“They’re not all bad.”
“No, you’re right. There is Kal.”
“Kal? Oh my God! Who would want to marry someone who shovels manure onto other people’s lawns,” she said, searching through her clam-shell clutch. “I can’t believe that he and Sunny are related.”
“Stop being such a snob.”
“I’m not a snob,” she said, reapplying her signature maroon lipstick. “I just don’t understand why you guys are friends.”
“Funny, he says the same thing about you.” I waved him over. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
She dropped her lipstick back into her gold purse. “What if Sunny’s mom sees you with him? People will think you’re together.”
“Who cares what people think?” I replied. “Besides, everyone knows we’re old family friends. No one will think otherwise.”
“I figured you could use a drink by now.” Kal handed me a tumbler. Aman yanked it from my hand. “Meena, you can’t drink that. What will people think?”
I took it back. “That it’s a Coke.”
“Until they smell it on your breath.”
Kal picked up a nearby wedding favour—mints wrapped in lavender tulle—and passed it to me. I pulled the ribbon offand handed Aman a mint. “In case you want to have a drink.”
She popped the candy in her mouth and smiled at someone across the room. “I have to go say hello to my cousin. Try not to get too corrupted while I’m gone,” she said, shooting her disapproval at Kal.
“Hi to you, too!” Kal yelled as she walked away, and then, lowering his voice, said: “Remind me again, why are you guys friends?”
“She asks the same about you.”
“I called you today, but I got stuck talking to your mom,” he said, chewing an ice cube. “She really likes me; she wouldn’t stop talking.”
“Trust me,” I said, interrupting my words with rum. “She wouldn’t like you so much if she ever found out.” He fell silent like he always did. On the day he told me he’d met someone else, I’d bumped into an old classmate at the mall. We’d stood there, exchanging stilted questions about high school, about what we had done since, until he finally said that he’d recently heard from Liam. I was relieved at the mention of his name. It reminded me that he existed even if it was apart from me, that he was more than a memory and less than a dream. But as I walked away I was reminded that memory was bound by rules of completion. Liam was further from me than the past. My memory could not contain his possibilities; he had moved on, and without any effort, so had I. That was the part I had forgotten. When I’d gone to see Kal that last time, he could tell why I was there. We knew each other’s details; we hoarded them and occasionally whored ourselves to them. I remembered his earthy scent, his breath on my neck, quick and hot, his mouth parched on my name until I was just an exhale, and I pulled him to me faster, trying to forget.
2.2
Islid into my cubicle, unnoticed if not for the one Plexiglas wall that reminded me I was working in a fishbowl. I pressed my hand to my temple and propped my elbow on the desk, trying to block out the white noise of mundane chatter and the glow of fluorescent lights. “You’re kidding… she said that… and then what did you say… you’re kidding… and then what did she say… yeah, yeah… are you serious?” On and on it went. If only my co-workers recognized that we had only the illusion of privacy. I was tired of hearing their personal telephone conversations and of seeing their pin-ups, their postcards, their boyfriends in heart-shaped frames and their bikini-clad vacation pictures tacked around them. I didn’t have a candy drawer, colourful Post-it Notes, novelty pens, pithy quotes on plaques, or a Hallmark figurine collection lining the top of my computer monitor. If I was away from my desk, you wouldn’t even know that anyone ever sat there.
I already missed the anonymity that university had given me. There I’d learned how to blend in, disappear even, but here I found myself ill-equipped for the small talk, the water-cooler conversation, and in most cases nodded far more than was required or comfortable. “Did you watch Survivor?” I would nod, even if I’d only heard the highlights on the Larry & Willy morning radio show. “What did you do this weekend?” I never knew how to answer. As my peers recounted the details of their weekend binge drinking and club hopping, I smiled and laughed along, wishing thatI knew what it would be like to have that sense of independent reckless-ness.
