What a Happy Family

by Saumya Dave

  Even though Suhani’s sitting on this uncomfortable bed and staring at her sister in scrubs and nonslip socks, she still can’t fully accept that her little sister is a patient, like so many of the patients she’s seen and treated over the years. When they’re feeling better, Suhani’s heard a variety of reactions about how they’ve felt about the ward.

  Many can’t wait to leave and say it was a useless experience for them. Some have been traumatized from the confinement. And then there are those few who say it was exactly what they needed. She never thought Natasha would be in that last category, but she’s grateful to be wrong.

  “So, I do have some news for you,” Suhani says. “I spoke to Dr. Chan and she says you’re ready to leave tomorrow!”

  Natasha’s face lights up. “Tomorrow? Really?”

  “Really.” Suhani hugs her.

  You made it, she thinks, wanting to break out into a cheering routine. You didn’t let this break you.

  “So, what do you think is next? You know, after you leave?” Suhani asks.

  “I’ll keep taking the meds. Stick with the therapy.”

  But what about your career? Your future? Suhani wants to ask. The truth is, she’s always felt a mixture of envy and awe toward Natasha for being able to do what she wants, be free in that way. But she also knows that if Natasha goes back to the life she had before she came here, there’s a risk she’ll continue to struggle.

  But she doesn’t want Natasha to think she’s pushing her, so she keeps a smile on her face and says, “Sounds like a plan.”

  Natasha stares at her nonslip socks. She wraps her arms around her legs.

  “Do you think there’s something innately fucked up about me?” Natasha’s voice is soft.

  “What? No! Why would you say that?”

  “I don’t know. It’s like for as long as I can remember, it’s been hard for me to keep my emotions in control. Be the way other people expect me to be. And there are always these negative thoughts spiraling through my head. Even when I was a kid, I had them.”

  “That doesn’t mean there’s something fucked up about you.” Suhani grabs Natasha’s hand. “You have an illness. And you’re getting help for it now. I’m just sorry you’ve been going through this alone for so long and that I was too blind to help you earlier.”

  “But what about all of us? Have you ever thought that there’s maybe something that runs in our family?” Natasha asks.

  “What do you mean? Mentally?” Suhani looks at her and wonders what she’s put together.

  “Sort of, yeah. We talked about our family histories in group therapy the other day and I started wondering. Nanima”—Natasha says, referring to Mom’s mom, who passed away when Suhani was in high school—“always told me that Mom and I have a lot in common, even with our tempers and stuff. After being here, I wonder about Mom. She gets emotional so easily like I do and I remembered those drives she used to go on when we were little, how Dad tried to make them seem like no big deal, but we always knew. And Anuj has told me that his mind has gone to dark places sometimes. He’s more relaxed than all of us, obviously, but even he’s struggled.”

  Suhani has been wondering the same thing since she started her residency training. When she sat in lectures that covered everything from personality traits to marital dynamics to birth order, she couldn’t help but link certain insights to her own family. She began putting things together that she never had before, like why she and her siblings were parented differently or what traits drew her and Zack to each other.

  Natasha smiles. “I mean, I know you don’t really get how it feels to hit a point so low that you’re totally lost, but, yeah, I do wonder if there’s something with our family that makes some of us prone to it.”

  Suhani bites her bottom lip. Natasha has no idea about the low points she’s hit. Nobody does.

  “Um, are you okay?” Natasha asks as she scans Suhani’s face. “I know it’s weird for me to ask you that, considering where I am right now, but still.”

  Suhani smiles. Now isn’t the time to tell Natasha she’s so tired of trying to be perfect all the time. What does being the good girl amount to, anyway? It doesn’t protect you. It definitely doesn’t ensure you’ll be happy. Ever since she could remember, every victory gave her a brief, fleeting high. But the goalpost was always moving and she was soon chasing the next one. Perfect GPA, perfect body, perfect manners. She thought it would lead to a sense of security at some point. But all of it only continued to leave her in this limbo between achievement and the persistent, gnawing feeling that she’s not good enough.

