The Choice

someone with so much energy and life. I am glad to have her blessing.
And yet how easily I could have been the one in bed, propped up on
scratchy pillows, coughing between words, ĕlling a handkerchief with
blood.
at night Béla and I stay in a hotel together, the hotel where we
met. In all of his visits to Košice we have slept in separate rooms. We
have never shared a bed. We have never seen each other without
clothes. But tonight is different. I try to remember the forbidden
words in Zola’s Nana. What else can prepare me to give him pleasure,
to pursue pleasure myself? No one has instructed me on the
choreography of intimacy. Nakedness has been degrading,
humiliating, terrifying. I have to learn again how to inhabit my skin.
“You’re shivering,” Béla says. “Are you cold?” He goes to his
suitcase and takes out a package wrapped with a shining bow. Inside
the box, nestled in tissue paper, is a beautiful silk negligee. It is an
extravagant gi. But that isn’t what moves me. He somehow knew that
I would need a second skin. It isn’t that I want to shield myself from
him, my husband-to-be. It’s not cover I’m aer. It’s a way to heighten
myself, extend, a way to step into the chapter that hasn’t been written
yet. I tremble as he slips it over my head, as the fabric falls against my
legs. The right costume can augment the dance. I twirl for him.
“Izléses,” he says. Classy.
I am so happy that someone is looking at me. His gaze is more than
a compliment. Just as my mother’s words once taught me to value my
intelligence, through Béla’s eyes I ĕnd a new appreciation of my body
—of my life.