Hot (Brown) Girl Summer by Nifath Karim. (@nifathkarim)

[[[Naomi’s note: February 17, 2020. Nifath is a writer and is also my friend. She sent this to me over the weekend. I composed a long, tumbling list of reasons why I like this work, but I’d like to highlight 1) its sense of humor which is as biting as it is patient and 2) its effortless structure. I frequently have a hard time stomaching narrative prose, because the thing that leads to the next feels contrived. Not the case here. Plz enjoy <3]]]

Tonight is warm and my Uber driver has just dropped me off somewhere in Brooklyn. I am standing right now in the middle of the street, poised to be run over, trying to find anything that resembles a functional door on this broken block. My phone beeps and New Boy texts me again, this time it’s a Boomerang of him wielding a lightsaber over his crotch. I groan and keep looking for the door to his apartment and find it wedged between an unpleasantly graffitied wall and a boarded up Chinese takeout spot. There is light inside the Chinese place, it is bright and yellow and I realise it is the only source of illumination on this street. I think I can hear screams and laughter and silence in there all at once and I urgently buzz for New Boy to let me in.

            There are shoes, far too many, just outside the door to his apartment. I stop to count them before I knock— twenty-two pairs, plus several singles grouped sadly in the back. They’re mostly sneakers, but I count three pairs of dress shoes gathering cruel levels of dust on them. It reminds me of funerals back home when everyone would take their shoes off, stacking them on top of other shoes forming a filthy pile for people to dig through later, dupattas wrapped around their heads, packets of tehari in hand. Ammu would always put her sandals in a little plastic bag and carry it around with her and taught me to do the same. She didn’t like touching other people’s shoes, she said all the dirt in the world collects under them. Duniyaar Moyla.

            I knock and New Boy opens. He looks just like his photos, tall and pale with shiny black hair that is just shy of being greasy. His eyes take me in, my too-short shirtdress that would make Ammu faint, my hair bleached to oblivion, glitter falling from my lids when I blink. I know he is thinking about what I look like under my dress and I feel a sudden thrill at the realisation that I am about to be touched by someone who isn’t You.

            It’s a very small apartment, three bedrooms are almost squashed into one another, separated by walls thin enough to be poked through. I sit on the couch in the living room, my knees uncomfortably tucked behind the coffee-table positioned too close to me. New Boy gets me water in an emptied jar of pasta sauce, the label hasn’t been peeled off properly. I pick at it while he talks to me, telling me about his life and work and the time he smoked weed in Africa and in Cuba and how much he wants to go to India and smoke weed on the mountains. He looks at me at this point, hoping I will say something like “Ah yes, India, where I fed goats and played with cattle and did yoga naked.” Instead I say “That could be cool. I’ve never been to India.”

            “Oh, wild. So you’ve like, never been to your homeland?”

            “Uh I’ve been to my homeland, it’s just not India.”

            “Oh.Oh.” He pauses, thinks and says “word.”

            I spot a bottle of vodka on the table and gesture towards it.

            “I want you to tell me where I’m from and for every wrong answer you will do a shot.”

            He is almost too eager to get drunk and three shots later (Pakistan, Guyana, Sri Lanka) I tell him he can use Google for help while I use his restroom. Like the rest of the apartment this too is tiny and cramped, and I have a hard time imagining him sitting on this minuscule toilet. There’s no hand soap, just a bottle of face cleanser that is clearly being used beyond its potential. I stare at myself in the spotty mirror, bored with how good I look. I am struck suddenly by overwhelming anger at You for leaving me, leaving my face and my body, leaving me with no choice but to stand in this awful bathroom in this terrible apartment with New Boy who I am sure can’t say my name right. I think of the last time You said my name and it fills me up with crazy hurt.

            When I walk out of the bathroom he is jubilant. “Bollywood!” he exclaims. I smile sadly, say “you guessed it!” and lead him into his bedroom. He starts taking my clothes off, his fingers pinching at the fabric like he is touching salt. He is so pale under his shirt, I can almost see through him. When he finally takes my bra off he says “Oh, wow” but not in the way You’d say it, more like “Oh wow—brown.”

            We exchange sexual pleasantries for the next ten minutes, him pestering me with several variations of “does this feel good” while I respond with sounds that keep me from having to talk and lie. His bed creaks, actually squeaking like it does in movies and TV shows when sex is being suggested but not shown. Your bed never made a sound and I wonder if it was because our sex was never this athletic, or if your bed was just constructed better.

            When he’s finished he pulls me close in a surprisingly tender embrace and starts snoring almost immediately. He smells like You, he uses the same deodorant I think. I detach myself and sit up, looking around the room. I spot the lightsaber leaning against his closet door. It looks like a toy and I am tempted to put it away, to clean up this room with too many things on the dresser, too many clothes on the floor, too many books untidily stacked on his table. I think of Ammu cleaning my room, the way she’d arrange books by size, hang clothes by color, put all my dumb knickknacks into neat groups on my dressing table. He keeps snoring and I get up, start folding and clearing and arranging. When I’m done I stand back to look at my handiwork and I wonder how I ended up here, mothering this man who feels like a child. He sucks on his thumb and farts in his sleep. I dress quietly and walk out of his room. I can hear one of his roommates using the bathroom so I wait on the couch.

            I open Messenger on my phone and scroll down, down, down until I find my last conversation with Ammu. It was right after I told her about You, almost a year ago, and she’d insisted I end it or I would never hear from her again. I open the thread and read the messages I haven’t looked at in forever—me explaining how wonderful and perfect you were in your non-Islamic, non-Desi-ways, her texts angry and short and full of warning of the dangers of Bideshi Boys. I look at her profile photo and realise it’s changed since the last time I saw it. Since the last time I saw her.

            The roommate steps out of the bathroom and spots me on the couch. He’s shirtless and very blond, the hair on his chest looks like dust. We smile and he approaches me.

            “Hey.”

            “Hi.”

            “You’re that Indian chick he’s been talking about.”

            “I’m not Indian. But I probably am the chick in question.”

            “Oh, word! My bad.”

            He looks at me like he wants to flirt but isn’t sure how to do it. I get up and walk past him into the bathroom. I look at myself in the mirror like I’ve done so many times after we’d have sex. I would glow then but now I feel hollow and a little tired from cleaning his room. I suddenly want to cry. I want to call You and cry. I want to call Ammu and cry.

            When I step out of the bathroom the roommate is sitting on the couch, he looks at me like he has a plan of action now.

            “You know we couldn’t figure out how to say your name, so we just call you Hot Brown Girl.”

            “That’s-nice.”

            “So like, where are you from then?”

            I eye the vodka on the table and rethink it.

            “Bangladesh. I’m from Bangladesh.”