by SJ Sindu
There’s the wind chime on the front door. Amma’s footsteps. The thunk of her putting her bag down. She says hello to Grandmother.
“Lucky?”
I walk down the stairs, pausing just before I come into view. The next stair feels like stepping off a cliff.
Amma stands at the bottom of the stairs, some mail in her hand. She looks up at me, and freezes. Her mouth hangs open. Her face gets hard, her eyes and lips press together, closer and closer until they’re just slits in her face.
“Amma?” My voice is dry and cracked.
She’s sinking, her knees giving out under her reaction. She slumps down on the first stair and claws at her chest. The mail drifts to the floor.
I leap down the staircase and kneel next to her. “Amma?” I try to turn her around by the shoulder so I can see her face but she resists.
She sucks in the air around us. Her fingers clutch at her chest. She stares at the carpet.
My fingers tingle with the numbness that threatens to spread. I’m too big for my skin. I did this for a reason. I want this.
I rub circles on her back, hoping to rub out that feeling in my fingers. Around and around, circles, both of us pitching with her crying, trembles and shakes until I can’t tell how long we’ve sat there. Then she sniffs, shrugs my hand off her shoulder, and goes up the stairs without saying a word.
The day I should get my period passes and the safety tampon I put in comes out clean. Every night that white cotton, revealing my panic slice by slice.
Still nothing, I text Kris.
Exciting! he texts back.
I want to tell Tasha, Nisha, someone. I don’t even want a baby. I keep my mouth shut.
Nisha talks and talks of running away, but only on the phone. I get text after text of plans: Toronto. That’s where we should go.
I’m so sick of this wedding. Let’s go soon?
I can’t wait to wake up next to you every day.
She never gives a date or time, just rising panic. When I see her, she’s full of the fake smiles she wore at her engagement. I drag around the cloak of her plans with me wherever I go. Amma asks me why I’m slouching more than normal. Tasha has to remind me constantly to keep form when I practice for the tournament. I turn corners with these heavy shoulders. Numbness spreads through me again, fills me like cement.
•••
Kris visits on the excuse that he misses me and wants to be with his wife. Amma’s delighted. She fawns over him, makes his favorite foods, and tries to prod him along on the path to fatherhood.
He arrives with a bouquet of yellow roses. Unorthodox for a brown man, but he loves to stand out. Amma smiles wide and puts them in water. She hasn’t smiled since I cut my hair.
Kris kneels down next to Grandmother in her folding chair. Grandmother turns her head from the afternoon news headlines. Kerala High Court says buildings of religious groups are taxable. Rogue cop dreams up unique rental business. Richie Ramsay leads at Indian Open.
Her bluing eyes twitch. “Lucky.” She reaches up and touches Kris’s hair.
“See?” Amma says. “She doesn’t even know the difference between you two anymore.” She turns to Kris. “I can’t believe you allowed her to cut her hair like this.”
Anger folds over inside me.
Kris has a fake smile of his own. “If it makes her happy.”
•••
Later, when Amma is busy cooking his favorite shrimp stir-fry, Kris drags me upstairs. “How goes it?” He gives me a look but I don’t know what that’s supposed to refer to. Nisha? Tasha? Grandmother?
I sit down on the bed and let him tower over me. My eyelids sag. I droop with the effort of it all. “Fuck if I know.”
“That bad?”
I let myself fall backward onto the bed. I hit the mattress with a thump, arms spread wide. My breath leaves me. I watch the slope of the ceiling.
“Your mother’s mad at you,” he says.
“I know.”
“Did you get your period?”
“Nope.”
“Can I help?”
“Please don’t.”
He sits down next to me on the bed. “We fucked this up, didn’t we?”
Little canyons run across the sloped ceiling and down the walls, cutting into the plaster.
“We should be happy,” he says. “We did this to be happy.”
“Maybe it just wasn’t in the stars for us.” I’m starting to sound like Amma. Rewriting your fate is tricky. We get to keep our families, but we lose something in return. The law of equivalent exchange.
