by SJ Sindu
“As long as you carry it.”
“Come on, Lucky. A baby would be good for us. Think about it. We’d be a real family.” He reaches over and pushes a piece of hair off my forehead.
“Don’t touch me.”
He wants to take back the moment he came out to his mother, take back her locking him in his room, take back his imprisonment in his parents’ house for days before he snuck out and took a cab to the airport so he could fly back to the States.
“We’re fucked up.” The words warp around my tongue. “We’ve fucked this up. We can’t fuck up someone else.”
“We could make really good parents. Think about it.” He drains the last of his gin and tonic and vanishes up the stairs, glass in hand.
I want him to come back, to smile and laugh like we used to in college, in the first months of our marriage, that delight at having pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes.
•••
Kris shakes me awake. I’m still on the couch, still in my clothes, my duffel bag still sitting on the floor of the living room.
I sit up. Sunshine clangs behind my eyes. “Don’t let me do that again. I’m too damn old.”
He gives me a glass of water and I drain it.
“So.” He sits across from me in the same armchair as the night before. “About this baby.”
“The baby we’re not going to have? Yes, what about it?”
He rubs his forehead and stands up. He goes to the kitchen with my empty glass.
I shut my eyes, hoping my head will stop throbbing.
He comes back with a full glass and an envelope. Dirt encrusts its corners. “This came for you. I think it’s from Vidya.”
He lays the envelope down on the coffee table. A part of me doesn’t want to look at it. A ghost. An empty chair. I pick it up and there it is, her writing, the spikey t’s and long p’s that dig into the depths of the next line, addressed to an apartment we haven’t lived in for two years. Postmarked a week ago. I take it in my hand. I carefully run my finger underneath the flap, which comes away easily, the glue weakened with travel. Inside, a short letter written on thick white paper that’s embedded with what looks like seeds. The letter is wrapped around a glossy photo. Vidya stands next to a palm tree, squinting at the sun, dressed in a skirt and a T-shirt. On her hip, a little girl of maybe three, her hair curling in and out, wrestled into pigtails. The girl is darker than Vidya, her mouth thicker, her nose wider. She holds onto Vidya with one chubby hand, and reaches out to the camera with the other.
Lucky, I’m sorry I missed your wedding all those years ago. You know I had my reservations, but I’m happy for you. I hope he’s everything you wanted in a husband. I miss you. I’m doing great. Radha, my daughter, makes my life so happy. You, Grandmother and Amma are in my thoughts. Give my love. Vidya. P.S. You can plant the letter. It’ll grow wildflowers.
I flip the letter. Nothing on the other side.
Kris holds out the envelope. “There’s a return address. Kentucky.”
•••
For the next few days I’m on the Internet, trying to track down the address, match it with a phone number or email. I try Vidya’s old email address. She hasn’t answered any email I’ve sent in the last five years. No luck on a phone number. I check everything I can find, including preschools and kindergartens in the area to see if a little girl named Radha goes there. They turn me away. Confidentiality issues. I call Shyama but she hasn’t heard from Vidya, either. Even Vidya’s art site, the online portfolio where she used to post pictures of her sculptures, is gone, just as it had been right after she ran away.
I find nothing. She has made sure to leave emptiness behind.
•••
My sister Vidya left at night. She didn’t tell anyone she was going, but I remember her coming into my room right as I was falling asleep. I had just graduated college, and we were all busy planning my wedding to Kris.
The corner of my bed sagged. She put her fingers through my then-long hair, again and again, until I melted back into sleep, lulled by the rhythm of her nails on my scalp.
The day before she left, she and Amma got into a fight. They fought often, about everything from what Vidya wore—Amma said it was too revealing—to what she did in her free time—Amma had wanted her to volunteer at the hospital to help her get into med school, but Vidya wanted to teach an art class at the county jail. This fight was different. Amma had found a Valentine’s Day card addressed to Vidya from someone named Jamal.
