Jai and Malenna

I owe the inspiration of this story to a man who loves his mother. This is not his story but it is my story inspired by his mother. Thank you for letting me share her with everyone. -C

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Jai and Malenna-Chapter 1: Prelude

Very carefully, Jai opened the door to his family's New York apartment. He'd toed off his sneakers in the hall. He sat down his pack and computer case. He eased the door open. He heard the sound, the soft, toneless sound of his mother humming. He slipped into the hall and padded silently down to the entrance to the kitchen on his right. She stood at the sink, washing up the mixing bowl. She'd made a cake but it was still baking in the oven. She wore lime green jeans and a colorful shirt, one of his fathers because it bloused around her, hiding the lithe lines of her body. She hummed but she was tone deaf, could not carry a tune in a bucket. She loved music, all her talent resided in her feet. She danced.

Jai eased up behind her and waited, barely breathing, unable to believe she didn't know he was there. It seemed like forever before she set the heavy old mixing bowl in the drainer and wiped her hands on the towel. He slowly encircled her waist and whispered, "Mom, I'm home!"

Jai Kumar had gone away for his first year of college a gangly eighteen-year old kid. College had changed him in many ways but not the least was the broader shoulders, the thicker chest and the rough bristles that appeared every evening on his face. That was the outer changes, the inner shifts in his realty were far more profound. His mother hadn't wanted him to go away. She argued with him and his father, insisting he could live at home and attend City College but his father agreed that getting away from the City and meeting new and different people would be good for him.

It had been. He left last August. By the end of September he had a girl friend and by the end of October, his virginity was compromised and in real danger. The first day of November, following some very heavy petting at the Halloween party, he became a man. For a couple weeks, they couldn't keep their hands off each other. He was distracted, jittery, as though if someone were to touch him, he'd get an erection again. He thought everyone was looking at him and they all knew what he was doing, what he was thinking, what he was feeling. Then things got weird, for him and, he would eventually understand, because of him.

They had spent a couple nights together, once in her room when her roommate was off attending a conference for young Republicans in Washington D.C. and the next time when his roommate had to go home because of a death in the family. The third night, with his roommate still gone, he woke up beside Torrai in the new morning and saw her for the first time.

"My god." He thought. "She looks just like Malenna." Malenna, of course, was his mother. The realization spooked him. Things never went right after that, and soon they split up. Torrai kept trying to get him to talk about what was wrong with her but he just shook his head and mumbled nothing was wrong with her, it was all him. How could he explain that when he looked at her now, after finally seeing her for real, all he saw was his mother. At first, he thought it would pass but again and again Torrai would turn her head just so or touch a hand to her hair, smoothing it back over one ear and Jai would shiver with recognition.

He finally confronted the reality he'd been avoiding. He was attracted to Torrai because she looked just like his mother.

Once he confronted that, he couldn't have sex with Torrai any more and they drifted apart. He kept out of the sex and love reservoir until the next semester, it was almost spring break. Everyone was cramming for mid-terms and planning for going hither and yon for spring break. The campus creaked with the oppression of the long semester and the winter that went with January and February.

Jai was sitting studying when he noticed the new night librarian, a plain looking woman with her hair bound up tight in a bun. He just stared at her until she met his eyes. Her smile tickled his skin and left him panting as though he'd just run up stairs carrying a beer keg. He looked away but the connection was made. Later, he'd think back to that moment and wonder that it had washed over him without ever offering him the explanation he didn't get until well after she took him to bed.

