Cowgirls & Indie Boys
Tanuja Desai Hidier
On Saturday, May 22, at 11:14 A.M. in her birthplace, India (though 12:44 EST here out West), Sulekha Madhav Shahane would turn sweet sixteen and never been kissed. This was something her best friend, Gemma Nicks—who by sixteen, it seemed, had never never been kissed—decided to set straight once and for all.
Thursday at lunch, Gemma spoke with surprising urgency to Marisa Salerno, who convened with Poppy Shea and Carmen Roncevic, who was going with Sledge Davies, who was tight with both the baseball and brainy boys due to his left hook and right-hand-man ease with rotating solids around the Y axis. Sledge could swiftly find the boyman for the job.
And so a plan was hatched: They would gather Friday evening at Carmen’s. A stroke before midnight (for more nick-of-time dramatic effect), Sulekha would cross the street and head uphill into the woodland cove that split Carmen and Gemma’s neighborhood from the middle-school sports field. This evergreen enclave was called the Saloon. By Sulk and Gem, that was. Rumor had it the football team had buried a galleon of whiskey bottles under the knottiest oak for deep forest forays with females; there were other F’s involved in that as well. So it was an apt place for Sulekha to meet the chosen boy and get the first, the French, deed done.
As Carmen explained, Sulk fidgeted her booted foot in and out of the baby-blue hopscotch square. It all sounded complicated, but the Bees liked complicating things. They thrived on rites of passage. Personally, Sulekha wondered when these initiations would end, when where she was would be where she was trying to get to.
Maybe after this midnight kiss, she thought, Gem’d be back in boots again.
Gazing down at the array of girlfeet, Sulk saw her former Wild West pardner donned army green platform sneaks, the ones she’d gotten en masse with her employee discount. They’d gotten close with their part-time jobs, the Bees—Carmen in the drugstore (replenishing her condom stock), Marisa and Poppy steaming at Starbucks, and Gemma in shoes. And when their hours upped with summertime, this mall bonding could only intensify. Sulekha had wanted to join in on all the fun, but her parents wouldn’t hear of it.
—Part-time job! her father nearly guffawed, patting his belly after a particularly large bowl of pista kulfi. —What are you needing part-time job for? You have a roof over your head.
—People will begin to speak, her mother whispered, as if the world had been mute until then. —You need to focus on your studies, Baby, so you can go to a good university, earn a fine degree. . . .
—And give it all up for a suitable CKP Indian boy, her sister, Reshem, who was home for Thanksgiving, had interjected with her new higher-learning snort.
And so the rest of the Bees had gone on to punch in and out and Sulekha not.
Gemma was standing farther from Sulekha than usual today, leaning in with Carmen. A wistful view, but it afforded Sulk a glimpse she normally never had when they were all whispering ears and eyelock, fingertwined and braidmaking. Gemma afar was nearly as beautiful as she was up close. A lotus from a muddy bank, she was growing into her wildness with a savage grace: long, weedy tangles of dirty blond hair, the big beauty mark the blush of cinnamon under her left lower lid, and the cat-slant eyes, flecked yellow as if gold were there for the panning just below. Her faded jeans dragged too long on the ground, running under the backs of her squashy heels, and the knit violet halter dress barely covered her womanchest. But that was the point, wasn’t it?
—We’ve gotta take care of this pronto, she was saying. Her back was decked in freckles, an arched map of Little Dippers, stolen sun, and wish-upons.
Sulekha knew the inflections in Gemma’s voice as if she’d lain in them till they molded her own body. All her voices: her mother-on-the-phone-from-L.A. monotone, father-may-I sing-sing, dog-ate-my-homework sugarcoat, can-I-help-you brisk beat, mmm-like-what-I-see meadowy melt. But this was a new voice. A We voice, not as in she and Gemma, but as in Us— and then there’s You.
Sulk sucked in the dip of her upper lip. She hovered with one foot sinking in the pliant spring grass, the other on the edge, where it abruptly capitulated to concrete. Forever on the edge of things, it seemed. Of this conversation, for example. Her family was always going on about borders, the ones they’d traversed and the generations before: Pakistan and India, village to city. America for them marked the end of this perpetual crossing over. But what no one had told Sulekha was there were just as many invisible frontiers once you got there.
Take sixteen. Sixteen itself was a borderline: neither here nor there yet everywhere. The age of the kiss, of the never-been-kissed. If you didn’t have your period, you were late, as the doctor had informed Sulk, alarming her mother by diagnosing stress as serenely as possible. And if you were getting it, you prayed to gods you wouldn’t be late, as Carmen had been, despite all the rounds of rosaries. Legal for some things, illegal for others; just barely consensual. The driver’s permit, which Sulekha would be eligible for soon, summed it up: You had the basics, a beginning ability to take on new roads, but you didn’t have the grace yet, the map yet, and if you did, the keys were someone else’s. You couldn’t be you without surveillance.
At sixteen, everyone was watching you—especially you. And the boys were watching, too, sometimes looking right through you, sometimes not getting past the skin of you.
—Well, Sulekha said now. She couldn’t feel the sunstuck tar through her sturdy sole. —Who will it be, then?
—Could be anyone, couldn’t it? Poppy mused into a tangerine-sheen bubble of Bazooka.
—Danny Kinsley, Marisa offered kindly.
—Joel Macero, Poppy counterpopped.
—Sledge Davies, Carmen suggested, smiling mischievously. (She wouldn’t!)
They began to rattle off the Wanted Alive list, more for their own pleasure. They were in the part of the parking lot where the burnout girls leaned on wine-colored car hoods smoking reds and letting rocker boys slip sure hands under their low-rider waistbands. The Honors girls (minus Sulekha) collected in beige cropped chinos in the mottled shade, simmering strands of sunshine filtering through leaf and lighting them up like a group of laptopped angels. Gemma had been Sulk’s way in to this group of in-betweens, these Bees; they hung about on the chalky lines of four-squares that were still around from when this school had been for kids. But recently this in-between had begun to seem like a somewhere.
The Bees efficiently used the twenty-minute break to digest iceberg lettuce and update one another on the expanding constellations of fingerprints on their flesh. As such, Gemma’s affair with a much older boyman, a manboy, in fact, had been her ticket to hive entry. Sulk had nil to add, though her own hands had taken on an astronomical tendency to chart out new ports of call on her own body of late. There were terms for this pastime, the more technical M-word sounding like a medical condition, and “jerking off” making you seem like the jerk. Sulk thought of it more as a melting pot, a clay unmaking—the reverse rendering of an earthen bowl whirring into being on a potter’s wheel. It was the only moment when no words pressed against the inner screen of her forehead.
