by interpreters. They described themselves: hair, eyes, height, weight, preferences in food, drink, animals, colors, recreations. She could speak English but not write it; they had a few phone conversations. What could they possibly have talked about? What did she say? It was enough to make him pay the money, buy the tickets, sign the papers to bring her over the ocean.
These days, ever since her arrival, Joel looked happy. He had a sheen. Someone had cleaned the waxy buildup from his ears. We asked if she was different from the women here, if she had a way of walking, an extra flap of skin, a special smell. Did she smell of cigarettes, patchouli, foreign sewers, unbathedness?
“I think she has some extra bones in her spine,” he said. “She seems to have a lot of them. Like a string of beads. A rosary.”
We’d seen more of her by then, up close, coatless. Her hair was bright red, black at the roots, which gave her head the look of a tarnished penny.
“Tell us something about her,” we said.
He closed his eyes. “When I take off her shirt,” he said, “her breasts jump right into my hands, asking to be touched.”
He opened his eyes to see how we took that.
“Her nipples crinkle up,” he said, “like dried fruit. Apricots.”
“She has orange nipples?”
We’d always insisted that Joel be completely open with us, tell us everything and anything he would tell a male friend. How could we advise him unless he told us the truth? Utter frankness, we told him, was the basis of any mature friendship between men and women. He often seemed to be trying to test this theory, prove us wrong. “Frankness will be the death of any good relationship,” he’d say.
Joel was what we called a teddy-bear type, meaning he was large and hairy and gentle. He had a short soft beard all around his mouth so you could not see any lips. Hair grew in two bristly patches on the back of his neck. His fingertips were blunt and square, his eyes set far back in his head so that they were hard to read. His knees were knobby and full of personality, almost like two pudgy faces. In fact, he sometimes drew faces on them, to amuse his soccer team or us. Some of us had been in love with him once, but that was long past. Friendship was more important than any illusions of romance.
Nadia did not smile much. At first we thought it was because she was unhappy. Then she began smirking in an awful closed-lipped way so we thought she didn’t like us. It took us a while to understand that it was her smile. Eventually we discovered the reason: her teeth were amazing, gray and almost translucent, evidence of some vitamin deficiency. When she spoke, air whistled through them, giving her a charming lisp.
She spoke English well enough, with a singsong lilting accent that lifted the end of every word, so that each word sounded as if it ended with a curlicue, a kite tail, a question mark.
She trilled certain consonants. “Lovely,” she said and trilled the V. Trilled the V! Have you ever heard that before? She must have had some extra ridges on her tongue.
She burst into tears at unpredictable times. She needed her own bedroom, so he cleared out his home office for her. We saw her bed, a child-sized cot.
We began to suspect that he had done it all purely out of kindness, that he had wanted to rescue someone and give her a better home, a new life. He wanted to be a savior, not a husband. “Why didn’t he just adopt a child, then?” we asked each other.
I thought, Maybe I should adopt a child. I ought to have one of my own; people are always looking at me and saying “childbearing hips” as if it’s a compliment. But then I think of the rabbit my sister had as a pet when we were little girls. I remember holding him tightly to my chest until he stopped kicking. I was keeping him warm, but when I let go he was limp. We put him back in the cage for our father to find. I still dream of white fur, one sticky pink eye. I worry I might do the same to a baby. I could adopt a bigger one, a toddler. Not too sickly. But what if it doesn’t understand English?
Of course you want to help, but what can you do? We did what we could: we gave money to feed overseas orphans, money for artificial limbs and eye operations; we volunteered at local schools; we took meals to housebound invalids once a month; we passed out leaflets on street corners. A friend of mine volunteers to escort women past the protesters into abortion clinics and has invited me to join her, but it’s never a good day for me. We recycle. We get angry and self-righteous about what we see on the news. When I see a homeless person on the street I give whatever’s in my pocket.
It’s not enough. But what can you do? What can you do?
Joel had a friend, Malcolm, he was always promising to introduce us to. Malcolm worked for some global humanitarian organization. We saw him on television occasionally, reporting from some wartorn, decimated, or drought-stricken place, hospital beds in the background, people missing feet with flies clustered on their eyes, potbellied children washing their heads in what looks like a cesspool. Malcolm was balding but handsome in a weather-beaten cowboy way. His earnest face made you want to reach for your wallet. “That guy, he can relief-effort me any time,” we’d say to Joel. But we hadn’t met him yet. We were beginning to suspect he existed only inside the box and was not allowed out.
As for Nadia: “Where’s she from, exactly?” we asked Joel.
“A bad place,” he said, frowning. “Her village is right in the middle of contested territory, every week a new name. Don’t ask her about it. It makes her sad.”
“All right,” we said, but privately we wondered at his protecting her feelings like that. No one we knew had ever stopped talking about something because it made us sad. No one. Not even Joel. Was it because we were fat happy Americans, incapable of real sadness? Was it because he thought we had no feelings, or because he thought we were strong enough to bear sadness? Unlike poor delicate Nadia with her pink-rimmed eyes, Nadia who bought her clothes in the children’s department because she had no hips. She said she did it because the clothes were sturdier, better quality, would last longer.
Last longer? How much longer will she need green corduroy overalls, or narrow jeans with unicorns embroidered on the back pockets? How much longer before her hips swell and her legs thicken and her collarbone stops sticking out in that unbecoming way?
Her legs are not like American legs; they are pieces of string, flimsy and boneless.
“We’ll take her shopping,” we told Joel. “We’ll show her the ropes.”
“She’s doing just fine,” he said. “I’ll take her.”
I said, “You should be careful. I’ve heard, people like her, the first time they go to an American supermarket, they have seizures or pass out.”
“Why?” he said.
“They just can’t take it,” I said. “They’re not used to it. The … the abundance or something. Overstimulation.”
“Thanks for the heads-up,” he said, but he wasn’t looking at me. Nadia stood at the other end of the room, before a window, so that sunlight set her hair afire and shone right through her pink translucent ears. Her ankles were crossed, her arms folded, a cigarette hung from her fingers. The skin on her face, her arms, was so milky-white her ears didn’t seem to belong to her. Around her people moved in shadows.
“Do you know,” he said, “she lets me hold her hand. In public? Just walking down the street?
