Shine, Coconut Moon

by Neesha Meminger

  I stare in disbelief at the photos, then look at my mother, and back again. No matter how hard I try, I can’t see that bleak teenager in the woman sitting next to me.

  She points to the last photo in the album. “This was the day before I shaved my head,” she says quietly. She turns the page, and a small photo falls to the floor. I pick it up and turn it over. There, smiling blissfully back at me, is Mom, standing next to a man I know must be my dad.

  I gasp and hear Mom’s sharp intake of breath next to me. The photo is slightly discolored and a little dog-eared, but it’s whole and complete. Mom and Dad on the day of their marriage.

  The halls of the courthouse are blurred behind them, in stark contrast to the shimmering excitement in their eyes. Mom has on a lustrous, fitted, silver-gray mermaid dress that reaches just above her ankles. She wears a dazzling bindi on her forehead, and there are tiny rhinestones following the arch above her perfectly plucked brows. Her hair is carefully swept up on top of her head and fastened with fresh flowers. Her lips are a deep ruby color, and tiny pearl earrings dangle from her ears. She stands in his arms, one hand on his chest, the other around his waist, and smiles radiantly at the camera.

  He stands next to her, both arms around her waist. He looks dapper and handsome; tall and velvety dark in his suit and tie. His hair is slicked back into a tight, shiny, black ponytail, and he has a ruby flower on his lapel, the same color as the flowers in Mom’s hair. He, too, beams joyfully at the camera.

  I feel my throat beginning to close up as Mom takes the photo from my hand. She looks up at Naniji. “Why would you keep this?”

  Naniji keeps her gaze level, sharp pain clearly evident in her eyes. “It was the last photo we ever received from you.”

  “But…but I thought you hated him,” Mom says, just above a whisper.

  “Han,” Naniji says softly, “but he is not the only one in the photo.”

  Mom stares at the picture in her hand. “This was when it was good,” she says, her words packed with static.

  “We tried very hard to warn you, Sharanjit…. He didn’t have a stitch of ambition, and he was absolutely un—” Nanaji gives her a look, and Naniji stops herself before turning away.

  Mom holds the photo for a moment longer between her thumb and forefinger, gently, like a cracked raw egg. Then she places it back in the album where it was. A brief silence follows. Uncle Sandeep delicately takes the album away from Mom and opens the next one.

  “Ah! Look at cousin Rimi!” he says, opening to a page from earlier years.

  Mom’s still quiet, but she manages a small smile. “That was one smart girl. She knew how to get us in and out of trouble so fast, it would make my head spin.”

  Naniji turns back to look at the photo. “Yes,” she says, “very smart girl—she went to Harvard, you know, married a very wealthy fellow.”

  “Good for her,” Mom says tersely.

  I’m still fighting the surge of tears that threaten to pour forth. That was the first photo I’ve ever seen of the man who fathered me. Seeing it here, after seeing all the other photos of Mom, makes it hard to get enough air into my lungs. I take a deep breath to quell the feelings fighting forward. Mom covers my hand gently with hers before taking a deep breath herself.

  “Never would have thought it of little Rimi,” Naniji continues with a chuckle. “But if you’re going to be dark, I suppose you have to be smart.”

  Mom’s face goes taut and her eyes flare. “What do you mean, ‘if you’re going to be dark’?”

  Naniji sighs and straightens up to her full height. “I mean that being dark is already an imperfection in our culture. You know that, Sharanjit. Right or wrong, that is the way it is.”

  Mom snaps the album shut.

  “Sharan,” Uncle Sandeep begins, but Mom is already standing up.

  I drop my head into my hands, my whole body trembling uncontrollably.

  “This is exactly why I didn’t want anything to do with you,” Mom says quietly. “It’s bad enough I had to go through my whole life listening to this garbage. But now I’ve walked my daughter straight into it too.”

  Naniji looks at Mom in dismay. “What…?” she says, holding her hands out.

  Nanaji gets up too. “There’s nothing wrong with being dark, Sharanjit, that’s not what your mother is saying.”

