Stories of a Golden Girl Jennifer Willis
The first time they met wasn’t actually a proper meeting. They hadn’t even made eye
contact. They had only seen each other. Maybe it was the way the sun was setting over the
Lexington Avenue taquería that made them notice each other. He was sitting outside, eating with
a friend when she walked by. She had noticed him as soon as she turned the corner during her
walk to the train station. And like she did every time she saw an attractive man, she glanced at
him and then refused to look any more. During her brief glance, he was focused on his plate,
trying to pick up the taco without dropping anything. And by the time he looked up and saw her,
her head was already down, avoiding his gaze. She walked quickly, a full tote hanging on her
shoulder, one foot in front of the other. She could feel him watching her, but she kept walking. It
was easy. She did it all the time, like she would do later when she got to her neighborhood,
keeping her keys between her fingers and watching any shadows that weren’t her own. Men
jeered at her only occasionally, and she figured it was because she was good at seeming
disinterested. But he knew. Where others saw a purposeful gait, he saw something else. The
careful way she avoided looking at him, the way her lips were parted, how she fidgeted with her
fingers, the flush of her cheeks. It was the opposite of what he was used to; sometimes he could
feel other women’s looks drilling into the back of his head. But he knew. She wasn’t
disinterested. In fact, she was very interested.
1
This all transpired in the span of about fifteen seconds, but it didn’t matter how long it
took. That was all they needed for the infatuation to begin.
They creeped into each other’s thoughts. For her, it was every time she walked home. As
she passed the spot where she first saw him, she would remember how he looked sitting there
eating, the warm glow from the sunset hitting his face as he furrowed a brow to focus on his
taco. She found it weird that she kept thinking of him. Though she usually kept her face down,
she looked out for him, quietly hoping to see him again. After a few days of her heartbeat
quickening every time she passed the taquería, she decided to walk a different route to the train
station. I need to stop thinking about him, she warned herself. She remembered his blue button-
down shirt, sleeves folded up to his elbows. Then she imagined his arms wrapping around her
waist, his hands coming together at the small of her back. She shook away the thought and
scolded herself. I really need to stop.
As she fidgeted with her fingers waiting on the train platform, he was up at the taquería,
half eating and half expecting her to turn the corner any moment. When his friend suggested they
go to the same place near his apartment again because their burritos were so damn good, he
didn’t object. He too quietly hoped that he would see her again. He couldn’t even tell his friend
what had happened; she had left him speechless and it was over so soon and he’d still had tortilla
in his mouth. He held out hope that he would get to see the sway of her hips again, her hair
bouncing with every stride, the finality in her steps as she walked towards and away from him.
He imagined it in slow motion. But she didn’t come. It’s a big city. Why would she be in the
same place five days later? He went home sheepishly, kicking himself for thinking that anything
about her was predictable.
2
They were always at the back of each other’s minds. Her heart skipped a beat anytime
she saw someone around his height with the same brown hair and light skin, and since they were
in New York City, it happened a lot. She would hold her breath until the person would turn
around and she saw it wasn’t him; then she’d breathe a sigh of both disappointment and relief.
He kept an eye out for her tote bag brandishing the name of her college; one that kids from all
over the world came here to attend. He wondered which foreign country she was from. He was a
city kid through and through, raised in southern Manhattan and now living on the Upper East
Side since he had gotten his job at an investment bank. Her long black hair and dark eyes
rimmed with liner led him to believe she was Indian. She was in fact from a foreign country; it
was called the Bronx, and usually people left it alone, though recently more people seemed to be
moving there and leaving complaints about bodega cats on Yelp. She had just finished working a
late shift one Saturday night and was waiting for her train, growing worried about the outsiders
waiting near her on the uptown side of the station. They looked like the only hip hop they
listened to was Macklemore. He was slightly buzzed after pregaming with his friends to Thrift
Shop, waiting with them on the downtown side of the station to continue their drinking
somewhere in the village.
She was cracking her knuckles when she saw him from the other side of the tracks. She
froze in place, watching him through the pillars as he laughed and playfully punched one of his
friends. As luck would have it, they were standing right across from each other. Once she
processed what had happened, she turned on her heel and went straight to the back end of the
platform, feeling her tote bag bump against her hip with every step. After hoping for all this time
to see him again, she didn’t know what to do once it actually happened. He didn’t know what to
do either. All he saw was her, walking away with a fury, her long hair billowing out behind her
3
and bag screaming out that it was her, and he was left speechless again. One of his friends must
have seen his eyes roaming to the end of the platform.
“Guys, let’s go up to the front,” the friend said. “It’ll be less crowded up there.”
