From: Alyssa Chatterjee

  We all bleed for our wrongdoings. If not in this life, maybe in the next. I’m not ready to bring life into this world. It’s not yours. I’m sorry. For everything.

  I reread it at least five times before he said anything.

  “She sent that to me the night before she killed herself.”

  I was dumbfounded. “Why?”

  His head was cocked to the side. He was tired and angry. “Why? Why? Why…?” His words were like a grater slowly tearing at the outer layer of my heart, shredding it to a pulp.

  “Ryan?” Was she pregnant? Was that what she was saying?

  “I hate her for leaving me to do the dirty work.”

  “Tell me.”

  His fingers were at his eyes. “A couple of months before she died, Alyssa was sleeping with Simon…”

  I shook my head violently, no, no, no.

  “She was seeing him because she needed him. Simon had something Alyssa needed.” I knew he was trying to spell it out for me without saying the specific words, but I needed help.

  “What? What did he have?”

  His head was hung over the edge.

  “Ryan?” I was shouting it at him. I needed to know. The answer was staring at me in the face with a smirk. Simon’s smirk.

  “She had an addictive personality, Tay…” He stopped talking midsentence, and I let him, my heart grinding to a stupefied halt. “She did it to herself, Taylia.”

  It was so cold. He had given up. Slowly he explained her pregnancy with Simon’s baby. Her addiction. I wanted to projectile vomit. Alyssa, my darling. I wanted to weep, Alyssa, Lyse. I’m sorry I wasn’t there.

  “That sounds harsh, but it’s true. She lacked self-control. She chose not to take advantage of the good life she was given. She decided to fuck up.”

  I could hear how hurt he was, but I didn’t care. There were small tires of anger lodged underneath both sides of my throat. His response was so mean. Like a plug to my tears, I felt immeasurably sad for her. I knew this wasn’t the whole truth, and in that moment, I mourned never getting the chance to know her side. The pain of holding back the deluge, even for a few moments, sent a tight pull up my jaw, like a harness against my emotions. Couldn’t he just forgive her and move on? He was still here, he was still living.

  “Taylia…”

  “Get the fuck out.” I wanted to scream it, but before I inhaled another scratching breath, he had already left.

  As I began to breathe normally again, I remembered that before she died, Alyssa wrote out, in her notebook left neatly on her bedside table, a quote from Mama’s favorite book, Family Lexicon, by Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg. It was a line about Cesare Pavese, an Italian poet and writer who tragically killed himself. Though, I guess, suicide was always tragic.

  “He looked beyond death and imagined death to the point where it was no longer death he imagined but life.” She wrote it at the top of her Moleskine, leaving it open for all to see. It was scrawled with her favorite Kaweco fountain pen. The ink bled a little onto the pages, just the way Alyssa liked it. I remember, I remember reading it. I should have known.

  She came as soon as I texted. In one hand she bore a stack of Ritter Sports, the ones with cornflakes in the chocolate, and in the other was Sufjan with an insistent gaze. Luc was behind me, holding on tightly to my stringy dress, hands shoved tightly against my fleshy calves.

  “Who are you?” he asked Tahsin.

  “I’m Tahsin. Who are you?”

  “Luc.” His questions didn’t skip a beat. “Is that your baby?”

  “Yes, it is. This is Sufjan.”

  “You know my mommy owns this place.” Even under the circumstances, it was so cute that Tahsin and I both laughed. I tried to pick him up to kiss him, but he swatted my care. There was another short pause before he sprang off. “Okay, bye!”

  Tahsin giggled. “Kat’s not home?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve been doing some babysitting to help her out. She’s probably prepping the kitchen for tomorrow as we speak. She doesn’t really ask for much help, but this is the least my giant amniotic sac of a body can do.”

  Tahsin cocked her eyebrows at me, judgmental. I watched her plop the chocolates onto the dining table while simultaneously pushing Sufjan upward in a graceful propelling motion.

  “How are you really doing?”

  “Well, I guess I don’t know what to think…”

  “Why? Don’t you trust Ryan?”