Lana was older, alone. She was divorced and had moved to the university town for this job, but mostly to escape the small town dominated by her ex and his family. Everywhere she went, she said, someone judged her for the failed marriage. She didn't volunteer why and Jai didn't ask. After his aborted first affair, he turned to physical work and started lifting weights, running and even swimming although he swam more like a brick with water wings than anything aquatic. It helped his wind and relaxed his muscles that constantly ached. He was Indian in lineage, though very American in culture. Most Anglos looked at him and figured he knew all about yoga and the Kama Sutra but he didn't even know what that was till he got to college and had to look it up when guys kidded him about it. He had good looks, a shock of thick black hair and deep set eyes. He didn't like to talk so ended up listening a lot; he only talked when he had something to say. He didn't understand people that talked all the time. That exhausted him and he shied away from the outgoing girls who fluttered around him after Torrai. They soon bored with his unresponsive manner and left him to himself, which was why he was alone in the library that night.

Staring at the woman became sort of a habit, something he did when he was working out a physics problem or arranging the outline for the history paper. Instead of staring off into space like he often did, he found his eyes constantly returning to the woman. For several nights, it went like that. He'd stare at her until she caught him and smiled at him, and he'd look away, embarrassed. His roommate had a girlfriend and by tacit agreement, Jai stayed far away from the room for as long as he could. Several times he interrupted them having sex but he never complained. Gary punched him on the shoulder once and told him he was a mensch for being so cool about it.

Finally, he had something he needed the librarian's help with. He needed to know how to get population statistics from the 17th century. He walked right up to the woman's desk and asked her.

She smiled at him, listening as he went through his request but when he finished, she held out her hand.

"I'm Lana. I am sure I can help you. What's your name?"

He told her but his mouth was suddenly dry and he stumbled on any sentence with a dental syllable in it. He sounded like he had a lisp. She walked him back to a bookshelf and selected several and left him alone. The next night, she came by and sat down with him, uninvited.

"You always study alone, how come?" She asked from across the table.

"Other people talk too much." He said. That made her laugh. Her laugh and the fact that he'd elicited it gave him a private little thrill. It went on from there, until, by the week before mid-terms, they were talking together longer. He decided to just stay on campus, not realizing the subterranean reason that drew him in, unconscious but later, so very obvious. When Lana understood he was staying on campus, not even going home, back to New York, she invited him to supper. She seduced him that night. The sex was incredible. She was a woman who understood her body and had ways of pleasing him that Torrai simply didn't know about. He spent the week with her, enjoying her company, her body, her pleasure.

When the revelation appeared that Saturday morning when he saw her for real finally, he didn't panic like he had before. Lana had long but fine black hair, and the same columnar neck that his mother had. Since she wore her hair braided and up in a bun at work, he didn't see it down until Saturday morning. He arrived at her little bungalow a few blocks off campus. By then, he was certain that they had that sexual spark and he was trying to figure out how to verify it and not look stupid. He wanted to touch her but didn't want to be rebuffed. She kissed him and they went to bed, solving his conundrum. It was too easy, like he only had to float along and follow her lead.

She was confident and clear in her desires, riding him when she wished, pulling him between her legs on her back when she wished. She kept her hair up, she said because it took so long to fix it, until the weekend when she let it down and again in the dawn's early light, he woke and looked over at her and saw his mother. Lana resembled her mostly in bone structure and manner, not so much in coloring. Her face was shaped the same but her skin was pale, almost translucent. She had green eyes but when she smiled when she thought no one was watching, like in her sleep, her rich lips formed an expression that reminded Jai of Malenna.

When school resumed, he took some time to think about what he was doing and instead of letting Lana's resemblance to his mother freak him out, he basked in it. He had sex with her constantly, ravenous but always comparing her body and actions and mannerisms with his mother, wondering what Malenna looked like when ecstasy took her, how she kissed, what her hands felt like on him. He tried to extrapolate from Lana, but it became evident that he couldn't, not really. He kept having sex with her, trying to charm her, trying out things like taking her flowers or a box of chocolates in the American way. He was testing himself, finding ways to act that felt natural to him, dismissing others. One of his favorites was to sneak up behind her and kiss her neck, breathing on her smooth, taut skin. They had sex in the kitchen many times. He found lots of things he liked, tender things like kissing grease off her fingers after eating KFC or licking her nipples while she squirmed under him. He found things he could do but they remained cautious and romantic. It all backfired.

