by Teal Swan
However, as Mark explained to her, beginning in the summer of 2006, the price of housing began to fall. The value of many homes dropped below the value of their remaining mortgage debt. Because of this negative equity, the owners were unable to sell them and move. By March of 2008, almost nine million Americans had either zero or negative equity in their homes. When interest rates rose, many homeowners were unable to make the higher payments and so, they defaulted on their loans. Foreclosures were everywhere. People lost their homes. They filed for bankruptcy. The number of houses for sale caused the price of homes to decrease even further. The homeowners who had sub-prime loans were forced to leave properties that were now worth less than they’d originally paid for them. The loans were worth more than the houses themselves. But the loan companies could not make money with those houses. Because the economic housing bubble had collapsed, the value of investments began to fall. The companies that had invested in sub-prime loans lost billions. Several begged for government bailouts. Some of the executives took those bailouts and tried to save themselves by giving themselves million-dollar bonuses. Other companies went entirely out of business. People went from being millionaires to being bankrupt. The financial losses and stock market decline of the 2008 financial crisis had been estimated to be just over 15 trillion dollars. Mark was one of the men who had ridden the wave of that economic bubble, only to be crushed by it.
When Mark was laid off, he was forced to drain all of the money from his retirement fund, taking on hefty tax penalties for withdrawing early. He racked up $10,000 in credit-card debt and large medical bills because without a job, he had no health insurance. His house, which he bought at the height of the bubble, lost its value. As a last-ditch effort to try to start from zero again, he let it go to foreclosure and claimed bankruptcy. The expensive contents of the storage unit that he had stuffed his life into when he lost the house were sold at auction. Now, only the sales pitch of his voice hinted at his previous life.
“It was nice talkin’ to you!” Mark said before he left, extending her the kind of handshake you would expect to get after a sales pitch instead of from a friend. He stood up and put on his secondhand blue suit jacket. On the street, every part of life was about survival. It was impossible to think about how to get ahead instead of how to keep your head above water. The people who said “don’t give a man a fish, teach him to fish” about the people who were low-income or homeless – those were the people who never knew what it was like to have all forces in life against their fishing. Still, with the knowledge Mark had, Aria wondered if the emotional crush of having gained everything only to lose it was what kept him from getting back on his feet again.
For whatever reason, Aria had enjoyed listening to him talk. She enjoyed the authority that life had not beaten from the sound of his voice. In his absence, she didn’t want to sit there any longer. She dropped her trash in one of the large blue bins and started to head out of the building when she saw Pedro and Consuelo sitting at a table. Pedro had noticed her before she had noticed him. He got up from the table to walk toward her. Consuelo stayed seated, but waved from a distance.
“Maybe you think we are stalking you, eh?” Pedro said as he approached, shaking her hand but pulling her into a half hug.
“Ahh, I’m so happy to see you again. Do you guys come here often? I’ve never been here before!”
Pedro, who always seemed to be on the edge of laughter, put his hands sheepishly in his pockets. “Not too often, pero when we come here, I think it’s nice. Come, come sit with us,” he said, ushering her over to the table.
He introduced her to the three other Mexican men sitting with them before taking a navel orange off of his plate and handing it to Aria. “Here, you will like. I think since the season is harvest, it taste pretty good.” He sat on the edge of his seat, watching Aria peel the rind away from the flesh of the orange, separate off a segment and bite into it.
Aria smiled and nodded her head. Pedro was right. It was a living example of the succulent potential that an orange could live up to. Having been a farmer all his life, he had developed an appreciation for produce. Pedro rejoiced in her enjoyment of it.
As they ate, Aria tried to understand what was being said between the men. Occasionally an English word she understood would be peppered into their Spanglish and Pedro tried his best to rope her into the conversation again and again. When the meal was over, having worked out that the house they were staying at was in the same direction as she would be walking, she accepted his invitation to walk with them instead of by herself.
The downpour had turned into a sprinkle. Aria felt safer walking with them through the roadsides of the city. When they arrived at Pedro and Consuelo’s place, Aria felt sad at the idea of parting ways with them. Pedro lifted himself from the lawn onto the first step of the house. The exterior of the tiny house had been painted aqua green with a pink trim. The windows were covered in what looked like cages, painted white. “You wanna come in?” Pedro asked.
She did want to go in, but as usual she was afraid to be an imposition. “Nah, that’s OK, I gotta catch a bus that won’t be running soon if I don’t go get it now,” Aria said.
Having grown used to the tendency whites had to turn down offers when they wanted to accept them, Pedro pressured her to accept again. “Ah, come on, Consuelo needs to practice his English,” he said, tipping his chin at his brother who was standing behind Aria as quiet as a statue.
“OK. You sure it’s not a problem?” Aria asked.
“No, no, I love it,” Pedro said, opening the door and stepping through it to announce their arrival.