When I’d first started working at the pr firm, I’d gone out with them once or twice, but after spending the evenings abandoned at an empty table of coats and purses, watching their coupled silhouettes on the dance floor, I was almost grateful that my mother insisted I be home by eleven. After that I made excuses for why I couldn’t go out after work, telling them that I had a headache or other plans—anything was better than telling them the truth, that at twenty-four I still lived at home, arguing with my mother about arranged marriage. I found that avoiding social situations was easiest and tied myself up in extra projects that made me look too busy to talk. While others took their breaks together, I made up false errands and wandered around the city. Sometimes I would eat my lunch on the steps of the art gallery like Liam and I used to or sip my coffee from a to-go cup on the park bench in front of the Burrard Street Station watching people, wondering who they were and where they were going as they rushed by in such purposeful madness. Occasionally I’d walk by the stands of postcards and spin through them, wondering if Liam was still a col-lector. Sometimes I bought one.
One day, instead of wandering the city, I’d eaten in my car. Trish from marketing saw me sitting with my bagged lunch, and though I jumped out of the car talking about the “crazy” traffic, I knew she’d told everyone what she’d seen because when I went back to the office they all stared at me with what resembled pity.
Now Liza was peering over the top of my cubicle, the scent of her musk and the jingle of her charm bracelet preceding her. “Geee-off ’s back today,” she said, giggling, purposefully mispronouncing Geoff ’s name as I had accidentally done when I’d first met him. Even though he’d laughed it offby explaining that his parents were hippies who refused to spell his name the easy way, I felt bad for making a joke of it and apologized to the point of discomfort. “He’s in the copy room.” She handed me a fax and strained her neck, shooing me along.
The room smelled like ink, warm paper and the spark of overloaded circuits. It was my favourite spot in the office and Geoffand I often loitered there, cracking jokes and catching up in the way I didn’t seem to be able to do with anyone else.
“How are you? How was your vacation?” I asked, feeding my paper into the fax machine. He said “Good,” without looking up from the photo-copier. The fax sound screeched through the awkward silence. He turned around and ran his fingers through his hair, which looked lighter against his fresh tan. It was always a relief and a disappointment to see him. Besides Liza he was the only real friend I had at work, and when he’d asked me out he was surprised that I’d said no—all of my actions, all of our conversations pointed to “yes.” But all I could give him was a cryptic “I’m sorry, I can’t.” Sometimes I wished I could tell him that it wasn’t him. That it was me—that I wasn’t allowed to date, that I had never had a real boyfriend, that there was no point in going out with any white guy because inevitably I would have to marry an Indian guy like Sunny or end up being disowned. When my cousin wouldn’t give in to her family’s ultimatums, Mamaji tore his name from hers and never spoke of her again. Every time he came to our house, he would look at me so long that I saw her missing in his eyes, felt his disappointment in his general detachment. I wanted to tell Geoff all of this, but knew that this truth was more hurtful than an enigmatic lie, so when he asked me why, I simply told him that it was complicated. He shook his head and said, “No, it’s not… but you are.”
I pulled the fax confirmation slip offthe tray and as I turned to leave, Trish walked in, sidling up next to him. “I was just telling Michell
e about the swim-up bar at the resort. She’s thinking of planning a trip as well. Meena, have you been?” I shook my head, feeling like an idiot as I ducked out. I hadn’t realized they’d gone to Mexico together.
Liza sat down, holding her questions when she saw me return to my desk a little defeated. I sat in front of my computer, tapping random keys, watching the letters filling a blank Word document. Somehow it made sense.
When I got home, I slipped offmy heels, changed my clothes and fell into a frustrated silence that my mother referred to as moodiness. She never understood my need for quiet and filled the space with numb details that coloured in all of our lonely parts. As she told me about her workday, I nodded absent-mindedly, listening only to every other word. I wondered what was being harvested but didn’t bother to ask; her withered expression, her stained nail beds and the dirt dotting her tear ducts all cried out that, whatever it was, it was rotten. The fields were being cleared for something new; the seasons had changed, and if not for my mother I might not have noticed.
“I phoned you five times today,” she said, buttering the tender side of the stacked rotis. Though it was only the two of us now, she still made enough food for my sisters. She repeated herself, louder this time, trying to be heard over the hood fan that pulled the singed heat from the tava.
