At the steakhouse I ordered steak, which they didn’t have, pizza, which they didn’t have, noodles, which they didn’t have, and salad, which they also didn’t have.
“What is there?” I asked the waitress, in Mongolian.
She looked like somebody’s niece, sullen and thin-wristed, her mouth shiny with lip gloss. “Vodka,” she shrugged at me. “Chicken strips.”
“We’ll have that,” said Oyumaa, giving the waitress her chilliest side-eye.
The girl snorted and walked away.
Oyumaa was my colleague and neighbor—same Soviet-blue building, different stairwells. Sometimes we saw each other drinking instant coffee on our respective balconies. When that happened, we waved. Though it was still cold, I liked to stand out there in the mornings, watching hairy tusked pigs root around in the trashed field behind our place. If I got up early enough, I could see the milk sellers trudging by with their sacks of repurposed Fanta bottles. I saw the stray dogs swirling in packs or humping in pairs.
The steakhouse waitress had barely left when Oyumaa sucked at her teeth and said in English, “Next time we go for hot pot.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. This place is a dump.”
She said the same thing every week, although we never went anywhere else. I was too busy marveling at that idiom—so weirdly Bette Davis. Although Oyumaa taught business, she had the best English at our provincial university. This came from having watched every Bond movie ever made, and following Lana del Rey and her ilk instead of K-pop.
Some folksy but current Mongolian ballad was blasting through the steakhouse’s tinny speakers. A disco ball rotated like a drunken planet above the empty dance floor, flecking Oyumaa’s smooth face with shards of pink and purple light. It was a Monday. When the vodka came, she tipped it back without a twitch. I stared down at my own glass, dreading the burn.
“Do you have a boyfriend yet, Cecily?”
I shook my head. Almost every week we paid our separate tabs. Almost every week she asked me that question, along with a slew of others, most of which I had no idea how to answer: How effectively did America run public schools in rural places? Could privately owned cattle graze on public lands? Was American high school like the movies?
She dressed like a teenager—bangles and little wedge heels and shirts with rhinestones on them—but she spoke like a professor of economics, which she would be, once she got the hell out of Dodge. She was beautiful, of course. I never really knew a Mongolian who wasn’t. She had an oval-shaped face and green-flecked eyes and wore her hair in a glossy bob.
“Aren’t you lonely?” she said.
I swallowed down my shot and started coughing like an innocent. “I’m busy. I’m teaching. I’m learning Mongolian.”
“It’s not important,” said Oyumaa, waving a hand.
She was tutoring me—two Mongolian language lessons for every one she got in English. That was her idea of a fair ratio, not mine.
“It is important,” I said. “I live here.”
“For a short time only. You should learn Russian. Or Chinese. Or Boyfriend.”
“What?”
“The language of the Man People.” She laughed at her own joke. “You’re still young. You shouldn’t be alone.”
“But I’m leaving in June. What if I break his heart?”
“He can tell the story until he dies, of how he loved an American girl. You can learn to ride a horse.” She leaned back. “You have a boyfriend in America?”
“No.”
Sorrowfully, she shook her head. The chicken still hadn’t come, so Oyumaa stood up and gestured at the sulky waitress. The waitress shouted at us. Oyumaa shouted back. Then she sat down like nothing had happened.
“You’re young,” she said. “You should wear nice clothes.”
I had thrown a loose sweater on over my button-up, hoping to evoke a sort of rumpled professor look. “But I’m comfortable.”
“You dress like a man, Cecily. Or a grandmother.”
Okay. True. On New Year’s Eve, I had scandalized the other teachers by wearing a suit to their sequined dance party—a soiree of prom-level proportions, for staff only, held in the university’s echoing gym. Almost anywhere else on God’s green earth, I would’ve been readily identifiable as a dyke. Certain friends had threatened to post my picture to a Tumblr page, “Lesbians Who Look Like Justin Bieber.” I still had short hair and long bangs. But in Mongolia, when Oyumaa asked what kind of men I liked and I said “None of them,” she burst out laughing.
That was the year I turned twenty-two. Oyumaa was twenty-three and already married. She’d met her husband while she was working as a teller in a bank. They tried to move to the big city—even succeeded. Then his father got dementia, and they came home after six months to this concrete outpost on the steppe.
Although I had never met Oyumaa’s husband, I hated him. At the steakhouse one night, she’d confided to me that he used to drink. He hit her once; she kicked him out. Later he came back, apologetic and mostly sober. They were living together again. She loved him, she said, even though she was applying to a PhD program in Hungary and he wasn’t planning on coming with. I had written Oyumaa a letter of recommendation. Not because I knew anything about her agro-economic research on peri-urban herding, but because I was the only person at the university who could write her a letter in English.
“Oyumaa would return to Mongolia empowered to enact positive change,” I wrote—a little bullshitty, but my heart was in it. “I hope she is granted the opportunity to continue her studies in Hungary, not only for her sake, but for the sake of her home country.”
By then most people had given up on calling me Cecily, which was considered too hard to pronounce. They settled on Cec, as in cesspool. But Oyumaa was so delighted with my letter, she gave me a proper Mongolian name.
“Bagsh aa!” she hollered, bounding after me in the Soviet-seafoam-green hall. “I’m going to call you Tsetsgee.”
That’s pronounced like Sex Gay, except with a ts. She told me that it meant Little Flower.
“Because you are beautiful. But”—she gestured at my skinny body, grinning—“no fruit.”
She wasn’t wrong. A year in the closet hadn’t seemed so bad when I set off, with a long-distance girlfriend and a suitcase full of classic novels I’d always meant to read. But six months in, I was single and under siege by my own best comrades. Beautiful Mongolian women were always touching my upper thigh in completely heterosexual displays of affection. At night I got off on tender memories of my ex. When the university remembered to pay my Internet bill, I plugged my laptop into the ethernet cable and watched RuPaul’s Drag Race just to stay sane.
I knew some English teachers in Ulaanbaatar. At the tail end of winter, Logan called me up and told me his female best friend was coming to visit.
“She’s an artisanal glassblower,” he said. “She’s bi. Or, like, experimenting.”
“I’m not a chemistry kit,” I said.
“Of course not. But we’re going to Mojito House. You love Mojito House. And you’re still single, right?”
I said yes, so Logan planned a night on the town. I took the twelve-hour bus ride to the city. There were five of us: Mateo, Logan, Violet, Ari and me. Ari was the glassblower. We didn’t talk much—Logan had chosen a succession of loud bars and basement clubs, where we writhed and pulsed among other sweat-dripping young people—but I could feel her gaze on me.
