Chapter Twenty-Two Rupi
Twenty-Two
Rupi
My wedding is just about a month and a half away, and I have now been a fixture in the Gupta landscape for two months. One thing I’ll say is that time flies in the Gupta home.
After my sister all but warned me not to hurt Prem’s family by getting too close to them, I figured the easiest way to distance myself without losing my chance at freedom was to spend time with Prem’s father.
The man needs company, and I want to avoid it.
I get that I’m using his illness, but hey, even my own sister thinks I’m a leech.
It has turned out to be the worst and best sort of bad decision.
At first, when I started spending time in Baba’s room, there was this strange sensation that filled me up.
It was like a hit of something heady and intangible that I kept coming back for.
I had never experienced it in my life before, so it took me a while to put a word on it.
I think what I’ve been experiencing might be peace.
I can breathe. My vision doesn’t dart here and there, looking for danger.
For all his frailness, there’s a solidity to Baba, a substantialness to his spirit.
He is fully present and entirely undemanding.
No one has ever been so interested in my art.
No one has ever been so comfortable with my silence.
No one has ever been so on board with all my plans concerning him.
I twist and turn his limbs the way his physical therapist showed me.
I can tell it hurts, but he smiles through it.
I breathe with him, holding his nostrils in alternating patterns.
I read to him, which has gotten me back into reading.
I used to read like a beast in school, but then I lost my taste for it, because the books made me either too sad or too hopeful, and I didn’t have time for either.
We’re reading a book Preeti thought I’d love because of the protagonist, a female scientist in the 1950s who has no patience for the world’s bullshit.
It’s filling me with anger but also making me laugh.
I’ve never known rage to be so delightful.
It’s amazing how books make us feel our own feelings as someone else’s.
I’ve avoided myself for so very long, it’s therapeutic to see myself in a book’s character.
For some reason, the book makes Baba cry, too, but when I offer to switch to a different book, he absolutely refuses to let me.
The family comes and goes. They tease and hug and provide anecdotes about their long, hardworking days. They think I spend so much time here because I can’t get a job while I’m waiting for my green card.
I’ve borrowed Baba’s old bike. He was an avid biker before the stroke. He biked some twenty miles every day from restaurant to restaurant. Mamma says he loved that bike as much as he loves his family, but none of his kids wanted it. Until now.
I love it too. Suddenly I have freedom. I bike from Simi’s apartment to the house every morning now, so she doesn’t have to drive me. Simi gave me a credit card, which I wanted to throw in her face, but really, not having a penny is limiting.
I still didn’t use it for a while. There’s really nothing I need.
Mamma and Simi both took me shopping on separate occasions, and now I own clothes and shoes and even a little backpack for my bike rides here.
Then one day I brought Baba some nankhatai cookies Simi baked, and he got so excited that I realized he loves gifts.
Now I stop at the grocery store on my way and bring him a little something every day. Candy, cookies, oddly flavored chips. He is technically Simi’s father-in-law, so I feel completely valid spending her money on him.
Simi keeps trying to buy me things. Clothes and bags and makeup. I leave it all unused, hoping she’ll return it. I hate how things make me feel. Weighed down.
I know she’s trying to make amends for accusing me of being a callous user of the Guptas, but I’m not sure she was too far off the mark.
Nonetheless, not having to fight with her all the time is nice.
I guess the strategy of locking myself up with Baba so I can’t hurt anyone else works for her.
I don’t care, because it works for me too.
I quite like this peace thing. And no one ever makes me feel like I shouldn’t be here.
Except my mother, who shows up in the room every so often and looks at me the way she always looked at me, like she wishes I wasn’t here. She stands in the corner and watches as I push Baba’s knee into his belly.
He groans in pain.
“Sorry,” I say. “I’ll be more gentle.”
He shakes his head. Keep going, his eyes say.
But I stop, and my mom gives me a knowing smile. Wimp.
I pull the covers over Baba and put a hand on his head. “Sleep,” I say. “We’ll do more later.”
He’s tired enough that his eyes flutter shut.
Ma doesn’t like that. She sneers.
I do see that I’m the one who’s putting her inside this room, and I have to be the one to let her go.
