Gold Diggers

by Sanjena Sathian

  “Who’s people?” I asked.

  “Juhi and Isha and all.”

  “Seriously?”

  I’d shut down Facebook—and never came back, even in adulthood—the morning they announced Shruti’s death at school. My feed was clogged with statuses from the girls who’d snickered at her, now claiming the deceased as their intimate: Last weekend we lost a classmate and a friend, Juhi wrote. We will miss you and your brains and your laugh, Shruti.

  Manu’s brow furrowed. He lowered his voice. “It’s not their fault, and it’s not yours.”

  “They were so mean to her,” I said. All the saliva in my mouth dried out. I put the soda down and filled a glass with water. I couldn’t rid myself of the bad taste. “We—”

  “I know you feel bad, Neer. I do, too. I think about Spring Fling a lot.”

  I had almost forgotten that Manu had preceded me as Shruti’s date. So, he had avoided her for a few hours on a dance floor. Some part of me ached to tell him he had no idea how small his unkindness had been in the scheme of things. Another part wanted him to keep self-flagellating, so everyone would share the blame.

  “You didn’t do much,” I managed.

  “That was exactly the problem, wasn’t it?”

  He reached into his backpack and pulled out a plastic Kroger bag full of knockoff Hallmark cards. Teddy bears and hearts and flowers. I’m sorry, in our thoughts, condolences. None of the language of the brown parents who had been squeezing out their inadequate explanations. Here was white procedure, American custom, and in it, relief.

  Manu left me with a pen and a card—a mournful chocolate lab on a white backdrop beneath a cursive phrase: sympathies—as he went over to distribute the others. There was some groaning as he shut off the television, but it was replaced by the scratching of pens.

  “Do we know how she did it?” Kartik whispered.

  “K,” Manu snapped. “How could that be relevant?”

  “I just don’t know shit about any of this,” Kartik huffed. “What am I supposed to say?”

  “I’m writing that they’re in our prayers,” Aleem said.

  “Man, but you’re Muslim. What if they don’t want to be in your prayers?”

  “I think they’ll understand, dude,” Abel said softly. “It all goes to the same place.”

  My grip on my pen faltered. I didn’t want to write to the Patels; I wanted to write to Shruti. I had an urge to write backward in time, into the past, to run to OHS and shove a note in her locker, the way we used to communicate with girls in middle school—Circle yes/no if you want to be bf/gf. Now: Circle yes/no if it was/wasn’t my fault. Manu was gathering the cards. He stood next to me and sealed each one in an individual envelope. I still had not written anything.

  “They might not even open them, Neer,” he said. “Do it so you can say you’ve done it.”

  I clicked my Uni-ball over and over. I pressed it to the paper. Manu had given me a glossy card and a too-inky pen; the words bled. Dear Mr. and Mrs. Patel—I didn’t remember their first names to write So-and-So Auntie, Uncle. Dear Mr. and Mrs. Patel, I am sorry for your loss. Shruti was an incredible person, smart, funny, and a really good friend. My whole family is thinking of you both and Hema. NN.

  “Write your full name,” Manu said, but I was already licking the envelope.

  The guys had turned Grand Theft Auto back on, and the roar of an animated car at 120 miles per hour filled the basement.

  Abel shouted, “Fuck!” and Kartik yelled to shut up, his mom was upstairs.

  Manu dug in the Kroger bag and handed me another card. “Anita was sometimes really nice to Shruti. Can you have her do one? I just have to get these to Isha’s mom tomorrow.”

  “I haven’t really talked to her,” I said.

  “Try.”

  I took it. It was one of the postcards you got for donating to the World Wildlife Fund.

  “My mom said to use up these, too,” he said.

  On the front were a rollicking polar bear and her cub running across a slab of ice. A sheer blue cloudless sky framed them. The year of debating climate change made me think of their habitat melting away in long cold trickles.

  * * *

  • • •

  On my last evening before leaving for East Lansing, I snuck over to the Dayals’ when my father thought I was packing upstairs. He was semi-dozing over a textbook at the breakfast table, some continuing education. My mother and Prachi were on a Target run, buying extra-long twin sheets and a shower caddy and other dorm supplies. My mother was insisting on taking new purchases to the temple to have them blessed by a priest who specialized in educational consecrations, so they’d be out awhile.

