HBCU Love, by Lauren Francis Sharma

Of course, Evelyn would bring up the list. Because, inevitably, Evelyn will ask Sanaya about a man. And it won’t be in the way people asked when Sanaya was in her 20s or 30s, it’ll be in the don’t-mean-to-but-have-to-ask way of her 40s.

-What was the number? 44? Evelyn said.

-I don’t remember. The list is long gone.

Two lies to a friend, because lying was less exhausting than talking the same bull. Yes, Sanaya still had the list. At the back of Loving Donovan inside the first moving box to arrive. She’d seen it while packing and thought to shred it but there’d been no time to cull possessions; the new job wanted her at the next board meeting and her belongings had to be boxed within a week.

Now, she was in a new city, searching for a new house, and on the phone with an old friend, who hadn’t asked jack about her new gig before wondering aloud if Sanaya had met anyone yet. Inherent in the question was always both the expectation that she would and that she wished to.

In her 20s, Sanaya’s friends had nicknamed her ‘44’, for just after graduation, she’d written an exhaustive list of all the characteristics she desired in a man. It was the kind of stupid shit twenty-something-year-olds did. An inventory of the finer traits of lovers who were barely men. Some big-hearted, some brilliant, some with daddy issues. She’d created the list hoping it might help her recognize the wrong lovers, when in fact, the list wed her to the idea of a perfect lover who didn’t exist.

-I’m looking for a house, not a man.

Even if she were searching, which she was not, things changed with age. Hope was now synonymous with pity, which came alongside unsolicited analyses and odd attempts at asexualizing her, leaving her feeling as if she needed to remind people that she’d loved, been loved, and had chosen not to overlook the wrong time, the wrong circumstance, the wrong man.

-I have a friend from law school, Evelyn started.

-Stop.

-I was just gonna say that he bought a house there, not that long ago.

-Oh. I have a realtor.

-He did too but it took him almost two years after his wife died to find a place, not far from the city.

-I like the city.

-He’ll be helpful. I’ll have him call you.

Evelyn was a pushy Trinidadian who Sanaya called only at life’s big intersections. New jobs, relocations, Evelyn’s divorce and subsequent coming out. Now, against Sanaya’s wishes, Evelyn would give her friend from law school Sanaya’s mobile number. Evelyn texted a kiss emoji after they ended the call. Sanaya muted her phone.

The first day at the new office, there were a maddening number of forms to complete. Health forms, non-disclosures, equity allotments. Though the woman rarely answered her phone, Sanaya offered her mother’s name as her medical emergency contact. Before the move, they promised to do things better.

I didn’t hear the phone, her mother had said when the doctors finally reached her from Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation Hospital, a day’s drive from Everest base camp. Sanaya had tried to imagine the conversation, the doctors explaining to a woman hard of hearing that her only remaining child had succumbed to high altitude cerebral edema on her way down from a mountain half a world away.

Who is this? Nepal? No, my daughter is in India. What’d you call that thing she has? Lemme get a pen. She’s not gonna make it where? No sir, don’t you say that. Don’t let her spirit hear you say that. You hear me, Mr. Doctor, sir? She’s gonna make it.

Sanaya had, indeed, made it to summit. As the sun rose and broke through clouds so close to her that she imagined she’d breathed them to life, she fancied touching the ball of sunlight between her fingers, for up there the sun seemed both celestial and corporeal. And it was the sun, after all, that had been the reason for her trek. She hadn’t told anyone that she’d wanted to feel its heat close to her face, wanted to see if it could melt sorrow, if it could heal. Sanaya watched it rise that morning and suddenly the weighted breaths she’d sensed since her brother’s funeral seemed to vanish, and for the briefest moment, she felt the grief slide out from the pit of her stomach. As she sat down in a bed of trampled powder, her summit mates snapping photos, Sanaya watched the sunlight kiss the hardened peaks, and she told God if He took her then, she wouldn’t mind. I got what I came for, she whispered.

On the descent, their guide insisted they not focus on the dead bodies, shrewn about like discarded logs. But Sanaya couldn’t look away from the woman. Her Chanel red lipstick still bright against a blue face, her eyes sprung open and flat against the same sunlight Sanaya thought she could harness. Sanaya dizzied and tumbled onto one of her trek mates who, weak himself, could not bear her weight.

-We called the last number on your phone, a lone voice said when she woke.

She thought of the peaks. Wondered if she’d remembered to take a photo of the sun at summit. She felt cold. So cold.

-Do you have a husband, children we can call?

She spent the remaining weeks in recovery alone, much of it unremarkable, except that every memory she’d ever stored, returned, vivid and whole and fresh, forcing her to think of a life she wasn’t sure she still wanted.

-You seem different, her mother said upon her return.

