by Nisha Sharma
Jai closed the space between them with a kiss that melted every last thought out of her brain.
“Hey!”
Radha jumped at the same time Jai jerked and hit his elbow on the counter.
Jai’s brother stood at the back door with a long pair of tongs and heat-protectant gloves up to his elbows. “No hanky-panky in the kitchen,” he called through the screen.
“Hey, bhai, your bird is on fire,” Jai snapped.
Neil’s eyes went wide; he spun around and raced across the lawn.
“How do you know? We can’t see it from here,” Radha asked.
“I don’t know, but there’s a good chance it’s true.” Jai leaned in and kissed her again. “I’m thankful for you today. I’m glad you’re spending Thanksgiving with me this year.”
“Me too,” she said. Radha wanted to add that there could be more Thanksgivings together in the future, but she stopped herself. Neither of them was ready for that yet.
Chapter Nineteen
December
JAI
MASI: Can you come by my office tomorrow after practice?
JAI: Sure, everything okay? Is Nana okay? I know it’s been a few weeks since we ran into each other at the hospital, but he looks like he’s getting better?
MASI: Yes, he’s okay. I want to talk to you about applications before winter break.
JAI: Masi, we’ve talked about it already.
MASI: You’ve done all the work. There is no harm in hitting send. I’m texting you as your aunt, not as your teacher.
JAI: There is no point.
MASI: There is still a chance with regionals. And I’m saying that as your teacher now.
JAI: I don’t think that’s an option either.
MASI: Have you asked Radha to perform?
TARA: Hey, I don’t know how many times I’ve tried to call and text you. I know that you’re mad at me, but I’m trying to do the right thing here.
JAI: Sorry, I’ve been busy. I’ll call you later. Promise.
Jai rushed down the hall toward dance practice. He was running late, and on the last day of school before winter break, too. It had been like this all week. He’d missed his advising session with Masi and hadn’t been able to talk to her since. Then he’d gone to the store in the morning to help open because their part-time help had called in sick, and then his car had broken down in the parking lot. The Lyft driver had taken forever to get to him, and by then he’d been late for his first class.
Now he was supposed to meet Radha before practice, and he was a minute away from the studio when his phone buzzed in his pocket.
MASI: I know you have practice this afternoon, so I wanted to tell you that I had a few advising sessions today and I addressed the team about the showcase and regionals. You haven’t mentioned to your team about my recommendation. That’s what we were supposed to discuss on Monday, but you missed our meeting.
Masi’s message stopped him in his tracks. What did she mean? He shot back a quick message.
A slick uneasiness churned in his gut as he quickened his pace to the studio. Masi had warned him he had to speak to Radha about performing in the showcase, but there’d been no easy way to do it. If Masi had really said something before he could, it would make him look bad as captain of the team.
He opened the studio door and stepped inside.
Radha was sitting on the floor with an arm around Shakti. Shakti had tears in her eyes, which did nothing to lessen the impact of her glare when she spotted him.
To her left, Hari and Vik stood with their arms crossed, like soldiers waiting for direction as to who they had to throat-punch.
The throat-punchee would be him, he thought. He dropped his dance bag, and before he could take another step, Shakti swore at him.
“I never thought you’d lie to us like this, Jai.”
“Lie?”
She wet-snorted. “I almost got into a fight with Radha, because I thought you were both in it together. But she had no idea that the director didn’t think we were a slam dunk for the showcase or for regionals because I’m the one dancing lead! What were you going to do? Try to Jedi-mind-trick us into coming to that decision on our own?”
“The last thing I wanted to do was lie to any of you, Shakti,” he said. “I hadn’t told you yet because there was a lot to consider. Radha, you know that, right?”
Her furious expression knocked him a full step back. “I never thought you’d do this,” she said. “The showcase and regionals. Some of the team are depending on their performances for dance scholarships or getting into troupes.”
“What she’s saying is the team is not just about you,” Hari said. “We trusted you!”
Jai felt his own anger spike as Hari got in his face. “And I’m trying to do the right thing by all of you! The director wanted Radha to dance the lead, but she is choreographing because she doesn’t want to perform in the first place.”
“That’s a cash prize at regionals. You may be done after high school, but some of us are going to college,” Hari said.
“That was a low blow,” he said quietly. He’d never thought his friend would try to hurt him that way.
“Jai, I deserved the right to make the decision for myself,” Radha said as she got to her feet.
“You made that decision,” he said, rounding on her. “On the very first day we started working together. You were going to move back to Chicago because you didn’t want to perform.”
Shakti gasped. She got to her feet as well. “Is that true? You were going to leave us, Radha?”
“If my mother had had her way, then, yeah,” Radha said. “Jai, that doesn’t mean you get to decide what I’m going to do without asking me first! The director said she’s been able to gauge the winning team for the last ten years. If we win the showcase and regionals—”
“But we’re not,” he said. “Because you refuse to dance again because of something that happened almost a year ago, and I was trying to do what you wanted.”