  Mom explodes. “Then what, Papa? What is she saying? Please tell me, because maybe I’ve been wrong for thirty-seven years!”

  Naniji folds her arms across her chest. “I did not make up the rules, Sharanjit. Indians all believe light skin is prettier than dark skin—and as much as you would like to, you cannot place that entire burden on me. It has been so since before I was born, and it is still so.”

  “That does not make it right,” Mom fires.

  “Okay, let’s not bring up the past again. Let’s move on….” Uncle Sandeep puts his body between Mom and Naniji.

  “No,” Mom says, walking brusquely to the closet. “We cannot move on. This kind of nonsense is precisely why we haven’t been able to move on. This was the reason you thought Harpreet wasn’t good enough for me. This was the reason I never measured up to my beautiful, fair-skinned cousins!”

  Naniji puts her hands on her hips. “Sharanjit, Harpreet showed his true colors shortly after your marriage, didn’t he? We warned you, but you were too headstrong, and then you found yourself in a mess.”

  “But that’s not why you didn’t like him! No, Ma. You didn’t like him because he was too dark. And for you, being dark means something else…it means a lack of ambition, a flawed character, an imperfection, right?” Mom shoves her feet into her boots, grabs her coat, and charges out the door. I follow numbly behind.

  “Sharan!” Uncle Sandeep calls, running after us.

  Mom guns the engine, blasting cold air at us as I get into the car, shivering and pulling my coat tightly around myself. In the doorway, Nanaji and Naniji stand close together, faces pinched with something between shock and disappointment.

  Uncle Sandeep jogs down the steps and taps on my window. I roll it down a couple of inches. “Sharan,” he says across me to Mom. “Come on, don’t run away again.”

  “Sandeep, I’m tired of this—not a thing has changed. It’s hopeless.” Her voice snags on “hopeless.”

  “Sharan, please…” He looks at her beseechingly.

  “We’re going, Sandeep,” she says firmly, and throws the car into gear.

  He looks defeated. “I’ll call you soon,” he says, stepping away.

  I nod and whisper, “Bye.”

  As Mom screeches out of the driveway, I glance in the side mirror and see Uncle Sandeep climbing slowly back up the stairs to the front door. Naniji and Nanaji have closed the door and are standing together in the bay window, watching us drive away.

  All that waiting and wondering what it would be like to sit down to a meal with my family. We get out on the freeway and I want to cry and scream, or something…but I can’t, because Mom beats me to it.

  “I knew it was going to be a disaster!” she says, pounding the steering wheel. “I swore to myself I would never let it come to this, and here we are. I feel as if I never left that house!”

  I can see her clenching and unclenching her jaw, while navigating the now darkening streets of New Jersey. It’s just after five, and the sun has gone down, leaving behind a few solitary fingers of light.

  “Sammy, I’m so sorry it had to be like this. Are you all right?”

  I shrug. I honestly don’t know what I am right now. I don’t know if I’m all right—if I want to scream at her to shut up, or if I want to go back and scream at Naniji to shut up. No, actually, I would love it if Mom would shut up. I would love it if they all would just shut the hell up.

  Mom’s eyes are slits. She’s clutching the steering wheel at the ten and two position, and she’s sitting forward in her seat. “It’s always been like this—since I was a child,” she says. “My mother will never expand her views. I kept hoping and
praying. I even asked Sandeep to make it abundantly clear that everyone keep their opinions about my marriage to themselves. Especially Ma.”

  “You brought it up,” I say, leaning against the door and pulling my coat up around my chin.

  “It was that photo. I’ll bet she keeps it around to remind her how right she was. I wouldn’t put it past her to have planted it there, just so she could rub my face in it.”

  “She had no idea I was going to ask to see pictures! And it’s a good thing I did—I actually got to see what my own father looks like.” I can’t help the hard edge of bitterness that clings to my words.

  She grips the steering wheel. “Sammy, I don’t know how many different ways I can tell you this, but don’t idealize your father. I assure you, he was anything but ideal. If he was, he would have come back around by now…at least to see your face, if not mine.”

