Kissing Outside the Lines

by Diane Farr

  From the time she was small, Jennifer’s parents, the Jaasmas, told her a person of any race was fine for marriage as long as he was a follower of Christ. And she disagreed with them right from the start but didn’t actually know any non-Christians until college. When Jennifer met Sonu she fell in love and was not concerned about her parentally prescribed boundaries.

  Hmmm. So this couple’s familial issue is like a side dish of race and an entrée of religious prejudice. But understanding how Jennifer and Sonu dealt with her parents—a mother and a father condemning a person their child loves, sight unseen, because he won’t call their God his personal savior—sounds exactly the same as racism hiding behind the piety of religion. Which feels like an even harder mountain to climb. So, rather than looking at the racism in faith, I’d like to continue to understand the faith of exclusionism. This idea of: “You must be one of us or you are not worthy.” Which feels as black-andwhite as judging people for being black or white. So I’m thinking, if I can understand how this couple defended their love, even against the seemingly benevolent church, who can’t I withstand?

  “I just never fit in,” Jennifer says about her parents. “I always felt like I was born into the wrong family.” Jennifer is choosing her words carefully so as not to condemn her parents or perhaps oversimplify their plight. It seems she still has the strength to stand up for people she loves—even if their opinion is obviously different from hers. Even at nineteen, Jennifer never hid Sonu from her mom or dad. When she visited or talked on the phone with her family, Sonu came up regularly. “There was no big reveal. My parents just didn’t see us as serious. Until I applied to the University of Arkansas.”

  Jennifer said she was thinking of transferring after her first year at “VahTech” because the music program at U of A was better. Sonu had just graduated and was also about to open a business in Arkansas—which Jennifer readily admitted was not a coincidence. Now the Jaasmas wanted to discuss Sonu, as their daughter’s motivation to move across the country awakened them. So they asked Sonu to their house.

  Conversations between Sonu and the Jaasmas lacked Southern hospitality right from the start. Jennifer’s parents usually started off a talk with Sonu by saying that they followed the word of the Bible literally. Sonu would immediately ask if they handled snakes. The Jaasmas would then clarify that they believed in every word of Jesus literally. Sonu might then ask if they had the ability to speak in tongues. He remembers Jennifer’s mother getting very frustrated, very quickly. Mr. Jaasma was calmer and a bit more reasonable, “but still did not listen to reason.” Sonu once asked Jennifer’s father if he believed in dinosaurs. Mr. Jaasma did. Sonu asked why, if there is no mention of dinosaurs in the Bible. Mr. Jaasma conceded that some things are unexplainable but their beliefs and Jennifer’s are the same and very explainable, for this life and the afterlife.

  The Jaasmas felt Jennifer had made her own choice to follow Jesus because they witnessed her choose this religion when she was baptized. They felt Jennifer’s soul was at stake and that it was their duty, both as her parents and as good Christians, to defend it. But Sonu had some defending of his own to do. He asked direct questions like, “Do you truly think Jennifer made that baptism decision herself, seeing as she was four years old?” Jennifer was witness to all of these debates. What was uncomfortable for her almost became a sport for her incredibly well-versed boyfriend. As long as Jennifer maintained that she wanted to spend her life with Sonu, there was no obstacle her parents could throw at him that he would let between them. However, Jennifer says she knew all along that there would be no changing anyone’s mind. She just had to let them duke it out.

  Her parents must have wanted to pull their daughter’s hair out for bringing home a cocksure twenty-two-year-old who had the audacity to question their entire lives before he had even started his. Perhaps this is why the Jaasmas decided to take their next step: to call Sonu’s parents. The Jaasmas asked Sonu’s family to meet with them privately.

  Sonu’s family, the Singhs, practice Hinduism but, adds Sonu, “My parents didn’t choose our social groups around ethnicity or religion.” Both the Singhs have PhDs and are both professors at Virginia Tech also. (Ironically, Mr. Singh and Mr. Jaasma are both engineering professors at this university, but neither man, having different specialties, had ever met the other.) The Singh family did not hope or even passively suggest that their children should marry Hindus, Indian people, or people of Indian descent. But the Singh family’s openness was of no consequence to Jennifer’s family. The Jaasmas were sure, before having ever met the Singhs, they were going to hell.