But other than boymen brushing inadvertently against her in the crammed corridors, or the brief thrill of knucklebrush while passing a lunch tray, no Big, no Little Dippers could be found on Sulekha’s own unfreckled skin. She envied the Bees, especially rosy-cheeked, licorice-locked Carmen, who took an exuberant, almost malicious joy in the power of her swooshingly blossoming body, wielded it like a tool to navigate the uncharted territory that lay ahead. That they were already in.
—We’ll arrange it all for you, Suzy, Carmen assured her now. That’s what they called her, a taste their tongues knew. Carmen wore a stick-on bindi from one of the many fashion magazines she subscribed to. It was last year’s issue but it’d been a good one—complete with a foldout of Justin Timber-lake, creasing him cleanly, excruciatingly down the crotch.
—We’ll choose the boy. You’ll see him when the time is right—when the stars are in place and all that. That’s how it works for you people, anyways, no?
Sulk hadn’t been “you people” before. But she was glad Carmen was at least talking to her.
—Oh right, that arranged-marriage business, said Poppy. —I read an article on that in Radolescence. About how all these Indian women are suppressed and have no choices in life.
—But they’ve had so many Miss Universes, Marisa sighed dreamily. —That doesn’t sound so oppressed. . . .
—Don’t get off the subject, Carmen cut in. —Listen, Suze, consider it an emergency birthday present.
—I know, but it’s just my parents. You know how they are.
—Who’s about to turn sixteen? You or them? said Carmen, eyes smirking. —You know, Suzy, I’ve about had it with these excuses. There’s always something with you. You’ve been getting a little too big for your boots lately is the feeling I’m getting. I know your ’rents don’t want you to be like us. But what’s wrong with us?
Sulk bit her tongue tip. It was true, about her parents. That’s why she never invited the posse over, only Gemma on her own. And if her parents knew the half of it, it’d be doubly true. Already she couldn’t attend the same parties, where they were convinced sperm could cantor across carpet, hurdle a TV screen, and up-wriggle a pair of boot-cuts to impregnate a girl. (That’s why it’s called a shag rug, Gemma had snickered, employing a bit of the British slang she’d brought over from her own motherland.) Where boys were certainly slipping pills in these girls’ drinks and making promises that had always been broken.
—Or, actually, what’s wrong with you? Carmen challenged now, her words glinting as if rubbed on stone. —Don’t you want it?
Of course Sulk wanted. But she didn’t know what, or where. She knew she lay awake at night with this wanting, like a new tensely wound organ, hands pressed to lower belly to keep it from rupturing skin. Her belly had been aching for days now, around the button, like a cord yanking her out of herself. Too many boys, boys. What to do with them? They made her feel breathlessly cloddy when she had to interact with them, especially the ones who ran around chasing balls on fields as if engaged in some primordial dance with the Nerf god. Their voices were like the bottom of boats. Their throats bobbed when they talked as if they couldn’t get out what they really wanted to say. They looked like they knew different things.
Take Lane Hallestorm, the one the Bees were eyeing at the moment, even Carmen, who was with Sledge but always stocking up for the winter. He was one of the ones who looked like he could break you and you should be grateful he hadn’t already. His face was all carved ice. The one who swept you in his view for a second and made you feel he’d held you an eternity. Lane Hallestorm, the Bees swooned, always first-name-last. Not like Gem’s ex Ryder, who was out of school and therefore had only one name. Nor Abhijit, who also went by one name—Abe, just like Sulekha was Suzy— because as the only other Indian at Royal Oak, he was too contexted.
—Lane Hallestorm. Sulekha swooned now. Not so much because of the boyman himself, but because swooning felt so good, a sheer relief to hear how her voice took on the swooping frequencies and flavor of theirs when she did.
Carmen relaxed a notch, even as she said, —I know it’s your birthday, but we can’t promise a miracle, Suzy. We’ve only got twenty-four hours.
—It doesn’t really matter who it is, Poppy said, shrugging, sucking her words out a deflating bubble. Sulk imagined them floating around in there, a cartoon caption. —Just get it out of the way.
—You can’t be a baby forever, whatever your parents think, Gemma agreed in her new hive voice. —It’s only a kiss. No rubber, no pill. You don’t even need your nappies.
That was a new-old development; Gemma had forcepped from her vocabulary most of the British English terms that had set her apart as a kid in this town. It’d been part of Sulk and Gem’s Wild West pact. But that pact was cracking, and Gemma’s kind of different now held its charm, while Sulk’s just slowed the posse down.
—Yeah, Suze. You kiss him, diss him, then text in.
That she had to be with a boy to be one of the girls seemed ironic but incontestable. Sulekha could read Carmen’s unspoken thought as if she were subtitled:
Do this and you can buzz with the Bees.
They called themselves the Bees ’cause they could make honey and sting. Honey with their smiles and sting with their tongues. Sometimes they honeyuttered and glance-stung. Rarely did they honey-honey sting-sting.
At first Sulekha had thought the name was because of their grades. Sulk had never seen a B on her own report card. But sometimes she longed for one, voluptuous. She sometimes longed to make a mistake. What might happen then?
The bell dddrrringed. The Bees headed off in one direction, Sulk in the other.
Later, when she got on the bus, Sulekha took the window seat, leaving room just in case. But Gemma sat behind her, silent. So Sulk was surprised when she descended at her stop, even though her own was still four away.
When the bus was out of view, Gemma grabbed Sulk’s elbow.
—Damsel, I’m distressed, she said.
That was cowgirl code for sorry and Sulekha softened. Gemma rarely used their lingo in posse mode anymore, or even one-on-one.
—About the nappies. I know you’re not a baby. I don’t know why I say those things sometimes. It’s like someone else’s words are coming out of my mouth.
—I know what you mean, said Sulekha, and she did. —Like a bandit ventriloquist.
—Sounds like our next song, Gemma said, smiling sadly.
She hadn’t talked about the songs in ages. Sulk felt a tug of hope.
—Gem, I know they don’t really like me. I’m sorry, too. I know it’s hard for you.
—We just need to all get along, said Gemma too earnestly. She squeezed Sulk’s hand, then dropped it as if it were too hot. —I want them to see the damsel I see. But you’ve got to buzz with the Bees. Don’t make me choose—stick with me.
Sulekha looked at Gemma and the goldrush eyes that were so familiar when no one else was watching. She knew she wouldn’t make her choose. Because now the choice Gemma would make was clear.
—After tomorrow, said Gemma, closing her eyes. —We’ll all be the same.
—I’ll be there, said Sulk. And then, to remind Gem who they were: —You know I love you, lonestar.
