by SJ Sindu
“Oh, let her go,” Laila Aunty says. “She’s a grown up.”
Amma takes in a breath of air that fills up her chest. Her face crumples. I try not to smile, but I’ve won.
•••
Tasha’s car slices through the streetlights on our way inbound, Chris Pureka’s eerie low voice winding through the speakers and vibrating in my ribcage. I melt into the cracked vinyl backseat. Tasha and Jesse’s conversation mixes in with the music. My fingers are still jittery with cold. I close my eyes.
We weave through the inky night, moving along a river of headlights, the city winking with the light of a million bulbs. I wish Nisha was sitting beside me, holding my hand the way that she does only around the rugby girls, Nisha in her engagement saree, the silk fabric folding into orange waves, gold glittering like fish in the sea. The whiskey has carved me empty.
Cool air streams inside the half-open windows of Tasha’s car, the salt of the sea still riding on the wind, splashing against the mask of makeup on my face. Buildings swim past us and we’re riding the wind, too, us and the salt of the sea, hurtling toward the city on a night that isn’t special and doesn’t matter, except that it does and I want the car to slide, to give up its traction on the asphalt and fly faster until our skin melts away and we are free.
•••
At Machine, Tasha holds a ten-dollar bill in between her fingers and leans against the bar. She doesn’t tilt her hips or stick out her butt the way Nisha does. The club expands like a cave, the darkness thick between the breaks of light. Tasha shouts drink orders into the bartender’s ear and lays down more bills. “I got this round,” she yells over the music.
I stuff my money back in my purse, wishing I’d left it in the car. I pull up my saree and pin it so that it doesn’t fall over my arm. Tasha gives me a Sam Adams, raises hers in a toast, and tips her head back to drink. I let the cold beer rush into my mouth and fall down my throat. If only it could wash away the image of Nisha bending down to sign her marriage certificate, skin stretched tight over her lower back, the room too hot and I can’t breathe.
Tasha hooks an arm around mine and pulls me toward the dance floor. I take another sip of beer and let myself be dragged. She squeezes us into an opening in the crowd of people, many of whom no longer have their shirts on, their chests and backs gleaming with sweat and glitter. The crowd keeps pushing us closer. I could grab her hip, pull it to me, push my face into the crook of her neck, breathe in the smell of her. I reach out. My fingers close on the rough material of her slacks. Over her shoulder, one shirtless girl pushes another one up against the wall. Tasha moves closer. She smells like leaves. Her breath skims my ear, along the skin of my collar, slips into the fabric of my saree and down my back. She feels solid. She comes forward, slowly slowly and closer closer and kisses my neck. But Nisha’s face is stitched into the backs of my eyelids and I move away.
I push back against the crowd of dancers, turn away from Tasha. My phone buzzes in my purse. A text from Nisha: You left early.
Went out with Tasha and Jesse.
I wanted you to be my witness for the marriage license.
Sorry.
Whatever.
I said I’m sorry. I didn’t know.
I push my way off the dance floor, toward the bar. Jesse is standing next to a poster calling for dancers at the Mason Jar.
Tasha follows me. “I’m sorry for what happened back there.” She puts her empty beer bottle on the bar and doesn’t look me in the eye.
I drain the last of the beer and put my bottle next to hers. “I’m married.”
“Oh.”
I expect questions, but she doesn’t ask them until later, when we’re sitting on the deck of the rugby house and she’s smoking her cigarette and tapping the ashes into an empty beer bottle with the label ripped off.
“You’re married.” She stuffs her free hand in her pocket and looks out into the street. The wind swoops in cold through the metal railings of the deck. The peeling white paint glows in the moonlight. Voices shout at a party down the street.
“Married to a guy?” she asks.
“His name’s Kris.”
“So you and Nisha?”
“Nisha’s engaged.”
“Yeah, but don’t you have an arrangement? With your husband.”
