Love Songs for a Lost Continent

by Anita Felicelli

  Susannah shook her head. “I’m sick of this.”

  “The mess? It does get pretty filthy around here. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault. Who lives like this? Who would put up with this extravagantly unsuccessful pot farm? He’s too much.”

  “I don’t know. Even people who are fucked up are loved by someone.”

  “I know that.”

  “My mother put up with my dad’s affair for thirty years. He’s had a mistress for thirty years. Can you imagine? But she’s still putting up with him. Are your parents still married?”

  Susannah nodded.

  “An arranged marriage?”

  “No, they married outside their castes, outside their religions. It was what they call a love match.” Both families had been equally unhappy with the marriage, which was seen as shameful, impure, and wrong. Her mother’s clan disdained her father and his family for being untouchables, and they didn’t much care for her either. Her father’s Dalit Catholic family was suspicious of her mother’s fair-skinned Brahmin family. Brahmins didn’t allow Dalit in their homes, didn’t allow a Dalit to touch their food or even the pots they cooked with—it was the intense, unyielding upper caste abuse of Dalits that had motivated their escape to Catholicism. She learned over the years that being Dalit was so stigmatized even among the Indians in the Bay Area that it might ruin her mother’s restaurant, marketed around authentic Brahmin home cooking and traditions, if they told people the truth. For a moment Susannah thought she would elaborate to Aristotle, but she didn’t want to share something she’d never even shared with Drew.

  “I thought all Indian people got arranged marriages. Were they rebels?”

  “Rebels? I guess so.” Susannah had never considered her parents this way, as strangers worthy of admiration. She blushed. Something about the hungry way he was looking at her from under his long lashes made her feel like he was drinking her down.

  ***

  At the start of their relationship, the perpetual haze of smoke had been novel and romantic, a respite from student life. Susannah didn’t know Drew dreamed of having a hydroponic marijuana farm. She’d lug legal textbooks to his apartment and after she studied, they got high, had sex, crashed, and woke up to the hypnotic drum of the winter rain steaming up the windows, the grinding pulse of dance music on Drew’s alarm clock.

  “Do you think I’m pretty?” Susannah had asked Drew one night. They’d been dating for about a year and were lying in bed spooning in the dark. The neighbor downstairs had been pounding on the ceiling of her apartment with a broom handle to tell them to shut up while they were fucking, and now they could hear her storming around in her own bedroom.

  “Yes, you’re the most beautiful girlfriend I’ve ever had,” Drew said. He pulled her tightly toward him, hugging her like he could make her real.

  Susannah laughed. She was the girl who wore thick Coke-bottle spectacles until she went to college. She probably should have gotten orthodontia as a little girl, but her parents had spent the income from her dad’s engineering job to open her mother’s restaurant in Fremont, and later expanded it into a chain.

  “Don’t get me wrong, you don’t look like any other Indian person I’ve met, but weird is a good thing. Your eyes! You have the most beautiful strange eyes. And of course, you’re the smartest girlfriend I’ve had, too.”

  The smart part seemed rather obvious, but the weight of Drew appraising her face this way was stunning. Her parents, relatives, and friends had always found her lacking. Just before law school, she’d been chosen to be a model for makeup by a New York company because, supposedly, she was ugly-beautiful. But after a few screen tests, the company had dropped her. She was not beautiful, period. Drew’s tiny compliment was so heavy that it carried her away from all the friends who told her he was a slacker who wouldn’t amount to anything, that he was nothing but a stone gathering moss and force as it rolled downhill, pulling her down with him.

  “Someday I’m going to take you around the world,” she said, imagining the kinds of adventures they could have once she had a decently paying law firm job.

  He sat up and reached for his glass pipe on the coffee table. “Amsterdam?”

  “I was thinking more like Morocco or Chile or Iceland. Oh, I know, the Galapagos,” she said, thinking of places her friends and family had never been. “Some place strange and special. Like our relationship.”