  “I’m totally fine,” Suhani says. “And regarding something running in our family, I do see your point.”

  Natasha peers at her the same way she did before, as if she knows Suhani is keeping something from her. But before she can say anything, Suhani changes the subject and they stick to safe topics for the rest of her visit: a funny joke Anuj made when he stopped by with Dad and Mom last night, how Natasha plans to stay in touch with her roommate, the quirks of the different nurses on the ward, and the excitement of her being out of here in twenty-four hours.

  Twenty-Seven

  Bina

  Natasha is already waiting for Bina by the time she reaches the ward. No matter how often Bina sees her, she can’t ever get used to the image of her daughter in these gray scrubs. Her pulse quickens at the thought of Natasha wearing her ratty Georgia State hoodie and sweat pants in a matter of hours. Who ever thought she would miss the disheveled clothing?

  “Beta, I can’t believe you’ll be out of here soon.” Bina gives her a hug and hands her two yogurt containers, which she still reuses for food storage. The habit started when she and Deepak moved to America and couldn’t afford glass containers. The kids would sometimes get annoyed thinking they were opening a tub of yogurt, only to find leftover chole or a ball of dough.

  “Mooooom,” Natasha says, stretching out the word, pretending to be annoyed but smiling as she takes the dhokla. “You didn’t need to bring me food. We’re literally going home in an hour.”

  “And what if you got hungry during that time?” Bina says.

  “I would have been fine.” Natasha gazes around the room. “I guess this is our last time meeting here. Weird, right?”

  “It is,” Bina agrees.

  She’s surprised at how much she’s started to enjoy showing up for visiting hours. Somehow, the confining nature of the ward has given her and Natasha the space to just be. This is no longer only a place for people who are mentally ill. It’s a place where she’s had some sense of understanding with her daughter for the first time in years. The structured environment distilled them down to their essentials, and during these visits, Natasha was both a daughter and a friend. They shared celebrity gossip. They laughed about Deepak’s many quirks around the house, from his tendency to fall asleep watching Shark Tank; to calling several times, overwhelmed, when he went to the grocery store; to how, even though he’d never admit it out loud, he loved gossiping with them.

  “Do you feel that being here helped you, beta?” Bina strokes Natasha’s tangled curls. She resists the urge to talk about the YouTube videos.

  “I do. I know there’s still a long way to go and staying better is going to take daily work,” Natasha says. “But when I first got here, I felt like I was trapped, like this mood was a living thing and I was caught in its tight, unyielding grip. Now I can see that I was trapped in some ways but I was also tired. So tired. Tired of pretending I was fine. In a way, I was putting on this constant performance that I was okay enough. And it all caught up to me. But now it doesn’t feel that way.”

  Bina stops herself from saying she knows exactly how Natasha felt and she wants to make sure Natasha never has to pretend she’s fine again.

  “You really made the most of your time here, beta,” Bina says.

  “It wasn’t as terrible as
I thought it’d be.” Natasha pulls her hair into a ponytail. Bina ignores the urge to fix it for her. Her daughter’s hair is a perfect match for her spirit: unruly, stubborn, unique. Hair that Bina spent hours pulling into neat braids until she discovered Natasha went to school and undid them. Hair that made beauticians at the threading salon murmur, That’s some difficult and tough hair, which made Bina always say, Yes, she’s my tough girl so I expect nothing less.

  “I’m glad it wasn’t as bad as you thought.” Bina hugs Natasha. “So, Devi Auntie did want me to pass something along to you.”

  Bina tells Natasha about the internship. (Why don’t they call it what it really is: cheap labor?)

  Natasha gasps. “Oh my God! The late-night show? In LA?!”

  “So you’re interested?” Bina doesn’t mean to sound so weary.

  “Yes. I really am! I’ll call Devi Auntie tonight.”

