Martina was not her real name. Not the one she was given at birth, at least. And this was half of the problem.
Her adoptive parents were tennis fans and had seen no issue with giving the little brown girl the agency had sent her a name that her peers at school would associate with snobbery. And everyone knew brown girls couldn't -- shouldn't be snobby, even if their new parents are some of the wealthiest of their street.
'Why aren't you called something more Indian?' the kids would ask.
'Like what?' she would ask with her small, quiet voice.
Then, the children, who had never seen another Indian person before and assumed they were barbarians of the worst order, would make various animal sounds.
Martina raised her shoulders almost to touch her ears, watched them with wide eyes, in awe of their condition of settled assimilation, feeling that it was certainly all her fault.
Other times, the kids would ask why she wasn't wearing feathers. Of course, wrong Indians, but precision is not always required when teasing a shy girl at the playground: most things would do.
Yes, it was all her fault. She didn't fit in. Everyone else did.
And there were the little pranks, the incessant tormenting of a girl, whose real parents hadn't been able to love. It had taken the charity of her adoptive parents to give her a home and put some clothes on her back.
Not that Martina remembered what it was like before. She had been re-homed when she was a few days' old. Who knows why her biological parents had given her away, she would reason? Maybe... She could come up with fanciful stories, some more plausible than others, but not a day went past that she didn't look at herself in the mirror and think: 'You can't be loved.'
The fact remained that Martina's adoptive parents, a dentist and a school principal, lived in a white, upper-middle-class suburb. There was no one like her for miles: nobody knew how to deal with someone like her.
*
Martina moved to the city for her university degree. Here things were a little better.
'More multicultural,' the dentist and the teacher, who could tell she had never fully blended with her peers back home, would say approvingly every time they visited.
They seemed happy for her. They seemed to approve.
But Martina knew in her heart they were glad to board the return train. They could go back to the Saturday golf and their well-catered dinners with their friends: she could still picture the long table and the men who looked like each other, and the ladies who were variations of the same woman with the same opinions and the same conversational points, just wrapped in different gowns.
She now worked at a design agency in a fancy building with a view of the Bay. She was the only woman of colour here.
Not the only person of colour, though: there was Teddy. He was Korean. From actual Korea! Not adopted.
People were kind to her here: nobody made fun of her name or the colour of her skin. That was something. But the damage had been done.
Martina was painfully shy. She had to be dragged away from eating her lunch at her desk and to socialise with the others in the cafeteria.
There were still awkward moments, like when someone, trying to compliment her, had told her that, 'The food you bring is not...'
'Smelly?' Martina volunteered with a smile, trying to absolve her colleague of this little faux pas.
'I wanted to say "traditional",' the other laughed awkwardly.
Maybe it was all in her head. Maybe she made a big deal out of nothing. Who knows?
When people talked, she listened politely and said nothing. When people asked for her opinion, this came in short, almost inaudible sentences.
She was twenty-four and single. She had had boyfriends in the past. Even she now wondered how that had happened. The truth is that they had done all the work.
She was pretty, petite, with smooth brown skin, and a bob of raven-black hair. She had big brown eyes and full lips. Her nose was thin, with a severe hook. Men were attracted to her. It was only natural that they would ask her out, but her shyness soon would put them off.
In truth, the only person who didn't like Martina was Martina herself. In adolescence, she had noticed girls developing hips and breasts. She had stayed lean, almost without curves. For months, while still in high school, she ate a block of butter a day, hoping to add a few grams on the scales. Her mother, the principal, put a stop to it as soon as she found out. Not that it had made any difference anyway: Martina was all bones.
'You can't be loved,' she would often think. And this turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So now, she was resigned to be single. She wasn't sad when she was alone, and it was easier to go from day to day in this way without the uncomfortable moments that dating required. She didn't have to guess what other people expected from her, what they meant by some droll expression, or how she was to behave.
Martina could look at life sitting on the sidelines. Things happened, people came and went, but nothing really touched her. And things remained simple: nothing ever derailed her routine; nothing threatened her way of thinking; nothing was ever out of place, and everything was simple.
If she didn't like it like this, she could easily live with it. She had made peace with the fact.
*
One day, it was late afternoon, Marina got home after work. As it was her habit, she walked into the shower to wash off the sticky feeling left by the commute on public transport. Just then, her phone rang.
She ran out of the shower, dripping wet: she had to get to that damned phone.
The offending piece of technology was charging on the table in the living room.
Martina got to it just in time.
'Hey!' a familiar voice said. 'I thought you were not in.'
'No,' she whispered. 'I'm in.'
It was Sarah, a colleague from work. She and a few of the girls were going out for a drink.
'Do you want to join?'
Martina wanted to say no: she never knew what to say; she rarely followed the conversation that often revolved around what was "In". She never watched popular shows or went out to restaurants. When she was done with work, she was happy to pick up a book from the library and read in front of her dinner until it was time for bed.
'Sure,' she said finally, knowing she could not turn down every request without being labelled as rude. Of course, it didn't matter: she walked into work, did what was expected or her, and went home. She was a near silent presence in the office, but she still didn't want to be thought of as impolite. While she wasn't keen on other people's company, she didn't want to offend anybody. That was her nature.
She hung up, promising she would be there. Then she realised she was naked, and she was suddenly filled with horror because she had been standing in front of a window for quite some time.
Her building was oddly configured: four apartments per floor, wrapped around a central courtyard. It was a small and dark affair all units had some windows opening onto. The window she had been standing next to was one of them.
She quickly coward under the window, goosebumps raised on her harms. Had anyone seen her? She could not bear the thought; she would have to move out, change her face with plastic surgery! She laughed at the thoughts.
'Oh -- my -- Gosh! I was fricking naked in front of the damned window...'
She slowly reared her head, just enough to spy outside. Had someone seen her? She calculated that a person standing where she had been standing could only be seen from two apartments: the one opposite hers, and the one on the floor above. That was it.
She knew that the apartment on her floor was untenanted, but her blood froze in her veins when she saw that there was a man standing at the window of the apartment above it.
It wasn't a big distance, and she could see he was a young man, a little older than she was, probably in his late twenties or early thirties. He had a nice face with a big, manly jaw. She could tell his hair was brown, cropped on the sides. She couldn't be sure, as she could only see a portion of him, but he looked like the gym-going type, tall and well formed. In fact, he was quite good looking.
And, as she could see his features in great detail, she was sure anybody standing where the man now stood could clearly see her every feature. Had he just arrived, or had he been there for quite some time?
The Mystery Man was standing inside his apartment with a calm smile on his face, looking out.
Martina raised a hand quickly and grabbed the tassel and tugged at the rope. With a swoosh, the calico curtain came down. Then, she ran back into the bathroom.
*
Dinner was a strange affair. People were talking, yelling to each other over the loud music, ordering drinks and stealing each other's fries. As usual, Martina was silent. People paid no attention to this: after all, she was always very quiet. But, this time, Martina was not agonising searching for something mildly relatable to add to the conversation only to find out the others had already changed the topic. This time, she was going over the events of the afternoon.
She could only think of herself, the thin brown woman standing naked in her apartment, and the man in the other apartment staring down at her.
She cringed every time the image appeared before her eyes.