  I breathed in. “Yes. I do…” I guess I did, but I also didn’t know him anymore and didn’t know if I could trust his objectivity.

  “Then? What’s there to think?”

  “I don’t want to believe it, Tahsin. I just can’t. It would mean too much.”

  “What? What would it mean? Other than she was complicated, and that she hid things. Even from you. I know that hurts… but you were coming to terms with that. If anything, this is a blessing. I think this is that for you. You just have to look at it like a blessing. Besides, you shouldn’t hold her complexities against her.”

  I didn’t. I just felt betrayed that she never told me. That she never confided in me.

  “I’m just shocked.”

  “That is to be expected…”

  “I just found out that my sister—” My voice broke.

  Was pregnant? Drug addicted and pregnant? With Simon’s child?

  “Okay, sit down. I’ll make us some tea.”

  I sat down, replaying every memory of her that could have pointed to the truth. How could she have done that to herself?

  As if reading my mind, Tahsin remarked, “Taylia, people do stupid things, obviously to varying degrees, but she clearly felt like she was losing agency.”

  How could I tell her that this was also about Simon? How could I tell her about the disgusting overgrowth of despair that was Simon?

  “Oh, and she only just left me all alone in this fucking world.”

  “Sweetie, please. Would you have wanted to be overshadowed by Alyssa your whole life? It’s hard, but you have to find a positive in this…”

  I felt a disorienting alignment pull up my spine. “A silver lining…” I said half-mindedly. “I guess. Yes. It’s so great my sister killed herself so I can finally learn to be strong! Have you found the silver lining since Roman died, too?” I wanted to be cruel, but the question came out sedately, clear, with a certain piquancy.

  “No,” she said, “but I see him everywhere…”

  My heart started hurting as I suddenly thought of Ky. I noted that she still talked about Roman in the present tense. I stared at Sufjan for a while, my mind suddenly absent. I could hear her speaking, but nothing was going in, she was just a voice outside of my paralyzing shell, her voice mildly operatic. I suddenly wanted to blame her for the fact that Ky never tried to get me back. He never even came looking for me. I guess he never really loved me, and I was also in the midst of accepting that.

  “In time, I will heal. It’s hard to start your life after death.” I was back, listening to her. “Your natural inclination is to die with them, right? Like, you almost don’t want it to get easier, because how dare it? And the thing is, did I even have a life outside of him? Do I just stop loving him? Do I just turn it off? I know that would make it easier, but how do you stop loving someone you love, and if life would have gone your way, they’d be loving you too… right here, right fucking now.”

  I could hear her voice stutter at the word here, and only then was I fully present again. I stared at her, knowing and not knowing her.

  “It’s strange, there’s this word in Arabic, Ya’aburnee, which means ‘I love you so much that I hope I die before you because I couldn’t bear the pain of living without you.’ I used to say it to him all the time, and we’d laugh at its absurd moroseness. Ya’aburnee.” She started crying. “You look pale.”

  I looked up at her, unfazed by her tears. “Do I?”

  She nodded.

  I deflected by getting up at the zing of the kettle boiling and poured the hot water into two short ceramic mugs, wide with moon-shaped handles. Tahsin had scooped Sufjan into her left arm, drumming his diapered bottom as she cried melodically. I wondered at how much I didn’t know about her. How I didn’t quite understand the intricacies of her character yet. Was she just wearing a disguise of positivity? And if so, was she actually in chronic emotional pain underneath it all? I felt my eyes numb as I stared at her wiry silhouette, questioning what it was that made us who we are. She was so open, so authentic, but not vulnerable. There was no room for hurting anymore, only room for survival. She wanted to succeed. Even then, on some level I was a witness to her pain. It was deep like a well. I assumed some days the pain must rise more than others, floating to the top, usurping all.

  I still hadn’t mentioned Ky. I knew I wasn’t ready, but I also was paralyzed by the idea of what to do next. Was I actually going to have this baby alone? Kat had done it, Tahsin was doing it, but was I going to actually join the single mothers club for eternity? Money was an obvious question. Kat owed me nothing, but I wondered if she’d let me work at the café again. If I could beg her to let me stay in this brownstone with her. How was I going to pay for everything? For this baby? With the small sum of money Dadi-ma left me? Forever? Life was beginning to come crawling in like an anthem.

