The Bollywood Bride

by Sonali Dev

  “Oh my God! Aren’t you Ritu, from Ritu and Raj?” A girl ran up to her. She must’ve been about thirteen. Her mother followed behind her. They looked at once elated and embarrassed. “Can we have a picture, please? We love you.”

  Ria brought out the smile, thanked them, and posed mechanically, all the while aware of Vikram’s eyes on her. By the time they were gone, he had slipped back behind a mask. He was angry again and she didn’t know why. Or maybe she did, but there was nothing she could do about it.

  The salesman pointed to Vikram. “So, Ms. Parkar, very nice, no? It fits Sir like it was made for him. Even around shoulders and hips. No need to alter, even. I told you we have the best fits in North America. What do you think?”

  Vikram’s eyes bored into her.

  “Ma’am?”

  “She likes it.” Vikram’s voice was a growl.

  The man beamed. “She’s right, it’s per—”

  “Unfortunately, I don’t,” he said so sharply, she drew back.

  “I am sorry about that, sir. Why don’t we try one of these?” The man raised the hangers he was holding, looking hopefully at Vikram.

  Vikram’s voice gentled a notch. “No, I’m sorry. I’ve changed my mind. I don’t think these clothes are for me. I think I’ll stick to a suit.”

  “Like hell you will.” Nikhil stepped out of the fitting room in the cream-and-bronze sherwani.

  Vikram pressed his fingers to his temples. “Come on, dude, look at me. Don’t make me do this.”

  Nikhil picked up a turban and placed it on his own head. Then he pointed at himself with both hands. “Don’t make you do this? Look at me.”

  Vikram looked unmoved. Nikhil glared at him. “Listen, Vic, Jen wants the family to dress Indian and that’s what she’s getting. You’re family, remember?”

  “Come on! Don’t pull that shit on me,” Vikram said.

  The salesman looked from one to the other, utter confusion on his face.

  Enough was enough. Ria stepped between Vikram and Nikhil. “Are you guys for real?” she snapped, one hand on her hip. “What the hell is wrong with you, Nikhil? This is your wedding. Your wedding! And this is your heritage. Jen’s not even Indian and she gets it. And here you are. Standing there looking like veritable princes and acting like clowns. Acting like this is some sort of awful punishment. You know what—you should wear suits. Hell, wear jeans, for all I care. I am not standing here and doing this with you for one more minute.”

  She turned to the salesman. His mouth was hanging open again. Every other customer in the store was staring. When had the store become so crowded? A man in a yellow shirt held up a cell phone. He had probably recorded her entire meltdown. Bloody hell!

  The man quickly lowered the phone and ran toward the exit, but Vikram pounced on him and snatched the phone out of his hand.

  “Give that back.” The man scrambled to his feet and lunged for Vikram. This time Nikhil pounced on him and held him back while the salesman danced around making squealing sounds.

  Vikram furiously jabbed buttons on the phone. “What is wrong with you, man? Can’t you respect a person’s privacy?” Once he’d deleted the video, he threw the phone at the guy, who grabbed it and pried himself out of Nikhil’s hold.

  “If your fucking girlfriend is so precious, bastard, why don’t you keep her at home instead of letting her shake her booty at us like a whore?”

  Vikram lunged at him again, but he ran to the door, picking up one of the small elephants from a pedestal and flinging it at Vikram as he went. Screams rose from the crowd; people ran helter-skelter. The wooden elephant hit Vikram’s temple and thudded to the floor, leaving a gash that started to bleed. The man pushed past the crowd and ran full tilt out the door.

  Ria flew at Vikram, pulled off her scarf, and pressed it against his temple. Her hands shook, all of her shook, he was shaking too.

  He recovered first. “Shh, Ria, it’s okay.” He wrapped an arm around her waist and steadied her hand against his forehead. “Sweetheart, I’m fine. Breathe. It’s fine.” He wiped the tears from her cheeks.

  She took a breath, but the shaking only got worse.

  “Let me take a look,” Nikhil said, but Vikram tightened his grip around Ria.

