Sefa, by Amy Savage

Sefa was twenty-one, svelte and petite, with deep round eyes, a long nose, thin lips, and big teeth—a perfect Disney mouse love-interest type. An urban planning student at Complutense, Sefa had grown up near Ventas and riding shotgun in her father’s taxi. Before the last weekend of the semester, she told me she knew Madrid “intimately,” and reached across the table. Sefa placed her hand on my hand, her fingertips on my knuckles, dipping down between them before rising again. I had never even held a girl’s hand. The charge of her touch made my palms sweat, so I kept my hand where it was. Was this knuckle-rub just a cultural thing? How much did she know, or want to know? I started jabbering about a recent road trip to Valencia with my roommate Charlotte, so I could prove I was adventurous. “I like that your beaches are topless,” I said, though I had kept my breasts firmly covered. Sefa’s hand moved calmly back to her coffee cup. 

“Yours are not?” she said, though it wasn’t a question. It was a courtesy; she’d said it so I wouldn’t have to. 

Back home, in post-industrial Dwaynesburg, the closest thing to support for queer kids were the rainbow sprinkles at the Dairy Queen. Summers between semesters, I developed tennis elbow scooping too-hard Rocky Road while attempting to tune out coworkers and customers who used “gay” multiple times a day as an insult. Spilled something? Gay. Jammed the cash register? Gay. Accumulated tens of thousands in student debt with the hopes of never returning to D-burg to pack another wafer cone? You guessed it.

After another sip of her black coffee, Sefa suggested my roommate and I meet her Friday night at a bar in Chueca, the gayest neighborhood in Madrid. I knew that straight people went to gay clubs here, but was Sefa trying to tell me something? It was my last chance to find out—my flight home would leave the following night.

Although I knew about topless beaches before arriving in Madrid, my other impressions of Europe were over fifty years out of date, drawing only from the five classic Italian films the Dwaynesburg library carried. Who cared that Sofia Loren wasn’t Spanish—if the luscious 1950s starlet could sport hairy armpits, I wanted in! I took it to the next level and grew out all my body hair—Europe would love this furry xenophile! But my host brother, Ricardo, was shocked when he saw my legs. “You need to shave,” he instructed me firmly, in front of Charlotte. “The dictatorship is over,” he said. The irony of his contextualized tyranny escaped us all. Later, Charlotte patted my shoulder and said, “He’s probably never seen a hippie before.”

The night we went to Chueca, I’d done what Ricardo had told me: it was the first time I’d shaved in six months. I’d noticed that Sefa’s legs were smooth; that was my reason to obey him. My armpits burned. My legs felt as if shrink-wrapped in plastic—without their hairs, they could barely detect the insides of my pants. To add to my discomfort, when I’d gone a few days before to the Corte Inglés in search of a sexy bra and new shirt to go out, the trim clerk looked at my bountiful American bosom and directed me toward maternity wear. I found a translucent white button-down, which I bought only so as not to leave empty-handed. After shaving that night, I donned my new blouse and added a safety pin so that, in the event of any arm movements, my bust wouldn’t pop the buttons off. 

At the bar, I hoped my infantilized pits and shins wouldn’t ruin my chances with Sefa. But it seemed my hairlessness wouldn’t matter either way, despite my maternal buttoned-up charm. Sefa had a boyfriend. Daniel. Or maybe he was her brother. They arrived together and he kept draping his arm over her, confidently feeding her nuts from the bar. Ricardo, who’d insisted on coming along as our chaperone, looked as disappointed as I felt that the only other girl in our group was already taken.

Daniel was a photographer and showed us a recent magazine with a shoot he had done. Sefa looked at a photo of an androgynous model with her hair slicked back, wearing a collared shirt and tie. “Así me gusta,” Sefa said. “Ambigua.” She ran her finger down the length of the model’s flat body. I was round. And I’d been working on less ambiguous. 

The red lights of the bar dimmed deeper. The music grew louder. Sefa asked if I would go to the bathroom with her. Girls always go to the bathroom together, right? I thought, nervously. But why didn’t she ask Charlotte? I hadn’t even brought a tampon to offer. Fool! “Makes us more familiar,” Sefa said. I hoped she didn’t mean like family. 

