by Jenny Feldon
And then there was an arm lifting me away from them, pulling me out of the heat and dust, into the cool, black fortress of the Scorpio. Venkat. He’d even saved the groceries. We didn’t speak on the way home. The air was thick with silence as I tried to slow my racing heart, to forget the sound of the old woman’s cackle as she pounded the ground with her stick to rally the crowd.
It was hours before Jay came home. When he did, I was huddled in the dark, shivering, hugging my knees to my chest. Glaring at him with accusing eyes. His fault, all of this. The heat and the beggars and the loneliness that crushed me from morning until night. I didn’t belong here. I never would.
“Where WERE you?” I shouted. Anger radiated from my skin like the hum of an electric fence. Venkat, replacing the keys to the Scorpio on the hall table, turned in shock.
“Working, that’s where,” Jay sneered back. “Something you have the luxury not to have to do.” Venkat slunk out the door, giving me one last shrug of pity as he closed the latch behind him.
From someplace outside myself, I could hear Jay’s voice shouting, the venom in my own voice as I shoved my pain into a ball and hurled it at him, desperate to be rid of it, desperate for any shred of relief from the misery that threatened to bury me alive. But underneath the shouts, something else, a taunting, painful memory, whispered at the edges of my consciousness.
I promise to love you always and follow you everywhere, to the ends of the earth and back again. I promise to respect you and cherish you and grow with you for the rest of our lives.
The wedding vows echoed in my mind on cruel, mocking repeat. When I’d spoken them that day, not even two years ago, I’d meant them with every cell in my body, intending to believe them and live them every day of my life. Now they felt like nothing more than an iron chain, binding me to a life I wanted desperately to escape.
Chapter 17
The days crept on. I locked myself in the bedroom with Tucker, eating Lays “Style Cream and Onion” potato chips by the bag and sleeping so much that my whole body hurt from being horizontal for so long. If I managed to leave the house at all, to Q-Mart or the Taj for a manicure, I’d snarl at anyone who so much as glanced in my direction.
Raju was terrified of me. Every time he came to the door, he put his hands out in front of himself, a defensive posture in case I hit him or something. (I hadn’t, of course. Not yet.) Sometimes, after communicating particularly bad news (“electrician not coming today, Madam” or “leak not fixing today, Madam” or “gas main exploding broken, Madam”), he would become so distraught about my fits of fury that he would sneak off and call Jay at the office.
“Madam upset, sir. Madam upset.”
I’d had enough. I was sick of spicy food and broken English and people staring at me all the time. I was sick of being trapped all day with dozens of strangers tramping through the house, leaving behind muddy footprints and puddles of water, fixing nothing at all. I missed my parents. I missed my friends. I missed my life. Finally, Jay couldn’t take it anymore.
“You’re going home,” he said, watching me sob as I sprayed Raid onto thousands of ants swarming the kitchen cabinets.
“I’m not leaving you here.”
“Yes, you are. You’re going home. You can’t stay here anymore. I’m booking your flight.”
“I’ll be fine,” I sniffled, swatting convulsively at the imaginary ants I felt crawling up my arms.
“You’re not fine. Look at yourself.”
I didn’t need to look to know what he saw. I thought of all those photo albums of our past years together: engagement, honeymoon, going away party. I was smiling, glowing, happy…and it showed in every picture. That kind of happiness has its own way of projecting beauty through the camera lens, its own language for capturing joy. Now, even without a photograph, I knew that depression had blighted my face, settled into my features. The girl in the broken mirror, as broken on the inside as she was in her reflection.
I didn’t want to give up. I didn’t want to lose. I’d wanted to return to my family triumphant. I’d wanted to be a whole different person, with hundreds of fascinating stories to tell and a new worldly attitude, enlightened and wise. Most of all, I wanted to stick it out for Jay’s sake, supporting him while he did something big and important. But in so many ways, I’d already given up. I’d already lost. One night, Jay came home with a paper ticket in his hand and he forced mine. In that moment, we both acknowledged the truth. That my misery threatened to destroy both of us if I didn’t leave India for a while.
