29. Violet
29
VIOLET
I usually look forward to going home for winter break, but this time, I don’t want to. Things with my mum are still awkward, and even though I’ve visited on a few weekends, we still haven’t had a real conversation about what the future holds. I know there’ll be no avoiding it. With the deadline for university applications coming up right after winter break, I’ll have to tell her now that I’m still set on moving away. I just don’t know how she’ll take it.
The other reason I don’t want to go home is the boy knocking on my door as if it’s not ten at night, and there’s no chance of getting caught. I pull him into my room before anyone can see him. Although I try to pretend I’m angry at him for taking such a big risk coming over here, I can’t hide how excited I am to see him before we both leave tomorrow. Being with Isaac again has felt so good, and the thought of spending two weeks away from him now, when I’ve only just gotten him back, is excruciating .
“You’re going to get caught one day.” I chide as we both get comfortable on my bed, our backs against the wall as we sit side by side.
Isaac wraps his arm around my shoulder, pulling me closer to him. He starts twirling my hair with one hand while the other plays with my fingers, which are resting on his thigh. I catalogue all these casual touches of his and hate how much I took them for granted before. It feels like I can’t get enough of them now as I lean my head on his shoulder.
“Whatever punishment they give me is worth it as long as I can see you.”
I knock my head against him as I roll my eyes even though he can’t see. He replies with a quick kiss to the top of my head.
“What if they kick you out of school?”
“I’ll just move to London earlier and find the perfect apartment for us.”
I lift my head from where it’s resting on his shoulder and look up at him, his green eyes focused on mine. He’s completely serious about it. We haven’t spoken about the plans we made before, but that one sentence alone is enough for me to know that he still wants them as much as I do.
“You mean it?”
“Of course I do.” He doesn’t even hesitate.
I reach my free hand up to push his glasses back before running my fingers through his hair. He told me that he’s been growing it out so he can get it cut during winter break, but I know it’s just because he loves when I brush my nails across his scalp. His eyes close as he relaxes into the feel of it, and when I reach the back of his head, I pull him down to me until our lips meet. Isaac holds me tighter, his hand gripping onto my shoulder like he never wants to let me go, and I don’t want him to.
“I’m going to miss you,” I tell him when we finally separate a few moments later.
“I miss you already,” he says, pressing a kiss to my forehead. “I’ll call you every night.”
“Every night?”
“Every morning.” A kiss to my forehead.
“Every afternoon.” Another to my cheek.
“Every night.” A final one on my mouth.
It shouldn’t be this nerve-racking to face my mum, but weeks of a lack of real conversations that only touch the surface level have meant that we both have a lot we need to talk about. This is the last chance I have to tell her about my plans and ask for her support because in a few weeks, I’ll be submitting my final university choices, and not a single one is close to home.
She’s in the kitchen when I get home, humming along to some old Bollywood songs as the smell of my favourite food fills the air.
“Mum, I’m home,” I call out to her as I take off my shoes and swap them for slippers so I can enter the house properly.
“Dinner will be ready in ten,” she says as I start walking up the stairs to my room to leave my bags.
It always feels like I’m time travelling when I come home. My room hasn’t changed in years because I spend most of my time at school, so I decided to focus on making that room cosy instead.
There’s a small desk in the corner of the room, stacks of books piled on top of it because I’ve run out of space on the shelves that line the walls. Posters of disbanded boybands line the other walls, and I should probably take them down, but I don’t know what I’d replace them with, so they stay.
I unpack my bag, take out the few books I’ve brought back with me, and put them on my bedside table before putting my clothes in my wardrobe. It’s half empty because most of my clothes are at school, and as I hang them up, I start to wonder if this is what my life will always be like. Half empty wardrobes and messy rooms in two places instead of one, a life divided by two versions of myself, one constantly stuck in the past and one in the ever-changing present.
My bed sheets have been changed since the last time I stayed here a few weeks ago, and I wonder if this is what’s making Mum so hesitant to support me. I can’t imagine what it’s like for her to come in here when I’m gone just to see traces of me instead of the real thing. I don’t think I realised how lonely she must be.
I go downstairs after I’ve emptied my bags and find her in the kitchen plating up dinner, chicken and spinach curry with parathas which are always a special treat whenever I come home.
“Go sit down, meri jaan. I’ll bring it to you.”
I almost tell her that I can do it myself, but then I think about how she must enjoy this part of having me at home, too. The fact that she can make my favourite dinner and serve it to me seems like such a simple thing, but I’ve been depriving her of it by not visiting home as much as I should.
I sit on the sofa and wait for her to come in, a chaba in each hand as she approaches me and passes me one. There’s nothing wrong with the food at school, but my mum’s cooking is far superior, and I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed it. She pats my knee when she sits down, and I smile while thanking her.
We don’t speak while we eat. Only the sound of the TV playing a Christmas movie fills the room. When I’m finished eating and feel like I could lie down and take a nap for five hours, I decide to bite the bullet and get the conversation over and done with. It’s been simmering beneath the surface the whole time I’ve been home, even before that. There’s no point in dragging it out any longer.
“I’m submitting my university choices when I get back to school.”
“Are you still set on moving away?” She asks with no emotion in her voice.
“I am.”
She sighs before getting up to take her plate to the sink where she rinses it and then washes her hands. I can see her through the door, but she doesn’t turn around as she grabs a towel to dry her hands.
“I just don’t understand why you want to stay away from me.”
