The Source of All Waters

You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:
(Ranier Maria Rilke - Rilke's Book of Hours - Love Poems to God)


Aini argues fiercely in her liquid-accented English, and her hands dance in rythm, circumscribing the boundary of her ideas. Giving them shape, sculpting maths or philosophy or the political structure of Kenyan street gangs. It makes me so happy to share classes with her.

When she is very passionate about a topic she will go up to the whiteboard, pull back the long sleeves meant to shield her from the lustful eyes of men, and write as she talks. Her mind is always on display, her body almost never; she doesn't know how precious these glimpses are to me. I'm afraid that, if I ever tell her, she'll stop, so I haven't.

I share a small apartment off-campus with two other students, a political science major and a girl who can't decide between statistics and the cello; some weekends we have groups over, a roomful of brilliance like the old French salons, and Aini comes with two or three other girls; they are mysterious shadows on their way up the street, clustered together, silent, till they pass our doorway and immediately shed scarves and robes and soft outdoor voices. They're fellow students, or wives and daughters of men who work at the embassy. Talking for hours in birdsong voices. Religion, politics, empowerment, sex. They laugh together, like music, and sometimes they stand at the balcony and smoke, turned inward so no one will see their faces from the street.

Sometimes Aini stays when they leave.

I put clean sheets on my little twin bed while she showers, and the other girls go home or vanish into their rooms, into the privacy of headphones and university-funded internet connections. (The cellist/statictician has been dating a British law student via Second Life for a year now.)

Water beads gleam like onyx in her black hair when Aini comes back to me, locking my bedroom door behind her.

I keep a bottle of oil in my closet; sandalwood and rose in a base of almond, a warm sweet blend that mixes well with the scent of her skin. She lies supine across my bed and closes her dark eyes, relaxing by degrees while I revel in her body, comparing firm musculature of calf and thigh to the pillowed luxury of her belly, the graceful, architectural curve of her ribcage. She is warm, warmer than I am, and her skin gleams after my hands pass over it, oiled mahogany, irresistable. The rosy-brown aureola surrounding her tiny nipples crinkle when I let my fingertips skirt them. Her breath slows, deep and steady, belied by flushed cheeks, by the subtle shivering of her body beneath mine.

She rolls onto her belly for me with a wordless sigh, giving me the violin curve of her back to explore; perfect and enticing, warm skin contrasted with the cool shadows between her thighs. She is sculpture. I imagine her body adorning some ancient temple, decked in strings of flowers and silver bells. Curled around the rampant form of a nameless god in carnal embrace.

I trace lines up either side of her backbone, to the spot where texture begins to change under my fingertips. It's high on her left shoulderblade. At first they look like pale freckles, then ragged patches; moving higher they join into a blank pale stretch of scar, like tan paint splashed across her body. This stole of wounded flesh covers almost her entire left shoulder, the nape of her neck, stretching up into her hairline in fingers of emptiness where her dark hair will never grow again.

This rebuilt tissue is fragile, and I take my time, relearning it; massage helps keep it supple. There is no pain, except in her mind; all the nerves were burnt away. She trembles under my hands regardless.

Finally I take the tiny, flower-like remnant of her left ear between thumb and forefinger. As gently as you would a baby's. Caressing the curve doctors were able to reconstruct. Her high cheekbone bears a tiny splash of scar, a spot like an antique beauty mark; she is lucky, she told me once, that the acid did not splash more, that she turned to watch a cat run across the street. If her attacker - she has never named him to me, if she ever knew his name - had succeeded, she would be blind, or dead.

Instead she has most of her hearing, scarred skin that can be covered with modest clothing, and the way she shivers when I touch her like this.

Finished, I lie beside her, and we entwine; the slick oil spreads over my skin, turning us to silk against each other. Her mouth finds mine with a passion that always surprises me, and we taste each other's soft cries as her hands begin a shamelessly carnal exploration of my body. Like, yet unlike. I love the contrast of her skin against mine, dark and pale, and the gentle way she presses her fingertips between my labia, finding slick wetness not so different from the oil that covers us.

I push against her softness, reaching for my climax; caught in her smiling eyes. She likes to tease me with it, circling my swollen clit as slowly as she can, little fluttering curls of her long fingers inside me that make me cry and beg.

Eventually, she gives me her mouth, tender catlike licks around and over my pussy, finding every tender spot again and again. She wraps her arms around my hips and holds me still when I finally come, when I stretch my legs out stiff and grip the sheets tight in both hands.

Finding her climax is different, as everything about her is different; Aini has been hurt in so many ways. It astonishes me that she can be so brave, both to show me her difference, and to hold me afterwards when I cried, angry and ashamed that I had to be comforted, instead of giving her comfort. But she is still beautiful. She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.

We had to figure out her pleasure together; the structure of a woman's clitoral anatomy is mostly beneath the surface, so that while much was taken from her - in an act I can hardly bear to imagine - she can still be brought to climax. One of the many reasons I love living in the future; there is a world of powerful electronic devices, easily obtainable, devoted to pleasure. I curl one arm beneath the small of her back and kiss the soft swell of her stomach, cradling our toy between her tiny labia with my other hand, and slowly rock it against her, feeling each little gush of moisture, the way her thighs tremble, the soft growling cries she makes as we climb this beautiful mountain again - again - moving the little control wheel under my thumb to give her more and more, and I tell her how beautiful she is, I tell her she is loved.

Seeing Aini come is like watching her suddenly wake from a deep and dreamless sleep.