“What am I supposed to take pictures of?” he asks, looking around. “The room?”
“If you want. Or we could walk around the halls, see if there’s anything interesting.” I see his hesitation, his lack of interest. “Dr. Ford thought it might help you.”
“I thought that’s what this was for,” he says, pointing to the wrap around his head with electrical probes attached, meant to study his brainwaves through the night. He hands me back the camera.
“This is meant to help in a different way,” I say, holding the camera like a lifeline. “Want to try? It might make you feel better. Maybe get you back to playing sooner rather than later,” I tease, trying to find common ground with him.
He shakes his head slightly, no. “Want to know the truth?” he asks. Before I can answer he says, “I hate soccer.”
David is not on the main floors. I ask the nurse to page him, waiting while she does. “He said he could meet you here or in his office.” She waits, with David on the other side of the phone line waiting for my response.
“Tell him I’ll be there in five.” I drop the camera in a safe spot behind the desk. I fight the anxiety that seeps through me, ordering myself to get it together. I take the empty elevator to his floor and walk quickly down the hall to his office. From a distance, I can see his door ajar, awaiting my arrival.
He’s behind his desk, reviewing a file. When he hears me, he glances up. In the second before he shutters his emotions, I see want and need in his eyes. My breath catches and I look away, staring through the window at the darkness that has fallen outside.
“He wasn’t interested in taking pictures,” I say. “He took a photography class in high school. Wasn’t his favorite.”
“I see.” He stands, coming around to the other side of the desk. “Thank you for trying.”
“What’s his prognosis?” I can’t help myself.
“We’re not sure yet.” He rubs his hand across his face. “A neurologist is scheduled to see him first thing in the morning.” He leans his weight against the desk. “We’ll have more information then.” He shakes his head, as if fearing he will fail the young man. “He’s hurting. Confused. I was hoping taking some pictures might cheer him up.”
I yearn to reach out, to offer comfort when I have none to give. What could I possibly offer another human being? “He doesn’t want to play soccer,” I reveal. David looks up in shock.
“He told you that?”
I nod. “He plays it for his dad.”
David shakes his head, puzzled. “It was all his father could focus on when they brought Will in. He must have asked me at least five times whether his son will be able to play soccer again.”
“Sometimes parents are the last ones to know what their child wants,” I murmur, not considering my words before saying them.
“Is that what happened with you?” he asks, his hands clenched around the edge of the desk. “Your dad didn’t know what you wanted?”
I want to walk—no, I want to run. To hide, to be safe. But Trisha’s revelation has left me rawer than I was, empty in a way I couldn’t imagine. When your life is a dark hole, you believe everything passes through without having an effect or making an impression. The fact that my sister’s heartache makes me want to lie down and weep forces me to realize I am not as hollow as I believed. Maybe my father hasn’t stolen everything.
Everyone must reach a point in their life when they stop running. When it is easier to stand still than to keep being chased, even if the person chasing you is only in your head. When a fire burns, it rages fast and furious, devouring everything in its wake. But when the job is done, when all that is left is smoke and ashes, you wonder what has become of the fury that propelled the flames to destroy everything they touched.
I assumed I would never stop running, never stop being one step ahead of the demons that are in constant pursuit. I accepted that I would do that for a lifetime, and I was sure that if I ever stopped I would be devoured by the memories, be haunted by those still living. But now, standing before David, it has become harder to run than ever before.
“He didn’t care,” I admit, tired of my escape. Our status quo has created so much loss, I wonder what it would be like to do it differently. To try, to trust. “He . . .” I struggle for the words, search in vain for a way to describe what he did to me, to my family. “He beat us,” I finally say—the truth, the words harder than I thought. “All the time.” I wait for the pity, the disgust, all the things that come with someone knowing you are damaged. The acceptance that the scars that cover your body and soul have shriveled you to nothing but a fragment of what you once were.
“No.” His voice is broken, shocked. He shows pity but no disgust. I look up, sure I have missed it, but his eyes are filled with warmth. “I’m so sorry.” He comes toward me, but I take a step back. He watches me, not missing a beat. “There was no one who was able to stop him?”
“No one wanted to,” I whisper, confiding in him. “In the eyes of our community, he was perfect. In the eyes of my mother, he was right.” I have revealed too much to this stranger. Given too much of myself away.
“Sonya,” he starts, but I have to stop him. I can’t accept what he is offering. It is too much for someone like me, someone who is beneath him, beneath everyone, I am sure.
“I’m just like him,” I blurt out. It is the belief that I couldn’t even admit to Trisha. When she told me her fear, I kept silent about my own. But it is time to tell him, a voice urges me. Once he is aware of the truth, sees past the illusion to the reality, he will run from me. I won’t have to hide anymore.
“I don’t understand,” he says, stopping.
“I’m dark, evil like him.” I turn away, wrapping my arms around myself. The room has gone cold, quiet. My breath comes in gasps as I struggle to even it out. “I read stories, watch movies of women,” I pause, scared. What has not begun between us will be over forever once I tell him. The hope of more will become impossible. The burden of my secret has always been heavy before, but with David, the weight of it has become too much to bear. Only in revealing the truth can we be free of one another.
