What a Happy Family

by Saumya Dave

  “I can see that. And I’m sorry for that, too,” Natasha says as she thinks back to all the times Anuj has been more like a spectator to their conversations. She assumed he didn’t want to say anything, not that he felt he couldn’t.

  Natasha hasn’t apologized this many times in a single week, let alone a single conversation. Why didn’t she ever put herself in her siblings’ shoes? Why did she always assume she was the only one struggling?

  “It’s fine.” Anuj shrugs. “I’m just telling you because Suhani’s right. Why do you think I went to Cornell? I could have gone to Tech or Emory, but there’s a reason I wanted, needed, to get away.”

  “I understand,” Natasha says, realizing how much power there is in the simplest words. I understand. I hear you. I’m sorry. She thinks back to all the times she’s played around with the idea of moving far away, growing new roots in a place that’s just her own.

  “You never told us that, Anuj,” Dad says as he and Mom glance at each other.

  “You didn’t give me a chance!” Anuj throws his hands in the air. “All of you think that because I don’t say much, because I don’t ever raise any hell, that I’m fine. Well, I’m not. I deal with stuff, too. And maybe I’ve always felt like I had to be a certain way for you all to accept me.”

  “What way is that?” Suhani asks, seeming just as surprised as their parents to hear this.

  “Calm. Chill. The one who goes with the flow,” Anuj says. “And, yeah, I can roll with the punches more than y’all can, but that doesn’t mean things don’t bother me.”

  “Your family is listening.” Dr. Eze taps her pen against her notepad. “Is there anything you’d like to say to them?”

  Anuj doesn’t even pause to think before he says, “Stop treating me like a baby. Stop telling me to be a doctor. Stop talking over me. Just stop. Please.”

  Mom and Dad glance at each other. Suhani sighs and says, “We really didn’t know.”

  “I know you didn’t,” Anuj says.

  “Oh, this is all my fault.” Mom clasps her hands together as if she’s praying for forgiveness.

  Everyone is in awe that Mom’s been able to stay quiet until now. Natasha sees Dad sigh with relief.

  “What do you mean by that?” Dr. Eze asks. Natasha’s impressed by how Dr. Eze can receive all her family’s emotional statements with the perfect mixture of curiosity and compassion. The past weeks have given her a newfound appreciation for mental health providers. She wonders how many times Suhani and Dad have done this for other people.

  “I’m the reason my kids have felt pressure and doubt and the need to keep quiet about what’s going on with them. I came to this country so scared, with such a chip on my shoulder because I had to let go of my big career. I had to prove to my parents I made the right choice. Then we settled here and I still keep trying to prove to everyone that I’m doing everything right, that I’m a good wife and mom.”

  “You are those things,” Natasha says. She hears murmurs of agreement from her siblings.

  Mom shakes her head. “Am I really if this is how my children feel?”

  “Well, Bina, I think it may be worth hearing from them.” Dr. Eze gives Mom a thoughtful nod. “They all did just learn about a pretty big part of your past.”

  “Yes, they did,” Bina says.

  The night Natasha came home from the hospital, Mom and Dad sat with Natasha, Suhani, Zack, and Anuj at the formal dining table and told them about what happened to Mom in India, the real reason she left acting. Everyone gave Mom a hug, but only Zack and Anuj asked her for more details. Suhani stayed quiet. Even now, she’s staring at the floor, her fists clenched.

  Dr. Eze notices it, too. “Suhani, can you share what you’re thinking?”

  “To be honest, I don’t know,” Suhani says. “During my first year of residency, I learned about how when a woman’s stressed during pregnancy and after birth, that stress can potentially be passed down to her baby in different ways. I wondered if something happened with my mom that made me always so on edge. And now I guess I understand why she pushed me so hard my entire life, but—” Her voice catches. “I just wish I knew because I often felt so alone, so under pressure, so scared to let her and my dad down.”

  “I’m so sorry about that, beta,” Mom says. “I really am.”

