by SJ Sindu
“Coldhearted,” said one of the guys next to me. He was blond and tall and spoke to no one in particular.
“Who?”
“My girlfriend.” He raised his bottle toward the dance floor. “I’m Derek.” He had at least a foot on me height-wise, so that when he looked at me he seemed to be bending down.
“Lucky.”
“Who’s lucky?”
“That’s my name. Lucky.”
The girl pressed against Juan, her lips on his.
Derek pointed at the door and followed me out onto the deck. Summer air pressed on my skin. He pulled out a packet of Pall Malls and offered one to me.
“You’re hot,” he said. He lit the cigarette I held between my teeth.
I breathed the smoke in deep, held it there until it burst out in a cough.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“Boston.”
“No,” he laughed. “Like your parents. Where are they from?”
“Sri Lanka.”
“You’re all butch hot. I like that.”
Nisha would’ve liked him, would’ve thought he was cute. He talked about his ex-girlfriend, moving closer so that his arm brushed against my waist. He bent down and kissed me in a cloud of sweat and deodorant.
I was too numb to care, too drunk and a fuck was a fuck.
Derek picked me up and carried me inside the house and up the stairs. I hung onto his neck, the Pall Mall still dangling between my fingers. I wanted to walk but I was too drunk to squirm out of his hold.
He took me to a room on the second floor and sat down on a couch, pulling me down on top of him. I wondered if Kris was looking for me. I wondered if I should leave. I stared at the ceiling and the patterns in the popcorn spackle. Derek was hard.
“I should go,” I said.
“Stay the night. I live here.”
I got up. He grabbed my arm.
“Stay,” he said. He pushed me down and unbuttoned my shirt. He left patches of wet saliva on my skin that cooled with the air.
The ceiling was patterned like the stars, a Big Dipper here, an Orion’s Belt there.
When he tried to take off my pants I held his wrist. He lay down on top of me and ground his hips into mine. I tried to focus on the ceiling but I couldn’t. He started to grunt.
I wiggled out from under him. “I have to go.” I picked up my bra from the floor and put it on.
Derek watched me and lit a cigarette. “My ex, she was butch hot too.”
I buttoned up my shirt.
He kept watching. “Now she calls herself a lesbian.”
I didn’t know if I was supposed to apologize. I said nothing and left, closing the door on the smoke.
•••
In the winter of my senior year, Amma stopped talking to me when she found old texts from an ex-girlfriend, texts like I miss you and I want to fuck you deep and lick my fingers clean and Come back to me let’s try to make it work. She had snooped through my phone when I was sleeping. I don’t know what tipped her off, what gave her the feeling that something was wrong, but one night when I was home for Christmas break, I awoke to her crying. She clutched my phone to her chest and sobbed at the end of my bed.
I went to a friend’s house that night, and stayed there until my bus back to college. Amma stopped transferring money to my account. I wasn’t talking to Appa at the time, too angry about the divorce and his remarriage. Vidya was busy with work, Shyama with her husband and grad school, and I wasn’t out to either of them. I had $243 to my name.
I put up a website with my art but I was new on the scene and no one wanted to buy it. I sold off my possessions one by one: small green desk, forty dollars; pleather office chair, fifty dollars; blue couch, best offer. The due date for my rent came and went. I sold my furniture, my band posters, the iPod Appa had given me for my birthday. I packed up extra clothes and took them to a consignment store for forty-seven dollars in cash. No job openings. No skills. A rapidly depleting bank account. Kris was luckier—his parents had paid for an entire year of his room and board in the dorms before he came out to them. He snuck out food from the cafeterias for me to eat. Every day he came by my efficiency apartment and we talked ourselves in circles.
“Maybe the loans will come through,” I said. I knew that wasn’t possible, but I said it anyway. The credit union told us we needed a cosigner.
Kris stacked and unstacked my shot glasses to pass the time. “I wish we could afford to get drunk.”
My landlady knocked on the door. Her ragged outline showed through the blinds, the flowered robe she always wore. When I opened the door she was wringing her hands.
Her watery eyes darted to where Kris sat on the floor, roamed over the emptiness of the apartment. “I need your rent, dear. It was due three weeks ago.”
“I’ll have it soon.”
She took a step toward the apartment like she was going to come in. Rightfully I couldn’t stop her.
“I need that rent.”
“I know. I just don’t have it right now.”
She looked where the couch used to be. “You going somewhere, dear?”
“No, just—just redecorating.”
She frowned and retied the knot around her waist. “Can you make the rent?”
“I just need more time.”
“I don’t have time, dear. I got someone who wants to rent, and all my rooms are full.” She looked at Kris. “He your boyfriend?”
“No.”
“I don’t like men staying the night.”
“He’s just a friend.”
She poked her finger into the knot of her robe and pulled it back out. “I think I’m going to ask you to move out. I’ve gotten complaints from the neighbors. Too much noise, too many people over.”
“I’ll get the rent to you soon, I promise.”
“No, no. I want you out. You got two weeks, dear.”