  “Nic, seriously, I’m fine. Bring the car to the service entrance in the back. I’ll bring her out in five minutes.” His voice was calm. So calm. The steady thud of his heartbeat wrapped itself around her. She focused on it and increased the pressure on his wound. Warm wetness tinged the scarf in her hand, and panic tore through her.

  The salesman brought her a first-aid kit. “I’m so sorry, Ms. Parkar, nothing like this has ever happened at Komal. Never,” he said sincerely, but Ria couldn’t respond.

  “We’re buying these.” Vikram pointed to the sherwani he was still wearing and extracted a credit card from his wallet with one hand. His other hand was an unbreakable circle around Ria’s waist.

  “Yes. Yes. Of course, sir.” The salesman took the credit card from Vikram and scampered away.

  “But you didn’t like it,” Ria whispered into Vikram’s shoulder, inhaling the scent of him as if it would set the world straight.

  For a second he looked like he had no idea what she was talking about, and then he smiled down at her. “It’s fine. If you reacted like that, I can only imagine what Uma would do to us if we went home empty-handed. And you can stop pressing that thing into my head now. I think it’s stopped bleeding.”

  Very gingerly Ria lifted the scarf away from his head. “It’s called a scarf,” she said, and studied the gash. The bleeding had slowed, but it looked angry and swollen and painful.

  His fingers touched her chin. The gentlest, softest touch. “Please don’t cry. I can’t even feel it.”

  She closed her eyes.

  “Why is there a crowd outside?” Ria’s eyes flew open at the sound of Mira’s voice. She lurched away from Vikram.

  Mira stood there gaping at them.

  Vikram let Ria pull away from him, but he kept a hand under her elbow. “Someone tried to take a video of Ria and run out of here with it.”

  Mira pushed a hand into her mouth. “Oh no.”

  Ria pulled her arm away. “Vikram caught him. But he hurt himself.” She pointed at his wound. Mira’s eyes widened to saucers.

  Ria opened the first-aid kit and held out gauze and tape. Mira pushed it back at her. “No. You do it.” Her voice was so sad, Ria’s heart twisted.

  She pushed it back at Mira. “No. You do it.”

  Vikram snatched the gauze from Ria’s hand and pressed it into his temple. “I can do it myself.” It must have hurt, but he was so angry he didn’t even wince.

  Ria tore a piece of tape and pressed it over the gauze. Vikram refused to look at her. Which was a good thing, because she didn’t want him to see the shame she was feeling. Her fingers trembled against the warmth of his skin. He steadied her hand with his.

  She pulled her hand away again, but this time he didn’t let go as easily.

  “Mira, can you take him to the hospital?”

  “I don’t need a hospital. I need to get you home.” By the set of his jaw, Ria knew he would be immovable.

  She tried anyway. “I’m fine. I’ll wait for Nikhil, you go with Mira.”

  “Nikhil should already be in the back. And you’re not fine, you haven’t stopped shaking.” He grabbed her hand and led her to the back of the store. “I’ll be back in a minute, don’t leave,” he told Mira.

  The service parking lot was empty except for Uma’s van. Vikram’s hand was a vise around hers as they walked to it, and it made her feel too safe to struggle out of his hold. His palm splayed against the small of her back as she climbed into the car and lingered on her waist before he withdrew it. The contact between them tore like a Band-Aid ripping off sore skin, one cell, one pore, at a time. She sagged against the seat, Vikram looming over her.

  “Go, Vikram, please. I’m fine.” But she couldn’t meet his eyes. He didn’t move.
Neither one of them was fine. Neither had been fine for a long time. She was a bloody liar.

  “There she is!” Someone shouted from a distance. A mob turned the corner and rushed into the isolated parking lot.

  Vikram stepped back and slammed the car door shut. “You got her?” he asked Nikhil.

  “Aren’t you coming?” Nikhil said.

  “Mira’s in there. There’s something I need to talk to her about.” Vikram touched Ria’s hand as it clutched the door. She wanted to draw it away, but she couldn’t make herself.

  And she couldn’t look away from the mirror, where his form grew more and more distant as he stood there watching them drive away. Vikram, hurt and bleeding. Her worst fear come true.

