Chapter 31 Simi
Thirty-One
Simi
After a lifetime of witnessing my sister blow shit up, watching her telling Prem’s mother the truth is one of the saddest, dumbest, bravest things I’ve ever seen anyone do.
As for the aftermath, I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t watching Tanuja Gupta turn into someone straight out of the soaps Rupi and I grew up watching. She’s totally and completely losing her shit.
“I never want to see your face again,” she says to Rupi, pressing both hands into her temples as though it will keep her head from exploding.
“Who does this to their own sister? And to think I was starting to make you my favorite. Everyone is right about me. I’m too trusting.
” She turns to Prem. “How could you deceive me, Prem? You were the child I never had to worry about, and you’re the one who lied to me.
You let these girls you met yesterday make you lie to your own family. ”
In the face of conflict, every family’s dysfunction comes out, I guess.
Even more tragic than Prem’s mom’s anger is Rupi’s reaction to it.
After admitting to pulling Prem and me into this arrangement, she’s just sitting there and gathering up Prem’s mother’s rant as though her anger is precious, albeit heartbreaking.
As though she’s waited all her life for someone to love her enough to lose their shit over her.
There’s not even a hint of responding anger in her.
I want her to push back, but what can she possibly say to make this better?
That’s never stopped her before. Making a bad situation worse if she can’t control it has been who she is for so long, this feels like losing her.
All I want to do is take her away from here and figure out what to do next, how to make sure she’s safe.
For my whole life, whenever I’ve seen Rupi in crisis, she’s been coiled up like a spring, filled with the potent force of trying to get away and finding an out.
A cornered animal. Now there’s no hint of that.
She’s completely and totally still, as though there’s a deep knowing inside her that whatever happens is going to happen.
She is currently an observer in her own life, and she’s okay with it.
I sit down next to her on the couch in the sitting area on the upper floor. We’re surrounded by walls plastered with the Gupta family’s joy.
“Everything I said before about how I feel about Prem is true,” I say to Prem’s mother, who’s pacing.
“But you’re right, I took advantage of him.
The only person I’ve ever been able to rely on before I met Prem was my sister.
I could think of no other way out but to ask for his help.
I should never have put him in that position.
I wish I could go back in time and undo things.
I never meant for it to hurt you. Prem would never lie to you if he had a choice.
He wanted to tell you the truth, but we were all scared. ”
“I’m not a puppet, Simi,” Prem says. “I was never, not even for a moment, not aware of the choices I was making or the risks involved. Even if we did go back in time, I would do exactly the same thing again. I would do anything to keep you from being hurt.”
His mother presses a hand to her mouth. I press one to my chest.
I try to telegraph both my gratefulness and a warning to Prem.
“Please, can we not do this right now?” I turn to his mother.
“You’ve done so much for Rupi and me. You took us into your family.
” My gaze strays to the smiling pictures we’re surrounded by.
“Showed us for the first time in our lives what that feels like. Thank you. I truly am so sorry we put you through this.”
Tanuja doesn’t respond.
I take Rupi’s hand and pull her up. “Let’s go, didi.”
For once in her life, Rupi follows without a word.
Prem grabs my other hand. “Hang on a minute, Simi.”
I try to pull away, but he holds on.
“I lied to you too,” he says to his mother. “Do you never want to see my face again either?”
She gasps.
“Don’t do this,” I say. “Don’t say things to hurt your mother. She’s right. I forced you to lie. I took advantage of your love. I gave you no choice.”
“Didn’t you hear me? I knew exactly what I was doing,” Prem says. “That old cliché is true. You always have a choice. I chose this.”
“Neither one of you chose this,” Rupi finally chimes in. “This was just the easiest choice for me to make, and I made it. I took the easiest path.”
“You took the only path,” I say. “The choice of going back to India and facing what awaits you there isn’t a choice. You are not going back. But you are coming home with me now.”
“I’m going with the two of you,” Prem says.
Tanuja’s eyes widen with shock. “You’re leaving home over this? After lying for this girl, you’re leaving your family for her?”
“Can we please not be so dramatic, Mamma. I’m not leaving home.
But from now on, I will be where Simi is, always.
Everything I’ve done is on me, not on Simi and Rupi.
I can’t believe you, of all people, are blaming them.
What happened to ‘I’m not like other mothers’?
They asked me for help. They didn’t even know you.
They had no commitment to you. I’m the one who did. ”
She sticks out her chin. He’s managed to wound her even more. “You are correct. This is on you. Why did you do it?”
“Because I love Simi.” He pulls my hand to his lips and drops a kiss on my knuckles.
“And now I love Rupi too. They’re my family, too, now.
Look at them, Mamma. Didn’t you just see them throw themselves in front of each other so the other didn’t take the blame and look bad in front of you?
You’ve spent months saying how loving and strong and generous they are.
You were absolutely right, they are, and no one gave them that.
Their values and strength and love weren’t taught and modeled by a family like ours was.
They’ve had nothing their whole lives that they didn’t create themselves.
Not even love. All the things you’ve taught us about life, they are models of it, and no one taught them. They just are.”
“They lied to all of us, Prem! They made my son lie to me. They turned the love we gave them into a lie.”
“No, Mamma, they returned your love tenfold. Baba can use the remote control by himself. He held my hand by himself the other day. He leaves the house! Is that a lie? Did any one of us spend months working with him on that? Neel and Nathan, they grow vegetables and draw and take showers without being bodily forced into it. Is that a lie?”
He throws me a worshipful look. “Even before Rupi came into town, Simi was having trouble with Karina at work. I was already madly in love with her and asked her to marry me. She could have married me, gotten her green card, and then found another job. But she didn’t because she didn’t want to turn our love into a lie.
She could have left Preeti to her own devices with TASha to placate Karina, but she didn’t because she loves those girls so much.
Is that a lie? Do you know the thing that broke Simi’s heart today?
It was losing the chance to wear your forty-year-old wedding sari.
Simi and Rupi love you and this family, and you know it. ”
Tanuja’s shoulders descend a few millimeters. “Then why not tell us? Why not trust us? Do you not think your mother, your family, would have supported you and helped you?”
“We do trust you,” I say. “But we already put Prem in jeopardy, we couldn’t drag the rest of you into this mess with us too. At first we were just afraid, but once we got to know you, the idea of exposing you to legal action became impossible. Telling you the truth would have made you accomplices.”
Rupi has been eerily quiet until now. “I’m sorry,” she says, gaze on her hands. Even the most heartless person would see the effort it takes her not to let the words crack on her tongue. “There’s no excuse. I shouldn’t have done it.”
Tanuja folds her arms across her chest.
We wait for her to respond, but she doesn’t.
There isn’t much more we can do, so we take her silence as goodbye and leave the house.
I can’t seem to let Rupi’s hand go. She doesn’t pull away, but her heart’s not in it.
She’s letting me hold her hand because she doesn’t have it in her to fight me. All the fight inside her is gone.