Mehendi Tides

by Siobhan Malany

  “Are you running away?” Neil asked sarcastically.

  Kate clenched her jaw.

  “You can’t quit,” he said rationally. “Yeah, okay, you have an ass for a professor, so what? You’re smart. You’ll get through it. Besides,” he continued, “the chair of the department won’t let you quit.”

  “Why would he care?” she said.

  “If you weren’t good enough, you wouldn’t be there. It doesn’t look good for the department to lose students, especially female students.”

  His words ricocheted into her chest. Kate stared at the road ahead.

  “I’m done driving. I have to stop for the night,” Neil said wearily, giving up on the conversation.

  On the outskirts of Springfield, Missouri, with nothing visible but a gas station, a repair shop with a stack of lopsided tires in front of the garage, a Waffle House, and a budget motel, Neil parallel parked the truck at the motel.

  “I’ll get us a room. Two beds or one?”

  In response to Kate’s glare, he said, “Okay, two. Just checking to see if you were listening anymore.”

  Dinner at the Waffle House and three beers later, Neil fell into a soft snore. Having slept much of the day in the truck, Kate lay on her side listening to the light drizzle hitting the pavement outside their door.

  KATE AWOKE ABRUPTLY to a door shutting. Her shirt clung to her skin. Lying in bed, she scanned the thin, daisy-printed bedspread, the brown curtains, and the bolt on the thick door. Her mind was momentarily vacant as to where she was. The tangy odor of citrus ammonia cleaner reached her nose.

  She remembered, the budget motel.

  “Good, you are awake,” Neil’s voice bellowed through the small room.

  The ammonia smell gave way to the scent of sweet aloe leaves and aftershave lotion. Neil ruffled his damp hair with a pea-green towel and tossed the towel on the floor.

  “If we get an early start, we should make it to Dallas before dark, depending on traffic.”

  Kate sat up and leaned back against the flimsy headboard that promptly banged against the wall. She hugged her knees and watched Neil pack his duffel bag.

  “Take your time. I’m just going to grab some waters in the lobby and study the map.”

  A quick zip of his bag and Neil unbolted the door and walked out. The heavy door closed with a bang, sending an echo down the corridor.

  Lunging out of bed, Kate reached for the bolt on the door and turned it quickly, locking herself inside. With her body pressed against the door, she heard voices coming from several rooms down followed by slamming doors and roller wheels scratching along the balcony of the motel.

  Somewhere, she realized, in crossing from the northern Great Lakes into the Ozark highlands, Neil was no longer leaving a place but steadily moving toward a new start, a new career.

  She turned from the door and saw her reflection in the mirror above the desk. The corners of the mirror were rusted where the metallic coating had peeled off. The objects on the desk reflected in the mirror. The phone’s message button was still flashing. There was a display of brochures and a brown leatherbound Bible lying next to a pad of paper and a plastic pen, both stamped with the motel’s emblem.

  What was she running from? A manipulative professor? A childhood best friend, wronged? A broken heart? Her scheduled DNA test?

  She missed her mother more than ever. The void in her chest grew broad and ugly. She crossed her arms over her chest and slid with her back against the door to the floor. In a huddled position, she tried to suppress the void from rupturing and breaking her apart, but the monstrous space rose in her throat. She sobbed then, long heaving sobs. On the floor of the sterile, cheap ammonia-smelling motel room, she cried until the void inside her fell away to numbness.

  “Housekeeping!”

  The knock on the door kicked her in the back.

  Kate jumped up, startled.

  “Please,” her weakened voice cracked. “Please come back later.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Kate listened to the maid’s footsteps shuffle away, followed by a knock on the adjacent door.

  Kate climbed into the cabin of the U-Haul. Neil looked impatient but said nothing as he turned the key in the ignition.

  The long hours on the road and the passing landscape calmed her. Kate told Neil stories of India and Pakistan.

  “You never shared those stories when we were dating,” Neil remarked.

  Kate shrugged. “Too preoccupied with lab, I guess.”