She was different. More vulnerable, more aware, more afraid. As if something inside her wished to rise up, crawl out. With her disability time, she journeyed to the Zambezi for rafting, hoping someone at work would see the Instagram posts and report her, hoping that maybe she could get her life to stop performing for itself.

When the phone rang the day after speaking to Evelyn, somehow Sanaya knew it was Evelyn’s friend, Deepak. She would never be able to say why she answered the call.

-Chopra. Evelyn had said his name twice like it should’ve meant something. He was in the Black Law Students Association with me, Evelyn said. A Trini. Did I tell you he lost his wife to brain cancer? Poor thing.

Deepak had a quiet, rich voice that seemed to sing. If someone had asked Sanaya, she would’ve said he didn’t speak much at all, but afterward she remembered all he’d told her about neighborhoods and realtors.

-I can introduce you to my builder, he’d said.

-I’m not interested in building.

-He has spec houses. I’ll pick you and your husband up on Saturday, take you around.

-No husband. Just me.

-Okay, I’ll pick up Just Me on Saturday.

Were all Trinidadians pushy?

Deepak was five minutes late. When she greeted him, he was standing on the step below her, so her view was of his burnished forehead, for he was short. And muscular. With straight hair. Evelyn hadn’t mentioned that he was Indian. Like Indian-Indian.

-I’m late. Apologies, he said.

She offered him only water, as if to punish him for tardiness.

He observed the room as he drank and she found herself wondering what he thought of it, then grew angry that she cared at all for his thoughts.

-Ravens fan?

Her purple pillow had been a gift from her brother. She hugged it at nights when she thought of him. She didn’t like that Deepak had noticed it.

-Baltimore girl, she said.

-I’m all Washington.

-The Skins?

-I say Washington now. My dad didn’t understand football when he got to this country. He made me play.

-You?  

He laughed then carried the empty water glass into her kitchen.

They drove that day. Up and down winding roads and across avenues she didn’t yet know. They discussed the city’s history of apartheid, while Deepak pointed out landmarks, told her of the Black activists who still lived there. Then he gave her a quick tour of his home. A stunning Tudor with a modest façade filled with modern Indian art. Its expansive rear surrounded a creek she could hear gurgling from Deepak’s deck.

-Can’t live without water. I always wanted a pool but I think it’d be too much.

-Too much for what?

-For who I think I am, he said.

The sun fell that afternoon exactly as it had at Everest. Like light that spread and rolled, light that shone on Deepak’s long lashes and bowtie lips. He caught her glance and grinned.

-You didn’t look me up online? he said.

-Deepak Chopra?

He laughed.

-You looked me up.

-Yeah, had to know how to put myself together.

He flexed, propped up his imaginary collar, turned his head as if to offer her his profile.

She hadn’t noticed until then his perfectly tailored pants breaking at the top of his Italian loafers, blue cashmere stretching across a hard and broad chest. Why in the fuck was she looking at this Indian man like this?

Over the coming months there were hundreds of texts, food deliveries at her doorstep, mid-day emails just to say hello. She was being courted, and wanted none of it, yet wanted all of it.

-Evelyn, you didn’t tell me he was Indian. You said he was from Trinidad.

-There are Indians in Trinidad. Lots. And his last name is Chopra.

-I know, but you said he was in BLSA, so I thought he’d be half Black. At least.

-Well...he’s comfortable with folks.

-I don’t need an Indian man in my life.

-Oh you wanted an HBCU kind of love?

-What?

-You know. Black love or no love, right? Didn’t your list say that?

Sanaya had tossed the list after realizing Deepak scored 42 out of 44, which by anyone’s standards would declare him a winner. When she created the list she never imagined a man who’d score so high but who wasn’t Black. And now she didn’t want to imagine it.

Deepak poured a vintage red. He collected wine and they joked about the pretentiousness of collecting though both loved vineyard tours. While Sanaya sipped what they both thought was a cloying Cabernet, he told her about learning to love before falling in love, told her of an Indo-Caribbean woman whom he watched grow sick then die. Their families had emigrated together, and his wife was kind, he said, with big dreams, and when he spoke of her, Sanaya felt their love had been real, and she remembered that she too had loved, many of the men were kind, all of them were Black.

Then Sanaya, remembering something else, sprung from her chair.

-Oh no! I needed a strap fixed on the dress I’m taking to the company retreat!

- I’ll drop it off for you.

Deepak was a good man. A man many women would feel lucky to know, which is what Mr. Lee, her tailor, sort of said to Sanaya when she picked up the dress the next afternoon.

Sort of.

-Oh, we talked and talked, Mr. Lee said. What a good man. I told him to go to Korea and get a new wife. He told me he’s lucky if he could have you.

Mr. Lee laughed.

-But you are the lucky one. Not him, Mr. Lee said. You.

