Born Confused (8 page)

I was on the verge of laughing but it wasn’t such a pleasant feel
ing, any facial motion riding an acidic deluge right up my throat and into my mouth nearly, like a film in rewind of a girl drinking far beyond her capacity. I will never drink again.

—Oh Maude, Dimple, are you all right?

A pair of strappy sandals was inches away and then two knees knocked down and the friendly moon of Gwyn’s face worried my own. Her eyes fell on the bottle tipped at my side.

—Christ,
how much did you drink?

The moon tilted upwards, crescenting.

—You guys gave her all that Bacardi? I mean, she’s a novice!

Muffled noncommittal noise from the other two satellites orbiting farther away into the black hole.

—Do you want to go to the bathroom? Dimple, come on—swashbuckle up and hold my arm.

By this point only the popcorn guy was still around, sweeping up, and he was aisles away. My coat was gone somewhere and I watched my legs straighten out below me like a lifted rag doll and then I was upright, well, at a sort of oblique angle in Gwyn’s firm grip. The Dudes were keeping their distance, spinning around me in click-clack freeze-frame as if through a slow-moving shutter, nearly blending into a two-headed entity.

—Come on, keep moving. Just act cool for the popcorn people. We’re almost there.

—Hey, popcorn peeps! I hollered, waving excitedly, and I immediately dropped down again, my eyes so close to the carpet the pattern jumbled; I looked up to stare down the strip of floor between aisles. I wished I’d brought Chica Tikka; it was actually quite beautiful, the tumbled boxes stripily spilling more white and yellow clouds and gleaming soda cans, the crinkled candy bar wrappers like stars crumpled in a hand and tossed, all glowing astronomically against the dull red deep of the rug and seat backs.

I was up again, and we were ascending the aisle, which made the nachos rise farther but somehow helped abate the spinning; whenever we halted, the nausea went down and the merry-go-round switched to high speed. Not to mention that I was starting to feel low number-two rumblings in my nether regions. To poop or to puke?
That
was the question.

—Keep moving, Dimps, you can do it.

She was swinging me away from a long centipedal line of twitching women and in through a door with no human barricade.

Then we were in the bathroom, and paradise
was
a bathroom, shining and empty. Gwyn led me into a stall where I promptly fell to my knees, the upper ring clattering back down to the lower with the force of my landing.

—I don’t feel so good, Gwynnie.

—No kidding? she said.—It’s all that grease—you should never mix nachos and rum.

—I’ll never eat nachos again, I vowed.

—Honey, just hurl ‘em up and let’s get out of here before any guys come in.

She was behind me, steadying my head and pulling my hair into, I suspected from the nimble finger motions, a chignon. I gazed into the white scoop bowl, at the shallow-end pool of water there. I could feel it all nearing my mouth and my head was beating hard now.

—Come on, Dimps. Just think of something that grosses you out—like that booger that was stuck in Mr. Witherspoon’s nose all day during the lava lecture, or diarrhea, or, I don’t know, kissing Jimmy Singh.

I considered this last option, and pictured him now, silver kada sliding as he unwrapped his Ziplocked pakoras at lunch, reviewing class notes and (copyrighted) business plans on a Palm Pilot all alone at his cafeteria table-for-two.

I often spied on him from my own Sloppy-Joed arena—where usually Gwyn was lecturing stalwarts like Maria Theresa Montana and Shoshannah Lieberman, and even pudgy pudding-fiend Franklyn Thomas Porter the Fourth on how to lose a pound a week through creative visualization. Jimmy’s lunch was always tidily packed, but he was not. Even under that turban I knew lay a jungle of unwashed hair, and maybe even a knife, if you listened to some of the aunties’ tales about those warrior Sikhs. So I didn’t talk to him much. No one did. Plus, he kind of smelled. It was a smell I’d gotten a whiff of sometimes when we had relatives or Indian friends over—coconut hair oil and cumin and slept-on pillows, sandalwood and sweat. In our house it seemed normal; in the school cafeteria, however, the odor made me ashamed—which made me even more ashamed. I carried a tiny pink bottle of Love’s Baby Soft in my purse and spritzed it on frequently between classes and under desks. My parents had told me how bathing really was an Indian art, how the British had been taken aback by the cleanliness of the Indian people and the number of baths they took a day, when they were so foul-toothedly colonizing us all those years ago. But you could never be too safe.

