by Tara Pammi
I shook my head and moaned something into her skin. I flailed my hands around, even knowing that I was acting like a child throwing a tantrum. My tears soaked through her shirt.
"Okay, okay. We won't talk about the grade." Her arms tightened around me until she was pulling me into her. Even through the tears soaking my cheeks, I laughed as she maneuvered me on that bed with almost Herculean strength, until she was leaning against the headboard. I ended up in her lap, straddling her hips.
"How are you so freakishly strong and sexy at the same time?" I asked, before dipping my head to kiss her.
I took her laughter inside me and it spread through me, filling me up with a joy that I’d never known. On and on we kissed – both of us wild and hungry for the taste of the other. I was always desperate when we kissed, but today, she was the aggressive one. Her hands were everywhere on me – stroking, needing, clasping as if she couldn't get enough of me.
As if our time was limited. Even shorter than the little we had.
"Tell me about your plans. Tell me what you plan to do when, not if but when, you pass."
I breathed hard. My entire body was tingling with arousal. "You want to talk? Right now?"
She nodded, her own breathing shallow. "Yes. I… I want to continue kissing you, of course, but sometimes it feels like there's so many things I still want to ask you. So many things I want to tell you."
"Okay," I said quickly, breathing a little easier. I pressed my finger against her lips, learning the shape of her all over again. "I mean, nothing beats kissing you but talking to you comes a very close second."
"So tell me then," she said, a certain resolve to her tone I didn’t understand.
Something about her curiosity, about the intensity in her eyes, put me on guard. Me, the girl who had no boundaries or self-preservation. But then, I’d never been in love before.
"Honestly, I don't know.” I untangled my arms from around her and pushed back until I could see her properly.
It felt as if she was digging through all the layers of me, at least the surface layers, to see my core. The thing was, I was mostly a transparent person.
I didn't do complexity and yet, the way looked at me just then, I felt incredibly vulnerable. So instead of digging through those layers myself and examining something that I’d been pushing away for too long, I gave her the easy answer. The non-answer answer. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her to be gentle with me if I found something beneath those layers – but because I was afraid of what I’d find.
"I'm sure I will look into the community colleges. Get a degree in… Something, you know. Really focus on my life for once."
“You talk as if you’ve spent decades just bumbling through life.”
“Sometimes, every day since spring has felt like a decade.”
She nodded but I knew that nothing I said made sense to her. "And the channel?"
"What do you mean the channel?" I wasn't being clever or facetious.
“What about This Masala Life? I mean, it's not something you can run while you’re studying all hours, is it?"
I shrugged again.
"I thought the channel and your cooking… They were more important you."
"They are. But I can’t just do that for the rest of my life, can I? I need to move out of this basement. Have a proper college life. Be a normal person."
"But what is normal, Tara?"
I jumped off the bed, feeling as if she was examining me under a microscope. "What's with all the questions?" I said, pulling on a sweatshirt. "I feel as if you're dissecting me."
"No. I am sorry if I am asking you uncomfortable questions. I just thought… What do you think is normal?"
"I can't live off my parents for the rest of my life. Even you have to agree with that. I want to be successful at something. I want to not be known as the girl who failed high school and continues to live in her parents’ basement and is weird. I want to get my shit together."
"Who has their shit together?"
She said it so formally that I laughed. I was also pretty sure I was laughing because the alternative was to stomp my feet or to cry and I wanted to do neither of these things. "You, for example. You know what you're good at, you know what you want to do with your life.”
"You don’t know me at all if you think I know what I’m doing,” Farah said softly. And that felt like a punch.
"Are we fighting, Farah? Are you trying to say something without saying it? Is that what this is?"
Farah got off the bed and hugged me and I knew something was definitely wrong. My skin felt cold even though I also felt hot. I stayed in her arms but didn't return the embrace. "Something is wrong, isn't it? Just tell me, please."
"This has nothing to do…" She shook her head. "I'm doing this all wrong. I just wanted to tell you that… "
I pushed out of her embrace and stared at her. "What's going on, Farah?"
"My father and my stepmother will be here tonight. And then the day after, I'm leaving."
I felt as if she’d punched me. "Leaving? I thought you still had at least two weeks of work."
"No, I finished it. I wrapped up everything two days ago. And I'm not leaving for New Jersey. I'm going back to India."
That elevator drop started again in my stomach. It went on and on and on and I thought I might throw up. India was far away, with thousands of miles between us. India was a permanent goodbye. "I… When did you… How come…?" In the end I simply settled for, "why? Did I do something wrong?"
"Absolutely not!" She reached for me, but I stepped back.
Her face fell but right now I was looking out for myself. I had no bandwidth to think of how my actions were affecting her. She hadn’t given a thought to how her actions would affect me. I was being that selfish version of myself, but I couldn't help it.
She sighed. "Star Bells, look at me. Please. You knew, you've always known, that I was here only as an escape from my life. I have to go back. I have to spend time with my grandparents and my uncle. I acted as if they hadn’t lost a daughter or a sister,” she said, a resolve to her words. I knew she hadn’t decided this easily but all I heard was that she was leaving.