  “You don’t have to apologize.” Suhani’s voice is soft. “I understand why you kept it to yourself. I just wish I knew, that we all did. I think we all would have been more honest with ourselves if you were more honest with us.”

  Natasha can tell those words sting Mom because her face crumples up as if she’s about to cry.

  “I didn’t do the right thing by keeping it from you.” Tears well in Mom’s eyes. “Your dad told me to but I was too stubborn.”

  “It’s okay, Mom. I know you were protecting us in your own way. And now I know you’re even stronger than I thought,” Suhani says.

  Natasha realizes that it’s possible for her to wish her family was different and at the same time know that they’re all doing the best they can with what they have.

  “Bina, I want to go back to the point you made earlier about proving something to everyone.” Dr. Eze clasps her hands on her knees. “You had to prove yourself to your parents and that makes a lot of sense. Families often have patterns, especially when it comes to communication. The way our parents spoke to us influences how we speak to our own children.”

  “I never really thought of that until now, but I do see it.” Mom’s voice wavers. She squeezes her eyes shut, as though she’s staring directly into the sun. “My mom and I argued a lot. She always thought I was a difficult child. And she warned me that I’d understand one day when I had kids. She was so right.”

  Mom faces Dad, who is already staring at her, on the brink of tears. Natasha didn’t realize until now how fortunate she is to have a father who so freely embraces his emotions, even if that wasn’t what he was brought up to do.

  Mom sighs. “And then after I met Deepak, I was this rising actress, choosing a man for love. I was so determined to live differently than she did, with her concerns about money and appearances and status. But I ended up being more like her than ever. I’m sorry, Natasha, for passing that to you.”

  “It’s okay, Mommy.”

  Mommy. Natasha’s voice breaks as the word escapes her mouth. A fat tear dribbles down her cheek. Mom gets up and walks to her.

  A ripple of sadness passes through Natasha as she presses her face against Mom’s soft shoulder.

  Usually, Natasha has fixed images of Mom that come to mind whenever she thinks of her. Mom, adding cumin to a pan of simmering vegetables. Mom, sitting at the edge of Natasha’s bed, her voice strained as she tells Natasha to not make the same mistakes she did. Mom, yelling when she found out Natasha was drinking alcohol in high school. Mom, demanding Natasha think of how bad she will look as a mother if she doesn’t straighten up.

  And then there are others. Mom, telling Anita Auntie on the phone that Natasha is vibrant and funny, the light of their family. Mom, stretching out on the recliner next to Natasha, watching a comedy special with her, and really understanding the talent and work it took for the comedian to create that. Mom, a tight smile on her face that doesn’t quite reach her eyes as she serves chai and snacks to guests who don’t bother to ask her how she’s doing, who she hopes to become.

  But now Natasha sees that in the back-and-forth web of criticism and companionship that she and Mom have always been caught in, she never thought to consider the life Mom left behind, the parts of herself she gave up along the way. Mom didn’t strike her as a woman who ran away from anything.

  “It must have been so difficult.” Dr. Eze gazes at Mom. “Leaving your family, your career, your country.”

  “It was. I don’t know what I would have done without Deepak and then the kids.” Tears pool in Mom’s eyes. Before s
he goes back to her chair, she reaches for a tissue from the box on the table behind her.

  Dr. Eze looks at the genogram she gave them a copy of at the beginning of the appointment. “You and Deepak went through things that were traumatic, many of which forced you to suppress your emotions just to get through. Many children of immigrants inherit that trauma in various forms. Some of them want lives that look nothing like their parents’ as a way to protect themselves.”

  Natasha is grateful that their therapist gets it. One of her parents’ fears about coming to family therapy was that their provider wouldn’t understand the cultural context of their situation. Even Dr. Jenkins used to tell Natasha to stop talking to her family if they were bothering her so much. Natasha didn’t know how to explain that it just didn’t work that way in desi families. Like so many things, Alexis was spot-on about this.

