by SJ Sindu
“Don’t play with your life, Lucky. You can’t be happy living like these Americans.”
She acknowledges the possibility, and rejects it. Can’t. I get up from the table.
“You’re going to destroy the reputation of this family,” she says.
I walk upstairs to my bedroom, and close the door on Amma’s voice.
Even after Sita proved her fidelity, questions remained in the minds of the people. Rama, now king, sent his pregnant wife into exile because he couldn’t stand the shame. She raised her kids alone in the woods, and when they were grown, she called upon the earth to swallow her up, and it did.
•••
Grandmother’s coughs scrape themselves out of her throat and fall around her. I bring her glasses and glasses of water during the day, place another by her bed at night, and wake up to go help her drink it. She stays in the folding chair all day, and when she gets tired of that, she stares out the sliding glass doors. Sometimes I take her to sit on the deck to work out the pain in her knees. She leans heavily on me when I help her walk, favors her left leg, and throws her coughs behind her.
The heat outside refuses to let up, even with November creeping over us. The sunlight taps against our skins when we go outside. Even the floorboards of the deck soak up the warmth and radiate it back into our feet like asphalt.
Grandmother cups her hand behind her ear and listens. I catch a small wail in the air, but as soon as I hear it, it’s gone, leaving only the sound of the air around us.
“The babies are dying.” She stretches out her neck like a turtle into the breeze. “I can’t hear them now.” Her eyes are clear, the blue eating more and more of the brown from the outside in. Tears drip out and down her cheeks. “The babies are dying, Vidya. They want to be born.”
I wipe away her tears with a kerchief. “There are no babies.”
“I hear them, Vidya. They’re dying.”
I try to tell Amma. “She’s getting worse,” I say.
Amma pulls on her thick suede gardening gloves over blue latex ones that she took from work.
“She’s getting worse,” I say again.
She tightens the Velcro straps on her gloves. “I’ll worry about Grandmother. You just worry about you. It’s what you’re good at.” She opens the sliding glass doors and walks out onto the porch.
Grandmother snores on her folding chair in the living room.
I follow Amma. The air swirls with a slight chill but the sun prickles on my shoulders. Amma walks down the steps to her garden, still going strong in the unseasonal late-fall heat. The grass slides wet and cold under my bare feet.
She crouches down and starts to pull out the weeds that have crept in. “Now you’re trying to convince me you care. How selfish.”
My shadow swallows her.
“All you care about is going out and drinking with your friends,” she says.
The sun is starting to singe through my pores. I think of numbness. I need to hold onto that feeling.
“What did I do to deserve daughters like this?” She stops weeding and sits back into the grass.
Imagine me without my weight. I’d just float off the earth, my bones growing hollow like a bird’s.
“I’ve tried to tell you, Lucky, but you don’t listen to anyone. You’re going to end up alone.”
She presses her face into her dirty gloves. I crouch down and try to pry her fingers away. She resists. She cries and pulls at her hair, heaving sobs down into her soiled gloves.
“Amma.” I try again to wrestle her hands away.
The gloves leave dirty streaks down her face. “You think it’s my fault that Vidya ran away?”
I open my mouth but the answer won’t come. It’s not your fault. Grandmother isn’t my fault. Blame solves nothing. But I can’t wrap my tongue around the lies.
She pushes me away and kneels down next to her garden. “It’s my fault, right? My fault. Everything’s my fault.” She pulls at a healthy pepper plant, rips it out, and tosses it into a pile of weeds. “I’m a terrible mother.” She pulls another plant hanging low with eggplants, and tosses it into the weeds. “I’m a terrible wife.” Pulls and pulls out one plant after another.
I grab her shoulders and try to push her back but she’s heavier and shakes me off. I fall backward into the grass.
She grabs the last onion plant and shakes it at me. “Go,” she says. Loose dirt falls from the exposed roots. “Get away from your terrible mother. It’s what you want, isn’t it?”
I scramble to my feet.
“Just go.” She hits her chest with her fists again and again. “Go.”
I should stay. I should stay. I turn and run, away from her, away from the bald garden and the pile of healthy dead plants.
I go to the rugby house and tell Tasha what happened. We sit and smoke on the deck. The wind is back to normal—cool but not yet cold—carrying with it red and yellow leaves, slowly stripping the trees in the neighborhood. Tasha nudges me and points toward a car that is parallel parking. A small blue Honda. Nisha’s car.
“Do you want me to go inside?” Tasha asks.
“No.” I put my hand on her knee. “Stay.”
We watch Nisha pull in behind a Smart Car and get out. She looks at us, but I can’t see her expression.
She walks up to the house. I take my hand from Tasha’s knee.
Nisha climbs up the creaky steps and stands in front of us. I stare at the peeling strips of paint on the wood floor.
She digs around in her purse and pushes something at me. A gold envelope that glitters in the sun. I take it slowly and open it. She holds out another one for Tasha.
The wedding invitation is cut in the shape of a woman’s facial profile. Milky skin and a long, aquiline nose, head draped in a red saree that opens to reveal text printed in gold. Tamil on one side, English on the other.
