Marriage of a Thousand Lies

by SJ Sindu

  She presses her nose against my neck and cries. Her arms pull me closer, flush against herself, tighter, tighter until I want to push them away. Through the window, birds fly away in droves, finally leaving for winter.

  Nisha quiets, sniffs away her tears. Her arms slide off me.

  “They’ll be back soon.” She grabs tissues from a dressing table and presses them to the bottoms of her eyes. “Did you bring your car? Whose do we take?”

  “You have your car here?”

  She holds up her keys. “I drove.”

  “I thought they wouldn’t let you leave?”

  “They didn’t.”

  “And yet you drove here.”

  She puts the keys back on the dressing table.

  “Do you just need someone to do this with you?” I say. “Do you even care if it’s me?”

  She fiddles with the edge of her saree.

  “Jesus, Nisha. No one has a gun to your head.”

  She holds out her hands and takes a step toward me. “What will I have if I leave this behind?”

  The bride belongs to the man who—

  “Do you want to go or not?” I widen my stance.

  She looks at the floor and bites her teeth together. Walls of teeth. Keep in the things you want to say.

  The bride belongs—

  The room wavers. I walk toward the door.

  The wedding has probably started. Both sets of parents will give their children away. Nisha’s male cousin, stepping in for a brother, will guide Deepak to the flower-entombed altar. The priest will make a ring out of reeds and start the ceremony, his nasal chanting filling the room. When Deepak’s sister comes to guide her to the altar, Nisha will stand up, grab the chair for support. Maybe she’ll get used to the weight of the thali on her chest.

  I stand in front of the door. “Are you coming?” I ask.

  There’s a saying in Tamil that a thousand lies can make a marriage. Here’s the truth: I’m tired of lying.

  Nisha is quiet, wrapping the loose end of her saree around and around her arm. I go back to her, draw her to me. I go to kiss her but she pulls away.

  “We can have a life together,” I say. “A real one.”

  She shakes her head. “I can’t.”

  I try to catch her by the waist but she’s walking away, toward the back of the room.

  “I can’t,” she says. “I can’t. You should go.”

  I make sure to leave the door open behind me. I half expect her to follow, but she doesn’t.

  In the wedding hall, she’ll see Tasha sitting in the crowd as Deepak’s sister guides her by the arm to the altar, drums beating a tune to her walk. Deepak will turn to her with the thali in his hand. The drums will beat louder and louder toward frenzy as he ties the thali around her neck like a noose.

  I get back in the car. The windshield wipers push snow off the glass. I can’t fight anymore. I can’t save her. I said I would. It’s the last lie I want to tell.

  Amma is standing at the kitchen sink when I get home, watching the running faucet. Sound of pressurized water on steel. She startles when I touch her shoulder. I turn off the faucet and guide her to a chair.

  “I’m getting a divorce,” I say.

  She looks up at me, her eyes struggling with understanding. Her face is puffy and ugly from crying. Her mouth mimes the word “no.” No no no no no. She shakes her head.

  I feel drunk, light-headed. I need air.

  I open the sliding glass doors and walk out onto the deck. Grandmother’s folding chair is still there, baking in the sunshine. I can’t make myself sit on it, so I sit on the steps instead. Milky clouds stir over the sun, throwing shadows over fresh snow. Wind blows through my saree. Goosebumps, my feet curled with cold.

  A high wail rides on the air, pierces through the light, the fog in my head. Like a baby crying.

  I go back inside to where Amma sits. I touch her hand.

  “Amma, come outside.”

  She looks up at me like she doesn’t know who I am.

  “Amma.” I pull at her hand.

  I lead her out of the house and into the sunshine.

  “Listen.” I close the sliding glass doors behind us. The hushed static of the house dies. “There’s something crying.”

  Amma shivers, wraps her arms around herself. “I don’t hear anything.”

  I pull her closer to the edge of the deck where I was sitting. “Listen.”

  She closes her eyes. Waits.

  I hear it again, the high wail stretched thin.

  Her lips open. She looks at me, then at our crumbling fence. “It’s coming from somewhere.” She walks down the steps to the backyard, barefoot in the snow.

  I follow. We spread out, trying to follow the sound. Amma walks to the fence, drags her hand down one of the planks. I squat near her vegetable garden. She’s replanted it, and the lettuce needs to be harvested before the snow melts. We’ll be eating lettuce for weeks. The wail grows softer as I lean toward the garden. I head back toward the deck.

  Amma trails her hand across the floorboards. I get down onto my knees in the cold snow and crawl forward. The deck floats about two feet from the ground, the underside of it dark and edged with rocks. I inch closer. Amma stops me with a hand on my back. Her hand clenches in my blouse, then slowly eases open, finger by finger.

  I crawl under the deck toward the sound, using my phone to light the way. The smell of rot washes over me. My stomach turns. I pinch my nose and shine the phone screen in a wide arc.

  Pressed up against the very back of the deck, a clumpy mass. Something moves.

  I react without thinking. The phone slips out of my hand. I crawl back out and into the light.

  Amma’s face is still wet with tears, but she looks like she’s forgotten to cry. “What’s under there?”

  “Something moved.” My arms twitch. My legs want to run. “I dropped my phone.”

  She comes closer, reaches out and touches the bruise on my jaw, a mottled black starting to fade. “What happened to you?” Her eyebrows turn sad, and for a moment I think she’s going to cry again. But all she does is turn my face this way and that and study the skin.

  “Was it my fault?” she asks. “Did I make you like this?”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  She bends toward me, crumples at the waist and cries into the snow. “The community will hate you,” she says. “They’ll blame you for driving away a good man like Kris.”

