The Subtweet

by Vivek Shraya

  “Midi Mini,” Neela countered.

  “That’s too ‘RUK-MINI.’ Not enough of you in there. Plus it sounds a bit like Minnie Mouse,” she scoffed as she opened her Notes app where she documented their growing list of potential names.

  “You should embrace it. Wear mouse ears in your videos.”

  “Sell them as merch? R on one ear, M on the other?” Rukmini jutted her teeth out and poked her index fingers above her head, looking more like a ravenous alien. Neela flashed her own teeth with a laugh.

  “Exactly. How did you decide on your name anyways? The hyphen and caps.”

  “That was Puna’s idea. She thought white people would have an easier time saying my name if it was split up.”

  “Well, your roommate seems to be right.”

  Rukmini’s cover of “Every Song” had broken into the mainstream, with coverage in Entertainment Weekly, and her YouTube numbers were increasing by the thousands every week. Rukmini frequently reported the latest stats: “We’re at 268K this week!” She always said “we” because, in her mind, this was their shared success, this was happening to both of them. Neela appreciated Rukmini’s generosity and likely would have been bothered by its absence, but with every listen and every share, “Every Song” felt more like Rukmini’s song and less like Neela’s. Faced with this ongoing and uncontrollable transference, she was trying to let go, but the process of separating herself from her song, her work, felt foreign and uncomfortable. Unlike many artists, she had never considered herself a mere vessel for the muse, or a medium, or even a parent. Her songs weren’t her “babies.” Her songs were her.

  Before she had listened to Rukmini’s cover of “Every Song,” Neela had always been able to fall asleep with ease. Once her head touched the pillow, the intimacy was so palpable that sleep felt like a passionate, seven-hour kiss. She would even wake up with her face slightly oily, like afterglow. In her recent state of insomnia, she wondered if choosing the title “Every Song” had sealed its fate. It could never be hers alone. As Neela had rolled from side to side between her silk sheets one night, a new internal voice emerged, a parental one that asked, Don’t you want what’s best for the song? Don’t you want the song to be heard? She didn’t resent the questions as much as she resented the voice referring to her song as the song. When she got up the following morning, she decided that perhaps silently granting Rukmini partial ownership could be her way of saying, I will be your friend.

  “What a turnout! I’m so relieved,” Rukmini said, as the hall packed in around them.

  “So brown too,” Neela observed, appreciating all the diasporic style — tikkas and lip gloss, sari blouses and jeggings, turbans and bow ties, anklets and sneakers.

  Rukmini handed Neela her phone. “You good with this?”

  with my girl @NeelaDevaki @SwetShopBoys show! #pumped

  The tweet included their new selfie. “Perfect.”

  “Shit, I forgot to tag the venue. How’s this?”

  with my girl @NeelaDevaki sweating for @SwetShopBoys @TheDanforthMH. come out and play!

  “Better.”

  “More personality, more chance of retweets. Don’t you think the Boys would love our album?”

  As Neela retweeted Rukmini’s tweet, she was confused about Rukmini’s reference to their “album.” Was she actually serious about this?

  “So, would we write the songs together?” she asked, though what she wanted to know was whether Rukmini wrote songs. She reminded herself that if they were going to be friends, she would have to respect Rukmini’s passion for singing covers, but she worried that directly asking about Rukmini’s songwriting experience might suggest otherwise.

  “Of course. We’d have to,” Rukmini responded, dragging her Twitter notifications with her thumb.

  She wanted to ask, “But how?” — not as an insult, but because she wasn’t sure how they would approach collaboration — but she didn’t press. Instead she joked, “What if you decide you want to go solo?”

  “Oh, that will never happen. I’m barely even a solo artist now. Not like yo— oh shit.” Rukmini pointed at her phone.

  “Uh oh, who is Twitter telling us to be mad at today?”

  “No, Sumi favourited my tweet!”

  “That’s nice.”