In the three months she’d lived there, she’d spent thousands at Mr. Lee’s shop, altering clothes that’d been at the rear of her old closet for years. She and Mr. Lee had discussed politics, laughed at the clusters of goofy teens outside, and she’d even cried when he told her of losing his mother. He’d praised her success, bragged to other customers about her “big, big position” but now she would be lucky if Deepak wanted her?

When she told Deepak, he quieted before suggesting she use his tailor, a Black man named Mr. Charles, who’d told Deepak he “couldn’t handle no Black woman.” But Deepak couldn’t erase Mr. Lee’s sentiment. It felt like the sign Sanaya needed. She was a 44 year-old woman who happily dined at restaurants alone, who took care of all her needs, and who began to pray to be rid of an Indian man who made her laugh because she didn’t want a taxed happiness---didn’t want the Asian diaspora telegraphing how she didn’t deserve a good man, didn’t want Black men wondering with their eyes if she could ever love them, didn’t want Black women presuming Deepak was an act of desperation, didn’t want to be a silly women who talked about “following your heart” when secretly wondering what her non-Black partner thought each time they touched her hair or put their lips to her flesh. No, she’d end it.

The day she planned to do so, she found a calla lily atop her mailbox. She hadn’t remembered telling Deepak calla lilies were her favorite flowers.

She held the flower to her chest as she dialed him.

-You know I’m Black and you’re not, she said. It wasn’t the way she intended to start the conversation.

-Yes, he said.

-You know I don’t know how to be with anyone who’s not Black.

Deepak paused and she fished out her front door key, not knowing what more to say.

-Well…I want what you think is best for you, he said.

What did that mean?

-Is that all you called to say? he added.

He sounded angry, impatient even. She hadn’t meant to offend him and yet she had to “speak her truth.” Isn’t that what everyone wrote on their IG pages nowadays?

-All I’m trying to say…

-Please say it.

As she struggled with the next sentence, she was no longer certain that the words she’d intended to speak encompassed everything she actually felt. She recalled being at summit, remembered feeling it would be fine if her life ended---her brother was in the ground, her mother wasting away watching VHS tapes of I Love Lucy---but she also remembered feeling inspired, proud of herself, and so much alive. How could all those oppositional feelings reside in her at the same time with barely any distance between them?

She listened now to Deepak’s breaths, the traffic noise outside his car, blaring as if in stereo sound.

-I’ve still got the ashes of my mother and my wife, he said. I was supposed to sprinkle them in water that leads to an ocean. But selfishly, I keep them because I want them both with me. I don’t want change. I don’t want what I don’t know.

-So you understand?

-Understand what, Sanaya?

-That I don’t want what I don’t know.

She’d been the first in her family to attend graduate school, the first to step foot on each continent, the first Black woman General Counsel in her industry. So many firsts. She hadn’t always been afraid. And yet she felt she’d been at this place before too. The shiny new man, the luster of perfect promises only to realize that the spidery feel of some man’s toes on her calves made her feel violent. No, you could never know anyone. You could never even know yourself. And despite what everyone thought, she hadn’t been unhappy before Deepak.

Yet, when she pressed the END CALL button she knew somehow she’d made a mistake. What story had she told herself about herself that wouldn’t allow for radical change?

She reached for her phone only to realize that she’d received a text from Deepak.

-w crust in ur eyes and ashy heels

Wait. Was this fool insulting her now that she hurt his little feelings?

She began to type a nasty retort until she noticed there were multiple messages before the one she’d read. She scrolled up.

-I understand community. I need my people too. Who we are doesn’t change. If I ever get to wake up next to u, I’m gonna be me and you’re gonna be u---a Black woman, wearing a bonnet, w crust in your eyes and ashy heels.

-Wait. My heels are never ashy!!!

-Oh, u haven’t been behind your feet, my friend.

She laughed and remembered how frequently she’d raced home to sit with him, her leg crossed over his, a glass of that pretentious wine in hand. She both loved and hated that she was still becoming someone she didn’t always know.

-Open your door. I’m outside.

-You’re what?

-Been here since u got home. Saw u put that lily to ur heart. 😊

-Stalker.

-Nope. I’m just 42 and I love u.

She felt her breath catch. She’d never told him about the list. He was 42 years old. That was all it meant, right?

-Like my rhyme?

Sanaya opened the door.

-Yeah 42, I like your rhyme…all the time, she said.

Deepak’s lips were warm and velvety like the petals of the lily she held between them. She wanted to crawl inside him and see if perhaps the sun could be found there.

-You know what? He placed his forehead to hers. Let that rhyme rest in peace, if not, my soul’ll release.

-You are not Rakim.

-But you have zero skills.    

She lifted his chin and watched his smile, and felt that it was all so very familiar.

Lauren Francis-Sharma is the author of "'Til the Well Runs Dry" and the proprietor of DC Writers Room. She is the Assistant Director of Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, a MacDowell Fellow, and her sophomore novel "Book of the Little Axe" will be published in May 2020.