Tasha holds the card close to her face and looks at the Tamil script she can’t read.
“I want you to come,” Nisha says.
“I’ll come.”
She pulls out another invitation from her purse and drops it through the mail slot in the front door.
Tasha holds out the one Nisha gave her. “You can take this back.”
“You’re not coming?”
“I’m coming with Lucky. I’m her date.” Tasha shakes the invitation at Nisha.
Nisha’s face twitches and for a minute I think she’s going to cry. But then she takes the gold envelope and puts it carefully back into her purse, turns around and walks to her car. The wind blows her long hair into her face. I want to call her back, stop her, shake the sense into her.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Tasha says as Nisha drives away. “That I said I was your date, I mean.”
“You can’t make it any worse.”
She puts her hand on my knee and traces circles into my jeans. “The tournament’s getting close. We need a place to practice properly.”
I turn Nisha’s wedding invitation around and around in my hand. The glitter sheds onto my skin. I can’t scratch it off. I think of Nisha’s dark hair, splayed out on her bed, in the backseat of her car, on the mats of our old high school.
“I know of a place,” I say.
•••
That night I take Tasha, Jesse and two other girls to Winchester, through the side door of the high school that I know they keep unlocked for the theatre kids who practice late. We sneak through the long E wing, up to the gym, up again to the darkened wrestling room, navigating with the light from our phone screens.
The smell of sweat cooks in the heat of the room. We pull off our shoes and crawl on the mats to find each other in the dark. Jesse sets up a flashlight in the corner. She and another girl pull on their gloves and helmets and face off first while Tasha and I find seats against the wall.
“Are
you all right?” Tasha asks.
I press my back against the mat and slide down onto the floor. “Fine.”
Jesse and the girl circle each other.
Tasha’s fists beat a soft rhythm against the floor mat. “That was really fucked up what Nisha did. The wedding invite and everything. You can’t tell me you’re okay with all that.”
The smell from the mats is overpowering.
“I know it’s not my business. But she’s hurting you. I wish I could help.”
“I’m fine.” I scrape the mat with my knuckles.
Jesse blocks a kick and dodges a punch.
“She shouldn’t be stringing you along.”
“Shouldn’t you practice what you preach?”
“I don’t string people along.”
“You don’t commit to them, either.”
Jesse grabs the girl’s forearms and powers her to the ground. She knocks out Jesse’s knee with a kick. Jesse falls down heavily. She grabs the girl’s shoulders and pushes her flat to the floor.
“You’re a beast,” the girl says.
Jesse helps her stand and they both strip off their gloves. They shake hands.
Jesse comes over and offers me her gloves. I push my fingers into them and she straps me in. She takes her helmet off and secures it on my head. My short, prickly hair sticks out through the holes of the padded helmet.
Tasha gives me a fresh mouth guard and I put it in. She’s already padded and ready. We face each other. Tasha bounces back and forth. I keep my distance.
She feigns a punch. I step back. The mouth guard slides around. I bite down on the soft plastic.
She lunges at me again. I take another step back.
“Don’t let her corner you,” Jesse shouts from the side.
I’d have to take my eyes off of Tasha to check how much space I have behind me. Step to the side, circle around. But Tasha’s in the way. She comes closer. I keep my hands up to shield my face.
She comes close enough to make contact. I step back, feel the wall against my back foot. Nowhere to run.
“You have to go for it,” Jesse says. “Punch her.”
I try to visualize the energy flowing from my shoulders, try to twist with my waist but Tasha’s eyes glow in the dim light and I can’t do it.
“Punch me,” she says through her mouth guard. She steps in closer and aims a jab to the side of my face. The glove makes contact with my forearm.
I instinctively punch back. My glove lands on her shoulder.
A phone vibrates in the room. I feel it through the mats.
“It’s for you, Lucky. It’s your mom.”
Tasha aims a punch to my shoulder. I can’t dodge in time. My skin stings with the impact.
“How’s it feel?” she says.
The panic rises, that jitteriness in my fingers, my knees. Cornered.
“Just push through,” Jesse says. “Don’t close your eyes.”
Tasha lightly touches my glove with hers. “Push me back.”
I keep my eyes open. Step forward. Feign jabs. She steps into the middle of the room. We circle each other. The mats vibrate with a phone call.
“It’s your mom again.”
“Shouldn’t you get that?”
“No.” I can’t talk well around the mouth guard.
Tasha’s hands fall slightly from her face. “Maybe she wants to make up.”
I feign a punch. She puts her fists up. How much would a punch to the gut hurt? Don’t think too much. Act with the body. Trust the body. It knows how to survive.
I punch, twisting from the gut. For a split second I forget I’m punching another human being and it feels too easy until Tasha folds at the point of contact and sways toward me. I catch her, lift her upright. “I’m sorry.”
She coughs a laugh. The mats vibrate with Amma’s call.
“I can keep going.” She pulls herself up and punches me in the stomach.
Air rushes out of my lungs. Vertigo.
I punch back, blindly. My gloves make contact again and again.
Her hits twist me. My insides hum. My brain rings. I feel lighter with each hit.
