Born Confused (46 page)

—What—you have a copyright on being Indian? Well, then, I have one on Madonna and your e-mail account, so the moment you’re ready to give those up, I’ll give you back your—your rakhis and recipes. Weren’t you listening to a word at the NYU conference? Don’t you get anything? That was the whole point of Desicreate.

Had we attended the same conference? (And didn’t she know Hotmail was created by a South Asian?)

—Weren’t
you
listening? I cried.—Do you know how hard it can be from this side of the pond?

—We’re on the same side of the pond, Dimple.

—Not Mirror Lake. This side…of
things.
Of
life.
Gwyn, I can’t tell whether I’m Indian or American half the time. I don’t know how I’m supposed to act, who I’m supposed to relate to, where I fit in. I don’t know how to bring anything together. To be myself. And I finally thought maybe I was getting it, maybe I had met someone who would help show me the way out of this—this cultural conflict.

—What cultural conflict? Gwyn snapped, flinging out her arms. She looked like she might shake me, but just held them there.—Not knowing how to act, relate, fit in? Dimple, that’s called being a teenager! That’s called being a
person—
growing up. Which you should try out one of these days; it might do you good. It’s not
your
personal drama. In fact, you didn’t even know you had a quote cultural conflict till you read about it in books and heard about it in lectures.

She stepped back, dropping her arms to her sides and then crossing them.

—You just have fancier words to give it, names that make it sound
so
unique and
so
complicated, she said.—What, you think I’m not struggling with all the same stuff?

I didn’t know what to say. I had never thought of it this way before, and I didn’t know if I agreed one hundred percent, but when Gwyn got in the mood to argue, mercy on anyone who attempted to talk back.

—And you think I’m, I’m thwarting your quest to find yourself or something?

She was rubbing her arms now, hard. And there was a chill creeping up on us, and I was beginning to feel a little sick sad feeling in my belly.

—What about supertwins? she said now, and her voice fractured a nidge.—And Queens, and the suitable boy thing? I was trying to help you, support you.
Give
you that identity.

—I don’t know, Gwyn, I said quietly, but I was shaking, whether it was from my unscreamed scream or unsobbed sob I couldn’t tell.—It’s just. Lately I feel you’ve been taking things away more than anything.

Her mouth stuttered open but she didn’t say anything; the gum had turned her tongue purple, and her eyes were going very very blue.

I could see she was feeling that same unscreamed unsobbed
tension; it was in the way her shoulders hunched slightly. And I could see that she recognized it in me, too. Somewhere inside neither of us wanted to be doing this to each other. And I didn’t understand why we weren’t reaching for each other, why we didn’t just say
come on, come off it
and laugh it off, put it in perspective, count the years in our favor.

But now, with a heavy heart, they were a weight, these years. A burden, these memories, keeping us in clothes that no longer fit, repeating patterns that no longer applied. It was getting too hard to hold them without breaking them in all their strangely ponderous fragility, too hard to carry a childhood friendship into an adult world. It seemed it might just be easier, however unwise, to loosen the grip and let it all go.

Still, that
shutupshutupshutup
was looping in my head, and it was directed at both of us: Don’t ruin a precious thing. This moment could serve as a moment of grace and each of us, warily watching the other, knew it; a moment in which we could save each other from ourselves, when we could change the heart-wrenching direction this was all taking with a word, if someone would just say it.

But I said nothing, thinking all this. And when she spoke, it wasn’t that word either.

—Well, then, if you feel like that, I don’t know what we’re even doing talking to each other, she said finally. It was a voice I didn’t recognize, was like hers but not, like hearing yourself on somebody’s answering machine.—Maybe we need to make a break from each other. Maybe the next thing I need to take away from you—is me.

She was back in her shades now, but I could still see her glare, as if an unsparing sun were on the other side of them.

—No, you know what? she said.
—You
go.
I’m
meeting Karsh. And you just stay out of our way. I don’t think I want to talk to you for a while.

