We sat there in silence. I didn’t feel like opening up my book.
“I think I saw her again, you know.”
“Who?” I already knew who. I was just hoping she wouldn’t say it.
“You know. Mohini. I think she’s trying to tell me something.”
I started to feel my blood thumping in my ears.
“Tell you something?”
“Yes. I think—I think maybe she wants my help. That’s usually why ghosts come back, right?”
“Help for what?”
“You don’t believe me. Why should I tell you?”
My ears were pulsing now. I could feel myself getting sweaty in my armpits. I had to change the subject.
“Someone stole my passport picture and scratched my eyes out.”
“And you think, what? That it was me?”
Huh? What was she on about?
“No, are you mad? I’m just saying—have you seen what Shanika has been up to lately? She’s always wandering around in the night. Even more than usual.”
“Shanika is always strange.”
“Yeah, she is.” I felt a little smug. I even thought about telling Lihini what I had done this morning. How Shanika won’t be bothering me anymore.
“Maybe it wasn’t Shanika at all. Maybe it was the ghost. Maybe it was Mohini.”
Why was she always taking everyone else’s side but mine? First Maya, now Shanika. I bit my tongue, hard, the chipped bit cutting into the soft flesh. But I didn’t say anything.
There was a sound from the other end of the garden, and for the first time in my life, I was half grateful to see Upul dragging a sack of coconuts from the van into the kitchen. It wasn’t much, but at least it distracted Lihini.
“He’s such a creep,” I said.
“Don’t be so mean.” Why did everything have to be such an argument?
“But he is.”
She didn’t say anything, but I saw her press her lips together tightly, the way Miss Chandra did when she was annoyed about something. I guess this irritated me the most.
“What?” There was an edge to my voice now.
“I heard that Perera sir beats him. Maybe he’s just looking for love too.”
“Perera sir beats him? That’s ridiculous. Isn’t he his nephew?”
“Not closely related, I think. And you know those scars he has on his arms? I heard that’s from Perera sir also. From his cigarettes.”
“Who told you this?”
“Maya did.”
“Haiyyo, why do you always believe what she says? She just loves to gossip, no?”
“Doesn’t make it any less true.”
“But Perera sir would never—”
“How would you know?”
“I know!” Why was she being so defensive?
“Oh please, you don’t know anything!”
“What?”
“You. Don’t. Know. Anything.” How dare she?
Snooby got up from where he was lying down and barked once.
“I know that you are being a bitch,” I spat. I’d only heard the word being used once, when Miss Nayana said it to Miss Sarah about Miss Chandra and they both burst into a fit of giggles. I knew what it meant. It meant female dog, but not in a cute way. I guessed Lihini knew what it meant also, because she looked like I had slapped her.
But just for a moment. She reached out and I thought she was going to hit me. Instead, she yanked my book out of my hands and threw it in the dirt.
“God, you’re just like Mary, no wonder you like her so much. Spoiled rotten. You have everything. Everyone wants you. The Evanses, Upul, everyone picks you. And all you do is complain. You are such a spoiled brat.” She practically spat at me. Her hands were shaking as she balled them into fists.
Snooby barked again.
“I don’t complain about the Evanses.” Okay, maybe I did complain about Upul, but he was horrible! Why couldn’t Lihini see that?
“Why would you? You just get whatever you want, don’t you? You just reach out and take it.” Her voice was shaking as it rose louder, and her eyes got glassy. She was trembling now.
“I—I don’t just take what I want, Lihini. I can’t help it that they picked me, you know. I never tricked anyone. And you said it was okay. You said Perera sir would find you a family also.”
“You don’t even believe me.” Her words sliced into me. “You say you’re my best friend and you don’t even believe me when I say I’ve seen her.”
Here she was, talking about that stupid ghost again.
“Come on, sudhu. You know it’s not like that. You know—”
But she just stood up and reached out for Snooby and I couldn’t keep going. What could I say anyway? That I believed her ridiculous story? Because I didn’t.
Tears were running down her face freely now, as they were on mine.
“You’re so lucky, Paloma. You’re the luckiest girl in the whole wide world, and all you do is complain about leaving, and about Upul, and about Shanika. It’s like you don’t even care about us anymore. About me. I thought you were my friend.”
“You are my friend,” I insisted. She had to see that, surely?
“You were never my friend. You only care about yourself. You might not believe me now, but I’ll prove it to you that I’m right. I’ll prove it to all of you.”
And with that, she turned around and stomped back to the main building, leaving me under the tree with the dog. He stared after her awhile, and then looked at me sadly. I couldn’t bear it.
“Go away. Shoo!”
He didn’t budge.
I pushed him, gently, with my foot.
“Go away, Snooby. Now!”
Still nothing.
You were never my friend. You only care about yourself.
“Get out, Snooby.”
He just blinked up at me.
I couldn’t take it anymore.
I kicked his side. It wasn’t even that hard.
He yelped and darted away.
Dust clung to my sticky face as I tried to calm myself. My hands started to throb. I unclenched my fists. I had dug my fingers so hard into my palms that pink crescents winked up from the whites of my hands.