  The sting I felt from her slap didn’t hurt as much as this. I can’t look at her, because looking at her might make me want to yell—or worse, cry. Words seem to be embedded into hardened concrete, deep inside my belly.

  “Fine. He wasn’t ideal,” I finally manage. “But who is, Mom? No one is ideal enough for you. Nanaji and Naniji aren’t ideal, you fight all the time with Uncle Sandeep. Mike wasn’t ideal—”

  “And look what that boy did!”

  “Don’t you see?” It escapes as a scream. “That’s just what Naniji said! Didn’t she say she ‘warned’ you about my father? And even if he turned out to be a jerk, you still had to find out for yourself, didn’t you?”

  “That’s different,” she says curtly.

  “How is it different, Mom?” My voice cracks and I look out the window. Then I say quietly, “You know, you’re not so ideal yourself.”

  In the reflection on the window, I see her turn sharply to look at me. But I keep staring out the window, watching the bare, leafless trees whiz by. They look naked and pitiful, like something out of a Robert Frost poem.

  “Mom, you didn’t even give them much of a chance. It was like you were expecting them to disappoint you. As soon as Naniji made a comment that confirmed your opinion, or fears, or whatever—you ran. You ran, Mom, not walked, you ran out the door! How can they ‘expand their views’ if you don’t let them?” Mom has the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip.

  “How come it’s all them? Don’t you have anything that needs changing? Maybe you could expand your views or work with them on making changes.”

  “Sammy,” she says, her voice sounding tight and controlled. “I grew up thinking that I was very unattractive because I was too dark, and that I was unacceptable precisely because of the kinds of references my mother made this afternoon.

  “She would cluck to aunties and friends that I would be ‘perfect, if only I hadn’t been born so dark.’ Most of them would subtly agree, though some would say something like, ‘Oh, but she is bright, nah?’ or ‘Yes, but she is fine-featured.’ I thought that nothing I did was enough, and that no matter how hard I tried, I would never measure up to what my mother wanted in a daughter. It took a real toll on my self-esteem, and it has taken many years to undo the damage.”

  She turns to me, her eyes spitting fire. “I don’t want you to have to go through the same thing. And I’m afraid that if we have regular contact with them, you will. It’s inevitable! Don’t you see what I’m saying?”

  No, I don’t see. I don’t care what you went through. You’re not me. I’m not you. We ride the rest of the way home in a seething silence.

  Chapter 16

  Winter break has always been a lonely time for me. When I was little, Mom would fill it up with visits to friends’ homes and a nice dinner for us. But it always fell short of the lively, glittering events I’d see on TV, and the ones I’d hear about from Molly, or at school from friends and classmates. This year is the worst it’s ever been.

  Inside our house feels like being in the eye of a hurricane. There’s a huge storm raging all around, but where we are is silent, calm, deadly. Since any given moment could erupt in an explosion of sharp words, Mom and I maintain a tense civility between us.

  I want to spend as much time with Molly as possible, but the MacFaddens are off on their yearly winter ski pilgrimage to Colorado. I’m actually relieved that it’s almost over. At least when school starts, my days are full again. I’ve spent most of this break up in my room, catching up on schoolwork.

  On Sunday the phone rings downstairs as I’m trying to solve a math problem. I race down to get it, thinking it might be Molly.

  “Moll?”

  “Samar!” It’s Uncle Sandeep.

  Tears spring to my eyes at the sound of his voice.

  “Are you busy right now?” he asks.

  “No.”

  “Have you had dinner?”

  “Yeah, Mom made snapper.”

  “Where is she?”

  I look around for a note. There’s one on the kitchen table: Sammy, stepping out for a couple of hours. Maybe she went for another session with Tina the therapist. Ever since we came back from Nanaji and Naniji’s, Mom’s been seeing Tina regularly.

  “She stepped out for a bit.”

  “How about I take you out for tea?”

  “Yes!”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  I scribble a note for Mom and rush upstairs to change. I’m so thrilled to see him when he rolls up that I almost pull a Mom and run out of the house in my socks. When I get into the car, it smells like incense and basmati rice, and he has Punjabi folk music playing.