“I know. I got the messages,” I said, looking up from the journal I was attempting to write in. Words were not coming easily. “What was it that you wanted?” I asked.
“The boy, Sundeep,” she began. “He is from a good family… ”
“Mom, not this again.”
“Yes, this again. You will not get a better offer.”
I put my journal down and looked out the window at the tapping of rain and bare-boned trees. “Do we have to talk about this now? I told you I’m not sure.”
“Not sure, you are not sure,” she said, nodding her head. “I was not sure when I married your father and moved to England, had six children and then moved to Canada. I was not sure what I would do when your father died and I had to raise all of you alone. I was not sure while I emptied ashtrays or picked berries twelve hours a day to put you through school. I was not sure how to make a better life for you and now you tell me that you are not sure,” she said without taking a breath. “Meena, sometimes in life you must do the things you are unsure of.”
“Mom, I just need some time.”
“Time,” she repeated as if it were a question or a word that she didn’t understand. She wrapped a stack of rotis in tinfoil and ladled daal into a plastic container. “I need you to take these to Serena’s house for me.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now. She’s waiting,” my mother said, handing them to me.
Serena lived in Stucco Surrey, where all the boxy houses had red-tiled roofs and lawns that were dotted with the typical Sikh flourish of orange, Khalsa-coloured marigolds that were often crushed by parked cars. Park-ing in the area was a problem. All the houses—or Hinduminiums, as Kal and I called them—had several basement suites and not enough room for their tenants’ cars. To alleviate the problem, a growing number of residents had cut all their trees down, pulled up the grass and landscaped their front yards with asphalt. The combination of shortsighted residential planning and a lack of bylaw enforcement had turned the area into a cement slum which its residents called Chandigarh.
My mother was indignant about the way India was creeping through our suburbs, in the same way that she was about the moss that had over-taken our garden. She did nothing but condemn it with a watchful eye. She stood at the kitchen window watching the house across the street being demolished to make way for a new megahome. Each afternoon, instead of watching All My Children, she sat by the window and watched the phases of construction the way I usually watched the changing weather. When I came home from work, she would tell me about the workers who had stripped the house for salvage, the excavator’s tracks that had flattened the roses, the wrecking ball that had hit the house like a fist and the excavator jaws that had snapped everything like bone. Each stage was relived in such detail that it left me splintered and torn. I didn’t understand why my mother was so bothered by it all until we met the owner’s wife. She’d come running into our front yard chasing after her barefoot children, who routinely zipped across the road with little care or attention. She apologized to my mother, referring to her as “Auntie.” My mother was polite about it, explaining that she had several grandchildren and understood. The woman wrangled her toddlers, hoisting the little boy onto her hip and yanking the girl to her side every time she dared to stray. She smiled the kind of wide smile that masks all other emotions. A toothy muzzle. She asked my mother the usual sort of questions—how long we had lived here, where we were from, how many children we were, how many were married. My mother was matter of fact about it, offering only a few details, already aware that she was being judged. The woman, who was only a few years older than me, looked my way and asked my mother why I was not married. To my surprise my mother did not commiserate with her and told her that I had just finished university and that in Canada a woman’s education was more important than her marriage. “How modern,” the woman said, glancing at my jeans and T-shirt. She simmered, grinning before calling to her daughter, who had run into the street again.
Her smile was as good as a slap.
Serena was in the kitchen, standing at the stove, looking slightly di-shevelled in her stockinged feet and navy-blue airport uniform. She smiled my way, distracted by the ringing phone and by my niece, who was crawl-ing at her feet, tugging on the hem of her skirt and pulling at the run in her nylons. I picked Simran up, playing peekaboo while Serena answered the phone and abruptly told a telemarketer that she wasn’t interested. “They always call at the worst time,” she said, hanging the phone back in its wall cradle before reaching for Simran, who was jettisoning herself into the air towards Serena.
“How was work?” I asked. “Anything interesting?”
“Nothing… except there was this one Indian guy who’d tried to hide his stash of cocaine in his underpants.”
“Did you have to get it?” I teased.
“Vaheguru!” she said, snapping me with a dish towel.