A couple of college kids run down the street, hooting and pumping their fists into the air. She watches them until they turn the corner at the bottom of the hill. The air drips with dying roses.
“Kris is gay. We aren’t together.”
“So Nisha—”
“Nisha’s engaged.”
Tasha shivers and wraps her arms around herself. “Is this what you want?”
I wish I had a cigarette to put off answering. “What I want doesn’t matter. Not to her.”
•••
I sleep in the living room under the tie-dyed quilt. Tasha sits on the couch and talks to me until I fall asleep, and when I wake up she’s spread out flat, her head thrown back on a fuzzy orange pillow, her arm over her eyes, mouth hanging open. She makes me a breakfast that we eat out on the deck so that she can smoke. Birds sing unseen in bushes that haven’t yet shed their leaves.
“Don’t you want to do something?” she says.
I poke at my rapidly-cooling scrambled eggs. “Like what?”
She flicks her cigarette so hard that the lit end flies into the empty flowerbed. She waves her arms around. “How can you just sit there and pretend to accept this?”
She doesn’t get it. She lives in a world of polyamory and multi-lover households, where marriage means whatever you want it to mean. But Nisha’s marriage is real, and outside of stolen kisses at parties and dates masquerading as day trips to outlet malls, we will have nothing.
Tasha picks up a piece of scrambled egg from my plate and nibbles on it.
“This is what I want,” I say. I can’t tell if it’s a lie. “I can’t mess up my life. I worked too hard.” I lied too much.
She listens in silence, eats another piece of egg from my plate, and opens the door to go inside. “How is living in pain not already messed up?” she says.
•••
Amma opens the door when Tasha drops me off, and looks me up and down in my borrowed gym shorts and Patriots shirt. She looks out toward the dead-end street, where Tasha is turning her car around. “Is that a boy or a girl?”
I step inside the door and close it. “That’s Tasha. She was at the engagement.”
“Good. I got scared it was a boy.”
Amma’s in full cooking mode, three pans steaming on the range top and cutting board full of finely chopped onions, peppers, and tomatoes each in their own little pile.
“Grandmother has been asking for you.” She stirs each of the pots on the stove. She dips a wooden spoon in one, taps the liquid onto her palm, and licks it. “Hand me the salt.”
I take the salt from the counter and give it to her.
Amma sprinkles it over the bean curry and stirs. “She’s out on the deck again. Do you know why she sits out there?”
“No.” I go into the living room, open the glass doors and step outside. Grandmother sits on her folding chair, wrapped in her winter coat, thick wool socks and flip-flops.
“Vidya,” she says. “You turned into a boy. You can’t have a baby if you’re a boy.”
“It’s me, Lucky.” I put a palm to Grandmother’s forehead. It isn’t any warmer or colder than it should be.
She takes my hand in both of hers. “You should have a baby. Krishna wants a baby.” She rubs my knuckles and shakes a cough from her lips.
I pull from her grasp. She has moments of lucidity, but this is the first time she’s remembered Kris’s name in years. I go back inside.
Amma rolls leaves of cabbage into tight circles and slices them. “What did she want?”
“She wants me to have a baby.”
“Good. You need to start a family. You’re getting older, Lucky. You can’t just run around like a teenager anymore. You have to have responsibilities.” She throws the sliced cabbage into a glass dish full of water. “You don’t know how happy it will make you when you have a family.”
This is the same thing she said when she wanted me to get married, before Kris and I came up with our plan. Same speech: I didn’t realize how unhappy I was and I couldn’t even guess at the boundless happiness a marriage could give. Shyama was held up as the example.
“We want to see a grandchild before we die,” she says.
She already has a grandchild, but I don’t have energy for the hysterics right now. I sit and listen and don’t talk back. She turns off two of the burners and wipes at her eyes. I should be moved by this, the sight of my mother in distress, but I feel nothing. Her body slumps over her curries.
Escaping Fate
When I close my eyes I can feel the lights of Machine floating around me like dust, my body alive with movement. I dream about it at night. The need to move is like an itch under my skin.
