Blending Out

by Priyanka Bagrodia

  BLENDING OUT

  BLENDING OUT

  PRIYANKA BAGRODIA

  NEW DEGREE PRESS

  COPYRIGHT © 2021 PRIYANKA BAGRODIA

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN 978-1-63676-832-8 Paperback

  978-1-63730-210-1 Kindle Ebook

  978-1-63730-276-7 Ebook

  To my family,

  my friends,

  and the many wonderful people who saw me

  when I couldn’t see myself.

  “I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out;

  and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.”

  Virginia Woolf

  CONTENTS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PART 1. SEPTEMBER

  CHAPTER 1. SEPTEMBER 2008

  CHAPTER 2. SEPTEMBER 2018

  CHAPTER 3. SEPTEMBER 2018

  CHAPTER 4. SEPTEMBER 2008

  CHAPTER 5. SEPTEMBER 2018

  CHAPTER 6. SEPTEMBER 2018

  PART 2. NOVEMBER

  CHAPTER 7. NOVEMBER 2008

  CHAPTER 8. NOVEMBER 2018

  CHAPTER 9. NOVEMBER 2018

  CHAPTER 10. NOVEMBER 2008

  CHAPTER 11. NOVEMBER 2018

  CHAPTER 12. NOVEMBER 2018

  PART 3. FEBRUARY

  CHAPTER 13. FEBRUARY 2009

  CHAPTER 14. FEBRUARY 2019

  CHAPTER 15. FEBRUARY 2019

  CHAPTER 16. FEBRUARY 2009

  CHAPTER 17. FEBRUARY 2019

  CHAPTER 18. FEBRUARY 2019

  PART 4. APRIL

  CHAPTER 19. APRIL 2009

  CHAPTER 20. APRIL 2019

  CHAPTER 21. APRIL 2019

  CHAPTER 22. APRIL 2009

  CHAPTER 23. APRIL 2019

  CHAPTER 24. APRIL 2019

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I don’t know if anyone’s life plan goes as expected. Maybe it does for a select few, but it’s safe to say mine has not exactly panned out as I thought it would. I am twenty-six, and yet, I am currently writing this novel from my childhood bedroom with my vast collection of Beanie Babies rooting me on as I type away.

  Whenever someone asked twelve-year-old me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d always respond that I wanted to be successful. This answer was simultaneously brilliant and really dumb. Brilliant, because in theory, there was no way I could fail to achieve success if I were the one defining success, and dumb because the concept of success is obviously very nebulous; so, given a personality type like mine, every time someone would look down on me or look through me, I’d tell myself, “Still a long way to go.” Unfortunately, it got to a point where I was having anxiety attacks because of the pressure I put on myself. I realized that either my mindset had to change or I had to get knee pads to make tucking my head between my knees more comfortable.

  One day, when I was feeling quite blue, I came across an old journal of mine from the sixth grade. In it, I’d written an adaptation of William Blake’s The Tyger poem. It centered on dragons and was completely ridiculous, but I loved it. I loved how twelve-year-old me was trying to process some feelings of vulnerability even then and had instinctively turned to writing as an outlet. I decided to start writing again, and as my journal entries multiplied in number, I gained ever-increasing clarity about myself and realized I was consistently discussing the same themes again and again. Over the last year, I have happily become comfortable enough with myself that I would like to share that journey with you, the reader.

  I decided to make this work into one of fiction to create enough distance between me and the protagonist and give myself the breathing room to honestly discuss certain underlying concepts important to me. Although some things are dramatized and other things are just not true, this book at its core seeks to address the manner I used to give up parts of myself just to fit in. In the following pages, I discuss parts of my identity I love now but caused me a lot of inner turmoil over the years because I just felt off and like I didn’t belong. If you’ve ever felt that internal struggle and discontent, I hope you’ll find something to relate to in this book. If nothing else, I hope you’ll enjoy Ryley’s journey.