The luckiest girl in the whole wide world, she said. Was I really that lucky? I didn’t feel so lucky right now, crying under the ambarella tree. But maybe she was right. I thought about Mr. and Mrs. Evans. The way he smiled as if he had never known what it was like to be sad, the way she looked at me when she saw I was reading Wuthering Heights. Lihini was right. I was the luckiest girl in the whole wide world.
33
SAN FRANCISCO, CA
I GAVE UP EVEN attempting to sleep, but the quarter bottle of scotch must have knocked me out cold.
I guess I had opened a window because I felt the breeze tickle my face. I was glad it did. Droplets of sweat ran down my temples and into my hair, sticky and wet like honey. Or blood. My sheets twisted over me as I wrestled against them, trying to break free, trying to get some relief from these demons clawing at me, pulling me deeper into my bed, drowning me like quicksand.
A gust blew in again, its cool fingers a soft caress, giving me just a moment of relief.
I knew I wasn’t alone even before I saw her.
I heard her humming first. It was soft, melodic, as welcome as the breeze. The tune rose and fell, and I let it wash over me. Goose bumps broke out over my arms as I recognized the words.
“Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be.” Of course the words followed. She was never satisfied with just humming. She had to sing.
Her pale, gaunt face. The wild, black hair. Nothing had changed in eighteen years.
“How?” I choked out. “How did you find me?”
“I’ve never left you. I’m always here,” she raspe
d back. Not the song anymore, but the music was still there.
“Please,” I pleaded. “Please leave me alone.”
She smiled again. Her eyes were inky pools that sucked me in.
“You know why I’m here. Why I can never leave,” she said. “It’s because of what you did.”
“What I did?”
“You know what you did.”
She was holding something in her hand. I could see the moonlight bounce off the sharp metal. A box cutter.
“Que sera, sera,” she started to sing.
The tune was haunting me now. It hung heavily between us, perfumed and rotten, like fruit going bad.
She pushed up the silver blade one section at a time, extending it up almost completely. It glinted, silver and bright and long and sharp.
“The future’s not ours to see.” She stopped then, and licked her lips. “Now your turn.”
“Que sera, sera,” I whispered as she stuck her tongue out almost to her chin and licked the blade, slowly, forcefully, splitting her tongue in half, her black eyes never leaving mine.
I sat straight up in bed. My chest hurt and I couldn’t breathe.
“Que sera, sera,” I heard, but it was an echo. Water in cupped hands left over from my dream. But through all of that—the note on my fridge. Had Arun written it? Even if he read the letter, how would he know the song? Who else could have known the song?
I pulled myself out of the twisted blankets and stumbled over to the bathroom, turning on the faucet to the coldest it would go. The water felt like millions of needles stabbing at my skin, but I relished the ache. I looked in the mirror. My face was pale.
Just like hers, something in the back of my mind sneered.
No, I told myself firmly. Not like hers. Never, ever like hers.
I scraped my sweaty hair off my face and tied it back in a knot. I pushed my thumb hard against my fake front tooth, letting the ache bring me back to earth.
I glared at my reflection. Now was not the time to lose my shit.
“I’m Paloma,” I said out loud. My voice bounced off the porcelain in the empty bathroom with a resounding boom. Fuck, yes.
“I’m Paloma, and I’m here, and I’ll be damned if I let anyone fuck with me now.”
* * *
• • •
FIRST THINGS FIRST. I had to know what the fuck was up with that woman across the street. I’ve had fucking enough of her sneaking around and creeping me out. Giving me all this fucking anxiety that I really didn’t need right now, and worst of all, making me second-guess myself. The fact that she looked like, well, I couldn’t really bring myself to even say it. She looked like she might have more to do with what was going on than I first cared to admit.
I mean, how could I have been so dumb? The copy of Wuthering Heights. She was definitely trying to mess with me.
You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, my mother used to say, and she was right. I watched the way she always got what she wanted. It came naturally to her, and not just because she was always the most beautiful woman in the room. Not all beautiful people had what she had—this inherent knowledge to always say and do the right thing. To get everyone to like her.
It didn’t come easily to me. I had to work at it. But if I learned one thing from Mom, it’s that it was usually worth it being the sweet girl.
I didn’t think I had much to go on when it came to looks, not like she does anyway, but I did have the exotic card to play, no matter how much it pained me. I know I’m not supposed to do it that way. I know that we (and I use the term we to mean all of us who have been dealt the shitty hand of having too much melanin in this Clorox-white world) have been through too much, fought too much for our rights, been eroticized and disregarded, for me to use the exotic-brown-girl stereotype to my advantage. I get it. It cheapens our cause. I hate that I have to do it. But fuck you, this is the hand I’ve been dealt and now you want me not to play the only trump card I’ve got?
The catch is that you can’t play the exotic card with other foreigners, obviously.
I had to play the “nice” card with my strange South Asian neighbor, and I wasn’t sure if it would work, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t give it my best shot. And then maybe I could figure out if she has anything to do with the fucked-up shit that’s been going on and get on with my life without her blank stares freaking me out and giving me nightmares. I know it doesn’t solve any of my important problems, but it’ll solve something, I hope, and I’ll take whatever I can get right now.
