by Rahul Mehta
As soon as his father left, Kiran continued to do everything he could to avoid all Indians. Whether they were new immigrants (“fobs,” Kiran called them, “Fresh Off the Boat,” like the boy on his hall, like Kiran’s own father had been thirty years earlier) or second-generation Indian Americans (like Kiran himself), Kiran wanted nothing to do with any of them.
To someone else, someone like Kiran’s father, Kiran’s actions might have seemed harsh and exclusionary, evidence even of some internalized racism, and they might have been right, though that’s not how Kiran saw it. For him, his actions were self-preservationist, preemptive. The reason Kiran wanted nothing to do with these Indians was because he believed—and he believed this in the deepest place of his heart—that if they knew him, really knew him, they would want nothing to do with him.
Though it had only been two months, this was the longest Shanti—in eighteen years—had been apart from her son. She knew what it was to have a child go off to college, but with Kiran . . . well . . . it had been different. Preeti had left for college four years earlier, but in a way she had already been gone for years. A part of her had hardened, and Shanti couldn’t break through. She’d turned away from them and toward Ray of Light. Seeing Kiran now, watching him from the kitchen window making his way up the walkway (was it her imagination? were his steps getting bigger, faster? was he racing toward her?) duffel bag in hand, wearing the Kenneth Cole leather jacket he had picked out in Rochester, the one they had bought him just before he went away, his father asking, “Are you sure you want this?” because it looked so unlike the Kiran they thought they knew, seeing all of this, seeing how confident he was, and tall (had he grown?), Shanti thought, He is a man now, a young man, but a man. Then he flung open the front door, hard, so that it banged against the beadboard wall, dropped his duffel bag onto the slate floor of the split-level foyer, shrugged off the leather jacket—that beautiful, buttery leather jacket—and, without hesitation, tossed it on the floor next to his bag, and Shanti thought, No, he is still a boy, and she threw her arms around him. In that embrace, she imagined she could feel half of Kiran melting into her and the other half trying to squirm away.
“So why exactly are you here?” Kiran asked Bharat over the dinner table. It was all of Kiran’s favorite foods: chana masala, bindhi, chapatti, dhokla, and for dessert keer. But Shanti noticed he was mostly just pushing things around.
Why was he asking Bharat this question? Shanti wondered. She herself had explained it to him over the phone.
“I wanted to meet my American cousin, of course.”
“Now you’ve met me,” Kiran said.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Did you think I meant you? I meant Preeti.”
Nishit laughed so suddenly he spit out a bit of food.
“Preeti’s not here. So clearly you’ve failed. Speaking of which, how is your accounting class going?” Kiran stole a glance at his father, who had confided over the phone how puzzled he was that Bharat was doing so poorly. “I heard you’re tearing that shit up.”
Bharat’s Americaria raged. He could feel hot lava slowly rising, ready to ooze from his pores, run in rivulets down his arms, his legs, his neck, his torso. He stifled the urge to claw at his skin. These hives, he decided, were a test. He took a deep breath. He was not going to fail.
“My life is not so interesting,” Bharat said. “After all, you are the one who has just come home. How are your classes? Tell us everything.”
Under the table, Kiran petted the cat his parents had gotten that May to combat their impending empty-nest syndrome. Though she wasn’t his, Kiran had wanted to name her, and Shanti agreed, imagining when she called for her she might (even if fleetingly) feel a piece of her son still home. Grace Jones, Kiran called her, even though she had none of the diva’s fierceness or sharp angles; this Grace Jones would have been better named Marshmallow. Kiran insisted his parents always use her full name and was distressed upon returning home to hear “Grace” or (gasp) “Gracie.” Worse, in his absence, his parents had declawed her (surprising to Kiran, given his mother’s refusal years earlier to clip their birds’ wings). It was a sad scene, even cruel, Kiran thought: Gracie swatting insistently at a satin ribbon she had no hope of ever holding.
“I’d love to tell you about college,” Kiran said, “but there isn’t time. I’m meeting friends in half an hour. I still have to shower.”