  The Dayals’ lights were on, and music played inside. The door was unlocked. Milling in the foyer were people I didn’t recognize, fobby-looking thirtysomething guys, white men and women, a young black couple. Pranesh Dayal was holding forth in the dining room, drinking red wine. He wore a key-lime-green summer button-down that stretched round his middle.

  “Just came back to finalize all this moving business,” he said to his conversation partner. “It was getting a bit much for Anjali, she settles for any old amount, can’t be so generous when people are out to take you for all you’re worth.”

  Pranesh Uncle’s eyes fell on me. “Anita’s in her room, Neeraj. She’s sulking.”

  I didn’t need to be asked twice. I kicked off my shoes and bolted up the front stairs. The walls were still covered in Anita’s yearbook photos. The carpet looked recently vacuumed. I understood from years of tagging along with my mother to open houses that the limbo of placing a home on the market meant maintaining the illusion of life persisting within the walls.

  I knocked on Anita’s door. She looked unsurprised to see me.

  Her eyebrows had grown bushy. The whites of her eyes were roped with red. Her thick hair was tugged into a messy ponytail. She wore smudged glasses instead of contact lenses.

  “You’re not at that party?”

  “It’s people mooning over my dad,” she said. “Stupid shit.”

  “I’m leaving tomorrow,” I said, practically bouncing on my toes, looming over her. “I’m leaving tomorrow, then you’re leaving, and you can’t just expect me to not say bye.”

  She stepped aside so I could come in. Her room was barer than it used to be. The dresser and desk remained, but the Harvard shrine had come down. She took her glasses off and tossed them on the carpet.

  “Manu wanted me to have you sign a card. For the Patels.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Yeah. I figured.”

  She sat on her mattress, cross-legged. Her legs looked freshly shaved, inviting and buttery. There was nowhere else to sit—her desk chair was gone—so I chose the foot of her bed. My legs swung to the side, heels on the floor.

  “You’re not kicking me out.”

  She ignored that. “I took some of my dad’s wine. Do you want some?”

  I bit my thumbnail and nodded. She reached into her nightstand and removed a half-empty bottle, uncorked.

  “You already drank all that?” I didn’t want to spend another night holding her hair back.

  “No, stupid. It was like this when I stole it.” She took a long pull. Her whole face screwed up against the bitterness. She exhaled. “It still tastes weird to me.”

  I hesitated but followed suit. I was not particularly afraid of my mother’s ban on nonsense just then. All the barricades she’d erected to keep the world out had come tumbling down a few weeks earlier. The wine stung. But I did like the warmth filling my throat and the space behind my collarbones. Anita took only a few sips.

  “Are you feeling it?” I put the back of my hand on my cheek as though to test for fever.

  “Just a little,” she said.

  “Uh, yeah. Me, too. Just a little,” I lied. I inched
closer. I saw myself in Anita’s mirror. I was scruffy, but more substantial than I had been even months ago. I had the thought that I ought to take up more space in the world. “Why didn’t you tell me you were moving?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were—” She stopped.

  “Say it. No one will say it; just say it.”

  “You want me to say it was your fault.”

  “Yeah.” The heat in my face swelled; I didn’t know if it was the wine or impending tears.

  “Fine, it was your fault,” she said. “Do you feel better?”

  I shook my head and reached for the bottle. Through the air vent: the continued buzz of the party downstairs, Beatles songs, wooden laughter. I didn’t reply. Through the window by her bed, you could see the edge of my house. It was after eight and the sky was the color of dulling embers, the sunset polluted by smog.

  There was a finger’s worth of wine left. I chugged it. Anita shoved the empty bottle in her nightstand.

  “I’ll toss it later,” she said, like she’d done this before. Then she stood, and I was still sitting. She stepped near me. She was tall for a girl, but I was now taller, so she had to look up.