  27.

  As my mother had married a man with toffee-colored skin and a Nehru nose, she knew she needed to prove that her husband was just the same, lacking in no way what a “normal” man had. He may have resembled a cabdriver, but he was a different breed of Indian. An Indian with a Western education, who despised incense and spoke with a well-adjusted transatlantic accent. His skin was sweet and odorless, unlike other dirty Indians (and never sticky on hot days). He despised religion, having never read the Bhagavad Gita or followed the silly customs of his family. He ate beef, drank wine, and never reeked of cheapness. Completely affable, he wore polo shirts that highlighted his handsome physique, resembling a more rugged and darker Imran Khan. He was the Commonwealth’s dream who proved the Queen and her endeavors had done well to pillage and invest in Indian and foreign soil. He was cultured like them, like her. He was no longer barbaric, he was saved.

  When we lived at Dadi-ma’s, how easily Baba fell into wearing a lungi—a checkered blue sarong with hints of plum purple—in the daytime, reading newspapers with his feet, out of his Bata slippers, leaning like a bridge on Dadi-ma’s glass coffee table, drinking garam garam chai. He would visit his mother after breakfast, as she’d lie on her high, hard bed, the mosquito nets twisted like braids to the side. He was lighter with her; speaking in Bengali gave him character that English never gave him. He had humor, he had dimensions. I lamented never knowing this Baba. I knew that he probably felt he had to wear a mask of stoicism to survive in America as a Brown man, and that tormented me.

  Every morning I’d feed Dadi-ma red root, to strengthen her blood, and sat with her as the young girl, who usually swept the house, would wash Dadi-ma’s floating feet and toes in a shallow bucket. I’d tend to her hair, almost all white, like the beard of Gandalf, while she stroked her soft hands on the hems of her saree. We gobbled food, meals sectioning our days. In other hours, Baba lectured his visiting neighbors (I noticed he had a different vibrato in Bengali), while Mama would often read on the roof, in the rose garden, the peach and fuschia goblets already bloomed, and Alyssa would watch the Fashion network in the back room. In India, Baba’s gender took hold again, and he was satisffed with the privilege of his birthright.

  Are good memories just moments in time we choose to remember, or are they a sign of something greater? I looked back at the memories of my childhood and was surprised by what I had kept to bear with me through the days. A lot involved some kind of accomplishment. Like the time my fourth grade teacher said that I took initiative, and I knew that was a good thing, even if I didn’t know what it meant entirely. These embellished moments were simply a result of my stunted self-esteem. I guess what I’m trying to say is if love had been fostered within me at a young age, would my life have been different? And would I look at it differently? I don’t really know. But I’d like to think that I would. I’d come to realize that my self-effacing nature had become a roadblock to myself, and I never realized the way I viewed myself was deeply interconnected with Alyssa. So, to let go of that part of my life, the one that I had woven so tightly to my stunted heart, I needed to let go of Alysssa. Of what I deemed her to be. Especially in juxtaposition to me.

  Tahsin and I had quickly become like The Wives of the Dead, bonded by loss. Both of us understood the disabilities that came with that kind of pain: the unwanted tears along the sidewalk, the accidental somnambulance that occurred in daylight, the confused feeling of one’s heart continuing to drop, leaving an empty vessel—a heart-shaped lacuna. Our sudden bursts of emotion were as explainable and natural to each other as breathing and sleeping.

  After art class Tahsin turned to me.

  “Aye, Taylia?”

  “Yes, Tahs.”

  She looked nervous.

  “What?” I laughed.

  “This guy, the guy you left. You never really talk about him…”

  My positivity had its limits.

  That’s because it’s none of your fucking business.

  What I chose to say was the blanket answer to all uncomfortable inquiries: “I don’t really feel like talking about it…” I stumbled. “Right now.”

  She wrinkled her nose.

  “What was his name?”