Vidya and Amma faced each other in the kitchen. I hid myself behind the curve of the staircase and watched.
Amma waved the pink, glittery card above her head. “You’re not American. You’re not like these American girls. You can’t run around with boys at your age.” She crumpled the card in her fist and shook it. “What will people think?”
Vidya clenched her fingers at her sides. “I love Jamal.” She was wearing the cutoff shorts that Amma hated.
I sat down on the stairs and pushed my toes into the thick carpet.
“It won’t last, Vidya.” Amma’s voice softened and she sank into a chair. “Love covers up all the bad things, but then when it’s gone, the bad things will still be there.”
Vidya put her hands on Amma’s head. “Nothing bad will happen.”
“People like him don’t know the meaning of a good marriage.”
Vidya snatched her hands away like Amma had burned her. “People like him?”
“An Indian man will love you forever.”
“Like Appa did?”
Appa and Amma had told us they were splitting up on the day of Vidya’s graduation from college. The news was slipped in between congratulations and anxiety about medical school. Appa moved out of our house at the same time that Vidya moved back in to start a new job as a pharmaceutical lab tech for the summer. By fall, Appa had married Laila Aunty and bought a house in the rich part of Lexington.
The day after the fight, Vidya disappeared, no note. We woke up in the morning and she was gone. She had taken most of her clothes—billowy chiffon blouses and designer jeans with studded back pockets. The only things left in her suddenly empty closet were the churidars and sarees that Amma had bought for her, now lonely on their plastic hangers.
Amma sat in Vidya’s room for hours, spreading them out on the bed, running her fingers over and over them, tracing the patterns of flowers and peacocks embroidered on silk.
•••
“Maybe I should just go down to Kentucky.” I stand at the door to Kris’s bedroom. He lies on the bed in graying boxer briefs, partly covered by a fuzzy quilt. Thick curtains block out the morning sun. I walk the rest of the way into the room and lay down next to him.
“A baby boy is a joy to have. I should write that one down.” He taps his chin with a long finger. “How about, ‘The stork is on his way’?”
I try to punch him but he rolls away.
“Or ‘I hope you’ve caught up on sleep. Congrats.’”
“You’re an ass.” His room is filthy—clothes everywhere, shoes kicked off near the bed, two towels draped over the tufted leather headboard. “Was Justin staying over while I was gone?”
“I think you should go to Kentucky. I think you should find her, and bring her back.”
“Really?”
“No. If she wanted to be found, she would’ve said so. She would’ve given you a phone number, email address, something.”
“There was a return address.”
“Who knows if it’s real?”
I remember the empty whiteness of the letter. The note, really, the jagged letters contained in a rectangle in the middle of the page, surrounded by nothing. I could go pull it out from under my pillow where I stuffed it the night before, run my skin over the paper, see if I missed something.
“‘Life isn’t fair,’” Kris says. “‘G
et well soon.’ No, that’s shitty. And yes, Justin was staying over.”
“Where is he?”
“He left for California a week ago.”
“Are you okay with that?” I ask.
He flips over onto his back so we’re lying side by side. He stares up at the ceiling, and says with that high, fake voice he uses when he lies, “Of course I’m okay. I’m always okay.”
•••
Kris proposes a night out. He wants to leave at eight, which really means nine, because as per usual we don’t start getting ready until seven forty-five. I hated his chronic lateness for years, but I got used to it because I knew that if I didn’t, I would turn into Appa, pacing anxiously in the living room while Amma got ready and then fighting the whole way in the car. Too many fights.
Kris tries on outfits while I watch. I spread out on his bed in my boxers and feel the air on my skin for the first time in months.
“Are these pants too tight?” He turns around in front of his mirror to scrutinize his butt.
“Criminally.”
He takes a bow. “These are perfect. You should get ready, too.”
