SUNDAY
23 SEPTEMBER, 1990
DORIAN

               'Dorian, will you need a rod screwed to your spine?' Ima is a gold medalist in speaking through a smile so charismatic it tricks any strangers into declaring brutalities sweet. 'Sit straight.'

'Sorry.'

'Stop playing with your food.'

'Sorry.' The fork digs into my fingers as I tighten my grip.

I was relieved by the arrival of the first appetizers — I'm a naturally slow eater and I've mastered the art of drawing out each course so that I'm never pulled into conversation; it's bad manners to address someone while they're chewing — but the hope of reprieve wilted the instant I recognised the aubergine. The sight of it already makes me want to rock back and forth.

More than it already is from the overlapping sounds of the fundraiser.

I force a morsel onto my tongue and nearly spit it out. This is ridiculous. I'm eighteen; I need to learn to eat foods I don't like without making a scene. (Grow up!) But it's so awful. The aubergine turns to mucus that expands the more I chew.

I wish I could be as unbothered by other people as Isaiah is. He never uses a knife when he eats. Left hand always holding a book, he eats with the fingers of his right, or in the case he uses a fork, hacks up his food using the edge. Isaiah has a confidence I never will, the kind of self-assurance that allows him to write everything with a pen; the paper of his school assignments is never worn thin from eraser burn. How do I learn not to tie myself in knots over mistakes before I make them?

I wish Isaiah was here. I never feel this nauseous with him close.

'Dorian, I want you to play something.'

I snap my head up. 'Why?'

'We are raising money for your school,' Aba says with a humorous undertone. 'You should play.'

'But I've not prepared–'

Ima cuts me off. 'If you still need to prepare for a simple performance, I don't know if you'll be worth an Oxford tuition.' It's an empty threat. She would kill innocents before she lets me not go to Oxford. The men in my family have gone to Oxford since they came to this country. 'You'll play second — nobody listens to the first song because they're still thinking and by the third, they're bored.'

Entirely blinded by their mirage, Mrs Hoffman watches me excitedly from across the table. 'You play the piano?'

Whoever planned this fundraiser chose large round tables and we're seated with the Hoffmans (which I wasn't made aware of until we arrived). At Elijah's prompting, I tried to start a conversation with Sally, who I went to primary school with, but it took under a minute for her to call me weird.

I spend several seconds trying to manage eye contact and my nod is delayed.

Sighing (speak up; strike two), Ima answers for me. 'Dorian plays five instruments.'

'Do you really?'

I offer another meek nod.

'That's impressive.' Mrs Hoffman casts her daughter an almost pitying glance. 'How have you done it, Miriam? You must have some kind of secret to have raised three sons who are all so excellently skilled and well-behaved.'

Ima's delight is venomous. To others, this fundraiser is a consequence-free domain to express their most conservative views — People have forgotten scripture, the coming decade is doomed. To Ima, it's a covert tallying of every other Jew in the county to confirm that her sons are most observant of halakah.

My parents have never had an issue clinging to G-d at the expense of others. They view holiness as they do all things: not a round table with an unlimited number of seats but a throne at the top of a pyramid. They'll do anything to gatekeep their position and calmly wash their hands when it's done.

'Nothing more to it than yirat shamayyim.' Her hand falls to my knee where nobody can see, nails sharp even through my suit trousers. 'Sit straight.'

Maybe it's this overloading of my senses that robs my sanity or maybe it's the confidence with which Ima takes credit, a hubris limited to artists of excellent skill and no vision. Either way, insanity is the only explanation for my interruption: 'Isaiah always encourages me to play.'

The reaction is imminent. Elijah grimaces. My mother splinters whilst my father smelts.

Ignorant to the tension brewing on our side of the table, Mr Hoffman furrows his brow at me. 'I don't believe I'm familiar with any Isaiah in your cohort.'

Out of everyone in the race, Sally is the quickest. 'He's the Lower queer, Dad. He probably has AIDS.'

I snap despite Ima's talons hooked into my leg. 'He does not have AIDS.'

Several attendees at the surrounding tables glance at us. For the first time since the arrival of the salmon bagel bites (which none of us except Sally have finished), Fernandes's piano sonatina unearths from the noise. (Mrs Hoffman berates her daughter in a rough whisper — "People are dying. It's not something to joke about.")

