“I didn’t rethink it, I had a moment!” I curl my hands into fists. “You have so much faith that I’m going to be strong enough to fight this. How do you even know this is going to work?”
It’s out there now; the truth is laid bare. From day one, I have had no idea what makes James so solidly believe I will stand and fight for him. His stare is penetrating, his face flushed from raising his voice. The weariness in his body doesn’t match the intensity in his eyes, which are locked on my face.
“Because I love you, Nithya.” It’s the first time those words have ever been said. The conviction in his voice is staggering. “And I believe that’s enough. It will be enough.”
He has never sounded so sure of anything. He loves me. I only see his face in that moment. No families, no baggage, no medical school rejections or expectations. I see a future full of hope, unselfish acts of kindness… and love.
“I love you, too,” I reply, my cheeks wet. I mean it more than anything I have ever said. It doesn’t erase what’s happening, but it’s the start of something new.
few days later, I crash at James’ apartment. The beginning of April has been uneventful so far, but things can always change. James’ acceptance letters are on the docket, the last few of which should be arriving any day.
“Nithya, wake up.” Someone pushes my shoulders firmly. Now the voice turns to a whine, “Nithyaaa.”
“Mmpgh,” I croak.
“I got my letter.”
My eyes fly open, and I clamber over his bed to join him at his computer. The email waits unopened as James takes a seat in the swivel chair.
“Well… Come on! Do you want me to leave?” He deserves a little privacy to celebrate or wallow.
“No, you can stay. It won’t change anything. And you should be here whether it’s good or bad. Want to read it?”
I shake my head no. James should read the words that he is accepted. I do not want to take that away from him–his four and a half years of hard work, two unrelated majors, and long nights in the library shouldn’t culminate in an incredible accomplishment told to you by someone else. Acceptance letters validate all your college accomplishments… It’s a feeling you should experience on your own. I tell him so, and he agrees amiably before clicking the e-mail. His eyes scan over the letter and hungrily hang onto every word, transforming from a flat teal to sparkling as my suspicions are confirmed.
“I’m in.”
I squeal, unable to help myself. Despite any lingering animosity toward the world for progressing without me, I could not be happier for the love of my life. He has reached a milestone few reach and many work for. I jump into his lap and wrap my arms around his neck. I shout for Luca and Sophia next door, and they race in, Sophia still in her pajamas. There are high fives and hugs all around, the joy palpable in the air.
“So… roomies again in New York?” Luca asks, accompanied by another high five.
“As if you’d let me say no.” James beams.
“I really just want to make fun of you. While you’re at law school and want to bang your head against a desk, I’ll be at all the hottest parties,” Luca needles, before saying we should celebrate later.
I don’t want to own up to my envy. Luca has his job offer from a Big Apple PR firm, and his future is set. Sophia will follow him to the city, but if it fell through and she was summoned to the moon, she would casually pack her bags and go. James’ next three years are sealed now: if Columbia has come calling, there is no refusing the offer. Each of their paths leads to their dreams. It’s as if we are all in a forest, and they have the tools to carve their own trails out in the dense green. I sit with a toothpick and a spoon wondering how on earth I am supposed to dig myself out.
Later, as James happily calls his family, his grin mirrored on my face, I admit to myself I’m a little bit jealous. It’s also impossible not to feel thrilled when James exclaims on the phone to his mom that he got in to the faint cheers on the other end of the line. The overwhelming instinct I have to look after James has taken over. I feel as though I have accomplished something, though I have played no role in the hours of work James put into law school. James’ happiness is mine. Right now, my soul is aglow.
“Thanks, Dad. I start at the end of August. Yeah, a scholarship… No, I’ll be okay. No, Dad, I don’t need any money.” He pauses, and then he laughs. “If you insist… this weekend? I can. I can’t wait either, Mom.” I imagine his parents on speaker the same way my parents are, leaning as close as they can and holding the phone between the two of them on the couch. He glances at me. “Actually… can I bring someone? Yeah. Great. Love you too. Bye, Mom.”
He hangs up and climbs back into bed.
“Were they excited?”
“Max is flying in for the weekend, he thinks. Tristan’s coming back too. They want to make it a thing,” he says. I tell him to go. He hasn’t had the chance to hang out with his brothers in a while since their spring breaks and residency workloads have clashed.
“Come with me.”
I look at him like he has three heads. What?
“Isn’t it too soon? And are you sure this is a good time? It’s been so tense lately.”
“Maybe that’s why it’s the perfect time. We can get away for a little while, away from this bubble and away from the stress.”
It does sound tempting. The anticipation over my medical admission, the ensuing disappointment, my parents’ catastrophic reaction, and the pressure to find a job or move forward in any way–all of it has been pushing down on me. This could be an escape, if only for a weekend.
“Please, come celebrate with me?” He sticks out his bottom lip like a three-year old.
“Okay.” I give in, smiling.
he week leading to the getaway with James is a bright one, welcomed thankfully after the last hellish few. Our Red Cross blood drives have been going well–we have exceeded our goals for each month, and the president of the organization tells me I should consider working for Red Cross permanently after college. Despite skipping lots of class during rejection week, my grades haven’t sunk. I’m not preparing to send them into schools anymore, but I’m still me, which means I care.
