Chapter 11 Asma #2
When Asma lifted her head, she saw Ruby holding out a black swimsuit to her. She had already taken off her sweatshirt and was wearing a swirly multicolored Speedo underneath.
“I’m going to go stretch on the deck. Meet me out there when you’re ready.” With that, Ruby put her bag in a locker. “Oh, I also brought you a towel because the rec center’s ones are tiny.” She handed Asma a beach towel with an orange sunset on it and the lock.
Asma sat for a moment on the bench and watched Ruby’s departing back, lithe and ripply with muscles Asma didn’t even know existed.
Ruby had thought of everything and planned each detail, not once making her feel awkward or dependent or weird.
Asma felt she was in the kindest and steadiest of hands and thought of Mamoo.
There was a part of her that wanted to tell Mamoo about Ruby.
But what was there to tell? What would he think?
She had grown up thinking there was nothing she could do that he would reject.
But was there a line? In their culture, where speaking about love between a man and a woman was off limits, was there even language for love between women?
She was sure that Mamoo at least would understand what the word lesbian meant, which was more than she could say for her mother, who didn’t understand the most basic things.
Asma remembered her mother’s confusion about what a teacher wrote on her report card in junior high. She had returned home one day to see her mother tapping the heavy cardstock paper on the kitchen table.
“Read what your science teacher wrote. Out loud,” her mother had said, passing the heavy cardstock paper to her.
Asma scanned the words crowding the paper, pivoting it sideways to read the writing sloping across the margins.
“‘Asma is an exceptional student. She is a quick study, always participates in classroom discussion, and demonstrates a depth of understanding of the materials. Challenges arise when she finishes her work before everyone else.’” Asma paused for a long moment.
“‘It is already difficult at this age to maintain focus, but especially for Asma, to whom the boys are drawn like honey.’”
“What does that mean?”
Asma looked at the report card lazily, caught between bemused indifference and her instinct to protect her mother.
She had choices. She could placate by creating a story that sounded believable in the moment, deny understanding of the note’s meaning, plead ignorance, distract, or prepare for a fight.
“I have no idea,” Asma said. “I didn’t write it.”
“But that phrase. It means something. Would a teacher write that a friend who’s a girl is ‘drawn to you like honey’?”
Asma was taken aback by her mother’s uncharacteristic persistence and opted for cajoling. “It’s nothing, Ami. Just that there are boys I’m friends with.”
“Yes, but what does it mean? You girls don’t tell me anything!”
She had felt sorry for her mother, who knew enough to be suspicious but not enough to jump to conclusions. Her translators to the culture and the language couldn’t be trusted. There were conflicts of interest all around.
Asma walked out on the pool deck and tentatively stepped into the shallow end of the water. She gasped at the cold and raised her arms.
“Go under all the way. Your body adjusts faster than doing it little by little.” Ruby wore a swim cap, which accentuated the sharpness of her cheekbones and the plushness of her lips.
She had already gone under and popped back to the surface, water dripping down her face.
She reached out and slipped her finger under one of Asma’s shoulder straps and traced it over Asma’s shoulder. “Your strap is all twisted.”
Asma forgot the chill of the water. The nerve endings from her entire body rushed to where Ruby had touched her, a tingling strand of burn. Ruby held Asma’s hand under the water and with the other gently pushed her under.
They practiced in the shallow side for thirty minutes.
Asma felt like she should be listening to Ruby’s verbal instructions but instead dazed out and listened only to the tone of her voice.
It was all she could manage, feeling Ruby’s hands on her—her back, her stomach, her arms, her head—and instinctively responding.
There was no fear. Ruby was there, guiding her.
Arms outstretched, neck relaxed, she floated on her back, looking up at the industrial metal beams above.
She was amazed. This felt like the most natural thing in the world, like she was born for this.
She had never felt so rooted in her body, so aware of every muscle and tendon and nerve.
Ruby swam laps while Asma, wrapped in a towel, watched rapt from the deck. Stroke, stroke, breath. Stroke, stroke, breath. The rhythm lulled her.
She had never before felt such a sense of power and agency emanating from within.
This was her body, and what she decided to do with it was her choice.
The simpleness of this basic truth thrilled her, leaving her slightly boneless.
It felt radical and dangerous. If this is what her religion was so fearful of, then perhaps her parents were right to be concerned, after all.