At first, Aria thought that she had interrupted a party. Almost every inch of the house was crammed with men, women and children. When Pedro introduced her as his friend, they looked at her like he had brought her as the party entertainment. But it wasn’t a party. Most of them were relatives or friends living there, practically on top of one another. One of the older women got up to give her a seat and asked her if she was hungry. When she said no, the woman poured her a glass of orange Fanta soda. The men sat and stood around the couch, watching the players from Pumas and Veracruz scrimmage against the green of a soccer field. They cooled their nerves with cans of cheap Tecate beer. The women either watched the men or talked among themselves, cleaning around the muddle of people. The noise in the little house was deafening. The children ran around the house like bumblebees with nothing to pollinate. But there was a coziness to the chaos of it all.
The smell of the house was an assault on the senses, a masculine mix of sweat and paint and freshly cut grass on top of the smell of breaded chicken that had recently been fried. Despite her resistance to the intensity of it all, Aria loved the way the inhabitants seemed to suck up everyone around them into their festivities as if they had already been invited.
Pedro caught her staring at a bouquet of partially deflated balloons that had drifted into one corner of the room. “The kids like to play with them. Those are from my birthday. It was two days ago,” Pedro said. “What day is your birthday?”
Aria rolled her eyes, all too aware of the irony of his question. “Actually, it’s today!” she said.
Pedro put down his glass as if she had told him that the world as he knew it was about to change. “Hijole, no way, are you kidding me?” he said. Aria shook her head, embarrassed by his theatrics. “Hey, everyone … My friend’s birthday is today. Hoy es el cumpleaños de mi amiga, todos a cantarle.”
Like a conductor he raised his glass, and everyone in the room, including the children, stopped what they were doing to join the chorus. They sang to her in Spanish.
Estas son las mañanitas
Que cantaba el Rey David
Hoy por ser dia de tu santo
Te las cantamos a ti
Despierta mi bien despierta
Mira que ya amaneció
Ya los pajarillos cantan
La luna ya se metió.
When they were finished singing, ever
yone cheered. The same woman who had poured her a drink went over to the kitchen and rifled around. She pulled a used blue candle that was left over from Pedro’s birthday party from a drawer and a concha from a plastic bag covering a collection of various breads. Aria watched her light the candle on the stove and push it through the crust of the sweet bread, which she had put on its own little ceramic plate. Aria squirmed under the discomfort of being the center of attention. The woman placed the concha in front of her and said, “Make a wish.” In her head, Aria made the same wish as she had before. When she blew the candle out, again everyone cheered.
Aria let the sun disappear from the sky. She talked to Pedro and allowed him to translate what he could for the people who wanted to know more about her while she drank more soda than she should have. When she got up to make her exit for the night, a few of the children had already fallen asleep on the floor and on couches. She stepped over one of them, surprised that they could sleep through the noise still echoing through the house.
“No, hey … Antonio can take you wherever you want to go,” Pedro said, motioning to one of the younger men on a couch. He spoke briefly to the man in Spanish.
“Sure, sure, I can take you,” the man said. He grabbed his coat and hat from the arm of the couch and led the way out the door.
“Hey thanks, I had a really great time,” Aria said.
“Me too, hey thanks for coming. I hope to see you again real soon. Happy birthday!” Pedro said, hugging her tightly.
Aria walked across the room and hugged Consuelo, who blushed in response. “See you guys later, thanks,” she said to the other people in the house. Though she had not met each of them individually, they all smiled and waved warmly to her when she said goodbye.
Aria directed Antonio to the Super Sun Market, knowing that Omkar would be worried when she got back. The brakes of his little Ford truck squealed audibly at every stoplight. The man, who had been born in America, spoke perfect English. He kept the momentum of the conversation going for the whole drive and, at the end of it, asked her for her number. When she explained why she didn’t have one, he gave her his number instead. Aria thanked him for the ride and took the number, but knew that she would never use it because it was obvious that he was interested in her romantically.
Omkar had seen the man pull up to drop Aria off outside the store. He came outside partially to greet her and partially to challenge the other man with his presence. “Oh hey,” Aria said, hugging Omkar as if getting dropped off by another man was a usual occurrence.
“Who was that?” Omkar asked, trying to not let jealousy get the better of him.
“Oh, that’s just some guy that gave me a ride back here,” she said.
“What have you been doing all day?” Omkar asked.
“Just saying hi to people and finding places to eat, you know.” Aria tried to make her day sound as boring as possible, hoping that it would end his interrogation.
“Why don’t you just eat here?” Omkar asked.
“Well, I don’t want to be some huge burden here. Your mom won’t let me touch the kitchen and it makes me feel so weird when she cooks for me. Even my own mother never cooked for me. It makes me feel guilty.”
Aria played with the wave of hair over his forehead. Omkar’s good nature returned. “Don’t you know that Indian mothers love to cook for people? It’s this big secret they don’t want anybody to know about. All you have to do is to tell them that you love it and they will be like putty in your hand.”
Omkar picked her up and spun her once around. When he put her down, he looked toward the store to make sure his parents weren’t watching and kissed her softly on the lips.