He swallowed the tightness in his throat, trying to think of what he would do and what
she would do. The group of men walked slowly, taking their sweet time, slightly stumbling
between the other people waiting on the platform. They hadn’t gotten all the way to the front
when he spotted her leaning against a pillar, staring intently at her phone, ignoring him as best
she could. The glow from her phone lit up her face beautifully. She looked like an angel. He
stopped there, looking at her, willing her to look up at him. She could feel his eyes on her. She
caved and went against every one of her instincts; she put down her phone and finally took a
good look at him.
He wasn’t as cute as she remembered. His beard was scruffier, his eyes were a bit
bloodshot and his belt didn’t match his shoes.
She looked angrier than he expected. One might call it a resting bitch face. Her arms were
crossed against her chest and she was slouching.
Nonetheless, he still smiled at her, and she smiled back. And when their trains pulled into
the station, they both were kind of glad that they were going in opposite directions.
Fifth Grade
Her mind was chaos. The neighbors to the right were blasting salsa and the neighbors to
the left were blasting bachata. And below her, in the kitchen, her mother was blasting Bollywood
4
songs as she did her Sunday cooking. The three rhythms clashed, destined to never be in sync,
though they each made her feet ache to dance. To drown them out, she plugged in her earbuds,
pressing shuffle on the playlist. The Columbia white guy crooned to her, asking if her bed was
made, if her sweater was on, if she wanted to fuck. She skipped the song, and now he crooned
about playing tennis. She couldn’t take him seriously. No thanks, Ezra. I have work to do. So,
she was left with no other option but to put on Work by Rihanna.
She’d started listening to Vampire Weekend when she went to high school and wanted
attention from the boys that she’d never seen before. Naturally, The Black Keys, Arctic
Monkeys, and alt-J followed. Suddenly she was binge watching Arrested Development and Mad
Men. Bollywood movies took the back burner. She hadn’t been keeping up with the new
Dancehall music; her cousins made fun of her for not knowing the latest Vybz Kartel song. The
only person of color she had a crush on was Zayn Malik from One Direction. In fact, the only
other people she crushed on were straight white men. She refers to this period in her life as “The
Dark Ages”.
If these were her Dark Ages, the times when everyone had the plague and no one could
read, then when were her good times? If you asked her, she’s respond quickly.
“Fifth grade,” she would say. “That was the best year of my life.”
She was sitting at her desk trying to focus on her paper, but the rhythm kept calling out to
her. She found herself dancing in her seat. Her hips bounced every time Rih told her to work.
Soon she was up out of her chair, watching herself in the mirror, making gun signs with her
fingers and doing body rolls. She laughed at how silly it was, and then attempted to start
5
twerking. It wasn’t pretty. She created a playlist of all of her favorite songs to dance to. Jumping
up and down, rolling her hips, the soca songs spoke of peace and happiness. Comedians have
joked about how happy soca is and how much they hate it because of that. She inspected her
waistline in the mirror, making sure it was in time, rolling fluidly while going down to the
ground and coming back up. At parties with her Guyanese family, they used to tell her,
screaming over the deafening bass, “Eh gyal! Yuh can proppa dance!” and she’d laugh. Birthday
parties, weddings, baby showers, you name it: ever since she was ten, she could be found in the
middle of the dance floor all night (and completely sober, unlike the adults). She two-stepped
and made gun signs to reggae songs about spending money after a paycheck. For Chutney songs,
her hands curled up and she did intricate footwork, imitating older Guyanese dance, to alcoholic
lyrics in our pieced-together language dubbed over stolen melodies from classic Bollywood
songs. She loved to partner up with her mom; they made a good team against her uncles that
tried to out-dance them. A simple flick of her waist was needed: she knew exactly when to do it
because she knew all of the songs inside and out. Sweat beaded at her neck no matter the
temperature outside, and she always left with ringing ears, buzzing with life.
Then came her favorite Bollywood song from her childhood. She had her arms raised, her
hands put in expert position, and her hips bobbing up and down with her feet, moving as
gracefully as she could. She watched music videos and tried to replicate the choreography just
like she did when she was six years old, dancing in front of the television for hours as song
DVDs played on repeat. When she couldn’t figure out a move, she’d just improvise and do
something else. Sometimes she even put on a long skirt just to feel it lift up around her as she
turned, or the material drag behind her as she stepped forward, imagining herself on a set, lip
syncing the love ballad to some famous actor. She watched her facial expressions in the mirror to
6
make sure they matched the words in the song, the words she knew by heart, but had no idea
what they meant. She pouted in the mirror, as per the song, and then realized how ridiculous she
looked. So, she just turned around, closing her eyes and swaying to the music as the duet went
back and forth. She had no idea what they were talking about, but she felt like she knew because
she had known it her whole life. As it turns out, she’d lost those words a few generations ago,
and the only way she could get them back was if she looked up the lyric translation. Hindi is a
beautiful language, but the English would just have to do.
