Chapter Twenty-Nine
I stumble out of the trailer, Krish right behind me.
I can’t remember the last time I was this angry. “What an a-hole!” I never swear, and it feels weird in my mouth. I want to spit.
I speed walk across the park, not knowing where I’m going. Puffs of hot breath pump from my nose. Tears burn in my throat. My fists clench and unclench. Krish keeps up with me as I cross the street and keep walking. I’m so angry I can’t make words. He’s silent too.
Suddenly we’re facing the ocean. The beach is mostly rocks, with small sandy patches where groups of children are building castles.
Anger is still raging through me. It’s getting bigger by the minute, and I can’t seem to calm myself down. Using my hands and legs, I climb a cluster of rocks jutting into the ocean and keep going until I’m at the very end, where a gigantic rock forms a low cliff over the water. I sit down on it and let my legs hang above the waves.
Krish sits down next to me. “You’re right,” he says. “What an a-hole.”
Despite my anger, I smile.
“They did something to her,” I say. I recognize the kind of hate that makes people think it’s okay to hurt someone. I’ve seen it up close. In my own home.
Krish says nothing.
“Do you have the ring with you?”
He takes it out of his pocket and hands it to me. He seems calm, and that makes my own anger worse.
I hold it up against the setting sun. I’m going to find out what happened to Vasu. No matter what, I’m going to find out.
“What you said about being thrown away like trash. If that were true, why would she leave the ring with you when it was obviously a sign of such love?”
“We don’t know that it was a sign of love for her. We don’t know that she felt the same way Reva did.”
I stare up at the sky and make a frustrated sound.
“Please don’t say you just know. You can’t know. You can’t know that she loved Reva back, and you sure as hell can’t know how she felt about giving me away.”
“But I do know.” I squeeze the ring in my fist and press it to my chest. “I do know what it’s like when there’s a child inside you and you didn’t ... you weren’t even part of ... it’s not ... it’s not always simple. How can you not see that? Didn’t you hear the things that man said? Don’t you want to know what happened before you judge her? Not all pregnancies result from a choice the woman made. Sometimes it’s thrust upon them, shoved down their throats.” My heart is beating so hard that I’m shaking with it.
“Mira?” His voice is a whisper, but it sounds loud in my ears.
I don’t answer. I’ve said too much already, and all I want is to take it back. I want to get up and run. I want to slide limblessly into the waves. But I can’t move. I can’t move.
“What happened to you?” That’s even softer, his voice almost too gentle to bear.
The question isn’t gentle, though. Nothing about any of this is gentle. “Isn’t it obvious, based on what I just blurted out?”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not even a little bit.” I squeeze the ring harder. I want it to break skin. It must be the jet lag because I can’t believe what just happened. What I just let out.
Two skinny boys run into the water in their day clothes and start playing in the waves as their mother shouts after them to be careful.
For a long time I watch them, unable to say more, unable to stop shaking, cold in the heat. They loop over the rolling water, under it. They let their bodies go. Give themselves up to the power of the ocean, the waves playing with them as much as they’re playing with the waves.
Finally Krish breaks the silence. “You know how you asked yesterday if I had come all the way here to talk you out of looking for Vasu.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Then why did you come?”
“Because the only way I’ll have the courage to do this is with you.”
There’s a good foot between us, and I’m so very grateful for it, because if he were closer, I’d let myself fall into his arms and cry. “Why am I so filled with the pain of this stranger?”
“Maybe it’s not her pain you’re filled with.”
A giant wave crashes against our legs and soaks our jeans.
Neither of us moves.
That’s when I know. I know why I’m here.
“I was seventeen.” I say it with some force. I can’t start there. That’s not where it starts. “It’s really hard to explain my childhood, but it was restrictive. Like living inside a cage. At seventeen, I had never been to a party, a sleepover, not even a playdate, really. My parents didn’t trust anyone. They didn’t trust us to not be influenced by other people’s homes and lives and still be controllable. It worked. At least it worked with me.”
