by Sonali Dev
“Don’t do that. Don’t make this about sex.”
Her hand fell away from her throat. Of all the things he could have said, nothing could possibly have hurt more. They hadn’t had sex, they had made love.
Again she tried to walk away. She needed to find what she had come here to find. Now that she knew where the evidence was, she needed to have it in her hands and get away. For all the lies she needed to get to, she couldn’t leave this lie between them. “I’m not the one who’s making this about sex.”
She had no idea what she’d hoped to achieve by saying that, but she should have expected the anger that flared in his eyes. It was just cover for his pain. Anger and guilt were easier, they gave you power. Pain made you helpless. “I love Jen. I can never stop loving Jen. I don’t know how.”
“I’m not asking you to stop loving Jen. God, Nikhil, how can you accuse me of such a thing? Of course you will always love her. This is not about Jen. This thing between us. It has nothing to do with Jen.”
He looked horrified at what she had said, but not half as horrified as she felt for having let it slip out.
He had backed so far away from her, he was all the way across the room now. “I don’t feel the same way.”
And that’s what she got for losing control. Her shoulders hurt from holding them up. Her spine wanted to curl around the pain. Who would have thought love could hurt like this? She wanted to turn into a snail, roll up, and squeeze into a shell. But then nothing would be able to bring her out. And her life wasn’t hers alone. “I know,” she said.
“I can’t give you what you want, Jess.”
My name’s not Jess. That’s what she wanted to tell him. Once, just once, she wanted him to call her by her real name. Then again, she never wanted to be called by her name again.
“I don’t want anything from you, Nikhil. This is not me asking for something. I don’t have space in my life for you. Joy will never accept anyone else into our life. He’s really possessive of me.” It was a lie. But what did another one matter?
After that stupid outburst of truth, the only thing she could think of was more lies to obliterate it so something as useless as truth wouldn’t ruin everything she had to do.
* * *
The ease with which Nikhil had walked away from her after telling her she was nothing to him, the ease with which he had let her convince him that they had no hope for a future, it was like a black veil someone had thrown over her head before thrusting the key to her escape in her hand. She had to feel her way around it, navigate the darkness that also meant freedom.
Ria was alone in the house, and Nikhil had gone down to check up on her, leaving Jess alone to her stealth. She wondered how Ria was feeling and pushed away the urge to go downstairs and check up on Ria herself. Instead, she picked up her duffel bag and zipped open the false bottom. Sitting there under Joy’s smiling face was the thick leather-bound diary crammed with words. Crammed with all of Jen’s words.
Aama loved to say that two souls that fit exactly right stay together for seven lifetimes. She had felt that way about Baba. Jess had always believed it was just something Aama told herself to make her widowhood bearable.
But now she didn’t know. She had lived with her uncle and his family for seven years, but they had always felt like strangers. Her schoolmates, her teachers, people she had worked with for years—everyone had always felt like a stranger. Everyone except Aama, Joy, and from the first time she had met him, Nikhil. Her soul recognized him. It always had.
“This is not our first lifetime together, Jen,” she whispered to the diary in her hands. “And I know this won’t be our last. I know he was yours when you had him. But before I met him, my soul was nothing, and without him it will be nothing again.”
She remembered with so much clarity the day the person in a burka had thrust the diary into her hands, it was as though it was happening now. The person to actually put Jen’s diary in her hands was just a hired thug, of course. She had never actually laid eyes on the man who had stolen her life and turned her into a thief. She had no idea what he looked like. For all she knew, he could be her neighbor in Mumbai who skulked about and never responded when she said hello.
All she knew of the man who had stolen her son on his way home from school and kept him for two days so she would agree to whatever he demanded of her was his voice. That cultured, kind, silken voice that could modulate his intent with the skill of the most seasoned actor, it was a sound that would haunt her nightmares for as long as she lived. The person in the burka had handed her the diary and the cell phone and disappeared, and from then on that voice had told her what to do, held her strings, kept the noose around her neck.
Go to this clinic and the doctor will carve the scar into your chest.
Go to this beauty parlor and they will put extensions in your hair and color it.
Board this flight.
Board this ship.
Read every word in the diary.
Remember I didn’t hurt your son this time. But next time, who knows?
She sank back into Ria’s bed and pulled the diary close to her chest.
“I am so sorry,” she said. “I wish there was another way.”
But there wasn’t. That’s how life worked. When you were in a corner, you either got dug into the walls or you had to sell what you could to barter yourself out of it.
She stroked the thick leather. It seemed to respond to her touch. Jen had taught her so much. How pathetic was she that a dead woman was the best friend she’d ever had?
And here she was ready to gouge out the skin off her back. She still couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of checking the diary for the evidence. She pressed into the padded cover with her fingers but felt nothing. Jen had done a great job of concealing it. Nikhil had said that the diary was with the police. That meant even the police hadn’t realized that something so vital was hidden in there. Suddenly, her hands on the diary started to shake. If Naag had stolen the diary from police custody, that meant he was even more powerful than she thought.