So when I rang her doorbell with one hand, balancing a store-bought cherry pie that I had transferred onto one of Mom’s baking dishes in the other, I did it with a flickering sense of optimism. I made sure I was smiling my best, most unassuming, friendly-neighbor smile and waited.
I could hear laughter from inside, and light, unnecessarily fast footsteps followed by slower, heavier ones. Someone was chasing that baby around. Babies couldn’t run though, right? Was it a toddler, then?
I was wondering whether to ring the bell again when the door was yanked open. It wasn’t her.
“Hello?” a man with sandy-brown hair called out. He looked a little confused to see me. It was eleven a.m. on a Tuesday. I didn’t expect him to be at home. This neighborhood was far too nice for a husband who was at home on a weekday morning. Maybe he worked for one of those new-age startups that let you connect in remotely? I made a conscious effort not to groan. The only thing worse than a hipster is a wannabe yuppie hipster.
I had worn my impress-her outfit—a cheerful yellow skirt, and a roomy white T-shirt. Friendly, gal next door, and most importantly, nonthreatening. I definitely wasn’t in my impress-him outfit, which leaned more towards the low-cut, tank top side of my wardrobe, so this was certainly a deviation from my plan.
“Hi! I’m Paloma. Evans,” I added for good measure, in case he didn’t spend most of his time spying on me like his psycho wife did. “I’m just staying at my parents’ across the street. Just thought I’d come around and say hi, since we haven’t had a chance to meet yet.” Women use the word just far more than men do, an article I read recently said. They feel it makes them appear less imposing, and that’s exactly what I was going for. Less imposing. Least imposing. Totally approachable. Not at all like I want to bitch-slap your wife all the way to a mental asylum.
He leaned against the doorframe, oblivious to the stamping and squealing coming from inside. He had a geometric pattern of circles and triangles tattooed on his inner arm. The discipline it took for me not to roll my eyes was giving me a headache.
“Paloma. Hi. That’s nice of you to come by. I’m Gavin.” He spoke cautiously, with strong undertones of why the fuck are you here.
“Nice to meet you, Gavin.” I made sure my smile didn’t drop. I probably looked psychotic. “Is your wife at home? I’d love to say hello.”
He frowned a little and looked over his shoulder. “She’s home, but she’s been a little under the weather lately, let me check. Oh god, Gulliver, put that down!” Who the hell names their child Gulliver? Goddamned hipsters, man. They’ll never give that little shit a chance.
“Gulliver, come on, buddy.” He sighed. His eyes were red rimmed and he was unshaven.
“Give me a minute. Why don’t you just come in?”
I stepped inside a living room almost identical to my parents’ and Ida’s. Well, identical except this one looked like it had been hit by a hurricane of plastic toys, crayons, bottles, and god knows what else.
“Sorry it’s such a mess. We still haven’t fully settled in after the move. You know how it is with a kid.”
No, Gavin. I do not know, and have absolutely no intention of ever finding out. I thought about my little apartment back in the city and how I died a little every time Arun left an unwashed dish in the sink. No chance I was ever going to let my home look like the Teletubbies took a
massive dump all over it.
“Honey, are you there?” he called out. “Paloma Evans from across the street is here. And she’s brought pie.” He gave me a small smile like there was some secret joke between us that I was supposed to understand. Maybe there was. Maybe under different circumstances I’d giggle back, and he’d casually keep his left hand in his pocket so I wouldn’t see his wedding ring, and we’d think of plausible reasons to exchange phone numbers or fuck in a bathroom somewhere. But today wasn’t that day.
I stepped into the living room, my knuckles white around Mom’s baking dish.
“Appy’s not been feeling so great. I think she might be coming down with something. Terrible flu going around, I hear.”
I didn’t come all the way over here to talk about the goddamned flu, Gavin.
“Oh really?”
“Yeah, it’s been going around Gulliver’s playgroup. He had it too. It’s why I’m home today actually. I wanted to give her a break.”
So you’re not a self-indulgent millennial, Gavin. That’s a relief. Even though you were enough of an asshat to name your child Gulliver.
I was saved from having to come up with a mild remark that cajoled him about his generous attitude as a modern dad by the sound of a crash from the kitchen.
“Uh-oh,” Gulliver warbled.
“Two secs.” Gavin rushed over to the kitchen to deal with the little monster, and I tried to see if there was a picture or something of his wife. Why wasn’t she coming out? She wasn’t ill enough to stop spying on me, so why was she avoiding me now?
No pictures up on the walls. A few boxes stacked up in the corners of the room. I guess they really hadn’t settled in yet.
A tangle of brightly colored, paisley-printed, ethnic-looking scarves that hung on the coatrack was the only evidence that an adult, probably South Asian, woman lived here to begin with.
I was still holding on to the pie, and nudged a few toys off the coffee table so I could set it down. There was some mail that spilled off to the floor and I took a quick look at who it was addressed to—Aparna Burch. Aparna. Appy. Of course she changed her name. Most of us do. Make it easier to pronounce. More accessible. Altered so no one else felt uncomfortable about who she was, even though it’s pretty damn uncomfortable to be called a name that isn’t yours.
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