One night she broke up with him.

"I don't think we should see each other any more." She told him over a pizza. "I think you are falling in love with me and that's not what this is about. I like sex and sex with you is plentiful. I just think we should let this alone before it becomes complicated. I can't be what you want me to be." Later, on the bus ride home after the semester was over when he had all those hours to think about it, he realized Lana was likely surprised that he proved so amenable to the breakup. He listened, eating pizza while she talked. When she she was done laying out her very logical case, he nodded, stood up and left. He realized she'd had to pay for the pizza but that seemed alright since she broke up with him. He didn't argue, he didn't discuss her logic or her conclusions. He accepted all she had to say and the bottom line she thought her good and logical points implied. She was just wrong and had no way to tell her so.

After Lana ended their brief but fiery affair, Jai made a pact with himself. He said he couldn't get anywhere in life, with any woman, if all he did was duplicate his mother. He realized it might not be fair to her but he resolved to at least make a pass at her, to get her to slap him and give him anger, so he could tell her what he was feeling and get it out. It felt like he had a big bee buzzing around inside him, vibrating along the inside of his skin at times or popping against it with force.

He decided he was in love with his mother. That sounded weird to him so he changed it to in lust with Malenna. He couldn't help it. He dreamed of her, never seeing her nude but many times kissing her, the image populated with the feeling of her cool lips on his cheek when she had kissed him in the past. In his dreams, they never made love, never got to that point before he woke up. Each dream was similar to the others, where she'd be fully willing to have sex with him but he couldn't ever get to that point before he awoke, often with a new mess to clean up.

He decided he was going crazy but then talked himself out of going to a counselor. He couldn't imagine telling anyone that he wanted to have sex with Malenna. So he kept to himself, a solitary soul on the campus filled with an emerging grand passion he had to pursue. By the time he opened the door of his parent's apartment, it was firmly set in his mind, he'd make her slap him, so he could at least tell her how he felt. Three things interfered with this simple plan to unwind his personal insanity.

First, he kept losing his nerve. Each time he thought he'd kiss her on the lips like they kissed in his dreams, he couldn't. The biggest problem was his cock. It kept snapping to attention the moment she appeared and touching her made him genuinely worried that he was going to orgasm right then. He fought against having orgasms in bed because he feared his mother discovering the night stains when she washed his sheets. It kept happening so he decided to do his own laundry. His mother thought that was incredibly mature of him but insisted she would. He refused to let her, insisting she was his mother, not his maid. She kissed him on the lips for the first time since he was a little boy.

"I'm so proud of the man you are becoming!" She whispered to him, squeezing his shoulders that had gained quite a lot of very solid muscle at college.

He worked in her second-hand clothing store, called The Continental Two. Jai's father, Suresh, worked as a buyer for Kuhn's department stores and had connections that brought lots of remaindered clothing and name-brand stock with the tags removed to the store. They made a nice profit and Malenna got to have all the best clothes for much less than if she bought things through normal channels. She became an expert at identifying the style and stitching of famous brands, even from the cut tags so she could sell them to her customers. Occasionally, high class women would appear in dark glasses and scarves to buy something but mostly her patrons were middle class women who liked quality they usually couldn't afford. She was a guilty secret to a large and growing community in New York.

The second was more fun but just as disconcerting. His mother still danced. Most weeks she danced on Mondays and Thursdays. Mondays the store was closed and on Thursday, his father would leave work in the early afternoon and sit in the store till nine at night, to give his wife both a day off and allow her to keep with her dance classes. She enjoyed jazz but loved ballet. She lost her point early in her life, she was too tall, they said but she still walked with the floating grace of a prima ballerina. She moved like fog, drifting without bobbing, coolly striding everywhere she went as though she were a ghost.