We jostled our way through the crowd. Sefa opened the restroom door—it was single occupancy. Sefa tilted her head to indicate I could go first, but then she followed me in and locked the door behind her. 

Sefa flipped up her miniskirt, pulled down a red mesh thong, and sat down to pee. Not exactly what I was hoping for, but in my buzzed glow I figured this was a bonding opportunity. She wiped from back to front, which I found unsettling. Another cultural thing? When she stood, I saw her pubic hair had been trimmed into a neat, inch-wide strip. She flipped her skirt back down. “Adelante,” she commanded.

Pee in front of Sefa? I was not prepared. I had shaved my pits and legs, but I had a full classic film bush! But Sefa expected me to, and I knew when to do as I was told. While I tried to coax a few drops from my very full but very shy bladder, Sefa washed her hands and asked if I thought it was time to go to the next club. I agreed, relieved to make some other noise than dribble. 

The last time I’d been exposed in another bathroom with another woman, it was my mother. On the eve of my flight to Spain, I’d decided to come out to my mom. If she didn’t accept me, I wouldn’t have any place to go back to. I’d be orphaned, unmoored. Free was not a state I’d considered. I picked a Most Casual Moment to catch her off guard. In my perpetual awkwardness, this meant while she was scrubbing the bathtub. 

“Mom,” I said, “I like girls.” 

She looked up and used the back of her yellow rubber glove to brush her bangs off her forehead, leaving a smudge of baking soda on her brow. My neck was burning. I’d prepared myself for any extreme of love or hate, two sides of the same coin. “I love you just the way you are,” or, “Good thing you’re leaving tomorrow.” In either case I would cry and there would be clarity. What came was worse. 

“Tell me something I don’t know,” she said, and returned to scrubbing. 

I didn’t cry. Quite the opposite. Something inside me made of flesh and blood dried up. A fresh plum shriveled to a prune, now tougher, more concentrated, that would last but never be as tender. That night, I learned my closet had a revolving door.

When I stood at the sink, Sefa approached me from behind. She looked at me over my shoulder in the mirror, her small lips opening in a half smile. Her hands found my breasts. Wait, I thought, is this happening? Now? I felt my breath quicken and surely so did Sefa. My wet hands covered hers. I looked to the mirror, to find her gaze, but she had closed her eyes, long black lashes resting on her cheeks. That dried up plum I’d carried inside, desiccated, swelled a notch, reconstituting. I watched the two women in the mirror. Sefa squeezed gently, her palms full of me. The ache of lust in my groin was sudden and sharp. My blouse’s flimsy fabric strained against the now painfully obvious and pathetic safety pin. Sefa leaned her head against my shoulder. I felt the tip of her nose and her soft warm breath on the nape of my neck. Her squeeze tightened. Hold on a moment longer, I thought, let me soak you in, let me soak in you. Her fingers began to clutch, the tips scraping against my breasts, digging into my nipples, pinching, the clawing between my legs longing for those fingers, until her hands were two fists, self-contained. Sefa had released me. 

“Sólo en Chueca,” she said as if to herself, defeated.

Back with our friends, Sefa acted as if nothing had happened. Ricardo looked at my chest. I looked down. Damp blotches darkened the fabric revealing my black bra beneath. My wet shirt both clung uncomfortably to my skin and felt exhilarating. I held my cup up with two hands to try to cover my breasts and gurgled the last dregs of my drink through the straw. 

Sefa suggested we leave. Outside, Daniel and Ricardo conferred about which club we should head to. Daniel put his hand in Sefa’s seat pocket. I tried not to look at her. I failed. She took a pack of Ducados out of her jacket.

“Estoy cansada,” Charlotte said. “I’m going to catch the metro.”

Ricardo looked at the time on his phone. “Ya no hay metro.” We’d missed the last train until 6 a.m. 

“A taxi will rip you off at this hour,” Sefa said, lighting her cigarette. “Walking will be only twenty minutes.” 

“Veinte minutos?” Ricardo laughed at her estimation. “Vale.” Charlotte kissed us all goodbye and walked toward Gran Vía.

“She shouldn’t go alone.” Sefa blew smoke out of the corner of her mouth, an indictment, though it had been her idea for Charlotte to walk.

“Yo te acompaño,” Sefa called out. 