  I throw my arms around him. “Hi, Uncle Sandeep!”

  “Samar, it’s wonderful to see you again too,” he says with a laugh. Then, more seriously, “How is Sharan?”

  “You know Mom.”

  He nods and squints. “Don’t be too hard on her, Samar. That was a very difficult and emotional meeting for all of us. Things like this take time…it was a first step.”

  “Whatever. She’s always right, and she’s so perfect. I don’t know how you put up with her for so many years.”

  “She’s also kind, fiercely loyal, and loving. Maybe even to a fault.”

  “Yeah, her love is like a boa constrictor. That kind of love I could do without.”

  He pulls into Teas Me and we run in, bracing ourselves against the cold. I grab a table, and Uncle Sandeep comes back with a pot of chai tea.

  “So,” he says, dropping into a plush, overstuffed chair across from me.

  “So.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I don’t know,” I say, watching him pour tea into mugs. I think back to the day of our visit and involuntarily tense up. “It was…” I stop to take a deep breath.

  He nods encouragingly.

  “Mom and I had a huge fight in the car on the way back.”

  He wrinkles his eyebrows and leans back to take a sip.

  “It was about my father.”

  He stops sipping and sets his mug down. “I thought that might come up.”

  “Mom never showed me any pictures of him, ever! That was the first picture I’ve ever seen, and now I see where I get my cheekbones, and…” I get choked up and stop.

  “Go on.”

  “Why didn’t she at least show me a picture?” I ask through pools of tears.

  He warms one hand against his mug. “Samar…I know it must be difficult for you to understand.” He shakes his head. “But Sharan was doing what she thought best at the time. Just as she thought keeping you from our parents would protect you, so she thought about Harpreet.”

  “She says I shouldn’t idealize him.” A thought suddenly flashes through my head. “Wait. You knew him, right?”

  He gives a reluctant nod and picks up his mug.

  “What…what was he like?”

  Uncle Sandeep takes a long sip of his tea. Then he sets his mug down and looks thoughtful for several moments before he answers. “Harpreet was a very intelligent fellow.” He looks over my shoulder and out the window, as if the word
s are somewhere in the darkness outside. “He was charming and suave. Your mother fell hard and fast for him…many girls did. He was very likeable. Had a great sense of humor.”

  I fold my hands tightly, lacing the fingers together, and shove them between the warmth of my thighs. I savor the words he drops, like forbidden treats.

  He looks directly into my eyes. “Your mother is right, though, Samar. You should not idealize him. Sharan thought that being with him would get her away from our parents—which it did—but she wasn’t any happier.” He picks up his mug again.

  I want more. I need to know more about this man that my mother has kept away from me. “But he sounds fantastic! Why would she need to protect me from someone like that?”

  He looks up at the ceiling. “Samar, you really should have this discussion with your mother.”

  “I have. She doesn’t tell me anything, Uncle Sandeep.”

  He sits up again and heaves a deep sigh. “She discovered that he had been having a relationship with one of his coworkers. And apparently, he had taken you with him to one of their rendezvous sites. Sharan had some sort of inner sense, or ‘women’s intuition,’ and she followed him one weekend when he said he was taking you out for ice cream. Which he did, only the other woman was with him.”

  I’m leaning forward in my seat, waiting anxiously for him to continue. I have no recollection of any of what Uncle Sandeep has just told me, but it’s hard to imagine someone doing something like that to Mom, never mind the fact that she got into her car and followed my father. It’s like something out of a bad movie.

  “Samar, are you all right?” he asks gently.

  I swallow hard and nod. “So, what happened?”

  He continues, though a bit uncertainly. “She immediately moved the two of you out into an apartment on the other side of town and filed for a divorce. Of course, divorce being the ugly, stinking boil of stigma that it is in our culture, Harpreet’s parents were nothing short of hostile toward her. They tried very hard to convince her to accept what he had done and ‘work it out,’ for your sake, Samar.”