  “No, I feel bad that I didn’t invite her. She asked me if I was going before you bought us the tickets.”

  “Oh. Just blame me when you see her at work.” Neela shrugged.

  Rukmini’s attention was focused on her phone, thumbs ready to text the apology her brain was likely formulating. Then she looked up. “Can I ask you something? Why don’t you ever like my photos?”

  Neela almost let out a groan, but she clamped her teeth together. Was there anything more banal than talking about the fictional world of social media?

  “I’m not really into the whole social media artist self-branding thing, so I’m barely on Instagram.” She lifted her heel and tried to seem preoccupied with the leather strap on her shoe.

  “That’s not true. I can see you like other photos,” Rukmini asserted, waving her phone like evidence.

  “Do you really want to talk about this?” She sweetened her voice like she was consoling a pouting child.

  “Kind of?”

  “Okay, fine.” She dropped her foot. “I only like things I hate.”

  “You hate-like?”

  “Yes. I treat the like button as a dislike button.”

  “Why?” Rukmini’s crescendo of concern shifted back to her usual buoyant tone.

  Tired of yelling over the house music, which had gotten progressively louder, and not wanting the people pressed around them to hear this embarrassing exchange, Neela pulled her phone out of her navy clutch and texted Rukmini her response.

  If I like something, it feels kind of redundant and showy to declare it publicly. Neela signalled at her phone.

  Ironic coming from a musician who is liked publicly wink emoji, Rukmini texted back.

  Am I?

  Rukmini texted an eye roll emoji.

  I just think that actually liking something is a private, internal feeling. One that I relish. And if I’m going to be coerced into participating in like culture, I’d rather dispense these forced likes to the crooked photos or the ones that are accompanied by long melodramatic captions.

  Hate-liking seems so unlike you tho.

  I could say that about you and your tweets? Neela was starting to feel confined under her dress and regretted choosing long sleeves over short.

  Which tweets??? Rukmini squeezed her eyes as though the brightness of her phone had dimmed.

  A lot of them are cryptic. Why not just say what you mean?

  “Ooooh,” Rukmini said aloud then typed. lol u mean my subtweets

  Yes

  Sometimes it feels like the only way to talk about guys or yt people without worrying about the consequences, u kno?

  Isn’t that passive aggressive? Neela didn’t know why she texted this. She understood what Rukmini was saying and agreed with her. She glanced up at the piano onstage and wished they were both inside it, their phones off and out of reach.

  I see how it could seem that way but for me it’s kind of an act of resistance

  How so?

  If I could just tell a man directly that he’s being an asshole and trust that he would listen I would! Always a risk tho upside down face emoji

  “Hmm,” she said aloud, unconsciously emulating Rukmini. She waited to respond, watching Rukmini continue to text, her freshly painted aqua nails rippling up and down.

  So I subtweet. I say what I need to say and move on. U should try it!

  To signal an end to discussing this topic, Neela dropped her phone back into her purse and yelled in Rukmini’s ear, “You’ve seen my tweets. I am pretty direct.”

  “But not with your likes!
” This sounded accusatory — Rukmini also had to yell so that Neela could hear her — but her grin suggested otherwise.

  “My hate-liking is an act of resistance too, okay? Rage Against the Algorithm.” She was only half-kidding, but her comment made Rukmini laugh.

  “No, but seriously! Sometimes I think brown girl subtweets are part of this secret language we have with each oth— Holy shit!”

  “What?” Neela craned her neck to see if someone had walked onstage.

  “I figured it out! We should call our band The Subtweet!”

  “Would our songs be composed of subtweets? Very Carly Simon.”

  “Yes! Think of all the fun we could have! You could even turn some of your Instagram hate into lyrics. Like, Why are your selfies . . . so fucking blurryyyy.”

  Right as Rukmini shout-sang this line, the opening horns of the Swet Shop Boys’ “T5” started to blare. She screamed and shook Neela’s shoulders in excitement.