  The Jaasmas asked the Singhs to meet at a Hardee’s. “Which is the Southern equivalent of McDonald’s,” Sonu explains to me, a Northerner. At Hardee’s, the Jaasmas made no attempt to convert the Singh family to Christianity. They did not explain their feelings about their daughter’s afterlife. Rather, they chose to tell Sonu’s parents everything they felt was wrong with Jennifer as a person. They told the Singhs all of Jennifer’s faults and every misstep she had made in life so far. They shared intimate, personal, embarrassing details of Jennifer’s history—including details about the two boyfriends Jennifer had before college. The Jaasmas held this vomitous confessional in the hopes that the Singh family would find such fault in their adult child, Jennifer, that they would then force their adult child, Sonu, to dump her.

  Jennifer and Sonu both felt that if any parent should have had a problem with the other’s culture, the Singhs now had a right to. But the Singhs left this meeting finding only Jennifer’s parents unfathomable. They were truly mortified for Jennifer and left the entire conversation that transpired at Hardee’s in the trash there, where it belonged.

  In the sadness that followed for all after this hurtful failure, Jennifer’s parents made a last-ditch effort to save their daughter by conspiring with Jennifer’s grandmother. With serious pressure from Jennifer’s mother, Grandma followed up the Hardee’s conversation by ringing the doorbell at Sonu’s parents’ home. She gave a similar speech to dissuade the Singhs from liking Jennifer, revealing more supposed inadequacies at their doorstep.

  This event must have dug a ravine of pain for Jennifer. As she tells me this, her words are falling out of her mouth with incredible speed. But she is proud to add that her grandmother quickly apologized and, as Jennifer says, “was down with the brown.” Jennifer feels her grandmother did what she could for her own daughter—at her vehement request—but then refused to leave her grandchild alone without any familial support. Grandma enjoyed a special place in Jennifer’s life for many of the coming years.

  Jennifer was not making any such turn with her parents. The Jaasmas’ plan backfired more than they could have imagined. Feeling closer to Sonu and his family, Jennifer severed all ties to her own. She had minimal contact with them—perhaps once a year and only when absolutely necessary. This was not going to be anything like the civilized three-week hiatus that Lisa’s family took. The Jaasmas would not see their daughter again for almost a decade.

  UNCLE! I’M SAYING IT! Right here! I am sufficiently schooled in the possibility of how much could go wrong if you push or chastise a narrow-minded parent. I think I probably also have to make some phone calls and apologize to people I know who have traversed such insular thinking with parents—whom I advised to dig in and stand up for themselves. I had no idea that Dr. Seuss’s Butter Battle Book was a work of nonfiction.

  There is so much that I failed to think of when I savored the idea of telling off the unaccepting relative. I didn’t consider that xenophobic or devout parents might push back. I think I imagined that all mommies or daddies in these situations would yell mercy at the first sign of being cut off from their kid. It really never occurred to me that the “wrong” side would send up a war missile of their own, because most people seem to at least understand they can’t blatantly advertise their prejudices. They might speak them plainly in front of their own children, but I didn’t consider how entitled some feel in
their beliefs and, dare I say, seeming superiority. Clearly that lesson in the Bible about deciphering who loves a child most—when King Solomon threatened to cut the baby in half because two people claimed it as their own—is not a universal test for a mother’s unconditional love.

  JENNIFER NEVER DID transfer to Arkansas. Sonu decided to go into a different kind of business in Maryland. Jennifer still chose to leave college and move in with him, though. She says there were no agonizing questions for her as she left school, her family, and the only town she had ever lived in at twenty years old. “I always felt that Sonu would take care of me. I was just going with him.”

