Adaptation: book I (21 page)

She opened up two cans of black beans and smiled. Bilal liked black beans and rice, especially when she took the time to dice onions and peppers into them. Unfortunately the bell peppers were all gone—

“Ugh!” Bilal cried from the living room.

“Bilal?” Carmella nearly dropped the can as she dashed into the front room.

Bilal turned to her with a scowl on his face.

Raj was on the couch playing with his toes, much of his body covered in shit.

Carmella stopped as she was hit with the stench.

Bilal’s face twisted in disgust. “That is the most horrible smell. That is worse than cow and chicken feces. That smells worse than
my
feces!”

Carmella gasped and hurried to the couch where Raj gave her a nonchalant look before gurgling and concentrating on his toes again. “What happened?”

Bilal backed away from the couch. “I decided I would help by changing Raj’s diaper. I didn’t think it would be difficult. You make it look easy. It was a mistake. Feces began to pour from his behind.” He gave Raj an accusatory look. “He began to defecate as soon as I took the diaper off.”

Luckily Bilal had placed the baby on top of the afghan, but shit was all over her child. “Oh, Raj, what did you do to your daddy?” She turned to Bilal. “Put the teapot on so I can give him a quick bath.”

“I need a bath, too,” Bilal said. “He urinated on me.”

Carmella tried not to laugh, but she couldn’t help it because Bilal looked so helpless covered in baby urine.

Bilal cocked his head at her. “Why is this funny?”

She tried to stifle her laughter. “I’m sorry, Bilal. I can’t help it. You look so funny!”

He shook his head, turned, and headed for the kitchen.

“Oh Bilal, I didn’t mean to laugh at you! Where are you going?”

“To put on the teapot so that I can give Raj a bath—or better yet, so that you can.”

Raj looked at her curiously, smiled, and gurgled.

“You got him good,” Carmella said. “But how’d you get your own shit on your shoulders?”

She undressed Raj and tossed the soiled clothing into the corner to be washed before they dried and became impossible to deal with. She carried Raj into the kitchen.

Bilal stood by the cook stove waiting for the teapot to warm up. He had removed his shirt and was wearing only jeans and boots. His long black hair fell down his back in unruly waves.

The sight of Bilal stopped Carmella in her tracks.

“The water should be warm enough now,” Bilal said.

“Oh, uh, yeah.” She handed him his son while she put a stopper in the drain and poured the water into the sink.

Bilal held Raj out an arm’s length away from him. “You smell.”

Raj gurgled happily.

Carmella shook her head and hid a grin. “You know, babies are prone to pooping and peeing on themselves—and others. Don’t take it personal.”

Bilal’s eyebrows gathered as he passed the soiled baby back to her. “I know that. But he waited until the diaper was off before defecating.”

She had another spontaneous eruption of laughter, which she tried to mask by coughing.

Bilal was far from pleased as he tested the water. “It’s warm. Put him in. I’ll start his wash.” He returned a minute later with baby wash, a washcloth, and a towel, which he placed on the counter.

Raj had a bath every night. Bilal knew the routine well, and despite what he had said about the wash, he began bathing the baby.

Carmella peeked at him. He was handy and so cute with or without a shirt, but she preferred without. She allowed her eyes to scan his perfectly toned torso, which had returned to an even-tempered tannish gray. She wished everyone’s moods would be as transparent. What would he think if he knew what she was thinking now? What color would he turn? She looked away.

Raj was busy splashing and slapping the surface of the water as his dad washed him. Both father and son held exactly the same serious expressions on their faces as they concentrated on their perspective tasks. Raj could sit up on his own, but so far only in the sink. She thought Raj was advanced for a two-month-old, but it had been a long time since she’d been around a baby. Maybe it was normal.

Bilal finished washing his son, swept his long hair out of his way, leaned forward, and kissed the top of Raj’s head.

Carmella blinked. She had never seen Bilal do that even though she kissed Raj every day—maybe every hour. Something cracked in Carmella. Maybe it was the last straw she had clung to in an attempt to hold on to the last piece of her past. But her past only held hatred and mistrust, and it was time to let that go. She suddenly wanted to kiss Bilal and to be kissed in return. Her heart ached at the longing. Bilal loved her son,
their
son. Even when he was disgusted at having to face his poop and pee, he still loved his son.

Carmella realized that she trusted Bilal implicitly.

She leaned forward, wanting her lips to touch his sensuous ones, wanting to run her fingers through his silky strands.

Bilal’s turned and met her eyes with a piercing stare.

She froze, her mouth open.

“What is that?” he asked. “Is something burning?”

“Oh shit!” She jumped to attention and hurried to the stove where smoke billowed from the pot of rice. She removed the pot and set it on the counter. The rice was ruined. “Well damn.”

“It’s okay.” Bilal wrapped Raj in a towel. “I’ll eat it.”

“You’ll eat anything.”

He shrugged. “Yes. I probably would, but I wouldn’t enjoy it.” He smiled. “I always enjoy your meals, though.”

Her heart fluttered. “You might not enjoy this.” She tilted the pot toward him.

Bilal looked into the pot. “Rice is normally white, isn’t it?”

“Maybe I can scoop off the top,” she said.

His eyes scanned her face until she turned back to the stove and fiddled with the cans of beans.

“I’ll put a diaper on Raj,” Bilal said as he left the kitchen.

“And a clean jumper, okay?” Carmella called.

“Okay.”

Bilal carried his son upstairs to his bedroom and placed him on the changing table. “Raj,” he whispered, “please do not pee or poop.”