  “I’m sorry if I hurt you by breaking it off,” he said sincerely. “If I stayed in Chicago…I would be lucky to date you.”

  Kate nodded nonchalantly.

  She looked out at the plains of Oklahoma moving slowly across the flat horizon.

  “I miss traveling,” she mused. “I think that’s what’s so hard sometimes about graduate school. I feel trapped, like I can’t see past the next week.”

  “You have been to a lot of places,” Neil remarked. “Most people don’t get to experience such places their whole lives.”

  “When you travel,” she began again, “you can sense your future. It’s an acute awareness you gain about yourself while you are in an entirely different place. You can taste your ambitions in the grit of the streets. You can sense your soul in the architecture. You watch locals’ lips move, their words are incomprehensible, but yet you have a vague sense of what they’re talking about. It challenges you to the core!”

  She looked over at Neil. He had remained silent, listening intently and glancing at her from time to time.

  “You know what I mean?” she asked, searching his face for acknowledgment.

  “Not really.” He smiled. “Traveling to Austin, Texas, is about as exciting as it gets for me. But you make foreign travel sound very intriguing.”

  “I can’t afford to travel now.”

  “Apply for a fellowship overseas.”

  She filed the suggestion away for the future.

  “Someday I will write about traveling. I’ll write about India.”

  “Why someday? Just write.”

  “I don’t have time. I have to write a thesis.” She wrinkled her nose.

  “No one is asking you to tackle a whole book. Write a paragraph or a page here or there. Keep a journal. Gee, Kate, you are allowed to have hobbies in graduate school. Just begin.”

  He looked at the road and back at her, challenging.

  “You know?” he continued. “Maybe your lab mate Mei didn’t run away. Maybe she took control, took a risk.”

  AFTER TWO days of slow driving in the U-Haul, they reached Neil’s apartment complex in the humid subtropical climate of inland Texas.

  They grabbed a cab to Tablao Flamenco, a Spanish restaurant near an old mission, for dinner. In a corner of the cozy restaurant, a pair strummed classic guitars and a woman in a sleek red dress that ruffled around her ankles snapped her fingers and stomped gracefully in flamenco style. A crowd of boisterous locals had gathered to enjoy the music and clapped loudly. They clapped faster and faster as the dancer stomped so forcefully that the ruffled comb shook in her hair. The flamenco sounds and Latin language filled their ears and replaced the drone of the truck traveling over twelve hundred miles of road.

  “I feel like I’ve been transplanted into another world,” Kate remarked as she cautiously took a bite of paella.

  “Yes, it will take some getting used to,” Neil agreed. “Although this Spanish-Mexican fare,” he said with a mouthful of salty black beans, “I can definitely get accustomed to.”

  He washed the beans down with a gulp of Modelo beer and waved to the waitress.

  “Two more, please,” Neil called out, not bothering to ask Kate if she wanted another.

  “Okay, but this is the last one,” she cried. “Three is enough for me!”

  “It just feels good to be done with driving,” Neil said. “Come on, hitchhiker, celebrate with me,” he mocked.

  “Hey!” she warned playfully.

&n
bsp; The musicians traded their guitars for a double-headed drum and started playing salsa. Several locals rose to their feet and stomped to the rhythm. The flamenco dancer now held a pair of maracas and swung her hips. An old man with a bright smile urged Kate out of her chair. He took her wrist in his thin hand and led her in dance.

  “Quick-quick-slow,” he chanted as he rolled his shoulders and shifted his feet in a box step.

  The man had the agility of someone half his age. Kate tried to keep pace, and when her feet stomped offbeat, the man took her wrist and effortlessly engaged the beat, pumping through her arms to her feet until she felt the groove in her steps.

  Neil admired the scene until Kate cajoled him to join her. The fluid music and cheap beer eased their minds, and the dancing loosened their stiff bones.

  THE TAXI DROPPED them off in the wee early-morning hours at Neil’s apartment complex. Neil jiggled his key in the wrong lock. A dog barked. Lights flicked.

  “Run!”

  Kate grabbed Neil’s arm, running around the corner of the stairwell and huddling together to hide. He smelled of aloe, sweat, and beer.

