Hours later, as the ceiling fan whirred above us, I traced a line from her shoulder, down her arm, jumping off at her ribs, and continuing over the gentle curve of her hip. My white finger looked blotchy against her perfect skin, and I wished I had a tan. When I told her that, she made me promise never to get dark. I didn’t get it, this Indian obsession with fairness, but she was adamant. And I sensed in her no small measure of disappointment at the darkness of her own skin. I told her she was beautiful. Why such a confident, intelligent person should care about a shade or two of melanin, I surely did not know. But I wasn’t in her skin. I couldn’t possibly understand how the expectations of Indian society had affected her.

This was an odd conversation to be having in my own head. My parents had raised me to regard skin color as irrelevant, to me personally at least. Of course, they said, many people gave it too much importance, some for all the wrong reasons. I understood why a black man sees color. He’s likely to be on the wrong end of prejudice for his. But the white racists disgusted me. Bullies who bully those they can get away with bullying.

“You’ve got white skin,” she said. “You’ll never truly understand.”

I said nothing more. But if this remarkable woman thought of herself as somehow less than beautiful because of an arbitrary esthetic standard, I wanted to hold her tight, make her feel safe, and let her know she was perfect.

Even with the power back on, we burned candles and diyas instead of electric lights. Sushmita didn’t want to alert nosy neighbors to our presence. Not that there was any house in view, but she was exercising maximum care.

I’d somehow managed to make an edible dish of cabbage, so we had that and a plate of leftover dal and rice she’d made earlier. We talked late into the night. She asked me about my football career, such as it was, and I told her about the worst defeat of my sporting life, Harvard Beats Yale 29-29.

“That sounds like a draw,” she said. “You Americans really should learn English. Or maths.”

Ignoring her comment, I propped myself up on an elbow to tell the tale.

“It was my sophomore year and I was riding the bench.” I had to explain sophomore and riding the bench to her. She watched me with big, sparkling eyes, as if I weren’t boring her. “Both teams were undefeated, facing off in the final game of the season for the Ivy League title. We were leading by sixteen points late in the fourth quarter. And then disaster struck. Harvard scored twice in the last forty-two seconds—sixteen points.”

“Is that a lot?” she asked.