I think about the ad for the Mason Jar that hung at Machine, when I sit in the living room and paint on my laptop, when I shower, when I lay awake in bed—the rail-thin dancer on the ad, the blocky colors of the poster.
I go to the auditions and sit outside in the car for an hour. Once or twice I try to get out and join the jerky stream of women suctioned into spandex skirts and plunging blouses. Always try new things, right? I should’ve worn something sexier than brown corduroys and a U2 shirt, something that would get their blood pumping. The security guard watches me in the car. I hold onto the steering wheel. I pretend to read a book. I rummage in the glove box to pass the time.
Amma calls. “Where are you?”
“I’m on my way home.”
“I’ve been worried.”
I’ve only been gone an hour. “I’ll be there soon.”
She’s waiting at the kitchen island when I come home. Heated up leftovers lie spread out on the counter.
“Where were you?”
“Picking up some things from the store.”
•••
I start practicing when Amma’s at work and Grandmother is sitting out on the deck. I’m woefully out of shape. I drag the floor-length mirrors from the bathroom and guest bedroom into Amma’s room and set them up side by side against the armoire. My reflection looks unsure. I could stand to lose a few pounds.
I move, thick and unpracticed, my feet already hurting, my knees squeaky every time I put weight on them, my arms trembling when I hold them in position, my thighs tired of the constant tension. I relearn the mudras with my hands. I used to be able to run through the set without thinking, but now my fingers freeze and stumble over gestures. Arm movements are jerkier, sloppier, but my muscles still know how to push through the ache in my shoulders. I can’t move my feet the way I used to, can’t jump and slap the ground to the beat. I wish Nisha were here to dance with me. Next to her, I can be invisible.
Lasyam, the goddess Parvati’s graceful, fluid melody of feminine energy. Tandavam, Shiva’s masculine cosmic dance—strong, staccato, mountainous. Bharatanatyam, a combination of the two styles, is inherently androgynous. In the mirror I watch my head and eyes. In Bharatanatyam even the eyes move to the beat, each part of the body independent from the rest. My body still knows the songs.
I find a box of my old dance costumes in the basement and lay them out on Amma’s bed. The thin silk smells like my sweat, infused from many recitals. I arrange and rearrange the pleats that connect the two legs, the material shot through with so much embroidery that the original color is barely visible. I try on the jewelry, drape the headpiece on my parted hair, straighten out the crooked jewels that hang down over my forehead, tie the black shoestrings behind my head, pin the small sun and moon pieces to either side of my hair part, clip the fake nose ring on, and stack three necklaces on top of my T-shirt. Nisha used to help me dress for performances and draw fake henna on my hands using a red Sharpie.
I look in the mirror and expect to see myself at eighteen, a clone of the picture downstairs on Amma’s photo wall. But all I see is me.
•••
Nisha invites me to a beach in Gloucester with the rugby girls. We stop in town to buy beer and snacks. The air smells like fish and salt.
“This town smells like Sri Lanka,” I say. Back when we used to visit, back when my family was still whole. We flew back tanned and complicated, split between missing the blue warmth and grateful to leave all the soldiers behind.
Nisha scrunches up her nose and picks out a bag of Tostitos. “It does. But no one knows us here.” She steps closer to me and puts the chip bag in the basket I’m holding. When she kisses me, her lips taste like fake strawberries.
“I love you,” she says. She doesn’t look at me.
•••
The beach is bare and long during low tide. Fog rolls over the sand and obscures the ocean from view. People camp out under colorful umbrellas, in between the shaggy brush. We set up camp on an abandoned patch of sand. Nearby, a flock of seagulls attacks food left out by a family gone swimming.
Nisha sits next to me on a beach towel wearing only her swimsuit. Jesse and Tasha dig out beers and snacks. Jesse’s arms look enormous in the tank top she wears. Every time she moves her biceps, the muscles change.
