Hunger of the Pine

by Teal Swan

  Omkar coaxed her to lean against him. He pulled at the silk of her bangs with his fingers. “I feel really guilty. I should have explained about my culture to you before. Indian parents have a hard time accepting that times have changed. No matter how old you are, they treat you like a child. In my culture, most marriages are arranged by our parents and it’s kind of a big deal to them to make sure that the girl comes from a certain caste and a certain family and a certain culture and a lot of other things.”

  “Well, what do you want to do?” Aria asked, not wanting to come between Omkar and the life to which he belonged.

  “I don’t know. For a long time, I thought I might actually prefer for my parents to choose who I should marry. But that just isn’t the path my life went on. Part of me thinks it might be destiny that my parents moved here, because I was meant to meet you. But it doesn’t really matter, because I am in love with you, so it doesn’t matter who my parents want me to marry or if it’s a good idea or not.”

  “But I don’t have a family. I know how bad it is to be without a family and you don’t. I don’t want to be the thing that ruins your relationship with your family. That would fuck up our relationship so much worse than you realize,” Aria argued.

  “Are you the one saying you won’t accept my family?” Omkar said. It was more of a statement than a question. “No … they are the ones that won’t accept you or me for that matter. You aren’t the one not accepting my family; they are the ones not accepting you, so they are the ones separating me from them, not you. You need to trust me. I won’t let anything ruin us.”

  Aria rested on the belvedere of his reassurance until it was time for him to go to class. After he kissed her forehead and she hurried across the courtyard between the buildings, Aria realized exactly where she was. She watched the students file past her and felt intensely out of place.

  Unlike her, these students had been sheltered. For them, the future was a risk they were excited for. College was rather like a low cliff over dark waters. A diving board off which they would jump into the real world, hoping they could swim. And of course they would. Their success was obvious to everyone but them; much like a baby taking its first steps with trepidation.

  Aria had never been given the luxury of wondering whether or not she could swim. She had never been given the choice to jump or not to. There was something in the weakness of their buffered lives that she both despised and envied. For the first time in months, she thought about the school she had dropped out of. Dropping out had proven to be a conflicting move. On the one hand, it made her both freer and therefore more empowered than her peers. It was like she had broken out of a prison that the rest of them had chosen to stay trapped in. On the other hand, she could clearly see now how everyone else was being funneled down the road of success. They were both supported and led. She was now forced to fend for herself in a world that she had not been ready for. Nothing about her future was a guarantee, least of all success. Aria’s graph was measured by an axis of pain.

  Sitting on the green, Aria felt bad about herself. Though the other students would see her as indistinguishable from themselves and probably mistake her for one of them, Aria could not forget the differences between herself and them. She felt classless. It was strange to her; given that she found school so embarrassingly cumbersome, dumb even, that seeing herself as a dropout would cause her to feel so bad about herself. She chased the feeling away by finding a bathroom and washing her face with cold water.

  The threat of failure chased the students like a specter toward their chosen majors. It made them run from classroom to classroom and study from dawn to dusk. Only the occasional student looked to have ended up there by accident, or to have been placed there because of the prestige belonging to their parents, who viewed their attendance there to be critical. Academic prestige lingered over the buildings, whose prime had come and gone. The words belonging to the books read and exams taken there for over a hundred years were written heavy on its chaptered stone.

  Aria leaned against that stone, waiting to see Omkar’s face again. Waiting for him to take her somewhere less pretentious, somewhere that wouldn’t serve as such a somber reminder of her shortcomings.

  CHAPTER 29

  Their love was in the color of conviction. It was in the weightless communion of their lips and nectared smiles. The light coming through the window of the motel room was blanched. It teased its way through the over-starched curtains to spill across their faces. They did not answer its call.

  Omkar had rented the room for a night. It was only natural for Aria to expect him to make love to her there. But to her surprise, Omkar had initiated nothing. Instead, when she stripped down to her underwear, he kept his clothes on for good measure and pulled her backward against the curve of his body, like a pearl against the bend of a clamshell. She could hear the excitement in his breathing; it was like a sea sliding when the ocean wants to claim something on shore for its own. But he would not allow his body to follow suit. They slept a fitful night, churned in the stimulation of being so near each other. And now, it was the morning.

  His fingers adored her. They slid across the silk of her, cherishing each freckle and pore. They traced the lifted pathways that had been carved into her arms by glass and steel. Omkar could not imagine the kind of pain that could drive her to such an action. All he could imagine was to rescue her from it. He carried the grief of her scars with the tribute of his fingertips and the kisses that he placed on them. He was not trying to arouse her with his touch. Instead, he was calming her. There was a poem in his touch and the verses of that poem spoke of solace.

  Aria knew what to do with herself when it came to sex, but not to this. Not to being loved by a man. Aria was conscious that she loved the smell of him. She listened to those verses he spoke through his touch as if they were spoken in a foreign tongue. She was out of her element and out of her depth. When they spoke to each other, their words felt so shallow compared to the conversation of touch.