Kiran pushed his chair away from the table and stood up, his plate still half full. Shanti looked from the plate to Bharat to Nishit. Wouldn’t Nishit say something to his son? Was it always her job?
“Kiran,” she said, a pleading in her voice.
“Mom, I can’t stay in tonight. I already promised Tina. Besides, I never get to see my friends anymore. And no, I can’t invite Bharat.” He turned to Bharat. “Sorry, dude, it’s a private party.”
“Kiran!” Nishit said sharply.
Kiran threw up his arms, spun, and bolted up the stairs into the bathroom.
Twenty minutes later, when Kiran was rooting around in the hall closet for his leather jacket, he felt a hand at his back.
“One thing,” he heard a soft voice say, and he looked over his shoulder and saw Bharat. “Just one thing I ask you.” Bharat held out a hand grasping some folded bills. “A packet of Marlboros. Reds, not Lights. Please. I’m almost out.”
Kiran turned back to the closet, found his jacket. “I’m not your servant,” he almost said, but said instead, “Cigarettes will kill you, dude. I don’t want any part in it. My conscience won’t allow it. Besides, do you know what evil imperialists cigarette companies are? Is that really where you want your money going?”
“Please,” Bharat said. “You know I have no car, no way of going anywhere on my own.”
“Sorry.” Kiran pulled on the leather jacket and wondered if Bharat caught the stale smell of cigarettes that had permeated the grain, the fabric lining. He’d become a fiend, spending hours in the dorm lounge with Michaela and Jeffrey, sometimes not even waiting until one cigarette was done before lighting up a new one. They were there every evening, often very late into the night. Increasingly, they were there in the afternoons, too, and even mornings. Kiran knew that almost any time of day he could go to the fourth-floor lounge and Michaela would be there, or Jeffrey, or both. The three had become such fixtures on the ratty couches—the TV always blaring, at least one cigarette always lit—that the other residents on their floor had all but abandoned the lounge to them.
Kiran opened the front door and, seeing Bharat standing frozen on the slate floor of the foyer, said, “You’ll thank me later.”
Bharat shook his pack of cigarettes, though he hardly needed to. He remembered from earlier in the day that there was only one left. In India, when he finished a pack of cigarettes, he would carefully dismantle it and save the shiny foil lining. He wasn’t sure why. He had no use for it. He supposed he was a magpie that way, drawn to that which sparkled. He liked everything about these foil papers: the way they caught light, the sound they made in his hands, the smell, part tobacco, part something else. He smoothed them on the dresser with the heel of his palm and stacked them in a shoe box in the top drawer. He loved smoking, loved especially the quiet moments alone, in a park, or by the stream, or outside the temple, or on the porch of his house sitting on the jhoola swing. Each shiny sheet represented twenty such moments, not that he thought of it exactly this way. But he did feel a certain calm pleasure when he’d open the box to add another sheet and see the stack. In America, he hadn’t bothered saving them.
Bharat stood on the patio. The way the yard sloped made the house look bigger from behind than from the front: a giant in the dark. Lights blazed in the living room; the TV was loud enough that he could hear it from outside. The other windows were dark, but he could just see in the kitchen window a flash of Gracie’s glowing eyes.
In spite of the clear night, the glorious moon, the pale stars, in spite of it all, the sky felt oppressive to Bharat. Its hugeness pressed down on him, a
nd he felt crushed beneath the weight. The stars, after all, were to blame for his exile in America. He wasn’t even sure he believed in stars or fate or astrologers. He’d come to America because his parents had told him to and he was a good son; he did what his parents said. From early on he’d been keenly aware of the ways in which his parents suffered. He’d seen how his father struggled to make his way in a world he simply didn’t seem fit for. Bharat didn’t want to add to their trouble.
He shook the cigarette from the pack, held it between his lips. He wouldn’t light it, not now. He wanted to save it. He knew he would need it later.
Chapter 11
They weren’t supposed to be there. On top of the water tower. It was Rick’s idea.