  “I’d settle for Amsterdam. It’d be easy to find weed there.”

  ***

  After the bar exam, Susannah discovered Drew had hemorrhaged all his money that summer investing in his farm. She’d just started a job as a first-year associate at an environmental law firm in downtown Oakland and she assumed he’d take up a sys admin job again or go back to school. In her elaborate daydreams, they would move in together, get married and have children. Her parents would have to get used to him, if he were their son-in-law.

  But next month, the water company shut off water to the warehouse. Not wanting the girls to die, Drew took a crowbar to the sidewalk and pried up the concrete lid of the water tank. He cranked the water back on. And then the electricity was shut off. They lit the warehouse with white candle tapers. Soon the place smelled like hot wax and looked funereal.

  Aristotle complained, but he hadn’t paid rent. Without halide lights, the girls wilted. Drew took them one by one to the backyard to suck down some of the faint autumn sunlight. He lined them up on the cold backyard deck beside the chain-link fence, but there wasn’t enough sunlight. They couldn’t be revived.

  When the East Bay Municipal District realized Drew had tampered with the faucet, they fined him. He could not pay the fine or the overdue electricity bill, so Susannah wrote him a check for a grand. “I’ll pay you back soon,” he’d said.

  One night, when Drew had fallen asleep on the couch, a twinge passed through her abdomen. She ran cold fingers under her T-shirt and across her stomach. It was starting to bulge with a hardness she’d never felt there before. She hadn’t gotten her period since summer. After a few minutes of panic, her first thought was of Drew’s family, about the possibility of having a baby whose grandmother still referred to colored girls. And then she thought about her own mother, and how she’d never truly broken with her conservative family members who were bigots, simply because they were family. Her mother had never said fuck off, and would never say that, even from an ocean away. She would be kind. But her mother’s choice to keep the peace, even after her family had rejected her, even after they repeatedly rejected Susannah, had always made Susannah feel like she wasn’t good enough. It had secretly made her feel like maybe those bigots in her family had a point, like maybe they knew something about her she didn’t. These thoughts were still running through her head many days later, after three over-the-counter pregnancy sticks confirmed Susannah’s suspicion.

  ***

  The following week, she and Aristotle were sitting up late on the couch watching old movies. Drew was at a friend’s house mooching off the friend’s weed, since he no longer had any of his own. Aristotle was drinking from a bottle of Cabernet someone had given him as a gift. He offered Susannah some, but she declined, claiming to be on antibiotics.

  Sitting a foot away, Aristotle was wearing a Pistons basketball jersey, which set off his dark coppery skin. His cologne was musky and dark, but sweet like decaying apples and good sex. She watched him out of the corner of her eye as Bogie kissed Ingrid Bergman.

  “How’s your job search going?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “It’s not.”

  “Maybe you should apply to film school?”

  “Yeah, I’m thinking ‘bout it.” He waved a hand dismissively and leaned toward Susannah.

  They kissed, a gentle kiss, a sweet deep kiss that tasted like wine and orange Tic Tacs but felt like coming home. But then their noses knocked against each other. His warm hands were running up her arms, and suddenly they were too close, too familiar, too alike, and all she could think abou
t were those damn Tic Tacs. She couldn’t breathe. She pulled away.

  Aristotle hovered in front of her face for a second, like he was about to confront her. Maybe he’d ask why she’d reacted like that, maybe he’d ask what this thing between them was. Instead he took a big swig of wine and leaned back. She looked at her hands and wondered what to say.

  He said, “I think this is cheap, what the screenwriter did here. Why doesn’t Ilsa just refuse to go? She doesn’t love that guy. It’s a stupid twist.”

  “She knows deep down that her future is with Laszlo, maybe. They’ve got a higher purpose.”

  “Isn’t love the highest purpose?” Aristotle said. He looked right at her with his large clear eyes. For a split second, she saw recognition there. “Staying with Rick would be worth the consequences, wouldn’t it?”