  Sonu found them an apartment and began working. After a year as a singing waitress on The Spirit of Baltimore, Jennifer re-enrolled herself at the University of Maryland and picked up her degree where she had left off. By which point the Singh family had emotionally adopted Jennifer. She was included at all of their holidays and celebrated with them on her birthday. This remained the status quo for five years.

  As Jennifer approached twenty-five, her mother started to have new feelings. Mrs. Jaasma contacted her daughter to tell her that she still feared for her immortal soul but was also worried that this life was looking grim. Meaning, if Jennifer intended to marry Sonu, her mom wanted them to do it soon so that they would at least stop living in sin.

  “Sort of like, love the sinner, not the sin, you know?” Jennifer asks this to see if I’m following this backhanded endorsement. I am, but I’m also sort of astonished that she seems unaffected by this turnaround. I get that this was not a joyous rebirth with her loved ones, but it was a step, right?

  It didn’t matter. So many years had passed that Jennifer had learned to live without her family. When most twentysomethings are suffering from the quarter-life crisis of “Should I get a real job now?” or “Is it time for an apartment with one less roommate?” Jennifer had already mourned the loss of her mother and father and brother and sister. Their acceptance no longer held any weight.

  Sonu’s mother was having the opposite conversation with her son and Jennifer. Mrs. Singh advised Sonu and Jennifer not to get married until Jennifer had finished her degree and had a job. Mrs. Singh felt too many bright and capable women were left with few options later in life when their children had grown (or if, even worse, their husbands left them) and they had no skills in the workforce. Not surprisingly, these kids took the advice of the parent who seemed to be observing the life Jennifer was actually living, rather than the prescribed one written two thousand years ago in Nazareth.

  Jennifer graduated from U of M and set up her career over the course of a year, and at a seemingly random steak dinner, Sonu proposed. The couple next to them leaned over to say congratulations and give sage advice based on their thirty-five years together. At the time of this interview, neither Jennifer nor Sonu could remember what the hell those old people said.

  Nor can Sonu or Jennifer remember how they even told the Jaasmas they were engaged. After their decision to marry, though, Jennifer’s family gave a financial contribution for the wedding reception and had no further participation. The celebrations to come were events the Singhs and the soon-to-be Mrs. Jennifer Singh planned together.

  BUT FOR INDIAN PEOPLE, a wedding is about bringing two families together. Kusum, Sonu’s mother, was having a hard time not including Jennifer’s mother, Diana. After all these years, Kusum was holding out hope for a meeting of hearts over minds and to start anew. Kusum called Diana and invited her for tea. Diana accepted, if they could meet at the Jaasma home. When Kusum arrived after a day of teaching, Diana was knee-deep in the garden and covered in dirt. Diana was taken aback that Kusum was “so dressed up.” Diana spoke directly about how simple her family was and that this “show” from Sonu’s mother was not something she was looking for. Kusum remembers an attempt to explain that she had just come from work, but it mattered little. Both mothers’ insecurity flags were flying high as they headed inside. Seated at the kitchen table, Diana opened the conversation by asking Kusum if she was a Muslim.

  It was so off-putting that the Jaasmas still had no interest in Sonu or nonreligious beliefs or the life these children were embarking on. All Kusum saw were four parents who lived in the same town, with the same jobs, with the same number of children, who should have had so much joy to share as two of their kids joined forces. Perhaps Diana was just rude, but maybe Kusum’s heavy heart caused her to dismiss the fact that devout followers of any faith rarely read material published outside their safety zone or converse with people leading a secular life. Either way, when Kusum returned home, her husband told her it was time to let all expectations go.

  Hold, please! Can I say this whole love story is making me shit my pants at the thought of Seung’s “not really fluent in English” parents meeting my “incredibly loud, drinking and smoking, barely been out of New York ever” parents? I’m not exactly sure these ethnocentricadvisory chats are a good idea anymore! I think they are making me more nervous than informed. So let me see if I can get these kind people to cut to the gore and get the hell of knowing how this turns out out of the way.

