palate
a short story, written in the summer of 2024
Content warning: Sexual assault, violence, body image
Every month, I pay a Pakistani woman fifty dollars to rip little black hairs off my body and tell me I’ve lost weight. I wonder why I do it when I cover my skin in baggy jeans and band t-shirts. Old habits die hard. We small talk. I ask her about her daughter, who’s at college. She asks me about my trip to New York. I lie through my teeth while she makes my skin turn red. The wax is too hot, I say. She tuts and blows on it before buttering me with her dull knife like a piece of bread, but her efforts are futile. The wax still burns. I lay silent and flat and remember every bad thing that’s happened to me. She utters “Alhamdulillah” under her breath as she waxes my stomach. I imagine her thanking god that her daughter isn’t like other girls her age. My eyebrows come out too rounded. I look like a sullen girl.
Four in. Four rest. Four out.
His poster choices were calculated and algorithmic, painting him to be the sensitive, artsy man who was in touch with his emotions. Radiohead records shined above his Fender Telecaster. A rejector of toxic masculinity. The nice guy with pierced ears that complimented his black nails. For a boy so fixated on his guitar playing rock-and-rollness, there appeared to be nary a callous on his soft fingers, adorned with Goodwill rings. He told me on a bench in Central Park that he liked Taylor Swift’s Red. The ice cream tasted sweet on my tongue.
Soft jazz hummed on his vinyl player, crackling repeatedly off the rotating disc. Outside, gaggles of girls in mini-skirts and going out tops clicked their heels on the pavement in a narcotic frenzy. Their phones buzzed with desperate exes. They carefully left their hearts on the sidewalk before getting into their Ubers. The air was festering with pungent immaturity.
My guts were shrinking back into me. A permanent ring lingered around my areola, like an ever-lasting cigarette burn. Fondling it was a foreign finger, familiar to its peculiarities like it was its home. I was melting slowly. Stuck to another body. I cringed at the sweat dripping down my back. My vision flickered like an old-timey film reel.
I felt his gaze on me, focused on his task. My eyes were on the minifridge in the corner of the room. I wanted to touch it. Lick it. Flatten my nose against it and inhale all that lovely plasticky scent. I contemplated running into the minifridge for refuge. But I was 5’10 and far too wide for it. My family joked constantly about my broad-shouldered physique. My body was always a well-visited point of discussion at home- my height, fast metabolism, my comically large feet and hands.
I was shaking like a leaf. Could he see that? Or was it all in my head? What do you think he had stored in there? He was really into pop-tarts. Went on and on about it on their first date. A humid, stuffy afternoon in Central Park, accompanied by mild conversation and the wafting smell of Concrete Jungle piss.
Nevertheless, I blushed. A life-altering flavour of blush. Was it the blush that landed me here? It’s not like I could really blush anyway; that was all artificial. My brown skin prohibited any white inconveniences akin to blush. The blush was more of a sensation. On him, it was a permanent colouring. In my peripheral vision, I saw his skin splattered a tomatoey red.
He did ask me if I wanted to eat, but the adrenaline was enough to satisfy my appetite. He was ravenous. While I picked at a stroopwafel, wondering how they made them so thin, he devoured a flaky croissant. Piece after piece failed to make it into his mouth, resting on his thin, pale lips. The caramel lattices crept up my throat as he licked his lips. The pieces remained there, the lip licking a useless act, but they were now coated by teenaged drool.
I could snag his food and make a run for it, I remember thinking. Dine and dash. Or I could go back to the time, the moment taking place right now in the second on this day of the month of this year. Inevitably, it would have to happen. Melting was no option.
A tug on my jean zipper snapped me back to reality. I recoiled and, instead of punching the motherfucker, I gently pushed his hands away. Like some kind of nobility. Like a mild-mannered mother out of a Victorian novel, keeping her husband away from the Battenberg cake. And whispered, in the demurest of voices, that I didn’t want to do that. That I wasn’t comfortable.
I used to be a boisterous young kid with what my teachers called ‘an active imagination’. Accompanied by my pockmarked, freckled friends, I would march downstairs to play. Sometimes, we’d play Real Life- I enjoyed this more than most. I commandeered the storyline; my gal pals and I were always three fabulous fashionistas working glamorous jobs in Los Angeles with dreamy boyfriends. Plastic cash registers jingled with coins stolen from our parent’s pockets as we babbled, playing receptionist, chef, or veterinarian. There was added drama, too- one of us would always get into a car crash after a fiery lovers’ spat. But it’d be fine, for by the end of the game, there would be a grand wedding, a rosy-cheeked baby, and all would be well before dinnertime.
