By the Light of My Father's Smile Read Free

the architecture, the vegetation. The paintings—paintings were everywhere—the music, and, of course, the dance.
    Do they not dance and paint where they are from? the old women asked each other.
    Do they not have tasty food?
    Have they no remaining vegetation?
    Young and old alike were puzzled. Some were flattered. Most were, for the longest time, wary or indifferent. Few of them remembered the overthrow of their country’s monarchy by Europeans in a distant century. Their beautiful country occupied. Their king beheaded, the queen raped. Their country stomped on, drained, for over three hundred years: a time of seeming amnesia, for survival’s sake. Few dared to think too closely of the horrors the ancestors endured: of the leaden, pus-colored men on top of them who smelled of stale tobacco, sour sauternes, and rancid cheese. The near nakedness of the Kalimasans drove the sexually repressed Europeans to heights of cruelty as they vainly sought to deny their lust. So much beauty in a world indifferent to their ways, a green and gentle and supple world that was actually repelled by the mountainous thickness of the pale male body in its farty woolen underwear, black cloak, and ugly hat. The people had suffered, in silence, seemingly in a collective sleep. The sleep of shame. Then, as if a cycle had ended, collectively they woke up. They fought back. They became independent, at least in name.

    She listens to the woman softly snoring beside her, and then, switching off her mind, she begins to stroke her awake. The woman is responsive instantly, as if she’d never really been asleep. She permits my daughter free-roaming access to her heavy breasts, hot to the touch, and to her furry belly from which the scent of sandalwood floats upward through the sheet. My daughter places her nose in the crease of the woman’s neck, which, like her breasts, is incredibly warm. The woman rolls over and is suddenly the aggressor, on top of my daughter, straddling her. My daughter has wanted this. She widens her body on the bed and slips off the thin chemise she is wearing in order to permit full contact. The woman flings off her strip of a garment, something barely gathered around her loins, and begins to ride my daughter, hard, as if she would drive her into the mattress that sits on a delicate frame of bamboo.
    Her tryst with the Kalimasan boy has left her savage. That, and Susannah’s apparent indifference to it. Now she sucks her fiercely, Susannah’s breasts full and brown and somehow pleading against Pauline’s white teeth and insistent mouth. Between Susannah’s breasts sweat flows, which Pauline laps like a dog. Between her legs where Pauline has insinuated her hand there is, already, a stream of wetness. She feels Pauline’s fingers, first one, then two, then three, enter her with an authoritative firmness. She is embarrassed to hear herself moan and shamed to hear Pauline’s grunt of conquest. Susannah’s body starts to move against the woman’s hand. Oh, she says. And oh, and oh, and oh. Pauline bites her ears. She laps her body everywhere there is sweat. She keeps her pinned and will not let her rise. When my daughter raises her neck from the bed so that the cords of her neck stand out, Pauline thrusts her long whining tongue into her mouth with such force she pushes Susannah’s head almost underneaththe pillow. Only her gorged mouth is visible, and Pauline’s forehead rests on the pillow that obscures Susannah’s face.
    Pauline is conscious of the slightest tremor of my daughter’s body but she is also venting her “lust” for the Kalimasan boy. She imagines him coming through the bamboo curtain at the foot of the bed, penis—a smooth and heavy one, she is happy to find out—erect, dripping in hope and shy anticipation. She imagines ordering him to the bed, to her backside. Imagines he is in her, driving her, as she drives herself against Susannah,