by Mintie Das
The Aiedeo started with Ananya, my great-great-multiplied-by-like-a-hundred-more-greats-grandmother. She was a queen in an ancient kingdom that ruled what is now Assam, India. I don’t know much about Ananya, but from the stories that I’ve heard, Gram was straight-up gangsta. Ananya’s husband was the maharaja but he was just a tiny footnote in her story because it was Ananya who had the real power. Supernatural powers.
I never got the details on everything Ananya could do, but it sounds like she was all the Avengers rolled into one. Legend has it that she single-handedly took on a battalion of Persian soldiers with her mad combat skills, poisonous arrows, and super-strength.
When Ananya was still a relatively young queen, there was a shift in the Ultimate Reality, the eternal cycle of creation and destruction, that caused all hell to break loose. Literally. War broke out between the gods and the Asuras—or, more accurately, the creators and the destroyers. Ananya used her powers to help the creators win the war, which was a good thing, because had the destroyers succeeded, we’d all be living in some dystopian nightmare under the rule of demon kings.
The gods honored Ananya by creating an entirely new position for her: an Aiedeo. Her task was to protect the world by destroying the destroyers. As if that weren’t enough, the gods decided to ensure job security for Ananya’s future female lineage by making us all Aiedeo too.
They also promised one female in every generation would get her own set of powers like Ananya had. However, like most Indian parents, Ananya wasn’t going to give any of her progeny a trophy just for showing up, so she threw in the stipulation that an Aiedeo wouldn’t be born with her powers but had to earn them.
An Aiedeo does that by going through a rigorous training that starts when she’s ten and continues for the next seven years. An Aiedeo mother trains her daughter in a series of lessons designed to prepare her for various shamas, which are the ultimate tests of mind, body, and spirit. Every time a girl passes a shama, she’s rewarded with a power.
My training began exactly on my tenth birthday. I kind of knew what to expect because my nanny, Dede, had been telling me about my legacy for most of my life. The Aiedeo are a highly secretive group and they rarely reveal themselves to outsiders. But apparently, when my mother was still alive, she’d told Dede everything she knew about being an Aiedeo. I sometimes wonder if that’s because Laya was aware that she wouldn’t be around to tell me herself.
The night I turned ten, I woke up to see a woman with long black hair just like mine sitting on my bed, and I was so excited. Not because of all the stories that Dede had regaled me with about the Aiedeo; it was never just about the shamas or the powers for me. What I’d held on to was that every Aiedeo girl was trained by her mother. Which meant now I was going to get Laya back. But when I turned on the light, my heart plunged. The woman saw the clear devastation on my face and smiled softly. She told me that her name was Mohini, and then she taught me how to braid my hair. First with my hands and then without my hands, just using my mind. I wasn’t very good but Mohini was a patient teacher and I liked her singsong voice. She came back every night after that for an entire month until I could braid my hair with no hands all by myself.
After Mohini, more Aiedeo came to teach me. They were kind and nurturing like the TV moms on my favorite sitcoms. Except that none of them was actually my mother.
I grew up hearing stories about ancestors who could multiply themselves and assist in wars between gods and demons, so the idea that my dead mother would come see me wasn’t so unbelievable. Especially because another of Ananya’s rules was that there could be only one Aiedeo per generation, and both my mother and grandmother (who had died before I was even born) were gone. There was no living Aiedeo to teach me. Which meant that Mohini and all my teachers were dead. So why couldn’t Laya train me herself?
About six months into my lessons, I gained the courage to ask my most recent new teacher, Bhanu, when my mother was coming. The weird thing with the Aiedeo was even back in the days when they were nice to me, I always got the sense that I wasn’t supposed to ask a lot of questions. Bhanu explained that Laya was an elite Aiedeo and was needed for their most dangerous missions. She’d come to teach me only if I proved that I was good enough.
I’d grown up with a dad who was pretty much work-obsessed and rarely had time for me, so I was already used to proving my worth to get a parent’s attention. I knew what I had to do if I wanted to see my mother—I needed to be the best.