Jai got his silence from his mother. Suresh liked to talk and it fit his profession as a buyer, the constant banter that went with it. Malenna was quieter, not shy really but gentle, softly insistent but never aggressive. She got what she wanted using elegant grace, not leverage or force. The Thursday after he got back from college, he found his mother soaking in the old wrought iron bathtub in the second, unremodeled bath. He came home and pushed into the room to find her sitting in the tub, surrounded by fluffy soap bubbles, smelling of pine or mint, like that, fresh and light. He backed out, shocked to see her like that. She called him back and asked how his day had gone.

When she sat up, he thought she was going to show him her breasts. Instead, her knees appeared out of the suds like shoals in an angry ocean and she hugged them.

"My legs always hurt so much after I dance now. I push too hard. I'm getting old."

"You aren't old, mother." Jai said. "You are a beautiful woman."

She looked up at him, measuring his words, he thought to see if he was teasing her or something. Only after a long pause did she respond.

"Why thank you, Jai. It's always good for a woman to hear that she is beautiful, even if it is from a biased party like her son."

"Sons always know." He returned.

He left her like that, hiding his erection. She emerged from the bath barefoot, in a white terry cloth robe Suresh had stolen from the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco some years back. She was drying her hair.

"I soak my legs now, to take the ache out of them." She said. "Suresh says I should find a good masseuse but I cannot bear the idea of a strange man or a woman touching me." She smiled that easy smile that matched her dancer's gait, smooth and flowing from the look in her eyes. For the first time, Jai noticed it, a sort of bleakness that hadn't been there when he went off to school, like she was sad. He decided that it was because he'd left her and that he was growing up. The narcissism of this conclusion did not come clear to him until later.

"I could rub them." He offered. He had his father's flat feet, feet that made it good for Suresh to sit at a desk rather than do something more active like his older brother did, a building engineer who put in air conditioning systems all over the country, doing projects for sky scrappers and other large projects like airports or sports arenas. When Jai was young, working as a sack boy at the local grocery, being on his feet for so long made his legs ache and his ankles swelled. He'd wake up on Sunday after a long day on his feet and crawl to the breakfast table because his feet were so painful. His mother took to rubbing his feet and legs before he went to bed and that made it much less painful the next morning. His offer echoed this memory they two shared.

"Would you?" Malenna said softly. "I hate to ask anyone but it would be so wonderful..."

When she rubbed his legs after a long day so long ago, he'd lay across his little bed on his face and Malenna would rub his calves and ankles. Now, she lay across the queen bed in her room and he sat beside her as she'd done with him those few years ago and rubbed her calves and ankles.

"Oh, your hands have gotten so strong." She whispered.

"I worked out a lot at school. It helped me study."

After about ten minutes, going back and forth from leg to leg, she lifted her head.

"Jai, please, would you rub my thighs. That's where the pain is the worst. I get cramps in the night when the muscles knot and twitch."

Of course he agreed. That was how he glimpsed her bum clad only in her practical underwear the first time. With a little oil on his hands, he ran them up the sinewy taut back of her thighs.

"You're so tense." He whispered.

"That's so wonderful. Oh my god." Her voice seemed to seep out of her, like it was a tune he was making with his hands on her skin. His body shook. The sensual feel of her smooth thighs on his hands thrilled him. He reflected that his few weeks with Lana had brought him a calm about a woman's body he certainly hadn't possessed before. He ran his hands up and down Malenna's thighs, pushing a little higher each time. Finally, Malenna put a hand back and pulled her robe up over her rump.

"All the way up." She whispered.

She groaned as his hands circled the quad muscles in front against the bed, kneading them and breaking the brittle lactic acid that formed in the leaves of the muscles. Up and back, up and back, left and right, Jai rubbed her legs until his hands quivered from the stress.

"I have to stop. That's a workout. I won't work out on Thursdays any more."

Malenna rolled onto her back, pulling the robe tight around her body. The lower part of the robe flapped open, exposing one of her shapely thighs. He couldn't help but stare. It wasn't until later that night that he got to slow down his heart and focus on the fact that he'd had his hands on his mother's thighs.