  PART I

  SEPTEMBER

  CHAPTER 1

  SEPTEMBER 2008

  Ryley galloped into the kitchen, having smelled the mouth-watering combination of frying onion, oil, and spice wafting into her room. The aroma had effectively jarred her out of her bout of melancholia, induced by thoughts of what the day would hold. They had a giant shopping trip planned mainly because Ryley’s mom had decided Ryley’s current collection of clothing did not befit a tenth grader. Ryley would have preferred to skip the mall and instead do any number of things: play baseball—badly—with her brother Harrison in their backyard, read a book, or just hole up in her room and play one of her angsty bands on loop, appropriating the singer’s heartbreak for herself. She was a girl of simple pleasures.

  Nonetheless, Ryley made a good-faith effort to bury her resentment as she walked by her mother in the kitchen, shooting her a nice enough attempt at a smile. Her mother instinctively smiled back, but the smile transformed into a light grimace upon seeing Ryley’s red capri pants and her white shirt with owls and a caption that said love hoo you are. She then very obviously looked Ryley up and down, immediately making her disapproval known in the downturn of her lips and the furrow of her delicate brow. Ryley ignored her, pretending obliviousness even as a little pool of uncertainty formed in her belly, causing her to tug at the shirt slightly riding up on her lanky frame. She had spent fifteen minutes deciding on the outfit and was a huge fan of owls. They reminded her of the owls that would sit outside her room at night as she lay in bed reading or daydreaming; sometimes, they’d hoot back and forth at each other past midnight.

  “Are you sure you want to wear that to the mall?” her mom finally asked, never one to beat around the bush for long.

  Ryley simply said, “Yeah,” not bothering to defend her outfit choice. She knew the other teens at her prep school were moving on to nice sweaters and plain, flattering shirts, but she liked the owls.

  Ryley’s mom, still standing at the stove to char bread for them, provided no further response, so Ryley quickly and silently took her place by Harrison at the kitchen table. She then rapidly dug into the poha her mom had laid out for her. Ryley was almost proud of how quickly she scarfed down the mix of yellow, flattened rice, tomatoes, potatoes, and onions, all flavored with an intricate assortment of spices. In truth, the only thing at which she was remotely athletic was how fast she could tuck away food. Harrison, sitting to her right at the antique oak table, unsurprisingly made the easy, lazy joke that she ate as much as a teenage boy on a football team. She ignored him. Their father too kept his silence as he ate, reading the newspaper with an intensity and thoroughness in keeping with his position as an executive in finance.

  Ryley looked back over at her mom, still cooking, even as the rest of the family began to eat. She chafed and startled inside, her heartbeat picking up, as she got a glimpse of a future that felt more real to her now. She’d seen the same dynamic in other Indian homes, and because her parents’ Indian friends had recently begun asking her if she had a boyfriend, the idea of being made to be the nurturer, the caretaker, no longer felt as foreign and only reserved for actual grown-ups.

  Eventually, her mother joined them, placing the bread down with a sigh and Ryley immediately hopped up, perhaps wanting to punish, absurdly, her mother for the role she played in all this. If her mother continued to perpetuate this gendered dynamic, she wouldn’t get Ryley’s company; however, before Ryley could complete her huff-off in style, her mother spoke again. “Ryley, please change. You look childish. Also, don’t forget we need to stop at Claire’s to get
your ears pierced. I want you to be able to wear earrings at your cousin’s wedding next month.”

  Ryley took several deep breaths in an attempt to control herself, but her anger rose too fast. It was the sort of tidal anger that welled up only when she felt powerless and trapped. She didn’t like earrings and disliked jewelry in general. She’d let the holes in her ears close on purpose—her earlobes would turn red and irritated whenever she wore earrings as her body rejected the metal. Her mom had needed to badger her for an entire week before she’d agreed to get them re-pierced, so her poor ears could play unwilling host to the heavy ornate Indian earrings necessary for a wedding.

  Everything was a show, and as long as she could remember, her parents had walked a fine tightrope, showing that even though they’d fully acclimated to America, they still valued and embraced their Indian heritage. There was Indian Mama and Papa Agarwal with their salvar kamiz and saris, boisterous Hindi, enjoyment of Indian songs and Bollywood, and emphasis on the proper hierarchy of a family; then there was American Mama and Papa Agarwal with their designer clothes, muted accents, and adoption of stiffness and aplomb, her dad emphasizing that he went to Wharton and was an executive at Merrill Lynch.