I ramped up my training and slowly started to become really good. The warrior stuff was never easy and I struggled the most with that part. I’m not a natural athlete, so all that running, jumping, and fighting were not my jam. But I pushed my body as hard as I could.
Where I excelled was with the supernatural stuff. Once I learned how to focus my mind and harness my power, I found that I could do so much cool shit. Move objects, read people’s thoughts; I even teleported myself to Dairy Queen a few times.
For a while, I loved being an Aiedeo. These were my ancestors and the Aiedeo was my legacy. It made me feel connected to something so much greater than myself. I’d train hard almost every night but I still had more than enough energy for school, maybe because what drove me, deep down inside, was the belief that all of this would eventually lead me to my mother.
Then, around the time that I entered seventh grade, everything changed. My Aiedeo teachers stopped being nurturing TV moms and became more like ball-breaking bitches. The shamas weren’t just getting harder, they were getting downright scary. And it seemed that the more I gave the Aiedeo, the more they wanted from me.
I felt like they were sucking all the life out of me but I was relentless because of Laya. Although I was secretly afraid the Aiedeo would eventually break me. And they did.
I don’t even remember what really happened back then, but I still feel such a wave of rage when I think about it. It was shortly after my thirteenth birthday when the Aiedeo threw me out of a moving car. Maybe it was part of a shama, but WTF kind of test ends with the test taker almost dying?
Miraculously, I survived, but I broke both my legs. To make matters worse, this happened on the rare occasion my father was actually in town. The moment he saw me lying there in the hospital bed, Naresh regressed back to his days as a military interrogator and started grilling me. I’d gotten good at hiding the Aiedeo stuff but I was pretty doped up on pain meds and I’m not sure what I told him. Besides, what could I really say? Whether I was pushed out or jumped out of that car, I was clearly in a dangerous place in my life. Dede tried to step in and help me but Dad didn’t want to listen to anything either of us had to say. He and the hospital psychiatrist were convinced I’d tried to kill myself, so I was put on a twenty-four-hour suicide watch.
It didn’t matter how often I told my father and the shrink that I hadn’t tried to commit suicide; nothing I said was very effective because, honestly, I was effed any way I spun it. If I told Naresh about the Aiedeo, surely he’d lock me up in a mental institution for good. So I just kept quiet.
Dede practically lived in my hospital room and my best friend, Meryl, brought my homework assignments and loads of Little Debbie brownies every day. We’d never kept any secrets from each other. She knew everything about the Aiedeo and always believed me no matter how crazy it all sounded.
Naresh told everyone that I was in a car accident, which I guess was kind of true. To his relief, people seemed to buy it. I think he wanted to believe it too. Meryl heard that Collette, who had an aunt that worked in the psych ward, was telling people that I’d been placed under suicide watch, but Meryl shut down Collette hard by threatening to start a rumor that she’d seen Collette making out with her cousin at the Sweethearts Dance.
The car “accident” was the first time the two parts of me—regular Violet, who was just like everyone else, and Super Violet, the secret Aiedeo—collided. I’d entered junior high the year before and I was convinced that the sole purpose of it wasn’t education but so that some stud
ents could find out what made other adolescents vulnerable and then socially eviscerate them for it. Amber Baker had become a laughingstock when kids found out she’d been taking magic lessons, the kind where you pull a rabbit out of a hat. Imagine what would have happened to me if they’d discovered that I thought my dead relatives were teaching me how to shape-shift.
The consequences of being an Aiedeo were becoming too dangerous in both my inner life and my outer life. But I held on because of my mother.
A few of my Aiedeo teachers visited me in the hospital but I pretended to be asleep and let Dede deal with them. Laya never came. I laid there in bed with a totally busted mind, body, and soul wondering what more I could do to make my mother want me. Then one day about three weeks into my recovery, it all kind of clicked together. I was never going to be good enough for Laya to return.