I imagine all his diplomas crashing down around us, his crystal accolades shattering, an earthquake tearing the room into two to give me an escape. But only silence echoes off the white walls. The only sound is him waiting for me to speak. “Of women being hurt.” I laugh to fill the silence. “It’s the only way I can find release.”
Images of the men I have slept with swarm before me, each one oblivious to what was happening in my head. “When I am making love,” I pause, my eyes shutting with shame, “the only way I can have an orgasm is by imagining a woman being broken.”
I will not cry. Not now. He has to see the malevolence, all the shades of black that I am. “It’s my definition of love.” My chest is heaving with dry sobs. “But if a man ever dared to touch me that way, if a man ever actually raised a hand to me, I know I would kill him where he stood.”
I don’t remember the first time my father hit me. They say you form your first memory when you are four. If that’s the case, then I imagine he started hitting me long before my brain knew to make an imprint. The recollection I do have is when I was barely six. Like a stream searching for a river to belong to, I was sure if I became beautiful like Trisha, I too would become favored, loved by the father who barely gave me any attention. I sneaked on one of my mother’s saris and wrapped it around myself as best I could. I powdered my face with talcum and used her red lipstick to highlight my mouth. A quick perusal in the mirror told me what my young brain needed—I had succeeded in becoming a swan.
I found him in the living room. “Look, Daddy,” I announced, twirling in all my glory. The sari proved too much for me to navigate; I tripped and fell onto him, sending his chai flying. He hit me over the head and then threw me across the room, the sari coming undone and floating over me like a sheet over a corpse. I lay there silent, in disbelief that I hadn’t succeeded when I was so su
re I would.
“So, you see,” I start, watching David watch me. It is time to say good-bye. “There is nothing for you to get to know. Nothing for you to miss. I’m not good enough, and I never will be.”
MARIN
The memory of her father’s words came to Marin while she was sleeping. “It is all a game,” he had said. Marin hadn’t understood until now how important those words were. How critical the lesson was. The game wasn’t over; it hadn’t even begun. The last play she had lost. Gia and Raj had made their move, and they stood as the victors. But Marin would not lose her daughter, not now, not ever. She sat in her office, contemplating the next step with more thought than she had ever given to any of her business dealings. The answer came to her just as she feared there might not be one. It was simple, really, but she realized most things were. It was emotions that made things difficult. As long as you kept those in check, everything else would fall into place.
“Raj?” Marin says, knocking softly on his office door. He glances up, his face shuttered from revealing too much. He has been working more from home, wanting to be near Gia in case she needs anything. “Do you have a minute?”
“Sure.” He motions her in but stays in his seat behind his desk. “What’s going on?”
“I wanted to talk about us.” Marin begins, not breaking eye contact.
“I was under the impression there wasn’t an us.”
He is not going to make it easy on her, but that is fine. She has fought larger battles and won. “Things have been difficult; we have gone through a lot with Gia.” Marin pauses, trying to find the right words. “We’ve been married a long time. I’m not ready to give up on that yet.”
Raj falls silent, watching her carefully. Marin sees the distrust but also the hurt, and she is surprised at the emotion. “What do you propose?”
“We try again. Go slow, but with the intention that our family remains intact.”
Raj finally stands, coming around to face her. After so many years of marriage, of having and raising a daughter together, they stand as strangers. “Why?”
“What do you mean?” Marin demands.
“Why now?” Raj asks. He shakes his head, knowing her better than she thought. “You didn’t like Gia’s decision, so now you rethink the strategy, right? Is this really what it comes down to?”
Marin contemplates denying his accusation, screaming at him for thinking she is capable of such callousness. But he has caught her off guard, his assessment too accurate to negate. “I can’t lose her, Raj,” Marin finally says, after a long pause during which they both seem to stand on a cliff that is crumbling. “She’s all I have.”
“You had me,” he says so quietly that Marin would have missed his words if the room weren’t deadly still. She doesn’t respond to him, doesn’t give his declaration its due. He appears to wait for something, but when seconds tick by and only silence continues to fill the room, he sighs. “What do you propose?”
“We keep living in the house, together.” They can return to the way they were, three souls coexisting under the same roof. “We help get her through this.”
“What about school?” They are negotiating now, a divorce settlement without the legalities. “That’s not something I will budge on.”
The control Marin was so sure she had starts to slip away again. Her instinct is to lash out, demand to know why Raj can’t see what the school means for Gia’s future. But the battle lines have been drawn, and Marin is on the wrong side of them. “Can we table the final decision for later?” Marin asks.
“I’ve contacted some private tutors,” Raj says, surprising Marin. “She can finish the school year out at home. I’ve also scheduled tours of the local schools. That way, Gia can have some options if she decides she wants to return to a school setting.”
“Her résumé may suffer with the homeschooling.” Marin tries to get him to understand. She can start to feel her dreams of Harvard or Yale slipping away. “She won’t have access to the types of activities she has now.”
“I’m not particularly concerned about her college right now. The priority is keeping her alive, and her wanting to stay that way.”
