Sadiya hated the new sound FaceTime made whenever she called her parents. It had been about two weeks since the big breakup, but she’d managed to hide the fact that she was single from them, but now it was time to come clean. For once, she was glad they hadn’t approved of Rakshan.
From Bangalore, India, Sadiya’s mother answered the call. “Hello?”
“Amma?”
“Hello? I can’t hear you.”
“Amma, it’s a video call.”
Sadiya stifled a laugh as she explained the concept of FaceTime to her mother for the tenth time. “Let me see your eyes, not your mouth.”
After dropping the phone once, Hema Murthy was finally able to pick it up.
Sadiya smiled seeing her mom’s wild and sparkling eyes. I wonder how so much energy can fit in such a small body? When she was younger, Sadiya would poke Hema’s stomach and have her exclaim like the Pillsbury dough boy.
“Ah, now I can see your pretty smile, kanne,” Hema said. “Rakshan didn’t want to hang out tonight?”
“Amma, remember time zones. It’s nighttime there but morning here.”
“Must be very early if you’re still in bed,” her mother teased.
Sadiya changed the subject. “Um, is Dad there?”
“Oh, that man. If it’s Saturday night, Sahit is at the club playing squash and drinking.” There was no mistaking the disdain in her voice. “When are you coming home next, Sadiya?”
“Soon, Amma.”
“It’s just that you aren’t getting any younger, dear. Or skinnier. That man isn’t great, but at least he can give you children.”
“Mom!”
“He can give you children, right?”
“Mom, we broke up.”
A silence permeated the room, as thick as rasgulla. Sadiya thought her phone had frozen and was about to hang up and call her mother back when Hema whispered as if gossiping about sex.
“Is he gay?”
“Ma!” Now it was Sadiya’s turn to drop her phone.
Her mother didn’t wait for her to pick it back up before voicing her opinion. “I know the trends over there. Over here now, too. When your father and I were dating, there were no gay people. Now? All gay.”
Picking the phone back up to look at her mother, Sadiya made sure the camera caught her eye roll. “India has over a billion people, Amma. I don’t think they’re all gay.”
“Oh, you’re so smart, huh? Tell me then, what happened?”
“He just…he wasn’t for me.”
“You think your father was as sweet as a laddu when I met him? Marriage takes work, Sadiya.”
Sadiya smiled before responding. “We never got married, so no need to work, right?”
“Hmph. I gave birth to a genius, did I? Where is my prize?”
It was at this moment that Sadiya heard a door slam in the background as her father arrived home.
Another day spent with his drinking buddies at the club. She stifled another smile as he called out his daily greeting to his wife.
“Chai?”
“Forget the chai, Sahit. Come see what your daughter is doing to our life.”
“My life,” Sadiya muttered under her breath as her father stepped into the frame.
“What is wrong, my baby?”
“Nothing is wrong, Appa. I broke up with Rakshan.”
“Aye! That is first-class news!”
Hema slapped him on the wrist, dropping her iPhone again in the process. Sahit picked it up and set it on the table in front of them, leaving the couple to scrunch together on a couch.
“Your mother always thinks she’s Katrina Kaif. Such an actress! But we all know she didn’t like Rakshan.”
Her mother looked mortified, but Sadiya appreciated her father’s honesty. It was one of the few traits she hoped she’d acquired from her parents.
“Now that the boy is done with, we can set you up with a proper man. My friend, Uday, at the club was just mentioning to me that his son is moving from Sunnyvale to New York. He’s got a master’s, kanne. He’s a suitable match, an engineer. Why don’t I call him?”
Sadiya watched as her mother nodded in excitement. She’d hang up the phone right now and call Uday if I let her. She rolled her eyes at her mother’s lack of shame.
“Rakshan has a master’s,” Sadiya argued.
“Yes,” Sahit said. “He has a master’s in drinking.”
“Appa, you just came from the club.”
“Yes. I was playing squash.”
She sighed before changing the subject. “I actually think I might have met someone here.” Here goes nothing. Sadiya’s heart began to race as she looked beyond her phone to the day planner lying open on her bed. It had one item written in all caps: TELL MOM AND DAD. Now she had to do it, she had to be brave. It was in the planner; it was set in stone.
“Oh?” Her father made no attempt to hide his skepticism as he sipped chai that one of their servants handed him.
“An Indian.” It’s like ripping off a Band-Aid; do it all at once. It was as if her heart was a Prius and she was on a hill that demanded an SUV.
“Thik hai,” Hema said, satisfied for now.
“What’s his name?” Sahit asked.