  Bina tries to ignore the different feelings building up in her. Happiness at her daughter’s excitement. Fear at the thought of her leaving Atlanta. Relief at having her home soon.

  “So you really want this, yes?” Bina asks.

  “I do.” Natasha clasps her hands together. “I really, really do. Thank you, Mom. I never thought you’d be okay with something like this.”

  Neither did I, Bina thinks.

  “I just want you to be happy,” she says.

  Natasha smiles. “I feel . . . I feel like I’ve gotten to know a different part of you since I’ve been here.”

  “I agree,” Bina says. She’s about to say the car is parked right outside and that the second Dr. Chan puts in the discharge order, they’ll leave that locked door forever. But something pushes Bina into another direction. And she can’t ignore it.

  “Beta, before we go”—Bina takes a deep breath—“there’s something I should have told you a long time ago.”

  Natasha raises her eyebrows. “What?”

  “I was in a place like . . . this many years ago.”

  “What? You were in a psych ward?” Natasha’s face is confused as she processes Bina’s words. “When?”

  “Twice.”

  “Twice? Seriously?” Natasha’s eyes widen.

  “The first time was when I was pursuing my acting, in the middle of a rehearsal. I had gotten a really big role, the kind that could have made me a real star.” Bina nods. “And then again, right after I gave birth to your sister.”

  “But . . .” Natasha shakes her head. “I don’t . . . that doesn’t . . . but you never . . .”

  Bina blinks away tears. She pictures the horrified expressions of the other actors, the stern nurse who told her to be quiet, the thin, tall doctor who held the massive needle that was soon injected into her arm.

  “I should have told you a long time ago. But Dad and I thought it was better that all of you not know. It was a really hard time for us. I hated everything: the hospital, the doctors, the medications they made me take.”

  “What happened? Did you try to hurt yourself, too?”

  “No.” Bina shakes her head and tries to think of the best way to explain that horrific time in her life, the time she’s spent so many years trying to forget. “I always had thoughts going through my head that scared me. When I was younger, I pretended all that frantic energy came from another place altogether, like some outside force, as a way to make it seem more manageable. For so many years, I didn’t know it had a name: anxiety. But while I was in rehearsal for a movie, a movie where I was opposite a very famous actor, I broke down. I think the doctor thought it was the stress of everything, but your dad and I are still not very sure. All I remember is that everything felt like a blur, and suddenly I got very scared. I was yelling at people and convinced that there were dark shadows flying all around me. The next thing I knew, I was in an ambulance. They gave me a shot to calm me down. But it was so loud, so intense. The hospital stay was short—thankfully—but it was the scariest few days of my life.

  “And then, after I had just given birth to your sister, it happened again. The thoughts, the room spinning out of control. The doctors thought there must have been some reaction with my hormones and the pregnancy. They tried to put me on this medication—your dad agreed with them—but it turned me into a zombie. I was supposed to take it every day and didn’t want to breastfeed on it. It was a constant battle, with your dad and me, with the doctors, with my parents, with myself. God, what a hell of a time.”

  “I don’t even know what to say.” Natasha rests her head in her hands in a gesture of defeat and sadness.

  Bina reaches forward and squeezes Natasha’s arm. Natasha keeps her face buried in her palms. Around them, patients are meeting with their family members. For a brief moment, Bina wonders what their conversations are like, how they’re all coping with the pain in their lives.

  “So I’ve managed to make my Natasha quiet? Wow, I’ve accomplished the impossible.” Bina laughs in an attempt to make some light of the situation.

  But Natasha doesn’t laugh back or even crack a smile. “Why didn’t you ever tell us? Me?”

  Bina considers this. Why didn’t she just sit down with the kids and share this with them years ago? It would have all been out in the open and then they could have moved on.