“I like being naked.” Amma has rules about clothing. Pajamas can’t be worn during the day. You can’t leave the house in jeans and T-shirts. Hair has to be combed. No cleavage. No shorts or skirts above the knee. Sports bras only when exercising. No men’s clothes.
“Get dressed,” Kris says.
“Pick something out for me.”
“How butch?”
“Futch.”
He disappears down the hallway and into my room. “Can you fit into those red jeans I bought you?”
“Too tight.”
“They’re supposed to be tight.”
“I’m a little fat right now.”
He comes back with jeans draped over his arm, holding a stack of shirts on hangers. He stops in the doorway. “You aren’t fat right now.”
He wrestles me into a short sleeved button-down shirt and tie and fusses with my hair.
The phone rings. Amma, with news that Grandmother is in the hospital again—this time with pneumonia. We leave immediately for Boston.
•••
Cars skid along the highway, their tires fogged by rain-slicked tar, their metal scuttling under rusty green bridges. The robotic voice of the GPS guides me. Even though I know the way, I always turn on the GPS like Amma taught me to. Her voice still lives in my head.
The rain. It was the rain. Grandmother got sick because of the rain.
When I park in the hospital lot, Kris reaches over and takes off my tie. He undoes the top button of my shirt and untucks the back. “Well, this is as feminine as it’s going to get. Just act extra girly.”
•••
The smell of antiseptic and sickness crawls under my skin. Death is everywhere in a hospital, as common and concentrated as the disinfected air. Grandmother floats among the tubes and machines, scratchy white sheets draped around her like a coat, the small room crammed with steady beeping.
I sit on the couch while Grandmother sleeps. Kris escapes to go buy coffee with Appa. Amma cries silently near a small window that faces the night’s darkness.
Grandmother lies motionless except for her raspy breathing and spasming eyelids. Her mouth hangs open.
Amma stares blankly out the window. “I should’ve brought her in earlier. She’s been coughing for a while.” She shudders, her voice almost muffled out by the beeping of machines.
“You couldn’t have seen this coming,” I say.
Amma looks me up and down. “Why are you dressed like a boy?” She doesn’t wait for me to answer, just turns back to the window.
Grandmother doesn’t have her dentures in and her mouth looks sunken like a cave. I sit and watch her while the scent of the hospital works its way into my clothes. Grandmother caught me with Nisha once when we were in middle school. Nisha and I had hidden in my room to play out a scene we’d read in a summer reading book for school. A ronin warrior slowly strips off his mistress’s kimono, revealing her part by part, each second written in detail. Grandmother’s face had hardened when she found us, her voice glass-like when she asked us what the hell we were doing.
I stare at Grandmother’s sleeping form because when I look away all I can see is the rain soaking into her dress, her face and hair dripping with it, her thin body shivering, rain pooling into the carpet, her eyes that day—the clarity as if the rain had washed away her dementia and for a moment she had herself back.
“It’s from sitting out in the cold,” Amma says. “Why did you let her sit out there in the cold?”
“It’s no one’s fault.”
“I told you not to let her.”
I stroke Grandmother’s hand. Her skin moves in many folds.
“She’s had a hard life.” Amma’s voice is softer now, sadder, choked up. “What will I do if she doesn’t—What will I do?”
Something gives. The hardness inside me budges, just for a moment. I walk over to Amma and put my hand on her shoulder.
•••
Grandmother doesn’t wake up until morning. Kris sleeps on one of the chairs with his head drooping to the side. Amma and Appa sit silently on the couch. I sit on Grandmother’s bed, rubbing her hand and nodding off every once in a while with my head in my hand.
Around sunrise, Grandmother’s hand twitches in mine. I snap my head up, but my eyes are heavy.
“Ammamma?”
Her eyes open and scan the ceiling. She looks through me, her eyes cloudy.
“Vidya.” Her lips quiver into a smile.
I nod. Amma comes and puts her hand on Grandmother’s forehead.