“You know this person,” Sadiya said. Almost there. Tires squealed against dirt in her mind.
“Enough suspense,” Hema said, snapping her fingers. “This isn’t an episode of Who Wants to be a Millionaire.”
“It’s Maadhini.” The words came out like verbal diarrhea. Then again, her parents had always been comfortable talking about diarrhea. Maybe this’ll be okay.
No one spoke again, and Sahit sipped his chai to break the silence.
“Kanne,” Hema said, rocking her head side to side like a bobblehead, “you’re just confused. All that time with the drunkard got you mixed up. You come visit Bangalore or go hook up with the engineer.”
Sadiya squeezed her phone so tight in anger that the screen went black as her skin covered it. I knew this would probably happen. So then why am I still so upset? To dream and to hope was to invite disappointment in her life. Yet what would life be without those things?
“Baby,” Sahit said. “I can’t see you. What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong is that you’re both ruining my life!”
Hema turned to her husband. “This was the problem with sending her to America without us. She got all these American ideas.”
Without addressing his wife, Sahit responded straight to Sadiya. “We love you no matter what, baby. Go through this phase if it will make you happier.”
“Oh my god, it’s not a phase, Dad!”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” her mom said. “You think only boys don’t like drama, but the truth is girls aren’t so wild about it, either.”
Sadiya bottled a scream as she dropped her phone on the floor again and saw her mom smirk.
“I can see you’re upset, kanne,” Sahit said. “Let’s talk next week. Love you, baby.”
That could’ve gone worse, Sadiya admitted to herself after hanging up. At least no one had disowned her. Throwing her phone on the table by her couch, she finally started her day. It was almost noon; two weeks had passed since Rakshan had demolished both her life and her routine.
I can’t believe I got drunk in public. As an architect, Sadiya had built a life that mirrored her work: perfect and precise, constrained by rules like “wake up at seven no matter what” and “watch The Bachelor and tweet about how bad it is.” Crossing items off her day planner released anxiety from her like a valve. She lived and died by the hand-written lists that filled that planner. If it wasn’t on one of her lists, it didn’t exist. So much for that.
The sheer fact that she’d wanted to tell her parents about Maadhini told her she was on the right track, though. Sadiya hadn’t realized it at the time, but when she’d broken up with Rakshan she’d also broken up with the idea of routines. I’m a free bird now, she thought as she opened her closet and picked out her clothes from a section she’d labeled “weekend wear.” Right? Breaking a routine was scary, but maybe she could find a happy medium. Maybe I can plan spontaneity. But first, she needed a hot shower.
As the water hit her skin, she closed her eyes and listened to the whine of the pipes. Scents of honey and vanilla wrapped around her as she applied an ayurvedic shampoo to her hair. When she inhaled, she thought of Maadhini and those eyes that could penetrate anyone’s soul, her soft lips…
Showers were always good for thinking, and when Sadiya stepped out, she knew what she wanted. It was time to make another call.
“Hello?” Maadhini answered, sounding like she was halfway through a marathon.
“Are you running?”
“Sadiya? Yeah, what’s up?”
“I…uh…I was thinking…about last night…”
“…And?”
“You said to call you when I figure out what I want…I know what that is.”
“I’m not sure you do…”
Sadiya flinched as Maadhini’s voice trailed off. The longing in her friend’s voice stretched as if it connected their cell phones across all the miles between their apartments.
Biting the inside of her cheek, Sadiya forced herself to be brave. “When we kissed…it was different than with Rakshan, or any other guy for that matter.”
“I saw the list on your day planner last night: do something reckless.”
Shit, Sadiya thought. She saw that. “Sometimes…” she began.
“Yes?” For someone so short, Maadhini and her question loomed larger than life at that moment.
“Sometimes I get so in my head that I need to write things down to command myself to act on them. I wrote it down, do something reckless, because I couldn’t work up the courage to write down what I really wanted.”
“And that was?”
Be brave. Sadiya pinched herself before responding. “I was with Rakshan for so long, and it was easy, and it was safe, and it would’ve resulted in a perfectly manageable life.”
“’Diya, I’ve done ten miles on this treadmill, but this conversation is even more exhausting.”
What is wrong with me? Just say it.
“I don’t want easy anymore,” Sadiya said.
“’Diya…”
“I wrote it on my list,” Sadiya said, cutting Maadhini off before she could say anything else to break her momentum. “Think about what I want and tell Maadhini. You know that once it’s on my list, it gets done properly.”
As Maadhini went silent, Sadiya closed her eyes and remembered the kiss. It’d been sloppy and wet and uncontrollable. And that’s exactly what I need. Her parents had planned her life out to the last detail growing up, but it was only after she’d gotten away from their rigidity that she’d found true happiness in her work, in her friends. In Maadhini.