I slammed the door closed behind her. I didn’t realize I was shaking until Kris pulled me down to the floor between his legs and put his arms around me.
“You can live with me,” he said.
“What about your roommate?”
“I’ll ask him. Don’t worry about it.”
•••
Kris’s roommate was a boy named Tim who always wore a Wildcats ball cap and had a Nickelback poster taped to the wall on his side of the room. I slept on his futon, but I had to wait until he was done studying on it every night. It got harder and harder to wake up for my eight-thirty Matrix Theory class. I started skipping it.
On most days, even though the weather was still cold and there was a March bite to the air, I spent my days under the trees on campus, listening to the squirrels coming out for the spring. The trees budded in silk curtains hanging down into the grass. I avoided the room as much as possible. As the weeks dragged on, Tim became more and more talkative.
“You and Kris dating?” he asked me.
“No.”
He rubbed the back of his neck and shuffled his feet. “Do you want to go to a movie sometime?”
“I can’t.”
“I’m a nice guy.”
“I’m gay.”
He turned back to his Calculus and stayed quiet for a while. I kept writing my English paper.
“You ever slept with a guy?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then how do you know?” He kept reading his math book, following the words with his finger. “I think you just decided too fast.”
•••
One weekend Tim had his friends over to the room to drink. They made Jell-O shots in the small microwave and mini fridge. I couldn’t afford the booze so Kris and I spent the evening on the dirty, pilled couches in the lounge, playing cards and drinking hot chocolate he’d snuck out from the cafeteria.
Kris shuffled cards without looking at them. “Semester’s almost over. What are we going to do?”
“We could go back to Boston after graduation.”
Kris stopped shuffling.
“Maybe we can get jobs.”
“Maybe you can. No visa, no job for me.”
He dealt out the cards into two piles. I picked one up from my pile and turned it over. Jack of Clubs. I ran my finger along the edge of it, letting its sharpness bite into my flesh.
He tapped his fingers on the table. “We could get married.”
I dropped the card.
He wasn’t smiling. “Think about it. You need to convince your parents you’re straight. I need to stay in this country. Your parents would welcome you back.”
The room needed more air. I wanted to feel the cold spring night around me. The idea was too sticky. Too many things to go wrong.
“People do it all the time back home,” he said.
A marriage of convenience. Amma would talk to me again.
I straightened my pile of cards and gave it to Kris. “Let’s go back to the room. I’m tired.”
We walked in silence. The dorm floor was especially loud. Students rode scooters back and forth in the hallway. Music clashed through open doorways.
Kris’s room was dark. Someone had thrown towels over the lamps so that they glowed eerie and muted. At least ten people sat crammed onto the floor and the futon.
Tim got up and stumbled toward us. He put the tips of his fingers together around the red cup he was holding. He bowed. “Namaste.”
I grabbed Kris’s arm and pulled him back toward the door.
“What?” Tim stood up straight. “Isn’t that how you guys do it?”
I opened the door. He crossed the room and closed it. He put his elbow on the door near my head. I could smell his sweat.
“You’re Indian and gay.” He turned toward the room of people. Some laughed. “How does that work out?”
“It works just fine,” I said.
He lurched forward and kissed me. My head slammed against the door. My brain rang.
Kris wrenched him backward but he pushed his way toward me. I pressed against the door.
He was too close. “I think you’re lying.”
No escape. I pushed back, pushed hard, away. He fell. Laughter from the walls. Red cup spilled red fizz into the carpet. He pushed me down into a beanbag. I stood up. Pushed down. Up, pushed down, my knees gave way again and again not strong enough to stand up push back, push hard, away away away again push push run.
•••
I ran to the pond and collapsed into the trunk of a tree. I watched the water. I wanted something to wilt against. Kris found me. He was carrying my jacket. He held it out to me and I put it on. The fabric was freezing. He’d been looking for a while.
He sat next to me and stared across the water. Clumps of ice had started to form on the pond, little veins spreading across the top like spiderwebs, eating up the warmth.
“I love you,” he said. “I hope you know that.”
I watched a duck jump into the water. The ice—too fragile still—cracked and broke. Water rippled from beneath the bird’s feathers and spread out across the pond.
My breath curled white and smoky out of me. “If we do this—if we get married, what happens when we fall in love?”
“Tell you what. If Nisha ever decides she wants to marry you, I’ll give you a divorce.”
“Nisha and I haven’t talked in four years,” I said.
Kris laughed. “Then you don’t have to worry about that particular scenario.”
I watched the bird on the pond, the ice breaking. We could still win.
After we get back from the beach, Nisha stops answering my calls. During the day, she texts me that she needs space away from me to get her head around this marriage. At night, she wants me to say “I love you” and describe in detail how I’d fuck her. When I ask to meet up, she refuses. I turn off my phone and stop answering her texts.
•••
Grandmother sits outside every weekday for hours at a time, bundled in more and more clothing as the temperature drops. She doesn’t risk it when Amma’s at home during the weekends. And even though she never comes out and asks me, I know I’m supposed to keep quiet about what she does all day.