She tried dance bachata once at a party and failed miserably, so she decided to take up
practicing in heels. This was one of those times. One, two, three, step. One, two, three, step.
Turn, turn, turn, step. One, two, three, step. She smiled giddily as she remembered how she had
learned at a middle school dance, her best friend from the Dominican Republic teaching her the
whole night. She didn’t wear heels back then, of course. Nonetheless, she stumbled among the
sea of students from Mexico, PR, and DR who could already do it flawlessly. DJ 718 played at
every one of their middle school dances, and always made sure to thread a few reggaeton and
bachata songs between the mid-2000s hits. She played Daddy Yankee and screamed the lyrics
just to feel the words in her mouth. Whatever happened between us happened. It just didn’t
sound as good in English. The cafeteria was always dark and stuffy; kids scrambled to buy sodas
and ice creams and popcorn with the five dollars their parents gave them that morning. The air
horns that the DJ managed to disperse throughout every song epitomized her childhood:
hilarious, obnoxious, and fun. It made her think of a warning sound, alerting neighbors when her
and her friends walked onto their block on their way home from school, stomping and pushing
each other into bushes the whole way.
7
She heard Marc Anthony’s voice and remembered being in her room, watching her
footwork in the mirror as she taught herself to salsa. Now she could do the basic step without
thinking, both the normal and New York style. She danced alone, wondering what it would feel
like moving against someone else, her waist under the weight of their hand, their fingers trailing
along her hips as she turned. She remembered when she fell in love with salsa. It was fifth grade,
and her school had gotten someone to come and show the kids how salsa music was made. The
musician described it as a pizza: there were so many layers of instruments. The drums descended
from Africa: the base. The maracas to add spice. The trumpets for flair. There were so many
instruments she couldn’t remember now because it was so long ago, but every time she listened
to salsa after that she was intrigued. She watched El Cantante in Spanish class, following the
musical career of salsa icon Hector Lavoe, and the rise of salsa in New York City. Her friend
from middle school, the same one that taught her how to bachata, recently said she needed to
learn salsa. Ten years of friendship, and now she was offering dancing lessons? Sure. The two
danced again in the El Toro section of Six Flags to the salsa song playing in the background. The
app she used told her she was 47% fluent in Spanish, but things like this made her feel como una
hispana. You just couldn’t put a number on that.
She took out her earbuds and now her neighbors switched. The house on the right was
playing bachata, and the house on the left was playing salsa. No noise was coming from
downstairs – her mom must have finished cooking. She was looking forward to the chicken
curry. She looked around her room, the photographs of her and the people she loved: her best
friends, her favorite cousins, photos of her mother and grandmother from their youth back home.
They smiled and made silly face and were stern. They were beautiful. And they were her.
8
How Babies are Made
Standing in front of him, she unclasped her bra and felt the pressure fall away from her
chest. Upon seeing her, he grabbed her by the waist from his seat and fell backwards, pulling her
on to the bed. She shrieked with laughter, tickled by the kisses he was placing on her neck. At
this point, both of their pants were already off. The only thing left between them was their
underwear. Oh, and one more thing.
“Babe,” she interrupted him between kisses.
“What?” he answered, breathless, still kissing her.
She pulled back and raised an eyebrow at him.
“Oh, shit. Yeah. Right.” He turned away from her over to his bedside table, propping
himself up on one arm, opening the drawer and rummaging around.
“I don’t think I have any,” he said, still looking. “Do you?”
“No,” she whined, now getting under the blanket and laying it over him too. “Whatever I
bought last time I left here.”
He continued to look, praying to see the gold foil while trying to keep his hopes up. But
with each passing second it was clear.
“We are out of condoms,” he announced forlornly, still turned away from her. A beat of
silence passed between them before she spoke.
9
“I’m sorry, Reid,” she said, cuddling up to his back. She spooned him, placing her cheek
between his shoulder blades. “Let’s go out on a pharmacy run. Ice cream included. On me.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed, a reaction way beyond his 21 years.
“That’s not it, Sonali,” he started. She groaned internally. She knew this conversation
would have to come sooner or later. She just didn’t want it to be sooner.
“Have you looked into getting birth control at all?”
“No, and you know why I don’t want to –”
“What’s more important to you? Don’t you want to be safe?”
Another beat of silence passed between them, longer this time. Reid turned around to face
her, laying on his side. It was as if he was seeing her as his reflection in a mirror.