She catches me looking and flexes her arm. “Want to feel?”
I poke the hard bicep. I need to do more push-ups.
Nisha kisses me on the neck. “I like your arms the way they are,” she says into my ear.
The seagulls descend on the camp next to us. Jesse and Tasha run to chase them away.
Nisha turns her back and pulls her hair to one side. “Could you retie this for me?”
I unknot her bikini, tie the strings tighter. She turns around and puts her fingers on my cheek. I look at her eyes through her sunglasses.
“Don’t look so sad,” she says. “He’s as good as any guy I could find myself.”
Tasha flaps her arms at the seagulls while Jesse puts away the family’s food in bags and coolers.
“Have you dated either of them?”
“I dated Jesse in college. But that was ages ago. I was a different person. I thought I could be like them.”
A seagull waddles toward us. Tasha and Jesse chase it away on their way back to our camp.
“Why can’t you be like them?” I ask.
She draws circles in the sand. “We’re not like them. We have to think about our families. If we lived like them, we’d lose everything.”
I feel sick with chips and beer. My skin sticks with humidity.
Nisha pushes her fingers down and buries her hand. “I don’t want to spend my life fighting a war I can’t win.”
I need to feel something more solid than air around me. “Let’s swim.” I stand up and say it again, louder so the others can hear. I walk toward the ocean. The others follow. It’s not a warm day. Thorny seaweed and sharp cracked seashells dot the sand. The first cold steps take effort, but I push forward slowly. The water engulfs my feet and creeps upward with each wave, each step.
Tasha stops with the water up to her knees. “The tide is coming in.”
Nisha walks by my side, her skin raised in goose bumps. “That’s it, Tasha? That’s how tough you are?”
Tasha scowls and marches forward.
I can’t feel my legs from the cold. Nisha smiles at me and lets go of my hand.
I keep walking until the water moves around me like air. Waves pick me up as they pass. I dive into them, let the salt into my mouth. The cold soaks into my scalp. People must drown out here, pulled in by the riptide. I feel light, my thoughts chased away by the waves, my brain washed clean by wind. I want the ocean to carry me away,
to pull me from myself and birth me like the tide.
Tamils believe that fate is written on top of our heads, immutable, our future stories scratched into our scalps with permanent ink, birth to death. We can’t run from it, we can’t fight it, we simply accept it—this notion that we’re doomed to pay for the sins we committed in our past lives.
Before I got married, Amma brought Kris’s horoscope and mine to an astrologer who told her we were a seventy-five percent match, and that all the indicators pointed to our having had a connection in a past life. Amma was thrilled. A match made in heaven, or rather, written on top of our heads as our souls traveled through the cosmos from one life to another.
I met Kris in college. He was a lanky boy from India with thick-framed glasses and ruddy skin he hated for its darkness. I met him in a gay and lesbian literature class, and for the longest time I knew him as the other South Asian queer on campus. He was pompous, and drove me crazy with the way he turned up his nose at books that weren’t part of the British canon, how he refused to look waiters in the eye. We would meet at parties, fight about the meaning of the Vedas or the true class issues in the Kama Sutra, but we didn’t become friends until his parents disowned him for being gay. He sought me out at a party, pulled me aside, and said, “I told my mother.”
“And?”
His chin, thin and sprinkled with sparse black hairs, quivered. “It was so stupid.”
His grief bent him toward me. He put his forehead on my shoulder, and just like that we were friends, bonded by our proximity to the cliff, our danger of falling.
•••
Our friendship passed in a blur of booze and parties. Kris and I knew enough people that we never had to get involved in the drama of any one social group. We rode to parties with Juan, the boy Kris dated on and off and the only person we knew with a car. Kris sat in the backseat with me, parting my hair in different ways and fussing with my shirt.
Sometimes I met girls at parties but usually I met men. None of them saw me. I wanted it that way.
At one party, Juan danced with a girl while Kris danced by himself near the edge of the crowd.