By the end of October, the temperature is too cold to sit outside for more than an hour. I try to coax Grandmother back inside, and some days she surrenders. Some days the smell of betel leaves and the sound of her favorite shows are enough. But other days she cups her hand behind her ear and tells me to listen to the baby.
“It’s your baby, Vidya.”
“I’m Lucky.”
“It’s your baby.”
So I bring her more blankets, start making her wear her winter coat. She comes inside right before Amma gets home. Her skin is icy to the touch, the wrinkles still holding pockets of cold between the tissue.
•••
One day it rains. When I come downstairs to drink my coffee, Grandmother is sitting outside without her winter coat. Everything is soaked. Rain blurs her face.
I run outside.
“Come in the house,” I say.
Thunder grumbles overhead. The rain is cold, little pinpricks to my skin. It rattles on the tin gutters. Rain pelts Grandmother’s skin. She shivers. Her cotton housecoat clings to her legs.
I shake her arm. “Come on, Ammamma.” I squint to see through the rain, and try again in the best Tamil I can muster. “Vaango, vaango.”
She gets up slowly. Each step takes a thousand raindrops. I pull her inside and slam the door shut. The rain has soaked into the carpet inside.
I run and grab towels from the bathroom and when I get back she’s still standing where I left her, soaked and shivering. I throw a towel on her head and mop up as much of the water as I can.
“You need to change,” I say.
Her eyes look through me.
“Neenga uduppa maathonum,” I try again, in Tamil.
She moves toward the bathroom. I get a sweater and thick socks from her room and bring them down. When she takes too long to change, I pound my knuckles on the bathroom door. She comes out dry, her eyes clear. I wrap a blanket around her over the sweater.
“You need to change your clothes, Vidya,” she says. “You’ll get sick.”
I put on dry clothes and clean up most of the water from the carpet. Grandmother sits in the kitchen while I make tea. My hands won’t stay steady. I watch to make sure she drinks it all. My tea tastes like rain on metal and musty carpet. I already know I won’t tell Amma about this.
•••
After Nisha’s engagement, Amma cries often about wanting me to have a baby, to fit in for once in my life and be a good brown daughter. She cries when I’m helping her cook, when we drink tea, before she goes to sleep. I hear her wheezing, see the way she trembles with the effort.
One day she stays home from work and claims her heart is hurting.
“I think it’s a heart attack,” she says. She’s burrowed in her blankets, only her head visible in the enormous folds of her comforter.
“Your heart is fine,” I say.
“It feels like stabbing. My daughter is giving me a heart attack.” She rubs at her chest and cries.
I sit there, trying to feel my own pulse, my blood, some primordial pull to comfort my mother, a tear, something, anything to reassure me that I’m still alive. Instead all I feel is numbness reaching to the tips of my fingers, something cold and hard in me pushing back against her tears.
“I miss Kris,” I tell her. “I think I should go and visit him.”
What I really miss is the way Nisha’s skin smells and how she smiles when I kiss her. She still won’t answer my calls. She still refuses to meet up.
I summon up e
very last dreg of compassion I have left. I rub Amma’s chest for her and get her some aspirin. Maybe that softness does it, because she smiles for the first time in days. “Go home and spend some time with your husband,” she says.
•••
Kris isn’t home when my Camry finally pulls into our driveway. I’m exhausted and dizzy at the sight of our lavender front door and black shutters. I drag my duffel bag into the house, get myself a beer, and sink into our couch to look out the window at the street. The living room is just as I left it—messy, Kris’s computer thrown onto a couch seat, weeks-old bowls of ramen in muddy water, fat fruit flies meandering through the air, the sharp, sweet smell of rotting garbage. After the immaculate cleanliness of Amma’s house, our living room makes me queasy. I drink my beer and watch the cars that march by our house. The numbness sits inside me, makes time slip by while I stand still.
When Kris comes home I’m still sitting there, looking out the window and watching the sunset. Not even the colors can get inside my skin.
He flips on the light switch. “How many beers have you had?” He toes off his black leather loafers and loosens his tie.
I point at the couch armrest where I’ve stacked my beer caps into a tower. Who’s counting? The slush in my brain feels good after Amma’s house, the sluggishness against that stonehearted feeling, the engagement, Nisha, Tasha, Amma, all of them pulling me in different directions.
“Jesus.” Kris counts out the beer caps one by one. “Nine.” He takes them into the kitchen, and comes back with a glass of gin and tonic. He unbuttons his collar and takes off his belt. “So are we getting drunk or what?”
“I suppose. Everything’s fucked up.” I can feel the steam leaving me, my legs itching to get up and move.
He sits across from me and drinks.
“Amma wants us to have a baby. Can you believe that? Us, with a baby. God.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
I put my beer bottle on the coffee table. The mud in my mind wobbles. “Are you serious? You know what’s wrong with that.” The walls look squishy. I could pinch them with my fingers.
He stares at his glass, collecting the condensation on its side with a finger. “I think a baby sounds nice.” He flicks droplets of water at me.