“There are recruiters coming to the showcase!” Shakti shouted. “But guess what—the director doesn’t know if I look good enough, because I can barely keep up! And you’re here making decisions without even consulting people like me who are putting their futures on the line!”
“Then what should we do, quit now and say screw it?” he shouted back. “You all want to write papers instead?”
“We may have to if we kick your ass and you can’t dance anymore,” Vik said.
“Stop it,” Radha said. Her voice was like a whip. “We need some privacy, guys. Since I’m his excuse for not telling everyone, I want to talk to him.”
It wasn’t true, he thought. He wasn’t using her or anyone as an excuse. He was just…Jai didn’t know. He had a lot on his plate, and talking about something that could potentially hurt his girlfriend wasn’t exactly high on his list of priorities.
When no one made a move to leave, he snapped, “Clear the room!”
“I’ll tell the rest of the team that practice is canceled,” Shakti said. She was the first to storm out of the practice studio. She ignored Jai as she passed. Hari and Vik followed her, glaring at him.
“I don’t know how I can trust you after this,” Vik said, and closed the door behind him.
The studio echoed with their footsteps as Jai and Radha circled each other.
He wanted to tell her so many things. That she should’ve understood why he hadn’t said anything. That this was what Radha had wanted, and it wasn’t his fault that she didn’t want to perform.
“How dare you?” she shouted, and the words cut him. “I never thought that you’d think of me as someone you needed to save.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“You thought that I was so pathetic I wasn’t capable of hearing the
director’s feedback? That I was so weak because of my anxiety that you had to keep information from me? From your friends?”
“Yes!” he burst out. “Yes, I kept that information from you, not because you’re weak or because of your anxiety, but because you literally said that you refused to perform. How could I ask you to dance after everything you’ve told me? For fuck’s sake, Radha. What do you think would’ve happened if I’d said something? You’d have felt like I was forcing you into a corner!”
“No,” she said, pointing at him, jabbing him in the chest. “You don’t get to make assumptions about me and my reactions. You’re trying to blame me when this is all your fault. What you did was turn this around and make me feel small, make me feel like I’m the reason thirteen dancers won’t get a shot at something important at regionals, when this was really all about you.”
“This has never been about me,” he said, pounding a fist against his chest.
“No, it’s always been about you, Jai.” She walked to him, but instead of touching him, hugging him, she looked at him with pity, and that hurt so much more.
“You were too young when your family was going through something really terrible. You blame your brothers for needing you to open another store. You blame me and my performance anxiety because it’s stopping us from going to regionals. Not once, Jai, not once have you looked in the mirror and blamed yourself for refusing to look at all the options you have to pursue your dreams and go to a school like Columbia. People would kill to be as smart as you.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he shot back.
“Well, let me put it to you this way,” she said as she grabbed her dance bag. “If I don’t dance in the showcase, and maybe even the regional competition, then there is zero chance you’ll get that cash prize you can use for school. That’s what you’ve been telling your family and the director, isn’t it? That I’m the reason we won’t win? I could’ve helped you, Jai!”
“With what?” he shouted. “How were you going to help me when you can’t even help yourself, Radha? You’re so busy cooking when you’re not at school that you’re not even giving yourself the chance to remember that you’ve found your dance joy again!”
She paled. “That’s not true.”
“You know it’s true. You love it just as much now as you did when you first started kathak classes. But you’re hiding.” He motioned to the empty studio. “Every day you come in here and pretend that you’re doing your part, but you’re really just scared to take the next step, and every therapist, every person who loves you, is waiting for you to freaking see it. You’re not managing your anxiety now; you’re using it as an excuse because you’re afraid.”
She looked like he’d slapped her, and then he realized that he’d repeated the words of the dance teacher who’d berated her at the NYU show.
He didn’t step down, though. He couldn’t—otherwise he’d end up telling her how much he was hurting too. “And yeah. I screwed up. I screw up a lot with you, and I own that. But what you can’t see is that you’ve messed up too, by not even trying to understand me. You’re so privileged, you don’t know what it’s like to be poor, to be truly scared and helpless. To listen to your mother cry in the middle of the night, wondering where the money is going to come from. To think that you might have to go back to India because there isn’t enough money for food and for your dad’s treatments in the US. To watch your brothers quit college because they have to work instead.”
“And you don’t know what it’s like to wonder if anyone has ever wanted you for who you are!” she shouted. “Or, better yet, even knows who you are!”
Jai watched her loop her dance bag over one shoulder and her backpack over the other. She straightened her back and sailed past him, then twisted the door handle with a vicious yank.
“I guess both of us are cowards, then, Jai. You don’t want to admit that you’re afraid of failing if you apply to Columbia. And I don’t want to lose anyone again if I go back to dancing. But it looks like I’ve lost you anyway.”
She was gone before Jai could stop her.