“Of course I want to be safe,” Sonali said, cupping his face with her hand. “I just don’t
want to risk... I’ve heard of so many women becoming depressed and suicidal. The pills fuck
with your mental health, and an IUD makes your period heavier and cramps worse. Everything
else is inconvenient. Some stuff even makes you lose your period, and I don’t wanna do that. I
could be pregnant for months and not even realize.” His eyes widened as she went on with her
anxieties. “The side effects are so awful. Everything is fine the way it is, and I don’t wanna mess
with it.”
They lay there, looking into each other’s eyes, her brows furrowed in worry and his in
frustration.
10
“I don’t think everything is fine, though.”
She felt like she’d been punched in the stomach, out of breath and forgetting how to
breathe. But she recovered quickly.
“Ouch,” Sonali said sarcastically, removing her hand from Reid’s face. She got out of the
bed, crossed her arms over her chest and started to look on the floor. She didn’t even have to ask
where her clothes were before he realized what he had said.
“C’mon Soni, you know I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, sitting up now. He saw the
way her eyes were blinking back tears as they scanned the room, and he felt badly. “Don’t go.”
“Nah, I have to.” She had found her bra and was putting it on with her back facing him.
“I have stuff to do anyway.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
Silence as she found the rest of her outfit. He continued to sit in the bed, unsure of what
to say. Quiet waves of anger radiated off her now. He could see it in the way she was packing her
bag, stuffing her things in there haphazardly. She usually liked to keep it neat and organized.
“I love you.” He was sincere. He hadn’t meant to hurt her.
“I love you too,” she said, sighing. “And I listen to you when you say things.”
11
Now Reid felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. His mouth was set in a hard line as
she put on her shoes. One of Sonali’s socks was inside out, but he didn’t tell her anything. She
knew it was inside out; she just wanted to get out of there.
Once she had everything on, she walked to the door to leave. She paused with her hand
on the knob, sighing.
She went back to him and lowered her head to his for a quick kiss. Afterwards, she
kneeled by the bedside so she could look right into his eyes.
“Hey, I love you. I just need more time to think about this. It’s a big step,” Sonali
reminded him.
“I know,” he said, not feeling angry anymore. Even the smallest of her kisses undid him
like that. “I just don’t want you to get pregnant. And I know you don’t want to get pregnant
either. We’re only 21, for God’s sake—”
“I know, baby, but there’s a lot more to consider than just getting pregnant. You’re not
the one trying to prevent your reproductive system from doing its job. So, just bear with me.
Please?”
They looked into each other’s eyes, mirroring concern. For Reid, it was concern that it
wasn’t so obvious of a choice for her; didn’t every woman want to take the opportunity to use
birth control? For Sonali, it was concern that he just wasn’t listening to her. He held her face in
his hands and brought it to his, planting a kiss on her lips and another on her forehead.
“I love you so much,” Reid said. “Let me know what you decide.”
12
She nodded, swallowing whatever uneasiness was at the back of her throat.
“I love you too,” Sonali replied. “I’ll see you later.” She smiled at him, left his room and
walked out into the brisk night.
As she made her way home, she remembered her mother.
“Yeah, well, you were an accident!” Sonali teased her youngest sister. It was all in jest –
the four of them laughed: her and her mother, brother, and sister.
“You all were accidents,” their mother revealed, to which they laughed even more. It
made sense – Sonali’s mom came to America for a college education, but never received it
because she was too busy going back and forth between nannying other peoples’ children and
raising her own.
Sonali remembered her grandmother too. She gave birth to six children, but only four
lived into adulthood.
“The hardest thing is to have a child and then lose it. Even worse is to have a child, see
them live to be one or two years old, and then lose them too. To be a mother is a hard thing,” her
grandmother told once her on a visit. They shared a bed, and she often told Sonali back home
stories late into the night, even after they had said goodnight time and time again.
“We didn’t have so much, but you, you Americans have so much more. You got to take
advantage.”
13
Sonali tossed and turned that night; she couldn’t fall asleep. She opened her phone, found
her mom’s number, and wrote a text:
“Hey ma. Missing you. Will call tomorrow, I have kind of a big question. Just wanted to
say good night, and I love you. Talk to you soon.”
She hit send, started playing classic Bollywood songs, and turned around to sleep. She
dreamed of her and Reid living on a deserted island, surrounded by 10 of their children all
wearing leaves for clothes, and woke up the next morning in a sweat. She opened her phone to
distract herself, and saw a reply from her mom:
“Love you too hon. Sorry, too busy today, can’t talk. Sure you will be able to figure it
out. Just remember to always do what is best for you.”
14