  I hadn’t said his name in months. What would it sound like to say it again? How would my mouth feel to resonate that heart-twisting syllable, the sound of those letters again? How would my body react to his name being said aloud, and almost more important, how would Tahsin?

  “I really… really would rather talk about how much you enjoyed Mateo’s ass today!”

  I hardly believed I had uttered it, but it had come out of my mouth. I didn’t know if I should be proudly horrified. But my intuition knew one thing: Tahsin had a weakness for Mateo’s spicy white (we still didn’t know where he was from, but assumed Italian) butt. Tahsin laughed and nudged me playfully on the shoulder as we walked in the sunlight.

  Later, I caught up with Ralph even though I didn’t want to. When he called me to set something up, I said, “I don’t like you, life,” but what I had meant to say was his name. He laughed with familiarity, as if this were a candid joke of mine. I imagined his face as if it were right there. I imagined him smiling, eyelashes sprawled out like a fan as he thought of me.

  When we eventually met up, he pulled me into a meaningful hug in a meaningful way. At first I didn’t put my hands around him, but then something shifted and I involved myself both emotionally and physically. After a few moments he pushed me forward, still holding on to me, and caressed the part of my cheek that was closest to my lips with his own. I wasn’t repulsed; instead I looked up at him and saw him for what he was. And suddenly, it was that obvious. I looked at Ralph, finally clear-minded.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t do this anymore. It’s not working for me.”

  I was learning new skills now, skills of straightforwardness, of honesty. With the heaviness of my voice, the directness of my glare, I knew Ralph understood me. I could tell he was skipping between words, but in the end he said nothing, so I walked away.

  Letting go of Alyssa took a lot more willpower than I had initially anticipated. I had to rewrite the crusty neurological center of my brain, bright against blackness. It was the unknown, the uninhabited wilderness, that scared me. Living without Alyssa reinforced my innate fear of failure. My anxiety always swallowed me whole. My anxieties were their very own majestic organ. I was utterly afraid of ending up at square one again, so I had spent years steeping in my depression, a bitter tea leaf, sunken and rotting.

  But, slowly, through the work of showing up for myself, in the smallest of ways, the pink membranes of my heart were starting to understand that I could fail without being a failure. That was it. When you accept that you’re a real life human—a squishy, mortal, and malleable being of sorts—you begin to accept your mistakes. You accept that your life cannot ever be fixed, not like a fast-tongued solvable riddle. Instead, you must become intrigued by the messiness, the nuances and the in-between bits of yourself and your life, to survive. You have to accept change. At one point, you have to surrender.

  I was beginning to understand that my mother wanted for me to excel only in her own image, maybe out of protection. It was a desperate requirement for a woman who, I came to realize, was stuck in her habitual racism, taught to her by her parents. Maybe she was drawn to Baba because of her self-actualizing hatred. So she dedicated herself to a cinnamon-eyed stranger out of a misplaced, fleeting need for change. But white was the color she knew. And that permanence would haunt her. She loved Alyssa because she was closer to her, but also of a world she wanted to enter, a world that being Jewish also gave her—but her accidental whiteness, and generational emulation of whiteness, absolved her of. Now, I understood it: Mama was making sure we were all fitting in. She was doing it for all of us. Maybe she was trying to unlearn her racism, but in the end gave up on it. Both she and Baba were complicit. Through remembering that, I was finding compassion for her. I just wish she never stopped trying. I wish she and Baba had stood by their politics. Maybe that’s why I felt okay leaving them—what did they have to teach me? I could love and respect them for all I had received, and let everything else go.

  I had learned from both Kat and Tahsin the intricacies of being women—Black and Brown women—in a failing health-care system that cared little for your needs or pain threshold. How many women were dismissed, unseen and unheard. I thought of Dadima talking to me and Alyssa about her sister who died while giving birth. Complication from eclampsia. I remember being struck by the word. These days, with my baby, I knew that could easily be me. I had little money and even less support, but I would find a way. I wanted the birth to be a new beginning. To set a new standard into motion. I was optimistic, even when I wasn’t.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30