Wax Doll

artwork by amina

a drop of sweat is born
above her eyebrow
it slowly gathers weight
attains adulthood
until the moment
it is perfectly
Formed
then motion
Heaviness
breaks apart its surface
its liquid interior coming
forth, the drop slides
inexorably downwards
and disappears
Juthi and Dina were sitting in Juthi's dining room, surrounded by the remains of their lunch. The summer heat was as liquid a presence as rain, though it hadn't rained yet. Today. Juthi's grey cotton kameez was dark with sweat, but she was determined not to switch on the air conditioner. It wilted her. A momer putul, a little wax doll, said her grandfather.
"The last thing I want," Juthi was saying, "is a love marriage."
Dina snorted, "No one does arranged marriages anymore. Not unless there's a mullah or hijabi in your immediate family. And that's not your family." She eyed Juthi's father's liquor cabinet meaningfully. "Speaking of which, I am a little thirsty…"
Juthi shook her head. She knew what havoc love had wrecked so far. For her parents. For her parents' friends, Shagor Uncle and Modhu Aunty. For Juthi's own friends, Sal and Madhobi. Even Tahsin's maid had fallen for love, and Juthi saw her crying every time she went over to Tahsin's. It was like a virus, these love marriages, multiplying everywhere she looked.
"It's not as if there's much difference in the weddings any more," Juthi retorted, "Arranged marriages aren't all crying brides and mirrored looks. Or maybe all marriages are sad now. Remember Madhobi's posh love do?"
"Oh, he was gross! I don't know what Madhobi saw in him."
"Don't be horrible. She loved him," Juthi said. They were both laughing now.
All these examples made Juthi afraid. Afraid for all the rose-blinded couples, unable to see the love-propelled disaster descending. Afraid for her own chances at marital joy. She wasn't going to get married just to get divorced. She knew how hard it was, even when you loved someone to pieces. She was going to be prepared.
"Ok, fine," Dina said, "I know divorces suck, but at least it means you're not stuck in some shit marriage for the rest of your life, like before."
"Granted," Juthi replied, "But I'm not talking about that. In the old days, you had to fight tooth and nail to get into a love marriage. So you'd to choose carefully, and God forbid you picked poorly, because after all that trouble, who'd want to walk away? Who could?"
"So what's your point? People aren't choosing carefully now?"
"Yes! Because it's so much easier now to have love. People pick carelessly and then compounding the problem, they try less."
"Ok, fine, so you let someone else choose your husband for you, but who chooses? Your parents?"
Juthi laughed. She would make it happen. Through quips or quiescence. One way or another. After all, Juthi still knelt for the Magrib prayer. It was the only one she did now though she used to do all five when she was younger. When her mother left. When her father faded.
Dina had lost interest in the conversation and was tugging futilely at the drooping spikes of her hair. In an effort to regain her attention, Juthi picked up the sports page and intoned heavily, "It was not easy for the skipper to - ACCEPT - the fact that he was no longer… captain." She whispered the last word.
Dina started to shake in silent laughter. It was their favourite form of entertainment. Juthi's naturally hoarse voice at once mimicry, seduction, and melodrama. And the daily sports page was perfect for their purposes.
"What shocked me most was the way I was treated!" Juthi switched to a high-pitched socialite's whine, pressing her hands against her heart. She pranced up the dining room, her dopatta trailing behind her, her long hair syncopating with her undulating motion. When she turned, Dina was watching her eagerly with her heavily kohl-shadowed eyes.
"I pitch before you, skipper mine." Her hands cupped Dina's narrow shoulders, "My wicket heart has no chance against you. Give us a kiss."
Dina obliged. She leaned down and pressed her damp lips against Juthi's. Juthi was the first to break away, pounding heart, ribboned breath.
"I love your antics," Dina said easily. "Hey, let's have a splash of Amir Uncle's Bailey's and go to Tahsin's?"
"Sure," Juthi said even though she didn't really want to do either. Tahsin was home from Georgetown for the summer and ever since Juthi had introduced Dina to his crowd, she'd been spending time with them. Drinking, smoking, hooking up. The only reason Juthi went was because of Dina.
At Tahsin's mansion of a house, Dina kicked off her sandals into a pile of shoes in the foyer and ran up the gleaming granite stairs. Juthi prised hers off more slowly, and looked up to see the old maid watching her silently.
"How are you, Komola?" she asked, remembering her name at the last second. The last time she had seen Komola, the woman had been inconsolable. Juthi had not understood much of her garbled story of a man with strange eyes and a first wife. And Juthi had guessed this last: finding love, and then losing it. Juthi thought perhaps it was never there to begin with. Not real love anyway, the one that made you stay, no matter what.
Komola shrugged tiredly, "I'm here, as I've always been."
Juthi was lost in thought as she ascended the stairs. She stopped outside Tahsin's room, raucous voices filtering out through the half open door. She could see Dina lounging on the bed intertwined with four of their friends. More bodies were spread out on the floor. There was a boy she didn't recognise leaning against the wall, next to Shoma and Gorjon. Older than the rest of them, in a rain-stained kurta. She remembered her own clothes drenched against her body and pulled at her kameez uncomfortably. When she looked up again, she saw him watching her. Before she could react with a wink and smile, something passed between them. It had nothing to do with words, nothing even with feeling, but a certain kind of understanding.
She took a breath and pushed open the door. A pop tarantella was playing. Snapping her fingers in time, she glided into the room in a spurious version of the tango, her arms akimbo.
"Are you ready for it?" Juthi said huskily in Tahsin's direction and then silently berated herself for encouraging him. He inhaled from a joint, nodding, his chiseled face engaged.
