by Teal Swan
Neeraj was taken aback, suddenly distrustful of her interest in his son. “He’s coming back tonight, but he is very busy with his schoolwork. Why do you want to know?” he said, hoping to deter her.
“No reason, never mind,” Aria said, wanting to get out from under the pressure of his distrust as fast as she possibly could. “Thanks again,” she added, walking backward a few steps and waving at him with a smile.
“You’re very welcome,” Neeraj answered her, wanting to leave her with a good impression before she left, despite his suspicion.
Aria walked briskly out the door and down the street. The bell on the door made a riot in response to her exit. She had already made up her mind to wait for Omkar to return the minute the man in the store had hinted that he would be back that night. Trying not to make herself conspicuous, she crossed the street and sat against the side of a building in an alleyway with a view of the store. She didn’t know how long she would have to wait, but she couldn’t let it deter her. So she let her mind wander, making sure to act nonchalant when anyone passed by and always keeping an eye on the store.
It was dinnertime in homes across the city. Aria could hear the buzz of the tail end of rush-hour traffic on a distant highway. She could feel people slowing down for the day and picking up last-minute items to bring home to eat. The sun still had half an hour left in the sky. Out of all the cars that had passed during the three hours or so that she had been waiting there, only one car interrupted its straight-line trajectory and pulled up to the curb just beyond the store. It was a compact car, an ash-gray Honda Fit. (Neeraj had bartered with a man at a used car lot to buy it for Omkar the year he’d been accepted to college.) Because of the sun’s reflection across the driver’s side window, Aria couldn’t see it was Omkar until he stepped out of the car, his hands full of books and papers that he had not bothered to put into a backpack.
Aria rushed across the street toward him, not wanting to give Omkar’s father time to notice that he had arrived. Omkar was oblivious to her until she was standing right next to him. He jumped back, startled, and almost dropped the books he was precariously balancing in his forearms. In a fluster, he put them on the roof of the car and turned to face her. His cheeks flushed and he could hardly breathe. “Um, are you into me?” Aria asked, cutting straight to the point.
Omkar took a deep breath and put his hand against his temple, his mind stuttering over what answers he could give her, and finding none.
“Well, I saw you leaving stuff for me and I wanna know why,” Aria said, pleading with him to answer.
Omkar was seared with embarrassment at having been caught. For a minute he teetered on the precipice of manhood before deciding to take charge of the whole situation and play it as cool as he could. It was his best shot at getting her to like him back.
“My name’s Omkar,” he said, redirecting the conversation and extending his hand for her to shake. Aria was confused by the sudden topic change. But she took his lead and placed her hand against his palm. Her hand inherited the warmth of his hand. Its strength carried her for the briefest of moments.
“I’m Aria,” she said.
Omkar loved the ladylike intonation of her name. For whatever reason, it reminded him of a bird’s wing. He realized he wouldn’t be able to avoid her questions, so he decided to confess. “You must be wondering what is this, what am I doing or whatever. But I just want to express this …
“Ever since I saw you, I couldn’t get you out of my mind. Don’t take me wrong. I never meant to chase you or stalk you or whatever. I’m not a creep or something. I’m not the guy who is going to do anything bad or wrong. I just think I must be in love with you or something. And I was curious about you. When I found out where you live, I just wanted to show you I love you. That’s why I left you those things, I swear.”
Having conceded so much, Omkar stood over her, waiting for her response. Part of him was relieved to no longer have to hold the pressure of keeping the feelings he had for her secret.
Aria couldn’t believe her ears. Despite suspecting that he might have feelings for her, she had expected him to tell some story about leaving the things because he felt sorry for her. She stood there as if she had been put on pause. Discomfort etched a half-smile across her lips. She didn’t know what to say.
Again, Omkar took charge of the ungainliness of their conversation. “Look, will you go on a date with me? I swear I’m not the guy who is going to do anything bad.”
“OK, yeah. I guess I’d like that,” Aria said. She had spoken without thinking, as if some unknown part within her had answered on her behalf.
Excitement coursed through his veins. “OK, well, can you go out tomorrow?”
Aria smiled at his urgency. “Yeah,” she said.
“Do you want to meet here or should I come pick you up?” Omkar asked, careful to maintain a respectful distance.
“Ah … I can meet you here. What time do you want me to be here?” she asked.
“How about five o’clock? Is that too early or …?” Omkar said, ready to adjust himself to any time she specified.
“Nah, five is good,” Aria said.
Omkar and Aria stood there on the pavement of the street, neither of them wanting to be the one to rupture their proximity. Eventually, Aria gained the strength to step out from beneath the reassurance of his shadow. “OK, I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” she said, shyly moving her body away from him while still looking him in the eye.
“OK, see you tomorrow, then,” he said, standing motionless and watching her start to walk down the street. “OK, five o’clock. Thank you!” he yelled out after her, suddenly feeling the need to remind her of the time they had agreed upon as if she had already forgotten.
Omkar turned and placed his arms and forehead against the cold steel of the top of his car. No longer trying to act collected because of her presence, he let out a sigh of relief.