  And then I did it. I took her face in my hands, and I kissed like I knew what I was doing. Her lips were this strange combination of gentle and assured, and when tongue arrived, it was just enough. I couldn’t say how long the first part went on for, but at some point, she was sitting on her bed and at some point later we were both lying down, and my hand was on her breast, then her stomach, then beneath her shirt. She made an mmph noise, and I didn’t immediately move my hand away.

  She pushed my wrist back up to her collarbone.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  Her lips glistened and she bit the lower one and wiped her mouth with her knuckles.

  “I didn’t know you’d—” Her expression shaded suddenly.

  And then, there, blinking at me, was not Anita at all, but Shruti, whose small eyes were considering me quizzically as I asked her if her chain was gold. I shuddered, visibly, audibly. Shruti’s breath on my neck; her voice in precalc: Neil, you can solve by substitution.

  “Neil?”

  I looked up. “Oh, I mean, I haven’t,” I said, too late.

  Anita’s spaghetti strap and bra strap had slid down her right shoulder, and she tugged both back into place. I scooted a few inches away, though it required all my might. As Anita turned her head to assess me, there were Shruti’s frizzy locks, catching the light.

  “How many girls have you done stuff with?” she asked.

  “Three.” I closed my eyes. Shruti in my ear: No, you’re supposed to be taking the compound probability of two independent events, see? “Two.”

  If I kept my eyes on the carpet, Shruti’s voice faded. Two possibilities, equally likely—

  “I’ve only kissed two guys,” she said. “Never, um. Never even second base.”

  “Who?” I said it instinctively—I had to know . . . Which adds up to all possible events, see. Shruti’s mouth—the smacking of her lips before the second kiss . . .

  “Oren, from drama camp, remember?” I’d forgotten—a ginger, in seventh grade. “And Sam.” Say it’s tails, heads, heads, tails . . . “At this end-of-year tennis party.”

  “Really?” No, what you’ve done here, it’s very common, you’re thinking about those two things as connected, but they’re entirely independent events. It was all I could do to stop Shruti from rising wholesale out of Anita. If I kept everything even—my voice, my expression—she remained on the right side of reality. Anita’s eyes stayed Anita’s eyes: wide, lively, their darkness illuminated by her bedroom lights. There. No Shruti. No hard, calculating pupils.

  “It’s only ’cause I’m leaving. He’d never date me in public. Who are yours?”

  “You don’t know them.”

  “I told you all mine.” Anita was hugging her knees to her chest and chewing on the ends of her hair. For her, the world was easing; this terrain—our old terrain of small secrets, minor confessions—made her feel safe. “There was that girl from your computer camp. Let me guess the others.” She bit her lip. She seemed to be trying to prove that she knew all material truths about me even when I had not explicitly shared them. “Wendi, right?”

  “Not that much happened.”

  She laughed; she looked unthreatened, having some sense that she preceded, or superseded, all others. “And the third . . .” She tapped her chin with a finger.

  I stood up. “No, it was just two,” I said. Determine the probability of this exact order, Neil. I paced, stepping loudly to stop Shruti’s high pitch from trailing me around the room.

  “Don’t stomp, Neil; my mom will come up.” Anita giggled. Had I been sober or unhaunted I might have seen that she was happy in my company. “And, wait. You said three.”

  I was sure I heard someone—not Shruti—calling her name. “Is that your mom?”

  “Who was the third, Neil? Oh, my god, was it Juhi? I always thought—” and then she stopped. Her fingernails dug into the bare skin around her knees. Through clenched teeth, she said, “No, you didn’t. At Spring Fling.”

  I stared miserably at the carpet. Maybe I’d said three on purpose. Maybe I’d wanted her to know. Maybe I couldn’t picture holding the secret alone for the rest of my life.

  “So,” she whispered. “All that . . . to get what you needed from her.”

  “I didn’t mean for it to go that way—”

  “Did you get what you needed from me?” she said, still in that tinny, mean voice.

  “Anita, it’s not the same thing, like. With you . . .”

  The moment was racing past me, into terrain I had no language for, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to seize the words to explain, or apologize, in time.

  These are all independent events, see, so here are all the different possibilities. Shruti was done explaining. I heard the satisfying clunk of a pencil being dropped onto a desk. No, it wasn’t that—someone was knocking on Anita’s door, and calling for her through the wood.