There was this gaping hole that had been ripped open inside of me when Laya died. I’d thought having a mother again would mend it, but now I let it fill with all the fury and hate I had for the Aiedeo.
Those bitches had lied. They knew Laya was never coming. I was done.
I’d earned a few powers already but I was still in training and a good four years away from becoming a full-on Aiedeo. In theory, maybe the fact that I was an Aiedeo Lite would have allowed me to walk away. But from what I’d learned about my dead relatives, they did everything on their terms. What I had to do was force them to abandon me.
The night after I’d finally gotten both my casts off, I woke up to Mohini sitting on my bed just like she’d done on my very first lesson. She tried to speak to me but I was too fed up to listen. I knew what I had to do if I wanted to end this for good. My legs were still too weak for me to fight but my mind was working just fine. In fact, the forced rest had re-energized me. But this time my energy wasn’t focused on joining the Aiedeo; it was turned against them.
I sat straight up in bed and let my rage fuel me. Mohini had taught me telekinesis and now I turned it back on her. I pelted her with my hairbrush, hair straightener, and blow dryer. The angrier I got, the stronger I became, and I hurled all my books at her. Then it looked like there was a cyclone in my room as everything I owned swirled around until I catapulted it into Mohini with all the force I could muster. I didn’t know why she didn’t fight back harder but I didn’t care. I just kept on hurling things at her until she finally left.
After Mohini, more Aiedeo showed up each night, and I did the same thing. Everything that they had taught me, I turned on them. After all, I’d reasoned, if I was just going to use my powers against them, the Aiedeo had no choice but to take my powers away, right? And what good was a powerless Aiedeo?
After a month of this, my plan worked. A whole day and night went by without any Aiedeo visits. I tried to open my front door without using the knob and couldn’t even make it budge. I didn’t have any special powers anymore.
At first, I didn’t buy that it was really over. I stayed up night after night, expecting them to show. But after a few months, I started to think maybe my dead relatives were actually done with me. Months turned into years without one Aiedeo visit, and little by little, I’ve let my guard down.
I’m not delusional. I know the craziness that I experienced. There’s a scar running down my entire right calf from the night of the car incident to remind me that that shit was real. I just didn’t want anything to do with it anymore. As time went on, I found that I could choose to forget it all. It took work to make the memories fade—the bad ones and the good ones too. Eventually it all went away. Or at least enough of it that I can believe that I’m finally free.
In my new life, without the Aiedeo, I’m normal. I don’t have to deal with ghosts, witches, and dead warrior queens anymore.
I’m just like everyone else, I tell myself as I pull into my driveway. And with enough denial in my arsenal, I can convince myself it’s actually true.
* * *
“Dede! I’ve got food!” I shout as I walk into the kitchen, managing to keep my backpack over one shoulder while holding the drink carrier and BK bag.
People think I’m rich for the same reason they think Naomi is loaded. The Talberts live in a big house and have nice things, and you could probably say the same about us Choudhurys. The fact that I live in a good neighborhood, that my father works at the university, that I have a nanny, and that I travel abroad every summer seems fancy.
Rich, however, is relative. In Meadowdale, where you can still feed a family of four at a sit-down restaurant for under thirty dollars and the most expensive car in my high school’s parking lot is a 2018 Mazda Miata, we sit somewhere between the middle and the higher rungs of the economic ladder. But in other parts of the world, particularly those where girls wear couture under their burqas, people consider hanging with me and my Coach wristlet slumming it.
“Bring me burger, please,” my nanny yells back. “Private Practice starting.”
I drop my backpack on the kitchen floor and head to the family room with the food. When Naresh is here, we have to eat our meals in the dining room. But when it’s just Dede and me, we like to veg out in front of the TV.
My father extended his summer consulting gig in Turkey to last the entire fall semester and now he won’t be back until winter break in December. I’m pretty sure that return will be temporary and he’ll be off to some other country by spring.