Ari was heavy but compact, just under five feet tall, with a gold ring through her septum and the come-at-me attitude of certain short people. She wore a tight orange dress. Her roots were dark, but she had buzzed her hair and bleached it. By the third bar, we were sitting thigh-to-thigh in a booth, drinking the only commercially available mojitos in Mongolia. We shouted preliminaries, me about travel and her about art. Then I was rubbing my fingers through the prickling fuzz on the back of her head. It felt like velvet when I stroked against the grain.
We left at three or four in the morning. Neon lights swam above the frozen clouds of our breath. Ari slipped on the black ice of the broken sidewalk. When I tried to catch her, we both went down. I scraped up my palms. Still, we carried the humidity of the bar with us, long enough to hail a cab and get to Logan’s place without the cold setting in. In the car, Ari sat half in my lap and kneaded the meat of my leg.
We were sleeping on the floor of Logan’s apartment—not just Ari and me, but Violet and Mateo, who’d come down from Darkhan for the weekend. Almost as soon as Logan flicked off the lights, Ari wormed over to me, her sleeping bag crinkling. She stuck a hand under my shirt and searched blindly for a nipple. The red light from Logan’s clock spat out a dim glow, too faint to get a good look at the others. They might be passed out. They might also be staring. I wanted to tell her to wait until we were alone. But I was too drunk to whisper. I pretended to fall asleep, so Ari gave up and spooned me instead.
I woke to a changed light. The sun was muted, the clouds a white sea. I wiped the boogers out of my eyes and crawled to the curtained window. When I peered out through a crack, I breathed in sharp. Snow swirled down in sheets. The coal-streaked city, suddenly bright, stunned me and set my vision to swimming. By that time it was supposed to be spring.
The buses were still running, so Ari and I said our goodbyes over a subdued breakfast of noodles in the café across the street.
“I’m here for two more weeks,” she said. “I’ll come visit you.”
“That’s great,” I managed. “You seem cool.”
Logan was smirking at us from the other side of the table.
“What’s the deal with this trip anyway?” I asked, ignoring him.
“I’m here to see this smarmy young son-of-a-bitch.” She jabbed her thumb at Logan. “But I also got a travel grant from my college to study traditional Mongolian jewelry. That was before I found out the oldest beads are all coral or stone.”
“Google malfunction,” sneered Logan.
Ari kicked him under the table. “Fuck you too.”
“You know—” I couldn’t help myself. I had to poke at this until it was ruined. “Choibalsan is pretty remote. We’ll get stared at. Maybe yelled at. There’s not much to do.”
“Except you,” said Ari.
I didn’t have anything clever to say to that, so I blushed and said nothing.
When I got back to the office that Monday, clearly hungover, Oyumaa summoned me to her desk. She was wearing a pale yellow blouse and glitter-encrusted jeans.
“How was Ulaanbaatar?” she asked in Mongolian.
“Scary cool,” I said. That was the only slang I knew.
And I was scared. I’d never had a one-night stand—just a girlfriend in high school, and a two-year relationship in college, which I had fucked up by fleeing to the steppe.
That Friday, Ari texted me to say she was bussing into town. When my lessons were over, I stared at the glowing time stamp on the smeary glass of my phone. I tried to grade papers. Hormones were coursing through my body, turning my normally adequate brain to pink sludge.
I walked to the bus station early and stood there, old men staring at me, my heart slamming against my ribs. The bus trundled late and unhurried down the road. The doors disgorged people in suits, people in deels, people in jeans. And then Ari. In the seconds before she saw me, she looked flustered and lost. Then she laid eyes on me. Her face lit up.
“You made it,” I said.
“Barely.” She had brought only a tiny backpack and a too-warm coat. “This creepy guy was trying to grope me and there were no empty seats.”
“Oh God.”
“It’s okay. A Mongolian grandma switched spots with me and gave him a tongue lashing. It was actually kind of amazing. Anyway,” she slipped her arm into mine, “I’m here now.”
People gaped at us on the way to my apartment—two white girls, stranger than two camels galumphing down the street. But nobody yelled or called us Russians. I’d planned to cook her dinner, even prepped the veggies and bought the wine. When we stepped inside and flicked on the light switch, my apartment stayed dim. It was not the first time the university had forgotten my electricity bill. I made a few heated calls, to the director and the financial officer, which no one answered.
We went out for hot pot and strained to converse. Rather, I strained. Ari seemed okay with silence.
“What got you into glassblowing?” I asked, early on.
“When I was a kid I went to one of those living history museums outside of Boston. I saw this guy blowing glass. That color it turns, lava orange—I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Like pulling taffy, except if the taffy was fifteen hundred degrees.” She grinned at me. “Why’d you choose Mongolia?”
Usually I would say something about studying Russian literature—how I got curious about Central Asia through the Soviet connection. But I figured I might as well tell her the truth.
“I watched this shitty Netflix drama, Marco Polo. I liked the landscapes. I saw how the sky was out here and, I don’t know. I just wanted to come.”
“Seriously?”
I shrugged and nodded.
“You’re nuts,” said Ari. For some reason, this flattered me.
That night, in the dark cave of my kitchen, we lit a candle and drank some wine. Then she scooted over and kissed me. We made out for ages.
“Don’t you want to show me your bedroom?” she said at last, when our faces smelled like spit and my butt hurt from sitting.
“Um.”
“I haven’t been with any girls. So this might be awkward.”
“I mean—” If Ari really was deciding her sexuality, I felt I had to be honest. I didn’t want to disillusion her with my ineptitude and somehow turn her straight. “I’ve only been with two.”
She raised both eyebrows. “Logan told me you’re a gold star lesbian.”
“Logan’s a peach. But that is some gay purity bullshit.”
“You’re cute,” said Ari. “I like you.”
She led me to my own bedroom. It wasn’t hard to find. We rolled around on my stack of sleeping mats. I didn’t usually come, not with company around. But when Ari pulled me into her, gripping my bony hips and wrapping her legs around my middle, I felt something inside me start to loosen. A melting, hot and bright. Fiery words seemed to flash across my eyelids, scrolling too fast to read.
Just then, I heard a violent pop. I remembered the candle we’d left burning in the kitchen.
“Oh Jesus fuck.”
I disentangled myself from Ari and stumbled to the other room. It was pitch dark except for an ember, smoldering on my wooden table. I swiped at the glow with a sodden sponge. The orange light hissed and died. The candle had shattered its glass holder. I swept the pieces into my hand and tossed them in the garbage.
“What was that?” Ari had appeared in the doorway, wearing just a shirt. And then, incredulously, “Are you bleeding?”
“Um.” My hand was wet. I looked down and saw, in the dimness, a dark stain on my palm. “Yes?”
“Holy shit.”