It’s one of the many things I’ve learned from Baba. He never turns away any healing he’s offered. Not medicine, not exercise, not any time anyone wants to spend with him. He is wide open to help. He values it, feels fully deserving of it.
Maybe I’m deserving of it too. His body is as sick as my mind feels, but it’s me who has to do what I can to help heal it.
Saj’s unsolicited insights notwithstanding, I am only interested in helping myself. I am most certainly not in danger of liking these people.
Fine. I’m quite in danger. In fact, the danger might have fully overtaken me. A family’s love may be the world’s most powerful force.
I hate that Saj’s annoying voice has gotten stuck inside my head.
They won’t hurt you if you let yourself love them.
He’s dead wrong. It’s going to hurt like a bitch. It already does.
Even the part where I can’t talk to Simi anymore.
Not without feeling like I’ve stolen from her.
It was much better when I didn’t know these people, so I didn’t know what I’d taken from her.
She no longer looks at me like I have everything she wants, but now that I know how having all that feels, I can’t bear to have her witness it.
All I want is to stay here with Baba and read. We’re almost done with this book, and we have our next one picked out. I’m dying to know what happens next, but Baba is fast asleep.
I pick up my phone to check on Simi. She usually texts throughout the day.
Difficult patients, Karina drama, hospital politics.
I pretend not to care, but she’s so entrenched in her life, it fills my heart.
If I was the child my mother wanted to tame, Simi was the child our mother barely knew existed.
That’s probably why Simi only existed in her own mind through my eyes.
Seeing her like this, so present and complete in her own world, is so deeply satisfying it makes me smile.
There’s no text from Simi, but there’s one from Saj.
Saj: Going to LA today.
I am aware, I text back. I want to stop him. I wish I hadn’t agreed to this, but Simi is right. We have to do what we can to get through this as fast as we can.
Saj: Thanks for agreeing to this.
Rupi: Did I have a choice?
Three blue dots dance on the screen. Then stop, then dance again.
If you say you always have a choice I might have to kill you, I type before I can stop myself.
Only a robot would say that to you. And I’m human, Rupi. His text lands on my screen, and the strangest electric spark splits through me. Then: Also, I like being alive.
I refuse to smile.
He waits for a few seconds, then the blue dots start to dance again.
Thanks for trusting me, he types finally.
Something tells me this is what he wanted to say in the first place. The reason he texted.
Do I?
I cannot start to depend on people. What is wrong with me?
Just do your job and get my passport back. That’s all I can think of to say.
His silence is longer this time, and for a while I think he won’t respond to my rudeness, but he does. You got it.
I put my phone away and start pacing the room. Baba is still asleep. I pace until the restlessness eases, then I sit back down and lay my head on the edge of his bed. Before I know it, I slip into sleep.
I dream about my sister.
Clinging to me. Scared. Unable to protect herself.
I see a man put a hand on her shoulder. Something about the way his thumb moves, stroking over the tiny curve, makes fear prickle down my spine.
She’s five years old. I pull her away. Take her away.
I tell my mother. She tells me to stop trying to ruin her life with my imagination.
I hear another man outside the door. I’ve learned to bolt it shut.
My mother asks me why. I make up a story about monsters.
About hearing voices in my head. I let her think I’m crazy, because it scares her and it scares the men.
I realize I like scaring people. It keeps them away.
But at least Simi is safe. I don’t let her get hurt.
Simi is never scared of me. She knows it’s for her. She knows.
I startle when a hand lands on my shoulder.
“Rupi, beta, it’s okay.” It’s a voice that’s grown to soothe me. I relax and feel deeply embarrassed at having jumped out of sleep with such terror.
“It’s going to be okay,” she says, her Mamma face burning over Ma’s face, and I realize my own face is wet. I’ve cried through my dream.
Mortified, I jump up and leave the room.
I go to the guest room. I wash my face, scrubbing at my skin.
The rock on my finger flashes under the lights.
The ring has gotten snugger on my finger, and sometimes I forget it’s there.
It no longer feels too heavy to bear. There are no hollows in my cheeks, no shadows under my eyes.
There is a gold chain around my neck, and there are little gold tops in my ears.
There’s a line of embroidery around the neck of my blouse. Gifts from Simi, and Prem’s family.