He says nothing. I don’t want him to say anything.
“The more they controlled us, the more uncontrollable Rumi became. The more uncontrollable Rumi became, the more responsible I became. He hated it, obviously, the fact that I kept making myself smaller, tying myself tighter. He goaded me constantly. He wasn’t popular, exactly, but by junior year he hung out with a bunch of kids who were considered edgy. Some of his friends were dealers. They were invited to the parties at the cool kids’ homes. Not in Brown Town, of course. Brown Town was too closed of a circle. This was true of all the communities, all these bubbles that were supposed to keep you safe. There was rarely any mixing between the racial groups, except a couple kids who were able to hang out across the boundaries.
“One night my parents were at a dinner party, and a boy I had a crush on invited me to a last-day-of-school party. Rumi was at a different party. He’d already mocked me before leaving. I’d done really well that semester, but some other Indian kid won the academic award, and my parents were incredibly disappointed. I was so angry, and so tired. I snuck out. I wanted out of the cage.”
Now that the words are coming, I can’t stop them. It feels like snakes slithering out of my throat. I want to stop them, I want them gone, but the sun is being swallowed up by the horizon, the waves are getting higher and higher, and for the first time in my life, a friend is listening by my side, so I let them out.
“The rest is almost like the plot of a bad teen film. The party got wild. The guy I’d gone with disappeared to hook up with some other girl when he realized what a prude I was. I wasn’t drinking. I was too scared I’d get caught. Almost as soon as I got there, I wanted to go home, but there was no one I could ask to take me. I must’ve put my Coke down for a minute. Someone put something in it. The next thing I remember, I was throwing up in the bushes. The party seemed to have ended. There wasn’t anyone else around. One of the Indian girls in my Young Feminist Leaders club found me. I had blood on my clothes and crusted down my legs. She tried to take me to the hospital, tried to get me to report it. I couldn’t remember anything but flashes of ugly feelings and wanting to struggle. Nothing else, not the faces of the boys, not if there was one or more. I begged her not to tell anyone. I told her my parents would kill me if they found out. She sneaked me into her own house. I showered there, borrowed her clothes, and had her drop me home.”
The thing I remember most about that day is the certainty with which I knew that my life was over, and how Priyanka’s kindness felt like a lifeline.
“In a couple weeks I missed my period. My mother tracked my periods—remember what I said earlier about trust? When I didn’t get them for a couple weeks, she confronted me. I told her what happened.”
I can still feel the force of my father’s hand slapping me across the face, I can hear his voice calling me a whore. I can’t say that out loud even now. Not even to this person who doesn’t know my parents. It’s probably why I’m able to tell him this much. Or maybe I’m telling him because I had the choice to get rid of a pregnancy I did not want and that would have ruined my life. I need him to understand that maybe his birth mother didn’t have that choice.
“My mother took me to San Diego. It was the farthest I’d ever been from Naperville until I came to Mumbai. We didn’t know anyone there. She didn’t want to take a chance on anyone finding out. I was told never to speak of it. I made the mistake of telling my mother who helped me that night. Unfortunately Priyanka had a reputation. My mom found out through the grapevine that she smoked weed in the toilets with some of the white kids. My mother reported her, and she was suspended and lost her position as the president of the club.
“She was totally discredited in the community. Which obviously was my aie’s intention. So if she said anything about me, no one would believe her. She never did. I think it’s the worst thing I’ve ever done to another human being. I was paralyzed by fear. I was scared everyone would find out. I was scared my parents would throw me out. I was scared of ever leaving the house again. But I wasn’t forced to carry a child, and I didn’t have to give a child up.”
It’s no surprise that I’m crying. But it’s not cathartic. I feel like I’ve betrayed everyone I know. My parents, Druv, his parents. I squeeze the ring so hard it cuts into my palm.
Krish doesn’t say a word. He knows not to, and that’s the only reason I survive it.