Born Confused (44 page)

I couldn’t believe it. My parents were dealing with this like pros. They were so radically open-minded they were blowing my own blown mind.

—The way I am seeing it, I suppose it could have been worse, at least as far as Meeratai is concerned, my father mused.—For example, she could have chosen a black boy, a kala boy.

—Dad, that’s totally racist!

—It is not racist, said my father, looking wounded.

—No! cried my mother indignantly.—It is not racist! It is sexist. She could have been with—even worse—a kala girl!

—We’re already halfway to black ourselves, in case you—or, I guess, Meera Maasi—haven’t noticed.

But they were ignoring me, were somehow onto the improbable scenario of Kavita’s narrow escape from a star-crossed romance with a black Jewish Muslim boy. They stopped a moment to consider the sheer horror of this. I could understand now how a case of Sabina was looking rather like a mild malady to them.

—You see, there is a bright side coming to everyone who waits to call the kettle black, concluded my mother.

—Is she awake still, Kavita? I asked, coming out of my stupor and realizing there was a broken heart buried somewhere under all this mess.—Can I call her?

My mother gestured to the telephone on the tabletop, then picked it up and put it to her ear.

—She is right here. Kavita? Beta? Your cousin is requesting to speak with you.

—She’s on the line? I cried.

—Of course she’s on the line.

—Why didn’t you just put her on speakerphone? I said, grabbing the handset.

—Dimple! This is a private moment for her!

The receiver burned and I could smell my mother’s cloved breath. All-out sobbing filled the line, invisible tears spouting through the tiny holes.

—Hey, Kavity, I said softly.

—Hi—hi, Dimple, Kavita managed.—I’m sorry about tonight.

—Their loss, I said.—How are you doing?

—I’ve been better, cowgirl, she said.—The apartment seems so empty. Everything is too…
big.
I cannot believe it ever seemed like a crowded house. I cannot believe we ever complained. Any noise makes my heart pound—at first I think it’s her, and then there is only fear. I have never spent a night alone in this city. I’m sorry. Would you mind staying on the phone with me a little longer?

—I’ll stay on with you till you fall asleep, if you want, I said.—I’ll stay on with you
while
you sleep—I can leave the phone next to me, so if you wake up or get scared I’ll be right there.

My father was already in his coat, keys in hand.

—Where are you going, Daddy?

—I am going to New York City, he said.—And bringing our dikree home.

—I’ll drive, I said.

This time, nobody argued.

We drove quietly through our small town. The orchards stood like shadowy high-bosomed sentinels over dream-dark fields and the cider mill. Streetlamps washed on, encouraging harbors of light along our night way, and the neighborhood malamute howled his ancient message to the dangled moon, floating egglike in a cloud nest. The radio sang a decades-old song soft of last summers, suddenly, a woman’s quavering voice hearkening me back to an era I’d never even experienced. Funny, music, how it can do that. I could barely remember my own last summer, this one had so fully usurped it. But I didn’t mind remembering hers. My father turned and smiled at me, his bifocals glinting in the dashboard light.

—Are we road tripping? he asked.

—I think this qualifies, I said, smiling back and swervelessly squeezing his hand.

When we got to the highway, it was funny, but this time I wasn’t so afraid to merge. It seemed like the natural state of things, to try to fit in and at the same time keep your space, your speed, your radio station from staticking out. It was maybe even like beat-matching, slipping your song into an existing groove and turning it into something seamlessly new. We drove through the oil lamp rain of the George Washington Bridge, and in the song-silent tunnel just after, among the converging cars, night vented in vertiginous with exhaust, and the caramel smell of burnt rubber. Going down the river now, the lowered skyline of where we’d just been followed us alongside, never touching, never losing sight.

Kavita was standing on the corner of Waverly and Waverly, a small suitcase set beside her on the sidewalk. Her hair brambled almost all the way down her back now, summer longing it rapunzelian. She was swathed in a raincoat, though it wasn’t raining. Before I’d switched to park, she’d opened the back door and climbed in, lain across the backseat without a word, using her bag for a pillow. My father reached around behind his seat and held on to her foot, and she slept, finally, her breathing like a second steady motor purring behind us as we headed back to the ranch.