Bilal figured out how to put on the disposable diaper and dressed Raj in a clean jumper. He lifted the baby in his arms and looked at him.

Raj reached out for some of his father’s hair to pull, and Bilal let him until he tried to put it into his drooling mouth.

Bilal carefully untwined it from around Raj’s pudgy little fingers and smiled at him. Bilal thought about Carmella and the way her heartbeat began to race when he smiled at her in the kitchen. What did that mean? No, he knew what it meant. Did his smile excite her? He shook his head and smiled again, this time to himself.

~***~

After putting Raj
into his crib for a nap, Bilal returned to the kitchen wearing a clean shirt. The table held two bowls of black beans and the rice Carmella had salvaged. Slices of fresh baked bread were placed on the table alongside freshly churned butter and two bottles of iced tea.

Carmella sat in her usual seat. “Raj asleep?”

“He will be shortly. He is playing with his feet again. For some reason he finds his toes interesting.”

She looked at Bilal. “Well, have a seat.”

He took a deep breath. It was now or never time. He had a more than a suspicion, and he needed to know if he was right.

Bilal held out his hand to her.

Carmella frowned and slowly placed her hand in his.

He pulled her gently until she was standing before him.

“Carmella.” He swallowed. “I get a feeling in my belly that is not like hunger or fullness. They call it butterflies, I think. Sometimes my heart races and my palms sweat. Sometimes I have a difficult time catching my breath. It mostly happens when I am thinking about you, which means it happens all of the time.”

Carmella’s mouth dropped open. “What?”

Bilal took a deep breath and leaned forward. He knew the feeling he had was one she shared as well. Her heart raced, her breathing became shallow, and her hands trembled slightly. If all that happened when she thought of him …

Their lips met, and he half-expected her to pull back.

She didn’t.

He sighed against her lips then reached up to touch the line of her jaw. Bilal kissed her, and although he had never kissed anyone like this before, it wasn’t foreign to him. He’d seen it done countless times. He closed his eyes and thought about what he’d seen in movies or while observing his friends and other humans. As he kissed her, he quickly forgot to think. He became awash with emotion brought on by the proximity of her body.

Carmella didn’t try to think or reason. When his lips touched hers, she was lost. Her hands closed around his arms and held him.

Bilal’s knees felt weak and his heart was pounding. His hand moved to the back of her neck, his fingers captured by her dreads. He stroked a dread lovingly and then pulled back.

When Carmella felt the loss of his lips on hers, she opened her eyes. After a moment she reached up and captured a few strands of his hair, feeling Bilal shudder as if her hands had stroked him. Her heart raced even faster. “Bilal, I …” She lightly bit her lips. “Bilal, I know how you feel … because I feel the same way about you.”

Bilal exhaled. “Carmella, what does this mean for us?”

“I don’t know Bilal, but I don’t think we should try to figure it all out at once. Is that okay?”

He nodded. “Yes. We must not figure this out all at once.”

He wrapped his arms around her body and pulled her into a hug, holding onto her tightly. It was like wrapping his tentacles around someone he loved but better, a million times better.

“I want you to know that I want you,” he whispered.

Carmella stiffened and
pulled back from his embrace. “What? Bilal, I think we need to take things slow. I mean, this is a lot for me. I never thought I’d ever come this far.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Go slow? We are in a place that I could have never dreamed. I wanted for you not to hate me. And now you tell me that you care for me as much as I care for you. I can’t ask for anything more. Slow? This is anything but slow. I’m content, Carmella. I will stay in this spot with you for as long as you need me to.”

She relaxed and smiled. He wasn’t thinking about sex, but she was. What did that mean?

As they ate their lunch, Carmella decided to find out more information about the man she was now living with. “So, how old are you?”

He finished chewing his beans. “I was six Earth years when we first arrived in the mother ship. To you, it was twenty-two years ago, but in actuality we were here five years before that observing and learning about your world. Your scientists knew and began communicating with us even then. When we finally arrived in the sky, you were told that it was a ‘mysterious’ appearance. But it wasn’t. We were invited.”

So the world conspiracy was five years in the planning,
she thought.
And all we invited was disaster.

She sighed and suppressed her mounting anxiety. “So you are thirty- two, thirty-three?”

“Thirty-two Earth years.”

“Good.” She smiled. “I was afraid you were underage.”

He inhaled and exhaled deeply. “In my culture you are not an adult until you leave your parents’ home and begin your own household with your spouses.”

“Spouses?”

“Yes, Centaurian marriages usually consist of two males and two females.”

She frowned. “Why?” 

“We had limited space on the mother ship, and out of necessity families combined. Some untraditional families have developed since we arrived that contain only one male and one female because we have more space and are adapting again. A Centaurian can live for several hundred years. So in the eyes of my people, I am still a child.”

“So you still live with your parents?”

“I technically live with my First Mother. She has separated from the family unit, and I joined her. But I have my own quarters.”

She couldn’t read his emotions. His face was peaceful, and his skin was pink like Pepto-Bismol. She wondered exactly what pink meant. “Do you … have a girlfriend?”

“No,” he said. “Centaurians do not socialize in the way that humans do.” He finished his beans and rice and got up for a glass of water. “Centaurians go to the mother ship and share with the ship, and that is entertainment, socializing, even sex.”

“What?”

He sat drank, happy that she was interested in his life. “We don’t experience sex in the same way that you do, and it doesn’t have the same meaning. Relationships are based on forming a family unit. Procreation is considered technical more than pleasurable. How we share pleasure is by hugging.”