Emma Ch 25

Amna wasn’t sure how she felt when she received her letter from Sextasy Stars telling her that she’d been successful in the audition and asking her when she could start coming in for rehearsals and script for the film. When she learnt that Susan had also been accepted for a rôle in the film, however, she decided, perhaps recklessly, that it was a well-paid job which she’d be really stupid not to accept even though it meant being extremely wary about giving her parents a good idea of what the job actually entailed. She also knew that she’d still be expected to work in the shop when time allowed; and this was a responsibility she’d not be able to shirk whatever other work she was doing.

However, the unsavoury nature of her work meant that she felt rather less happy about staying at home with her parents and continuing to share a bedroom with her two younger sisters. She’d actually resisted any suggestion of moving away from home before. It was much more secure than anywhere else and she liked the luxury of having her food prepared for her, her laundry cleaned for her and indeed everything else being done for her. On the other hand, she’d felt uneasy enough on just the audition coming home smelling so obviously of the smell of sex. She’d rushed straight into the shower and spent ages scrubbing off the evidence and worrying about the damage so recently done to her body. She felt around her vagina with an anxiety she’d never felt before for signs of worse damage than she’d originally anticipated. If she was to be coming home regularly with this kind of anxiety, how soon would it take her parents to realise that she wasn’t working as a clerical temp in a small accounts’ department? And how much opportunity did it give her mother to actually fulfil her well-meant promise to visit her at work to see how she was.

Her Aunt Salim was a good Muslim. She covered her hair in a head-scarf and all her body was covered by a long discreet dress, which was not unstylish but designed more to hide than to flatter. Amna wasn’t sure that Aunt Salim was the best person with whom to live, but her aunt had often made the offer, and now seemed the appropriate time to accept. She hoped that her aunt had been sincere in her promise that she just wanted company in her three-bedroom house and would leave Amna alone as much as possible. And anyway, despite her unambiguous religious devotion, she was very pleasant and easy-going, making the effort to show interest in the sort of things that Amna enjoyed.

Aunt Salim was also a woman who seemed a little apart from the rest of Amna’s extended family. She was quite a distant aunt (several times removed) and was in fact was not wholly Asian. Her mother or father had bequeathed her with paler skin, lighter brown hair and far more freckles than anyone else in the family. This alone constituted quite a severe differentness, but even now, in her early thirties, she hadn’t got married and didn’t even have a fiancé. She had quite a nice home, however, which she’d bought partly from family money, but mostly from her salary as a systems analyst in an insurance company. Quite clearly her employer was not one who expressed prejudice about employing Muslims.

Amna soon received permission from her parents who nonetheless expressed reluctance to see her leave the family nest, even if it was to live with someone in the family who could be relied on to provide a proper moral environment. However, Amna knew that, in truth, they were quite pleased to see her leave more room for her sisters and that her mother secretly looked forward to having one less child to have to look after. Aunt Salim picked Amna up in her modest car and assisted her in loading the bags in the boot.

Amna was soon shown her new room which provided much more space than she was used to, and a quite pleasant view across a leafy suburban street to the mock Tudor houses opposite. She spent quite some time unpacking her bags and putting her underwear and clothes in the appropriate drawers. She knew she was finished when she’d put up her last poster on the wall and the several framed photos of her parents, brothers and sisters on the available surfaces. She lay back on her bed contemplating her new room and thinking of her future in films. After appearing in Hot Asian Lovers with Susan, what next? She’d have so much money and be able to do the millions of things she’d always wanted to do and hadn’t been able to afford. All she had to do was to put up with the discomfort of having men’s engorged penises enter her and pretend to enjoy it.

After a while, she made her way down the narrow staircase to the living room where she could hear Aunt Salim watching television. What she didn’t imagine she’d see was her aunt, who she had only seen totally covered, dressed in nothing more than expensive black silk underwear, knickers and bra. She was sitting on the sofa with her legs tucked up underneath her, her bushy hair cascading free over her shoulders. Aunt Salim greeted her with a smile and no comment and the two of them continued to watch the television programs that were on.

Amna soon came to understand that her aunt habitually spent her time at home dressed only in underwear: perhaps as a compensation for being so hidden the rest of the time and as a result the temperature of the house was kept somewhat higher than Amna was used to at her parents’ flat. It seemed that besides her heavy unexciting outdoor clothes, she really owned nothing more in the way of clothing than an extensive wardrobe of comfortable and generally silky lingerie. She didn’t consider it at all unusual, (although she’d clearly not advertised her preference to the rest of Amna’s family) an impression reinforced by the fact that whenever Aunt Salim was entertaining her women friends, they too dispensed with all clothes bar their underwear. And quite a few of these women were such very devout Muslims.

Uncovered by her clothes, Aunt Salim had a very attractive body. She was slim, with a less pronounced figure than Amna’s very obvious bell-shape. She had a flat stomach and taut muscles in the arms which gave evidence to the efforts she took to keep her body in good form. Like most of her friends, Amna found it funny that she put so much effort into her appearance and yet had not got married. Nor did she ever show any ambition in that direction.

After a while, and with no prompting from her aunt, Amna herself started wearing only underwear around the house. It was quite a liberating feeling for her, although she didn’t have the range or quality of lingerie of her aunt. In fact all her underwear was made of quite cheap nylon and cotton in colours and designs more fun than elegant. Of more note was the fact that the knickers did not succeed at all in hiding her bush of pubic hair at the top of her thighs or above their waist-line. Even her bra did a less than perfect job of restraining her breasts and on more than one occasion she’d found that a bosom had worked its way loose and was freely on view. When this happened she embarrassedly struggled to restrain her still-growing assets inside bras purchased when she’d had somewhat more modest requirements. Aunt Salim made no signs of ever having noticed, and indeed made very little sign ever of noticing the way her niece was now dressing. She gave no signs of either approval or disapproval, and never appeared at all aware of any aspect of Amna’s appearance.

Most of the time, the aunt and niece would sit around in the living room either watching television or reading books, and it was only occasionally that Amna felt the need to spend time by herself in her own so spacious bedroom. She concluded that living with her aunt wasn’t such a bad move at all: she felt much more free and comfortable than she’d ever done surrounded by her immediate family.