Ima's mask cracks. This is her worst-case scenario.

'I'm sure everyone who hears you play encourages you to continue. Your scholarship boy is hardly unique in that. I'm doubtful he could tell the difference between a cat running across the keys and a virtuoso.'

I cut over the laughter that breaks out around the table. 'Isaiah appreciates art. Probably more than you do.'

'What a talent for him to appreciate something he will never witness.'

'You have no idea what art–'

'That will suffice.' Aba offers Mr and Mrs Hoffman the kind of nod I've seen parents exchange countless times at the expense of their children. 'My apologies. Dorian gets attached to people with awful ease. Next week, he'll declare the postman his best friend. Teenagers. I'm sure you know.'

Before I can protest, Aba turns to me. 'This isn't a subject to be discussed here. Why don't we finish this at home?'

My face scrunched. 'I'm going to school from here.'

'No, you aren't.' His expression leaves no room for doubt: there will be punishment for my behaviour.

And if I'm already going to be punished, I have nothing to lose. 'Art is consumed for liberation. People who have nothing to liberate themselves from will never understand it.'

'You truly are a mirror for his opinions,' Ima muses.

'That's not true.' (You're the only one who explains things to me until I understand, but that's what makes them my opinions too.) 'I believe that. I do.'

She doesn't bother to coat her laughter in sugar this time. 'And it has nothing to do with him?'

'Of course, it has everything to do with him. But it has everything to do with me, too.'

Bubbled by defiance, I don't realise the weight of my confession before silence swallows me whole. My mouth runs dry. Ima's serrated stare dulls with terror. On my other side, Elijah's glass threatens to shatter in his grasp.

I didn't mean to make any such admission to her; what could I possibly have to liberate myself from? We all know the answer: if there's anyone on Earth capable of mind-reading, it's my mother. She knows. How you live permanently in my thoughts — my chest, more importantly. The static that seeped in two summers ago, how I'm full of it now, the need to memorize every inch of your skin. Someone could have seen me staring. They would tell her: this town sows gossip and harvests tragedies.

The pianist is still playing but their music is buried under the sound of eating. Fifty people chewing at once. When I realise it, I can't block it out. Not that or the scrape of countless cutlery against porcelain. I'm going to be sick. Or pass out. Sweat rolls down my back. Why play music when no one is listening?

I jump to my feet. Before anyone can stop me, I've rushed between tables, nearly colliding with a server at the door. Though I intend to go to the lavatory, I find myself outside and I round the building to the workers' entrance where there are no windows but to the kitchen.

Nobody who works in the kitchen cares about who I am. Here, out of reach from the waning sunlight, I'm free to pace with my hands clawed to the back of my neck. They'll kill me. I could run away. Where? How? With what money? If they kill me, at least it'll all end. They'll kill me. They'll–

'Yuh gud, cuz?'

I whirl around and for a moment, I'm convinced Isaiah is an angel or, at the least, a hallucination of one. Standing on the narrow cement staircase with the wrought iron lantern behind his head, he arrives from the heavens as the answer to my prayers.

'What are you doing here?' In my panic, my voice becomes angry but Isaiah turns my harshness into humour.

'Washing them damn dishes.' He kisses his teeth. 'You people love your tiny plates. Couldn't use one big plate that'd fit all them five courses on. You on some joke ting.'

He rolls his eyes before he bounds down the stairs. The gravel grouses under his trainers as he approaches me, gentle, as one would a street cat they want to pet, and I'm abruptly aware I'm still gasping for breath.

The reminder avalanches onto me and my body fluxes into lava: scalding and immaterial. Sweat oozes out of my skin. My clothes shrink, the seams bulk. A feverish bubble encapsulates my head.

'I think I just told my parents I... They're going to kill me. They'll kill me.' My voice is shrill and sounds as though it's spoken a yard from my left rather than my own mouth which only exacerbates the nausea. 'It's so loud. There are so many people chewing at the same time and the... plates, it ruins the music. Why are they playing music if no one's listening to it? I hate these clothes and my brother's here and I always ramble and I can't look out the window or cross my legs and I have to grow up and it-it-it's just too much.'

I hunch over to stare at my shoes which dot with my tears. He's going to think I'm weird. He thinks I'm weird. I'm weird–

'No third eye, though. Count them blessings, cuz.'