My embryology class on the Wednesday before our trip to Connecticut is about blastocyst development and sexual differentiation in gametes. I’ve already learned it in previous classes, but I listen anyway. Most people are genetically and physically the same sex, my professor tells us. That is, their xy chromosomes form a weeny (the fact that I still can’t say the word makes me question whether I’m doctor material in the first place) and xx forms a vaginal canal. Sometimes the signals get crossed in the process, creating situations with xy chromosomes and lady bits or xxy. Scientists are doing research on these conditions, and psychology professors are researching the implications… So naturally, my thoughts turn to research jobs. I’m not looking, I’m just curious. Aren’t I?
I apply Thursday night to a research firm in Tribeca. My cover letter sounds desperate. Please hire me! It screams as it recites my accomplishments. By the third draft and the third job I’ve found that vaguely piques my interest, I begin to believe my own hype. I close my laptop with minutes to midnight, and don’t bother to clamp down on a touch of reluctant optimism.
Nanna calls me Friday morning. I haven’t heard from him since he told me he was disappointed in me. “How are you, Nithya?”
“Better. But sometimes, I don’t know, Nanna.”
“That’s okay, me either,” he says with a hint of cheer.
“Is Amma still pissed?” I haven’t spoken to her either since our blowup. It’s the longest we’ve ever gone without speaking.
“It’s quiet in our house.” His euphemism is a guise for the truth: Amma has been unleashing on everyone. She said this was Nanna’s fault, so I imagine it must not be easy at home for him either.
“That’s funny. She wasn’t quiet with me,” I mutter.
“She’s very upset, Nithya, that’s all. You have to give her time
. We aren’t happy.”
I notice the shift from she to we.
“It’s not easy for me either,” I tell him, quietly. “I just want to be happy.”
“Mmm,” he hums. This vocal response is similar to the side-to-side nod, except right now, I’m the one who doesn’t understand.
“She told me I was a disappointment.”
“You are not the disappointment. This situation is,” he says gently.
“That doesn’t make it better, Nanna.”
“Well, then, know this. This is not ideal for us either. Everyone is hurting. We will get through this.”
“How?”
“Like we always do. Together. It may take time, but I have faith.”
“I thought your disappointment in me meant you didn’t love me as much,” I confess.
“Nithya, I am not happy because I’m uncomfortable. But you will always be my daughter, so you will always be my greatest joy. Disappointment and arguments don’t change that,” he finishes. Whether I want to admit it or not, it does make me feel better.
ophia settles on my bed before she notes the frantic state I’m in as I shove clothes into a duffel bag.
“Why are you so worked up?” Her eyes follow an airborne sweater that I toss away.
“I’ve never even slept at anyone else’s house who wasn’t family or an Indian friend. I’ve never met a boyfriend’s family. Too much newness!”
“You never had a sleepover?” Sophia asks, puzzled after her giggles fade.
“No… besides my Indian friends back home…” Her understanding eyes make me conscious of the fact that I have missed another normal American milestone.
I begged my parents to sleep over at my friends’ houses growing up. Each time Clara or Danielle would invite me for a slumber party or an overnight birthday thing, I would be the one leaving in the middle of a horror flick at midnight when my dad would dutifully be waiting in the driveway.
“What’s the point? You’ll be sleeping at night anyway, so it shouldn’t matter where it happens,” my mom would say, missing the point completely that sleep was the last of our intentions.
“Amma, why can’t you let me be normal?” I had sobbed in fifth grade.
It was after one particularly humiliating experience where a cousin of Clara’s had said, “It’s so weird you can’t sleep over. Aren’t you allowed to do anything?”
“Kanna, in India, a girl doesn’t sleep over at other people’s houses. It is not safe,” she’d said, using stories of her childhood.
But the truth was, her childhood and mine were vastly different. In retrospect, I can understand that this was a new situation for my parents too. They had to raise their daughters in a situation they had not grown up in, navigating cultural differences and their own children’s deviations in attitudes… an adjustment any parent has to make, I suppose. At the time though, I could only see that I was the odd one. The one who couldn’t watch horror movies at three in the morning, the one who had to say, “I’m sorry but I have to go,” and be awkwardly walked out by my friend in the middle of her party. I was the one who missed out on the girly conversations about what a boy looked like down there in middle school, and how everyone got their first kiss. I may not feel bad anymore, but the absence of the experience stands out now that I’m an adult.
By the time I had gotten my period, all sleepovers, whether they were at an Indian family’s or not, had ceased. My mother had reasoned that when you get your first period, you become a woman. In the Ramayana, one of India’s greatest epics, Ravana, the villain of the story, abducts the hero Rama’s wife Sita. He lusts after her and she, wholly dedicated to Rama, thinks of Rama the entire time, even refusing to look Ravana in the face because of her commitment. I wondered for the longest time what the story had to do with me until my mother told me when Sita was finally rescued, she and Rama had to prove her fidelity to the subjects of their kingdom through a literal trial by fire. Instead of allowing a similar situation to happen again, some families chose to disallow their daughters from spending nights at ‘stranger’s’ homes.
