by Sajni Patel
“Yes. Take for example Saanvi. She observes all the holidays and fasts and prays every morning. We used to do sleepovers at Rayna’s, and she’d bring this portable prayer kit. You know? With a prayer towel, pictures, prayer book, and beaded necklace thing, I don’t know what that’s called. She’d wake up at dawn and face the south of the house, or something, and pray. She used to get mad when I walked in on her, even if we were quiet.
“She’s active in mandir and goes to all the weddings and parties and is devout and just perfect in every way to every auntie and uncle I know. They light up when they speak about her; they’ve never done that when they speak about me. They don’t even say more than two words if they see me.
“I don’t pray. I don’t like going to festivals. I don’t even like curry. I can only eat so much roti and rice. I eat meat. And I like things that most other Indian girls here don’t, so I don’t conform to their view and they make me feel like I’m less of an Indian, an outsider, too Western. I’ve always been on the fringe of social things. Most people have never said, hey come on over or we’ll see you at whatever. When I got close to being friends with other little Indian girls, their moms pulled them away.”
I paused long enough to drag in another breath, but I didn’t look at Amit. I didn’t want to see how weirded out he was or even, maybe, how upset he might be. And since I was on a rant, might as well get it all out. Might as well completely push the boy away.
“My grades are okay. My Gujarati is embarrassing, and my understanding of Hindi is laughable. I don’t get Bollywood movies. I can’t do a single Indian-style dance, including Garba, the easiest of them all. I can’t figure out how to wear a sari properly. I can’t grasp the spices to know what to put into Indian food. My rotis come out square and uneven, and my barfi comes out bumpy and not at all square.
“I’m not saying that’s all an Indian is. You can’t quantify an entire race by a few abstract things. And I’m not saying all Indians view me that way, it can’t be. But I’m saying there are enough Indians in this community to make me sorely aware that I’m not . . . what . . . good enough? Americans have no issue in reminding me that I’m brown by saying crap like I must be good at math and know computers and must want to be a doctor and obviously eat curry every day, but Indians have no regard to remind me that I’m not brown enough.”
There. It was all out in the open like a shredded trash bag with its innards of rubbish flapping in the wind. All ugly and smelly.
I braced my hands against the trunk, readying myself to push off and go home once Amit realized I was not the sort of Indian girl he could take home to hang with his parents. I was a blimp passing through his life, which was fine because no girl needed to be around a guy who thought less of her. Especially based on stupidity.
When he didn’t speak, I did. “Yeah. You can judge me just like the rest of them do. It’s expected.”
“Wait.” He took my wrist as I shifted to jump off. “I’m sorry that you feel that way, but you shouldn’t. No one has the right to tell you that you’re anything less. I’ve never felt that way from anyone at mandir.”
“That’s because you’re perfect.”
“I’m-I’m not,” he stammered and cleared his throat. “I’m pretty sure we established that I’m definitely not perfect.”
“You are everything they expect you to be. I’m not.”
“Did you feel out of place or judged tonight?”
“Only with Saanvi.”
I could feel him rolling his eyes. “She’s a whole other entity. She does not represent the entire community, by the way.”
“You’re not in the least bit curious to know about the whole Dev fiasco?”
“It’s not my business. Except . . .”
Now I rolled my eyes. Here it came. Get on with it.
“It sort of pissed me off. That she would say that about you.”
“Are you more upset that it could be true or that she fabricated some giant story?” I spoke tentatively, my stomach clenching with anticipation.
“The latter.”
“What if Dev and I had done something?” I asked, my head whirling from relief but bitterness still biting my tongue.
“I’d be a little mad.”
“Exactly.”
He explained, “Not at you, but the . . . um . . . the idea of someone all up on you. I’d get over it, definitely wouldn’t judge you or view you differently or think any less of you.” He went silent for a minute. “So did you—”
“No!”
“What happened, then?”
“Why?”
“Because I’d like to know the truth instead of whatever Saanvi said. Not that I believe her.”
“If you don’t believe her, then that’s all that matters,” I said, waiting for his response.
He didn’t say anything for a good minute, and finally relented. “Okay.”
“Just like that? You’re not going to probe later on?”
“No. If you don’t want to share, I have no right to push you. I’m sorry.”
I sighed. Part of me wanted to tell him, to get it out, to move past this, to vindicate myself. I tempered my words so I didn’t sound defensive. I didn’t owe him an explanation. I did, however, want him to know the real story because once I said it aloud, it wouldn’t sound like such a monstrous deal.
“Rayna, Saanvi, and I were squad-level friends.”
He sat up and watched me, but I kept my focus ahead or on our feet. “During last semester, I was talking with this boy, Reg. Nothing serious, nothing physical. Rayna was talking with Dev. Also nothing serious. Then one day I asked about Dev and she said she didn’t care. So Dev and I started talking for about a week. I’d never told the other boy that we were done, seeing that we weren’t serious. It should’ve obviously faded away when I stopped texting. Saanvi found out and told Dev and they were super mad, like I’d cheated on my boyfriend while testing the waters for a new boyfriend.
