“And how do I take it off of my hand?” she asks. “Is there like … a special chemical or something that I should use?”
I bite down a smile.
“Just brush it off over a sink. It might stain a bit—the sink, I mean—but it should wash off. Try not to wash it off with water. Your hand. Not the sink. You should wash the sink with water.”
“Okay.” Janet looks like she doesn’t completely understand me. “Can I take a photo for Instagram?”
“Sure! But could you tag me in it?”
“Of course.” She grins, fishing around in her pocket for her phone. “Your turn, Cat.”
Catherine and Janet exchange seats. Catherine is still unsure, I can tell by the way she’s glancing back at Janet. “How long does it take to go away?” she asks.
“Well, assuming you let the color set properly, a few weeks. But if you don’t like it and decide to wash it off, the color won’t even have a chance to set.”
That seems to convince her, because she nods her head.
“Do you want to look at my designs again?” I ask.
She quickly shakes her head and says, “I want the same as Jan’s, is that okay?”
“Sure. Same place?”
She nods and I lay her hand on the table too, palm down. She giggles when I touch her hand with the henna tube.
I bite down another grin as I settle into the work. I get lost in it.
Fifteen minutes later, Catherine is admiring her hand the same as Janet, and I’m trying not to beam with pride.
“That’ll be fifteen euros each.” They both pay up happily, mumbling their thank yous and admiration.
I’ve known Catherine and Janet for years, and have never felt anything but nonchalance or even occasional dislike from them. This is the first time anything resembling respect has been aimed at me from my fellow classmates. If I’m honest, it feels good. For once, my classmates are actually admiring my culture instead of scoffing at it.
I mean, what I love about Bengali culture is much more than henna or the food, but those are things we can share here meaningfully.
I see Catherine and Janet off to the entrance of the restaurant, waving goodbye with the brightest smile I can muster while looking around for signs of any more customers.
Well, I had two. That must mean that more are on their way.
But when I slip back into the booth, Priti is staring at her phone with a look of such blazing anger that I know something is wrong immediately.
“Priti?”
She whips her head back to look at me, her face softening. “Apujan …” She shakes her head. “I think I know why you’ve had no customers.”
“Racism and homophobia?” I say jokingly, but Priti only manages a weak smile.
“I mean …” She shrugs as she holds her phone up for me to see. It’s a picture on Instagram of a garden filled with people. There’s something familiar about it: the place and the people. There are so many of them that their faces blur together at first, but I pick them out: almost all of them are girls from our year. They’re wearing white t-shirts, and they’re covered in paint. Reds and blues and pinks. And there, front and center, is Chyna. Her blonde hair is floating around in wisps. The red of the paint stains her cheeks starkly against her pale skin.
The caption reads, holi party with henna tattoos!!!
I can only shake my head. This is a new low, even for Chyna.
“Holi isn’t even for months and months,” I say.
Priti sighs. “You think Chyna knows that? You think she knows anything about Holi other than the colors and an opportunity to get more people to pay for her henna?” There’s a sinking feeling in my chest as I slip back into my seat, leaning back and letting out a deep sigh. Priti nestles up to me and says, “Don’t worry, we’ll get them.”
But I’m just not sure anymore.
27
PRITI TAKES THE BUS HOME, BOOK BAG IN TOW. SHE insisted she wouldn’t leave me here to mope around by myself, but I promised her that if nobody else showed up in the next hour, I would get Abbu to drive me back home.
But with Priti gone and the booth empty except for me and my henna tubes, everything feels more overwhelming. Chyna is in her house, celebrating something that isn’t hers—that she doesn’t even understand in the slightest—and she’s using it all for profit while I’m here hoping that a third customer shows up before the hour is up.
“Hey!”
When I look up, Flávia is peeking through the curtain.
“Can I come in? Are you … busy?”
I blink my eyes a little too fast to make sure that she’s really here. I didn’t notice her in the picture Chyna had uploaded to her Instagram, but I can’t imagine her not there. But here she is.
“Nishat? I can … come back later?” She looks over her shoulder, like if I say the word, she’ll turn around and leave.
“I’m not busy,” I say, patting the empty space beside me. She slides into the booth.
“What are you doing here?”
“Well, I saw your posts on Instagram … I thought I would just come down, maybe get some henna on my hands.” She lifts up her palm as if to show me that she came prepared. Both her palms are surprisingly free from henna, though there are bits of faded red blobs and smudges, probably from applying it to other people. None of the stains look fresh.
I take hold of her palm, and run a finger over it.
“How come you don’t have any henna on your hands?” I hold out my own palm, covered in dark brown henna. I also have henna designs all over my feet and ankles, and all the way up to my elbows. I’ve become my own canvas in this business venture.
“I’m not great at putting henna on myself, so I haven’t really tried much.”
“Right …”
I grab hold of my design book and hand it to her. “These are my designs, but … I don’t know if it’s a good idea to give money to your competition.”
She shrugs. “I’ve had worse ideas.”