“It is because of that tale women are not supposed to remain in another man’s house,” my mother had finished her story.
“But why can’t I have a sleepover?” I had whined, completely missing the point.
“Because now you are a woman. Your friends are all respectable, but the principle is that you are not allowed to stay in another person’s house without a family member there. End of story.”
“Nanna!” I had appealed.
“I don’t see the big deal,” my father had said, “we can let her go. Clara has been her friend for most of her life.”
My mother had shot him a look that could kill, and the discussion in their room ensued late into the night. The following day, my father had told me Amma was right.
“How did I not know this about you?” Sophia asks, bringing me back to present day.
“I guess it never came up! Time to learn. Don’t do anything gross with Luca in the apartment while I’m gone.”
“No promises.” She giggles.
icture for our first road trip!” I exclaim, once James and I have hit the highway.
James leans over, his eyes on the road as I count down, “Three, two, one!” He glances at the camera and flashes a smile right when I hit the button. Our faces, flushed with excitement, gaze back from the display screen.
“Our first road trip,” James repeats to himself like he doesn’t believe it.
We gaze at each other excitedly–this is a big day for us. Despite the nervousness and the anticipation of meeting his family, an undercurrent of electricity thrums like a live wire. As we get farther from Penn State, we leave our own world of limitations behind. My body relaxes. For once, James and I don’t jab at the radio buttons every other song.
Our music choices are vastly different.
“Yours are quite possibly inferior,” is what James always says to irk me. He tends to listen to R&B, rap, and heavy rock. When we had gone on our first few dates, I had stared at him incredulously when eardrum-cracking screams had blared from his speakers. I didn’t expect such a preppy boy to be into such angry beats. We frequently roll our eyes at the other’s choices. My Top 40 and relatively eclectic tastes clash with his as much as the cacophony he calls music. I ask him how he got into those genres, my leg tucked underneath me, already comfortable.
“I had a phase in high school,” he says with a smile.
“A phase?”
“I had a rebellious phase in tenth grade or so. It didn’t last too long… You know, the usual: smoking weed once in a while, trying alcohol. Typical stuff.”
“Really?”
“You sound so surprised.” He laughs. “Not everyone’s as careful as you.”
“I am surprised! I never knew you tried drugs,” I whisper the last word like it’s a taboo.
For someone who has never drunk or done drugs (at least voluntarily), I’m blown away by this revelation. I’ve never even seen him drunk. He chuckles at my wide-eyed innocence. We switch from subject to subject, and chatter for another two hours on I-80. An exit sign passes for Philadelphia, and I ignore the pang in my chest. I listen instead to James tell me about his family. His parents were college sweethearts, he says, and they began with no money and built themselves up. Max broke up with his girlfriend when he moved west, and Tristan is currently a commitment-phobe.
I fall into a catnap and when I wake up, a sign declaring the establishment of Greenwich in 1640 has just passed. Small shops scroll by, patisseries and quaint stores with slanted roofs. History oozes between the bricks. Art deco buildings are scattered among colonial and revival-style structures, and together, they bridge the gap between the past and present.
We swing onto a residential drive, and trees envelop us again. The road winds, tracing S’s as it curves through the countryside. Houses peek through the trees here and there before we come to a clearing.
“We’re in my neighborhoo
d,” James says as he turns into the driveway, which splits in two around a tiny brick gateway. James waves at the man inside, who shouts a loud greeting and tells him his parents are looking forward to his visit, before he pushes a button to open the gate.
Enormous properties surround us. A Mediterranean-style villa sits on our right with curving roof tiles that probably sound loud in the rain. On our left is a Colonial Cape Cod with white paneling and deep green shutters, framed with enormous bushes that haven’t bloomed yet because of the early spring weather. It must be beautiful in the summer.
We turn right onto a flat driveway, and my eyes are drawn upward to the enormous home in front of me. The driveway circles around a brick wall enclosing a small fountain. The house itself is stunning. It reminds me of a plantation in the south, or a rich home of a governor in England. Deep red brick layers the two floors and gives way to windows here and there. Large white columns surround the entrance. Dark shutters line the windows. Two enormous wings extend on either side, one containing a three-door garage, and the other sporting large windows, which probably allow in copious sunlight. It looks like the house is extending both arms out to welcome us in, and I melt.
James shifts the gear into park and turns off the ignition. “We’re home!”
“Wow…” I say softly, still taking in the details.
“Let’s go inside. They’re waiting.” He opens the door and bounds to the trunk.
As he fishes out the overnight bags, a voice booms, “They’re here!” It belongs to a six-foot-four, dirty-blond man with a more muscular build than James.
“Dude. You’re putting us to shame, you need to stop growing.” James gives him a gentle slug on the shoulder.
“Considering I put you to shame at everything, this really shouldn’t be a surprise,” the guy laughs, and they turn to me, standing awkwardly against the closed passenger door.
With his playful disposition and his eyes, which are the exact same shade of green as James’, it’s impossible not to recognize him. The rib-shattering bear hug he gives me as I reach for a handshake is proof my suspicions are correct. This is Tristan.
The Rearranged Life Page 19