  Recalling that night in her living room a week later, Neela stayed folded in child’s pose longer than usual, mentally composing a tweet about how content she felt. Then she rolled up her yoga mat and headed to her laptop. As she began typing, she was arrested by a tweet in her feed.

  Album by @RUKMINI’s secret band debuts at #2 on iTunes

  Malika

  Rukmini woke up to a text from Neela.

  Congratulations on your secret album.

  Rukmini responded, ???

  Neela texted back a Billboard link. The headline was a haze — except for the words “Subaltern Speaks” and “Hegemony.” She turned off her phone and stared at the ceiling, spotted with glow-in-the-dark galaxy stickers left from the previous tenant. She thought about Malika.

  She turned her phone back on and scrolled through her contacts, searching for Malika’s name. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to delete it. She typed, Did you see this? and included the link. Then she turned off her phone again to prevent herself from adding, I miss u.

  Almost a decade ago, in the final year of her undergrad in women’s studies, she had become obsessed with postcolonial feminist theory and, driven by her curiosity, she also became the kind of student who pored over the suggested readings in addition to the mandatory ones. “Keener,” they had called her, but she fancied herself an enthusiast, a fan. It wasn’t always the content itself that had appealed to her. She was infatuated with the language of theory, the way sentences expanded to include not one but several layered arguments. Theory didn’t underestimate her capacity as a reader or a learner. Instead, it compelled her to slow down, instilled a patience so devout that it harkened back to the root of the word “patience” itself — pati, to undergo. Falling in love with theory had transformed her; it required her to let go of her skimming habit, to read each sentence over and over again, often aloud, until it unlocked and revealed its secrets. Falling in love with theory was not unlike falling in love with a human.

  She had become so immersed in the language of theory that she began to recite from whichever book she was currently studying, even in public while she walked to and from campus, as though she was in close dialogue with the writer. Sometimes she would catch herself doing it during breaks in class.

  Rukmini had noticed the other brown girl in her class who sat two rows in front of her, mesmerized by her dark-brown waterfall hair. Like Rukmini, she never went to the washroom or for a smoke during the breaks. Rukmini had made out that the girl’s name was Malika from the mandatory name tent displayed on the edge of her desk, but they had never spoken to one another. This wasn’t unusual — there was an unwritten code of silence amongst brown girls in white rooms. Staying separate was a way to assert their distinctiveness and delay the moment when their classmates or teacher would “accidentally” refer to one of them by the other’s name.

  Theory instigated the violation of this code.

  “I am endlessly creating myself. I am endlessly creating myself,” Rukmini murmured, curling her hair around her finger.

  “Are you a poet?” Malika turned to look at Rukmini. Her face was the colour of fresh earth after a rainstorm.

  “Sorry?” Even though no one else was in the room, Rukmini checked over her shoulder to confirm that Malika was speaking to her.

  “I hear you all the time . . .”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.” Rukmini covered her mouth with her hand.

  “Don’t be. I like what you’re doing.”

  “Those words aren’t mine. They’re from last week’s Fanon reading.”

  “Right. Last week’s reading. I’m still catching up from last month.” Malika frowned and turned back around to face the front of the class.

  They continued to talk to each other during subsequent breaks, though Malika never left her row, maintaining their territorial boundaries.

  One afternoon, Rukmini pointed at Malika’s iPod. “What are you listening to?” Small talk felt easier than asking Malika to sit next to her.

  “Homework,” Malika answered, shrugging her broad shoulders.

  “Like an audiobook?”

  “No, just something I put together for my music production class at Humber. It’s due tonight.”

  “That’s so cool! Can I listen?”

  Malika placed her hand on her iPod as though she was telepathically asking for its permission and waiting for its response. After a drawn-out pause, Rukmini was about to interject and say, “No pressure, maybe some other time,” when Malika finally reached over the desks between them and handed her iPod over.