  18

  Ria heard another car and rushed to her bedroom window. She pulled back a slit in the curtain and peeked out at the street. It was two in the morning. Light spilled from a solitary lamp at the end of the driveway and painted everything a surreal gray. She had run to the window so many times since coming home from Devon, she was amazed the carpet didn’t have a permanent path carved into it. Absently, she rubbed the depressed fibers with her big toe, and watched the car drive by without stopping.

  Her laptop sat open on the bed, providing the only light in the room. She had tried to read the blasted script, but she couldn’t get the cut slashed into Vikram’s skin out of her head. Instead of taking her mind off the metallic stench of blood that clung to her nostrils like rotten molasses, the script had only intensified it. One gruesome death followed another against the backdrop of exploding vehicles and burning buildings. Fire and blood interspersed with more fire and blood.

  Another car purred down the street, and Ria inched back the drapes to take another peek. This time the car turned up the driveway and bounced to a halt. The lighted AMERICAN TAXI sign on top flickered. Vikram staggered out of the backseat, his big body almost flying facedown on the concrete.

  “You need help, man?” the driver asked from inside the cab.

  “Nah, thanks, man. I got it.” Was he slurring?

  He righted himself and gave the driver a salute before he drove off. He had changed back into his golf shirt and jeans. Light reflected off the tape she had pressed against his temple. Slung over his shoulder was her bloodstained scarf.

  He weaved slowly up the path to the house. Suddenly, he stopped and looked up at her window. She jumped back, ducking away from the drapes, and plastered herself against the wall. Oh please, let him not have seen her.

  For long seconds she heard nothing more. The only sound was her heart pounding in her ears. She tiptoed to her bedroom door and pressed her ear to the cool wood, straining to listen. Finally the key turned in the front door. It opened with one click, then shut with another. Another long moment of silence followed. Then she heard his footfalls going down the stairs.

  Only instead of fading away, the footsteps grew louder.

  She pulled away from the door. He wasn’t going down the stairs, he was coming up the stairs. Shit. She ran to the bed, slammed the laptop shut, and dived under the sheets. In the dead silence, she heard the precise moment when he reached the top of the stairs. She heard every slow deliberate step he took toward her door. She heard the precise moment when his hand touched her doorknob. The softest thud sounded against the door.

  Her heart raced in her chest. She tried to relax her grip on the comforter, to even out her breathing. He twisted the doorknob. The tension in the springs coiled inside her belly. She held her breath and waited for the door to open. Every passing second stretched and pulsed in the stillness.

  The door didn’t move.

  Very slowly she heard him release the doorknob. With a whisper of a sound it clicked back in place. Just as softly, she heard him take his hand off the knob and make his way back down the stairs.

  She was shaking. But it wasn’t relief she felt. It was something else entirely. She tried not to acknowledge it, tried to push it away before her mind articulated the thought. But she couldn’t. She had been waiting, praying for the door to open. For a long time, she lay there motionless, the deadening pain in her heart weighing her down into the suddenly cold bed.

  She hadn’t thought about going crazy in close to a week. The constant noise inside her head asking to count, to check, to stay in control had gone completely silent, and she hadn’t even noticed—but now the warm slickness of his blood came alive on her fingers and brought it back. She rolled over and rubbed her fingers into the sheets, but she couldn’t wipe it off. The slickness spread up her arm and covered her body and she fell back in time, her body shrinking into tiny breakable arms, into tiny curious feet.

  Tiny seven-year-old feet she had used to follow the moans up the creaking stairs all those years ago. It was the moans that had called to Ria. They had been her earliest memory, those animal cries that had echoed through the house and woken her in the middle of the night.

  But she’d never gone up those stairs before. She’d known they were forbidden even before Aji had cupped her face in her hands and issued the soft command. You don’t ever go up there, you hear me?

  But a few days before her seventh birthday Aji had died, and Aji’s cousin had come to stay the day of her funeral. Ria didn’t like Aji’s cousin. The moment Baba left the house, the gnarled old lady pushed Ria out of the kitchen. Stay away from me, you cursed child, she hissed. That woman should never have married your father. Never brought her curse into the family. He should have made her spill you before you were born. Now he’s stuck with you and your devil’s possession.