She reaches over and begins to flip through my book. I peer at her closely, unsure how to ask about Chyna and her party.
“You’re really good, Nishat.” She pauses as she flips through the book, running her hands over the pages and tracing the designs with the tips of her fingers.
“I thought I didn’t get art—that I’m not an artist.” My words come out a little more resentful than I mean them to. But Flávia looks up with a smile.
“Have you ever had a moment when you feel like your tongue is saying words that you have no control over, and afterwards you wish you could take it all back?”
I shrug. “Maybe. Once or twice.” I’ve definitely said and done some things I’m not proud of—especially recently.
“I’m sorry about what I said,” Flávia sighs. “It was … I don’t know. I guess I wasn’t really thinking when I said those things …” For a moment I’m sure she’s going to say more. Instead, she points to one of my drawings and exclaims, “I want this one!”
I edge closer, peering over her shoulder.
It’s one of my most intricate designs. I’ve only attempted it once on myself, and it’s since faded away. It has the base design of a peacock—one of the most common ones in Bangladesh.
“I don’t have any designs like this, you know,” Flávia says as I reach for my henna tube. “All of mine are a bit plain Jane. I don’t know why people come to me and not you.”
I pause, unsure how to respond to that. If I should respond to that. I take hold of the henna tube and begin to weave the design together on her hands. A few minutes of silence pass between us, with Flávia watching my work closely and me trying, and failing, to only think of the design at hand.
“Flávia …” I pause in the middle of my work, lifting my head to meet Flávia’s eyes. “Why aren’t you at Chyna’s house?”
Flávia frowns. “Why would I be at Chyna’s house?”
“I’m sure you know about her party.”
Flávia’s face falls. “How
do you—”
“She put it on her Instagram.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
There’s a silence that hangs heavy in the air between us for a moment. Then, Flávia heaves a sigh, shaking her head. “I’m sorry,” she says, in a voice that sounds so sincere that it pulls my heartstrings a little too tight. “Chyna is … she’s so adamant about winning this thing. She’s been getting carried away.”
Except this has always been Chyna. She’s been “getting carried away” with things her whole life.
“How can she even do henna without you?”
Flávia glances at me hesitantly. “She … has stencils.”
“Stencils?” My voice comes out more high-pitched than I intend it to. Nothing should shock me at this point, not even that people in our school would go to a “Holi party” thrown by a white girl who applies henna with stencils. Not after everything.
Still, it does.
“I told her that I wasn’t going to her party and … that was her solution.” Flávia shrugs. “I know it’s … bad. The whole thing is …” She shakes her head again, like she can’t put into words how bad it really is.
“And you didn’t tell her that she shouldn’t? That the whole thing was offensive?” I know Chyna’s not really the type of person who listens to reason, or who does something because other people tell her to. But Flávia obviously means a lot to her. She backed off after she caught me with the henna tubes because of Flávia. And the way the two of them were with each other in Flávia’s house—casual and free. Chyna listens to her—more than she listens to anyone else, anyway.
Flávia scrunches up her face in concentration for a moment, like she’s thinking really hard about something. “She told me that if she couldn’t throw that party, then I couldn’t do henna. That they were the same thing.” Flávia takes a deep breath. It’s heavy, like the weight of the world is on her shoulders and she doesn’t know how to shake it off. “And she’s kind of right, isn’t she? I was the person who made her brave enough to think this is okay. I get it now. Why you were angry at me to begin with. I just … I wasn’t thinking straight, you know? I went to that wedding and I just … thought because I liked it, I could run with it. I didn’t really think about anything else. And … if I’m being honest, I kind of just wanted to have something to talk to you about when school started.”
“That’s … not true.” I frown. “Is it?”
“Yes, it’s true. I’ve never really done this before, Nishat.” She’s looking at me with wide eyes.
“This?”
She shakes her head and with a chuckle, says, “You’re kind of intimidating. I mean, you’re so self-assured and confident …”
“You think I’m self-assured?” My voice rises a notch. “You think I’m confident?”
“Nishat, come on. You’re the most self-assured person I know. You’re so … you have all of these things you believe in and you don’t bend from them just because it might not be cool or people might not like it about you. You always stand your ground and … you’re so into your culture.”
“That’s not self-assuredness.” I feel a warm flutter in my chest.
Flávia smiles like she doesn’t quite agree with me.
“I wish I could be like that. Sometimes, I feel like …”
“Feel like …?”
“Like … I don’t know. Like I don’t really feel Brazilian sometimes, you know? Especially around Chyna and her side of my family. It feels like they want me to be something else altogether, and it’s just easier to conform. I want them to like me. To accept me. But …”
I’m suddenly aware that there’s a sadness to Flávia. I didn’t notice it before, but maybe it’s always been there, underneath everything.
“Is that what all of this has been about? Getting Chyna and her family to accept you?”
Flávia heaves a sigh and brushes back her hair, smudging it with the half-finished henna design on her palm.
“Oh no!” she cries, trying to take the henna out of her brown curls but somehow making it worse.
