FRIDAY
14 DECEMBER, 1990
DORIAN

               Isaiah's mouth is where I cultivate my garden.

Cross-legged on the bed, his knees press into mine. I wish they would leave bruises. I wish his fingers at the back of my neck would leave bruises too, for him to use his grip to kiss me so hard the skin of my lips tears and my nose breaks, and to keep kissing me; drink the blood, I made it for you. I want his teeth to sink into my neck. At the horrified looks of whoever would see me next, I would shrug (nonchalantly, the way he does but I never learnt to) and say, I was hungry.

The thoughts would make me sick if I had the time to feel anything but love and desire. Desire which is only intensified by the fact that he is now my boyfriend. The word reels around my head, injecting itself into my veins to fill my whole body with the need to absorb into his. Boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend...

His other palm is planted over my heart, feather-light.

My hands on his waist gather the fabric of his uniform shirt until it untucks from his trousers.

Isaiah peels back, drinking several lungfuls before he's able to speak. 'I thought we was doing coursework.' He glances at the amber sky over my shoulder. 'Sabbath starts soon.'

I take the opportunity to kiss the spot behind the corner of his jaw and he shudders. 'We can do coursework on Sunday.'

To prove the point, I shove our books onto the floor. The thuds are honey in my mouth: a reward. All the other boys on this floor are home (it's Shabbat and Chanukah) and for the first time, we don't have to stifle noise.

I tug the ribbed vest from his waistband too, though I keep my fingers over the fabric. 'Can I touch you?'

Isaiah's hand guides mine under the tank, presses it flat to his skin. The other on my throat, he pushes me away to meet my gaze.

'You–' he pecks my mouth '–are obsessed with me.'

I nod. 'Yes.'

I graze his lowest rib and the smirk wipes off his face. Eyes glazed, he finds the hem of his shirt to unbutton it but I pull his hands away.

'I want to do it.'

The protest that has already reached his tongue melts like a sugar cube.

After dozens of times, my fingers still tremble as I slip each pearly disk through its slit (so much for piano genius, I have never been clumsier). Isaiah gazes at me as I do. I love how he looks into my eyes when I look away. I'll wait, it says. All the world is secondary in beauty.

Arms forming parentheses around mine, he traces the shape of my skull: the back of my head, my browbone, cheekbones, the ridge of my nose. Finger in my mouth, he imprints the shape of each tooth into his flesh.

'How are we going to survive at Oxford when you live in Magdalen and I live in Keble?' It's half joke, half genuine fear we'll drift apart when we have different classes in different colleges.

I focus on undoing the buttons with numb fingers. When the shirt falls open (save for the collar which is kept in place by his tie), I place my hands symmetrically on my thighs. 'What if instead of university accommodation, we get our own flat?'

Isaiah yanks back as if burnt, snatching my gaze from his chest to his wide eyes. They flit rapidly between each of mine. I don't resist. If mind-reading is possible, I'll offer you mine as a book and pray it'll be your favourite.

'You wanna live with me?' His voice borders on accusatory.

'Only if you let me cook for you.' I draw patterns into the fabric of my trousers. 'You also have to teach me to do chores because... I-I don't know how.'

Isaiah stares at me, eyebrows slowly raising toward his hairline. 'You ever washed laundry in your life?'

'No.'

'You know how to iron a shirt?'

'No.'

'Do you even know how to pay a bill?'

'No.'

Anxiety gathers on my skin like sweat. Just when I'm about to get off the bed, his face blossoms into a grin that announces summer. 'Then I'd love to teach you.' Returning his hand to the back of my head, he tries to kiss me but he can't stop grinning. 'I can't wait to teach you.'

Eventually, his smile eases and his lips become supple again, though this is when we part. Isaiah watches me undo his tie, peel it from his neck, and push the shirt down his shoulders (how I love your shoulders, round and lustrous like apples), then takes the rest off himself, tossing the shirt to the floor with the kind of disregard he shows his uniform only when snogging has coaxed him to the edge of insanity.