“Rayna was upset, too, because she thought the same thing and also because she still liked Dev. Anyway. It all sounds inconsequential and trivial now, but at the time it was enough for them to defriend me. Broke my heart, actually.”
“Doesn’t . . . sound like that big of a deal. I mean, not to diminish your feelings, but why is Saanvi acting this way?”
I shrugged. Cuz she spawned from hell?
“Maybe she didn’t want you in her clique and just, I dunno, latched onto some small mistake and blew it up.”
“Probably.” It would explain why she kept shoving it in Rayna’s face. Maybe Saanvi wanted me out of the group, and this was her way of making it happen. “It really hurt, to know they thought I was shady or would betray them. And I told Rayna play by play what was happening. But, whatever.”
“Their loss. They lost a good friend, but guess you dodged some shady ones.”
“Better way to look at it. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t miss Rayna so much. And if Saanvi wasn’t telling everyone I was easy, which probably is why Travis tries to flirt with me.”
“I’m sure there are a hundred other reasons he tries.”
Wait. Was he saying that I was flirt-worthy? Good thing there was a breeze to cool off my face.
“So, um, are you dating anyone now?” he asked and scratched the back of his neck.
“Why? Are you even allowed to date?” I tried not to smile, but my stupid lips went up anyway.
“Not exactly, but there are extenuating circumstances that allow rule-breaking.”
“Like what?”
“Like you.”
Flustered, I jumped off the trunk. My brain couldn’t come up with anything witty or smooth to say. So it rattled off the first thing that came to mind. “I’m in a monogamous relationship, to be honest.”
Amit followed suit, hurrying to walk alongside me back to the street
.
“Oh, really? What’s his name?”
“Um, MT. We don’t flaunt us.”
“Some guy at school that I know?”
“No, definitely not at school.”
“Ah. How long have you been together?” he asked, his mouth near my ear, his hands beneath the blanket cloak.
I smiled unwillingly. “Since forever.”
“What are we talking? Forever in high school?”
“Since fourth grade?”
“Are you asking or telling?”
“Telling.”
“What! That’s insane. Do your parents know you’ve been involved with someone for that long?”
“Yes. And they’re cool with it.”
“You’re playing me.”
“No. Ask them yourself if you want. It’s all true. MT is my first love.”
“Hmm,” he said suspiciously.
We stopped at the end of the driveway to my house, at the hood of his car. “I should go and clean up. I really did have fun though.”
He raised both eyebrows high, as if to challenge my admittance.
“Don’t you have some cosmic secret to work out? That multifarious program growing like a tumor in your brain?”
“Multifarious!” he choked out. “What does that even mean?”
“Look it up when you get home.”
“All right, Kareena. Thank you for coming tonight. I had a great time too.”
“I didn’t say I had a great time. Just fun.”
“Okay. Now you’re just flirting with me.”
“You should look up that word when you get home too.” I went to shrug out of the jacket.
“Nah, keep it.”
“Give it back to you Tuesday?”
He tugged on the collar, pulling me toward him. “I think it looks better on you.”
My heart pounded like an 808 against my chest. I was pretty sure he could feel it thumping against his wrists. What if he pulled me another few inches into him? What prevented my lips from touching his lips?
But then he actually, slowly, deliberately, pulled me into him. My hands crashed against his side to prevent full frontal contact, because who in the world knew if I could handle such a thing.
I gulped, hard, possibly audibly. My palms sweated against his kurta, or maybe that was just the dampness of his shirt.
His warm breath, laced with cardamom and cinnamon from the sweets, hit my lips. His gaze wandered to my mouth and mine dropped to his.
Boy, he sure was tall. He’d have to lean all the way down because my body seemed to freeze up.
His lips twitched before he grinned. “I better go.”
“Yeah,” I breathed, my tongue unable to form coherent words.
“Wouldn’t want this MT to beat my butt.”
“MT definitely is known for fighting, yup.”
He swallowed and leaned down, moving his head to the side, and kissed me ever so gently on my left cheek. On the far corner of my lips. And I was so very inclined to turn my head into his, but my entire body froze with the exception of the mass of butterflies mauling my insides.
Eleven
“No burger-flipping way,” Lily said, her back against my locker.
I nodded, trying not to cheese. “True story.”
“He kissed you? Your first kiss. Aw. You’re growing up.”
My skin turned warm just thinking about it. “It was sort of a kiss. On the cheek.”
“Did his lips or did his lips not touch yours?”
“Just the tiny corners.”
“Lip on lip action. Dang.”
I giggled, tickled by the fact that Lily didn’t care if most kids in our grade had already done the big deed and then there was me . . . romantically challenged and unable to date and did not care to date.
“It just happened.”
Lily nodded. She also didn’t try to convince me that a corner kiss was nothing to get worked up about because that was so fifth grade. A first kind of kiss was still a first kind of kiss.
“It’s a huge freaking deal,” she stated. “So you had the whole ‘low self-esteem/poor self-worth in comparison to what you think other Indians think of you’ talk?”