“And my other Thaata,” Farah continued, her eyes willing me to understand, “my Atthayya told me he hasn’t been well in the last few months, that something’s wrong with his heart.” She rubbed a hand over her temple. “I have been selfish and careless and yet, they're all concerned about me. It is high time I face the fact that Mama is gone and that I need to make some kind of plans. I need to figure out what I want to do with the bookshop, I need to figure out what I want to do with my career… I am in the same exact place as you are."
I snorted even though it was below me. "No, you're not, and you know that."
"I am. I am exactly where you are, at a crossroads in my life too. Only I am not as brave as you are."
I swallowed at how strongly she believed that. “You’re just saying that so that I’m forced to act brave and you don’t have to deal with a sobbing mess of a girlfriend.”
She laughed at that and I laughed. I was pretty sure I was getting hysterical.
She was leaving. Farah was leaving in a few hours. My grumpy math genius was leaving and I couldn’t follow her. Because how could I, when I didn’t even have a handle on what the hell I wanted to do with my life?
My cheeks were wet again and my nose was running. I was sure I looked red and blotchy and I hated that she was seeing me like this. And damn it, I was shallow enough to not want to leave her with this blotchy, ugly crying version of me on the last day. So I went into the bathroom, washed my face, combed my hair, and then stepped back out.
“Did you put on lip gloss?” she asked, looking flabbergasted.
I nodded. “If you’re leaving in a few hours, then there’s a lot to do.”
“Like what?” she asked, still looking shocked.
“You said you wanted to try my chicken biryani, remember? I was going to make it after I came back from
this trip.” I checked my watch. “If I start now, it will be ready by the time your parents get here.”
“Come here, Star Bells.”
“Why?” I demanded petulantly.
“Because I want to hug you. And kiss you. And hold you.”
I went to her. She hugged me as I cried, whispering all kinds of stuff to me. About how much I’d changed her life. About what a wonderful, lovely person I was.
I didn't want her to go. I never wanted her to go.
I loved her. I loved her so much that my heart was breaking but I didn't say any of it to her. She had a life that was waiting for her. And I’d been a nice stopover. Somewhere you sat down, refreshed yourself and then moved on from.
Like in one of those tragic romantic films where people found meaningful shit in saying goodbye. I’d never understood the appeal then. I hated them now.
Because if she loved me, she wouldn't be able to leave so easily, would she, without even making some vague reference to the future? She wouldn’t have cut the little time we’d had even shorter. She wouldn’t have been so eager to get back to her own life and fix it up.
So I didn’t tell this girl who had filled my life with such happiness in the past few weeks how much I loved her.
For the first time in my life, words escaped me.
I listened, I nodded, and I made all the appropriate noises as she packed. The day went on, and my parents came back and re-packed for our trip to Portland. I put a gift together for Farah, greeted her parents as they came in, laughed at the jokes her brothers told and then I said goodbye to Farah.
And after she left, I hid in the basement and cried until I had a headache. By midnight, when I hadn’t still fallen asleep, I got out of my bed, walked in the darkness to hers and slipped under the covers.
I pulled the duvet to my neck, breathed in her scent and lay awake for hours, asking myself all the uncomfortable questions I’d refused to answer when Farah had asked them.
She’d always told me I was brave. It was time to truly see if I was.
Thirteen
Tara
January came in with a blast of snow that made the town look like it belonged on a pretty postcard. I’d gone through the first week of the New Year moping about the basement, making more and more videos and desperately missing Farah.
In a few days, it would be the festival of Sankranti and Dad was busy doing his annual cleaning up and collating the things he wanted to let go.
This was a ritual we’d always performed as far back as I could remember. On the day of Bhogi, he’d wake me up before the sun had risen and we’d huddle in the backyard, freezing our asses off, while he burned a few papers in a small aluminum tray. When Ammamma had been alive, we’d walk in from the cold and she would serve us hot breakfast. Then she’d oil my hair and give my scalp a massage with her magical fingers, and then bless me and hand over lots of cash.
The ritual, she’d explained to me once, was about letting go of things that didn't serve us anymore. Whether it was just some rubbish lying around the house or negative thoughts that colored your entire world.
How long had it been since I’d done that kind of cleansing? How long had I been carrying all this negativity within myself?
Farah had started me along the line of questioning everything I had always internalized. But the thing was, I was miserable because I was making myself miserable. She’d been right — not everyone in the world was going to be a math genius, just as not everyone in the world was going to be a doctor like all my aunts and uncles wanted their progeny to be.
Why was I so hung up on something that I was not good at when there were so many other things that I excelled at?
Thoughts swirled around in my head as I lugged bags of groceries out of the trunk. I loved celebrating our festivals, and I loved talking about them on my channel, cooking all the special dishes my grandmothers on both sides had made for years. I loved connecting the dots between history and food and how so many dishes could be traced back to different parts of the country and the stories they told.
That was what I was good at. Telling those almost forgotten stories, reading and recreating the language of food through centuries.