I stare blankly at his grin. It takes a minute for me to remember his Chornobyl fearmongering from Friday. How does it feel so long ago?

Isaiah gestures to a bench beneath the kitchen windows. 'Wanna sit down?'

He retreats to it though when I remain rooted to my spot, he leans back to stare at the sky. Immediately, he understands I want space and company, that I don't want to be left alone but don't want to be prodded either, that I want attention but not a spotlight.

How does he always know exactly what I need? In a world where everyone else constantly tells me I'm confusing and difficult, Isaiah reads me with intuitiveness I could only expect from G-d. (You were made for me!)

When human proximity isn't overwhelming anymore, I sit beside him, cross-legged. He lifts his hand from his lap and holds it over mine as though intending to give me something only to say, 'You can hold my hand if you like.'

My heartstrings strum when I interlace our fingers. (Your hand was made for mine!) His palm is cool and his skin dry from dish soap. His touch grounds me back into my body and the gentle hum of the river only a dozen yards away emerges from beneath my internal racket.

With our hands in my lap, I spin his friendship bracelet around his wrist. He's clearly tried to keep it from getting wet by hiking it higher up his arm but the tails are soggy and I get the satisfaction of squeezing water out of them before I return to rotating it. Eventually, the repetitive movement eases my discomfort.

My attention tiptoes to him. 'You're in pain, aren't you?'

It's not hard to tell from the rhythm of his breathing: it's too controlled to be unconscious. His natural breaths wade like waves that caress a beach, morph from shallow to deeper at no particular interval.

Moving as little as possible, Isaiah glances at me and the corners of his lips twitch. 'Yeah.'

Selfishly, I'm filled with warmth. In the first few years of his fibromyalgia diagnosis (and sometimes even now) Isaiah would downplay his flares with humour if not blatantly lie about their severity. The fact that he doesn't bother with any facade now warms my insides.

That's nothing compared to the rush that flutters from my stomach to my knees when he leans his head on my shoulder. (Can you hear it? My heart pounding. Can you tell I'm tingling all over? Are you?) Isaiah yawns and I watch his eyes shut in the blur of my periphery.

'I feel much better already.'

'Me too.' I trace the pattern of vitiligo around the knuckle of his ring finger. 'You saved me.'

He loads more weight onto my shoulder before he pulls away and tries to blink himself awake. Fatigue remains heavy in his voice. 'I should probably get back in. You probably should too.'

I should. Ima will have a guillotine sharp by now.

Neither of us stands.

The evening breeze drapes the moringa scent of his perfume around me. It dulls my thoughts, good and bad, and makes me oddly aware of my own body, though not in the way I've learnt to associate with meltdowns and panic. Now my hands are restless with the unfamiliar need to touch rather than to retreat.

Before I have time to second guess, I grab his again. Isaiah looks up, slightly surprised but also pleased. He must know I feel insecure because he pulls his thumb from under mine to caress the base. It means he's happy to hold my hand, that he wants to do it more often, and don't pull away.

I love how easy it is to read your body language. I love how, when everyone else shrouds in several layers, you wear your emotions on your sleeve. (You were made for me. You were made for me. You were made for me.)

'Run away with me?' I ask, knowing I won't.

'Without hesitation,' he says, knowing he won't either.

'I want to kiss you.'

I register the words only once they shimmer in the air between us and it's too late to take them back. My cheeks burn and my heart hammers so quickly, I wouldn't be surprised if it leapt through my ribs, but I don't turn away.

Neither does Isaiah. He smirks, tooth gap teasing me from the parting of his lips as he finds my gaze. His eyes are so impossibly large and the richest brown imaginable — The most beautiful colour: the colour of Earth, the first of HaShem's creations, and therefore the colour of life itself. The colour of love, too, because we share it in both our irises.

'Kiss me then.'

There's an inflexion of challenge in his tone that says he doesn't think I'll have the guts to go through with it. Still, he tilts his head so that all I need is to lean forward.

All I need is to lean forward.

I do.

Halfway, I retreat enough to seek his gaze again (Are you sure about this? What if it was a joke?) only to find it hazy on my mouth, which is all the encouragement I need to press my lips to his. The touch, even when neither of us moves, washes a calm over me I've sought everywhere else.