I was too upset to do anything
but
go. I was shaking. My blood seemed to be running a new course; organs wobbled around like furniture in an earthquake. I walked and I walked, and before I knew it I had actually walked all the way back home, back to Gwyn’s house, as if it were in fact out of my control to stay away from her. But of course she wasn’t there.

I went out to Mirror Lake, to the three-holed bridge, and sat, dangling my feet off the edge.

How had this whole mess started? When had it become such a complicated thing to just be who you were?

My birthday. It had all started around my birthday. I reached into my wallet now and pulled it out, the perilous piece of plastic. The identity she gave me. I stared at the girl in the palm of my hand, this girl with the headlit eyes, surrounded by a web of lies as to who she was, and when, and how. How could I have ever hoped to be her?

I turned my hand over, knuckles rising. The plastic flipped over a few times before landing. Water caught, it hurdled through the middle hole of the bridge and was gone.

Gwyn’s words still burned inside me. We had never had a moment like this one. It felt like a breakup, but worse, because I had never been friends with any boy the way I’d been with Gwyn; she had been in my life for as far back as my life went, nearly. There was no me before her, no me without her, it even felt. If she walked my childhood walked out the door with her. It actually hurt too much to think about; there had been something so final in her tone.

It was only afternoon and the day was heavy, sagging at the middle. Clouds scuttled overhead, their bellies gorged and grey. I was at the fork in the road that went off towards her home, by the Bad Luck House, sitting on the curb before the Sold sign. Even from here I could see her shade drawn and window firmly shut. Earlier, when I’d come out to the driveway to see my parents off to a hospital function, I’d seen her take off, too, looping unlicensedly up the street without so much as a backwards glance.

—Wasn’t that Gwyn? asked my mother, who never missed a thing.

—What? I said looking away in the direction of our dead end.

—The car that burned rubber up this street about twelve seconds ago.

—Oh that. No. No, I think that was Mrs. Sexton.

—Baapray, I cannot believe how alike they are looking these days, my father had clucked.

—They are not looking at all, said my mother, watching me carefully.—That is the part I cannot believe.

Now I could hear a car coming down Lancaster Road again, just rounding the bend. Could it be Gwyn had forgotten something? I would look a fool if I started running back to my yard now. Actually, I would look a fool if I were caught sitting here at the fork like some forsaken lover, too. So I did the most unfoolish thing possible and stayed right where I was, squeezing my eyes shut. Maybe if I couldn’t see her…

—Hey, you, I heard as the tires paved closely slow.—Need a lift?

I knew that voice.

I opened my eyes and Karsh filled them, leaning out of Bin-digo’s rolled down window. He looked at once ethereal and real, in his car on my street, as if he’d traveled a great distance to get to this neither-here-nor-there spot at the fork. He stepped out of the car and squatted down to face me.

—Forgot your way home? he smiled.

—Hey! I said.—I mean…hey. Um, you just missed her.

—Hmm?

—Gwyn.

—Oh, yes, Gwyn.

He leaned back into the car and dug around in his glove compartment, then produced a cassette.

—So I have this tape, he said, handing it to me.

—Tape?

—A potential mix for the party.

He looked at me a moment without speaking, and seemed to be thinking hard about something.

His eyes were too intently beautiful to look at, all coal and campfire, and I turned away. Just as I did a humming like a trapped bee went off and he pulled out his cell.

—Oh, hey there, sweetie, he said, voice hushing down.—No, no…You are? Okay. Okay, I’m heading over right now.

He clicked off.

—Oh well, I better be off. Gwyn’s caught the club manager by chance and is holding on to him till I get there.

I guess I must have looked like I’d bit a lemon.

—Dimple? What is it—you look worried. Is everything okay?

I could barely talk.

—It’s Gwyn, isn’t it, he said softly.

I was embarrassed to have my heart so ragingly sleeveless, but I nodded.

—Don’t worry, he said.—She’ll be fine. She won’t be hurt again. I’m going to prove to her all guys aren’t jerks.

So he was really serious about her—and reassuring me of that! Not only did I seem to have lost my best friend, but the boy was definitely off limits now, too.

