-
The Prince
- University of Arkansas Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
The Prince The night of the dance I wore an ankle-length caftan, hiding my body beneath its airy flow, flat shoes not to be too tall, and my roommate’s lipstick, brighter than orange juice. He was a prince who could have picked any of the boarding-school girls— Suzie with one eye blue, full-breasted Victoria, or the girl from India with a waist slender as a drumstick tree. But the sixteen-year-old Saudi royal asked me for the first dance, then the second, then for the rest of the night, as boys and girls disappeared into dark corners while chaperones dozed off in the hall nipping Hennessy from tiny silver flasks. My prince was shy, but not too shy to slowly drop his hand and squeeze, his lips on mine, the knife in his pocket on my groin. On the ride back the girls taunted me, Camel driver’s virgin, imitated my accent 41 singing, Don’t touch the merchandise, mocked me for pushing away the fetching prince so hard he fell on his ass and twisted his wrist. What did he do? Stick his finger up your . . . ? That night I packed my bag, slipped out just as the sun exhaled its first breath into night, took the first Eastbourne rail to London. I hid beneath a beat-up hat, collar pulled up, and by the time the headmaster was informed, called the police and my anxious parents overseas, I was at my clueless cousin’s boarding house nibbling baklava, drinking hot tea from a chipped cup. I shivered beside a coin-operated heater, ate fish and chips on yesterday’s newspaper, and read Neruda, Farrokhzad, for a week, Tolstoy, and Austen. Quietly I thanked my father for giving me time to strengthen the sinew that held my heart. It rained and I didn’t go out, avoided my big-boned cousin with her roto-rooter tongue and the nose of our grandmother who could smell anything rotting inside the heart. I turned the cracked mirror in my room towards the wall. Someone had scribbled “HELP” on the back. The rose-splattered wallpaper looked scrubbed with day-old coffee. The lone sofa sagged with the weight of absent occupants the way my lips still felt the heaviness of that first kiss. 42 [18.234.55.154] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 19:15 GMT) In the end what mattered, I learned, were the smallest blessings: the milk-sweetened tea or the miracle of scalding water from the ancient bathtub faucet. What counted were my widowed cousin holding her own in a foreign land, and the grit to say no to what is hurled—words, glances, bullets, all. 43 ...