At home, my parents left us in the kitchen where, happily, we found two half-pints of the over-the-top ice creams that make me proud to be American. We went into full-on Ben and Jerry’s mode, and finally, half a pint down, Kavita emerged from her tress shield and spoke.

—I suppose I should have seen it coming, isn’t it? she sighed, licking the curved back of the spoon.—I am feeling a bit foolish.

—It’s easy to say now, I said.—But don’t feel like that. I can’t
believe it myself—almost as much as I couldn’t believe you were with her!

Kavita smiled and reached out and took my hands.

—She was my beloved ABCD, she said.—But she left me with the C and ran off with the rest.

—I don’t understand how anyone could leave you, Kavity, I said, shaking my head.—Like I said before, you are a dream woman.

—She told me that I was a little too Indian, said Kavita.—That I wasn’t gay enough.

—What do you mean not gay enough?

She went on; it was as if that half-pint had opened a valve.

—Because I did not wear my sexuality for all to see, because I was taking too long to walk with her openly, because because. But I tried to explain to her that everyone comes to terms with things in their own time, isn’t it, and that perhaps I had a different set of things
to
come to terms with. And that I was not comfortable wearing anything like a banner. That maybe I wasn’t ready to proclaim that I am a woman who loves women. That it was enough for me to be a woman who loves Sabina. And that did not mean she was going to lose me to a man, or to anyone. I was in love with Sabina whether she was in the body of a man, a woman, or an elephant. Okay, maybe I’d just be friends with the elephant. But that wasn’t enough for her, no—I was not advanced enough to wear my name with pride.

—Maybe you’re too advanced, I said.

—She says I am too Indian.

—Versus South Asian?

Kavita smiled.

—I suppose.

She was in her diaphanous nightdress and I could see through
it that the henna had paled, the flowers fading from the surface of her skin. Fat tears dripped into her ice cream, salt melting sweet. Her words moved me, and I could really relate. I couldn’t believe it was such an issue becoming who you are. I gazed into my upside-down reflection in the spoon. But it seemed to be for everyone these days.

—Well, Kavs, I said.—If it makes you feel any better, I’ve been spending my summer finding out I’m not Indian enough, nor American enough, it would appear.

—How’s that?

—I don’t know. I guess I’m just not Indian enough for the Indians or American enough for the Americans, depending on who’s looking.

—What if you are looking?

—What do you mean?

—I mean, you are saying that you don’t feel like you measure up, isn’t it? Depending on who is looking at you, heh? But what if you still all the voices and stares, all the things you think you’re supposed to think or you think everyone else is thinking, and go to somewhere in yourself like when you are underwater, for example, or in an asana, that truly conscious silence—and
you
look at you?

—Hmm, I said, thoughtfully.—I guess I’ve been so busy feeling I don’t fit so well into either place that I never really thought of it that way.

—But Dimple. Maybe that is because you are too big for one place; you have too much heart and home and information to be contained in one tidy little box.

—You mean I’m all over the place.

—You are…interdisciplinary, if you will. But you have to realize, there is no such thing as this tidy little box you think you have to
fold up and fit into; it simply does not exist. That’s what I’m learning, learning as we speak.

She was right. After all, if she herself had wondered whether she was Indian enough—she, who had always been to me a sort of epitome of Indian—then who could be? Who could claim the sole right or way to an identity?

—And you have to realize that you don’t need that box, she added slowly, speaking as much to herself as to me. With every word the veil of tears burned off her face like sunned dew.—That there is something that connects it all, even in wide and open and uncontained space. The way a constellation makes a shape.

I tried to picture it, and found to my surprise that I could. It was beginning to make sense.

—The way a silent room has a sound, I said.

She nodded, smiling.

—You, she said.

—You know what, Kavs? I said, winding my arm conspiratorially through hers.—If we have your people talk to my people, I think we may be onto something here.

In our room that night, just before I turned off the light, Kavita turned to me.

—So how was the party after all? she asked.