—We can’t keep talking like that, Suzy, Gemma said, and the name made a funny-mirror sound coming from her mouth. —Especially not in front of the Bees. I’m sixteen now, you know.
Gemma got her period first; Gemma wore a bra first and took it off first, and now, though they were only months apart, it seemed as if mysteriously dense and ambiguous years were accumulating between them.
—I know, Sulekha said.
Gemma tapped her shades off head and over eyes and Sulk popped up double in the glassy lenses. She looked redundant. Gemma waved, turned, and walked away.
At home Sulekha kicked off her clogs in the foyer. She’d stashed the boots safely in her locker. Her mother had just shaken her head, with a funny little illegible expression, when she’d first worn the lime-and-sage cowkicks home two Septembers ago. She’d told Sulekha they were meant for a boy, and later turned back to the kitchen temple, the low candle glowing and the small ultrasound beside it, its speck of bright, brief life petaled from view by the curling edges. Sticks and stones; the unspoken in that was enough to make Sulk start sneaking them on at school instead, and it was strangely sweet turning secret, breathtakingly boundless going outlaw.
Unbaby was the unspoken. And since his unarrival, Sulk’s mother had begun to cast her eyes around this house they’d lived in for a decade as if startled to find herself in it. When Sulekha first heard the word stillborn, she thought it meant that despite everything, he’d still come through, was still born, this little one she already loved. She didn’t realize that that everything included his negation until she saw how her mother’s eyes chasmed after, how even she and Reshem no longer seemed to shine in them.
The house as usual was unbearably quiet without Reshem home. Long nights with only the thud of the dishwasher tablet releasing, the train-track spin cycle, a hiss of eraser to page. Television tuned low, an occasional uprising of programmed laughter; thick, silky rugs muffling footfall. Shh, Baby is studying. So silent the swirling dust motes hovering in the paned light ached her ears.
Reshem was in New York. Before she left, she chopped her hair, streaked it sunflower and satsuma and still blacker between. She began to look like a boy and the boys began to look at her: the Big Y baggers, the fertilizer company kids who came to lay the mulch, the paperboy with his topply twelve-speed, even her father’s whiskey-grinned colleague. But mostly the Radio Shack manboy with the dyed-blond dreadlocks; in this case Reshem had gazed right back, all summer long.
Sulekha recalled watching through the family-room window that week before Reshem left home, how her sister had huddled on her haunches and wept alone in the driveway, a staticky silence when that dyed-blond boy stormed off, just as tired of being hidden from her parents as they were of their true daughter being withheld from them.
That night, contemplating Reshem in her carefully ripped jeans and CBGBs T-shirt, her hair scuffed and face the most visible part of her, as if she were floating neck-deep in the black lake of the driveway, Sulekha remembered another Reshem: Monsoon Reshem, how she’d always prayed extra-hard for the rains, and when they came, ran from the swinging bed in Smita Villa out into the gray embrace of it all, spinning sun and moon, Surya and Soma, from her sari silk, her hair so long and even longer wet, her eyes so bright and even brighter then.
Her heart went out to Reshem. But what Reshem didn’t know was that inside her mother was weeping as well, before the goddess Laxmi, her father watching as well, from another darkened window. And caught between them, Sulekha fell mute, could not cross over to either side, straddle their pain and bring them together.
They seemed so confused by their children lately. Almost afraid of these creatures they’d birthed and fed and who were now sinking roots in foreign soil, flourishing like exotic plants and branching out in unforeseen directions.
Sulk switched on the computer and was grateful for its noisy hum. Half-smiling at the cheery face signaling the system was ready to go, she spelled in her password: Gem4Ever. It seemed unlikely Gem’s was still SulkOnly.
Like a bandit ventriloquist, Sulk thought to herself. It would be their next song if only Gemma let it. Tongue-tied, you’ve twisted / The words from my mouth / And oh, now I miss them.
A missing period. But Sulekha knew those were unspoken words bundled at the bottom of her belly. She felt like some of them got said unspokenly when she was around Gemma, even now. But she missed the days they were sung.
Sulekha wrote the words and Gemma sang them into the air like a paper airplane with a message that reached everyone. Gem strummed Sulk to new places; Sulekha’s words meant something else on her friend’s tongue, sunk in another salt and sweet. Or maybe they found their true meaning in Gemma’s mouth: She made sad things ring joyful; if you said you were blue, she made blue sound like the most beautiful hue to behold, the stroke to paint the world with.
—Cowgirls and indie boys, Gem rambled that last time.
—Give us another choice, Sulekha inked.
—Cowgirls and indie boys.
—Sing in another voice.
Sulekha loved Gemma. She loved her so much she wished she could have cried the tears Gemma left on Sulk’s pillow for days after Ryder rode off with her innocence. Sulekha knew every shift of her face, every flick and nail-pick of her fingers. She didn’t know how to play the guitar herself, but she memorized the shapes of Gemma’s hands on the frets, a sign-language counterpart to the voice that glowed like hot stones.
She loved her so much it broke her heart when Gemma frosted her words around the other girls, ice not to skate on; alone, they’d always been summerfield tones.
But on IM it was reassuringly different. She saw lonestar was online and shot off a Howdy, pardner. Moments later, the comforting tinkerbell ring:
lonestar: u doin ur xoxos?
Damsel: How will I know what to do?
lonestar: nuttin 2 do m8.
Damsel: But what will it be like?
lonestar: like rollng ur tung bk on itslf. try.
lonestar: u try?
Damsel: Yes. Two cavities.
lonestar: like som1 talk in ur mouth som1 put words in ur mouth.
lonestar: got it?
Damsel: Got it.
lonestar: gr8.
lonestar: feel ur way.
Damsel: I feel your way.
Damsel: Lone?
Damsel: Miss you.
lonestar: missu2.
lonestar: go west.
Damsel: But I have so many questions.
Damsel: ??
No reply, and when she glanced at the box she could see charmincarmen now up and online. For a while she stared at the two names fixed in the upper-right corner of her screen, as if waiting for them to do something. She felt she was spying somehow, and clicked the corner X to close the box. A half hour later, after finishing The Scarlet Letter, she fired out another question mark.
lonestar is not currently signed on.
Go West. That’s all Sulekha had been doing for the decade since coming to America. For a moment, her classmates were fascinated with her culture: There was a brief hip wink when they turned expectant faces to her over desktops and under monkey bars and looked for kamasutronic elucidation to shoot out from the space between her brows and zap them enlightened. Madonna was doing yoga. But Madonna was also having sex (which, it occurred to Sulekha, must have been pretty good with all that yoga). A few indie movies with Indie themes came out and played at the art-house cinemas near college campuses. Movies with Indians playing—Indians! And Indians—having sex!