Kiran had met Tina, as planned, and they had gone to Carla’s house and Carla’s dad was there, smelling, Kiran noted, like whatever hard-labor, low-wage job it was he did. Slumped in the brown recliner, Carla’s dad wore a stained shirt, his eyes already glazed over, and no matter how many times Carla asked him, he would not go watch TV in his bedroom, as Carla assured them he usually did. “This is my house,” he kept saying. “My house.” So finally Rick suggested they go to the water tower. They took two cars.
There were seven of them: Kiran and Tina; three girls Tina knew from the dance studio she’d been studying at since she was six, girls Kiran only knew peripherally; Rick Fitter, who had gone to Kiran’s high school but who Kiran didn’t know at all, wasn’t even sure who knew him or why he was there; and Rick’s older cousin Matt, who no one had met, who was a senior at Penn State and had a silver Ford Probe with a power sunroof and ID to buy beer.
There was a lot to carry up the ladder, what with all the beer and the boom box and the blankets, and Val, who was just fifteen (and talented enough to have a real shot at being a professional ballerina, the girls concurred) was wearing such a stupidly tight skirt, when all the other girls were wearing jeans, that eventually the struggle was so much she gave up. She giggled—“Nobody look”—pulled her skirt all the way up, bunching it around her waist, and scampered chipmunk-like the rest of the way up the ladder.
Once they were on top of the tower, it wasn’t long before Matt and Val paired off. Kiran was partly surprised by this and partly not: on one hand, they were the two best-looking people up there; perhaps it was natural that they should gravitate toward each other. And yet there were at least six, maybe seven, years separating them. Still, Kiran had known as soon as he met Rick and Matt at Carla’s house that they were on a mission. He could tell by the overpowering smell of cologne. He could tell by the impatience in their eyes and their voices, the way they kept looking at one another, the way they looked through everyone else because they were focused on something in the distance, some future time they’d already planned out when they’d all be drunk and in the dark and there would be music playing and the boys would be paired off with girls and there would be enough of a chill in the air that the girls would slide beneath the blankets with the boys without even quite realizing that this is what they’d done.
Kiran watched as Rick tried his luck with the remaining three girls: Carla, Tina, Sissy. Rick didn’t seem to care which one he ended up with. He wanted to fast-forward to being beneath the blanket. But unlike his cousin, who had the advantage of being new and exotic and older, Rick was known, even if none of them really knew him. Kiran vaguely remembered him from the halls. The kids had called Rick’s crew Jean Jackets because that’s what they wore: spring, summer, fall, even winter when it was ten below. Sometimes, instead of Jean Jackets, they’d call them Dirts, as in “I can’t believe Mrs. Patterson is making me do my project with a Dirt” or “Don’t hang out at that sub shop; it’s strictly for Dirts.” And yet someone had agreed to meet up with Rick and his cousin tonight. And when Kiran saw Tina throw back a beer and scoot a little closer to Rick, he understood.
He’d never been up here, had never even noticed the tower on the hill with the town name painted on it. Was this what teenagers did, what they had been doing all along, coming up here to drink? Or was it just a Dirt thing? Either way, how was it that he’d never known? What else did he not know?
Maybe it was the newness of it all. Maybe it was the long day traveling, the train ride, Bharat at the station, or maybe it was because it was his first time home since college. Maybe it was the height, the perspective of being above, looking down on the tiny town, barely a town. Maybe it was because it was dark or because, other than Tina, he didn’t know these people; they were background, minor characters in a life he believed he’d already moved beyond. Maybe it was the music (Van Halen), or the beer (“Beast”), or the fact that he’d barely eaten. Whatever it was, Kiran felt disoriented, lost, and despite the chatter, strangely alone. He lit a cigarette and thought of Michaela and Jeffrey and the ratty couches in the fourth-floor lounge. He thought, too, of Bharat. What was he doing now? Watching TV with Kiran’s parents: some terrible mindless sitcom? Or smoking? Had he figured out how to remove the screen from the window in the bedroom and climb out onto the roof, the way Kiran always had?