I crashed through my own medicine cabinet, looking for wherever the hell I’d put the band-aids. Ari stood by and cursed nervously. The water bill, at least, had been paid. I washed the cut, dried it, and then bled through one band-aid after another, wondering vaguely if I needed stitches. Was it possible to bleed out through your hand?
The cut clotted, in the end. But the other fire had gone out. Ari and I slept senselessly, dreamlessly, with the exhaustion of children. I was the little spoon again.
“What is there?” I asked the waitress, in Mongolian.
She looked like somebody’s niece, sullen and thin-wristed, her mouth shiny with lip gloss. “Vodka,” she shrugged at me. “Chicken strips.”
“We’ll have that,” said Oyumaa, giving the waitress her chilliest side-eye.
The girl snorted and walked away.
Oyumaa was my colleague and neighbor—same Soviet-blue building, different stairwells. Sometimes we saw each other drinking instant coffee on our respective balconies. When that happened, we waved. Though it was still cold, I liked to stand out there in the mornings, watching hairy tusked pigs root around in the trashed field behind our place. If I got up early enough, I could see the milk sellers trudging by with their sacks of repurposed Fanta bottles. I saw the stray dogs swirling in packs or humping in pairs.
The steakhouse waitress had barely left when Oyumaa sucked at her teeth and said in English, “Next time we go for hot pot.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. This place is a dump.”
She said the same thing every week, although we never went anywhere else. I was too busy marveling at that idiom—so weirdly Bette Davis. Although Oyumaa taught business, she had the best English at our provincial university. This came from having watched every Bond movie ever made, and following Lana del Rey and her ilk instead of K-pop.
Some folksy but current Mongolian ballad was blasting through the steakhouse’s tinny speakers. A disco ball rotated like a drunken planet above the empty dance floor, flecking Oyumaa’s smooth face with shards of pink and purple light. It was a Monday. When the vodka came, she tipped it back without a twitch. I stared down at my own glass, dreading the burn.
“Do you have a boyfriend yet, Cecily?”
I shook my head. Almost every week we paid our separate tabs. Almost every week she asked me that question, along with a slew of others, most of which I had no idea how to answer: How effectively did America run public schools in rural places? Could privately owned cattle graze on public lands? Was American high school like the movies?
She dressed like a teenager—bangles and little wedge heels and shirts with rhinestones on them—but she spoke like a professor of economics, which she would be, once she got the hell out of Dodge. She was beautiful, of course. I never really knew a Mongolian who wasn’t. She had an oval-shaped face and green-flecked eyes and wore her hair in a glossy bob.
“Aren’t you lonely?” she said.
I swallowed down my shot and started coughing like an innocent. “I’m busy. I’m teaching. I’m learning Mongolian.”
“It’s not important,” said Oyumaa, waving a hand.
She was tutoring me—two Mongolian language lessons for every one she got in English. That was her idea of a fair ratio, not mine.
“It is important,” I said. “I live here.”
“For a short time only. You should learn Russian. Or Chinese. Or Boyfriend.”
“What?”
“The language of the Man People.” She laughed at her own joke. “You’re still young. You shouldn’t be alone.”
“But I’m leaving in June. What if I break his heart?”
“He can tell the story until he dies, of how he loved an American girl. You can learn to ride a horse.” She leaned back. “You have a boyfriend in America?”
“No.”
Sorrowfully, she shook her head. The chicken still hadn’t come, so Oyumaa stood up and gestured at the sulky waitress. The waitress shouted at us. Oyumaa shouted back. Then she sat down like nothing had happened.
“You’re young,” she said. “You should wear nice clothes.”
I had thrown a loose sweater on over my button-up, hoping to evoke a sort of rumpled professor look. “But I’m comfortable.”
“You dress like a man, Cecily. Or a grandmother.”
Okay. True. On New Year’s Eve, I had scandalized the other teachers by wearing a suit to their sequined dance party—a soiree of prom-level proportions, for staff only, held in the university’s echoing gym. Almost anywhere else on God’s green earth, I would’ve been readily identifiable as a dyke. Certain friends had threatened to post my picture to a Tumblr page, “Lesbians Who Look Like Justin Bieber.” I still had short hair and long bangs. But in Mongolia, when Oyumaa asked what kind of men I liked and I said “None of them,” she burst out laughing.
That was the year I turned twenty-two. Oyumaa was twenty-three and already married. She’d met her husband while she was working as a teller in a bank. They tried to move to the big city—even succeeded. Then his father got dementia, and they came home after six months to this concrete outpost on the steppe.
Although I had never met Oyumaa’s husband, I hated him. At the steakhouse one night, she’d confided to me that he used to drink. He hit her once; she kicked him out. Later he came back, apologetic and mostly sober. They were living together again. She loved him, she said, even though she was applying to a PhD program in Hungary and he wasn’t planning on coming with. I had written Oyumaa a letter of recommendation. Not because I knew anything about her agro-economic research on peri-urban herding, but because I was the only person at the university who could write her a letter in English.
“Oyumaa would return to Mongolia empowered to enact positive change,” I wrote—a little bullshitty, but my heart was in it. “I hope she is granted the opportunity to continue her studies in Hungary, not only for her sake, but for the sake of her home country.”
By then most people had given up on calling me Cecily, which was considered too hard to pronounce. They settled on Cec, as in cesspool. But Oyumaa was so delighted with my letter, she gave me a proper Mongolian name.
“Bagsh aa!” she hollered, bounding after me in the Soviet-seafoam-green hall. “I’m going to call you Tsetsgee.”
That’s pronounced like Sex Gay, except with a ts. She told me that it meant Little Flower.
“Because you are beautiful. But”—she gestured at my skinny body, grinning—“no fruit.”
She wasn’t wrong. A year in the closet hadn’t seemed so bad when I set off, with a long-distance girlfriend and a suitcase full of classic novels I’d always meant to read. But six months in, I was single and under siege by my own best comrades. Beautiful Mongolian women were always touching my upper thigh in completely heterosexual displays of affection. At night I got off on tender memories of my ex. When the university remembered to pay my Internet bill, I plugged my laptop into the ethernet cable and watched RuPaul’s Drag Race just to stay sane.
I knew some English teachers in Ulaanbaatar. At the tail end of winter, Logan called me up and told me his female best friend was coming to visit.
“She’s an artisanal glassblower,” he said. “She’s bi. Or, like, experimenting.”
“I’m not a chemistry kit,” I said.
“Of course not. But we’re going to Mojito House. You love Mojito House. And you’re still single, right?”
I said yes, so Logan planned a night on the town. I took the twelve-hour bus ride to the city. There were five of us: Mateo, Logan, Violet, Ari and me. Ari was the glassblower. We didn’t talk much—Logan had chosen a succession of loud bars and basement clubs, where we writhed and pulsed among other sweat-dripping young people—but I could feel her gaze on me.