Maybe forever.
***
“Why don’t you just pack everything?” Jay asked, watching me cram a few last items into my carry-on. “We both know you’re not coming back.”
There was no accusation in his words, no intended barb. For once, we weren’t using sarcasm as a weapon. It was just the resigned statement of a fact I wasn’t willing to admit. Not yet.
On the way to the airport, we were quiet. We weren’t fighting, at least not out loud. Our regrets hung like cobwebs in the stale air between us. Venkat hummed to break the tension until Jay barked at him to stop.
“What do you want from America, Venkat?” I said, trying to soothe his injured feelings. “Chocolate? Hair gel? Car wax?” Venkat’s face lit up, but Jay interrupted before he could make a single request.
“Forget about it, Venkat. She’s not coming back.”
“Not coming back, Madam?” Venkat looked over his shoulder and eyed my one suitcase, Tucker shivering in his pet carrier. “Madam is coming back, yes?”
I couldn’t answer.
Jay waited in the security line with me, stoic and silent. The guards let him come far enough to help me put my bags on the conveyor belt for security, then gestured for him to step aside. He hugged me once, hard. My throat closed on itself and I clung to him, wanting him to say something that would make all of this OK. He stared over my shoulder into the distance and stayed silent.
Half of me wanted to grab my luggage off the belt and run back to the car and drive back to Jasmine Heights, where I was supposed to belong. To climb into bed with my husband and let the flight take off without me, listening to the roar of the jet engine fly over our heads from the safety of Jay’s arms. How could I just run away and leave him here? I’d promised him so much more than this.
But the other half of me saw the lights on the runway and thought freedom. Just a couple of hours and I’d be in the air, putting miles and miles between me and a country that was swallowing me whole. There would be sidewalks and electricity, family and friends to hug me and make me feel loved. I could walk out on the street and no one would stare. I could eat cheeseburgers and sushi and go to Starbucks five times a day. I could smile again, laugh again. Breathe again.
I didn’t want all that to feel more important than my marriage. Had I really become so shallow and foolish that a cup of coffee was more compelling than my husband’s arms? I looked up into Jay’s familiar brown eyes, eyes that used to fill me with absolute wonder that someone like him could love someone like me. I wanted proof that he still loved me, that he wanted me to stay. If only there was tenderness behind his stoic gaze. But when he met my eyes, the only emotion I saw was a cold detachment. In his mind, he’d already said good-bye.
Panic made my pulse race and my breath short. The airport was spinning fast around me—lights too bright and sounds too loud, people turning in circles everywhere.
“Are you OK?” Jay asked, grabbing my arm to steady me. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t want to leave you,” I whispered. I couldn’t look at him. His emotions were shut down, locked up tight, while mine were overflowing, spilling everywhere, irrational and beyond my control. It was like being trapped on an ancient playground teeter-totter, one of us flying into space while the other came crashing down.
“Please come with me. Come home. I don’t want to be there w
ithout you.”
“This is home, Jen,” Jay said, more gentle than he’d been in weeks. “I know it’s not the home you wanted. But this is where I need to be right now.”
“I want to stay with you. I can make it, I’ll try harder. I promise.” I couldn’t keep the tears back. Jay hated when I cried. I could feel him recoiling, incapable of facing the torrent of emotion.
“I’m not mad about it. We’re doing what’s best. Just not together. Not for right now.” Jay hugged me again, harder still, and handed me a folder with my travel papers. “Everything is in here. Text me when you board so I know you’re all right. It’s going to be OK,” he said, reaching up with one finger to wipe at a tear caught in my eyelashes. “I promise it’s going to be OK.”
Then he turned around and walked back to the Scorpio. He didn’t look back. Venkat held the door open for him; Jay climbed into the backseat and closed the door. Venkat honked the horn to clear a path. The engine roared and they were gone.