I brought the groceries into the kitchen on the main level and found Amma and Dad sitting at the table.
"We want to talk to you," said Dad, not beating around the bush.
I nodded, knowing it was time. All the knotted thoughts in my head, all the routes of my confusion train led straight to Amma. I was pretty sure I’d been projecting my fears and doubts onto her, since she was the person I loved most in the world. Even though I knew that she wouldn’t get my passive-aggressive shit.
I’d always known, even as a kid, that my mother wasn't very good at communicating her emotions. But thanks to Dad and Ammamma always explaining things to me, I’d known that she did love me. When had I started questioning that? And more importantly why?
I poured hot water from the kettle into a mug and dropped a teabag into it. Then I pulled out a chair and sat down next to my mother. My choice surprised her.
Hot shame filled my chest. It was clear I’d made her doubt my affection. Dad was right – I’d really been a selfish brat, all tangled up in my own insecurities. “I passed the test. I’m officially done with high school,” I announced with no drama attached to it.
They both nodded. Dad reached out and took my hand. "You don't sound happy about it," he said, jumping into the fray right away.
I wanted to shrug and scoff and talk as if it didn’t matter. Instead, I curbed the impulse and spoke the truth. "I suck at math. Nothing’s ever going to change that. But I wanted to change it. I wanted to excel at something I was absolutely horrible at instead of something I am exceptionally good at. Because I wanted to please you," I said, turning to Amma.
Her shock superseded my misery by about a thousand miles. She sent a confused, almost stricken glance at Dad and then looked at me. It confirmed my suspicion that I’d twisted everything between us into a knot for no good reason.
"I never…" She wiped her hand over her eyes and turned to me. "What did I do to make you think that? I love you, Kanna. Whether you pass math or graduate high school or get a PhD… It was never dependent on those things. I’ve always been proud of you. How could I not be?”
She took my hand in hers and squeezed and my chest ached. Tears rolled down my cheeks. I hated crying and I had been doing a lot of it. I decided to think of these tears as all that negativity draining away, all that poison I’d let pile up finally spilling out of me. Leaving me whole and healthy.
Out with the bad, in with the good, as Ammamma used to say.
“You are?” I croaked through a throat full of hurt and need.
Amma nodded. “How could I not be, Tara? You’re the bravest, brightest girl I have ever met. Shall I tell you a secret?” she asked, her brown eyes as serious as always.
I nodded, desperate for anything she’d give me. “When I was pregnant with you, I worried constantly. There was no template for being a good mother and believe me, I researched. And then you were born and even as an infant, you were this smiling, happy baby. I realized my worries didn’t matter because I’d somehow been given a daughter who made it easy to be her loving mother.”
Amma gripped my fingers. “You have this...knack, Kanna, of accepting and loving people for who they are. You don’t know how precious that is.”
And finally, I saw it in her eyes – not just love but pride too. It had always been there. I had just been too caught up in my own shit to see it.
“But you didn't even express disappointment when I failed in the spring. You...” It felt stupid now to even say it. "You didn’t say anything to me. You didn't even seem to care what I did with my life…"
"That's absolute rubbish," Dad said, raising his voice. And he never shouted. "Your mother thought you’d been through so much this past year with all your friends getting into big schools, with your grandfather leaving for India, and that
thing… with your Mavayya."
Amma’s eyes flashed with anger. "Let us call it what it is, Ravi. My brother turned out to be a homophobe. I saw how crushed you were with the way he acted towards you at your grandfather's party. I saw how the family looked at you because you didn’t graduate. You were already under immense pressure. I didn’t want either your Dad or me to add to that. That’s the only reason he hasn’t been down there lecturing you.”
“Really?" I said, wiping away the tears on my cheeks. I turned to Dad. "She stopped you from yelling at me?"
"A couple of times, yes.” He sighed and then perked up. “Wait, you're mad at us because we haven't been mad at you?"
"No, yes, I don't know." I turned to Amma and tried to put it into words that she could understand. "I know how much Mavayya’s actions towards me hurt you. The stories Thaata’s told me about his inseparable twins...” I looked at my hands and then back up at her.
“I felt... I feel guilty that you are not talking because of me.”
Amma shook her head. “He made that choice, Tara. If he knew me at all, he’d have realized I wouldn’t tolerate anyone treating you differently.”
“Then there was always the issue of my academics,” I said, determined to get it all out. “I thought you just simply didn't care or that you had written me off. And I wanted to make you proud. I wanted to pass this test, I thought I’d go to college, get a degree, be successful, so that you were proud of me."
Amma looked stunned. "Why? What would you study? Why would you want to do something that you absolutely loath just to please me?" She looked at Dad and me again. "Success does not have to mean one path. Hasn't your Dad taught you that? Do you know how many people made fun of him in the early days after we got married and we had you that he was a stay-at-home dad? That he’d quit his job to look after you while I traveled and worked? How many intrusive questions even well-meaning family members asked about who’d paid for his Ph.D.? Do you think he cared? Or do you think he is less of a man because he chose to support his wife, look after his infant daughter and his elderly in-laws?"