  “There’s no purpose to pain.” She was too attracted to Aristotle not to push him away. “Suffering is a constant, but it’s completely meaningless.”

  “It all means something someday,” Aristotle said.

  “Someday never comes.”

  To her surprise, Aristotle laughed. “Damn! You’re so cynical.”

  He slurred the word “cynical,” and she realized he was drunk. She started to feel queasy. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you’d think you were really put upon from the way you talk. Indian girls! You’re such princesses.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Aristotle leaned back and whistled. “Let me guess. You probably have a rich family and you’ve lived all your life totally sheltered in the suburbs wishing you were white. Your parents paid for college and law school. You went to law school partly to please them, but also because you have no passions. Your parents probably hate black people.” He hadn’t actually liked her, Susannah realized with a pang of despair, as he chugged more wine.

  “My family doesn’t hate black people.” Trying not to cry from disappointment, she kept her eyes trained to the television screen. Rick said, “Louis, I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship.” The two moseyed through the deep grey fog toward the glimmering lights, and the music swelled.

  A week later, Susannah still hadn’t told Drew about the baby. She simply wore bigger and bigger suit jackets buttoned over her belly to work. Drew didn’t notice—he was worried that Aristotle hadn’t paid rent for three months.

  “He’s not even trying to pay me. I mean he just smokes all my pot and hangs out all day,” complained Drew. He swiveled away from his workspace on a rolling office chair.

  “That’s exactly what you do,” Susannah reminded him. Ever since Aristotle had told her what he thought of her, she’d burned with the desire to prove him wrong. Last week, Aristotle had cooked dinner with ingredients she’d purchased, including gravy so decadent you wanted to swim in it. During dinner, Susannah dropped little facts about her life, facts about how poor she’d grown up, about how ostracized she’d been, facts to show Aristotle he was wrong about her, but he displayed no surprise or interest. He seemed to have forgotten all about their kiss.

  “That’s different. It’s my place.”

  Susannah didn’t say what she was thinking, that Drew’s parents were “loaning” him money to pay the rent on the warehouse, not knowing he’d maxed out his credit cards on equipment and plants for the grow operation. From their conversations, she’d gathered Aristotle didn’t have a family who could afford to bail him out of trouble. “Mm-hmm.”

  “I’m gonna lock him out.” Drew picked up an X-Men comic.

  “You can’t do that under California law.”

  “What’s he gonna do? Call the cops?”

  “Aristotle’s not a bad guy, you know.”

  “Why are you on his side?”

  “I just don’t want you doing something illegal.”

  “I’m not running a halfway house here or something,” said Drew. “My parents think I should kick him out.”

  “They think you should break the law?”

  “Well, they won’t give me the money to start the eviction process properly, so in effect.”

  Late that afternoon, Drew changed the locks on the front door.

  They were fixing dinner when they heard the clank of the metal door being kicked. “You fucking piece of shit. Let me in! I live here. I need my shit, man! Let me in!”

  “Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin,” she whispered offhandedly, still bitter about what Aristotle had said about her. When Drew laughed, shame flooded her.

  The odor of fresh basil stained the cold kitchen air. Sesame oil sizzled in the wok. A few minutes later: a sharp cracking, a breaking.

  “Oh fuck, the lock.” Drew ran for the front door. At first, Susannah continued stirring the broccoli with a slotted spoon, but since she couldn’t quite make out their words, she stopped and tried to listen. They shouted obscenities, mostly fuck-yous, at each other.

  Tussling.

  Clanging against the concrete floor.

  Susannah dialed 911 on her mobile phone.

  “Help! There’s a fight here.” She told the police dispatcher the address.

  Just as she entered the front hallway, Aristotle wrested himself from Drew’s headlock and leaned back. He was wearing the same rumpled red flannel button-down he’d been wearing a couple of days before. He was holding an empty bottle over his head. Before Susannah could say anything, he slammed it down on Drew’s skull. Drew kneeled like a supplicant before losing consciousness and slumping to the floor. A thin stream of blood trickled down his forehead.

