Chapter Twenty-Two Rupi #2
I no longer look destitute.
My hair has grown out, and that, of all things, makes my heartbeat speed up. I need a haircut.
I pick up the phone, and my fingers dial the only person I can speak to right now. I’ve never been nervous talking to her before.
“Rupi?” she says, worried.
“I still can’t believe your phone tells you who’s calling. Isn’t it funny what’s happened to our world?”
“It is. It is very funny what’s happened to our world.” Simi’s voice is quiet, but there’s so much relief in it.
“Can you take me for a haircut?” I ask before I change my mind.
I expect her to be at work. To be busy. To ask me to wait while she looks for an opening in her schedule.
“I have a hair person. Let me call her.”
Just like that, she gets an appointment.
I want to bike there, but she insists on coming to get me.
Apparently, we have to take the freeway there, and my helpless bike isn’t allowed on there with all the monstrous trucks.
She happens to have the afternoon off because one of the doctors is out this week and one of the PAs called in sick and they had to cancel their appointments.
“I was going to call and see if you wanted to hang out anyway. I’m so glad you called,” she says as we drive away from the house. It’s been an age since I’ve heard her be cheerful, and I hate that my defenses go up.
“Thanks,” I say, and the word feels strange on my tongue.
The surprise on her face makes me smile. I don’t think I’ve ever thanked her in my life.
“Have I never said thanks to you?” I say.
She stops at a light. “I don’t think so.” She says it with a smile. “Have I? I didn’t realize siblings are supposed to do that.”
I think the Gupta siblings do it all the time.
Her face says she just had the same thought.
“I think we’re supposed to say it for the small stuff,” I say. “A ride. A glass of water. Borrowed clothes. I think the big stuff is outside the scope of thank-yous.”
“Makes sense. Some sacrifices are too big for thank-yous.”
I don’t know how to respond to that.
We drive in silence until we get to a parking lot, then she leads me into a salon. It’s completely empty, which is a relief.
A gorgeous girl with purple hair is chewing gum and reading on her phone on a couch. When she sees us, she spits her gum into a trash can and comes to us.
She gives Simi a hug. “Sims! So good to see you. Who is this beauty? You cloned yourself, yes?”
Simi introduces me to Suzanna, and I explain what I want. Which is to take it all off. I don’t know what it is about my hair, but I hate it. I want it all off. I’m surprised I haven’t woken up one day and shaved my head. I haven’t had the urge in a while. Now I really want to.
“I’m not shaving your head,” purple-haired Suzanna says.
“It’s already too short. I’ll shape it up.
Trim it. I’ve been trimming Simi’s hair for, what, four years now.
The girl refuses to let me put any layers in it.
Funny that I have to convince one sister to keep it and the other one to take some of it off!
Are you two like that about everything?”
“Pretty much,” I say just as Simi says, “Not really.”
Then she covers up the awkwardness that follows with “You can’t show up the month before your wedding with a bald head, Rupi.”
I picture it. Mamma, Chandni, Pawan, Preeti all with their jaws dropped open but not wanting to be hurtful. Then there’s Neel and Nathan. What would it be like for them? To see my bald head with the ugly scar splitting the back of my head. And Baba. Would he care? He might worry. They all might.
I do this every time. I come this close to exposing it and then back away. Suzanna runs a comb through my hair, scraping right across the scar.
Despite myself, I wince.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ll be more careful.” She doesn’t ask questions or remark on the scar, if she sees it. I have no idea how visible it is with hair. It’s been an age since I held up a mirror and looked at it. She finishes up the trim, then flips it all out with a dryer.
“You look like an eighties pop star,” Simi says in a whisper.
She pays for me, and we get back in the car.
“Can I ask you a question?” she asks.
I’ve been avoiding her eyes since the wince. “It’s never a good sign when someone asks that before they ask a question. We’ve just made peace. You sure you want to disrupt it?”
“No,” she says quietly. “I would do anything to never disrupt the peace with you.” She merges the car into traffic, and the ease with which she does it is so badass, something shifts inside me. I don’t drive. I’ve never had a car. My baby sister isn’t a baby anymore.
“Fine, ask me.”
It takes her a long time, but she finally looks over at me. “You still have the scar?”
How can she possibly remember? She was four years old.
“I think the memory of that much blood is one of those childhood memories that sticks.” She answers the question I didn’t ask.
“I do still have it.” The memory of the rain hits me, making the world beyond it invisible.
The only thing I can see other than the rain is my sister’s hand in mine.
She’s holding on with all her might. All I know is that I can’t let her hand go, no matter what.
The streets around the school have already turned into gushing rivulets.
The water reaches Simi’s knees. She’s pressed against me, and I can feel her body trembling with cold.
All the other children were picked up from school.
The rickshaw driver who usually brings us to school and takes us home with the other kids from our building didn’t let us on the rickshaw today.
He’s been warning us for weeks that he will have to stop letting us ride until he’s paid.
Our mother ignored my pleas to pay him. Despite the rain, he leaves us behind because he gave our spots to other children. There’s no place for us.
I remember waiting. I remember knowing no one was coming.
I remember knowing that our mother wouldn’t care if we didn’t go home.
I remember walking the two miles home through rain so violent, even Mumbai was deserted.
I remember falling and hitting my head. I remember never letting go of my sister’s hand.
“Does it still hurt?” Simi’s voice brings me back to the present.
“I’m not sure.” I don’t know if it’s pain or sensitivity or just the sting of memories.
I reach back and touch it. It’s wider than it should be because it was never sewed up.
A wound never treated. I’d hacked off my hair, then washed out the gash myself and pressed a cloth to it to stem the blood.
For months my hair stuck in the scab and pulled, making it take years to heal.
“Thanks,” my sister says.
“For what?”
“For not letting go.”