She flipped the cover open and traced the seam of the paper stuck to the inside cover. She used her nail to work the corner of the seam until the paper curled, then pinching it between her fingers she pulled. The thick card stock peeled off. Taped to the inside of the paper was a thin piece of plastic. A storage device. She stared at the minuscule thing that held within it secrets Jen had died for, her hunger for justice larger than everything else.
Jess, on the other hand, was going to be the end of the road for justice. The end of any chance at redemption for Nikhil. For Jen. She slipped the card into her bra and pressed the edge of the paper back into the leather seam, sealing the evidence of her crime. Her entire body was encased in an icy numbness. Jen was dead. Jess wasn’t responsible for her death. She was responsible only for Joy. For her baby. For making sure he was safe. It was the only thing that mattered. Then why didn’t it feel that way?
“Ria’s water just broke and it’s stained with meconium.” She spun around. Nikhil stood there, slightly winded from having run up the stairs. She thought she had locked the door. “I just called the ambulance. I have to go to the hospital with her. Everyone else is meeting us there. We can discuss calling the police about her diary when I—”
She tried to slip the diary back into the bag, but his gaze froze on her hands. “What is that?”
Everything slid into slow motion. Nikhil walked to her and took the diary from her hands. His eyes took in the worn leather, the well-used pages, then at the speed of a lethal, slow-moving snake, his gaze found her, pierced her, and started to riffle through her thoughts.
Ching ching ching.
“I can explain . . .” Only she couldn’t.
Nikhil’s forehead crunched up, his jaw tightened, all of him tightened. He reached for her. She almost took his hand, but he hooked a finger into the neck of her shirt.
“Nikhil—”
He pulled the neckline down, his eyes so
focused, so destroyed, she cringed. “Is it real?”
He didn’t wait for an answer.
“It isn’t. Shit.” His hand pressed against the puckered skin. “It’s fresh. It’s what, six months old? Why would you . . . ? Shit.” He looked up at her, eyes dilated with anger so hot she stepped away from it, backing herself against the bedpost.
“Nikhil, I—”
“The evidence. Shit. It was always the evidence. You were here for the evidence.” She watched his brain unravel the knot one snag at a time. “You were paid to find the evidence. You were paid to sleep with me.”
She pushed off his hand. That’s the first conclusion he jumped to? That she was a whore? That what they had experienced together was premeditated and dirty? Suddenly, she was sick. Sick of all the feelings she had let herself feel. Sick of her own stupidity.
What had she expected would happen? Yes, she was a liar and a cheat, and so incredibly stupid to think this would end any differently. She didn’t know what she had expected from him, but he was no different from anyone else. She couldn’t afford the guilt that she had let bloom inside her. It had never been a choice. And she didn’t care that he would never understand.
“Why?” he asked.
She could have dealt with the judgment he’d thrown at her, but the relief in his face destroyed everything. The fact that she’d had no recourse, no choice, didn’t even strike him.
She wanted to push him away, leave without answering. But he had her boxed in. “Because I had to.” Because if you had done what you should have, they wouldn’t have made me.
“I don’t believe it!” He turned away from her, even the sight of her disgusting him. “You’ve been scamming me this whole time and you’re justifying it? Don’t tell me you had to. You chose to.”
She sagged into the post. “Choice?” How could she not laugh at that?
He spun on her. “Don’t laugh. You always have a choice,” he said, throwing at her what had to be the stupidest platitude in all the world.
He believed it too. He wasn’t interested in what she had to say. But she didn’t care. She was sick of her own silence.
“You’re right. Of course you always have a choice.” She pushed past him and started to gather her things, but he grabbed her arm.
She yanked it away. “You want to talk about choice? Okay, let’s talk about choice. I was fourteen the first time my uncle’s neighbor cornered me in the street on my way home from school and told me he knew how I could make some money to help my aunt feed her five daughters. I carried a knife to school every day after that. That was my choice.
“But after I turned fifteen and my mother died, he didn’t come to me, he went to my uncle, who told me I had to go to Calcutta with him and work as a maid so he’d have money for my dowry. Even at fifteen I knew he was lying. Even at fifteen I had no faith, none of your bloody innocence and belief in humanity. I knew it wasn’t a maid’s job that was waiting for me in Calcutta. But I had to go. That was my choice.
“Still I fought. I lured the bastard into a bathroom at Siliguri bus station, stole his money, and locked him in there. Then I split the money between the other four girls he was taking to Calcutta and sent them back home. Me? I had no home to go back to.
“You want choice? I chose to go to Calcutta and work. But you already know what was waiting for me there. I was seventeen, Nikhil. Do you remember being seventeen? When you were living in this beautiful house being taught lessons about justice by your parents, I was picked up like a scrap of meat and dumped into a car, where two men took turns tearing up my body. Simply because they could. You’re right. I should have chosen to not let them do that to me, to my childhood.
“But I chose it. And you know what else I chose? I chose to let that bastard go on living in his big house, I chose to let him get paid millions of rupees to appear on magazines and in ads. Yes, I chose that, because of course, you always have a choice.”