“It was more of a blurted ramble.”
“And in this blurting and rambling, did you mention your deepest passion in life?”
“We’re not that close.”
“You locked lips. We haven’t locked lips and I know.”
“I want to tell him.”
“You’ll have to eventually,” she stated with a wave of her hand.
“That’s assuming this will turn into a thing.” I chewed on the inside of my lip. It could be, or it wouldn’t be. But who had time to worry? Especially when we couldn’t date anyway.
“Even if it doesn’t work out but you want to be friends, because he seems like a cool dude to be friends with, you might want to tell him. It’s a huge part of who you are.”
“So’s my dad’s health, but no one needs to know that much.”
“But Muay Thai is your passion. Shoot, you are going places with it. I think . . . now correct me if I’m wrong . . . but if you make it to the World Championships or I dunno . . . the Olympics . . . people might notice. Besides, you want to tell him. What’s the holdup?”
“That I’m afraid of him judging me.”
“He didn’t think any less of you when you told him about not feeling Indian enough. I don’t get why you’re so concerned with what others think of you.”
“It makes me feel disconnected from my people.” And also . . . low self-esteem issues? Hello? I knew that much. But no one wanted to admit that aloud.
“They’re no one to you. You’re not friends with them. They’re not family. You never see them except the few who go to school here, and even then, it’s in passing.”
“Insecurity isn’t logical.”
She hugged her books to her chest and shook her head. “Here’s how I see it: If someone doesn’t like you, then that’s their problem. Not yours. You keep doing your thing and not give them a minute of your time. Whatever narrow-minded, inferior judgment others pass is a cloud of negativity living in their head. Meanwhile, you’re living your best, most positive and happy life. Eventually, their heads will explode from the pessimism while you’re frolicking in a field of joy.”
“Am I high in this scenario?”
“Might as well be, since that’s what happiness from not stressing over others’ opinions of you feels like. How can someone as confident and badass as you be so insecure with strangers?”
“How can someone as kind as you be crude with my feelings?”
She smiled. “Sorry.”
“We all have our thing. You’re not perfect.”
“I never brought perfection into this conversation.”
“Let me break the complexity of my thought pattern for you: You don’t care what anyone thinks of you, but you feel very self-conscious if you were to leave your house with natural hair. How about, if I can learn to not care about what someone may or may not think, because honestly, I know I’m speculating sometimes, you come to school with that glorious Filipina ’fro.”
She eyed me warily. “Have you at some point mastered your issues and are pulling the long con?”
I crossed my arms, did that sassy neck roll thing, and pursed my lips. “Deal or no deal?”
She spent whatever time we had left before the warning bell sounded to consider. “Start with him?”
“I will.” Eventually. Maybe when I left for USMTO . . . if he asked where I was.
“C’mon. I know he’s going to react well. You don’t give him enough credit. He’s already proved himself worthy.”
I huffed out a breath. “Fine, I’ll tell him.”
She grinned. “Nice! M
aybe we can all go door-to-door together to get more sponsors. Put him to work. Gonna let him see you fight?”
I cringed but bit out, “Sure.”
“When are you going to tell him?”
“Why so pushy?” I asked nervously. Why were my palms sweating?
“Because it would be awesome if he supported you for the Open. It’s only two weeks away!”
Oh, lord. Only two weeks to practice my butt off and get the rest of the two grand? “And it would suck hard if he didn’t like it and I got distracted.”
“Trust him. It won’t be that way.”
I mulled over her words. “Maybe you’re right. Okay. I should tell him. And then you radiate the same level of confidence with your hair.”
Huffing and walking off to class, she called over shoulder, “Deal!”
-
Amit’s thoughtful gaze burned a hole the size of the sun into my side. He tapped the eraser end of his pencil against his notebook, his cheek resting in his hand and his elbow propped on the desk.
“What?” I finally asked, watching him through the corner of my eye and pretending he wasn’t adorable.
“Do you want to come over for dinner?”
Like a date? Or like, to chill with his parents? “What makes you think I eat?”
“I’ve seen you eat. I know.”
I scoffed. “Why?”
“Why eat?” He shrugged and straightened up. “Sort of vital to this whole living thing we got going on.”
“You know what I mean. Why are you asking me over for dinner? Is this a trick?”
He sat upright and swiveled a pencil between his fingers. He asked gently, “Why do you think everyone is against you? Is there a master plot that you’ve deciphered? Because I must be behind.”
“Seriously. What’s up?”
“My mom asked about you.”
“Your mom. Right.” That was hard to believe. I was a fleeting blip on her radar from Holi.
“Honest. You can ask her, if you want.”
“Hmmm.” Or had Saanvi mentioned something insidious to her and she wanted to gather intel and weed me out of Amit’s life?
He released the pencil and looked directly at me. He waited until I slowly dragged my gaze over to his before he started. “So, yeah. She asked about you and wants to invite your family over. I mean . . .” He shuffled through his pages. “Don’t think you’re special or anything. My parents weed out bad influences this way.”