I know if this was Priti messing up my hard work, I would be beyond annoyed. But it’s not. It’s Flávia and she looks so adorably alarmed that it makes me smile.
I reach over and grab one of the tissues I set aside for exactly an occasion like this and use it to tug at her hair. The henna has settled into her thin curls, sticking them to one another and refusing to come away.
“You know henna is really good for your hair?” I mumble.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, it makes your hair healthier. Plus, it’s a natural hair dye … I mean, not really for you and me because our hair is super dark already, but …” I’m suddenly aware of the fact that I’m holding Flávia’s hair and she’s inches away from me and looking at me a little too closely. I realize that pulling henna out of someone’s hair is not exactly the most romantic thing in the world, but it feels oddly intimate, especially since I can hear the sound of her breathing.
Flávia grazes her fingers against my cheek, brushing back a strand of my own hair and sending a jolt of electricity through me.
This time, when we lean toward each other, there are no interruptions.
When our lips finally touch, it feels like there are a million butterflies in my stomach. Like my heart is going double its usual pace. Like there’s nothing and nobody I want more than this.
When we pull away from each other, Flávia looks at me as if she’s surprised. Like she didn’t mean to kiss me at all.
My stomach plummets. What if she thinks this is another mistake?
Before I can wonder about it further, she leans forward until our foreheads are touching, brushing her nose against mine. I can feel her hot breath on my skin.
“You smell like henna,” she says. Which is totally appropriate, I guess.
I scrunch up my nose and pull away from her. We’re surrounded by the earthy smell of henna, and I’m actually not sure if the smell is coming from her or me or the tubes on the table—or all of it.
“Is that bad?”
She smiles, threads her fingers through mine, and pulls me closer.
“I love the smell of henna.” She kisses me again, but it’s barely more than a chaste peck. I want it to last longer. To get lost in it. In her.
But she pulls away and sighs. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Nishat.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean … this … you … I’m …” She shakes her head.
“Confused?” I remember when I felt like that too. I was confused because I couldn’t see the appeal of all the men that everybody else considered attractive. I could see it in an abstract, distant way I guess. But they never made my heart race the way that girls did. That girls do.
I guess I was less confused about what I felt than I was about what other people expected me to feel.
But how can Flávia be confused after she just kissed me like that a moment ago?
“Scared,” she admits finally. In a small voice. “Of telling people. Chyna.”
“I’m sorry,” I mumble. “I know what it’s like. Telling people. My parents … didn’t take it too well.”
“I told my mom.”
“You did?”
She nods. “A while ago. Last year … when … I mean. There was this girl …”
Something flares inside me that feels oddly like anger. Jealousy? I push it down as deep as I can, trying to appear as nonchalant as possible as I say, “Oh?”
“I mean, it was … different. From this, from you. Nothing happened. But I was confused and … I trust my mom, you know? We’re close. So I told her that … I don’t know. I said that I thought I might be bisexual.”
“And …?”
She smiles. “She was … I mean, I don’t think she was expecting it. And it took her a while to wrap her head around it. But I think she’s okay with it. She’s never made a big fuss or anything.”
“Oh, that’s … that’s good.
I’m glad.” I am glad, but that feeling, something like jealousy, rears its head inside of me again, crawling through my skin and clawing at my heart. This time it’s not about some girl but about the way that Flávia seems so nonchalant about her mom not making a big fuss. I’m jealous that it’s come so easy to her, this revelation. When it has cost me my family.
Flávia tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, and her fingers brushing against me sends heat scalding down my skin. We’re still so close to each other that we could touch at a moment’s notice. I have to get my thoughts back on track. Just the sight of her, the thought of her, sends me into a jumble.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“If you knew you were bisexual … why were you so weird after the Junior Cert party?”
She looks down at her stained orange palms like they will have the answer to my question. “Do you know any Brazilians, Nishat?”
“I know you.”
“Other than me?” She smiles.
There are a lot of Brazilians in Ireland, but in our school, Flávia is the only Brazilian girl I know of. So I shake my head slowly.
“Well … you know, it’s not exactly easy to be Brazilian here. When people think of Brazil, they think … I don’t know, futebol, Carnival, partying—whatever. And all the boys think because I’m a Brazilian girl, I’ll be up for anything. You don’t know the way they look at me, the things they say. And Chyna doesn’t get it. She kind of encourages it. After that party, I just kept thinking how much worse it would be if it was true that I was bisexual. Brazilian and bisexual? I would never hear the end of it.”
“I get it,” I say, even though I don’t think I really do. But I want to. I’m trying to. “Is Chyna really that important to you?”
“It’s not just Chyna …” she says hesitantly, like she’s really picking and choosing her words. “It’s just that … my mom brought me back here because she thought it would be good for me to get to know my dad and his side of the family. Even if they’re a little conservative. A little different from us. And … yes, Chyna and I have had this bond our entire lives. I don’t know how to explain it. I can’t exactly throw that away.”
The Henna Wars Page 20