  “Did you sleep OK?” Omkar asked her. Aria nodded. “Did I crowd you?” he asked.

  “No,” Aria answered. She wanted to thank him. She wanted to tell him that spending the night next to him had made it the best night of her life. She wanted to tell him that he was the first straight man who had slept with her without “sleeping with” her. But those deeper words wouldn’t come. They would make her so vulnerable that some part of her would not let them out.

  By the time they sat up, the sunlight had turned from white to yellow. The city had already long been marching around them and the breakfast hour had ended. Omkar picked up his phone and started listening to the messages he had received over the course of the night. His parents had called him 23 times since the incident the day before and they had left 16 messages. At first, the messages were angry. Then they were worried. They were worried even before Omkar did not come home for the night. Now, in two of the messages that his father had left in the early morning, Omkar could hear his mother in the background crying and telling Neeraj what to say.

  Omkar set the phone down and looked at Aria. “I think I should go talk to them. They are really freaking out. They sound like they might be willing to at least hear me. I can pay for another night and you can stay here until I come back if you want.”

  Aria thought about asking to go with him, but decided against it. She didn’t want to feel the pierce of whatever they might say about her. But sitting in an antiseptic motel room felt isolating. Some part of her was afraid that Omkar would come back through the door later that night, having been talked into following their advice, and tell her that he couldn’t see her anymore. She didn’t want to sit there waiting all day under the vulture’s wing of that potential.

  “Um, actually, there’s a church up the street from the shop. Is it OK if you drop me off there? I have a couple people I might want to see there,” she said.

  “Yeah, OK, sure,” Omkar said, happy that in his absence he would not have to carry the guilt of her
waiting on him. “Are we supposed to take these to the front desk?” he asked, holding up the little plastic cards that served as room entry keys.

  “I don’t know,” Aria said, giggling at their naivety.

  “I’d better just take them to the front just in case. I’ll be back in just a minute. When I knock, let me back in, OK?” Omkar said, tying the laces of his shoes before exiting the room to return them.

  When he returned, Aria heard the polite rapping of his knuckles against the doorframe. She started laughing to herself instead of getting up to open the door. Having decided at the last minute to pull a little prank on him, she acted like she didn’t hear him. When he tried to peek inside the window, Aria hid behind the door. She tolerated a few of his attempts to yell at her that he was there and to open the door before she opened it. Upon seeing her laugh so hard, Omkar understood it was a joke that she had played on him and began to chase her around the room. Eventually, after making him chase her up onto the beds, she intentionally gave up and let herself be caught by him. The humor of the moment was dissolved by the way his breath capsized against her and the way his devotion hunted her. Because of his height, he loomed over her. Though nervous, Omkar leaned down and pulled her upwards by the small of her back. The features of their private passion were formed of fondness. He claimed her lips as his and sipped the rosy pigment from them. Their youth was bent by that kiss. It was bent by the fever of loving each other so much they could break.

  When Aria opened the door of his car to step out onto the lawn of the church, Omkar grabbed her hand and kissed it. It was something he had seen in the movies and had always wanted to do. They both smiled, aware of the unoriginal (though endearing) nature of the gesture.

  Aria didn’t watch him drive away. Instead, she walked toward the church steps with a mind to wait there for the lunch service to start. Only a few people were milling around the building, like actors in a play before the stage was set. She had been sitting there for only a few minutes when a man came bounding toward her, holding up one side of the belt of his oversized jeans. Aria had seen the man here before, talking to Imani while he ate his lunch.

  “Hey, what a do?” the man said, with his deep voice. “You know when this place opens up?” He pointed loosely toward the church.

  “I think it’s open now,” Aria said.

  “Nah, I mean when they start servin’ food,” he said.

  “Not exactly, what time is it now?” Aria asked.

  The man looked down at the face of his knock-off gold watch and replied, “It 10:55.”

  “Well, I imagine they might start at like 11:30 or 12, but it’s just a guess,” Aria said.

  The man looked around, as if dissuaded by her answer. “Min’ if I sit here until it open?” The man sat down beside her roughly, before Aria could start indicating no.

  “So what’s your name?” he asked, folding his arms across his raised knees.

  “Aria,” she responded.

  The man extended his very large hand toward her. “Good to meetcha Aria, my name’s Kendrik.”

  Aria stared at the purple of his palms when she shook his hand. “Are you friends with Imani?” she asked.

  “Ah yeah. I known Imani for a long, long time. She’s a good woman, definitely a good woman.”

  “Do you have a job or why do you come eat here?” Aria asked.

  Kendrik laughed at the bluntness of her obvious insult. “You think just ’cause I’m black that I ain’t got a job?”

  Aria hadn’t even realized her question could be misinterpreted in that way. “No, shit, that’s not what I meant. I mean no one comes to eat at these kinds of places unless there’s some kind of story … Like, I don’t have a place to live or a job, for example.”

  “I could have a job. I’m just lyin’ low for a while. Plus I’m on probation.”

  “On probation for what?” Aria’s bluntness got the better of her again.