None did yoga.
At first her parents had been excited about this focus on the motherland, but subsequently didn’t know quite what to make of it when it came packaged for America. Sulekha was not one of the new harmoniously whole South Asians, like her sister was determined to be in her new interdisciplinary life. She didn’t like bindis—she had enough to contend with in the form of round red facial explosions that occasionally, irreverently, appeared left of center, like one of Carmen’s stickons with faulty adhesive. Sulk begged for a nose ring in India, but no longer wanted it in East River, ever since she’d been asked on the seesaw if it was a perma-booger (a thump as she slid off and bumped her gnomelike interrogator to the sandy ground). Her parents refused to let the hole close, insisting it looked lovely on her. But then, years later, when they saw that half the girls at Royal Oak sported a nasal stud, they urged Sulekha to take it out.
—Why now? Sulk had asked, joining the tiny diamond with its pair in her ballerina box.
—Because we can’t make them take it off, her mother replied.
The hole didn’t close. Sulekha’s tongue weakened. She found asafetida disturbing and cayenne too hot. She had to spoon sugar in her mouth to stop the burning.
—You had no trouble with that in India, her mother worried.
But the same tongue in a new American context tasted things differently. Sulekha longed for the spaghetti and meat-balls at Carmen’s, the twinklingly lenient TV dinners at Gemma’s, doughnuts that left your fingers shiny and sticky and salaciously oozed yellow cream.
So no yoga, no bindis, no nose ring (but a nose hole); no Bharat Nãtyam, no vegetarianism, better Spanish than Marathi. The Bees were tongue-cluckingly disappointed; it had been an opportunity for Sulekha to redeem herself for her difference, to exoticize it, and she’d failed miserably. To make matters worse, Sulk didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, didn’t party, and she certainly didn’t kiss. She did study; she did get good grades. She did think about drinking, smoking, and kissing.
Still she couldn’t actually see herself engaging in these activities. It would be like picturing her parents. But she could imagine Carmen and Sledge, Carmen and Lane, Marisa and Ethan, and, mostly, Gemma. She didn’t have to conjure much with Carmen, who thrived on sharing technique in the gym at school dances. Or Marisa, who spilled all the d’s for the Bees and seemed to enjoy that more than doing it, even. That was all they ever talked about, in fact. They were on to more advanced forms of kissing these days—capital K, with other body parts— but it was all the same set of hieroglyphics to Sulk.
Envisioning herself with one of the boymen was tough; she was always invisible in these equations, the boys even more delineated in her mind than they were in the lockered halls before her. With Gemma it was just the opposite. Gemma kissed invisible boys in Sulekha’s mind. Sometimes the boys shape-shifted, from Lane to strangers to Omar Sharif. But always at the meltiest end of Sulk’s imaginings they vanished again.
Now she recalled an image from a movie she’d once seen: a woman stripped to skin on a wild horse at a hacienda, doubly bareback. She couldn’t remember much else about the film. But she could hear the hooves strike dust, see the surrender of flesh on flesh, human hip on horse’s haunch, and that flying, fiery hair, like a flag to somewhere else.
Her hands worked a swirling script between her legs till the ache spasmed, left her throbbingly boneless in the swivel chair. She lay back panting gently, feeling ashamed and amazed.
Sulekha finished her homework. She helped her mother with the rest of the meal, chopping up onions under cold water, crushing cardamom with mortar and pestle. She cleaned up after, careful to twist-tie the excess oil into double plastic bags so as not to clog the drain, wiping the floury countertops back to peach. She poured iceless water into stainless-steel cups, folded paper-towel triangles, and laid it all out: fresh saag studded with garlic cloves, sweet thick dahl and rice, okra.
Her father was home early, whistling as he entered as if a golden retriever might be waggingly waiting around the corner. He washed his hands, Sulk’s mother washed hers, and then Sulekha did, too, at the kitchen tap. At the table, which was square, her sister’s spot, as usual, gaped.
—So Reshem cannot come until Sunday, Daddy, her mother told her father. —Too much busy-busy college business. She has to think .
—About what? She can think here, can’t she? her father wondered.
—Apparently not.
—Baby, beta, I hope you’re not too disappointed, he said, turning anxious eyes to Sulekha. —I know you’re missing your sister these days.
Sulekha sensed an opportunity.
—Well, I do miss having a sister around, she said slowly.
Her parents exchanged pained glances. Sulekha cleared her unimpeded throat.
—You know, Aai, Baba—the girls from school wanted to have a party for me tomorrow night. At Carmen Roncevic’s, just across the town line by Gemma’s.
They stared as if she’d just announced she was joining a traveling circus.
—Not even a party really. Just to, you know, celebrate my . . . sweet sixteen.
Sulekha felt a near-hysterical giggle hiccup up when she said it. Sweet sixteens were for SPF 15 girls with slim hips and Little Dippered skin. Not her.
—What is so sweet about sixteen in this country? her father wondered aloud, chewing slowly, perplexed. —Why not fifteen?
—Baby is very sweet, her mother said, arrowing a glance at her father.
—Why not eleven?
—Alliteration, probably, said Sulk.
That last word seemed to frighten her mother.
—Baby, do not stress, she nearly pleaded. —But why you can’t invite your friends here? I will make puran poli—just the way you like!—and we will all do the pooja together. Kaka and Kaki might even come from Hartford.
Sulekha considered this incongruous image of the Bees mingling cross-leggedly with her family before the floored Ganesha, with her uncle, who was unabashedly prone to a vigorous belch after meals, and her aunt, whose regurgitative release was shallower but still Richter-registerable; even though Reshem couldn’t make it, Sulk still pictured her, lobbing about looks of disgust, taking solace in the fact that they weren’t her real uncle and aunt, just called that the way all your parents’ friends were in India.
It didn’t seem very sweet.
—They can’t come Saturday, said Sulekha. —They go to church.
—On Saturday? I thought church was Sunday.
—Right. To practice. For Sunday.
—Good girls, her father said, nodding with surprising seriousness.
—I’d be back in time to help get everything ready for Kaka and Kaki.
—Oh, Baby, I don’t—
—It’s just the girls, she added. —It’s just one night. It’s not even my actual birthday.
When there was no response, she played the missing-period factor.
—It would really de-stress me.
—Well, her mother sighed. —I suppose it can’t hurt. And Gemma will be there to keep an eye on you.
—Ah, Mummy, it’s okay, her father said, smiling, patting her hand, gently, clumsily. —What kind of trouble can she get into with the girls?