A kid with all access to the internet, I’d learnt about the dangers of the world, dangers I was unlikely to be subjected to in my gated neighbourhood, but ones I feared nonetheless. Thus, I taught my friends a strategy; in the case of disgusting pervs, one of us would go for the eyes and gouge the threat’s goopy eyeballs out, whilst the other would rev up her leg to go straight for the target- that mysterious entity we had then dubbed the ‘Private Part’. What was private about it, though, I had no idea. The private part seemed to rule everyone’s lives- lust, fear, power, greed, and, in some cases, Love. Anyway, fighting a creep was not a nuanced, consequential occurrence. It was as simple as a tutorial video. The concept wasn’t a fog of grey. It was a punch to the balls and a scrape to the eyes. And a call to 911.
Was he… abashed? His eyes were downturned, flickering between my tits and the tiled floor. Although not my eyes. He avoided those two. Perhaps he knew that if he looked at those things, he’d grasp the weight of the situation. See my shame floating in spheres of brown.
The mouth remained closed. He recognised no fault in his actions. However, I did. Was it on me? Naively accepting this invitation, strolling into my own personal hell, expecting nothing less than an innocent peck and a hug goodbye?
I leapt into his arms, enveloping him in a hug. On my tiptoes so as to reach my head above his shoulders and breathe in the vacant space behind him. The hug was a desperate apology. A “sorry I didn’t fuck you” message.
I stared at the minifridge. So strikingly that I thought my eyes would float out of their sockets and land straight on the dusty door, worn beyond repair. It looked poetic, reflecting light shining on the SONY logo. He gripped tightly on my waist, bulging through denim shorts. I pulled away from him like shrapnel.
He looked at me now. Really looked at me. A look that can’t entirely be translated into words.
“Actually, I’m kinda hard right now.”
With one blow, he was on the ground, clutching his ‘hard’ part. I howled and got on all fours, scratching every legible part of his body. I kicked his face until he bled, until his Ray-Bans had cracked. My chequered, grimy Vans were in his mouth. He was choking on them. Contracting a crew of mysterious subway-originated diseases from the sole.
That isn’t really what happened. When I tell the story like this, the real ending is unsatisfying.
Why aren’t you eating?
I looked at the greasy, towering burger with a perplexing fascination. A 600-calorie monstrosity with layers on layers. Erotically pieced together like my own body. Hair, boobs, long legs, luscious lips. Brioche bread, cattle-farmed beef, ripe tomato, gouda cheese. The no-name chef probably cut that tomato with such delicate care. Toasted the bread with Irish butter. Put his heart and soul into that burger. I searched for my hunger. Long and hard, hard, hard.
It was there somewhere; I was sure of it. But it wasn’t there for the burger. It sought something else, more fulfilling. Something that would make me salivate.
I wasn’t anywhere tangible.
Sitting ten steps above me was her. Bones peeking through a lemon-print tank top, a skeleton-esque nine- year old with long braided hair and coral christened lips. Fishing out pennies from her pocket to buy one multicoloured ice lolly. Sitting on the playground steps. Basking in the sun, baked brown.
My own skin started to warm, and I plopped down next to her on dusty cement, stretching out my weak legs. Our hands intertwined, matching callouses meeting their pair.
She shuddered at the wind, and I laughed to myself. She returned to me a devious smile, its efforts at intimidating me weakened by her metallic teeth.
When it rained back home, and the sun no longer kept me company, I felt her behind me again, twirling flowers in my hair.
“So? Your eyebrows? You like?”
“Yeah. No, I really like them.”
I tip Aunty an extra ten dollars for her trouble. For her smooth ignorance of the new friends on my arms.
She looks at me with that familiar expression of worried mom. I stare at my fingers, now smooth as a baby’s butt.
“Chai?”
I hesitate but accept her offer. While she brews the chai, I look at the pictures on her counter.
I take a sip of it. The tea is scalding hot and burns my tongue.
“Aunty, I’ll have another sugar.”
This is the first post of yours I’ve come across and I am amazed. The way you write is something I can’t quite explain <3