  “We thought we were protecting you,” she says. “You have to understand, anything having to do with mental illness was so stigmatized in India back then. We think it’s bad now, but it was much worse at that time. People who did know about what happened to me made me feel like I was cursed. Some of them even suggested certain prayers or rituals to make me ‘cleansed.’ And I’ve always been so scared I could have passed something down to the three of you. I guess Dad and I just wanted to move on from all this, start a new life. I quit acting after the first time. Not that I really had a choice. After everyone I was working with saw my”—she searches for the right word—“episode, I knew there was no way I’d ever be considered for a movie again. And then, after the second one, the psychiatrist said stress was a trigger, and I had to make sure to stick to a routine, not have a life where I’d be prone for this to happen again. Even with how tough all of it was, it’s strange to say I’m one of the lucky ones. I was able to return back to myself within a week and I’ve been more than fine ever since.”

  Bina remembers the rise of excitement and fear that sprang in her when she and Deepak learned she was pregnant with Natasha, then Anuj. Deepak clutched her shoulder while the ultrasound technician rubbed jelly on her stomach and a hazy gray, black, and white figure appeared on the screen. Bina stuck the ultrasound pictures on her fridge even though she didn’t know what exactly she was looking at. In Bombay, it was considered bad luck to show anything related to the baby, but Bina had seen women in soap operas share their ultrasounds and she loved the idea. Years later, when Suhani was in medical school, she taught Bina how to make sense of the pictures.

  “I can’t imagine how people in India must have reacted,” Natasha says. “You and Dad don’t even let me tell our extended family there that I’m sad or pissed off. It’s like any discussion of emotional health with other people is so off-limits even though Dad’s a psychiatrist.”

  “It is. And that’s been a problem there for too long. A problem that we’ve carried over here. You’ve been through a more difficult time than I have,” Bina says.

  “I don’t know about that,” Natasha says.

  “I do.” Bina places a firm hand over hers. “Mine came out of nowhere, twice, and, yes, it was very scary. But I’m realizing you’ve always carried around this weight with you, haven’t you?”

  Bina repeats her last question in Gujarati, a habit she’s had since moving to America. Every time a question holds significant emotional weight, she repeats it in Gujarati.

  Natasha stares at the table. With her free hand, she traces the swirly wood patterns. Her nails are chipped with black polish. Bina finds comfort in this
, her daughter’s nails looking the way they always do, done and undone.

  “I guess, yeah.” Natasha looks up at Bina. Her eyes are moist. “I’m so sorry you went through that, Mommy.”

  Mommy. Natasha hasn’t called her that in years. Bina feels herself choke on tears.

  “It’s okay, baby. I’m fine. I just hate that you haven’t been . . . for so long. And were dealing with it alone.”

  Natasha slumps in the stiff wooden chair. “Being here has helped me realize that I’ve always felt bad about not being happy . . . because you and Dad went through so much worse.”

  Bina sighs. Just the other day, Mira had brought up that Pooja mentioned something about being depressed. I had asked her, what do you have to be depressed about? Mira scoffed. All of us who had to deal with everything when we were coming to this country, we have the right to be depressed.

  Now Bina wonders how many times she and her friends made those types of comments and what the impact has been over the years. Instead of encouraging growth or resilience, did it only result in their kids keeping things from them?

  Natasha nods. “I felt guilty about being so low when you and Dad have given us everything. And then I’d hate myself on top of that, then get frustrated for feeling all these different things. It’s been that way my whole life, this downward spiral that I can fall into at any second. Dr. Chan helped me realize that my thoughts have negative patterns. She thinks I need cognitive behavioral therapy to help with my disruptive thoughts.”

  “I see,” Bina says, trying to find the right boundary between being fully supportive and giving her honest opinion, a boundary she’s struggled with when communicating with her daughters throughout their lives. She wants to be the type of mother who can say, Yes, do whatever you think is best, I’m here for you. But she’s conflicted. One part of her is worried that Natasha’s focusing on her thoughts too much may not be helpful, but then another part of her is proud of her daughter for taking the time to understand herself.