On most matters, my dad is quite black-and-white, but when it comes to his kid’s cultural identity, he’s refreshingly open. It might not have been Naresh’s goal to assimilate but he has certainly made it easier for me to adapt to American life by raising me as a universal citizen.
Theoretically, universal citizenship means, in my case, that I’m neither Indian nor American. I have no ethnic, religious, cultural, or racial boundaries; I am supposed to be exposed to as many cultures as possible with no definitions or limitations. In practice, it can be simplified to this: I’m not Hindu, I eat everything—including beef—and the only language I can speak is English. (Well, unless you consider the janky-ass mix of broken English and even more broken Assamese that Dede and I speak to each other a different language, which I don’t.) Naresh probably won’t agree, but my interpretation of universal citizenship is that it allows me to be less Indian and more American.
“I got you the onion rings,” I say as I place a Whopper with cheese on the glass coffee table in front of my nanny. “With extra mustard.”
Dede smiles, which pushes her already high cheekbones up to her small hazel eyes. Her skin is the color and texture of sandpaper, and deep-set wrinkles line her face like the rings around an old tree, yet she has the speed and agility of a fit sixty-year-old woman. I’ve stopped trying to guess her age and Dede won’t admit to anything anyway.
I plop onto the couch. My whole body aches from the hard practice and the long day.
“You miss Grey’s Anatomy but I DVR for you.” Dede pops an onion ring into her mouth.
I watch TV everywhere I can—on my phone, tablet, and laptop—but I prefer old-school-style in front of our massive flat-screen. Usually Dede, who raised me on trashy soap operas and police procedurals, is right next to me. Recently, we’ve become addicted to a block of Shondaland shows like How to Get Away with Murder and Scandal. It’s so easy to let my mind go somewhere else with Olivia Pope’s bizarre love triangles and killer wardrobe.
“What you do today?” Dede asks during a commercial break.
I shrug. I’m too tired to remember. “I don’t know.”
Dede smacks me on my thigh. “Chht, you never know! That because you keep too many secret, swali.”
I can’t help but smile at the way my nanny uses the Assamese word for “girl” to chastise me. “I don’t know. School sucked. We had a long practice. And then I had to go for a meeting at Naomi’s house that lasted forever,” I gripe. There is something so solid about Dede that it is easy for me to regress back into a whiny child around her.
My nanny is mysteriously tight-lipped about her pa
st but I managed to piece together a big chunk of her backstory during my last trip to India when I discovered a rather loose-lipped gatekeeper at one of my grandfather’s homes who was actually old enough to remember Dede. Her real name is Purnakala Gurung and she hails from the hills of Nepal. When she was sixteen years old, she ran away from her tiny village and landed in nearby Assam, India. Most people who met the young Purnakala commented on what a rarity she was. First, she had received a formal education up through high school, which was uncommon for poor boys and, especially, poor girls back then. Second, Purnakala refused to act naive or inferior around the males she came in contact with, which was the behavior expected of females in those times. Instead, she was feisty and street-smart and unafraid to show it.
It was this unique set of qualities that caught the attention of Madhur, the wife of Assam’s richest man. She observed the teenager outfox an infamous gang of hooligans in a card game and hired the girl to work for her right there on the spot. From that day, Purnakala became my mother’s nanny. Laya called Purnakala by the respected title of Dede, which means “older sister,” and it soon caught on as the name everyone used for her.
Dede cared for Laya until Laya was sent off to boarding school at the age of twelve. From there, what happened to Dede is a mystery that I imagine could rival the crazy plots of the trashy soap operas that we devour. Maybe Dede had a love child, was hit on the head and got amnesia, or became the lady boss of an underground crime syndicate in Assam’s wild, wild east. If I had to pick, I’d choose the last option.
Wherever Dede disappeared to during what I’ve dubbed “the missing years,” Laya eventually found her and brought her back to Assam. Laya was expecting her first child and wanted no one but her beloved Dede to be the baby’s nanny.
“Talbert House of Dead.” Dede cackles, exposing her dazzling set of dentures. “Why Amricans bury dead body in ground?”