***
Twenty-four hours later, I landed in Boston at noon on a perfect fall afternoon. In the cab on the way to my parents’ house, I looked around and felt like I’d stumbled onto a strange planet I’d only visited in my dreams. It had been six months since I’d been on American soil. Everything was the same, but I was seeing it all with completely different eyes.
It was so clean. So quiet. No incessant honking horns, no mountains of garbage in the road, no men urinating in crowded streets. No one was staring at me. Everyone somehow looked familiar. Confused, I tried to figure out how I knew them all, where I’d seen them before, when I realized they were all strangers. They were just strangers that looked like me.
I sneezed. The cab driver blessed me. No one other than Jay had said “Bless you” in six months. And half the time, he forgot too. After so much time spent trying to understand and blend in to another culture, I felt dizzyingly relieved to experience the simplest of traditions in mine. I wanted to throw my arms around the driver in gratitude.
“Can we make a stop?” I asked instead.
“Sure thing.” I waited for him to call me Ma’am. He didn’t. I explained what I wanted; he shrugged and nodded. He pulled off the Pike at the next exit and made a few turns, navigating the familiar roads of the neighborhood I grew up in. And then there it was.
The green and white awning that embodied the American dream. The place I’d been pining for since the day we left New York.
Starbucks.
I shivered with joy as I ordered a grande house blend with skim milk and two Sweet’N Lows. Not a gritty, four-ounce latte made with black tar and buffalo milk. Not the medicinal-tasting, sugar-free saccharin tablets that floated on top of the cup. Just coffee. Exactly the way I liked it. Thirty seconds later, I held a cup in my hand that wasn’t melting or falling apart at the seams, with a lid that actually fit on the top.
“Have a great day,” the barista said. She smiled at me like handing me that cup of coffee was totally ordinary, not a miraculous epilogue to months of lonely, isolated, coffee-deprived suffering.
“You too.”
And I walked out into the sunshine cradling my coffee like a cup full of gold between my palms. People were all around me, in their cars, waiting in the crosswalk for the light to change. I’d seen these things a million times before…and now, truly, I was seeing them for the very first time.
God bless America. I was finally home.
Chapter 18
My first week home was a blur of jet lag and skinny lattes and long hours on the phone with family and friends. The simplest things had turned into miracles: driving a car, paying a parking meter, hot water coming out of the kitchen sink. I spent hours at my parents’ giant kitchen table, staring out the window at the river in their backyard. Like I’d just gotten off of a ship after months at sea, I was trying to feel the ground beneath my feet again.
In India, having nothing to do was nothing but a punishment. Back in my childhood hometown, it felt more like a luxury vacation. I walked Tucker through crisp fall leaves and learned to bake pumpkin muffins from scratch. I went to yoga class every day and out for drinks every night. The everything-is-brand-new feeling didn’t fade; instead, it intensified as I gorged myself on all things American: sushi and cheeseburgers, Top 40 radio, bad reality TV. I lived inside a mini-tornado of gratitude, spinning through my once-familiar world with new wonder, new perspective, new thanks.
Everyone was captivated by my stories of life in the third world. Holding court at the dinner table, I spun the tales exactly as I’d experienced them, playing up the high points, reminding my fascinated audience that everything they were hearing was as true as it was outrageous. Suddenly Venkat and Jena and Raju weren’t just faces that filled the otherwise empty landscape of my everyday life. They were characters in my very own reality show, comic foils for my wacky, misguided expat adventures. The more stories I told, the more I heard unfamiliar emotions creep into my narrative voice: Amusement. Pride. And even…joy?
No, that couldn’t be. I was telling stories about cockroaches the size of rodents and rodents the size of chickens. Of repairmen who said “No leak, Ma’am” and death-defying rickshaw rides and homeless Indian children dancing in the rain. My hair looked like death, Tucker was traumatized, and I’d had food poisoning approximately forty-seven times. But there were other stories too: of Jena and his green umbrella drinks; of Venkat and his sweet village romance with Swapna; of Shilparamam and illegal fireworks and the banyan tree in KBR park.