  “Ani, Papa wants you to say good-bye to the Shettys, please come down.”

  “You know everything,” I tried again urgently. “You’re the only one who can—”

  “In a minute, Mama,” Anita said. In her frosty gaze was a new kind of recognition. She was not seeing the boy who needed help to imagine, not coaxing him out of his paralysis and into the world. She was seeing the boy who was such a nothing that he had begged and stolen and finally killed in desperation to become something. For the first time, I wished she wouldn’t see me at all.

  The doorknob rotated. “Neil! I didn’t know you were here.” Anjali Auntie was wearing a somber navy salwar kameez flecked with glitter. She looked at the rumpled sheets, and then at Anita’s tank top, which was sliding off her shoulders again. Her eyes bulged.

  “Uncle told me to come up,” I said. “I just wanted to say bye.” I gripped my belly to stop the sloshing and spoke deliberately, unable to calibrate whether she could discern my drunkenness. I glanced around the room for some sign of Shruti tugging on her curls. I felt sure I would never be able to sit in a room with Anita or Anjali Dayal without the ghost of Shruti hovering, waiting for the right moment to manifest.

  “He was leaving,” Anita said.

  “I have to go to Michigan,” I said. No one budged. “Not now. Tomorrow, I have to go to Michigan. To East Lansing. Tomorrow.”

  “Both of you,” Anjali Auntie said tightly, “come downstairs. It’s not nice that Anita’s up here when we’re having people over like this.”

  And she waited in the doorway, arms folded, as I trudged downstairs. Before I could actually say good-bye, Anita had entered her public self once more. Her voice pitched upward, and she padded over to the Shettys, saying, “Auntie, Uncle, I’m sorry I’ve been MIA, had some things to get done. . . .�
� They subsumed her, then, these aunties and uncles with their scripts: Where are you going to school in California? Will you stay in touch with all your friends? Ho, ho, it’s Miss Teen India! And as I saw the last flash of her calf, I felt more alone than ever.

  “Neil.” Anjali Auntie glanced at her husband on the other side of the living room. He was entertaining a ring of engineers, all of whom seemed to be regarding him as the apex of something. (“This hardware versus software issue, Tarun . . .”) “You’ll be good. Make use of it.”

  I nodded, though I hardly knew what I was agreeing to. I felt nauseous, but still liked what the alcohol provided—this sense of self-obliteration, this warping.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket and I took it out—my father had noticed I was missing and was frantic. I told him I was just saying good-bye to Anita. The panic in his voice quelled.

  “You could have let me know,” he said. “It is worrisome—to not be able to find you.”

  “Come, Neil,” Anjali Auntie said. “I’ll walk you out.” She glanced back at Pranesh Uncle, who was talking over an engineer. I had the sense that just as the auntie-uncle scripts had once more subsumed Anita, many other scripts—for marriage, for a nuclear family—were waiting to reclaim Anjali Auntie as well.

  As I left the Dayal house that night for the last time, shutting the door on that strange party, on that strange marriage, on that strange girl who would not speak to me again for nearly a decade, Anjali Dayal appeared diminished. She walked next to me down the driveway, barefoot, and seemed too exhausted by all that had gone wrong to radiate the kind of damning maternal energy my mother would have unleashed on any boy caught in Prachi’s room.

  I remembered, suddenly, her dead brother. I scanned her for signs of this early tragedy. Was some part of her always lodged in the past, in the moment when he’d been lost? Would some part of me always remain trapped here, in this moment, in Hammond Creek, too?

  “Go home, Neil,” Anjali Auntie said. She didn’t sound like an angry mother—more like my sister, in the urgent tone she took when I was about to say something to get her in trouble with our parents. She glanced toward the Walthams’ curb, where a tall, chestnut-haired white man was stepping out of a hatchback and considering the bush/cheney lawn sign. He’d double-parked, blocking in one of the Dayals’ guests’ cars. Anjali Auntie seemed to flinch at the sight of him. I assumed she needed to go negotiate for the space. “Please. Your dad must be worried.”