All my life, I've been crammed full of noise. More so than other people, or possibly just less capable of dealing with it. It's like I was born missing the ability to tune it out; everyone tells me to just turn it down but I was never given a volume control. So I make do with blocking it out. I find sounds I like and cling to them in hopes they'll bury the noise underneath them.

All this time, what I've needed is the touch of his lips on mine to soothe all the static. (You saved me! You save me! You're saving me!) The cacophony of broken instruments is finally tuned and all that tickles through my body is a symphony more beautiful than any yet to exist.

How has it taken me eleven years to realise? I don't need to run away. I need to run to him.

We part only an inch. His breath whispers against my mouth. The hum of the river blends into the rush of my own blood. Thank G-d for the evening breeze; I'd melt away without it.

When my eyes find his, there's a flicker of fear in them, a kind of panic unprecedented for Isaiah that cleaves at my chest. Before I can identify the source, it's gone and he smiles instead.

So I lean in again. This time, Isaiah responds with movement that I stumble to reciprocate (I think I might be terrible at this). My free hand cradles his neck to pull him closer until my nose is flat against his cheek and our mouths are locked together.

Neither of our tongues dares past our own teeth but the hint of his taste from the smooth skin on the inside of his lip is enough to make my fingers curl into his spine. He grins into the kiss. My hand is clammy in his but he caresses the bridge of my thumb so I know I don't have to pull away (I love how, even now, you know exactly what I'm thinking) as his lips continue their slow movement on mine (How are you so good at this?) until they fall still.

With a final peck, he pulls back.

He's panting slightly though does his best to hide it. The sight unlocks a part of me I never knew existed, one that's cocky at the thought I could turn Isaiah bashful.

His sheepishness bubbles into laughter. 'You done made me feel like I ran a damn marathon.' Bending over, he stops masking his breathlessness and takes several gulps of air. 'I really need to get back to work.' His tone adds: though I'd much rather stay here.

I jump to my feet to help him up. Isaiah rolls his eyes and casts me a look that says what a gentleman in that affectionate mockery that tickles my ribs. He keeps his hand in mine until he's on the lowest stair where he squeezes and lets go.

I watch him idle up the cement steps, clutching onto the wrought iron railing a little more than someone else his age would.

'Shay?'

Isaiah looks over his shoulder, beaming in a manner that reveals he was dying for me to interrupt but also fully confident in the knowledge I would. 'Yeah?'

Swallowing, I fumble with the end of my tie. 'Is it going to be weird tomorrow?'

'Weird?' he repeats as though he can't fathom why it would be, only to simultaneously validate my anxiety as he brushes it aside. 'It ain't gon be weird less you want it to be.'

'Okay.'

As soon as he turns away, I crave him back. (What wouldn't I do for my life to be nothing but shared moments with you? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing!) School, my family, these stupid events... everything is filler shoved between Isaiah, me and Isaiah, Isaiah and me.

When he reaches the top of the stairs, I call after him again. 'I'll see you tomorrow.'

'See ya tomorrow, cuz,' he says, and adds with a laugh, 'If your family gets too much, I'll be in the kitchen.' At the door, he turns, and plays the pretence of nearly having forgotten before he grins to reassure that he never could. 'I love you.'

'I love you.'

The words taste the same and relief suffuses through me. There's no tang of iron to reveal the friendship I've butchered nor awkwardness that sticks to my teeth. The autumn breeze remains light and floral and the smile he casts me before he disappears inside is the same I've known for eleven years. He's still my best friend.

Tomorrow, he'll wait for me at the school gates and greet me with the fist bump I love to hate and we'll attend morning prayer together.

Tracing my lips, I drift around the corner toward the main door. Dread has no place in my body now. Let Ima do her worst. Knowledge of Isaiah's proximity makes me immune to any lecture and my eagerness to see him makes my mind a garden fear can't grow roots in.

I'll play if my parents want me to. I'll play Florence Price's Fantasie Negre and I'll send it to him. He'll hear it in the kitchen and know.

Notes

Halakah: The collected body of Jewish religious laws.

Yirat shamayyim: The fear of Heaven. it's a concept of being in awe of God and his power which is intended to motivate Jewish people to live in accordance to religious rules.

Florence Price's Fantasie Negre: Video below. Price was the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer in the US and wrote over 300 pieces in her lifetime. 

https://youtu.be/1wgUxMcM45U