Joy had been missing from my life for so very long. Every moment had been filled with disappointment and misery and failure. I was too busy hating India to love it, too busy loathing myself to remember the person I’d set out to be. So where was this benevolent storyteller pulling her material from? Was it all glorified fiction to make myself look better in the eyes of the people I’d come home to? Or could there really be joy beneath the sorrow, laughter under my tears? In my own words, India didn’t sound so bad.
It didn’t sound so bad at all.
As the days went on, I started feeling restless. I was still grateful for every moment of American life, for electricity and supermarkets and well-spoken English. But as much as I loved my parents’ quiet, idyllic house on a Charles River peninsula, it wasn’t home. My keychain still held the thick brass key to apartment 22M in our Columbus Circle rental building, but that wasn’t home either. Not anymore. I was unbound and drifting; headed, aimless, for nowhere in particular.
For my whole adult life, I’d been putting one foot in front of the other on the path that lay before me. Sometimes that path was complicated or broken or led me the wrong way. But karma always felt like it was there in front of me, giving intention and meaning to my movements. Never before had I felt so completely removed from my own life. The road I was supposed to take had all but disappeared. Without it, I was lost.
***
Jay flew in for Thanksgiving on a Tuesday. We’d spoken only a handful of times. He sounded the same. There wasn’t much to say. The only difference now was that the distance between us was literal too. Thousands and thousands of miles between where we wanted to be and where we’d ended up. I missed him. I was afraid to ask if he missed me too.
I waited at the airport terminal for him to go through customs with a fresh Bruegger’s bagel in my hand: sesame, scooped out, with light cream cheese. He might have mixed feelings about seeing me again, but I figured there was no way the bagel would fail to make him smile. Tucker waited on his leash beside me. He seemed as eager as I was to be a family again.
Finally, Jay came around the corner, dark circles under his eyes and a face full of stubble, his passport in one hand and his sleeping hat in the other. The sight of that red fleece hat made me feel like crying. We’d drifted so far apart, but he was still him. As conflicted and as lost as I felt, I was still me. And as long as there was that, there was still hope. Or so I wanted to
believe.
Jay was quiet on the car ride home. He gazed out the window, not really seeing, like he was thinking about something a million miles away. I kept quiet too, waiting for him to say something. I asked a few polite questions about his trip, about Venkat and what was happening at the office. He answered them perfunctorily, eyes fixed out the window at the passing highway. The bagel sat untouched in his lap.
Later, after he’d showered and napped, I suggested we take a walk along the river. We bundled up in parkas and hats, protecting ourselves from the late fall chill. Jay, who’d gotten off the plane wearing shorts and flip-flops, was shivering even through his coat. He stuck his gloved hand in one of my pockets for warmth. Tucker romped through the leaves ahead of us, batting them up in the air with his paws and chasing joyfully after them, kicking up swirls of red and orange in his wake. The setting sun glinted gold off the river. I blew out long streams of breath that hung in the air.
“I can’t take this cold,” Jay said, cupping his nose with his palms. “It’s freezing here.”
“It’s always been this cold in the winter,” I said, tossing a rock into the half-frozen water. It skidded on the ice, startling a flock of sleeping geese. Their honks filled the silent sky as they scattered. “You’re just not used to it anymore.”
“I’d rather live in India and be warm than deal with winters like this anymore.”
“I’d rather live anywhere than India,” I retorted. “I’d live in an igloo on the South Pole.”
“There probably wouldn’t be Internet there either,” Jay said, pulling his hand back and tucking it into his own pocket. Just like that, the moment was broken. We walked back to my parents’ house in silence. When they asked us how the walk was, we smiled big and avoided each other’s eyes.