If You See Me, Don't Say Hi

by Neel Patel

  * * *

  Anjali had asked me to meet her at 2 P.M. By two thirty, I still hadn’t left, and she called. I didn’t pick up. She called again. It would have been easy to invent something—an illness, an emergency, a sudden ache in my arms or my legs—but even that was too much. I kept hearing my mother’s words ringing in the periphery, warning me. Anjali had wanted to tell me something that afternoon, but what? I thought about the last two months, images of her smiling face flickering through my mind. I put away my phone. I placed the ringer on mute. A week went by. The phone calls persisted. I was reminded of college, the way girls would call me for days before disappearing from sight. Anjali did the same. She sent a text one bright August morning: I’m not sure what I did wrong, Ankur. Clearly you’re not interested. I’ll leave you alone now. Bye.

  And that was that.

  It was easier than I had thought it would be. I turned off my cell phone and it was like Anjali had never existed. Still, I found her hair on my pillows and floors and in thick damp clumps in the drain. I went for runs every day. I read novels at night. I jogged past Dr. Bernstein’s house and found Seth playing basketball outside.

  “Hey, Seth,” I said.

  He passed me the ball. I shot it and missed.

  “Weak, man. It’s been a long time, but I see your basketball skills haven’t changed.”

  I laughed. Seth had the same thick brown hair he’d had as a child, only this time it sprang up in wet curls.

  “I kept seeing your father. I was hoping I’d run into you. I heard you’re in a band.”

  “Just for fun,” Seth said. “You should come see us play tonight. We’ll have some beers.”

  He reached into his pocket and handed me a flyer. The bar was the same one where I had seen Anjali months ago. We talked about school and our lives and what we had been up to for the last decade. Then Seth had to get ready for rehearsal. “See you there?”

  I told him he would.

  * * *

  At ten o’clock, I took a taxi to the bar. I entered just as Seth was taking the stage. It wasn’t my scene: I was into hip-hop, mostly, Ghostface Killah and the Roots. Seth’s band was a mix of alternative and punk. His skin glowed blue under the lights. His T-shirt clung to his chest. He shook his head from side to side and sweat danced off it like tiny sparks. The room was captivated, swaying left to right while reciting every lyric to every song. I had never seen that side of him before; at home, Seth was a cautionary tale my mother conjured up to keep my sister and me in line. Is that what you want for yourselves, she would say, her eyes smoldering, to end up like Seth? But in that moment, I envied him. His freedom. His will. It didn’t matter where Seth was in life. It didn’t matter who he’d become. On that particular night, and on that particular stage, he was whoever he wanted to be. I remembered the morning Dr. Bernstein told my father he had to switch his call for the weekend to visit Seth at college. It was an emergency. Seth was depressed.

  “Depressed,” my mother had said, laughing. “These whites are always depressed.”

  He didn’t look depressed now. He was on fire, his eyes gleaming with the kind of bright intensity I had somehow lost in myself. Where did it go? The set was shorter than I had imagined. Seth wiped off with a towel; he made his way through the crowd.

  “Seth,” I said. “You were great up there.”

  He grinned. “Thanks, man. The sound was a little off, but what can you do?”

  What can you do? My father had asked the same thing. I ordered Seth a beer and we caught up some more, trading stories from our past. Then Seth had to chat with his bandmates and I decided to call it a night, ordering another taxi home. The driver’s name was Marcus. He was talkative. I lay my head against the seat cushion and listened to him, closing my eyes. It wasn’t until we had parked in front of my house, under the gathering darkness, that Marcus noticed the car.

  “Looks like you got company.”

  * * *

  Through the rear glass of a Volvo, I could see the dark outline of Anjali’s head, her engine running, headlights slicing the night.

  I waved to Marcus and got into her car.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. She didn’t answer me. “Hello?” I snapped my fingers in front of her face.

  She was still gripping the steering wheel when she turned to face me, slowly.

  “It’s not true.”

  There was silence.

  “I’m guessing you heard,” she said. “I was racking my brain for days wondering what happened, why you disappeared. Then Sharmila Aunty walked up to me at the grocery store, and the way she mentioned your name made everything clear.”

  “Why did you lie to me?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You did,” I said. “You’re crazy. You lied about everything. Everyone knows.”

  She looked as if I had just struck her across the face. I got out of the car. She followed me onto the lawn. My feet sank into soft, wet earth.

  “Wait,” she whispered.

  I spun around. She was squinting at me.

  “What do you think happens?” Her voice shook. “When a rich family finds out their only son is gay?”

  I didn’t answer her.

  “Who do you think people believe? The girl?” Her voice trailed off. “Of course Vijay’s parents denied everything. They still do. When they found out that, after six months of marriage, Vijay still hadn’t touched me, they said it was my fault, that maybe I should lose some weight. The divorce was my idea, but Vijay’s parents tried to intervene. When they couldn’t, they made up some crazy story about me and told the whole world. And do you know what I learned?”

  “What?” I said.

  She glared at me.

  “That if you’re rich enough, people will believe anything you say—even the people you’ve known your whole life.”