  “You’re going to be a big hit in this complex,” Kate laughed.

  “Shhh,” Neil shushed her. “All the apartments look the same!”

  Neil finally found the right door. They stumbled into the vacant apartment. Kate laughed loudly now that they were inside. She grabbed him to steady herself, and he wrapped his arms around her. She kissed him hungrily and he responded. She unbuttoned his shirt and moved her hands to his waist.

  “Kate,” Neil gasped for breath. “Do you have to head back to Chicago tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  He threw off her shirt and fiddled with her bra.

  “You can stay a few days.”

  They fell onto the futon, the only piece of furniture they had managed to drag inside before heading to Tablao Flamenco.

  THE EARLY-MORNING light flooded in through the curtainless windows. Kate was entwined in the sleeping bag. Her head ached, and her back was stiff from sleeping on the futon. She tried to focus on the room’s beige carpet and beige walls that smelled of fresh paint. The sounds of rhumba and salsa played in her ears.

  Neil snorted. He was sprawled across the futon, his eyes shut and his mouth wide open.

  No!

  An alarm went off in Kate’s head as she remembered them stumbling into bed in their drunken state. She slipped off the futon, gathering her clothes and bag.

  Dressed and with her bag slung over her shoulder, she watched Neil sleeping for a moment, then turned and let the door click softly behind her.

  She walked to the 7-Eleven store on the corner and found a pay phone.

  “Yes, I will accept the charges,” she heard her father respond to the operater.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “Kate, are you all right? Where are you?”

  “I’m in Austin. Sorry to wake you.”

  “Are you okay?” he asked again.

  The concern in his voice made her eyes swell.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Nothing like a road trip to take your mind off things.” She laughed nervously.

  “What is on your mind, Kat?”

  She could not contain the emotion welling up inside. Her body started to shake as she sobbed into the receiver.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing here, Dad,” she cried. “I don’t know what I’m running from.”

  Her voice quivered. She squeezed her eyes shut in anquish.

  The 7-Eleven was abandoned except for the clerk behind the counter biting his nails and a truck driver who glanced at Kate as he poured himself a cup of coffee. She recoiled around the phone and tried to control her sobs and sniffling.

  “Come home, Kat.”

  “I feel so lost.”

  “Just come home.”

  “Dad!”

  “I’m here. I am always here.”

  “Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I will buy a bus ticket today.”

  “Forget the bus, Kat! I will get you a plane ticket. Just stay on the line.”

  Chapter 14

  Road from Begumpet

  Hyderabad 1987

  Sundays in India are reserved for visiting relatives and paying respect to elders. Most shops are closed. Aunty Samina called for a driver to take them to Marah Bahri’s house in Begumpet. Marah Bahri was the sister of Nanima’s deceased husband, and Nanima visited the elderly woman every Sunday. Aunty Samina and Aunty Zehba and Nasreen’s cousins would meet them there. Kate anticipated seeing Tariq again.

  There was no certainty as to when the driver would arrive. Kate watched Nanima mill about, expecting nothing and no one in particular to visit. Having been widowed for thirty years, she walked in her own shroud of white. She saw daughters and nieces married off and settled into their in-laws’ homes, and sons uproot and move to Pakistan, neighbors disappear, and neighborhoods transform.

  Nanima’s sons urged their mother relentlessly to move to Pakistan. She refused to leave Banjara Hills. Only Aunty Samina and Aunty Zehba stayed in Hyderabad. Whatever loneliness or heartache Nanima endured, she buried it deep in the folds of her widowed-white sari and sauntered through the present in a peaceful independence.

  In the mid-morning, Nanima went to the armoire behind the dining table and removed the metal betel leaf box to prepare paan as was routine. Today, she ruffled through old photos in the adjacent drawer. Kate glimpsed the shades of white and gray in the photos as she peered across the table and longed to ask about the people captured in time.

  What caused Nanima to look at them with quiet nostalgia? Kate wondered.

  To Kate, pictures were her past and her future. Only in pictures could she relive the image of her mother.