Marin wants to argue, but his face is set. Any argument will fall on deaf ears and may impede the delicate negotiations they are in. “Fine. Let’s agree to take it day by day. When she’s stabilized, let’s revisit the situation.”
TRISHA
I have lost count of how much time has passed since I learned the truth. Days blend into night. The only way I know the difference is when Sonya goes to sleep and awakens. She keeps a tight schedule, something else that is different from the girl I knew. As a child, she used to be the last one to wake up, as if facing life were too much to bear. At night, she was the last one to sleep, fearing what the night could bring. I used to mock her for such thoughts, believing it a sign of immaturity. Now I wonder if she wasn’t on to something, if she knew the true danger Papa represented, while I lived in my own world.
I try to put as many pieces together as possible. None of them fit with the image of the father I loved, the man I adored beyond reason. Last night, I had a dream that we were dancing on an empty dance floor. A father-daughter dance at my wedding. But soon the floor changed from white to red. When I looked down, my red sari—the traditional garb for a wedding—had changed to a white wedding gown, and the front was soaked with blood. I screamed, but he kept dancing, insisting everything was fine. I awoke with a start, sweat lining my body. Sonya stirred at my movement but continued to sleep.
I glanced around, noticing a chair shoved up against the door, locking us in. Or locking everyone else out, I realize. How long has Sonya needed to do that? How many other ways has she needed to protect herself from nameless fears? Shame fills me, knowing my sister has been suffering in indescribable ways while I lived in comfort. But it was all a sham, a smoke screen I created to hide what had happened to me.
I have never really lived, never fully allowed myself happiness. There’s so much about myself I have never understood. I love pickles but hate cucumbers. Pictures of nature fascinate me, but I can’t stand camping. Give me fresh tomatoes any day to munch on, but tomato sauce on pizza makes me gag. I love children, but the thought of having one scares the hell out of me. I have never bothered to dissect the reasons I am the way I am—just accepted myself with an openness others lack. But as thoughts of the assault start to filter through along with images of a baby, I begin to wonder how far the pain of my father’s act reaches. Curling into a fetal position, my hand cradling my stomach, I feel myself falling into another fitful sleep.
Mama brings me an early dinner of one my favorite meals—pani puri. Puffed balls of fried wheat are popped open at the top and filled with potatoes, lentils, mint chutney, and onions. Topping it off is yogurt and sweet brown chutney. It is one of the few indulgences I could never resist, eating fifteen to twenty puris in one sitting. She sets the plate down in the normal place—by my bed—and strokes a hand across my hair. Assuming I’m asleep, she starts to walk out when I call her name.
“You’re awake,” she says, sounding surprised.
“Yeah.” I sit up in bed, avoiding looking into the mirror that hangs nearby. “I have been for a few hours.”
She says nothing, coming to sit by me instead. I scoot over, making room. She fits easily alongside me, her body smaller than I remember. Her hand next to mine, I see the wrinkles and the frailty I have always glanced over before. “I have been worried, Beti,” she murmurs.
“I know.” I lay my head back against the headboard, feeling the knots in my hair. I ventured into the shower once or twice but found even that to be too exhausting. “I’m just . . .” I try to find the words, but instead a tear falls silently down. I wipe it away quickly only to have another follow suit. “It’s just hard.”
“Do you remember?” she asks.
“Just flashes, here and there.” I am thankful it’s not more but ashamed for being so. “I see myself walking down the ha
ll afterward. Trying to find someone. But I don’t remember the actual act, what he did to me.” I rub my head, hoping to jog my memory. “But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Somewhere in my mind there’s a memory of it.” I yearn to pull it out, like a rabbit from a hat, and make it disappear forever. “Part of me always knew the truth. I just couldn’t see it.” My voice cracks, terror lining every word. “What if I don’t get better? What if this”—I motion to myself and around me—“is all I am?”
“Did I ever tell you the old Hindu parable of the rope and the snake?” Mama asks, facing forward, not responding directly to my plea.
“No,” I say, unsure where she is leading. Mama rarely read stories to us as children. At first she said it was because she wasn’t fluent in English and didn’t want to impede our learning with her interpretation, but years later she admitted to me she had stopped believing in fairy tales; she just couldn’t remember when. “I don’t think you did.”
She pulls her knees up to her chest, almost like a child, and begins to recite the parable from memory. “There was once a man who worked a very long day. He had a hard life, this man. Worked from morning until night in the fields of India without a rest or break to eat. The sun would beat down on his head and, without a hat to shelter him, sweat would pour onto his forehead and down his neck. With little water to drink, it was fortunate he did not collapse from heat exhaustion.
“This man was not a happy man,” Mama continued. “He had no family or anyone to call his own.”
“No children?” I demand, lost in her story.
“No.” She pauses, allowing the information to sink in. “He walked home every day after work filled with despair. His life was worthless, he was sure. One day, his normal route was blocked by a mudslide. The monsoons had just come through, making the road impassable. He hesitated to take an alternate route, for it was said that path was filled with all forms of evil. From bandits to dark magic, the tall tales were plenty. But accepting his providence and whatever may follow, he took it, prepared to face the danger he was sure was coming.”
Trail of Broken Wings Page 29