  Tears fell from her eyes as she marched back to her car. I quickly followed her.

  “Wait,” I said, reaching for her arm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “Right,” she said.

  Two weeks earlier, Anjali had tucked her legs between mine and asked me if I was her boyfriend; now she only stared at me, deciding I was not. I could have made some grand gesture—swept her up in my arms, distracted her with a kiss, professed my love for her in a song and dance, grazed her cheek like she was some heroine in a Bollywood film—but I didn’t. We regarded each other silently, aware of the distance between us. Then Anjali got back into her car and the glare from her headlights, bright as laser beams, burned through my eyes.

  * * *

  The next morning I awoke with a headache. I went for a drive. I stopped by my old high school. I stared at the rows of small houses surrounding it, the cornfields just beyond, blazing under a flamingo sun. Had it been ten years? I could hardly imagine it. I dialed Anjali’s number but she didn’t pick up. I left her a voicemail but she didn’t respond. I paced the parking lot, remembering the mornings when I had seen Anjali getting out of her father’s car, wishing I had said hello.

  That night, my parents called to tell me their plans had changed: they were returning early. Rohan was sleeping through the night. I cleaned the kitchen and emptied the bottles of scotch and replaced them with new ones from the store. I vacuumed the carpets and polished the floors. I removed every trace of Anjali from the house—a toothbrush, a hairpin, stray sequins from a strapless black dress—and tossed them into the trash. I had applied for a research fellowship at Northwestern and, upon being accepted, I moved to Chicago in the fall. I didn’t see Anjali before I left. I tried calling her, but she didn’t answer the phone. Soon, my parents reclaimed the house and there was no room for her, anyway.

  In Chicago, I worked on residency applications while my roommates got drunk at bars. I thought about Anjali and wondered what she was doing, or if she was still thinking about me. Girls slept over and I smelled the scent of her perfume. A memory of something she had once said would pop into my mind. For weeks I tried finding her
on Facebook but couldn’t; her account was disabled. Finally, I sent her a text: Can we talk? She was quick with her reply: I don’t think that’s a very good idea, Ankur. And that was the end. She disappeared from my thoughts, the way a T-shirt’s color, vibrant and new, disappears in the wash. It wasn’t until a year later, when I had matched into an Internal Medicine program in Riverside, California, and the black mark of my failure had been cleanly erased, that my mother called with the news.

  “You won’t believe. You won’t believe what I just heard. Do you remember Bharati Aunty’s daughter—Anjali?”

  My heart stopped.

  “Yeah?”

  “She’s getting married.”

  I dropped my headphones onto the counter; I had just come from a run. Sweat poured down my back and seeped into the waistband of my shorts.

  “She met a man online,” my mother said. “An engineer. He works for Boeing. He is divorced. Do you know what else?”

  I waited for her to continue.

  “No one is invited to the wedding. Not a single person. Out of the whole entire Indian community—not one.”

  I smiled. My mother went on to criticize Anjali’s parents for isolating themselves from the Indian community, for turning their backs on everyone who had turned their backs on them. But I no longer listened. I closed my eyes and imagined the peach shimmer of Anjali’s lengha, fanned out at her waist. I saw the flare of her hips. I remembered that night in my parents’ living room when I was twelve years old. In my recollection, Anjali had spun around the room like a tornado, her blouse flashing, her lips glinting. Spinning and spinning. Until she was gone. ◆

  radha, krishna

  You have no idea what it was like for me, the morning you left. I drove by your house as you were packing your car. I was parked on your street. Of course you didn’t see me. You wore a green T-shirt and your hair, so black it shone blue, was tucked under a hat. After you hugged your parents good-bye, you followed a tree-lined path toward the highway. What a privilege it must have been, to drive through their neighborhood, to see the world through their eyes, to live a life of certainty and assurance when so few things are certain or assured.

  I still remember that last night on your driveway, when you looked at me and saw nothing. Perhaps you saw right through me, into one of the houses beyond. What was it like to grow up in a house like that? Did your ego swell like a grain of rice? Did you enjoy the look of hunger in my parents’ eyes? I would never know. I grew up in a small apartment above my parents’ motel, with sounds of cars on the highway. I stared out my window and saw endless rows of corn. I cowered when white men shouted at my father in the lobby: Speak English! I danced in my bedroom to Bollywood songs, thinking of you.

  If you open your high school yearbook, you will find my picture next to yours. Our first names are similar. Our last names are the same. Because of this, everyone had assumed you were my brother. I was embarrassed to tell them the truth: that I was in love with you. Of course you didn’t know it at the time. What you knew instead was that I was the girl your parents forced you to say hi to at dinner parties you were reluctant to attend.

  Your parents knew mine only vaguely. Your father was a doctor. My father owned a motel. Your father dressed in business suits—mine, in old T-shirts. Your mother was elegant, with jewels glistening at her throat. My mother wore the same saris for years. I saw the way your mother slit her eyes whenever I walked by. Do you know what it’s like, to make a woman’s face go sour? Probably you don’t. Women look at you only sweetly.