Sulekha’s mother and father had really taken to Gemma ever since she’d dissed Winston Churchill for allegedly calling Gandhi “that little man in a loincloth,” which made them instantly forgive her burgundy passport. They might have appreciated her sooner had they realized that until Gemma arrived, Sulekha’s first year in America had been the loneliest of her short but deeply felt life.
That first day of school in the U.S.A. felt like a birthday. Not in the sense of a celebration, but in that it felt like no matter how far she’d come in her six adventure-studded jamrukhslaked years, she’d have to start all over as if they’d never happened at all. Sulekha was dressed in her Catholic-school uniform from India (she was Hindu but that’s how it worked if you wanted a proper British education there): starched white short-sleeved shirt, denim-blue skirt to the knees, and chappals, her hair tightened in two coconut-oiled braids with even longer ribbons (red, white, and blue; her mother thought it would be a nice touch). She stood out like a small brown pilgrim awash in a sea of scintillating pinks and ironons. This was not an auspicious start. So many of the American mother-daughters were dressed nearly identically; a number were in tracksuits, which made Sulekha worry they’d be asked to run or climb soon.
—Aai, Mummy, what will I say? little Sulekha had panicked when it was time for the children to leave their parents.
—Do not worry, Baby, her mother murmured. —It’s the English, it’s the same. It is your second language.
That wasn’t what Sulekha had meant. And in any case, it wasn’t the same language. The English she’d learned in India, British English taught by Indian nuns with its tea blend of chiseled stone and hilly sky, was not the highway slur and blurry blue windows of American English. And this distinction was made plain right away, at roll call.
—Sue . . . Sue Lake Shayne?
She hadn’t recognized it as her name at first. Then it clicked.
—Uh . . . heeyuh, she’d said. Here.
—Hee haw? someone chortled.
They giggled at her shalls and shan’ts and lorries, her queues and jolly goods. Sulekha didn’t share with them the bloody hells that marqueed resoundingly in fantastic fonts across the backs of her eyes. They wrinkled their eyebrow-noses at her saran-wrapped samosas and asked if she was Cherokee (her art teacher had been to a reservation once! It had changed her life!).
Until Gemma arrived.
Gem then looked a miniature version of Gem now, the longly tangled hair, and something like a patchwork quilt for a skirt and camisole top. Blue and fuchsia rubber bands wound round her wrist, the same way Sulk wore seven gold bangles. She had an utterly serious expression on her face.
—Class. This is Gemma Nicks, they’d announced. —She has arrived to Royal Oak from London . . . England!
A collective intake of breath.
—I shan’t be late again, Gemma had said in a crisp, controlled accent that trimmed the air of all its excess fat. Sulk’s heart leaped: Shan’t.
At recess, scores of seven-year-olds thronged around the mysterious girl, not least because of this accent that evoked little princesses and single princes, powdery queens and page-turning Dickens, but, more important, the Spice Girls. Sulekha, however, was drawn to it for another reason: It was just like her own with the soft parts pared off, the core of an overripe apple. She began to sense the pulse of vindication on a nearing horizon. And at lunch that day, as she fiddled with her brown paper bag at a corner table, it was confirmed when, in front of absolutely everyone and their dog, Gemma Nicks set her tray down next to hers, and for a brief rapturous moment made Sulekha Madhav Shahane good visible.
—Papadum! I simply adore papadum! Gemma exclaimed, cat eyes tipping higher. —I don’t reckon you’ve got another, Sulekha?
Sulekha: sung like a sigh. It had been ages.
—I’ll trade you, she’d added, rummaging in her rucksack.
India, it turned out, was nothing new to Gemma Nicks: India was well tucked into London with its curry houses and supermarket spices, its imported marble temples and the Brick Lane she spoke of that seemed a kind of Yellow Brick Road but red, but blue, but many-hued. Sulekha couldn’t believe her ears. And when Gemma produced a luridly wonderfully large Toblerone bar, she couldn’t believe her eyes.
—Chocolate? she offered, and it sounded like chalk lit . As the nougat emerged on her tongue, Sulekha imagined glow-in-the-dark blackboards scripted in luminous cursives that spoke to her alone.
They chose Gemma. But Gemma chose Sulekha.
Over the years they teamed up, the British-born and the Indian, in a quest to become American as quickly as possible. Together, as if they were performing the most exacting surgery, they learned to extract the l from travelling, the u from colour. They shifted “shan’t” to “won’t” and “a bit” to “a little.” They never, ever engaged in “dreadfully frightful rows.” And, word by word, it worked. It didn’t feel so much a surrender as a fantastic linguistic heist, a game of dress-up of audible proportions. What was lonely as one was lovely with tea for two.
And, as seemed only fitting, along the way they created a new language for this young map:
A stirrup was when something moved your heart. A hodeo was a bunch of fooled-around girls getting together and spelling out the d’s. Bullfight: when someone was lying to you. Giddyup—noun, singular—an outfit that made you feel particularly gorgeous. The good, the rad, and the snoggly was an irresistible boy; the hood, the bad, and the ugly, a nasty one—increasingly, the line between the two thinned for Gemma and solidified for Sulekha. Holster was gimme-a-hug, saddled was bummed out. Bareback: being caught in your birthday suit. Riding bareback involved entanglements in other people’s birthday suits. Ghost town? A dead party— that’s how Gemma usually described the ones Sulekha couldn’t attend.
A goldrush was how they felt around one another.
—Do you speak Indian? the creamy-skinned children had asked.
Now she spoke cowgirl.
—Don’t forget your mother tongue, the umber ones in India had warned.
Now, with Gemma, she remembered herself.
The September before embarking on high school, with Gemma’s Christmas checks and Sulekha’s odd-figure Diwali dollars, they gifted each other their most prized possessions ever: a pair of bona fide cowboy boots. Sulk’s were pull-on lizardskin, green as limes. Gemma’s were crisscross lace-ups, purple with suede fringe. Gazing in the floorbound mirrors that made the world seem a swiftly tilting planet, Sulekha was mesmerized.
—We made it, Damsel, Gemma had said. —We’ve conquered the Wild West.
They were a size too big so the girls could grow into them. Sulekha’s feet slipped around a little on their slopes, but they were magnificent. In these cowgirl shoes, she felt like a different person. Or the one she actually was. A pioneer, a buccaneer. A pardner.
—Lonestar, Sulk said with a twang that lay somewhere shot through the middle of a pile of maps. —Let’s ride.