When he opened the door to the store, carrying his heavy load of textbooks and papers, Neeraj criticized him for not using a backpack to carry his things, and Omkar realized his father hadn’t seen Aria and him talking. He had probably been too busy looking through the spreadsheets, which he insisted on printing out instead of reading on a computer.
Omkar went straight upstairs. Without taking his shoes off, he lay down on his carefully made bed and stared at the ceiling. His heartbeat hammered against the walls of his chest. With his mind, he traced the lines of her. He memorized the music of her voice. He knew the hours between now and five o’clock tomorrow would be the longest he had ever spent.
For the rest of the night, Aria wrangled with the part of herself that wanted to hope. She could hear her inner voice make a hundred and one excuses for why it wouldn’t work between them. She suffocated that excitement beneath a blanket of pessimism until the wrestling match she had been playing with herself was put to rest by Aston running up to her through the dark.
“Where’s my mommy?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Why don’t we go look for her?” Aria said, taking his hand to lead him toward the purple van.
Aria cupped her hands to look inside. The van was cluttered, but empty of life. So she led Aston over to Mike’s tent. But it too was deserted. “When did you see her last? Did she say anything to you about where you’re supposed to be?” Aria asked, kneeling down to face him at eye level.
Aston’s usual bullish demeanor had been reduced to the suddenly fragile mien of a child that had found himself abandoned. “Mommy put me to sleep in there and told me that when I woke up, I should go to Grampy’s,” he said, pointing first to the van and then to Mike’s vacant tent.
Aria felt the anger rise up inside her in response to her intuition about what was really going on. It was an all-too-predictable pattern. She didn’t care if it was knowing neglect or miscommunication on Ciarra’s part; it was damaging either way. Before confirming her suspicion that Aston had been left at the lot completely unattended, she walked with him, scanning the other
encampments for any sight of either Ciarra or Mike.
When their search turned up nothing, she brought Aston back to the Land Cruiser and did her best to distract him. It was a method she had learned from the many social workers she had seen working with young children at the group homes. She pulled one of the juice packets that Omkar had left for her from her backpack and watched him sip it in between his running commentary about cars. When Aston finished, she tried to wind his energy down by singing to him like she used to do to her younger siblings sometimes at the Johnsons’.
“Hush little baby, don’t say a word, Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird. And if that mockingbird won’t sing, Mama’s gonna buy you a diamond ring. And if that diamond ring turns to brass, Mama’s gonna buy you a looking-glass. And if that looking-glass gets broke, Mama’s gonna buy you a billy goat. And if that billy goat won’t pull, Mama’s gonna buy you a cart and bull. And if that cart and bull turn over, Mama’s gonna buy you a dog named Rover. And if that dog named Rover won’t bark, Mama’s gonna buy you a horse and cart. And if that horse and cart fall down, you’ll still be the sweetest little baby in town!”
Aston began to quiet under the soft stroking of her fingertips against his arm. “Again,” he begged when she had finished and she repeated the song again.
Rhythmic breathing eventually governed his little body. His innocence was painted in the dirt stains on his face. When Taylor came back for the night, Aria shushed him as he opened the door and explained what had happened in a whisper just quiet enough not to wake Aston up.
Before she fell asleep, she avoided the inclination to think about Omkar by staring down at Aston as he slept against her. Aria unexpectedly began to miss her younger siblings. She wondered what story they had been told or had told themselves about her disappearance. Aria felt more guilty for running out on them without explaining herself than she felt for anything. Her body remembered the weight of them leaning up against her, like Aston was doing now.
She took Aston’s limp hand in hers and thought to herself, “In this hand is the power to open or to close. And every moment is a crossroads. I hope he decides to open this hand instead of close it.” Aria could see how the bankruptcy of compassion that had plagued Aston’s life might make him choose to be hard and closed off to love and to life. After all, she was tempted to close off to it herself some days. But meeting Omkar had made her glad that she couldn’t find it in herself to do it.
Looking down at the baby fat still ornamenting Aston’s face, she wished that same failure upon him. Despite her youth, she had already found there to be more strength in softness after all.
CHAPTER 23
Cars flowed down the highway. The tall palm trees bordering the roads were coddled by the wind. Aria and Omkar were headed for the ocean. Omkar was trying his best to focus on his surroundings and the navigation system on his phone, which was in the habit of barking directions a second too late for him to follow them. It was difficult to focus through the elation of having Aria next to him.
Aria was reserved because she was embarrassed. The truth was that she had never seen the ocean. The closest she had ever come was visiting Lake Michigan as a child. And since coming to LA, she had been so forced to focus on survival day to day, on foot, that she had not had any opportunity to travel west to see the ocean. Of course, she had not admitted it to Omkar because it made her feel classless.
“Are you too cold?” Omkar asked, his hand on the dial of the air conditioner, ready to make an adjustment.
“Nah, I’m OK,” Aria said, growing uncomfortable with the quiet between them. “Wanna play a game?”
“Yeah – I mean, yes, what kind of game?” Omkar asked.
