Alexis Kellner Becker

The Name of Vanilla

Evie Kessler and Will Orshall slept in the same bed on Wednesday nights and Saturday nights. This was the arrangement. The other nights they did research and their creative projects and personal endeavors. On Tuesday nights, for example, Evie did bookkeeping for the local Humane Society, and Will wrote heavy-handed etymologies of Mayan words or masturbated. On Thursday nights Evie watched the hail hitting her window hard or masturbated, and Will edited the anthropology department’s linguamythology journal.

One Saturday night, after Evie undressed and crawled into bed, Will ran his hands over and across her hips and breasts, but in straight vertical and horizontal lines, like he was coloring her all over in a plaid pattern. He stuck his hand between her legs and did the same thing. It was never like this before, or was it? Evie wondered.

Sunday morning Evie awoke beside Will’s breathing form and kicked him lightly, scratching at his calf with her unclipped toenails. She thought about telling him it couldn’t be like this, she wouldn’t take it any more. But she hadn’t broken up with him when he called her unserious or when he told her she was a bit dull in bed; how could she break up with him now? Will woke up, stretched, and told her a myth.

“My favorite one right now, Evie, is from the Slalalek people of the northern Asavu Islands. It’s about why they call vanilla orchids asvikadakezak, which, just like the English ‘vanilla orchid,’ can be translated as ‘vagina testicle.’ The men, who are the first people, come from walnut shells and grow to the size of people by inserting themselves into the vaginas of the ancestral giants and coming out of their nostrils full-sized.”

“Are the ancestral giants all female?” Evie asked.

“No,” Will said. “But only the female ancestral giants have vaginas.”

This was how many of Evie’s conversations with Will went.

“Anyway, after they come out of the giants’ nostrils, their testicles are gigantic and they can’t really move. Their bodies are regular-person-sized, but their testicles drag on the ground. So they have to remove their testicles and re-insert them into the giants’ nostrils, in order that they would be smaller when they emerge from the giants’ vaginas. And it works all right for all the men until the last one, who is the ancestral culture-hero named Avata. Avata’s left testicle comes out of the giant’s vagina okay, all normal-sized, but his right one got lost somewhere inside her and didn’t come out. Avata asked the other people what he should do, for he couldn’t be happy with only one testicle.

‘You should climb back into her vagina, because you don’t want to be shrunk,’ one of his companions suggested. ‘No,’ another man disagreed. ‘You should climb into her nostril, because then you can more easily follow the path your testicle took. Perhaps it left traces.’ After seventeen days of deliberating, Avata finally came to a decision. He would climb into her nostril. Three times Avata climbed into the giant’s nostril and fell through her vagina, unable to grab hold to anything or to locate his testicle. He got smaller each time. Eventually, he got small enough that he could hardly be seen. The other men told him, ‘Stop! Stop! If you become any smaller you will die!’ But Avata was devoted to the pursuit of his right testicle. He climbed into her nostril one more time and fell from the giant’s body to the ground, where she stepped on him. Out of his squished body grew a vanilla orchid. So, for the Slalalek, that’s where the word comes from, and also, they say, why men really need only one testicle but usually have two.”

“How were regular-sized women made?” Evie asked.

“No anthropologist has recorded a Slalalek myth for that,” Will replied. “I guess the giants just shrank or something.”

The next day, Evie sat on her balcony and hated her body. She looked at the building across the street from her building. The window was open; the light was on; a woman put on her makeup in front of a full-length mirror. She needed to know. So, even though it was Sunday afternoon, she called Will on the telephone.

“Do I repulse you?” she asked.

Will exhaled heavily. He inhaled heavily. He exhaled heavily again. “Did you know the Asavee word for ‘repulsion’ is jijawai, which translates literally to something along the lines of ‘vaginal misunderstanding’?”

Evie started to slam down the receiver but then set it down gently in its bed.

Alexis Kellner Becker is from Maine and Chicago. She studies English and Latin literature at the University of Chicago. She is indebted to religion scholar Jonathan Z. Smith for the inspiration for this story.