Feria’s Story

t is no longer the case, but there was a time when people were carefully taught important things about love. For example, the fact that there is a particular posture in which the back must be arranged–ramrod straight yet flexible; a specific shape in which you must hold your hands–receptive yet generous, if you are to convince love not to escape your grasp. Because it’s not that love leaves, necessarily. It’s more that love is such a fragile, slippery thing; difficult to find and demanding to hold. It slips through the cracks when you’re not paying attention. But it doesn’t leave. It never leaves.

When she thought about it, Feria imagined that love was a bit like her grandmother’s orchids: exceedingly beautiful, a delight to behold. A true banquet for the eyes, if one were to be fully honest. But no one–not a single person Feria ever met, not even her grandmother–was quite sure what those orchids were actually good for, except perhaps looking at, which seemed to Feria a bit like a waste of effort. Feria imagined that, like her gamma’s orchids, love would take up a lot of time and attention and energy and sunlight and water. And for what? For the sake of beauty alone. For looking at and marvelling, and nothing else. Imagine.

When Feria was thirteen, she watched a man learn the hard way—the permanent way—that dancing after beauty is dangerous. The city where Feria’s life was unfolding was impoverished and full of grief and, like her gamma could’ve told anyone, beauty is a risky venture when surrounded by grief and nothing else. Feria watched this reckless man make startling curves on the back of his motorcycle, dancing with the road and the sky and the invisible horizon. Not far ahead was a red cloth, a warning to keep your distance; it whipped wildly on the back of a truck full of steel construction rods.

Feria had always been an easily distracted child, following clouds and butterflies wherever they went. She had turned into a daydreaming teenager, letting stray animals and errant thoughts lead her wherever they liked. Feria’s eyes followed this man and his dancing motorcycle and the dancing red cloth, all the way to the end of their story. The truck stopped suddenly—startlingly—in the middle of one of the man’s lovely, playful, swooping curves. 'Okada men', her grandma’s driver had muttered in annoyance just moments before. He never said the disapproving phrase to Feria’s hearing again.

Feria, on the other hand, had been enjoying the show. She was entirely unprepared to see how unbeautiful the insides of a person could be, and even more so for the lessons that flowed from the sight. Lessons like, life is not a plaything. Beauty and danger flirt with each other all the time. Broken bodies need doctors, doctors need hospitals, hospitals need money for broken bodies to be stitched back together, and sometimes the money matters more than the fact that a person’s insides are spilling onto every surface in sight. Feria squeezed her eyes shut as she vomited over the tyres of their car, over and over, until she had nothing but tight air and tears coming out. Nothing else moved, but her head wouldn’t stop spinning. At night, Feria fought to keep her eyes open. Her thoughts were terrifying, her throat hoarse from screaming and retching. But she was so tired. So tired. Her grandmother’s orchids suffered for a while. Slowly, the dancing red nightmare faded.

And yet, Feria came to understand, from the soft safety of her grandmother’s flower-obsessed shadow, that beauty is dangerous but eyes deserve feasts regardless. A thing that is good only for looking at is still good for something, which is more than some people are good for. Feria’s father was one of those, so she could recognise a Good For Nothing on sight. Their hands hung from limp wrists, their lips never closed over their tongues if they could help it, and there was more swagger in their shoulders than walk in their feet. Sometimes Feria’s father would cock his fingers like a gun, the way certain girls do when they really mean business. Unlike those girls though, Feria’s father used his fingers only to make threats he had neither the means nor even the will to deliver on.

Orchids, on the other hand. Now those were quite something. Waxy and soft, Feria’s grandmother’s flowers did their dramatic best every day to die in the most languorous possible way. In response, Gamma tended to them with the entire weight of her many decades of living, sunrise after sunset, sunset after sunrise. After all, the woman was old. She had time for frivolous things, like propagating beautiful flowers and looking after faraway-minded children. No one else had such time on their hands or in their bones. Not even Feria. No time for flowers, no time for childhood. And anyway, no one taught her how to use her hands to keep either orchids or herself alive. Feria’s grandmother was old. She simply trusted that the girl’s eyes were watching, that the child was somehow learning.

And she was right.

The first time it occurred to Feria that she might need to learn how to use her hands differently, she was seven. Someone had called her a beggie beggie. It was an ordinary day in Primary 2 Blue, the sun had reached the point in the sky that insistently said, 'Come outside and play!' and Feria was reaching across the aisle to her friend Mukan’s desk to ask for a wafer. Laid out across the torn open silvery wrapper like Mukan had done, the bite-sized wafers looked like bricks too small to build a house with.

Feria cupped her hands, palms up, and stretched her well-fed arms across the aisle. 'Please give me biscuit', her body said. Mukan placed an unknown number of beige treats in the bowl Feria had made of her palms, smiling a soft-cheeked smile. That smile always reminded Feria of clouds, or the fact that the end of school bell would ring soon and their leisurely, hand-in-hand walk home would immediately follow. But then, from nowhere, a shout. It was one of Primary 2 Blue’s nosier, noisier occupants. 'STOP BEGGING! BEGGIE BEGGIE!'

Feria jumped. Her tiny pile of wafers almost fell to the grimy floor through the new gap between her hands. 'Stop begging!' The words had landed in her lap before she even realised they were coming her way. 'Beggie beggie!' Feria wasn’t quite sure what to do with this name that wasn’t hers, so she just sat quietly as everybody laughed. And even though for years afterwards Feria reminded herself there was no malice intended, the memory of that laughter always made her want to sit on her hands and swallow hard.