  “Shit, man. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that…” Aristotle crouched for a split second to look at Drew, then jumped up and ran out the front door. Susannah kneeled beside Drew in confusion.

  Moments later, two OPD officers knocked. Susannah answered the door. “Who called?” they asked. Drew was blinking and regaining consciousness. She didn’t answer at first, but after a few minutes of questioning, told the police about Aristotle. They ran back into the night to find him as the screaming whine of sirens approached. She slipped outside for a minute to wave emergency responders into the warehouse. The air smelled like plastic burning, as it often did when the neighbors were smoking crack. Down the wide empty street lined with warehouses, she saw Aristotle being handcuffed.

  His face gleamed by moonlight. Even from twenty feet away his eyes looked big, his life slipping away from him into trouble, some dark alternate history. There were a lot of things Susannah wanted to call after him—she was his lawyer, he shouldn’t answer any questions, he should remember it was self-defense—but she was trembling so hard with fear and doubt that she said nothing. As the responders came up to the door with a stretcher, she motioned them inside. Not a single officer commented about the stench of pot or the lit spliff in an ashtray in the kitchen. Nobody even asked to see a medical card. Drew had been right—nobody cared a whit about his stupid infractions.

  As she watched the responders tend to Drew, carefully transferring him to a stretcher and wheeling it out the door, she realized what her tragic flaw was. She was a coward. She would choose to be alone and aloof, but comfortable and uninjured, over justice, over a real connection, even over love. But, of course, she would have lied if anybody asked her.

  ***

  When Drew returned from the hospital after midnight, Susannah made instant ramen, and set a bowl in front of him. “I’m pregnant.” She handed him a spoon.

  “What? You are? But I pulled out every time.” He looked at her stomach. “How much are abortions?”

  “I’m going to keep it.”

  He pleaded with her, pointing out that he wasn’t ready to be a father. It didn’t cross his mind that his opinion was not important to her—that she was telling him simply as a matter of course. He said he hoped he would be ready someday and she would still be around then. “Just look at me,” he said, trying to be funny, pointing at the stitches on his head. “I can’t even take care of myself.”

  The more he talked about his inab
ility to function in the world or care for someone else—things Susannah already knew—the more distant she felt. She would not be like her mother. She would not raise her child to think that holding onto blood family was more important than everything else. Another thought blossomed in her mind. All her life, she’d only known one story about love: you sacrificed everything else for it. Perhaps this was what her parents had been afraid of, that after gorging on this one story of theirs she would mistake pain and adversity and sacrifice for love. She burst into tears and went into their bedroom to pack and type a resignation email to her boss, leaving Drew baffled and shaking his head.

  She would not see Drew for many years after that, and then only in passing at a burger joint in Berkeley—his brown hair had grown into a ponytail and he was with a skinny blonde woman who was dressed in a long purple skirt and Renaissance Faire peasant top. The baby was at kindergarten, so there was no reason to speak. Susannah nodded to Drew, and kept walking by, like they were only acquaintances.

  ***

  When Susannah arrived at the original location of her parents’ chain restaurant and market, Madras Magic, with her old blue suitcase and a hatchback full of odds and ends, they were working, as they always were. They said they didn’t want her to have the baby either, one of the few things about which they agreed. All around the store, they’d strung tiny colored lights. Red and gold and green blinked on and off, as her parents talked at her, first yelling, and then, when that didn’t work, appealing to her sense of logic. And then, when all else failed, simply stating what they thought should be obvious to her.

  “You’re ruining your life!” Her mother was kneeling in the snack aisle, stocking big plastic bags of murukku and sev on the lowest rack.

  “I don’t care. I’m committed to doing this, and it’s the happiest thing that has ever happened to me.”

  “You should have an abortion.” Her father came out from behind the cash register with his stainless steel cup of filter coffee. “Is it the money? We’ll pay for it. You’re simply not thinking this through. How are you going to raise a baby as a single mother at a law firm?”