In his peripheral vision, Kiran noticed Matt removing his flannel shirt and holding it as Val slid her small arms into the sleeves. It was true, Kiran thought, turning to watch the two of them: Matt was undeniably good-looking. Kiran admired—even in the night shadows, even from this distance—the way his arms and shoulders and chest filled his gray T-shirt. He could still smell his cologne.
Carla, who was lying on her back, probably feeling a little dizzy in the same way Kiran was feeling a little dizzy, said, “Whoa, look at the moon. It’s huge!”
“And rising,” Matt said, and then to Val, in a stage whisper audible to everyone, “like my dick.” Val giggled.
Kiran ached. How easy this was for them. How natural. How smoothly they slid now beneath the blanket Matt had brought (a “tailgating blanket,” he had said proudly, as if Penn State tailgating were an accomplishment akin to graduating Harvard summa cum laude). Kiran ached for this ease. He ached for the boys in their tees and flannel shirts and cloying cologne. He ached for a dumb guy with a hard dick and a terrible pickup line to try to pick him up. Val’s giggle? To have one chance to giggle like that, Kiran would give everything.
He stood up too suddenly and felt the effects of the four beers he’d drunk on a mostly empty stomach. He wished he’d eaten more of his mom’s food earlier. He tottered across the tower, in the darkness not quite sure where the edge was.
Shanti removed the bedspread, a traditional Rajasthani block print in reds and beige and black, folded it neatly, and stacked it in the closet, from where she retrieved the blue comforter she’d bought at Macy’s at an after-Christmas sale a few years back. Nishit was downstairs, sorting through bills, CNN on the television. He had become obsessed with the collapse and dissolution of the Soviet Union, following every twist and turn since the decisive events of August, muttering excitedly—his voice equal parts exultation and apprehension—“It’s a new world.”
Kiran still hadn’t returned from his night out. Shanti hadn’t recognized him that evening, hadn’t known the son who spoke to his cousin that way. She should have said something at the dinner table. At the very least she should have spoken to Bharat afterward, apologized on Kiran’s behalf, reminding him that he was welcome there, more than welcome. She was glad he was there.
One evening just a few nights after Bharat first arrived, they ordered pizza delivery, cheese with mushrooms and onions and capsicum. Bharat took two slices. As he was shaking crushed red pepper over them, the cap came off and all of the pepper flakes fell at once. Nishit helped him scoop most of the excess flakes back into the jar and screw the cap back on, but there was still way too much red pepper on the pizza. It was impossible to pick it all off.
“Throw those out,” Nishit said. “Just take two new slices.”
“No,” Bharat said, “I like spicy.”
“That’s way too spicy,” Nishit said.
Understanding that Bharat did not
want to waste, Shanti said, “Look, beta, there is so much pizza. How can we eat all these slices on our own? Just throw those out and take new slices.”
Bharat shook his head. He bit into the slice. Shanti flinched as she watched his eyes water and his face turn red. She knew, despite the pain, despite the fact that it was searing his mouth, that he was not going to throw out these slices, that he was going to eat every last bite, not even drinking water because he didn’t want them to know that he was suffering.
Another time he accompanied her to the grocery store. When she asked him to get a pound of green beans, she noticed how he carefully selected each one instead of grabbing handfuls the way Kiran always did. She watched him pinch each one, turn it over, inspect it from all angles, before dropping it into the clear plastic bag. Then he walked over to the scale, checking the weight more than once. He wanted to get it exactly right.
It happened so fast. Val only half in Matt’s car, the passenger door still open, and no one else having even gotten in yet. The sudden squeal of tires, the car bolting halfway down the block, then stopping abruptly—brake lights bloodying the blue street—Matt leaning over Val to pull the door shut. The seven of them were supposed to distribute themselves among the two cars and head back to Carla’s house to continue the party, but Matt seemed to have other plans. The five remaining watched his car disappear around the corner.