•••
Amma takes me aside that evening while Kris works in the backyard, harvesting the last of the cabbage from Amma’s garden. The only time he gets his hands dirty is when he’s playing the good brown husband.
I watch him from the living room, his thin back bent over the patch of dirt, his spine visible through his striped polo, his long shadow mixing in with the others as the sun goes down.
“He’s a good man,” Amma says. She clears her throat. She does that every time she talks to Laila Aunty. She’s going to say something she doesn’t want to say. “How are you with money?” she asks.
I count the stripes on Kris’s polo. Seven. “Fine.”
“Grandmother’s hospital bills are getting out of hand. I—I need help with them.” She stares out the sliding glass doors, not meeting my eyes.
“Of course I’ll help.” For the first time there’s something I can give her. Money is power. A chance to turn the tables. I don’t think she even knows what she’s given me. I may have lost in my battle with fate, but I haven’t lost to Amma quite yet.
•••
Kris isn’t so sure. “We just don’t have that much lying around.” He keeps his voice low so that Amma, sleeping in the guest bedroom, won’t hear.
“We’ve been saving.” I lie down next to him in the bed and bump his shoulder with mine. “Amma needs this.”
“I’m not actually an engineer, you know. I don’t make nearly as much as your mother thinks I do. And you can barely contribute with your commissions.”
“I contribute.”
“This is our nest egg, Lucky. If we give it to her, we have nothing.”
“We have equity on the house. I’ll get a job. A real job.”
“You’ve tried. There are no jobs in this damn recession.”
I bend his index finger back until it cracks. “I’ll apply again.” Then his middle finger. Then his ring finger. “I’ll keep applying.” I crack his pinky.
He yanks his hand away.
“I’ll fucking work at McDonald’s if I have to,” I say.
“I’m not giving her the money.” He turns his head away from me and draws the blankets tighter around himself.
“You don’t make these decisions. I could apply for a divorce.”
“And be the divorced gay daughter? Your mom wouldn’t even want your money then.”
“And you’ll have to go back to India. How does that sound?”
“You wouldn’t.”
“She needs this money.” I tug on his arm until he turns around. “It’s my fault that Grandmother was in the hospital. We have to pay.”
His eyes follow me even when I look away. I get up and change into my boxers for bed. Amma’s decided to give us privacy, so I can at least sleep how I want to.
“Fine.” Kris stabs a finger at me. “But you get a job.”
•••
I visit Nisha on the weekends, and her parents take us to temple. I follow her around the shrines. Sometimes she stops so suddenly I run into her. She turns back coyly. She drags me to the bathroom. She tries to feed me lemon rice from her plate. I watch her parents carefully, just in case they notice. I’m wary of smiling too big or sitting too close.
One time when I go to her house, she’s alone. She giggles when she opens the door. “They’re gone.” She looks around behind me and pulls me inside. She has no makeup on and she’s still in her pajamas. “I told them I had my period.”
Women during their periods are considered unclean. In the past they weren’t allowed to cook or even enter the kitchen. Now we’re just not allowed to go to temple or pray. Progress, according to Amma.
Nisha pulls me by the hand up the curved staircase. The picture of her at her puberty ceremony looms over me as I climb, her face still full—baby-fat cheeks, too-big teeth and no lines. Menstruating women are unclean, but when a girl reaches menarche, we throw a party.
Inside Nisha’s bedroom, the menagerie of stuffed animals watches me. One side of her mouth curls up. She looks at the bed, then back at me. I like the depth of her face without makeup, the shadows and bumps that haven’t been hidden away. She pulls her shirt off, unbuckles her bra and walks toward me.
She takes my hands and puts them on her chest. I run my thumbs over her puckered nipples. She makes me sit on the bed and straddles my lap.
“It’s not really cheating if you’re not really married,” she says.