Without wasting time, he goes to pull his undershirt off only for his Star of David to get tangled. I have to fish the chain from between the collar and his cheek for him to get the vest over his head. When the top is on the floor and star centred on his sternum, I uncross his legs and position myself between them.

'You're beautiful.'

His cheeks blaze under my palms.

'I love you, yakiri. Boyfriend.'

His tooth gap peeks from between his lips. 'I love you.'

I lean forward until Isaiah has to lie down. 'Is this okay for you?' I ask, because sometimes he gets uncomfortable when I'm above him but he hums and when I don't move, responds verbally, 'It's criss.' He pulls my mouth down to his.

His hands find my shirt to start unbuttoning it. For the second time, I take his wrists and pull them off. Then a third time when he tries again, which makes him pull back. 'What–?'

'Let me make you feel good for once.'

'For once that my dick is working?'

'Yeah.'

'But what about you?'

'Nothing about me,' I answer. 'I'm trying to make this about you. That is the whole point.'

I undo his belt and the button of his trousers while Isaiah squirms on the bed, uncomfortable with his role, with the switching of roles (always the pleaser, he can't dispel the fear that he's losing something). Until I slip my hand into his boxers. I kiss him and he spills his moans down my throat as he grows hard in my hold.

The lock clicks.

I turn to the door only when the handle is down and it starts to open, which it does in slow motion until Ima steps over the threshold. Some weird garble between a scream and a sob leaves my throat. I lurch off Isaiah and cram myself against the wall, forcing my legs against my chest.

Isaiah snaps upright so fast I know it causes pain, but he shows no hint of it as he crawls in front of me without even zipping up his trousers. He whispers affirmations but the words are swallowed by the riptide of blood in my ears. The movement of his lips makes me nauseous and I screw my eyes shut. He places a hand on my knee only for me to flinch.

Ima's voice, always sovereign, pierces through with ease. 'Peculiar way of honouring the school you have, Dorian.'

I open my eyes with the floodgates and tears spill down my cheeks in brooks. I hardly see more of her than blotches of colour: brown skin, green mitpachat, crimson fury.

'How did you know?' It leaves me, not as a question, but a plea for mercy.

'Do you honestly think we don't know everything you do here?' Ima steps over Isaiah's clothes on the floor and closes the door. 'I would like to speak to my son alone.'

The blade on her tongue that would already have skinned me alive is blunt on Isaiah. He twists his head back to face her, still sitting in front of me like a shield whilst I try not to suffocate on my own lungs, and brandishes a knife of his own.

'Like I'm leaving him here lone with you.'

The way the g is dropped from "leaving" and th turned to a d in "with" pulls Ima's face so taut, her skin threatens to rip at every wrinkle. What would we find underneath, a second face waiting or a prayer?

'You will not speak like that around him.'

Isaiah sucks his teeth.

Before he can speak, I take his hand. Either he's burning up or I'm frozen over; I could just as well grip Hell. At his touch alone, I stop shaking. Couldn't I be burned by you instead of my mother? He turns to me, anger rooted so deep into his expression he can't weed all of it out. (Burn me! Burn me! Please, I want it to be you!)

'It's okay, Shay. I'll talk to her.'

'No.' He whispers furiously as if Ima can't hear us when she's a foot away. 'I ain't leaving you here with her. She could hurt you.'

'She–' My voice dries out and I have to swallow thrice before it works again. 'She won't. It's okay.' He shakes his head and I squeeze his hand. It doesn't matter what I say; he won't believe me, and perhaps that's exactly why I repeat it. 'It's okay. She won't. Wait for me at the gates. I'll come after.'

Protests clash around his molars; he has to clamp his lips shut to stop them from spewing out. But he respects my decision. I watch him get dressed as my heart fills with seawater, salty and erosive. My tears don't expel it fast enough. Is it possible to drown from the inside?

When he slips his shoes on, I pick up his homework, his durag and clothes, and his poetry notebook to shove into his backpack. Grabbing the striped cashmere jumper he borrows to sleep in, I hand it to him.

Isaiah stares at it.

'It's freezing outside,' I whisper.

He tries to smile though when he pulls it on, his eyes glisten. Hooking his backpack over his shoulder, he hesitates at the door, trying to fish something appropriate to say out of my pupils. Nothing bites.