CHAPTER 33
The sound of the shower towed Omkar from his sleep. Because of the strange hour, he knew that the person showering was Aria. The jealousy he’d felt at seeing the strange man drop her off the previous night had not gone away. Instead, it had festered over the course of the night. Seizing the opportunity of her room being empty, he pulled a shirt on over his boxers and ran downstairs into the storeroom. He rifled through the compartments of her backpack, finding nothing until his fingers grazed a piece of folded paper. He pulled out Luke’s letter and unfolded it.
It took him a moment to accept the words that were written on the paper. The cursive that had impressed Aria infuriated Omkar. He read the signature over and over again, etching the sound of the name into his soul like a vendetta. The letter Luke had written made him feel as if the life that he had imagined with Aria was falling apart before it even manifested. The idea of another man being with her made every inch of him recoil. He wondered if the man who had written the letter was the same one who had dropped her off last night. His mind tortured him with the potential that she might have said yes to the proposition the letter contained. Whatever feather the letter spoke of was not inside its folds. He was mauled by the idea of her having given it back to him.
When the sound of the shower upstairs stopped abruptly, he shoved the letter back into her backpack and zipped it. He ran back upstairs and lay in bed. Omkar listened to every sound that Aria was making in the bathroom with his heart furiously beating. The jealousy and betrayal he felt was like a fever sickening the marrow of his bones.
That day at school, Omkar could not concentrate. Every word his professors spoke was nothing more than a mediocre copy of another person’s genius. Though he felt like hours had passed, whenever he looked at the time, the minute hand had only traveled inches across the surface of the clock. He was no longer OK with Aria wandering around the city. He decided to tell her so just as soon as he saw her later that day. Having lost his appetite, instead of buying food at the cafeteria, he watched the other students in the outdoor common area. Catastrophe scenarios rose and twisted and fell like a molten swelling within him. It seemed to Omkar that everywhere he looked, all he noticed was other couples in love.
When his classes had finished, he spent a volatile 20 minutes fighting with himself to focus on one of his assignments at a table in the library before giving up. Determined to find Aria no matter where she had gone for the day, he let his feet carry him across the checkered marble floor like horses let out of the racing gate.
He had driven a three-mile-wide maze up and down the neighborhood trying to find her, and when he did, she was walking back toward the store. He parked the car and got out to open the passenger door for her.
Aria greeted him warmly at first, but quickly registered the somber mood he was displaying. “Is something wrong?” she asked, preparing herself for bad news. She scanned her memory to try to find some mistake she might have made that might have displeased Omkar’s parents but could find nothing.
“I just had a really crappy day at school,” he snapped.
“Well, why?” Aria asked, put off by the fact that a bad day would translate to him taking it out on her in this way.
“It doesn’t really matter. I just need to go home and take a shower,” he said.
Omkar parked the car directly in front of the store. He got out to open Aria’s door for her when Neeraj came bolting out. “Omkar, where is the key to the safe? I tried to take the cash in to the bank today and couldn’t find it.”
Omkar sighed with frustration. “Oh my God, this isn’t even the cherry on top of the cake. This is a rotten cherry on top of a bowl of ice cream that has melted,” he said out loud. Aria started laughing hysterically at his analogy. Omkar searched his pockets and scoured the crevices of the car, while Neeraj and Aria stood on the lawn watching him.
Eventually, Omkar stood up, defeated. “I must have left the keys back at school,” he said. “Look, Papa, I need you to watch the shop tonight. I have a project due and my study group is lazy so we’re way behind on it. I will find you the key – I just need you to watch the shop for the night.”
He stood there with bated breath, waiting for Neeraj to respond to his request. Neeraj folded one of his arms on top of his potbelly. He used the other one to accentuate his
scolding. “I’m really angry at the moment ya, I’m really angry at this Western culture because it is … it is totally gotten into your mind ya. You have become totally brainless lately. Totally brainless you have become. How do you expect to have a good job or a good life with this irresponsibility? It is totally rubbish, Omkar. Totally rubbish.”
Neeraj walked back into the store and Omkar, looking dejected, told Aria to come with him back to college. Even though she trusted Omkar to understand his own father better than she did, Aria was confused about how Neeraj’s response could have been taken as consent.
Omkar drove back to his college, withdrawn and in complete silence, hoping that the library where he’d been studying had not yet closed for the night. There was no other explanation than that he had dropped the keys there in his haste to leave the building.
“You stay here, I’ll only be a minute,” Omkar said, leaving the car keys in the ignition and the engine running. Aria waited until she was sure he wouldn’t turn back, then pulled the keys from the ignition switch and got out of the car to follow him. She followed him through the warren of hallways and through the door of the library without him noticing. She watched him ask a woman there if anyone had found a little collection of keys.
Aria waited for the woman to walk away before approaching Omkar. “What are you doing here? I said I was coming back to you there,” Omkar said in a whisper.
“No way, I’m not gonna sit there and take orders from you, especially when you won’t tell me what the fuck is going on with you. You’re acting totally fucked,” Aria barked.
Omkar tried to quiet her and looked around to make sure they weren’t disturbing anyone. Aria’s habit of swearing added an edge to her that he liked, but he still found it embarrassing when they were in public. “OK, we can talk once we’re back in the car.”