“Jess.” Now he was listening to her. Now what she said mattered. But it was too late. He reached for her again, but she’d rather die than let him touch her.
“And yes, I chose to let someone pay me to screw you.” They had paid her by letting her son live, but she could never tell him that. “And you’re right to call me a whore. Just like they were right to think I was one.”
He was breathing hard. Or maybe she was projecting again. “I never called you a whore.”
He had. Or maybe he hadn’t. She didn’t care. All she cared about now was getting out of here before he handed her over to the authorities.
Because of all the choices she’d made, getting thrown in jail was one choice she could not make. She had to get back to Joy.
“Nikhil!” Ria’s scream followed a loud crashing sound.
Jess pushed him out of the way and raced down the stairs, a horrible sense of foreboding slamming inside her. Ria was rolled up on the den floor next to the bed, the tall floor lamp lying broken next to her.
She went down on her knees next to Ria, using her hands to sweep the broken glass away from Ria’s body. “It’s okay, Ria. It’s okay.” She sat down on the floor and slid Ria’s head onto her lap.
Ria grabbed her hand. “Viky . . . someone needs to call Viky.”
Nikhil was already on the phone. “Vic and Aie and Dad are on their way to the hospital. The ambulance is almost here.”
Nikhil squatted down next to them and took Ria’s wrist. He checked her pulse, then her eyes. “Try to breathe. The ambulance is almost here. How bad is the pain?”
“It’s not too bad. I was going to come up to get you, but I fell and the stupid lamp . . .”
“It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.” Jess squeezed her hand, wiping the sweat off her forehead. She looked white as a sheet and she was having a hard time breathing. Why had Jess let her talk her into doing the blessing?
“What happened?” Ria asked, breathing through the pain, studying Jess’s face then Nikhil’s.
Jess waited for Nikhil to say something. But the doorbell rang, and he let the paramedics in. Before Jess knew what was happening, they had Ria on a gurney and in the ambulance. Ria wouldn’t let her hand go.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Ria as the paramedics took her vitals and started an IV. She slipped Ria’s hand into Nikhil’s as he climbed into the ambulance and she got off. “Is she going to be okay?” Jess asked, moving away before he could touch her.
He nodded. “The baby’s coming. That’s all. They’re both going to be fine.”
Her relief was so strong her entire body sagged.
“This isn’t about the blessing. It would have happened anyway. It’s just time.”
She tried to nod, but some things defied explanation. She turned and started to walk away.
“Jess,” he called after her, and despite herself she faced him again. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have accused you like that. I should have asked,” he said, but she didn’t care, she just needed him to leave so she could get away like the thief she was.
That’s when it happened, the moment that ruined everything. His eyes widened with panic. The paramedics pushed her out of the way.
“Is he safe?” Nikhil said over their heads, everything but terror gone from his eyes. “Is Joy safe?”
She stared at him, unable to respond, unable to bear the pain pooling in her heart.
“Please don’t leave. Please be here when I get back.” It was the last thing he said before the paramedics slammed the doors in place and the ambulance drove off, leaving her standing there, taking with it the anger that had been so much easier than what she was left holding.
38
I feel responsible for every one of the deaths. I typed those names into the registry. I pinned those targets on each of those people.
I’ve saved lives too. But somehow I don’t feel as responsible for those.
Why is it easier to claim those we lost while forgetting those we rescued?
—Dr. Jen Joshi
Maybe she
shouldn’t have run. Maybe she should have listened to her heart and trusted Nikhil to come back from the hospital and help her take care of things. Maybe she should have trusted that look in his eyes when he had figured out about Joy being in danger.
Or maybe she needed to stop wishing she had seen him just one more time before letting him go forever.
The autorickshaw pulled to a stop outside Joy’s school, and she led him to the door. He squeezed her hard, his arms a vise around her waist. He hadn’t stopped doing that ever since she came home yesterday and Sweetie had handed Joy to her at the airport before taking off for London.
Sweetie’s boyfriend, Armaan, had hidden Joy and Sweetie in the back of his car and brought them to the airport so they wouldn’t be followed. And then taken Joy back so she could take a taxi. She wished she could take Joy and run away to London with Sweetie. But Joy didn’t even have a passport.
“One call and I’ll be back,” Sweetie had told her. “I really don’t want to leave you alone.”
But she couldn’t worry about Sweetie being thrown in jail. She had to focus all her energy on carrying out her plan.
“I’ll bring you back a red double-decker bus,” Sweetie had said to Joy, fighting tears. “You be good for Mamma, even if she’s not as awesome as Sweetie-mamu.”
“No one’s as awesome as Sweetie-mamu,” Joy had said, and Sweetie had lost the fight against his tears when he turned away.
Joy hadn’t asked once why Sweetie had to leave. Or why she had been gone for three weeks. He had just refused to let her get too far, sitting as close to her as he could, sleeping tightly wedged into her, clutching her hand all day as he brushed his teeth and changed his clothes. He’d even eaten all his meals on her lap.
She could have told him a million times that she would never leave him again. Instead, she had stuck close and clung to him in return, because words meant nothing in the face of actions.