  Ryley didn’t see how they thought she could walk that same tightrope. She saw all the holes. Getting her ears pierced to wear Indian earrings for one day wouldn’t make her any more connected to their (her?) Indian heritage. Even if she wore the boring prep school clothes her mom forced upon her, talking about visiting India with her mostly white classmates would ruin the thin veneer of protection afforded by any French designer shirt. She’d rather stay in Los Angeles or go to some place in Europe, like the rest of her cohort. An Indian going back to India was not cool, not like it would have been if she were white, if she could talk about it all with a comfortable sense of foreign wonder.

  Ryley spent a good thirty seconds in a sort of test sulk in the aftermath of her mother’s offhand, careless directive, but the grievances she’d been stockpiling in her head overwhelmed her. She took savage joy in finally breaking free and shedding the accommodating, easygoing skin starting to suffocate her.

  “What business do you have telling me how to dress when you have more Indian clothes than American clothes? When people can’t understand your accent half the time? When it’s clear to everyone that you still don’t belong here? That you’ll only ever be just a transplant, an immigrant?” She let condescension color her voice as she called her mother an immigrant.

  Her dad looked like he was going to explode with his heavy black eyebrows drawing close together over his dark brown eyes, even as his wide mouth, usually only smiling at her, contorted into an O as he drew in a breath to bellow at her. Her mother jumped in though, placing a calming hand on her father’s arm even as she ordered Ryley to “get in the car.” Ryley stayed frozen, waiting to see what would happen. Her mother always had a retort at the ready; she’d never been silent. Finally, after receiving nothing more than a glinting glare from her mother, a scowl from her father, and a neutral look from Harrison—because ostensible peace-keeper that he was, he never took sides—she ran from the table.

  The car ride passed by in a blur as Ryley curled into herself, away from the hurt radiating from her mother, and then too soon, they were at the mall. The smell of Abercrombie & Fitch cologne overwhelmed her, fogging her mind, and she took short, shallow breaths to avoid inhaling too much of it. As they began the trek across the gray marble floor, Ryley focused on the plaintive, angsty tones of Lifehouse flowing forth from her headphones. Lifehouse was her favorite, stolen wholesale from her brother Harrison a good seven years ago and not let go of since. Her brother had moved on to Kanye and Coldplay with everyone else, but she considered herself a maverick, a cow in sheep’s clothing (she couldn’t possibly justify calling herself a wolf). She turned up the volume so her mom could hopefully hear how she was just “Hanging by a Moment;” the song was her current album favorite.

  Ryley dragged her feet as they got closer to Claire’s. Claire’s was the quick stop ear-piercing place everyone went to, located on the first floor of the mall. Her mom overtook her easily, a rather common occurrence in spite of the fact her mother was a generally small woman and Ryley easily towered over her, all gangly arms and legs. But Ryley tended to walk slowly, mulling through things, as she let her feet absentmindedly carry her along. It drove her mother, whose middle name was efficiency, crazy.

  Her mom let out a huff now as she turned to Ryley and said, “Do you want me to come in with you or not?”

  Ryley shook her head, though she would have liked her mom to insist that yes, she would come. Her mom would have normally insisted and made it her problem, so Ryley could reluctantly and dramatically cave, but now, Ryley’s mom just said, “Okay. I’ll be at the Banana Republic on the second level.”

  As Ryley passed her mother, she wanted to skitter closer, touch her hand slightly, and then play it off as accidental, acting annoyed that her mother had invaded her space. They didn’t fight, not like this, but it had been a long time coming: a culmination of too many underlying tensions simmering on broil unduly long. Ryley dragged herself through the door and into line, looking down at the floor as she replayed the words she’d said and let herself sink into the guilt.