  You come from insanity. It’s your destiny. As if hiding it in an attic will make it go away.

  Then she lit an oil lamp in the altar and walked it around the kitchen to get rid of Ria’s cursed presence as Ria watched her through the slit in the door.

  Suddenly the strangeness of her life made sense to Ria—why Baba never sent her to school or let her play with the kids down the lane, why the neighbors disappeared like raindrops on gravel when Baba and she walked past them to the market. Why her gentle father turned dark and menacing if anyone so much as approached their wooden gate.

  She stared up at the green painted attic door with its huge brass latch and threw one last look over her shoulder.

  You don’t ever go up there, you hear me?

  Did you have to keep your promises to dead people?

  She reached up and grabbed the massive latch with both hands. She could just about reach it, and it took all her strength to drag it back and forth until the door swung open. And she staggered into the room.

  The animal grunts hit her first. Matted hair and tattered cloth flew at her and knocked her flat and straddled her body. Spittle sprayed Ria’s face. Wild eyes darted all over the room. Ria shoved at the creature, trying to get away, and it sprang off her, struggling with its bound wrists, moaning and grunting. Ria scooted back on her elbows, tried to scream, but it lunged at her again before the sound made it out.

  Teeth sank into flesh. Razors pierced Ria’s skin, crunched against bone. Wetness slithered down her body. The grunting moans grew to a fevered pitch. Something hard and heavy crashed into Ria’s head. Pain exploded in her ribs, something tore inside her belly. Hands lifted her, threw her against a wall. Blood filled her mouth and pooled under her on the cold cement floor. Fingers grabbed her throat, shaking her and squeezing and squeezing. She struggled to keep her eyes open, but warm liquid dripped onto her lids.

  Baba rose from the red haze. He lifted the creature off her. He was sobbing. His eyes ablaze with anger, but his hands gentle on the thrashing creature in his arms. “Shh, please, it’s just Ria. It’s our daughter.”

  Blood dripped in rivulets from the creature’s teeth. Her eyes bulged with confusion, pleading with Ria, wanting something.

  Darkness wrapped around Ria, fading the face from view. But not before she’d seen the widow’s peak on the wide forehead, seen the bottle-brown eyes, and felt the shock of knowing that looking at the creature was exa
ctly like looking in a mirror.

  Ria sat up in bed, the pain in her seven-year-old body swelling to fill her adult form, the insanity inside her clawing like a beast. She rubbed her skin. All the near-invisible scars carved into her body throbbed to life. Tattoos commemorating her one and only encounter with the monster who had brought her into this world. Indelible brands of what she was destined to become.

  She stepped off the bed and slipped into her kimono and slippers. She had to get out of her room.

  It’s your destiny. She would never let herself forget again.

  You come from Insanity. Vikram’s mother had repeated those words a decade later, the terror of what Ria could do to her son making each word a trembling whisper. You. Come. From. Insanity. As if Insanity were a planet from where ticking time bombs were launched onto Earth, where they ultimately detonated into madness.

  It’s genetic. All the women in your family have had it. Why would it stop at you? Why?

  It wouldn’t. Ria had been stupid enough to forget once. The mistake had destroyed her life and almost destroyed Vikram’s. Almost.

  There was only one place to go. Only one place that could drag her back into the present. She slipped out of the kitchen onto the deck and let her feet take her to the oak. The canopy was tinged with yellow. The early-morning light caught each yellowing leaf and turned it into gold. An intense urge to capture it with brushstrokes, to wrap it in paint, overwhelmed her. But the last thing she needed was another way to draw out the crazies.

  She wrapped her arms around herself and leaned her back into the trunk. Her body still hurt from her dream. That was the thing about being beaten—you never forgot the pain or the shock of how much it hurt. Or the shame of having deserved it.

  So much shame that it had taken her words. All of them. She’d woken up in the hospital with Baba stroking her face.

  “There’s my rani, my baby princess. How are you?” he’d asked, tears streaming from his sad eyes.

  And she’d had no answer. Not to that question, not to all the questions that came after that, from doctors, from teachers, from Baba. Questions that had turned to pleading and goading and threats.