Silently, Isaiah leaves and the room sinks.

I turn to my mother with a rusty skeleton that creaks at every movement I force it to make. Because I'm a foot taller, I sink onto the bed to allow her to tower over me as any good sycophant does, hang my head, and wait for the axe.

She's going to kill me. She's going to kill me. She's known the whole time (this whole time!). She is going to kill me.

'Your aba and I have decided it'll be best you finish your education in America.'

Shock interrupts my crying. 'What?'

My urgency rebounds off her. The world operates on my mother's time — on the Day Of Judgement, HaShem will wait for her invitation to deliver the verdict.

Ima gives no response, and though I'm more than familiar with this technique of waiting for me to stress myself into knots so that her punishment feels like mercy, I can't stop the words from foaming out of my mouth. 'I-I-I graduate in s-seven months. You can't just s-send me to America. What-what about my A-levels? How am I supposed to get into Oxford from an American school?'

'You don't have to go to Oxford.'

My brain short-circuits. It sends messages to my vocal cords only to sever them at the first consonant and I stutter before I manage a full sentence. 'You're the one who always demanded I go.'

'Your university won't matter if people find out about this. You're going to a Yeshiva... They'll correct you.'

I manage a syllable of my question before the rest rots between my teeth. A bottom trawling fishing boat, it drags sediment from the floor of my stomach and bile corrodes my throat.

'I'm not going.'

'Yes, you are.' Ima hardly cares for my blood when I cough it at her feet. She's used to having it spoil the hems of her skirts. 'We already enrolled you in September. We had intended that you would start after the holiday but the plan has changed: you're leaving tomorrow.'

Laughter explodes in my chest. 'No, I'm not. You can't just abduct me and p-put me on a plane. I'll-I'll scream.'

The threat is that of a match to the ocean.

'It's Shabbat tomorrow,' I say pathetically. 'And it's the middle of Chanukah.'

'And I'm sure you were intending to observe them according to halakah with him here.'

I couldn't pry Isaiah's name from her lips if it was the sole cure to a gruelling poison seconds from reaching her heart. My mother has no need for G-d's salvation.

'You're right, I can't force you to go,' Ima admits with cordiality akin to being wrong about the weather forecast when I insisted it would rain. 'But if you decide to stay, your beloved scholarship boy might find that he's no longer has a scholarship and I'd like to see how he manages to get into Oxford after that.'

'You can't expel him. You don't work here.'

Her expression wilts for the first time since Isaiah's departure and pity seeps in. 'You don't understand the power your father has, do you? Do you realise how much funding he gives to this school? Do you honestly believe it will take more than one word from him? The administration has wanted to get rid of that boy since he started — he has only lasted this long because you help him...

'It's your decision.'

Her weaponry dulls behind the tears that flood my eyes again. The sky is dark and empty. The ocean swallows my heart without a single star as witness. What does the universe care that my life is ending?

'I tried to tell you. Elijah tried to tell you. You wouldn't listen, "he's your best friend".' The phrase is spat out with venom that could challenge that in the fangs of a taipan snake. 'I won't allow it. He is not going to make you like him. You are not going make me the mother of a gay son.'

'Then I suppose you can't be my mother anymore.'

Ima shakes her head, her regal face contorting into something monstrous. 'No. You have no idea what I've done to get here.'

My mother is not a woman who whispers. I don't think I've ever heard her whisper before, but as she does, it exposes, not weakness, but exactly how willing she is to tear out my heart with her bare hands if it gives her the chance to rewire it to her liking.

'I did not cut off my parents so my own son could sabotage me. And I know you think me shallow but it's easy for you to say that money isn't important when you've never had to live without it. I am not going back, you won't drag me back. They're going to fix you.

'And if they don't, you are not welcome here anymore. I'll pay your tuition to whatever university you end up in but you will never tarnish our name again.' 

Notes

Mitpachat: Headscarf.

Travelling longer distances on Shabbat is forbidden, hence why Dorian attempts that as an argument for why his mother can't send him all the America tomorrow.