Fourteen and this turf was just big enough for the two of them. But that was all before the indie boys rode into town with their caravan of stick-shift cars and dusty grins. Fifteen, and the playing field was replete with damsels in distress. It didn’t pay to be a lonestar—you wanted to be part of a constellation. Nearing sixteen, bitterstung bee-sweet: Gemma stopped wearing the boots.
—It’s getting childish to match like that, she explained, in kitten heels identical to the ones the Bees were wearing that week.
A kick, invisible, in Sulekha’s belly.
Last September, in the sweltering season of Ryder, Gemma grew shy about her body. One afternoon, when they were last in the group shower stall for the required pre-pool rinse, Sulekha was astonished to see Gem’d come up with fresh prep choreography: She curled over herself fetuslike, rolling over the shifting landscape of her chest and Down There— jealously, possessively, shyly, as if she were cupping her hands over a particularly important exam answer. And Sulekha tried not to cheat but couldn’t help herself: Off the edge of her eye, as Gemma unfurled for an instant to shave her underarms, Sulk was amazed at how the lush, unruly undergrowth below her belly button had condensed to a tamed slim strip, more of her baby shape visible than had been in four summers. Sulekha felt a strange sense of nostalgia and revulsion, was suddenly conscious of her own nakedness in a way she’d never been with Gemma before. She felt shy, and sad to feel shy.
—What are you looking at? Gemma snapped, rapidly pulling on a one-piece, but not before Sulk had seen the double blues of bitemarks running down her inner thigh flesh.
—I dunno.
—Boys like this.
—It’s just . . . different.
—Well, if you want it to be the same, Gemma said then, curtly handing the razor over. —Make it the same.
Sulk stood stupidly holding the pink plastic handle until she realized what Gemma meant.
—Go on.
She sudsed up, feeling absurdly frothy Down There. She took the razor with one hand, stretched her skin back tight with the other, stroking upward. She was surprised at the thickness and curliness of the hair that coated the razor with that single stroke. She glanced up. Gemma stood with her arms crossed and nodded at her to continue. Sulk shaved off one more strip from the outer edge, a little too hard. She sucked in her upper lip as a single drop of rose reddened up on that previously untouched flesh.
And then Gemma was kneeling before her. She took the razor from her hand.
—Here, you’ll hurt yourself, she said gently. —Let me do it. She felt frozen looking down at Gemma’s head, the hair so dark when it was wet, almost like Sulk’s own. Her heart dropped to the base of her belly, swelling.
Gemma slipped the blade up so easily she didn’t feel a thing. And when she was done, Sulekha looked just like her. There.
—Let me see, Gemma had said, standing. It felt strange, being examined by her. They’d shared this space before, but that day it was different. That day Gemma perused her with a stranger’s eyes. And there was a little sad something in those eyes, and a little something Sulk had never seen there before, like hunger and fear combined; hunger for fear? But in an instant it was business as usual. Gemma rinsed the razor and turned her back.
—Join the club, she said, and stepped out of the stall. From that day forward, they stopped walking with their schoolgirl arms around each other. They knew what was happening inside each other’s clothes, and though they did not touch, they held on even more tightly in their exchanged glances, their averted eyes, in what they didn’t say.
On Friday morning, from the pre-homeroom moment Sulk coaxed on her lizardskin boots, Royal Oak Regional High School resonated with new meaning. No one but the Bees knew who the midnight boyman would be, but it felt like everyone—from the custodian to passing upperclassmen— was giving Sulk looks loaded with meaning.
It was a different world in which anyone could be The One. The rowdy boys, the brainy boys, the alt boys with MP3s dreaming moody music, the skater boys and their proudly displayed bruises. It was a more hopeful world. The boys began to look less and less like parts of their various groups, and more just like boys. Independent. Even Lane Hallestorm (would it be? had he given her a glance just now? how could it be?): Once you zoned in on him and not the posse he posed in, he cocooned nearly human.
All day Sulekha gazed with an intensity at the mouths of her classmates—Carmen’s carefully applied, Joel Macero’s pensively chewed, Patrick Trainor’s brazenly toothed, Gemma’s own bare heart-shaped lips—until it seemed the whole room was awash in a sea of tongue steeped, a chorus of openings.
Her family seemed joyfully far.
And the Bees seemed satisfied. They were laughing at her as they went through a round of puckering exercises in the parking lot, but they were also closer than they’d ever been, and that meant something. And most important, Gemma was nearly being Gemma again. Sending her secret shimmering winks that made the butterflies flutter by in the pit of Sulk’s queasy stomach. We made it across, the smiles seemed to say. Nearly there. Nearly together again. In spite of herself, anticipation began to mount. Sulekha’s lower belly was in twirling cramps, like springs longing to shoot into the world, unspiral, straighten out a truth.
Last period put an end to the ellipses. In Honors American History, she turned around to pass the assignment back to Abhijit, today wearing a bandanna over his forehead that she’d seen him tying on by his locker. He mumbled:
—Got your phone?
She nodded, confused.
Moments later, she felt it vibrate through her bag, against her boot. Peering down, she saw the tiny envelope symbol and clicked.
xo + folks = kill. 210 at nth-sth
She understood.
At a little before two P.M., Abhijit raised his hand and asked to go to the boys’ room. A smidge after, Sulekha waved and requested the girls’.
At the junction of North and South Halls, by the handicapped toilet, she found him.
—Abe, she said, just in case anyone was around, and then, closer up. —Abhijit.
Despite the brazenly patterned headwrap, he looked sheepish.
—I’m really sorry, he said.
—So it’s you.
So this was the suitable boy they’d sorted for her? Abhijit. No alt, no rowdy, no jock, no skater, no brain, and of course, no Lane. But Abhijit Joshi, the only other desi (however American born) in school. How uncreative. Or actually, perhaps how creative, nearly doing her parents’ work for them— though the Bees probably didn’t realize that joint outcastedness at Royal Oak Regional High did not undo the biases their families had long ago packed in their luggage just in case and later casually unfolded before the eyes of their U.S.-bred children. Though both were Marathi, the Joshis were Brahmin, the religious caste, and more important, a higher caste than the Shahanes’ warrior one Kshatriya, which made them a little too uppity in Sulk’s mother’s opinion. Mrs. Joshi was always going on (in front of her) about how their bodies ran with pundit blood. And Sulekha’s mother was constantly proclaiming (behind her back) about how it was the Kshatriyas, the caste of kings, who’d protected these supposed pundits during all the great wars.
They stared at each other a moment, then simultaneously began to laugh.
—Look at us, said Abhijit, shaking his head. —My parents would kill me—with a CKP NRI like you.
—Nonresident immigrant? Excuse me, we live here, Sulekha said, smiling. —And imagine mine, with a pseudo-pundit ABCD like you.