  Rukmini cautiously inserted the white earbuds in her ears. “A degree and night school? You must be exhausted.” Thinking about her own evenings, she suddenly felt guilty for the hours she spent watching Veronica Mars and The Hills.

  “Not really. Music is my caffeine.”

  Perhaps it was this metaphor that made Rukmini think of liquid as she listened to Malika’s music. The sounds rippled and splashed, with liquid clarifying into stream, then expanding into ocean. She crossed her left leg over her right, anchoring her body and suppressing its urge to undulate. Malika stared at the round wall clock behind Rukmini for the duration of the track.

  When the music stopped, Rukmini clutched the iPod, not wanting to let it go. “Wow. You made this?”

  “I know. It could be better but I ran out of time.” She retrieved her iPod and hid it away in her backpack.

  “It’s incredible. I felt like I was a ship on some kind of noble voyage.”

  Malika chuckled. “Like the Titanic?”

  “Hmm. Imagine combining your music and theory?” Rukmini said.

  At the beginning of their next class, Malika put her binder down next to Rukmini’s and said, “Hi, I’m Malika.”

  “I know?”

  “And you’re Rukmini.”

  “That would be me!” She winked, not knowing how else to respond to Malika’s forwardness.

  “I think we should do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Work together. For the group presentation. Mix theory and music, like you suggested.” Malika tore out a lined piece of paper from her binder, scribbled her contact information and passed it to Rukmini.

  Each group was supposed to choose one article from the course syllabus and present an analysis to the class. They decided to meet every Wednesday night at Malika’s place north of Dupont to dissect their selection, Gayatri Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?”

  “Wow! Your bedroom is like a studio,” Rukmini exclaimed, tiptoeing around the black cables snaking across the carpet and the bumpy black foam lining the walls.

  “I’d say that my studio is like a bedroom.” Malika’s correction made Rukmini realize that something was missing from the room.

  “Where do you sleep?”

  “That thing pulls out.” Malika motioned at the black-and-white plaid couch under large Pretty Porky and P
issed Off and Desh Pardesh posters.

  “That can’t be comfortable.” Rukmini drew her shoulders back, sympathy-cracking her spine.

  Ignoring her comment, Malika placed a mic stand in front of Rukmini and adjusted it to her height. “Put these on,” she said, handing Rukmini a pair of shredded headphones.

  “Where did you get all of this equipment?” Rukmini spoke into the mic and then backed away. The mic smelled like raw onions. When Malika sat in front of her computer and turned her back, Rukmini exhaled over her shoulder, trying to smell her own breath to double-check that the scent was emanating from the mic and not her mouth.

  “Craigslist mostly. The occasional garage sale.”

  “Really?”

  “You’d be surprised what rich people get rid of.”

  As Malika clicked and typed in software Rukmini didn’t recognize, she scanned the room. “Is that your sister?” Rukmini pointed at the small wood-framed photo of a young woman with chunky glasses on the couch side table.

  Malika briefly glanced at the photograph and then returned her focus to the computer, responding, “Cousin. But she’s basically my sister. I don’t have any siblings.”

  “Me neither,” Rukmini sighed. She had often wondered how much her extroversion, her desire to connect, came from being an only child. “I’d love to meet your cousin.”

  Malika didn’t look away from the screen. “You can’t.”

  “Oh.” Had she pried too much?

  Malika swivelled her chair around. “No, I mean she’s in the States. I see her once a year, if I’m lucky.” Then she raised both of her thick eyebrows and asked, “Are you ready? Do you need a glass of water or anything?”

  “I think I’m okay? What exactly am I supposed to do?” Rukmini bent down, reached inside her backpack and pulled out her highlighted photocopy of Spivak’s article.

  “Do what you were doing in class, but into the mic,” Malika coached and then pressed Play.

  Scanning the article quivering in her hand, she asked, “Which lines should I read?” while Malika’s moody production filled her ears, distracting her.