  “I think I tried to protect myself that way,” Suhani says. “I saw my mom being resentful and just doing things for others for years. She pushed me to make sure I’d be successful, never dependent on anyone. And I thought if I went out with a guy as different from my dad as possible, I’d make sure to have as different of a marriage from my parents as possible. But at the same time, I chose my ex because he checked off all those approval boxes: doctor, Indian, et cetera. So even though I thought I was following my own path, I was really still giving in to these expectations. And then that person didn’t make me happy, at all.”

  She glances at Zack, who has been quiet this entire appointment, and wants to tell him how much she appreciates his being here. His wavy brown hair is grown out more than usual and splays out in every direction. If it wasn’t for his coral button-down shirt and dark jeans, he would look like he’d just woken up.

  Suhani reaches for his hand. “When I met Zack, I think I didn’t feel like I deserved to be happy. I got scared. And I turned to the only thing that’s ever helped me avoid thinking: work. I’ve used work and accomplishments as an armor. I’d gotten way too good at keeping my guard up, holding everything inside, and it’s cost me a lot.”

  Natasha feels something in her shift. It takes her several seconds to process that it’s the image she’s always had of her sister. Her beautiful, intelligent, accomplished sister has been carrying around pain for years.

  “Zack?” Dr. Eze motions to him. “Thoughts?”

  He’s leaning forward, his elbows propped on his slim thighs. It’s hard to tell whether he’s upset or just processing everything Suhani is saying.

  “I’ve always known that about you,” he tells Suhani. “It often seemed like nothing was going to convince you that you deserved to be happy and successful.”

  Suhani holds her face in her delicate hands. Her engagement ring winks when it catches the light. “I never felt like I deserved anything I got and I was convinced that at any second, it could all be taken away. I remember I used to even get mad when Mom would ask what you were eating when I worked late. I took it as her expecting me to be some traditional Indian wife, like she was for my dad, when really, she was just being caring.”

  Anuj exchanges an uneasy glance with Natasha. Maybe all three of them inherited the seeds of their parents’ regrets, but they bloomed in each of them differently.

  “I think you absorbing yourself in work and shutting down at home was really hard for me because it reminded me of my dad.” Zack’s knuckles are white as he grips his hair. “He used the hospital and alcohol to cope with his issues. And my mom and sisters would yell but I’d just go into my room and turn up the music. Withdraw.”

  “So, you felt some of those scary feelings from childhood coming back?” Dr. Eze asks.

  Zack nods.

  “It’s okay.” Dr. Eze’s voice is gentle. “Sometimes marriage can do that, especially at the beginning. It can bring back memories from our own parents’ marriage and then we can replay out those dynamics from our childhoods because they helped us survive in the past.”

  Zack slumps forward. Natasha’s never seen him like this, sad to the point of hopelessness. She wants to hug her brother-in-law and tell him everything will be okay, the way he’s done for her so many times. But she knows that even though they’re all here together, this is something he and Suhani need to navigate.

  “I’m sorry.” Suhani reaches out to grip his arm. “That’s awful. I never should have put you in a position where you could feel that kind of pain. I should have talked to you about how I was feeling instead of closing myself off more.”

  “I should have talked to you more, too,” Zack says.

  “We all should have talked to each other more,” Dad says, his voice soft. Gray stubble dots his chin.

  “What do you mean?” Dr. Eze asks.

  “I’ve done things to try and protect my family. And sometimes that’s meant staying quiet. But there’s no good that’s come from that. I should have known that after spending years telling my patients to be open and honest.” Dad adjusts his chair so it’s facing Mom. Natasha fidgets with the strings on her hoodie.

  “I wanted to be a poet. A full-time poet.” Dad smiles at the thought. “The reason I even met your mom is because I was outside that theater that night for a poetry reading and her play was after that.”

  “What? You’re serious?” Anuj says. “When I told you I loved poetry, you acted like you had no interest in it.”