—You and Gwyn have a great friendship. Nothing should come in the way of that. Nothing great, nothing small and petty.

Now I wondered if she’d complained to him about me and the stolen idea issue.

—I know, I managed to say.

—You’re a really good friend.

His sister, his friend. Could he be any clearer?

—Uh, yeah, thanks, bro, I said. I could think of Karsh as a brother. Frock, he’d make a great brother. I could do this. For Gwyn. For myself. I could let him go. But the more I thought of him this way, like family, the harder my heart ached. It made no sense: I’d lived seventeen years without him—why did I feel his absence so acutely now, even from all the years before I’d even known him?

He gave a half-laugh that matched his half-smile except he wasn’t smiling. He slid back into the car and started the engine.

—Do you want to join us, Dimple?

—Um, no. I think I’m better off—It’s best if—I just have a lot
to get through tonight. You know how it can be when you’re…you know…

—On summer vacation? Right, he nodded. But he lingered a moment as if he’d forgotten something.

—So you coming to the next gig? he asked finally. The car purred gently, the only other sound on the afternoon street.—You know, the Independence Day one? I’m going to sort of treat it as a warm-up for the Disorientation party. Try out some new ideas and all.

—Oh, I’m not sure, I said.—But…well. Good luck.

—Try to come if you can, he said.—It would mean a lot to us.

They were already in the plural? I toothed down my lip.

—Oh no, Dimple. Sorry I’ve been me-me-me, he said now, eyes contrite.—How’s Julian? Are you still—?

—No, no, not at all. Hardly ever were.

Karsh watched me as if he were gauging something. Then he reached back out of the car and took my hand and I tried not to wish he would never let it go as he turned it over, nodding to himself.

—Mmm hmm. Just as I thought, he said, pointing to a network of creases below my pinky.—You should be—and will be—with someone who knows that when he’s with you there’s nowhere else he’d rather be.

The buzz went off in his pocket now and he let go of my hand to check his cell again.

—Oh, man, he said glancing down at the little screen.—I’ve got to go.

When you meet someone like that, beep me, I thought.

After he’d gone, I noticed he’d forgotten to take back the cassette, still lying tumbled in my lap. I examined it now. It seemed he’d made the cover himself, a sketch of the sea and sand and some two-stroke boats.

I couldn’t resist. I went home and dug up my Walkman.

The music slunk in slowly, a shimmering strum, and then tentative drumbeats, a hesitant knock on a submerged door playing off from left ear to right. And as it went on recognition struck a match in me.

I watched now as the first drops hit the pane. I pictured them as the shivery percussions, watched the storm shudder from my ears and out to all the inhabitants of the big girdling world disco as if what was inside my body could affect the outside like that, as if music really did make the people come together. But I suppose it did—that had been the point, right?

It was raining ropily now, the colors from the pines and porch steps and beaten grass all streaked and running. And one by one, the other instruments fell away until it was only these deep-end drums rising up in all their submarine clarity, like my own overfull heart, into my own ears.

Dhage na Dhin, Dhage na Dha, Dhage na Dhin, Dhage na Dha, Dhage na Dha tiri kita Dhage Ti na Gi na…

There had been a day when these drumbeats might have been a hello. But in a heartbeat that had all changed. And now they sang only of goodbye.

I hit stop.

In the next weeks, there wasn’t much to do but mope.
Flash!
had apparently gone to press and as the HotPot events veered closer—the impending Indian Independence Day meltdown and the final fiesta—my spirits sank. I was going to be steering clear of any scene where I’d have to face Gwyn and Karsh, particularly Gwyn
with
Karsh. Kavita was still staying with us, and that was a great help; granted, she was gone a lot of the time, carrying on with her studies in New York. But it felt good having her there for late dinners and pillow talk, having her in the room with me; we were kindred spirits more than ever these days.

Me, I was spending more and more time at home. Mainly hidden away in the darkroom, not even developing pictures. But one morning when I was down there I was surprised to hear a knock on the door; normally no one descended the stairs to the darkening lair. When I came out, my father was standing there, backlit by the rectangles of sun slicing in through the grass-level windows.