“OK, it’s a fun game that I used to love to play when I was at school, except I used to be the one guessing for other people. Basically, I’d sit in my desk and think about what thing people would be.”
“What do you mean?” Omkar asked
“You know the game where it’s like if I were a car, what kind of car would I be; or if I were an animal, like what animal would I be? It’s like that game. But we have to guess for each other,” Aria said.
“No, I’ve never played that particular game,” Omkar said, excited to give it a try.
“OK. I’ll start. If I were an animal, what would I be? You have to guess for me and I have to guess for you,” Aria said.
Omkar thought for a considerable amount of time with Aria staring him down, waiting for an answer. Eventually, a smile crossed his face. “You’d be a jungle cat.”
“Why would I be a jungle cat?” Aria asked, curious about his impressions of her.
“A … maybe because you look a bit like them. You remind me of a cat, but not like a small cat and not like a lion. You seem very independent and mysterious and majestic and a little bit wild,” he said, teasing her affectionately.
“OK,” she said, “let me think.” Aria paused for even longer than he did, scanning him for any resemblance he might have to any specific animal. “Ah, I got it,” she yelled. “A bush baby.”
“Oh my God, it’s because of my ears, isn’t it?” The embarrassment Omkar felt for the way his ears protruded was suddenly revived. Despite the dark shade of his skin, she could see the redness appear in his cheeks and neck.
“Maybe a little bit,” she said, holding up her fingers to demonstrate an inch to tease him before explaining her choice further. “Oh come on, they’re cute! And they are really smart but kind of silly too. Plus, they can see through the dark, I mean you saw through me!”
The sudden sentiment made him adore her even more. He had to remind himself to look at the road instead of at her face. They played the game back and forth, telling each other what fruit and vegetable and car and celebrity they thought each other would be, for as long as it took to reach a parking spot at the public beach.
When Aria got out of the car, the long roar of the ocean greeted her. Like a breath, its exhalation pushed water up onto the shore and its inhalation pulled it back again. Aria suddenly understood why people made such a fuss about the ocean. Its beauty was free from the bondage of the words that one could use to describe it. Little birds bounced around in the white foam at the edge of the waves, sticking their beaks like sewing needles deep into the sand.
She had not imagined the ocean would have a smell, but it did. At first she thought it might be the smell of fish, but that wasn’t quite right. It was something else, something she had never smelled before. Maybe some ancient breeze of kelp and salt mixed equally. She searched the curve of the entire horizon, unable to find any land, and felt the power and vastness of the water, which seemed to have a consciousness in and of itself. It seemed to be alive. It was a power that could not be shouldered by coral or bone.
The breeze kicking up off of the water played with her hair. It seemed to move in slow motion. The allure it afforded her beauty was not lost on Omkar, who stopped unfolding the blanket for the picnic site in order to stare at her.
Aria rolled up her pants and walked into the surf. The water was a shock. The cold of it caused a dull ache to rise from the soles of her feet past her ankles. She giggled to feel the way the sand was pulled out from under her by each wave, making her legs sink deeper and deeper. The Pacific did not feel like a friendly, loving ocean. It felt wild and impassioned in its depth.
A pelican interrupted her congress with it. She looked up to watch it looming through the air. It looked like a feathered dinosaur that had been granted amnesty from extinction. It was unlike anything she had experienced in all her life.
“Hey, come over here,” Omkar called to her, not wanting to abandon their belongings on a public beach in order to join her. Aria walked back from wet to dry sand and sat opposite him in front of the picnic items he had taken great care to display before her. He had already opened a few Tupperware containers. They were filled with some kind of homemade food that Aria couldn’t recognize. There were two sodas, two bottles of water, a few rustic-looking slabs of
bread wrapped in paper towel and a blue package of Oreos, waiting to be opened.
“Did you make this stuff?” Aria asked.
“Actually, my mother made these. But I can make them.” Omkar felt shy to admit it. The truth was, he had taken some of the food his mother had made for dinner and told her he had to attend a late-night study group. “If you don’t like them, we can go get something else somewhere.”
He handed her a slab of bread. Demonstrating what to do with it, he tore through the structure of the bread with his hands, removing a piece from it. He used it to spoon some of the curry from a Tupperware container into his mouth.
Aria copied him gingerly. When she placed it in her mouth, she was in disbelief. The tomato was creamed; its flavor was heavy in her throat. It was suffused with spices that contained all the memories of a foreign land within them, all the celebrations. It tasted like pure indulgence, like luxury and wealth on the tongue. “What is this?” she asked him.
“This is chapati,” he said, holding up the bread in his hand. “That’s tikka masala.” He pointed to what she had just eaten. “And this is tadka dal,” he added, indicating a yellow curry in another Tupperware container.
“Where is all this from?” Aria asked him. The emotional feel of the food had made her suddenly curious about his heritage.
“This is Punjab food. Which is part of India, close to Pakistan, where my family’s from. Do you like it? You can tell me if you don’t like it, it’s OK,” Omkar said.
“No, I love it. Can I try this one?” Aria asked, reaching toward the yellow stew.
“Yes,” he said, dipping his bread into it first to show her it was OK.