She clapped her hands down on her thighs and proceeded to smack different parts of her body.
"Is it the macarena?" Zubair called out laughing as Juthi kicked one leg out and then another at odd hooked angles. Dina jumped up, grabbed Shoma's arm, and they fumblingly followed Juthi's lead.
"No, it's the makrosha!" Juthi spiked her clawed hands in the air spider-like. Water drops flung from her swinging hair. Her backup dancers collapsed laughing. Juthi couldn't look in the boy's direction for fear she'd fly apart. She didn't know why. So she looked at Tahsin.
"Juthi," he said holding out his hand, "How do you come up with the shit you do? It's hysterical."
She took his hand reluctantly and sat on the edge of the bed. Dina had started up a dance party. The tarantella had transitioned into an electronically remixed Baul song.
The sun was burning its way through the rain clouds, though the hermetically air-conditioned house didn't give a hint of the heat. When Juthi dared look up, Dina was gyrating to the music, and had pulled most of the others into her orbit, including the stranger. He was older than Juthi had first thought. Maybe in his 30s or even older. His eyelids were dark and his frame too thin. But she liked the lines around his eyes. His clinging kurta. His pricking presence. Shoma flashed her million-watt smile at him, and Juthi felt a clawing in her chest.
When she turned back, Juthi realised Tahsin had moved so his body was curved around hers. She resisted her implicit flinch.
"He's an artist," Tahsin said into her ear.
"Who?" she said carelessly.
"Gorjon's cousin. Has the best yabba hookups." Tahsin took another drag. "Crazy too."
He traced a lank piece of Juthi's hair. She let him but it felt like payment for the information. Still, she was unable to keep her body together. When the stranger took her arm, Juthi could barely feel his touch. Or she felt it too much. Her legs had dissolved into the charged air, yet somehow she found herself standing by him. Now they were dancing, his arms lengthening along hers. Juthi wanted to know if it was possible to want two opposite things at once. Passion and reason, each growing fruit and fruit-eating serpents in her garden. As the music segued again, this time to a trance samba number, the stranger moved away. Juthi stood in the centre of the room, coming together at the seams.
The next afternoon, both Dina and Juthi were quiet. Dina was hung over, her body more crumpled than folded into the chair. She suggested going over to Tahsin's.
"I can't," Juthi replied. "My dad is coming with my Nana and Phupu, and we're going to go see my future husband."
"What?!" Dina shouted. "You've agreed to go to a bride viewing?"
What Juthi really wanted was to just stay here in this room with Dina, where nothing had been decided, everything was to come, for better or for worse.
"Well, it's only a preliminary meeting," she replied.
Dina sputtered, incredulous, "Wait, is this a joke? Or is this why we had that conversation yesterday?"
"Well, it's been on my mind," Juthi said demurely.
Dina stared at her, unable to say more.
Juthi rushed on in an effort to placate Dina, "I'll tell you what I know. He's six feet tall. Masters from an Ivy League. A job in New York. And his parents want him married before he goes back."
"And when would that be?" Dina spat out, "Next weekend?"
"Two months."
"What about university?"
"I'd either finish here and join him, or I'd finish there. Depending on my visa."
"Are you freaking kidding me? Or yourself?"
"Yes. But only partly. Want to help me pick an outfit?"
It was only in the car heading to Dhanmondi that Juthi thought about how she might appear to Dina, or really to any of her friends. They would find it absurd. It was not the method of introduction; these days, parental introductions followed by a period of dating were not uncommon. It was more the timing. The speed of things.
An hour later, they were still in the car, the traffic more legion than usual. Her father was fidgeting, his British accent clipping off the edges of his sentences.
"The house is on Road 8, no? Shouldn't have come this way. Now we're late."
"It's fine," said her aunt, "We get to be late. And they must understand the traffic. They live in this neighbourhood after all." She eyed the immobile snake of cars with distaste. Juthi smoothed her kameez over her knees and watched the street traffic thrum and throb. If there wasn't love to begin with, then she had to count on it creating itself out of nothing. Could it be deep enough, wide enough to contain her ridiculous hopeful heart?
By the time Juthi walked into the flat on Road Number 8, she was ready for anyone who showed even a trace of surety. Soon enough, she was enveloped by it. The downright mother, the joking father, her voluble aunt, her sharp-tongued Nana. Even the would-be groom, though he said little, seemed assured in his reserve. She felt all their gazes pulling at her.
Only her father seemed unsure and Juthi found herself gravitating to him. Now, all the confidence seemed suspect, brimming the room with hot air, making it difficult to think. She needed to leave and when she looked at her father, he knew this immediately. The meeting was brought to a close, a second one planned with an enthusiasm Juthi found difficult to believe.
She was startled when the boy appeared in front of her. Her Nana raised his voice in an attempt to create privacy. She found it absurd and touching.
"Let's go for coffee soon," he said. Juthi could only nod. "Could I have your mobile number?"
Juthi fumbled for her phone and when she finally retrieved it, she stared at it blankly. He took the phone from her hand and started entering his number. She was both astonished and relieved but said nothing. He gave it back to her, gently vibrating.
"Missed call from you to me," he said, smiling easily, waving his own phone, "Shurobi… right?" His tongue seemed to be testing the syllables. It was a name only her Nana called her. She watched his lips move in slow motion. She could do this, she thought. Come to know that mouth, those hands. Discover a different arrangement of her heart. One where you knew the end wasn't in sight every bloodrush moment.
"Juthi," she said at last, "You can call me Juthi."
Abeer Hoque is a Bangladeshi-American writer.