“That’s not what it is. This isn’t an easy decision for me to make either. But I’ve done the research, and the best universities are the ones further away and in London.”
“Is that the only reason you want to go there?”
“What does that mean? ”
I get up and go to the kitchen, tired of having this conversation from a distance. I lean my hip against the counter, and she turns to face me, doing the same with her arms crossed across her chest.
“So this decision has nothing to do with Isaac?”
I haven’t told her that we’re back together, so I have no idea where this is coming from. In her mind, we’re still broken up, so why would he affect my decision?
“What does he have to do with it?”
“I was your age once. I know how it feels to be so blinded by love that it seems like you need to give up every part of yourself for it. But it won’t last forever, and you can’t make such a big decision based on a passing fling.”
“That’s not what it is,” I tell her, trying my best to keep my voice as neutral as possible because I can feel myself start to become whiny as I plead my case. “Yes, we’re talking again, but this decision has nothing to do with him. I want to do it for me, for my future. And, if anything, he’s the one giving stuff up for me.”
“That’s what you think now, but it’s all the same either way. I just don’t want you to make such a big decision that you might regret later.”
The crease between her eyebrows is deep, and so are the lines surrounding her mouth as she frowns. I don’t know why it’s taken me until now to realise that while I’ve been getting older, so has my mum. I’ve lived away from home for six years now, and I never thought about what that might have done to her, how much she must worry about her only child being so far away from her. A pang of guilt hits me, but I can’t let that stop me from following the choices that I want to make .
“If that happens, then it happens. If I regret it later, then you can say, ‘I told you so,’ and I’ll come right back home. But I can’t live my life only thinking of the worst-case scenario.”
“Your dad was exactly the same,” she says quietly as she pushes off the counter and goes back to the living room. I follow her and take a seat next to her on the sofa.
“It’s not fair when you do that, Mum,” I tell her.
My dad has been a constant thorn in my side, a life filled with comparisons from her of a man I don’t even remember. Appearance-wise, I’m my mother’s daughter through and through, but she must see some traits of his in me.
“I hate what he did to you, to us, but it’s been sixteen years, Mum. We have to move on. You have to move on.”
“I never told you how we met, have I?”
I shake my head and shuffle closer to her, placing my hand on top of hers that’s resting on her knee. Mum has been sparing with the details of my dad, only giving me small bits of information about him - I’ve never even seen a picture of him. I’m nervous to find out something so important about him, about their relationship, but I know it will help me understand my mum’s hesitancy.
“I was in my first year of university when we met, and he was in his last. There was a mishap with the library, and we’d both ended up booking the same room at the same time so we decided to just share it. A friendship developed from there, and then that turned into something more. I’d never been in a relationship before. My parents were quite strict about things like that, so I never even entertained the possibility of it while I was at school. But university felt different. I was an adult and thought I could do whatever I wanted.
“I knew my parents wouldn’t approve of him because he was White, but I thought we could overcome that and that they’d get over it eventually. But when I told them…”
She lets out a shaky breath, and I squeeze her hand three times.
“They kicked me out. He was there for me, of course, and I moved in with him. He told me everything would be fine, that we’d make our own family together, build a life together, and I believed him. He graduated and started working, and he supported me while I finished university. We got married a few years after I graduated and we were both working, and I was happy with our life, so happy . Two years after we got married, I fell pregnant with you.”
Mum turns her hand around so she can lock our fingers together and squeezes three times. I do the same back to her.
“I was over the moon when I found out. I couldn’t wait to have my own little family, and I thought your dad would be the same, but something changed about him. He said it was too soon, that we’d only just settled into working and having that kind of life together. He wanted more time with just the two of us before we had children. He wanted to travel, see the world, have experiences. I just wanted to be a mum.”
“You’re the best mum,” I tell her, trying to hold back my tears as I see hers start to fall.
“I thought once I had you, he would realise that nothing was better than holding you, that no amount of travel or fun would surpass how it felt to see you grow every day. But it wasn’t enough for him, and he left before you even turned one.
“I’ve tried my best to give you the world while also protecting you from it. I only want the best for you.”
“Do you know I’ve never once wished that I had a dad? It’s never mattered to me that he hasn’t been here because you’ve done everything for me, and I’m so lucky to be your daughter. I can’t even imagine how hard it was for you to let me go when I was eleven, but you did, and I’m so grateful for it every day.”
I can’t stop the tears from escaping now, and we’re both sitting here crying, but I think we needed it, we needed to get all of this out and it feels cathartic.
“I just don’t want the same to happen to you. I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did.”
“I know, and I love you so much for that. I appreciate every single thing you’ve done for me, but I need to make my own mistakes to learn from them. I’m so sorry for everything that he did to you -”
“You don’t need to apologise for anything he did. He gave me the greatest gift in the world by leaving and letting me be your mother.” She gives me a weak smile, her chin trembling as she lifts our joined hands and kisses my knuckles.
“I’ll always be yours, Mum, and I’ll always come back home, regardless of what I do or who I’m with.”
“I know, meri jaan.” She holds my cheek with her free hand, her thumb running back and forth across it as I lean into her touch. “When did you get so grown up?”
“Six years of school can really age a person,” I joke, and the small laugh she lets out is enough for me to realise that things between us are good now, that they’ve always been and will always be because she’s my mum and I’m her daughter, and that’s all either of us needs to be.
“Whatever choice you make, I’ll support it. I’m sorry for letting my insecurities get in the way of your decisions.”
“It’s okay, Mum, really. I love you so much.”
“I love you, too, meri jaan.”