Another punch and she sways toward me. I hold her. She puts her gloved hands on the sides of my head and presses her forehead to mine. Her hair is cold. Our noses slip against each other.
“Forget about Nisha,” she says.
The floor vibrates with Amma’s call. Four calls.
I close my eyes and think about the space between my face and Tasha’s.
Amma calls again. Five.
I step away from her. Jesse takes off my glove so I can call Amma.
Appa picks up the phone. “It’s Grandmother. You need to come home.”
•••
I don’t speak to Tasha as she drives me to the hospital. It’s an effort to even say goodbye, to thank her for driving.
I don’t speak to Appa or Laila Aunty when I find them in the waiting room. They don’t speak to me. Laila Aunty looks like she’s going to come hug me, but Appa holds her back by the hand.
I walk into a room decorated like a hotel, nothing like the sterile rooms she’s been in before. Grandmother lies under a mound of blankets and tubes. The light’s been turned down. There’s a window that shows the stars rising outside.
Amma sits in an armchair by the bed. I stand by her shoulder.
She strokes Grandmother’s hand with one finger and doesn’t look up. “She asked for you.”
Grandmother lies still, the blankets around her unmoving.
“She asked for you,” Amma says again. Her voice cracks.
Something drops in the very middle of my insides. Grandmother lies still and cold. The last bits of sunlight hang frozen in the air.
Silence eats through the house. Five ugly bruises form on my face and arms. Amma doesn’t notice. My face aches every time I move it, but inside I’m hollow. Inside, I can’t feel a thing.
Appa comes to see us almost every day, usually with a container or two of Laila Aunty’s curries. We sit around with tea, watching the news on TV. Democrats take the Senate. A divided nation reelects Obama.
Grandmother’s folded chair leans against the glass sliding doors that lead to the deck.
When I can’t take the silence, I go upstairs to Grandmother’s room and lie on her bed, finding patterns in the popcorn ceiling. Some of Vidya’s drawings are still taped to the walls of my old bedroom, each one carefully preserved in a plastic sheet protector and stuck on with tape. She drew me whatever I asked for, and I spent hours trying to copy her loose-wristed sketches. I send her one last email, telling her what happened.
The sheets smell like Grandmother’s skin, like the soap she liked to use. I hate the smell, too strong and flowery, but in the mornings I wash my face with it anyway. I can’t let it sit there, unused and softening in a plastic dish in the bathroom, its mint green blending in with the walls.
I could’ve gone home to Kris, could’ve never come to this house again. I could’ve walked away.
Vidya’s drawings watch me. She drew portraits of Amma, Shyama, me, Nisha. Appa’s portraits are missing, just empty spaces, holes in the crowded wall. Interspaced among us are pictures of Matt Damon at various ages and Wonder Woman in reimagined costumes that made sense. The small metal sculpture, her senior year art project, stands where it always did, a miniature of the orange metal outside of her apartment in Louisville.
•••
Amma and Appa plan the funeral. I want to help, to do something besides lie on Grandmother’s bed in the new November heat, but I can’t. I lie crushed into the blanket. I’m useless. Have I always been so useless?
Tasha wants to come and see me, but I tell her not to. I can’t upset Amma more. I step around her like a shadow. She sits in the living room and watches the election cover
age for hours on end. She goes to work even though she’s eligible for bereavement leave. I wish I had work to go to, something to structure my life. At night when she isn’t watching the news, Amma sits with her laptop and dentistry journals, her reading glasses on the tip of her nose. I sit with my laptop, trying to work on commissions I’ve neglected. I finish the pixie drawing, and the man who ordered it threatens not to pay unless I lighten the pixie’s skin. I lighten her skin. He pays me enough for a month’s mortgage on our Bridgeport house. I draw two portraits of couples for wedding invites, a battle scene of a young mage against a blurry medieval army, and a painting of John Watson kissing Sherlock on a bridge in the rain.
Amma and I don’t talk. What would we say? We sit with the lights off, our faces lit by blue screens, private and alone in our grief.
•••
People come by our house to pay their condolences. Laila Aunty has cooked everything. Rice and curries line up in aluminum trays on the dining table. People swirl around the house. I stay close to Kris and no one tries to talk to me. Amma sits on the couch and cries. Shyama and Laila Aunty sit beside her. I want to console her, to hold her as she cries, but I can’t make myself push into the grief circling around them.
•••
Grandmother looks more lifelike than before she died. Her face drips over whatever they’ve pumped through her to keep the flesh firm. Only around the edges of her fingernails can I see the gray striations of a decaying corpse.
Perfume wafts from the coffin, flowers and chemicals and something sweet. What sort of death smell is it trying to cover?
They dressed her in her favorite saree—dark green with embroidered white squares, a flower garland and a gold chain around her neck. There’s a sharpness to her white hair that I don’t understand. It’s so crisp now, like each strand reflects the light differently.
Amma sinks at the knees, grips the edges of the coffin for support. I hold her around the waist and prop her up. Shyama stands watching Grandmother’s feet. Amma’s sister-in-law couldn’t get a visa in time to come from Sri Lanka. It’s just the three of us—our small family even smaller in the viewing room.