Ari was heavy but compact, just under five feet tall, with a gold ring through her septum and the come-at-me attitude of certain short people. She wore a tight orange dress. Her roots were dark, but she had buzzed her hair and bleached it. By the third bar, we were sitting thigh-to-thigh in a booth, drinking the only commercially available mojitos in Mongolia. We shouted preliminaries, me about travel and her about art. Then I was rubbing my fingers through the prickling fuzz on the back of her head. It felt like velvet when I stroked against the grain.
We left at three or four in the morning. Neon lights swam above the frozen clouds of our breath. Ari slipped on the black ice of the broken sidewalk. When I tried to catch her, we both went down. I scraped up my palms. Still, we carried the humidity of the bar with us, long enough to hail a cab and get to Logan’s place without the cold setting in. In the car, Ari sat half in my lap and kneaded the meat of my leg.
We were sleeping on the floor of Logan’s apartment—not just Ari and me, but Violet and Mateo, who’d come down from Darkhan for the weekend. Almost as soon as Logan flicked off the lights, Ari wormed over to me, her sleeping bag crinkling. She stuck a hand under my shirt and searched blindly for a nipple. The red light from Logan’s clock spat out a dim glow, too faint to get a good look at the others. They might be passed out. They might also be staring. I wanted to tell her to wait until we were alone. But I was too drunk to whisper. I pretended to fall asleep, so Ari gave up and spooned me instead.
I woke to a changed light. The sun was muted, the clouds a white sea. I wiped the boogers out of my eyes and crawled to the curtained window. When I peered out through a crack, I breathed in sharp. Snow swirled down in sheets. The coal-streaked city, suddenly bright, stunned me and set my vision to swimming. By that time it was supposed to be spring.
The buses were still running, so Ari and I said our goodbyes over a subdued breakfast of noodles in the café across the street.
“I’m here for two more weeks,” she said. “I’ll come visit you.”
“That’s great,” I managed. “You seem cool.”
Logan was smirking at us from the other side of the table.
“What’s the deal with this trip anyway?” I asked, ignoring him.
“I’m here to see this smarmy young son-of-a-bitch.” She jabbed her thumb at Logan. “But I also got a travel grant from my college to study traditional Mongolian jewelry. That was before I found out the oldest beads are all coral or stone.”
“Google malfunction,” sneered Logan.
Ari kicked him under the table. “Fuck you too.”
“You know—” I couldn’t help myself. I had to poke at this until it was ruined. “Choibalsan is pretty remote. We’ll get stared at. Maybe yelled at. There’s not much to do.”
“Except you,” said Ari.
I didn’t have anything clever to say to that, so I blushed and said nothing.
When I got back to the office that Monday, clearly hungover, Oyumaa summoned me to her desk. She was wearing a pale yellow blouse and glitter-encrusted jeans.
“How was Ulaanbaatar?” she asked in Mongolian.
“Scary cool,” I said. That was the only slang I knew.
And I was scared. I’d never had a one-night stand—just a girlfriend in high school, and a two-year relationship in college, which I had fucked up by fleeing to the steppe.
That Friday, Ari texted me to say she was bussing into town. When my lessons were over, I stared at the glowing time stamp on the smeary glass of my phone. I tried to grade papers. Hormones were coursing through my body, turning my normally adequate brain to pink sludge.
I walked to the bus station early and stood there, old men staring at me, my heart slamming against my ribs. The bus trundled late and unhurried down the road. The doors disgorged people in suits, people in deels, people in jeans. And then Ari. In the seconds before she saw me, she looked flustered and lost. Then she laid eyes on me. Her face lit up.
“You made it,” I said.
“Barely.” She had brought only a tiny backpack and a too-warm coat. “This creepy guy was trying to grope me and there were no empty seats.”
“Oh God.”
“It’s okay. A Mongolian grandma switched spots with me and gave him a tongue lashing. It was actually kind of amazing. Anyway,” she slipped her arm into mine, “I’m here now.”
People gaped at us on the way to my apartment—two white girls, stranger than two camels galumphing down the street. But nobody yelled or called us Russians. I’d planned to cook her dinner, even prepped the veggies and bought the wine. When we stepped inside and flicked on the light switch, my apartment stayed dim. It was not the first time the university had forgotten my electricity bill. I made a few heated calls, to the director and the financial officer, which no one answered.
We went out for hot pot and strained to converse. Rather, I strained. Ari seemed okay with silence.
“What got you into glassblowing?” I asked, early on.
“When I was a kid I went to one of those living history museums outside of Boston. I saw this guy blowing glass. That color it turns, lava orange—I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Like pulling taffy, except if the taffy was fifteen hundred degrees.” She grinned at me. “Why’d you choose Mongolia?”
Usually I would say something about studying Russian literature—how I got curious about Central Asia through the Soviet connection. But I figured I might as well tell her the truth.
“I watched this shitty Netflix drama, Marco Polo. I liked the landscapes. I saw how the sky was out here and, I don’t know. I just wanted to come.”
“Seriously?”
I shrugged and nodded.
“You’re nuts,” said Ari. For some reason, this flattered me.
That night, in the dark cave of my kitchen, we lit a candle and drank some wine. Then she scooted over and kissed me. We made out for ages.
“Don’t you want to show me your bedroom?” she said at last, when our faces smelled like spit and my butt hurt from sitting.
“Um.”
“I haven’t been with any girls. So this might be awkward.”
“I mean—” If Ari really was deciding her sexuality, I felt I had to be honest. I didn’t want to disillusion her with my ineptitude and somehow turn her straight. “I’ve only been with two.”
She raised both eyebrows. “Logan told me you’re a gold star lesbian.”
“Logan’s a peach. But that is some gay purity bullshit.”
“You’re cute,” said Ari. “I like you.”
She led me to my own bedroom. It wasn’t hard to find. We rolled around on my stack of sleeping mats. I didn’t usually come, not with company around. But when Ari pulled me into her, gripping my bony hips and wrapping her legs around my middle, I felt something inside me start to loosen. A melting, hot and bright. Fiery words seemed to flash across my eyelids, scrolling too fast to read.
Just then, I heard a violent pop. I remembered the candle we’d left burning in the kitchen.
“Oh Jesus fuck.”
I disentangled myself from Ari and stumbled to the other room. It was pitch dark except for an ember, smoldering on my wooden table. I swiped at the glow with a sodden sponge. The orange light hissed and died. The candle had shattered its glass holder. I swept the pieces into my hand and tossed them in the garbage.
“What was that?” Ari had appeared in the doorway, wearing just a shirt. And then, incredulously, “Are you bleeding?”