Sefa kissed Daniel, Ricardo, and me on the cheek quickly before jogging after Charlotte. I stood there a second with Ricardo and Daniel, clearly disappointed to be left with just me, but not entirely surprised. I had to follow Sefa. And it was all too obvious I should have accompanied Charlotte to begin with. I said goodbye to the guys and ran after the women. 

When I caught up to them, Sefa’s dark eyes examined me. I’d managed to do the right thing. But it was from a selfish source and Sefa could smell it.

“Better we take a short cut,” Sefa said.

Sefa led us down narrow sidewalks with metal posts lining the curb. We passed queues of darkly-dressed people outside club doors, crisp graffiti on stone walls, twisted neon lights advertising porn, and a butcher’s unlit shop, where the bare cured meat of jamones serranos hung by their hooves. 

Sefa informed us we would be turning right at the next corner. Ahead was a small pedestrian bridge that covered a dry culvert filled with trash. Charlotte and I veered toward the bridge, but Sefa shook her head. 

“Vamos abajo.”

The path along the culvert’s edge was dim but for some flickering light. Sefa turned to look at me, her eyes quizzical. Was this a test? Was she going to rob us and leave us in this pre-dawn trough? She was clearly familiar, or at least confident, with the area. Sefa trotted along a few paces ahead of us. We dodged broken bottles, food wrappers, and a few used condoms stuck to a dead bush. 

On the underpass, a broad concrete slab, more than a dozen people lay in lumpy sleeping bags. Others stood talking and smoking around a garbage can fire. Sefa was at least ten paces ahead of us. I choked on the smell of burning trash and urine. One man in an enormous blue jacket approached us with droopy clouded eyes and asked us for money. Then a woman approached us. She wore a black velvet bodice top with a zipper running the length of it. She was chewing gum and languidly swinging a red vinyl purse with a long strap. “En qué te puedo ayudar?” She swung her purse out wider this time and it hit me in the chest. 

What I didn’t tell Sefa about the trip to Valencia was that, when the bus from the beach to downtown had turned for the onramp to the highway, I’d heard Charlotte sigh with despair. On the shoulder stood dozens of young women, girls. They postured, waiting for business, their neon green bikinis and canary yellow bras glowing in the oncoming headlights. At home in the States, police were quick to fine and sweep prostitutes away. But here, we were all witnesses. I couldn’t look away—but I was ashamed to find that, from the safety of a moving vehicle, I might not have minded looking longer.

Now, the woman under the bridge spoke so quickly I only understood a few words: money, suck, money. I felt my heart racing and said, “No, no, gracias, no.”

“Sefa!” Charlotte shouted. “¡Ayuda!”

The woman started slowly unzipping her top. I was paralyzed for a second time that night. Sefa turned and saw the woman, started yelling, her hand cutting the air. Charlotte rummaged in her purse, ready to give the woman money. 

“Tranquilas,” the woman said loudly and slowly, as though we were overreacting. 

Sefa snapped at the woman. “Tranquilízate tú.”

The woman smirked and then shouted at Sefa. When Sefa responded, her voice was tense but polite, almost professional. She said several things to the woman in an even, almost conciliatory tone, a negotiation, that I couldn’t catch, then muttered something that included hijueputa. The woman scowled and flipped her hand to dismiss us. 

When we emerged from under the bridge, it was several more blocks to our building. Sefa ignored us and kept up a fast clip a few paces ahead of us.

“That was super weird,” Charlotte said to me. “Sefa, do you know that woman?”

Sefa took a drag of her cigarette. “It’s the most direct route to your place.”

“It doesn’t seem very safe,” Charlotte said. 

“Listen,” Sefa said curtly, stopping in her tracks to address us. As if she hadn’t led us here, she said, “I don’t control who comes and goes here.” I felt both guilty and judgmental for having been afraid. Sefa continued to scold, but this time it was directed at me. “Quizás te habría dejado en paz—si no fueras tan guapa.” I only heard blame and sarcasm—until Charlotte looked back and forth between us. Sefa had meant to make Charlotte our witness.

When we arrived at the door of our building, Sefa air-kissed Charlotte goodbye. “Cuídense,” she said. Her voice was purposeful, sincere. She leaned into me. Her hand squeezed my arm and then relaxed, rested comfortably there, as if out of habit. Her cheek lingered against mine for the first air kiss, and as she passed her face before mine for the second, her nose brushed the tip of mine. I heard Sefa’s lips kiss the air by my other ear. My own kisses lagged a moment after.