—Gym teachers. Think gym teachers.

Ooh, that was good. And that was it: The whole Noahic nacho flood had its second world premiere, splattering the bowl, and flying off—and again. And once more. Was giving birth more embarrassing than this? I lay my head on the toilet rim (hoping no one would tell my mother I hadn’t covered it in a foot-thick layer of toilet paper first).

—Oh god, Gwyn, I said, and I broke into a sob of relief.—What would I do without you?

—You’ll never be without me, she said.

As we bumped through the sometimes slick, sometimes rubbled streets of Springfield, I thought about that last trip to India, how my stomach kept rolling long after the hitchka had stopped. Despite avoiding unpeelable fruit, unboiled water, and the crackling pani puri stands of Juhu Beach I’d been constantly nauseous. But somehow I’d managed to keep my inner organs intact until the second to last day at, of all places, the Taj Hotel; shortly after lunch, even the five-star rating couldn’t outdazzle the explosive effect on my being that an innocuous-looking shrimp salad was having. The next day I could hardly keep my seat belt on the whole fourteen-hour ride back on the plane. The slightest sign of turbulence elicited unsolicited bits and pieces of the irrepressible shellfish throatwards, and I spent the entire flight panicking not only about dozing off and drooling on the shoulder of the kind-faced Walkmanned stranger beside me, but that I would toss my crustacea on his freshly pressed Nehru jacket as well.

This car ride was a lot like that.

Julian was leaning way over with his head out the window, sniffing the breeze like a Labrador out on the town. But I knew he was just trying to manage his risks, what with me sitting next to him and all. I tried counting sheep to take my mind off my stomach, but math always makes me ill, so that wasn’t such a good idea. Then I thought of snow, that particular silence of its falling, blanketing. The whole forked street in white star-crusted stillness. This was a good thought, snow, the way it powdered up and caked onto the edge of a ski braking and in your ears wind and whistle and the almost indis
cernible scratch of the pole tapping you into a turn. It worked a while.

But fact was, the AC was broken, the roof was open, and we were in the middle of a heat wave. By this point my skirt had ridden up (a feat I’d hardly thought possible, considering it had never gotten that far down in the first place) and I was shamelessly exhibiting the two tanned beached whales that were my thighs. My coat was off, stiffly crumpled and creating a sort of hurl barrier between Julian and me. And it was still really hot.

I tried to sink deeper into snow. Last year we had so much of the stuff that for a while people were cross-country skiing down Fifth Avenue in the city; I saw it on the news, but by the time my mother and I went into Manhattan to get her visa for India it was all ashen slush, and everyone was slipping at the traffic lights in expensive shoes and getting cranky. We dropped off the passport at the embassy and were told to come back to pick it up stamped later that afternoon. So we went to lunch at a place that wasn’t Indian but had things like elderberry chutney and mango coulis (which the waitress pronounced “coolie” to my mother’s perturbation) and charged a lot for a salad with leaves called endives that were so bitter I nearly spit my first and last bite out. We left vastly unsatisfied and bought chestnuts from the Indian guy on the corner and went to Bloomingdale’s, which still looked decorated for Christmas even though Christmas was long over.

And then we took a walk, clinging to hot chocolates from the diner on the corner. They had marshmallows and everything, but somehow we couldn’t get warm. We were sitting on a bench when my mother started shaking, and the hot chocolate grew stormy, the brown liquid spattering the slush caking around her feet, marshmallows flopping out over the brim. She couldn’t stop shivering, and at first I thought she was really cold, and I reached over to put my mit
tens on her bare blue-veined hands and squeezed them and looked at her. But she kept shaking.

—Mom? Mom, what is it? Do you want to go back and wait inside?

—It’s too late.

—I’m sure it’s still open, Ma.

—No, no, no it’s too late—he’s going, he’s going. I can feel it. I’m not going to make it in time.

And then she was sobbing, and she let me hold her like a child.

—Come on, Mom, don’t worry. You’re just stressed. You’ll make it. It’s all going to be all right. Let’s walk a little, you’ll feel better.

I said it for myself as much as her; I was terrified. We were by Central Park, and the icicles were just beginning to melt, the delicate drops making little plink-plink sounds if you listened close, and my mother’s breathing slowly grew even.