Her thighs press against my jeans. She puts her nipple in my mouth and rubs herself off on my leg. I have a tampon in, just in case. My period is three weeks late, but I’ve always been erratic when stressed. She won’t try to touch me. I stay clothed. I suck on her nipple and scratch down her back. She bites my neck. I reach down and finger her and let her ride me. I’m the one not really married, so I’m the one not really cheating. Her marriage will be real. I wonder if she’ll hold onto his biceps and arch against him and muffle her moans against his neck. He’ll have to learn how to pull her hair the way she likes. When she comes she bites so hard she draws blood.
Afterward, we lie on her bed—the same bed we bounced on as kids, the one where she painted my nails during sleepovers, where we pulled the covers up to our chins to tell each other ghost stories. I hold her and feel my eyes close with the weight that follows me. I’m not the one cheating, but I’m the one who feels the burden.
•••
A scream wakes us. Nisha’s mother. My arm’s numb from hours of Nisha’s sleeping form.
Nisha scrambles to cover herself with the blanket. She yanks it out from under me and I fall to the floor. My tailbone lands hard on the wood.
Nisha’s mother runs across the room, shrieking too loud for her petite, withering body. I only catch a few words. Tamil falls too fast and shrill. Nisha stands mummified in her blankets. She’s taller than her mother but seems tiny.
Nisha’s mother pulls back her arm, twists, and swings the slap from her shoulder. She doesn’t stop, her hand slamming across Nisha’s face, sharp crisp thuds that hang in the air.
I jump up and lunge forward, catch the hand that swings a wild pendulum. Her eyes bulge, her mouth edged with spittle.
She shoves me hard. I stagger. She shrieks, calls me something I don’t understand, waits with wide eyes and when I don’t move—
“Get out.”
I stumble into Nisha’s father at the top of the stairs. He pushes his thick glasses up and looks away, stares hard at the wall. I stomp fast down the stairs and out the door, running run run until I can’t see the house. My heart won’t slow. My hands shake with cold. I have no coat. I left my car.
I can’t go to Amma’s house. Nisha’s mother may have already called her. I walk to a bus stop and wait, shivering. In the gray sidewalk I see Nisha’s face, caught in the back and forth momentum of her mother’s hand. The bus pulls up and I ride it to the end of its route.
As the bus pulls into the T station, my phone rings. Amma.
“Hello?”
Silence on the line.
I get off the bus and walk down to the platform. “Hello? Amma?”
“What did you do, Lucky?”
“I didn’t—”
“Be quiet.”
That tone, like in college. Last time led to me being homeless, to Tim, to Kris, to my wedding. A hand swinging wildly across Nisha’s face.
“Nisha’s father called,” Amma says.
I’ve swallowed sand. I wait.
I’m not alone on the platform. An older man, no more than a mass of dirty clothes, slumps on the wall under an ad for Maui, his sleepy head nodding off near the bikini breast cups of the model. A punk kid sits on the bench next to me, his eyes scrunched up underneath thick glasses, his blue head bent over a Harry Potter book.
Amma’s waiting for my explanation. Cold air rushes from the tunnel.
“Amma. I didn’t do—”
“I told you to be quiet.” Her voice is strangled, a cold whisper that makes me want to drop the phone.
The whooshing rumble of the Orange Line fills the station.
“Amma, please.”
“Come home. Now.”
“But—”
“It’s your choice,” she says.
Amma has hung up, or I’ve lost the signal. The train doors open. I enter the empty car.
The Last Lie
By the time I step off the T in JP, I’m shaky. I want to giggle, roll on the floor and pound my fists on the linoleum of the station until my knuckles bleed. I walk through the park where we played rugby. A breeze carries smells of Chinese fish fry. I sit on the bench to think. I didn’t tell Tasha or Jesse that I was coming, didn’t ask if they minded. I swung myself from Nisha’s house and this is where I landed.
A father tries to teach his daughter to walk on the grass. The kid stumbles after a couple of steps and freezes on her hands and knees until the father stands her up again. Appa taught me how to walk by putting my feet on his and stepping with me. Bikers pedal by, their hippie cotton skirts lifted up by the wind of their own movement. I taught myself how to ride a bike.