  Eventually, Ryley reached the front of the line and looked up to see a tall blond girl standing before her with low-cut jeans and a casual, white tank; they looked to be about the same age. Her name tag read Sarah, the h written to end in a playful loop. Sarah looked at her as much as through her and Ryley felt the immaturity of her outfit, of her person.

  “Hi!” Ryley said loudly—too loud for the relative quietness of the store.

  “Hey.” The reply was bored and careless in delivery, a tone removed from the perky, cheerful one she had just used with the girl in line in front of Ryley.

  “I’m here to get my ears pierced. I’m pretty old, I know, but I accidentally let the holes close because I just got bored with the earrings I had. But then I realized I should get my ears re-pierced because who doesn’t like earrings? So, if you have some availability, I’d love to get them re-pierced. Maybe, also a cartilage piercing? What do you think?” If Ryley hadn’t had to stop for air, she would’ve told the other girl she wanted to get her eyebrow pierced as well.

  Sarah stared at her blankly and then after a prolonged pause, said, “Yeah, sure, I can pierce your ears for you, but I have to help these other customers first.” She pointed at the line where five or six people were standing behind Ryley. Ryley saw another Claire’s employee standing off to the side, texting on her phone. She wanted to ask about her but convinced herself that likely only Sarah was capable of piercing ears.

  Ryley meandered around the bright purple store with its racks and racks of earrings, nail polish, and makeup, a supposed dreamland for a teenage girl. A gaggle of girls was huddled around the makeup display, applying eye shadow to each other in turns. Ryley looked down and away, drifting over to the birthday card rack instead and reading the messages inside. She looked back over at Sarah every three cards or so. Over the span of thirty cards, she saw Sarah lead two girls over to a white plastic chair to pierce their ears, even as the other Claire’s employee took over at the register. Ryley pictured herself going over, asking what had happened commandingly, but she could just see her voice tremble instead and her hands shake. She was still standing there, trying to muster up the courage to do something, when her mom came in and agitatedly walked over to her.

  “What’s taking so long?” Her mother’s tone was unusually curt, but it was naïve to have hoped her mom would have magically forgiven her after spending twenty minutes in Banana Republic.

  “Nothing,” Ryley muttered. “I was just about to go over to that employee, Sarah, to see what was going on. I think I was here before two girls who just got their ears pierced, but I’m not sure. Maybe they made appointments beforehand.”

  Her mom clicked her tongue and irritably said, “Stay here.” She
shook her head as she walked away. Her mother strode up to Sarah, cutting into her conversation with another girl. Ryley edged closer to them to overhear their conversation so as to appropriately calibrate how embarrassed she should be when she got into the chair.

  “My daughter has been sitting over there for twenty minutes. There were two people in line before her when I left her, so I don’t quite understand how she still hasn’t been seen.”

  Sarah looked taken aback for a moment, as if not expecting this type of mother with this type of daughter. Ryley’s mother was dressed in a manner very typical of a banker’s wife, with her silk shirt tucked into form-fitting, dark-wash jeans, her petite stature augmented by heels. She had thick black hair, styled with dark brown highlights, and her caramel-brown skin, unadorned with wrinkles, belied her fifty years of age. Other than their skin color and hair, they looked nothing alike. Her mom had light eyebrows, usually penciled in, small, light brown eyes, and a thin, narrow nose and mouth set in an oval face. Ryley, in contrast, had a round face, thick dark eyebrows set over big dark brown eyes, a wide mouth, and a nose that the rest of her face hadn’t yet grown into.

  Sarah looked at Ryley once again as if to check that this pair actually went together and for a second, her mom and Sarah seemed to blur together, denizens of a world she could never hope to inhabit. Ryley wondered if it all really came down to presentation. To acting presumptuous, to acting white. Ryley had seen all the moms at her prep school act the same way.

  Ryley’s mom prompted Sarah impatiently, demanding, “Well? Why hasn’t she been seen?”

  Sarah fidgeted, played around with her thumb ring, and then eventually said, with an air of forced nonchalance, “Two girls came in with rush appointments. Your daughter didn’t seem to be in any hurry and was going on about how she might want her cartilage pierced.”