  “You have her same intensity and vibrancy,” her father used to say when she engulfed him with questions about her mother.

  As Kate matured into her teenage years, her father discovered resemblances to her mother: the curve of her jaw, the slope of her nose, or the way she curled her mouth when she was indecisive.

  “Don’t fret,” he told her. “Your mother used to fret.”

  Through adolescence, Kate studied her reflection in the bathroom mirror, watching for physical changes as her face merged with that of her mother’s in the photos preserving her mother at age thirty-nine.

  Nanima looked up at Kate, as if she felt the girl’s focused intensity.

  “Family photos?” she asked.

  Nanima pursed her lips and tilted her head like she did, tick-tock, tick-tock, without speaking. She placed a photo, creased along the side, on the table in front of Kate.

  The black and white photo was of a young couple taken in a different era. The woman in the photo wore a delicate sari with lace along the neckline and trim. Her light-shaded dupatta draped over her dark braid to hang at her petite waistline. The man stood stiffly beside her with a dark jacket and hat and a pleasant face. Nanima tapped lightly on the face of the woman.

  “Ammi,” Nanima said, pointing to the woman and then pointing to Laila, who approached the table.

  “I haven’t seen this photo in a long time,” Laila sighed, leaning over Kate’s shoulder and carefully picking up the picture.

  “It is a photo of my mother and father as newlyweds,” Laila explained. “See here, my mother still has the mehendi design on her hands.”

  “Mother?”

  Kate squinted and focused on the woman’s hands clasped across her abdomen. The intricate design on her wrists disappeared beneath the lace of her dupatta.

  “Let me see,” Nasreen interjected, appearing beside her mother and taking the photo from her hand

  “But how can that be your mother?” Kate asked Laila, confused.

  “My parents died about ten years after this photo was taken. I was two,” Laila said with dull emotion. “Nanima raised us. My sister and brothers and me.”

  Kate looked at Laila with disbelief. She was Nasreen’s mother who drove them to the mall,
picked them up from after-school activities or the movie theaters, and cooked Indian food at any time of day whenever someone appeared at the door, expected or unexpected. Kate had never known that Nasreen’s mother was orphaned as a toddler in India!

  “Your parents died?” Kate questioned in shock.

  “My mother was Nanima’s older sister.” Laila took the photo from Nasreen and handed it back to Nanima, who looked at the photo endearingly like it was the first time she laid eyes on it.

  “So, Nanima is…” Kate’s face contorted as she struggled to understand.

  “I was the youngest and too young to know any other mother than Nanima,” Laila interjected. “But I know it’s hard to lose a mother so young.” Laila placed her hand on Kate’s shoulder. “We were lucky, my brothers, Aunty Zehba, and I. We had Nanima.”

  Nanima rocked her head, tick-tock, tick-tock.

  Kate looked to Nasreen for explanation and reassurance.

  “She has always been Nanima to me,” Nasreen remarked firmly.

  “How did they die? Your parents?” Kate asked cautiously.

  Laila looked troubled and seemed to retreat from the question. Nanima continued to study the photograph in her hand.

  “They were killed in a car crash, supposedly,” Nasreen answered impatiently for her mother.

  “Supposedly?”

  “They were driving home from Begumpet when their car wrecked. There were no other cars involved,” Laila said, but her eyes looked somewhere else.

  “Their bodies were pulled from the car and left on the hillside, not far from here,” Nasreen continued where her mother left off. “My father told me everything. Times were bad then after the Partition of India in 1947 from the British Empire that created India and Pakistan. I read all about it,” Nasreen stated with passion. “People found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. No reason, no justice. My grandparents thought they were safe here—in a Hindu-majority state but with a Muslim ruler who wanted Hyderabad to remain independent. There was brutality on both sides.”

  Laila took her daughter’s hand and finished telling her story.

  “Nanima was already a widow at twenty-five and mother to Samina. Then the accident happened, a lost husband, a lost sister, no time to mourn. She became an instant mother to three small nephews and two nieces, me and Zehba. Samina was six months older than I. We thought we were twins growing up.”