I had to wonder, had Sefa left with Charlotte only out of a genuine concern for Charlotte’s wellbeing, or was she also trying to prove something? To prove her toughness, how easily she could slide through different spaces and survive. To prove to Daniel how easily she could leave him. To shed me, too.

*

In the morning, Charlotte groaned and turned to the wall when I asked if she wanted to get up for breakfast. As I entered the dining room, Ricardo, already settled at the table, raised his eyebrows. He smiled, as if amused by my appearance or as though he thought he knew something I didn’t. He slathered margarine on some factory-made toasts and drank a tall glass of mango Fanta, his personal cure for hangovers. I took my usual place at the table, across from him. “You missed out,” he said. “The club Daniel and I went to was really cool.” 

I spooned instant coffee into a mug, poured hot water from the kettle and stirred, thirsty for its bitterness. As an invitation, Ricardo pointed his greasy knife at the plastic sleeve of toasts. “That Sefa,” he paused, munching, “es muy buena gente.”

He didn’t know what had happened, but I still felt like he’d abandoned us. I tried to sound casual. “Why didn’t you also come with us?”

“That would have been excessive,” he said. “I didn’t want to insult you.” My host brother passed me the milk for my coffee. “By the way,” he said, “I saw the way you looked at Sefa.” Ricardo’s eyes met mine for a hard moment, then went soft, but his lips stayed firm. 

The stare, the set of his mouth, reminded me of a girl from my ninth-grade gym class. During the girls’ swim unit, I found myself, for one hour twice a week, trapped in either the locker room or the indoor pool’s frigid water with other girls’ bodies. There was nowhere safe to rest my eyes. I always waited until the last minute to get out of the water; I didn’t want them to look at me, either. The other girls launched themselves up from the pool’s edge or climbed sedately up the ladder and went to the locker room. But one day, one girl stood by the bleachers, watching me. Bree, on the swim team, who never cared to cover herself in a towel. She dripped, magnificent as a koi fish in her iridescent orange swimsuit. I climbed the ladder and, though I avoided her, she came to me. “You know,” she said, pressing her lips together like a schoolmarm, “you shouldn’t look at us like that.” I flushed. I said nothing. It was meant to sting, the way she’d said like that. The way she’d said us. 

Ricardo continued. “Why was your shirt all wet when you came back from the bathroom?”

Sitting at the breakfast table, I thought of Sefa’s wet hands clutching me. I felt the heat rise from my chest to my neck. I put my hand on my upper arm, felt again her farewell grip as it had softened and rested there. I would forgive Sefa anything, for the embarrassment of my wet shirt, for the route home, for revealing my cowardice, merely because she had touched me.

“There were no towels,” I explained to Ricardo, “for drying one’s hands.” 

My host brother laughed deep in his throat. “Everyone knows,” he said, “to dry their hands on their pants.” Ricardo took another sip of his soda. “I should say, you should be more careful.” His drink hovered above the table. How could he know about the path under the bridge? “You could leave a mark on someone,” he said, setting down his glass. “You’re just passing through. Sefa, no.” 

Unable to speak, I took a swig of coffee. “I need to pack,” I said. 

In my room, I double-checked the time for my redeye from Barajas to Newark. I wound my clothes into tight rolls in my suitcase. Everyone knows. I supposed they did. I put on my jeans I’d worn the previous night. My legs felt almost comfortable with the reliable return of stubble. I was indignant, even angry, that my host brother assumed Sefa was bound to this place. It irritated me, his protectiveness of her. And even so, I envied her for it. I held the translucent white blouse to my nose, inhaling stale smoke and a hint of Sefa’s perfume. I couldn’t tell which would hurt less, to pack it or leave it behind. 

Amy Savage's fiction appears in Cleaver Magazine, Bellevue Literary Review, the Carolina Quarterly, Oyster River Pages, and elsewhere. Honors include nomination for Best American Short Stories and selection for One Story's Summer Writers' Conference '22 and AWP's Writer to Writer program. Based in Rhode Island, she teaches medical Spanish and is querying her first story collection and working on her first novel. Find her at www.asavagewriter.com or on Twitter @asavagewriter.