“Um.” My hand was wet. I looked down and saw, in the dimness, a dark stain on my palm. “Yes?”
“Holy shit.”
I crashed through my own medicine cabinet, looking for wherever the hell I’d put the band-aids. Ari stood by and cursed nervously. The water bill, at least, had been paid. I washed the cut, dried it, and then bled through one band-aid after another, wondering vaguely if I needed stitches. Was it possible to bleed out through your hand?
The cut clotted, in the end. But the other fire had gone out. Ari and I slept senselessly, dreamlessly, with the exhaustion of children. I was the little spoon again.
*
The next morning, with the stove still out and iced coffee not yet a feature of Mongolian life, I bought a bottle of Coca Cola from the corner store downstairs. We sat on the balcony and each drank a lukewarm glass. Oyumaa stuck her head out her window.
“Tsetsgee! Did you bring an American friend?”
I tilted my head toward Ari. “She brought herself.”
“I’m coming over.”
“Bring hot water!”
Her head disappeared.
Ari shot me a glance. “Who was that?”
“Just a teacher at my school. Don’t tell her about the cut; she’ll lose her mind.”
Oyumaa came over a few minutes later, hot water dispenser in tow. She peppered Ari with questions about Boston and the liberal arts. Oyumaa wanted to know why she hadn’t studied coding, why she’d learned French but not Chinese, and what she thought about the pros and cons of grad school. Spooked, maybe, Ari didn’t return her volleys. We ran out of things to say. But Oyumaa wasn’t ready to leave. When I said we were thinking of going on a walk, she insisted on coming with.
“Soon I’ll go to Hungary,” she told Ari, as we strode toward the edge of town. “It’s a first world country, but not so long ago they were nomads. They’re our future. We’re their past.”
“Are you sad to leave?” said Ari.
“Sad like a birthday party!” chirped Oyumaa, getting creative with her English. “Sad like New Year’s!”
She could be excessively cheery, but that day her energy levels were through the proverbial roof. Showing off for Ari, I guessed. We walked to the river, frozen but crumpled, the skin of ice buckling under its own weight. Oyumaa told a long joke about a Russian, a Mongolian, and an American who think they can understand each other’s languages but in fact just turn out to be wasted. Ari was smiling, but I couldn’t tell what she thought—if this was a Cultural Experience or some fresh torture. When I caught her eye, she gave me no clue.
“We used to pray to that mountain,” said Oyumaa, pointing toward Hanuul, a thumb of white over the golden-patched steppe.
“Cool,” said Ari. “I’m a pagan, too.”
On the way back, we took a new route, along hardpacked roads with the ruts scooped out of them. I was even maybe starting to relax. For a few minutes I let Oyumaa run the conversation. Then I heard that classic question.
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
Of course she asked. And Ari—Ari didn’t even meet my eye before blurting an answer.
“Just our Cecily,” she said, maybe trying to joke.
I forced myself to look at Oyumaa, who was quizzical but smiling. Next came the burst of panic high in my chest; the subsequent chill.
Then Oyumaa was laughing. “My new friend Ari! You’re very funny.”
“She’s a glassblower,” I said, way too loudly.
“Yes?”
“She makes glass.”
By then Ari had sent me one tacit glance, seeking my retroactive permission. I answered with a look I dearly hoped conveyed it all: that Choibalsan was not Boston; that it was hard enough to gain my colleagues’ respect as a young female foreigner. Ari pulled a contrite face and a shrug.
Before I could figure out how to divert Oyumaa, her attention wavered. I followed her gaze. A truck was approaching. The top was open, the sides barred. I saw a flash of red and brown. My already low heart plunged to subterranean depths.
“Don’t look,” I told Ari. “Here. Look at me.”
She blinked at me. Then she pivoted toward the otherwise empty street. The truck was packed with horse carcasses. The last casualties of winter, already cracked open and stacked in bloody piles. They had everything except their guts. You could even see the manes.
“Oh my God,” said Ari. “What the fuck.”
She bent over. I put my hand on her back. Oyumaa made helpless eye contact with me. As the truck rattled away, the stench hit us in a gust. Ari wet heaved and spat up a little Coke.
“My new friend,” said Oyumaa, hands fluttering. “You’re sick.”
Ari shook her head. I told Oyumaa, in Mongolian, that we really had to go.
“Okay.” She looked distraught. “I’ll bring more water, Tsetsgee. I’ll call the university about your lights. Go home. Drink tea.”
I caught her glancing at the hand I’d placed on Ari’s back. Mongolian or no, this was a woman who liked Janelle Monae. I wanted to ask what she thought Ari was doing there—why she’d come all that way for a weekend, when my apartment was at least as much a dump as the steakhouse. But Oyumaa said nothing, only cast one last worried frown at us and left.
After a minute, Ari straightened and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. Her face was flushed, with shame or with nausea. “I’ve got a strong stomach,” she said. “It’s just, I love horses.”
“It’s okay. We’re almost home.”
That afternoon, we had sex one last time on my bedroom floor. Ari and I rocked into each other, as gentle as could be. Still, we dislodged my band-aid. I started to bleed. She came; I didn’t. That evening I walked her to the bus station.
“Do you still like me?” I asked her, I don’t know why.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because you had an extremely weird visit? Because we saw horse gore and didn’t have electricity and you barely even got laid?”
“I’ve had weirder.” She seemed tired, and we weren’t walking arm-in-arm anymore. But I also didn’t think she was lying. “Text me if you’re ever on the east coast.”
When I got home, the lights were on. I took the rest of the wine to Oyumaa’s, to thank her. But neither she nor her husband answered the door. I waited in the unlit stairwell. The smell of boiled mutton was wafting through the vents. Piles of garbage loomed like golems in the dark, ready to shudder to life, dripping vodka bottles and gristle and sour TP.
In college, when my female friends gossiped about their latest hook-ups, I used to listen in baffled silence. Confessional culture seemed one more ritual peculiar to straight girls, a dialect of womanhood I’d never bothered to learn. Now I realized—it wasn’t fluency I lacked, but content. I finally had a sex story, replete with spilt blood and drunkenness. I could see myself regaling my old dormmates, making the whole thing funny-awkward instead of awkward-sad. What I couldn’t see was ever telling Oyumaa. Still, I wanted to. I wanted her to know.
Oyumaa never answered. I retreated and wiped the last of the dried blood off my sink. Lying in bed that night, prone and sober, I composed a vaguely horny text to Ari and never pressed send. Instead I developed a plan for my first Mongolian coming-out. The way Oyumaa had looked at me, when Ari was puking and I was rubbing her back—she knew; she must. She watched American TV.
I didn’t see Oyumaa until our usual Monday night dinner. She canceled our afternoon language lessons and arrived to the steakhouse amazingly late. Once there, she kept checking her phone and looking out the tinted window.