—Look, I’m not gonna be able to escape so late without my folks sending out a SWAT team, Abhijit said, lowering his voice. —But can you act like it happened? You only have to go for a few. You don’t even have to do the woods; they won’t know.
—Don’t worry, said Sulekha. —I’m kind of in the same situation.
Of course, she couldn’t call his bluff. It was in both their interests, whatever the stakes were on his end, to just say they’d gone through with it.
She presented her hand. After a moment he took it and shook. His palm was warm and his grip surprisingly firm.
—Thanks, Sulekha, I owe you, he said, and grinned. His mouth wasn’t so outcaste then, though it was still hard to imagine kissing it. —I hope it was good for you.
—The sweetest sixteen I never had, she said.
She almost liked this boy she’d called an American Born Confused Desi, with his earnest eyes and eager bandanna. She expected to feel winded, a tangible disappointment. But instead relief pumped her body bright. And when she looked around at her classmates running for the buses, clustering with friends in the sidewalk light, the sun still shone, stored with gold across a nearing frontier.
That night after dinner, Sulk brushed and even flossed. She had to get decked enough so the Bees wouldn’t suspect nothing was going to happen, but not so much so that her parents thought something would. She settled for flared jeans and a fitted button-down lilac shirt. She butterfly-clipped her hair, carefully pulling a few waves out to twirl around her face. Bangles and, finally, boots. The girl in the mirror was glowing, she was startled to see. Eyes the shade of gingerroot and shine of night rain. She was all dressed up with someplace to go.
Her parents both drove her to Carmen’s. They climbed partially up the drive, but not too far, and even stopped the engine. Inside the den window, Sulk could see shadowy figures drifting about on a soft swell of music. She hoisted the duffel she’d packed and opened the back door.
—Now, don’t forget to phone as soon as you’re up so we can come get you, her father said.
—I won’t forget.
—And call if you change location, her mother added. —Even for a half hour.
—Mummy, Daddy, said Sulk, trying on a reassuring smile. —Nothing’s going to happen here.
She got out, slinging the sack on her shoulder as she headed off. Out of habit she turned back, and they were still there, the engine now running but the car most probably in park; nevertheless, her father gripped the wheel as if it were moving, and her mother remained belted down, looking squashed under the straps she never lengthened after Sulekha had last been in the passenger seat. Sulk was reminded of that first day of school in America and her mother’s split-end braid, the salwar pants that billowed like pajamas out from under her coat. Today her mother’s hair was layered short, based on a photo she’d clipped from Redbook. She was watching her daughter fearfully through the windshield. Sulekha couldn’t help but go back and lean in the unrolling window.
—Don’t worry, Aai, she whispered, laying her hand on her mother’s cheek. —It’s going to be all right.
This time when Sulekha walked away, she didn’t turn back. But she could feel their eyes all candle on her until Carmen’s front door opened and they knew she was safely inside, felt the swing of headlights scan her back as they reversed and left.
The first thing she noticed when she entered: Gem in braids and boots! This was an auspicious start.
—Facesucker!
—Liplocker!
—Tongue-twister!
Marisa and Poppy and Carmen seemed far more excited than Gemma, though, who stood back almost shyly as they group-hugged Sulk.
—Snogger, she finally, quietly, said when Sulekha was released.
The room was a lively mess of magazines and makeup boxes, CDs strewn in silver spinning heaps. Missy Elliott was playing, and juice spilled off a speaker top, a drop off the beat. Carmen nabbed the plastic cup and pressed it into Sulk’s hands.
—Bottoms up, honeybee.
It was a well-sweetened command, and the contents of the cup were much paler than calcium-enriched Tropicana OJ usually was. That’s when Sulk noted the unscrewed bottle of Absolut on the coffee table. She tipped the cup to make Carmen happy, and her dipped lip immediately hummed.
—Come on, Suzy! yelped Poppy, turning up the volume. She began to sing along. —You gotta work it, lemme work it . . .
—Now, we don’t have time to waste on prehistoric tunes, Carmen announced, slamming her hands together. —We gotta get on Project SMS.
—Project SMS? Sulk and Gem said at the same time. They looked at each other, and Gemma half-smiled.
—We are gonna doll, you, up, Suzy M. Shahane, Carmen proclaimed.
—What do you mean?
This is what she meant (Carmen gestured like an airline hostess): a facial (self-heating), a manicure (aqua), a pedicure (violet), straight-ironing Sulekha’s hair (old-Friends Rachel). A trio of eyeshadows (on the brow bone, lid, and rim), a trinity of lip products (liner, lipstick, and gloss, all the same shade-too-cherry for Sulk’s taste), and a stroke of blush up the cheeks. They went to it, Marisa reading aloud from the prom issue they were using as a guide.
Poppy unbuttoned Sulekha’s top two buttons. Marisa undid the bottom four and knotted her shirt ends together just below the bra line. Carmen tugged the jeans a lick lower and lent her a double-looped rhinestone belt to create a sort of cowgirl-popstar midriff expose. A spritz of J Lo Glow hot off Carmen’s vanity table, and, at a little after 11:30 P.M. EST, Friday, May 21, Sulekha was ready to go.
—How do I look? she asked Gemma, who she saw then was sitting a small distance away, nursing her plastic cup.
—Who are you? said Gemma, barely looking up. The contents of her cup were translucent as a goldfish fin. —You’re hardly recognizable.
—Exactly! cried Carmen triumphantly. She unpeeled the bindi from her own forehead and stuck it on Sulekha’s.
—You might need this, she added with exaggerated mystery.
Sulk tried to look confused, as if she had no idea how the bindi could apply. Actually it wasn’t so hard with the way Gemma was acting—maybe she’d had a little too much? It seemed the same cup she turned slowly in her hands, but perhaps Sulekha had missed the transitional refill.
—Now, if he gets stuck on your bra straps, just undo them yourself, Marisa advised. —It is so cringeworthy watching a guy go through that. Kills all the atmosphere.
—Are your jeans button-fly or zip? Poppy interjected, chompingly cocking her head. She sucked in a snapped bubble. —Okay, cool thinking—zip’s easier.
—But that between-the-buttons move can be totally hot, too. . . .
—Keep your cell on in case, was Gemma’s only contribution to the conversation. She leaned her head against the wall as if it hurt and peered up at them from under a curtain of dirty-blond hair.
—Yeah, in case you don’t know what to do—
—Or he knows too much—
—Or you just can’t stop!
—I thought it was just a kiss, exclaimed Sulekha, mock-shocked; she was safe in her secret. She and Abhijit had shaken on it, after all. Maybe they were a great match.