  We’d met in grade school, but it was at a rec center one evening, on a cold autumn night, that I first began to notice you. I was thirteen at the time, and my breasts were budding. It was Navratri, the nine-day festival in which we danced around an altar, decorated with marigold petals. That was how I had explained it to my best friend in high school, Sarah. Sarah was with me that night, in a ghagra choli. I had wanted to give her a new one but my mother had refused.

  “What difference does it make?” she’d said. “Old or new, what does Sarah care?”

  You wore a baseball cap and you smelled like cologne. Your Air Jordans were unlaced, your flannel shirt untucked. Your carelessness was careful, your confidence, a con. I saw right through you. Maybe you knew, because when I said hello to you, you pretended not to hear it. You strode around the room instead, looking bored. I danced with my friends and ate puris on the floor and gossiped about who had been drinking or whose breasts had been touched. You were nowhere to be found. I longed to be in your world. At school, your friends were mostly white boys and black boys who listened to Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. I assumed you were ashamed of me. I was evidence of the world you shrugged off each morning before you entered the room.

  Of course you denied all of this in your bedroom the summer you came back into my life. We were older then. You traced my eyelids with your finger, and pinched the fat on my thighs, and flicked your tongue against my neck. You said I was beautiful. What was beautiful was your reflection in my eyes. Did you think I didn’t notice? The way you stood a few inches taller when showing me your parents’ brick house, or their brand-new sedan, with its thick, perforated leather? You saw only my devotion to you, like Radha’s devotion to Krishna, like Lakshmi’s devotion to Vishnu, like my mother’s devotion to my father, like the ocean’s devotion to the moon. I remember my mother showing me pictures of Lord Krishna as a child, with his soft navy skin. He was surrounded by women, hundreds of them, some old enough to be his mother, all with the same doleful look in their eyes. I asked my mother what they were doing there and she said simply that they were in love. A thousand women: all vying for the attention of a man.

  * * *

  I swore I would never become one of those women, so I married a man who is nothing like you. His name is Jacob. He’s an engineer. Brown fuzz covers his arms and his legs. His eyes, green pools the shade of summer, are flecked with gold. How can it be? That a white man could have so many colors? We’d met online. By that point, after the disaster of my first marriage, my parents were relieved; brown men had taken issue with the fact that I was divorced. White men had not. What mattered was that Jacob was successful. He was kind. According to my mother, he was like Vishnu—he restored order to my world.

  Through Jacob, I was able to escape the rumors and gossip and former prison of my childhood town. Even my parents were spared, having successfully raised a daughter in a country that was not their own. The pictures I sent them—of Jacob’s silver Lexus, of my brand-new Jeep, of our chocolate-colored house in Michigan with skylights and stone floors—were proof that they had fulfilled their duty, despite what anyone else said. Jacob accepted a position as the dean of a college engineering program. I finished my degree in pharmacy. Between the two of us, we built a life for ourselves that most people would envy. Our kids, twin girls with skin that glowed like metal and eyes so pale people wondered if they were real, were the crowning achievement of my parents’ lives. When we closed on our house, they threw a party and invited some of the Indian families from our hometown to see it. I hesitated at first, remembering what they had said about us, reminding her that we had never been close, but my mother insisted, and I could sense in her tone a kind of desperation. By that point, I had risen in the community’s esteem. All those years my mother had pretended to be comfortable on the outskirts of the Indian community, but in that moment, I knew: she wanted a way back in. So I let her host a puja in my honor, and bury a coconut in our backyard, and invite a priest over to chant above a small flame. He blessed the property, our marriage, our lives. Jacob and I linked hands and accepted gifts and showed off the spectacular central staircase and marble master bath.

  I still don’t know if I love him. I see his face in the mornings and feel at ease. I hear his keys in the lock and wait for him to enter. I cook him chicken curry and watch him clean his plate. I do the things I watched my mother do, things I swore I would never do when I was sixteen. I pack lunches and wash trousers and stand on
my feet for twelve hours a day, and sometimes, late at night, after scrubbing Play-Doh off the kitchen counter, I wonder if it was all worth it. The desperation I had once felt, the urgency even, is now gone. At the time, Jacob had seemed like my only option—it is clear to me, now, that he was simply a choice.

  I had assumed you and I would never see each other again, and for a while, I was right. Jacob and I lived in Michigan. You had moved to California. The thread that had once bound us was severed, too frayed for repair. I had convinced myself that it was never meant to be, that we were star-crossed lovers, but when I saw you that weekend at Nishali and Mehul’s wedding, in the bright lobby of a Marriott hotel, I began to wonder, for a moment, if I had been wrong.

  * * *

  The wedding was my parents’ idea. They had wanted me to reconnect with the people from my past. I suspect the real reason was to show me off; the daughter who once had nothing, now had everything. My mother was always asking me to send her pictures of Jacob and the girls and the house and the cars, and the little things, too, like a shrimp risotto we had once ordered at a restaurant. I understood, then, that those pictures were not meant for my parents’ benefit but for their friends’, that my presence at Nishali’s wedding, my postmarital glow, was a form of redemption.