Her words, and his, raced through his brain like a bad movie reel.
What he should’ve said was that he loved her and that he was really sorry.
Jai drop-kicked his dance bag across the studio floor. He had no idea how he could fix things that had been inherently broken from the beginning.
Chapter Twenty
Radha
Translation of Bimalpreet Chopra’s Recipe Book
Dal Makhani
Dal makhani is Punjabi comfort food. Served hot and fresh with bread or rice, it can make any pain go away. When my children are upset, I make dal makhani for them.
To create this most delicious and comforting dish, you will need:
Urad beans (whole and split) and red kidney beans
Ginger, garlic, onions, tomatoes, and tomato paste
Cumin, green and black cardamom, salt, green chilies, mango powder, cinnamon bark, bay leaf, and nutmeg
Butter or ghee
Heavy cream
Soak the beans overnight, then cook them in the same water. Panfry the seasonings, the onions, and then the tomatoes. Add beans and let simmer for at least one hour on low. Mash the beans to create a thick stew consistency. Add cream at the end.
Radha’s note: Soak beans overnight, then rinse. Dry-roast seasoning, crush in mortar and pestle, then panfry in ghee the ginger, garlic, onions, tomatoes. Put everything in an Instant Pot for 30 minutes. Let pressure release naturally. Pour cream at the end in small increments until the color changes to medium brown.
Best served and eaten when you’re pretty sure you’ve broken up with a boyfriend.
Radha watched the taxi pull out of the driveway before she walked up the cobblestone path to the front door of her childhood home.
She braced herself against the bitter Chicago cold, punched her birthday into the front-door keypad, and let herself in. She felt a strange sense of nostalgia, walking in. She’d become a dancer in this house. She was returning as so much more.
The lights went on as she passed the sensors and dragged her bags and coat up the curving staircase to her bedroom. The bed was freshly made, and her furniture was the same.
Her dance trophies were crammed into a wide built-in bookshelf. Six rows of metal and glass statues that served as a reminder of how different her life used to be. She still wondered if she’d deserved all of the trophies she received over the years, or if her mother had been responsible for some of the wins. After London, she’d probably think about that all the time. But now she knew the trophies didn’t matter. They’d never mattered, and seeing them again didn’t bother her as much as she’d thought they would.
Radha rubbed the heel of her hand against her chest, remembering how Jai did the same thing, and then unpacked her clothes into her old dresser. She changed into yoga pants and a sweatshirt, grabbed her recipe notebook and her grandfather’s, and headed downstairs.
Her dad was supposed to be home by six. She wondered if being with him would be as easy as it had been over the last four months through video chat, or if they’d go back to acting like strangers again. Hopefully things would be easy. She needed easy.
Radha walked in socked feet across the glistening floors into the chef’s kitchen. All the appliances and surfaces gleamed as if they were brand-new, the cabinets fully stocked like always. She spotted a large cream-colored bowl in the corner and lifted the kitchen towel to see black whole and split urad dal soaking inside.
She wondered if her father knew something was wrong and was making the comfort food for her. She hadn’t told her mother anything other than that she’d had a fight with someone at school. Maybe that had been enough for her to say something, and for Dad to soak the lentils overnight.
Deciding it wa
s time she cooked for her father, Radha opened Dada’s recipe book and hers in tandem so she could refer to the notes, then raided the fridge and the pantry, locating the remaining ingredients she needed. She found the Instant Pot and spent the next twenty minutes putting together Bimalpreet Chopra’s famous dal makhani recipe. Well, famous according to her cousin.
After setting the pressure cooker, she cut onions, cucumber, and tomato for a quick desi salad, then deftly covered it with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge.
The counters were wiped down and the dishes, pans, cutting board, and knife she’d used loaded in the dishwasher or hand-washed. When she finished, the dal still had another twenty minutes to cook, so she wandered through the house, feeling out of place and oddly at home at the same time. Her father had put up a three-foot Christmas tree in the corner. There was a plastic container next to it labeled decorations. She’d have to do that later.
After she circled the living room, touching the art that her mother had left behind, the framed picture of her first recital that her father kept on the mantel, she stood in front of the basement door.
Her dance studio was downstairs.
Radha grabbed the knob, and, her pulse racing, she opened the door and slowly descended into the personal space where she’d spent countless years of her life. The lights flickered on when she reached the bottom, and she faced the wall of mirrors.
“Surreal,” she whispered to herself. “Surreal that this was four months ago.” She remembered all the details as if it were yesterday. Her music system was still in the same place. A rack of clothes that she’d worn during competitions leaned against the far-left wall of the room. A towering display of her stage makeup stood in the corner next to the bathroom on the right. A small altar, covered in red silk and displaying murtis of Lord Ganesh, Goddess Saraswati, and Lord Krishna, butted up against the wall of mirrors. Her practice ghungroos sat in a basket on the floor next to the altar.