  Kendrik cracked a one-sided smile, amused by the lack of social sense inherent in her question. “Nothin’ big, just stealin’ some stuff. What about you, Little Miss Thing, shouldn’t you be in school or somethin’?” He asked the question as a friendly strike-back.

  “I already graduated,” Aria responded.

  Kendrik cocked one of his eyebrows in doubt. “OK, whatever you say.”

  She felt bad for lying to him, especially seeing as Kendrik seemed obviously the last person on earth who would ever turn her in.

  Kendrik’s phone rang in his pocket. When he answered it, he turned slightly away from Aria. “Baby, your brother ain’t gonna do shit cause he broke. Baby, you know nobody got it worse than he do … No, I gotta wait ’til I get off work … OK, love ya baby.”

  Aria tried to interpret his conversation through his short, one-sided replies. “That’s my girlfriend,” he said, putting the phone back into his pocket. “You got a boyfriend?”

  “Yeah, actually. We haven’t been together very long, but …”

  “You got nothin’ else to do but tell me about ’im,” Kendrik said, prying further.

  “Well, he’s Indian …” Aria began and was stopped.

  “Wait, you mean like an Indian Indian or like one of them cowboys and Indians types?” he asked.

  “Like an Indian Indian.”

  Her response made Kendrik erupt in laughter. “I did not see that comin’ … OK, so he’s an Indian Indian. What else?”

  “He’s in college, studying to be an engineer,” Aria replied.

  Again, Kendrik erupted in laughter. “Oh my God, you just pickin’ the low-hangin’ fruit, ain’tcha?”

  Though the humor of the stereotype of an Indian boy being in engineering school was not lost on Aria, she didn’t laugh with him.

  “Wait, wait, this here’s my woman.” Kendrik pulled his phone back out of his pocket. It took him a second to find a succession of pictures of his girlfriend in the gallery.

  Aria swiped through them. In almost every picture, her face was turned at a flirtatious three-quarter angle. Her hair was straightened and dyed purple-red. Her eyebrows had been drawn on to match the color of her hair, and big fake eyelashes framed a sassy look in her brown eyes.

  Kendrik watched Aria scan through the pictures proudly, waiting to hear a comment on her beauty, which he knew he could expect. Aria giggled when one of the pictures she clicked to was a topless one. Kendrik jumped to take the phone out of her hand. “You don’t needa see those. They be triple-X.” He paused for a minute, trying to figure out how to cut through the embarrassment. “She Brianna. She work at Foot Locker down in Crenshaw,” he announced.

  “She’s pretty. How did you guys meet?” Aria asked.

  “Her cousin be a friend o’ mine. Yeah, I met her at a kid’s birthday party. She was tryin’ to hit this piñata and was swingin’ the stick all around. It was pretty cute.” Nostalgia was heavy in his smile when he remembered it.

  “Are you from LA?” Aria asked him.

  “Yeah, I been here all my life.” Kendrik’s response trailed off when Imani caught his attention. “Hey, I gotta go say hi to Imani over there,” he said, standing up. Aria nodded. “Nice talkin’ to ya,” he said, again holding one side of his pants while he bounded across the lawn to Imani.

  Aria watched them hug and Kendrik proceed to help Imani set things up on one of the foldable picnic tables. For the most part he was talking and she was listening. Aria missed his company when he left. The conversation had served as a welcome distraction from her worry about what was happening between Omkar and his parents just a few streets away. She also liked him. The macho impression that he gave was like a gloss he didn’t want people to see past. Underneath it, he was friendly, and she could feel the gravity of his caring.

  Jarminder heard Omkar’s car pull up to the curb first. Neeraj had opened the store, but was not tending it. Instead, he had spent the morning failing to console his wife. Neither of them had slept the previous night. They had called everyone they knew, looking for Omkar. In he
r mind, Jarminder had run through every different version of them crying and running to hug each other if he came home, as she’d seen in all her favorite Bollywood movies. But in reality, when he showed up, the suffering she felt in his absence again turned into anger.

  She sat on the couch and folded her arms. “I don’t want to speak to him,” she said in Punjabi.

  Neeraj knew his wife beyond the wall she was presenting. He walked downstairs and opened the door for Omkar as he approached. “Hello Papa,” Omkar said, walking through the door.

  Neeraj contained his relief at seeing Omkar standing before him perfectly OK, masked by his stern demeanor. “Your mother is upstairs,” he said.

  Omkar walked up the stairs and saw her sitting on the couch. She defiantly turned away from him as punishment for what he had put them through. “Mama, I need to tell you something.” She didn’t answer.

  Neeraj sat down beside her and spoke for her. “What is it, Omkar? What is so important that you have to treat us in this way?”

  Although his mother showed no sign of yielding, Omkar began to speak. “You have always told me that a happy marriage is one where both partners want to be together. Otherwise, it feels like death. Mama, if I was with anyone but Aria, it would feel like death. I am not doing this to be funny. I am not doing this to disrespect you or Papa. I am doing this because I love her. I want to marry her some day.