In a panic, seven-year-old Feria stuffed the wafers into her mouth. They tasted like lost and lonely bricks; small bricks, no house. She held them on her tongue, counting her breaths and her teeth, not meeting Mukan’s eyes until the back-to-class bell started to ring. The wafers softened to nothing in a puddle of her saliva. Feria’s classmates who had heeded the sun’s call caterwauled their way back to class, sandy and sad about leaving play behind. Feria, meanwhile, went to the girls’ toilet and spat into the sink as seriously as she could. She kept her back as straight as her grandmother always reminded her to at the dining table. She stood there until the streaks of pink and white from the wafers’ insides, waxy and soft, had mostly slipped out of sight into the drains. There was only one sad, lonely streak left when Feria finally turned on the tap and started scrubbing her hands. I’m not a beggar. Mukan is my friend. I am not a beggar. Mukan is my friend.

Back in the still-teacherless class, Feria walked the two seats down from hers to look the silly shouter in the eye. 'Mukan is my friend. You are not.' She said it as seriously as she had spat out the sopping wet biscuits, then spun on her heel in a way she knew Mukan would want to talk about all the way home. The shouter threw a wad of paper at her head and missed. Coward. He had waited until her back was turned. Feria picked up the paper from where it had landed on her desk, put it in her mouth, and toyed with it with her tongue until it had softened to almost nothing. The subject teacher, late from lunch and frazzled, rummaged noisily in her desk. Feria turned her head, spat the soggy mess in the shouter’s direction, and also missed. The whole class laughed — Mukan the loudest. There was no malice in it. Mrs Afeni’s eyes whipped around the room, the paper clips in her mouth and tiredness in her shoulders preventing her from scolding the nineteen scoundrels of Primary 2 Blue. Nobody ratted Feria out. Feria looked at Mukan, then looked at her hands. Next time, I’ll use only one, she thought.

More than a decade later, when Feria was in her third year at university, she discovered she could stop using her hands to communicate desire altogether. Truth be told, she discovered this only because of the events that unfolded after this one girl, Merry, suddenly spoke to her. Merry had been following Feria from place to place with her eyes for weeks. Feria had noticed, but never returned the surreptitious looks. There was a lot happening inside Merry’s head, it was clear. Feria didn’t have the time, the energy, the water or sunlight, for a lot. She barely had enough for just enough. And she was fine, really, until something possessed Merry to stand over her head and block out the light on a day when the sun was high in the sky, calling to the seven-year-old that still lived inside Feria to come out and play.

'I’d like to sit down, please.'

The request was as abrupt as anything (even though everything that came afterwards was not). Feria had been reading, smiling a soft-cheeked smile to herself and feeling her grandmother’s spirit on the breeze. She looked up from her book, squinting, her glasses darkening further in the brightness. There was a dancing red dress in front of her. Feria’s throat tightened, quickly, almost beyond noticing. Her thirteen-year-old self swallowed.

'What..?' The rest of the words trailed away somewhere, following a stray thought. But nothing hurt. Feria checked inside herself; her eyes, her throat, her stomach. Nothing hurt. No one was shouting or bleeding. Everything was where it should be.

'I like your glasses. They make you look really cool.' The hem of Merry’s red dress danced in the wind; playful, light, beautiful.

Feria adjusted her glasses in the softness of this brand new shadow, confused and happy and confused about her happiness. Merry just stood there, red and tall and sudden. There was nothing modest about her. She felt like a lot. Feria counted her teeth, then counted her breaths, then counted the palm trees lining the lagoon behind Merry’s head, because she couldn’t remember what the girl had originally said and the thought of asking again made her want to sit on her hands and swallow hard.

'I said I’d like to sit down, please.'

'Oh!' Feria looked at her hands. 'Oh.'

Teeth.

Breaths.

Trees.

Merry inclined her head, her body reiterating the request almost as loudly as if she had said the words a third time. Feria grabbed her books off the concrete bench and winced. She had grazed her knuckles. Merry inclined her head again, quieter this time, then held out her hand. She was suddenly soft around the edges. Feria hesitated, her faraway mind rushing with questions. Then she placed the injured hand, palm up as if to receive a pink-and-white filled treat, in Merry’s waferless palm. Feria caught sight of Merry’s three and a half destiny lines. Merry turned Feria’s hand over, and the furrow that appeared between her eyebrows matched the grazed knuckles.

Three weeks later, on the same day that Feria discovered that you don’t always need your hands with girls even when you mean business, Merry whispered that it had taken everything in her not to kiss those raw spots. 'I like you,' Merry had said just five days before. The girl was full of revelations.

'I really, really like you.' The sun–that eternal showoff–was just finishing its set, packing up to let the night sky remind God’s children about the soft sweetness of the dark.

Feria counted her teeth with her tongue, wondering why the sunset was lingering so long outside the window.

Merry leaned closer. Feria counted her breaths, thinking about pink and white and treats and cloudy streaks; hand-in-hand walks home that felt like more happiness than mouthfuls of sugar; quiet questions long unasked in the furthest corners of her faraway mind.

Merry leaned closer.

Feria leaned closer, thinking about Merry’s furrowed eyebrows matching her grazed knuckles. Thinking about beauty and softness and the breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding since her grandmother said to her, dying and knowing and full of compassion for her daughter’s daydreaming daughter, 'Let the orchids die, Feri. And let yourself live.'

Merry closed the gap, kissed the kiss, counted Feria’s teeth with her tongue.

Feria didn’t stop her.

Feria stayed.

Feria let herself stay, and when Merry finally took her hands and cupped them on either side of Feria’s face, the sigh that escaped both their bodies was a breath that knew something about life, and bravery, and maybe even a little bit about love.