Sitting still makes me cold. I walk to the rugby house. I don’t know if I can tell them. I don’t want their pity, don’t want to be told it gets better. My parents are the kind of people who talk politics but never mention gay marriage, who watch the news but change the channel at the mention of gayness. Shame, dishonor, embarrassment. Five hundred Sri Lankan Tamil families in the greater Boston area, and not one of them has a gay kid.
Tasha and Jesse are smoking on the deck when I get to the rugby house.
“Hey handsome.” Jesse waves. “You okay?”
I twist away, watch the sparse trees that line the sidewalk. Tasha holds out a cigarette and I take it, lighting it from the one in Tasha’s mouth.
By the third cigarette, I’m restless. My legs are asleep. I can’t get the sinking feeling out of my stomach, a physical pain every time I look at my phone and see that no one has called.
I suggest rugby, and Jesse calls up some people they know in the neighborhood. A half hour later we’re in the park, lining up for a scrum. I want to run and fight and fuck, anything to quiet the static in my head. We line up five on five. Jesse plays a hooker as always, built dense and strong to power through the scrum. I line up next to her as the loosehead prop, snake my hands into her shirt and ball them up in her sports bra for leverage. We push push push and the ball peeks from under our line.
As we play I gasp cold air. The stinging wakes me up. My legs hurt. My mouthguard tastes like toothpaste. When we ruck or fall down in tackles the other girls smell like dirt and grass. Their sweat coats my skin.
I get tackled to the ground three times, landing harder and harder on my back and tailbone. I still can’t tackle well. Legal tackle means cheek to cheek, the side of your face on her butt. It means knowing how to fall forward, how to lose balance on purpose, how to drive something home.
We play until it’s too dark, and for a moment, with the sun dipping under the trees and the leaves crunching under our steps, Tasha’s arm over my shoulder, and the clink of twelve-packs from the liquor
store, just for a moment I can forget.
•••
Amma doesn’t call. I keep waiting for the phone to ring, check it every five minutes like a tick, turn up the ringer when I go to bed, but still nothing.
I lie next to Tasha in the living room. My stomach twists and spirals, keeps me awake. My heart beats too fast to settle down for sleep. I feel Tasha next to me. We don’t touch but the air between us presses warm against me. A subtle shift when she turns under the sheets. The mattress dips in the middle. I want to let myself roll into her. My muscles tense up trying not to.
I wake up on my side, arms spilling over the edge of the bed. I’m sore. The backs of my knees ache and my tailbone is tender. Tasha is inches away.
Through the doorway to the kitchen, Jesse makes something on the stove. A girl I haven’t seen before, a petite brunette drowning in one of Jesse’s jerseys, rummages in the fridge. I get out of bed and join them.
“Want some eggs, you?” Jesse asks. “You need to bulk up. It’ll help your game.” She sprays some oil onto a skillet. Gray, thick smoke shoots out from the pan. She breaks five eggs into it. Crackling fills the kitchen.
The brunette watches me, frowning at the tips of her mouth. When I look at her, she looks away. She kisses Jesse. Nisha’s absence is lodged in between my lungs. There isn’t enough air. The exposed wood beams are siphoning oxygen into the October winds outside. I hold onto the doorframe.
“I’m going to take a walk,” I say.
Jesse flips over the mass of eggs. She calls after me as I leave. “Feel free to grab something in the fridge.”
I step out into the clear morning air. I should’ve worn a coat. I put my hands in my pockets and walk down the creaky steps to the sidewalk. The sky spreads a clear blue, the air crisp and unmoving. I walk toward the park. A young woman my age pushes a stroller. An old man in a motorized wheelchair holds a small poodle on his lap. Garden blooms, the last of the fall, bend toward me from the retaining walls that hold in people’s yards. I check my phone. No calls. What if Amma never calls me back? What if Nisha never talks to me again? I call Kris, but the phone rings and rings and goes to voice mail.