How long could it last? Would he make the rest of the trip with her? What would her mother say about all this weight she had lost? Would Hilary think she was a whore? “Whore!” “Hure!” “Putain!” Silence. She heard nothing. But she wasn't listening for the voices anymore. Or for the echoes. She heard nothing. Closing her eyes, she waited peacefully for the aroma of coffee and the crocketing of wheelbarrows from the street below.

Aunt Victoria

My Aunt Victoria came back from Moscow tonight. She is my favorite aunt, of all my mom's sisters, even though I have hardly ever seen her during the fifteen years of my life.

“Victoria is a dancer before and after everything else,” my mother was explaining to my father, who doesn't like dancing, on the highway to JFK Airport. It was just mom and dad and me in the car because we knew Aunt Victoria would be tired after flying for so long. My mom was in a bad mood because she had just had a terrible fight with my sister Marie who had to stay home and babysit the younger kids.

“How come she gets to go?” Marie yelled, meaning me.

“Because she actually takes the time to write to your aunt,” mom said.

Marie doesn't see much use in writing anything. She's seventeen and engaged to Kevin Cagney. So she called me a
prima donna,
and thinking I wouldn't know what it meant, she also called me, “teacher's pet.” Of course I told her she was just jealous. Then my mom told me to keep still or I wouldn't get to go either.

My dad hates the ride to JFK. “What does being a dancer got to do with us turning our lives upside down when she comes?” he wanted to know.

“She's an artist,” said my mom. “She needs the right conditions. She would go crazy trying to find her way on the airport bus.”

“She's crazy altogether,” he said. “She's too nervous to look into your eyes when she talks. And she's always yapping about London or Paris or some goddamned place you never heard of. What's she coming home for anyway?”

I could have answered them that. I just got a letter from her last week. She always writes on blue vellum with black ink.

But my mom was talking already. “Oh, dear, when Victoria called, it was such a garble. She said she just wanted to see us all. She said that we, meaning the two of us, would go up to Manhattan to see a ballet together.”

“Swell,” he said. “We're the limousine so Ms. Big Shot can do her business. Last time she dropped by America, she didn't even fucking bother to call.”

“She was just in Washington for one benefit performance,” mom said. “And will you please watch your language.”

“Listen, the more Susie Q. in the back seat there knows, the less likely she'll grow into.…”

“She's shy,” I said, and I was going to tell him how much Aunt Victoria missed us, too, but my mom told me to be quiet and not to interrupt my father.

When we saw Aunt Victoria at the airport, she didn't look very shy or lonely. She looked like an empress. Her hair was piled high with silver combs. She was wearing a red velvet skirt and a beautiful black shawl with flowers on it. She talked all the way home in the car and after dinner she gave everybody presents. She brought mom and dad a samovar and Marie a painted box and I'm really excited because she brought me a shawl just like hers—black with flowers. When mom sent us all to bed, dad seemed happier. He was drinking vodka and listening to Aunt Victoria's funny stories about Russian toilets.

I can still hear them laughing from the living room. Mom said it was all right to sit up late and write, if I didn't tell my sister Marie. And she told me we should put away the shawl for a couple of years. She said it was a little too dark for someone only fifteen years old.

IX

Aerogramme

Dear Susan,

Drizzling here. I'm approaching that London dilemma of whether to risk the fumes of my gas fire or bear the cold a while longer. God, I envy your California respite. We've all missed you terribly these last months.

Even Pia misses Susan, but that's more than she'd admit to me. Of course, Pia is what Susan wants me to write about. How is Pia? Why hasn't Pia sent more than a postcard? Listen, none of us counted on much more from Pia. Once we had hoped she would go back to the States with Susan. At least for a time. For her own sake. Susan and the sun would have kept her much warmer than the Dutch gin.

I was delighted when they got together. Thought it would be good therapy for Pia and it might purge Susan of some innocence. Every woman I know who's had a lesbian affair in London has been with our Pia. For Susan, though, it turned out to be much more than an affair. It
was
Susan's turn. Or mine, but I decided a long time ago that I'm basically asexual. Anyway, I had seen their affair coming for a while. Even had something to do with it. A few initial phone calls, if you know what I mean. And I did bring Susan to Sara's wedding, which is the night she first slept with Pia.

Sara's wedding was Mardi Gras for sure. The last fling. Touches of celebrity. Made
Londoner's Diary
because Sara was “The West End Feminist.” The newspapers weren't the only place Sara was panned for “giving in and getting married.” Anyway, we all wore black—all her friends—completely without collusion. Well, Pia always wore black. But that night everyone did. Even Susan, who was forever tented in those North African reds and oranges. She hung up her Goulimime beads for a long silver chain. Sara, in her flowered Liberty cotton, was too pissed on Daddy's champagne to notice the mourning tones when we all paraded in at ten p.m. She didn't notice Pia's strained charm turn to wild dancing turn to intimate chat about the scars of Catholic daughterhood with Susan.