  The snow is melting through my saree.

  “Amma, Kris likes men. And I don’t.”

  She shakes her head. “This isn’t supposed to be your story. Not my daughter.” She sounds more sad than angry.

  I rub her arms, hold her to keep her warm. She keeps crying, coughing her sobs into the snow.

  “This is what I want,” I say. “I still have you.”

  The wail floats over our heads again. I wipe her face with the end of my saree. We crawl together, over the rocks and dirt until blackness surrounds us like film and the smell pours into our throats. I grab my phone and shine the light toward the back. What I thought was a clumpy mass is a pile of kittens, their fur matted and falling off their skin, their faces starting to peel back and reveal the bone underneath. Dead.

  “Grandmother’s babies,” Amma says.

  That movement again. That wail. One kitten still alive, small and dark and starved but alive. I reach out, cup it in the palm of my hand.

  •••

  Amma and I wash the kitten in the sink, wrap it up in a blanket, and give it some milk in a saucer.

  “I’ll have to go to the store to buy cat food,” she says. “Cow’s milk is bad for them.” She dips her finger in the milk and lets the kitten lick it off.

  The kitten is already half-grown. Grandmother must have heard them when they
were first born.

  “You loved her,” Amma says after a pause. “Nisha.”

  “I do.”

  There’s pity in her eyes. “Maybe we should name this one Nisha,” she says, petting the kitten.

  “I wasn’t kidding,” I say. “I’m getting a divorce.”

  “But Nisha is married now.”

  “It’s not about Nisha.” I feel like Vidya, giving Amma one last chance before I become an empty chair. “I want to be me.”

  She stops stroking the kitten’s fur. “Can you be happy like this? What would your life look like?”

  Like an apartment in Cambridge, a job and a kitten and midnight walks with a girlfriend. Like dancing at Machine with the rugby girls. Like short hair. Like looking in the mirror and never worrying about a stranger looking back.

  Amma touches my bruise again, turns me toward the light. “We should put something on this.” She rummages in the cabinets and takes out the sesame oil, a traditional remedy for scrapes and bumps. She dips a piece of paper towel in the oil and dabs it on my jaw. “Don’t do this, Lucky,” she says.

  The kitten laps noisily at the milk. Amma covers my jaw in sesame oil, then cries. When I touch her arm, she says, “Leave me be. I’ve lost everyone.” She backs away and up the stairs.

  In every story there’s what is written for you, and then there’s what you write. I think of how to tell Kris. I think of Nisha in her wedding saree, walking up to her honeymoon suite in the hotel. I think of Grandmother sitting out on the deck, Vidya and her daughter collecting shells on the beach, Amma crying upstairs, mourning a story I never wanted to write. Can we escape fate? Can we change it?

  My wedding photo laughs at me from the wall. I take the frame off its nail, slip out the print, and take it outside to the garden. Cold wind blows from the north. More snow coming, but after, the trees will bud and Amma will plant the garden anew. I dig with my hands and bury the picture deep in the earth.

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to say a heartfelt thanks to:

  The friends who read the book in its early stages and gave me important feedback: Alex Vera, Amy Lamphere, Andy Lim, Bernice Olivas, Bethani Herring, Cole Papadopoulis, Daniel Nyikos, Evi Wusk, Jacquelyn Stolos, Jeff and Linda Bouvier, Jeffrey Schindler, Militza Jean-Felix, Mitchell Waters, Oliver Bendorf, Sammi Bray, Sarah Thomas-Dusing, Saretta Morgan, Susan Martens, and Todd Pernicek.

  My professors and mentors at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Daryl Farmer, whose creative writing class made me put my ass in the chair; Timothy Schaffert, who first helped me believe that I could be a writer; Amelia Montes, who answered every panicky email and who listened, cared, and helped me through some of my hardest times; Starla Stensaas, who pushed me to follow my passion and opened my eyes to the concept that life is change and growth; Gerry Shapiro, RIP, who gave me some of the best writing and life advice I’ve ever gotten; Jonis Agee, who saw a novel in me and helped me start writing it; Judith Slater, whose kindness and care helped me figure out what I was trying to say; and Joy Castro, who tirelessly made sure I knew the right people in the right places at the right times.

  Mark Winegardner, my major professor at Florida State University, and my professors Robert Olen Butler, Skip Horack, and Elizabeth Stuckey-French, for their support and advice about publication.

  The New York State Summer Writers Institute and the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices, where I wrote great chunks of this novel.

  The writers of Write Here Write Now, who accepted me when I was most broken and gave me a space to heal, with a special thank you to Toni Amato, who not only gave me meticulous feedback, but who also helped me believe that I’m capable of great things.

  The friends who read multiple drafts, who listened to me rant for hours about my characters, and who have often been my own personal cheerleading squad: Annie Bierman, Jennifer Dean, and Ev Evnen.

  Sam Majumder, for being my Kris. Scott Schneider for putting up with me and this project for as long as he could. And the writers and friends at Florida State University for celebrating art and weirdness with me these last few years, especially Jess Cohen, Heather Bailey, Tom Tooley, Colleen Mayo, Gabby Bellot, Karen Tucker, and Rita Mookerjee.

  My parents for giving me time and space to write, my brother Varun for being a walking anti-depressant, and Geoff Bouvier for being a wonderful muse, teammate, and life partner.

  My agent, Connor Goldsmith, for believing in me and in the book, even when I didn’t. My editor, Mark Doten, for seeing the book for the best that it could be and pushing me to get there. Rachel Kowal, Abby Koski, and all the folks at Soho Press for putting so much love and care into this book.

  Y’all are wonderful humans. Thank you, thank you, thank you.