Serena had always wanted to be a flight attendant, but Dev didn’t like the idea of her travelling, or of his caring for the children in her absence, so she’d settled for swatting the security paddle across limbs for eight hours a day over the past ten years. She still had the framed map of the world that she’d bought after high school, but instead of being dotted with pinpricks denoting her travels, it reflected the destinations of all those who had gone through the security gates on her shift.
“Do you want tea?” She was rummaging through the kitchen cupboard, looking for Simran’s baby cookies. The kitchen was as it always was: dishes stacked haphazardly in the sink, last night’s pizza boxes on the counter, plastic toys and Tupperware scattered on the floor.
I rolled up my sleeves and started into the dishes.
“Did you bring the roti?” Serena asked.
I pointed to the bag on the counter. Serena placed her daughter in the nearby high chair with a cookie and opened the bag, pulling out the stack of rotis and the assorted tins of daal and subzi that my mother had packed. She moved robotically, each joint and bone protruding in purpose. Her eyes were socketed in deep circles that made her look old and frail. She had once been beautiful.
“So how are things?” she asked, transferring the contents of each tin into a microwaveable bowl.
“Things?”
“You know, at home. Mom says you still haven’t decided about Sunny.”
“She’s right. I haven’t.”
“What’s there to decide? He’s said yes, his family is loaded, he’s good-looking, got a great career. What more do you want?”
“Love would be nice,” I said sarcastically, tired that the prospect of Sunny always seemed to garner as much excitement as a celestial event or a religious festival. I rinsed the dish
es and turned offthe water. The steam rose and fogged up the window.
“Look, love will come later,” Serena said. “At least you get to meet Sunny. I didn’t get to speak to Dev until our wedding night. All I had to make my decision on was a picture and Masi’s recommendation.”
I turned towards her. “I don’t know how you did it.”
“I just did what I had to do,” she answered. “And love… well, like I said, it came later.” She gestured to a picture of their eldest son. “You’ll see, it will be the same for you too.” She said it with an assuredness that bothered me. I didn’t want it to be the same for me. I had never wanted anything to be the same for me, but could never clarify how I wanted it to be different either.
I turned the water back on and rinsed the sink. “What if I don’t like him?”
“Well, you won’t know until you meet him,” she said, putting her arm around me.
“I suppose.” I whispered it, practising submission. “But really, what if I don’t like him—do I get to say no?”
Serena turned around, busying herself with the tea. “Do you want sugar?”
“Mom’s already arranged for them to come over, hasn’t she?” I stared straight ahead into the window, unable to see my reflection through the steam, and for a moment it felt as if I’d disappeared.
“Yeah… This Sunday—she was going to tell you, but… ”
“But—she asked you to do it.”
“She thought it would be easier.” Serena quieted when her husband came into the room whistling a Hindi tune. He dropped his lunchbox on the counter and asked about dinner.
While Serena finished warming her husband’s food, I bathed Simran and helped my nephews A.J. and Akash with their homework. I could hear her in the other room talking with Dev—or rather taking orders from him, refilling his plate, getting him another beer, passing him the remote control. Things she did as easily as breathing. Sometimes I wondered how she even understood anything he said—his speech was so foreign, his village accent so heavy that I had to strain to get the meaning. He had a way of stammering and snapping, the urgent rhythms out of tune with the con-text of whatever he was saying. His words were like whips. Harj had hated it too. In fact she had hated him and went to great lengths to show it. She was like that; either she liked you or she didn’t and when she didn’t all she could think of was how much. My mother had often said she was focused to the point of being narrow-minded and stubborn. Once Harj made a list of all the things she hated about Dev. She hated that he wore sneakers with dress pants, that he wore Old Spice, that he had dandruff, that he wore polyester shirts with pit stains, that his belly looked man-pregnant, that he leered at women, that he picked his nose and flicked it, that he’d tried to grab her ass. The list went on. When Serena found it, she slapped Harj and ripped the piece of paper to shreds. Harj didn’t flinch, she didn’t move. It made me wonder if she was brave or just plain mean.
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