—No party without you, I said.

Gwyn was now with Karsh all the time, planning the big gig, and I was, in a highly unGandhian way, passively (and rankledly) resisting to my heart’s discontent. That could have been me, was all I could obsess over—I still couldn’t believe how brazenly she’d taken my idea. Maybe I would have been less upset if she’d included me every now and again in her busy schedule. But I’d been dropped like a hot tandoor.

It was an all too familiar pattern, this jilting the friend for the more-than-a-friend. The part that
wasn’t
familiar—my feelings for the boy at hand—only made it worse.

And simple fact was, I missed her. I’d recklessly dared to get used to having her back in my life in the period A.D. (After Dylan), and to be honest I was suffering a little withdrawal. But sitting around waiting for a friendship fix wasn’t going to get me anywhere, as was becoming painfully apparent. So, child of Chandra that I was, I decided to call Gwyn and tell her the truth. (Not the part about the tandoor or Karsh. I wasn’t actually a
blood
relative of Uncle Harish, after all.)

I caught her on her cell in the city, moments before, as she breathlessly informed me pre-hello, a “real live” editorial meeting at the
Flash!
offices. She’d been attending these recently now that she was their freelance fiesta femme.

—Oh, never mind, I said.—I guess you must be too busy to talk right now.

—I always have time for you, Dimps. Shoot.

—Well. I guess I just called. I don’t know, to say hello, I said. I
could hear New York City bleating and yammering and whizzing around her, and I felt foolish now for taking up her time. I wished I had something more defined to say, like
Do you have Maria Theresa Montana’s e-mail address?
or
I need to borrow your bathrobe.
—Well, I haven’t, you know, seen you in a while. I guess I was just missing you.

—Miss you, too, Dimps! she called out gaily. I could picture her looking both ways before theatrically crossing.

—No, I’m serious. You’re just so MIA these days.

—What do you mean?

—I don’t know. You’re so
busy
all of a sudden. I just wish we could hang out like we used to.

I could hear her mumbling
Excuse me
to someone, and now pictured her sleeking through a packed people patch.

—Dimple, honey, I just had an idea, she said when she’d finished navigating.—I’m coming home straight after this meeting. Why don’t you come over and we’ll have a good old-fashioned powwow? The girls. You know, we could go to the mall or something. Do some party shopping.

I pictured us trying on Style Child outfits and rating passer-boys from benches.

—Just like we used to? I said, relieved.

—Just, she said.

I was really bleepingly happy. Maybe I’d misjudged her. Underneath that busy bee was still my old honey-hearted Gwyn.

—Listen, I’m about to lose you, she said, and I could hear her descending what had to be the subway stairs.—See you—

Her words broke up into a million little particles then cut, but I filled them in. So I’d see her, finally, happily, wonderfully—tonight.

When I walked over to the double-drived house at the appointed hour, Karsh’s bindi’d indigo Golf was poised halfway up one arc, parked at a polite distance. Bindigo.

So who exactly was powwowing with whom?

The sight of his Birks on her porch, with her own strappy sandals tumbled wantonly against them, felt like nothing less than a betrayal. I’d just barely vowed to keep my own feet sheathed when they stepped out the front doors.

—Hey, you, Karsh smiled warmly, setting down his bags and bending to shoe up. Hey you, my foot!

Gwyn double-locked the doors, slung her slipping shades on top of her head, and turned to me.

—Hey there, Dimps, she said. She was dressed to the T, in fact, all the way to Z. It clearly looked like they were heading somewhere.

—I thought we, you know, were going to the mall, I said, confused.

—We are. I just invited Karsh along—he’s gonna give us a lift. I hope you don’t mind.

Karsh was already busily organizing the contents of his trunk. I was speechless, and she casually patted my cheek as she passed to catch up with him.

—I didn’t think so, she said.

She swished regally into the front seat, this time reaching over to Karsh’s side to open it a whit as he wrapped up out back. Like a real girlfriend. I was watching all this from the sidelines since for some reason my own door wasn’t opening and no one had reached back to unlock it. Like a girlfriend.