And she was right. She didn’t make it to India on time. And this idea that you could feel when a person was slipping away to the other side, the way she felt it so viscerally despite the 10,000-mile difference, this terrified me, too. Because I hadn’t felt a thing. Even when it was my own Dadaji, who was quite easily my favorite person on the face of this planet or any other. And if people were leaving and I had no clue, how was I going to keep track of them? I’d had a deep and sudden apprehension:
That could be me years from now, getting a chill on a park bench and just knowing.
But I couldn’t finish the thought. I had the chill already.

We were gliding down the slope of Lancaster Road and branching right towards Gwyn’s dead end, which forked off from my own not taken.

Julian was hanging almost entirely out the window now, singing the song on the radio really loudly, guitar riffs included, as if sheer volume could block out my presence. Well before we zigzagged up Gwyn’s double drive, he was over me. I guess he’d been hoping for action of another genre than nonstop ralphing; I was definitely not smooch material this evening.

All the lights were off as was often the case in Gwyn’s home. This was not an indication of anything in particular. It could mean Mrs. Sexton was out on the town with her latest flame (this one a theater director from the community college); it could just as easily mean she was passed out in the den in the back, semiconsciously watching reruns of
Family Ties.
In any case, Gwyn—much to my envy—could operate as if she weren’t home. And tonight, as it turned out, Mrs. Sexton actually was in absentia.

Before Dylan had even pulled the emergency brake, Julian was out the door.

—Hey, man, he said.—I’m gonna book. Mind if I use the wheels to get back?

—Leaving already? said Gwyn.—But I’ve got wine, and beer, and those big Pepperidge Farm cookies, the soft ones with the white chocolate chunks…

—Thanks, doll, but I’ve got to go home and watch my plants grow. Dillweed?

—Sure, dude, take ‘em, said Dylan, tossing the keys over. He slung an arm low on Gwyn’s hips and drew her against him.—Just swing by tomorrow—not
too
early—so we can get all the shit moved on time. I won’t be needing to get home tonight anyways, right, babe?

—Uh, right, said Gwyn.—Jules, are you sober enough to go?

—Believe me, I’m sober now.

We were all out of the car and Julian was in, revving the motor. Gwyn had one arm around me and the other around Dylan.

—Later, said Dylan, throwing out a rock ‘n’ roll devil’s horn with his free hand.

—Later, said Gwyn.—But I hope sooner.

Personally, I had a feeling Julian was thinking more along the lines of never. I still managed a halfhearted
Later.
But by the time I said it he was already out the drive, headlights streaking red like a gash in the night, and then vanishing around the bend.

In another place and time and body this sort of exchange might have bummed me out big-time. And I did feel a dull stab, like when the nitrous oxide started to wear off that time I got my wisdom teeth pulled. But Julian’s swift departure was more than anything a relief after all the humiliation of the evening.

—Don’t worry, honey, said Gwyn, squeezing my shoulders.—He’ll be back.

Those skidmarks didn’t look like the sign of someone in a hurry to do a U-turn, but I nodded dumbly anyways.

—I think I’ll be heading, too, Gwyn, I said.—Thanks for everything.

—Oh
noooo,
Dimple! Stay just a little longer!
Please!

—Come on, Gwyn, who needs a third wheel?

Dylan gave her a pointed look that said,
Heads up, she might have a point.

—Dimps! Plenty of things need a third wheel, said Gwyn, pushing my hair out of my eyes and gazing into them.—A tricycle, for example.

But I knew I’d only have a contraceptive presence if I stayed.

—Well, then, I’m gonna ride, I said.—Call me?

—Call you, she said.

And I wiggled my sack onto my back and walked on.

I was dying to sleep in my own bed and forget any of this ever happened, but figured I’d better work off the wooziness first. So I went in the direction opposite from home, towards the strip of woods bordering Gwyn’s yard. I crunched through twigs and fallen branches past the silent playhouse, the windows caked with dust as if the children had long ago vanished. I supposed they had. From there it was a hop, scrunch, and plunk to cut out to Mirror Lake. I stood on the edge of the three-holed concrete bridge that traversed it; on one side water gushed into a low-level creek with stones pitted for crossing. On the other was the pond itself in all its quasioctagonal tadpoled-and-minnowed glory.