Finally it dawned on me. “Did you hear back about Hungary?”
“How did you know?”
The news couldn’t be good. If it had been, she would’ve called. “What did they say?”
“I’m on the waitlist.”
“Well, hey, that’s great. That’s something.”
Oyumaa didn’t smile. She ordered beer for us, and pizza, which this week they had. “I won’t get in. It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it does.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Oyumaa was always blunt. I liked this about her. But her tone tonight was so sharp, I couldn’t help but feel the sting. “Is Ari sick?”
“She’s better now.”
It wasn’t the right time. I needed to wait, let the Hungary news breathe. But my pulse was racing. I had pumped myself up. Now I couldn’t back down.
“I’m gay. You understand that, right?”
Oyumaa’s ghastly smile faded. She understood. And I understood, in the same dreadful moment. She hadn’t known about me, or Ari, or any of it. She hadn’t realized how my Bieber-esque hair would read on an American sitcom. She was as innocent as me.
“I knew someone like that.” She lowered her voice and spoke without leaning, as if she were afraid to draw any closer. “A Mongolian.”
“In Choibalsan?”
“Two women. Very secret. One is married.”
For a long time we sat there. I kept sipping from my watery pint of Senguur, trying to cut my spirit loose. I willed it to float away to some dark club in San Francisco, where girls were winding their limbs together and dancing and not afraid.
“It’s not good,” said Oyumaa at last. “It’s not bad. But you shouldn’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t. I know.”
Ridiculous, but I was tearing up. Not for myself, dizzy with relief at not having been dumped. Not for the sex story I’d never get to divulge. It was those lovers. I’d never heard of a queer person in Choibalsan. And now this—an affair so secret it had to be whispered even in English. Had I seen them, I wondered? The streets had no dearth of same-sex pairs, linking arms or holding chapped hands in the cold. I might have passed them at the market, sacks of Chinese groceries dangling from their elbows. I might have glimpsed them under those rusty gazeboes with the candy-cane stripes, two mothers watching their children careen through the playground. As I huddled in my room, they had walked by the river. They’d loved babies born of men.
“Tsetsgee! Did you bring an American friend?”
I tilted my head toward Ari. “She brought herself.”
“I’m coming over.”
“Bring hot water!”
Her head disappeared.
Ari shot me a glance. “Who was that?”
“Just a teacher at my school. Don’t tell her about the cut; she’ll lose her mind.”
Oyumaa came over a few minutes later, hot water dispenser in tow. She peppered Ari with questions about Boston and the liberal arts. Oyumaa wanted to know why she hadn’t studied coding, why she’d learned French but not Chinese, and what she thought about the pros and cons of grad school. Spooked, maybe, Ari didn’t return her volleys. We ran out of things to say. But Oyumaa wasn’t ready to leave. When I said we were thinking of going on a walk, she insisted on coming with.
“Soon I’ll go to Hungary,” she told Ari, as we strode toward the edge of town. “It’s a first world country, but not so long ago they were nomads. They’re our future. We’re their past.”
“Are you sad to leave?” said Ari.
“Sad like a birthday party!” chirped Oyumaa, getting creative with her English. “Sad like New Year’s!”
She could be excessively cheery, but that day her energy levels were through the proverbial roof. Showing off for Ari, I guessed. We walked to the river, frozen but crumpled, the skin of ice buckling under its own weight. Oyumaa told a long joke about a Russian, a Mongolian, and an American who think they can understand each other’s languages but in fact just turn out to be wasted. Ari was smiling, but I couldn’t tell what she thought—if this was a Cultural Experience or some fresh torture. When I caught her eye, she gave me no clue.
“We used to pray to that mountain,” said Oyumaa, pointing toward Hanuul, a thumb of white over the golden-patched steppe.
“Cool,” said Ari. “I’m a pagan, too.”
On the way back, we took a new route, along hardpacked roads with the ruts scooped out of them. I was even maybe starting to relax. For a few minutes I let Oyumaa run the conversation. Then I heard that classic question.
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
Of course she asked. And Ari—Ari didn’t even meet my eye before blurting an answer.
“Just our Cecily,” she said, maybe trying to joke.
I forced myself to look at Oyumaa, who was quizzical but smiling. Next came the burst of panic high in my chest; the subsequent chill.
Then Oyumaa was laughing. “My new friend Ari! You’re very funny.”
“She’s a glassblower,” I said, way too loudly.
“Yes?”
“She makes glass.”
By then Ari had sent me one tacit glance, seeking my retroactive permission. I answered with a look I dearly hoped conveyed it all: that Choibalsan was not Boston; that it was hard enough to gain my colleagues’ respect as a young female foreigner. Ari pulled a contrite face and a shrug.
Before I could figure out how to divert Oyumaa, her attention wavered. I followed her gaze. A truck was approaching. The top was open, the sides barred. I saw a flash of red and brown. My already low heart plunged to subterranean depths.
“Don’t look,” I told Ari. “Here. Look at me.”
She blinked at me. Then she pivoted toward the otherwise empty street. The truck was packed with horse carcasses. The last casualties of winter, already cracked open and stacked in bloody piles. They had everything except their guts. You could even see the manes.
“Oh my God,” said Ari. “What the fuck.”
She bent over. I put my hand on her back. Oyumaa made helpless eye contact with me. As the truck rattled away, the stench hit us in a gust. Ari wet heaved and spat up a little Coke.
“My new friend,” said Oyumaa, hands fluttering. “You’re sick.”
Ari shook her head. I told Oyumaa, in Mongolian, that we really had to go.
“Okay.” She looked distraught. “I’ll bring more water, Tsetsgee. I’ll call the university about your lights. Go home. Drink tea.”
I caught her glancing at the hand I’d placed on Ari’s back. Mongolian or no, this was a woman who liked Janelle Monae. I wanted to ask what she thought Ari was doing there—why she’d come all that way for a weekend, when my apartment was at least as much a dump as the steakhouse. But Oyumaa said nothing, only cast one last worried frown at us and left.
After a minute, Ari straightened and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. Her face was flushed, with shame or with nausea. “I’ve got a strong stomach,” she said. “It’s just, I love horses.”
“It’s okay. We’re almost home.”
That afternoon, we had sex one last time on my bedroom floor. Ari and I rocked into each other, as gentle as could be. Still, we dislodged my band-aid. I started to bleed. She came; I didn’t. That evening I walked her to the bus station.
“Do you still like me?” I asked her, I don’t know why.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because you had an extremely weird visit? Because we saw horse gore and didn’t have electricity and you barely even got laid?”
“I’ve had weirder.” She seemed tired, and we weren’t walking arm-in-arm anymore. But I also didn’t think she was lying. “Text me if you’re ever on the east coast.”