“I want to see Vidya’s baby.” Grandmother struggles to shake the words from her mouth. “I want to see Vidya’s baby.”
Amma is going to cry again. Appa comes to her side and rubs his hand up and down her arm.
•••
Kris and I drive home after Grandmother is released from the hospital and settled back home with Amma. Hollowness eats its way through me, my insides scooped out and left on the floor of Grandmother’s hospital room. Kris stays silent in the passenger seat and squints through the windshield without blinking. The sky hangs a uniform gray against the gold dead grass in the median. Rain rises like mist through the spindly trees that flank the highway. The car shifts beneath me, slides along, bouncing back and forth between the white dotted lines.
I’m skin stretched around bones, my chest cavernous, no heart, my head dizzy with its own emptiness. The sun sets and still the road winds, pitch black except for the lone headlights of my car. When we first moved away from the city, I was terrified of driving at night, of plunging through the thick blackness, hoping I would see the next turn in time. But now it’s easy, like walking through our house in the dark, using my fingers and the pressure around me to know the way.
I turn off the car in our driveway, unlock the house with my hollow fingers, walk up to my bedroom, and lie facedown on my bed. I don’t want to move for days. Grandmother wants to see Vidya, and her baby.
Kris sits down on the edge of the bed. “She’s going to be okay.”
I try to breathe out the concrete that’s filling me up.
“I’m sick of you being sick,” Kris says, so quietly that I can barely hear him. “Get well soon.”
I sit up and with all my strength, I push him down onto the bed and pin his arms above his head. I want to punch him, see the trickle of blood from his nose, feel my fist on his cheek. His skin would give way and then his muscles, ripping through, crack and shatter. I wrap one hand around his throat. I push my thumb and index finger into his arteries. He swallows. I push harder. His breathing slows. Grandmother wants to see Vidya. Vidya, the photo of her and her daughter, the little girl’s hands reaching for the camera. Grandmother’s housecoat soaked
with rain, her wheezing cough, her hospital blankets and the drip drip drip of saline. Would it be so bad? I like the softness of baby skin, the way their limbs squish and smell like milk. Kris and I would be good enough parents.
“Let’s have a baby,” I say.
Kris stares at me. I loosen the pressure on his neck. He coughs once, twice. “Let’s.”
I’ve pushed the sound out of him. I bend down and kiss him. We’ve kissed before, when we were drunk and it seemed like a funny thing to do. We know how to kiss each other. We fumble off our clothes. We know the moves. We’re skilled enough to make it work. I press my face into the pillow and try to pretend it’s not Kris fucking me. I’m too full too full, dirty with the movement, Kris grabbing my hip to make me stop and it drips down my legs I want it out of me out out bled dry. I run to the bathroom and throw myself into the shower.
I move back to Amma’s house to take care of Grandmother. Constant supervision, doctor’s orders. She sleeps most mornings. Around eleven I help her come down the stairs, holding her by the arm. I make her tea, help her to the folding chair, and watch Tamil game shows with her while I catch up on commission deadlines. I help her use the bathroom, get her water and juice when she asks.
After a few days, boredom settles inside me and makes my limbs twitch with the urge to move—dance, play rugby, anything. I think about calling Nisha, but my stomach knots with nausea when I pick up the phone. I want to visit the rugby house, but I don’t want to explain the rain, explain Grandmother. So instead I call the Mason Jar, and find out they have an open stage night where anyone can dance.
•••
I park outside the Mason Jar and wait. I’m early. The place is still dark inside the windows, though there are a couple of businessmen at the bar. My hands tremble on the steering wheel. I can’t make myself go in. I watch the door. For a long time it stays closed, but then a woman in a long skirt opens it and walks in. I’ve brought a couple of dancing outfits I wore for performances in college—not Bharatanatyam but Bollywood songs. I still remember the choreography from some of them. I can do this. I’m a dancer. I trained for years. I can do this.