—A kiss is never just a kiss, Poppy said, grinning, breath redolent of grape and turpentine this close. —Don’t believe those black-and-white movies.
The Bees seemed to be growing very fond of her the more they dispensed this advice, or at least of their own voices, clamoring in close, buzzing into her ears, making honey-honey.
—This is stupid, Gemma suddenly snapped. All heads swiveled. Sulk could see her trying to rein in her flexed brow and furrowed mouth. Gemma wasn’t looking at her, though, but at Carmen. —She doesn’t need your advice. She knows what she’s doing.
—Really? said Carmen coolly. —Since when?
—Since now. She’s sixteen, bloody hell. What is wrong with you all?
—What’s wrong with you? Carmen challenged. It felt funny seeing the words she’d used on Sulekha just yesterday doing a spin and shooting out Gemwards.
—I’m going home, said Gemma, rising in one swoop as if strings had jerked her up marionette-like. —I’ve got things to do.
She was at the door. The Bees stared, stunned.
—Whatever, Carmen said, rolling her eyes. —You’ve been acting weird all night.
—PMS, honey? slurred Poppy, gazing, fascinated, into her empty cup. But Gemma was already out the door.
—She’ll be back, Carmen said, nodding. —Got to buzz with the Bees.
She tapped her watch.
—You better go, too, Suzy. You don’t want to blitz all these hours of prepping.
Sulekha already had her hand on the latch.
She sped down the driveway, boots tock-tocking as she caught up to Gemma. Gemma glanced at her, then quickened her pace.
—I thought you wanted this, said Sulk, quietly breathless.
—I do want it.
—I’m doing it for you.
Gemma stopped short and her eyes were mesmerizing and cold as a doll’s.
—Why don’t you do something for yourself for a change? she hissed.
—Well, I will, then, said Sulekha, but her heart wasn’t in it.
She stood a moment watching Gemma go, turn into darkness, return in the lamplight, and vanish, as if someone were flicking on and off a switch.
Sulekha knew the Saloon so well she could find her way there even in the dark. True that new shoots had sprung, a few branches snapped down with the spring’s thunderstorms. But she read the forest with her fingers until she was securely in the star-mossed cove. She could feel it from the way her boot heels dug plushed as if on living-room carpet. She could tell from the angle of moon slipping between the branches and down.
She wasn’t sure what to do. She didn’t know how long she’d have to wait to make it convincing, or if she even wanted to go back to Carmen’s—lying by withholding was doable, but without keyboard or pen and paper, how would she create a convincing tale of the passionate exchanges that would not take place this evening by the roots of the knottiest oak?
An owl’s persistent who.
Dropping to her haunches, she ran her fingers along the tangle of roots at the trunk’s base. What other secrets does this tree have to tell? she wondered. How many times had they lain here as kids, right here, talking cowgirls and indie boys? How many times had the others come, had skin transformed skin and frontiers been crossed? She was peering so closely at the rugged landscape of broken bark, at first she didn’t realize what she took for a variation in its layered texture was in fact someone separating from trunk, stepping out from behind as if from within it. She knew that silhouette, that wrangler stance, and rolled slowly up off her hips to stand face-to-face with Gemma.
—Hi, she said warily.
—Hey.
Gemma’s voice sounded disembodied in the woods: vulnerable. She was braidless now, and the dirty-blond hair wavier still, rippling to her waist, nearly. Sulekha could tell she was uncomfortable from the way she shifted from balls to heels of her fringed purple boots, rocking in a puddle of twig-latticed moon.
—What are you doing here?
—So he didn’t come.
It wasn’t an answer. Was it.
—How do you know?
—I know, Gemma said. She jolted to her toes and lingered a moment before coming down. —I called him.
—Why would you do that?
Sulk moved back a step, annoyed for some reason.
—I’m sorry, Suzy. I got a little worried when all that button-fly this and that came up just now.
—Great, Sulekha sighed, leaning against the oak. —And what do the Bees think of all this?
Gemma looked confused.
—How should I know? she said. —I just came straight here.
Gemma stepped farther out from behind the trunk and came to stand beside her.
—So . . . you’re not too disappointed?
—No, Sulk said, shrugging and turning away a little. She turned back again. —You know, I am curious, though. Who would pick a boy I would never kiss?
Gemma stood half in shadow, a stunningly melancholy half-moon; it took Sulekha’s breath away. Like that, both of them partly veiled, it could have been all those years ago, their nearly far childhood, right here and now.
—I would, she said. Her words swayed but held.
—Why? Sulekha said softly. But somehow she could taste Gemma’s words in her mouth, and in this childed darkness, was beginning to know where they came from.
—I don’t know. I couldn’t stand the thought of another Ryder in here with you—someone treating it like a game. I went along but then I was sorry. Someone doing that with my Damsel.
Sulekha’s heart start-and-stopped.
—What? Gemma said, the illuminated side of her face worrying the moon riven.
—I’m just surprised you called me that.
Gemma looked down and tested the moss with her boot toe as if searching for a weak floorboard.
—I didn’t want you to get your heart broken, she said.
—Only heartbreak I’ve ever had is you, Sulekha replied, and immediately regretted it until she saw Gemma’s sad smile.
—Sounds like a song, she said.
They both slid down to the base of the trunk and sat, knees up, arms wrapped around in separate self-hugs.
It was so quiet suddenly that Sulekha could hear loud and clear. She could hear the whiskey bottles glittering in the soil just a foot below their bottoms. She could hear crickets, distant traffic, the stitching hum of people far, far above, flying from one place to another.
—I . . . Gemma said softly, trailing off.
Childheart beating in womanchest.
The past, the present, the future all mixed up in this moment.
Sulekha can hear midnight come and go.
They are watching each other unspokenly now. Sulekha can see herself in Gemma’s pupils, wide as oceans from a night airplane, the all-those-years-ago night they left India behind to come here, now.
But Gemma keeps arriving.
And then she is so close Sulk can’t see her anymore. A faint scent of orange, and the world Sulekha knows begins to crumble away like dry earth.
Inside, something sparkles.
It isn’t like rolling your tongue back on itself. No—rather, a slow unfurling, an unsuspected blossom, and a thrill deep as root insisting its way through earth. This dark push fills her.
This is me, I am doing this.
Sulekha’s belly gives; autumn between her legs already, an early turning. A sound of ink sliding from broken pen, seeping unnamed into the roots of the knottiest oak, sucking up into trunk and branch: red leaves, green sky, blue grass.
Gemma begins to laugh and cry at the same time, and she smells like a little girl.
—Sulekha, Gemma whispers.
—Gemma, Sulekha sighs.