When I got home, the lights were on. I took the rest of the wine to Oyumaa’s, to thank her. But neither she nor her husband answered the door. I waited in the unlit stairwell. The smell of boiled mutton was wafting through the vents. Piles of garbage loomed like golems in the dark, ready to shudder to life, dripping vodka bottles and gristle and sour TP.
In college, when my female friends gossiped about their latest hook-ups, I used to listen in baffled silence. Confessional culture seemed one more ritual peculiar to straight girls, a dialect of womanhood I’d never bothered to learn. Now I realized—it wasn’t fluency I lacked, but content. I finally had a sex story, replete with spilt blood and drunkenness. I could see myself regaling my old dormmates, making the whole thing funny-awkward instead of awkward-sad. What I couldn’t see was ever telling Oyumaa. Still, I wanted to. I wanted her to know.
Oyumaa never answered. I retreated and wiped the last of the dried blood off my sink. Lying in bed that night, prone and sober, I composed a vaguely horny text to Ari and never pressed send. Instead I developed a plan for my first Mongolian coming-out. The way Oyumaa had looked at me, when Ari was puking and I was rubbing her back—she knew; she must. She watched American TV.
I didn’t see Oyumaa until our usual Monday night dinner. She canceled our afternoon language lessons and arrived to the steakhouse amazingly late. Once there, she kept checking her phone and looking out the tinted window.
Finally it dawned on me. “Did you hear back about Hungary?”
“How did you know?”
The news couldn’t be good. If it had been, she would’ve called. “What did they say?”
“I’m on the waitlist.”
“Well, hey, that’s great. That’s something.”
Oyumaa didn’t smile. She ordered beer for us, and pizza, which this week they had. “I won’t get in. It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it does.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Oyumaa was always blunt. I liked this about her. But her tone tonight was so sharp, I couldn’t help but feel the sting. “Is Ari sick?”
“She’s better now.”
It wasn’t the right time. I needed to wait, let the Hungary news breathe. But my pulse was racing. I had pumped myself up. Now I couldn’t back down.
“I’m gay. You understand that, right?”
Oyumaa’s ghastly smile faded. She understood. And I understood, in the same dreadful moment. She hadn’t known about me, or Ari, or any of it. She hadn’t realized how my Bieber-esque hair would read on an American sitcom. She was as innocent as me.
“I knew someone like that.” She lowered her voice and spoke without leaning, as if she were afraid to draw any closer. “A Mongolian.”
“In Choibalsan?”
“Two women. Very secret. One is married.”
For a long time we sat there. I kept sipping from my watery pint of Senguur, trying to cut my spirit loose. I willed it to float away to some dark club in San Francisco, where girls were winding their limbs together and dancing and not afraid.
“It’s not good,” said Oyumaa at last. “It’s not bad. But you shouldn’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t. I know.”
Ridiculous, but I was tearing up. Not for myself, dizzy with relief at not having been dumped. Not for the sex story I’d never get to divulge. It was those lovers. I’d never heard of a queer person in Choibalsan. And now this—an affair so secret it had to be whispered even in English. Had I seen them, I wondered? The streets had no dearth of same-sex pairs, linking arms or holding chapped hands in the cold. I might have passed them at the market, sacks of Chinese groceries dangling from their elbows. I might have glimpsed them under those rusty gazeboes with the candy-cane stripes, two mothers watching their children careen through the playground. As I huddled in my room, they had walked by the river. They’d loved babies born of men.
*
The next morning I woke up, sun beating through the window, sheen of sweat on my skin like a fever breaking. The snow had melted overnight, revealing constellations of shit and single mittens strewn across the balding ground. All the stale frozen piss of the last five months was unleashed in one fell swoop. The ice-skating of the previous week seemed hallucinatory.
“It’s spring!” I crowed, while taking attendance. For the first time in months, I’d left my fur-lined Russian boots at home.
My students were not enthused.
“Spring is very windy,” they told me. “Worse than winter.”
They said the dust storms would come. And within days, the first of them did—a huge black tower jutting up from the steppe. They came one after the other, speeding walls of opaque grit. When they slammed into my building, the windows rattled in their frames. The air became hot. I woke with a parched throat, an iron taste on my tongue.
I lived in an ancient building, with a five-story hammer and sickle inlaid on its flank in red and white bricks. The pipes in the walls popped and clanked. The downstairs neighbors played an accordion; upstairs they blasted Korean rap. Male strangers were always pounding on my door. But not until spring did I hear the worst sound. As soon as it started, at two or three in the morning, I woke from my dream and sat bolt upright. It was cats fighting, maybe. It was the wind, batting around the tin roofs and stripping down the fences. Only when the storm lulled did I hear it clearly: screaming, sobbing. A human in the night.
Even when I buried my head under the pillow, the cries went on and on like an animal in heat. At last it occurred to me that the voice was a woman’s, and she might have been hurt, and if I didn’t find her would she die?
I paced to the window. The yellow of the streetlamp was blurry from dust. The pole shook with each gale. I couldn’t see her, or anyone. The ripples in that pool of light made the sidewalk look like a stage—closed little space, a dark ledge beyond which there was nothing. My colleagues had warned me that people got mugged between my building and the Sports Palace. But I’d already forgotten. I dressed myself like a Star Wars extra—two scarves wound around my face and head, heavy sunglasses, leather gloves, Russian boots.
Downstairs, the metal door to my stairwell was crashing against its frame. I wrenched it open. Flying sand stung my cheeks. For a second I thought I’d lost her, until the weeping rose again. I followed the sound, past Oyumaa’s stairwell, past the corner store, past an alarming mural of bug-eyed caterpillars and bears. The crying stopped, started, faded again.
In the end, she was not even a hundred paces away. I didn’t see a bottle, but she had collapsed sideways across a slanting public bench. Her eyes were red with tears and grit. Snot ran down her face in two wet brown lines, the mucus collecting dust like my carpets collected hair. The door to my stairwell was still drumming away. Every couple of beats, she rose up and let out a pained cry.
“Oyumaa.”
She looked at me, not really seeing. I didn’t sit down next to her. I sank down in front, the gravel digging into my knees. When I held out both my hands, she took them. We stayed that way for a good long while, the storm whipping around us. And maybe there were muggers. Maybe there was something beyond the edge of the light.
“What happened?” I asked.
She shook her head, swallowing.
“Let’s go, Oyumaa. It’s too windy out here.”
“I got in,” she slurred, in Mongolian. “They e-mailed.”
“Scary good.” I petted her hand. I tried to pull her upright. “Scary cool. Next year in Hungary! Come on, now. Shall we go?”
“Baby,” she said.