  “I know,” Dad says. “I buried that part of me years ago. I did what I had to in order to support your mom and, later, all of us. But when I was growing up and my parents would sell vegetables from sunrise to sunset, I always dreamed of writing poems, reading them to audiences. My parents and brother told me I was crazy. Maybe that’s why I’ve always been easier on Natasha. I understand how it feels for your goals to not make sense, to you, to the people who love you.”

  Natasha can’t speak because her thoughts are in a tight knot. Everyone’s looking at Dad with an intense focus, as if they can also feel the emotional tectonic plates of their family shifting while he’s speaking. Natasha clenches her fists as she pictures a younger version of him hunched over a notebook and pouring out his most intimate thoughts onto a blank page. Picturing her parents when they were younger, long before she and her siblings existed, always overwhelms her. They had full lives. They had dreams and conversations and fears she never knew about.

  “In India, nobody asked us how we were doing emotionally,” Dad says. “We just had to keep going and doing what had to be done. If someone was struggling, they were told to pray extra or do some religious ritual. My family never accepted that I wanted to become a psychiatrist, so maybe, somewhere inside, I got caught up with proving something to them, too, and I lost sight of what I believed in the first place. But you kids are showing us another way.”

  Dr. Eze clears her throat. “You’re all breaking the patterns of the generations before you by being here.”

  “You’ve showed us a lot, too, Dad,” Natasha says.

  “We just wanted you all to be happy.” Dad’s eyes are red.

  Within seconds, Mom and Dad envelop Natasha in a tight hug. Hot tears stream down her face. Nothing compares to the safety and warmth that comes from her parents’ embrace.

  “I know.” Natasha says it over and over again. “I know.”

  Thirty

  Suhani

  Roshan started changing months into our relationship. But it was so subtle at first that I thought I was overreacting whenever he did things.”

  Suhani rips off a piece of garlic bread from the warm loaf and dips it into marinara sauce. The impending conversation and her long day has her craving comfort food.

  “What kind of things?” Zack folds his hands together and stares at her with intense focus.

  Suhani’s pulse throbs in her head. Where does she start in telling Zack about what happened? For a second, she wonders if her hesitation means she isn’t ready. But then she pictures Zack during famil
y therapy, the crestfallen look on his face when he talked about his dad. Keeping things to themselves is what got them to this point.

  They’re sitting across from each other at their tiny round dining table, the only one they could find that fit in the space between their kitchen and living room. Suhani’s initial idea was for them to go to Nuevo Laredo tonight and talk everything out over jalapeño margaritas and enchiladas. But she’s relieved they opted for the quiet of the apartment. Their apartment. She heated up spaghetti and thawed garlic bread from Trader Joe’s, a meal that would make both of their mothers shake their heads with vehement disapproval. Three candles flicker in the middle of the table.

  “It’s okay, honey. You can tell me anything.” Zack squeezes her hand. “Everything.”

  Her breathing slows down. Suhani is reminded of how, from their very first conversation, Zack instilled a sense of safety in her. She could be herself with this man—her true, flawed self. Somewhere along the way, she lost sight of that. Instead of telling him everything years ago, she tucked her past inside herself and hoped it would shrink with time. But pain was a seed and burying it only helped it grow.

  “Things were fine with Roshan. Great, even. And then all of a sudden, we had this terrible fight that I thought happened because we were both stressed with finals,” Suhani says. “He started yelling at me, like, really yelling. I was in shock because he had never spoken like that before, no matter how heated our arguments got. He apologized after and begged me to forgive him, said he was really worried about his evaluations from his clinical rotations. And then for a while, we were fine again. It was like it never happened. He went back to being his sweet and caring self, the person I thought I knew.”

  When things were good with Roshan, they were really good. Suhani had dated a few guys by then—all of them sweet and caring—but none of them sent her on an emotional high like Roshan did.

  “But then weeks later, he yelled again,” she says. “And again. I didn’t realize then that he escalated each time. He started using curse words and eventually progressed to a lot of name-calling.”