  I pointedly ask Sonu if his parents ever privately worried about him marrying Jennifer—specifically because Jennifer might become a zealot later in life—and asked him not to. Sonu answered without hesitation. “My parents knew Jennifer. They knew she was different from her family. They saw that she was willing to take a stand and they knew this stand was meaningful to her because they saw what it cost her. After the run-in with Jennifer’s mom, they really just wanted to plan a great party with us.”

  Tell me about that, then.

  HINDU WEDDINGS ARE famous for their size and spectacle. Our couple spent two years raising their savings and working out enormous details to fully embrace both their backgrounds and entertain the five hundred invited guests. These guests received authentic invitations made in India, printed in gold ink, in both English and Hindi. Programs for the day explained the elements and rituals in both the Hindu and small Christian ceremony that would take place. A pundit (Indian holy person)—who also happened to be on staff at Virginia Tech, working in veterinary science by day, but on the weekends performed weddings in both Hindu and Christian vows—would stand up for them.

  Jennifer was excited to participate in all the Hindu rituals. She even allowed her future mother-in-law to pick out her wedding dress in India—which she did not see until the day of the event! But Jennifer still wanted a white dress for herself, for the wedding she had always imagined as a girl. She feared she wouldn’t “feel married” if she wore only the Hindu attire. This was complicated, since white is the color of mourning in India. But who could deny Jennifer the one image she hoped to retain from her upbringing? She found a white beaded halter top and matching skirt in an Indian grocery store in Maryland. And for her stunning, statuesque figure, it was perfect.

  Jennifer and Sonu preformed seven rituals with both their families standing by them, the most dramatic of which was lighting a sacred fire—during a 102-degree June day. Jennifer and Sonu, as well as their best man, circled this fire seven times to represent their seven vows. Their best man was not Indian and had no idea that this ritual was meant only for the bride and groom. To this day, Jennifer and Sonu joke that they are also married to a man named Paul Rossiter.

  The new Mr. and Mrs. Sonu and Jennifer Singh threw a small brunch at their town house the morning after their wedding, which is also part of Indian tradition. In a moment of uncharacteristic vulnerability, Jennifer’s mother burst into tears. She said to Sonu that she felt like she wasn’t even a part of this event. Sonu spit back, “Because you weren’t.” Sonu had held Jennifer’s hand when she longed for her mother to be a part of her big day over the past two years. These unnecessary pains Sonu witnessed spurred him on to tell his new mother-in-law exactly how he foresaw her future.

  He warned the Jaasmas that day that if they continued to act in such a narrow-minded way, things would only get worse for them. “Th
is is our home and you’re not a part of it and someday it will be filled with children.” He told Diana that she and Mr. Jaasma were becoming less valuable to Jennifer with every passing year. “You’re going to miss all of it if you don’t make a change.” With this, Sonu closed the discussion with his new mother-in-law and moved on. By this period in their romance, Jennifer and Sonu were totally equipped to still enjoy the rest of their first day of marriage.

  But the biggest surprise came after the honeymoon, when Jennifer Singh realized she was not actually married. The Indian pundit who ministered their wedding was not registered with the state of Virginia as anything other than a veterinarian. Therefore, Sonu and Jennifer went to city hall and had a third, private, civil, legally binding ceremony. Jennifer is wistful as she tells me this. Perhaps there was a gift in being made to have a tiny affair. It was still based on the love shared between two people, without any addressing of race or religion or family influence. The image I have of them standing at City Hall, alone, in blue jeans, is far and away my personal favorite.

  SONU FEELS LIKE THE Batman of interracial dating to me. He fights injustice wherever he sees it. Honestly, though, he has more courage than I do. I’m living vicariously through him but sadly aware now that I don’t have the stomach to put up the iron boundary that he did. Seung was right, though, because I do feel empowered after talking with Sonu. Now I’m even thinking that pretending every person doesn’t have some degree of prejudice is naive. And I shouldn’t sit too high on my horse, because at this moment I seem more evolved. Because there are people in my psyche that I prejudge and shy away from. Namely, actresses and preschool teachers. I know I shouldn’t, but I do fear and judge them shamelessly.