“No. You’re my friend.”
“Baby. I’m having one.”
I didn’t know what to say. But she sure as hell wasn’t about to climb four flights of concrete steps. I got her to sit up. We slumped there together, Oyumaa exhaling vodka fumes into the night. I knew without asking that she would keep the goddamned fetus, even if it was only the size of a pea. She would stay here in Choibalsan, teaching business and winning awards for her research that never came with any cash. It wasn’t any worse, I supposed, than the way Americans’ expectations gently lowered in their mid-thirties. But at twenty-two, I had time to be reckless. My country had bought it for me. My parents had. And here I was.
My breath had steamed up the scarf I’d wrapped around my nose and mouth. Now the damp fabric was clinging to my skin. Even under the sunglasses, my eyes stung until I closed them. When I did, the dark opened up. I could hear Oyumaa’s labored breathing. I could feel the hot wind pelting us with earth. Roads and concrete walls unraveled around us, the wind chewing them up and spitting them out again. Somewhere in Choibalsan, those two women slept, dreaming of laying their heads down in each other’s laps. Somewhere in Ulaanbaatar, Ari dozed on Logan’s floor—remembering, maybe, in some dim corner of her mind, how I’d put my mouth on her because my hand kept on bleeding. Near, very near, Oyumaa’s child grew, a speck of grain curled tight upon itself. And all these humans were swallowed up in the same black cloud, which seemed to go on forever.
I felt Oyumaa stir. When I opened my eyes, I saw that she had straightened and was staring at the streetlamp. She watched the shreds of plastic slicing through the light. In her gaze, I glimpsed the hard edge of her—that glint which had drawn me to her in the first place. She looked like she wanted a fight, not with me but with that violent season, the hideous spring.
She lurched to her feet and shouted without words. I rose, too. She grasped my shoulder. I joined my voice to hers. We howled like beasts and the storm howled back, answering, erasing, snatching our flimsy protests away.
“It’s spring!” I crowed, while taking attendance. For the first time in months, I’d left my fur-lined Russian boots at home.
My students were not enthused.
“Spring is very windy,” they told me. “Worse than winter.”
They said the dust storms would come. And within days, the first of them did—a huge black tower jutting up from the steppe. They came one after the other, speeding walls of opaque grit. When they slammed into my building, the windows rattled in their frames. The air became hot. I woke with a parched throat, an iron taste on my tongue.
I lived in an ancient building, with a five-story hammer and sickle inlaid on its flank in red and white bricks. The pipes in the walls popped and clanked. The downstairs neighbors played an accordion; upstairs they blasted Korean rap. Male strangers were always pounding on my door. But not until spring did I hear the worst sound. As soon as it started, at two or three in the morning, I woke from my dream and sat bolt upright. It was cats fighting, maybe. It was the wind, batting around the tin roofs and stripping down the fences. Only when the storm lulled did I hear it clearly: screaming, sobbing. A human in the night.
Even when I buried my head under the pillow, the cries went on and on like an animal in heat. At last it occurred to me that the voice was a woman’s, and she might have been hurt, and if I didn’t find her would she die?
I paced to the window. The yellow of the streetlamp was blurry from dust. The pole shook with each gale. I couldn’t see her, or anyone. The ripples in that pool of light made the sidewalk look like a stage—closed little space, a dark ledge beyond which there was nothing. My colleagues had warned me that people got mugged between my building and the Sports Palace. But I’d already forgotten. I dressed myself like a Star Wars extra—two scarves wound around my face and head, heavy sunglasses, leather gloves, Russian boots.
Downstairs, the metal door to my stairwell was crashing against its frame. I wrenched it open. Flying sand stung my cheeks. For a second I thought I’d lost her, until the weeping rose again. I followed the sound, past Oyumaa’s stairwell, past the corner store, past an alarming mural of bug-eyed caterpillars and bears. The crying stopped, started, faded again.
In the end, she was not even a hundred paces away. I didn’t see a bottle, but she had collapsed sideways across a slanting public bench. Her eyes were red with tears and grit. Snot ran down her face in two wet brown lines, the mucus collecting dust like my carpets collected hair. The door to my stairwell was still drumming away. Every couple of beats, she rose up and let out a pained cry.
“Oyumaa.”
She looked at me, not really seeing. I didn’t sit down next to her. I sank down in front, the gravel digging into my knees. When I held out both my hands, she took them. We stayed that way for a good long while, the storm whipping around us. And maybe there were muggers. Maybe there was something beyond the edge of the light.
“What happened?” I asked.
She shook her head, swallowing.
“Let’s go, Oyumaa. It’s too windy out here.”
“I got in,” she slurred, in Mongolian. “They e-mailed.”
“Scary good.” I petted her hand. I tried to pull her upright. “Scary cool. Next year in Hungary! Come on, now. Shall we go?”
“Baby,” she said.
“No. You’re my friend.”
“Baby. I’m having one.”
I didn’t know what to say. But she sure as hell wasn’t about to climb four flights of concrete steps. I got her to sit up. We slumped there together, Oyumaa exhaling vodka fumes into the night. I knew without asking that she would keep the goddamned fetus, even if it was only the size of a pea. She would stay here in Choibalsan, teaching business and winning awards for her research that never came with any cash. It wasn’t any worse, I supposed, than the way Americans’ expectations gently lowered in their mid-thirties. But at twenty-two, I had time to be reckless. My country had bought it for me. My parents had. And here I was.
My breath had steamed up the scarf I’d wrapped around my nose and mouth. Now the damp fabric was clinging to my skin. Even under the sunglasses, my eyes stung until I closed them. When I did, the dark opened up. I could hear Oyumaa’s labored breathing. I could feel the hot wind pelting us with earth. Roads and concrete walls unraveled around us, the wind chewing them up and spitting them out again. Somewhere in Choibalsan, those two women slept, dreaming of laying their heads down in each other’s laps. Somewhere in Ulaanbaatar, Ari dozed on Logan’s floor—remembering, maybe, in some dim corner of her mind, how I’d put my mouth on her because my hand kept on bleeding. Near, very near, Oyumaa’s child grew, a speck of grain curled tight upon itself. And all these humans were swallowed up in the same black cloud, which seemed to go on forever.
I felt Oyumaa stir. When I opened my eyes, I saw that she had straightened and was staring at the streetlamp. She watched the shreds of plastic slicing through the light. In her gaze, I glimpsed the hard edge of her—that glint which had drawn me to her in the first place. She looked like she wanted a fight, not with me but with that violent season, the hideous spring.
She lurched to her feet and shouted without words. I rose, too. She grasped my shoulder. I joined my voice to hers. We howled like beasts and the storm howled back, answering, erasing, snatching our flimsy protests away.