Finally, Maadhini broke Sadiya from her thoughts. “We’ve kissed before…”
This is what she always does to herself, Sadiya thought. She’d always known there was a vulnerability to Maadhini, and she’d only gotten more scared since Rebecca had broken her heart. The reason her best friend surrounded herself in a cloak of confidence was because her reality was too scary. That’s why they’d met in a bar for drag queens, where she could actually let her guard down for once.
“We were practically black-out drunk then,” Sadiya said.
Remembering that night in college, the days tending to Maadhini’s broken heart, then the last several hours spent agonizing over her future, Sadiya looked once again at her planner. Holding the phone to her neck, she got out a pen and scribbled another item in the margins of her to-do list: be brave. As the inflection in her voice went up, she admitted a great truth to both herself and her best friend. “Kissing you yesterday was more thrilling than any night with Rakshan.”
Sadiya heard Maadhini’s treadmill stop. She heard panting from the other side; she heard the chugging of water. Closing her eyes, she pictured Maadhini’s big heart pounding. When she opened them, she spoke again without any hesitation this time.
“I want to take you out.”
“Yeah?” Maadhini’s tone had changed as well, as if she was taken aback by Sadiya’s forthrightness.
Good, Sadiya told herself. She should know I’m serious, that this is real. Maybe then neither of us will be so afraid.
“A proper date,” she said.
Maadhini paused. “How’s day after tomorrow?”
“Aren’t you supposed to wait three days after kissing a girl?”
“Fuck! I just snorted water out my nose. Thanks for that.”
Sadiya’s heart leapt at the picture of Maadhini laughing. She had confronted her parents with the truth and asked her best friend out, and she hadn’t even needed WP. The thought made her think that perhaps the people who relied on that drug for confidence and strength were weak.
“So…we’re okay?” She needed to hear Maadhini say the words before they hung up.
“Yeah, babe. We’re okay. But for the record, I’m coming to your apartment.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re going to cook for me. Any fool can buy me dinner.”
“You’re on,” Sadiya said. “See you Monday.”
After hanging up, Sadiya pinched herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. There were butterflies in her stomach, flying around and slamming themselves against her insides. Wait. Her stomach gurgled as she ran to her toilet. That wasn’t butterflies; that was whiskey.
Less than a day had passed, but already Spartacus had a job offer. When Jerome got up that morning, he checked his computer to find a message sent through the Silk Road’s messaging platform.
1 P.M. at my place. – Spartacus
There was no further explanation. It was already ten, but Jerome wasn’t worried. His mom ran double shifts on Saturdays; he could do whatever he wanted today. After I pull off a few jobs, though, she can spend her Saturdays with me.
Jerome had slept with his ring off—he knew overexposure to WP could be fatal—but now he put it back on. Instantly, he could hear the call of starlings looking for mates and the chatter of parakeets blocks away. He sensed the heartbeat of the woman on the floor above him getting railed by her boyfriend. It was always like this when he put the ring on, a never-ending stream of sounds and sights assaulting his brain. He struggled to get used to the feeling and to focus his senses. In time, that’ll pass. In time, I’ll be ready. At that point, he’d need more WP just to keep feeling the same high.
Climbing out of the window of his room, he jumped to the ground and smacked his lips upon landing, the impact of his feet hitting the ground rushing through his body like a building wave he had to surf. Time to get some more.
Before catching the bus to Brooklyn, Jerome went to the Panera down the street and got a stale bagel from yesterday for breakfast. The deal he’d worked out with the manager meant he’d make sure no one harassed customers on weekend mornings in exchange for leftover bagels once in a while. Everybody needed a side hustle these days.
When Jerome arrived at Spartacus’s house, the unkempt man smiled as he opened the door.
“Today is a test.”
“And the reward?”
“Don’t be so thirsty, boy.”
Jerome started caressing his ring with his fingers the moment he walked into Spartacus’s place. He’d been able to gauge the measure of this man last night, but today Spartacus’s aura clouded as he touched the ring. It was as if the man had erected a wall around himself; every time Jerome reached out to try and touch his mind, Spartacus rebuffed him.
“I can sense what you’re doing,” Spartacus said. Rather than say more, though, he turned away to sit at his desk.
Jerome’s fingers formed a fist as the man clacked away at his keyboard.
“I can see that, too,” Spartacus said. “Do well on today’s test and you’ll start getting jobs.”
“And WP?” The window at the top of Spartacus’s basement let in just enough light to blind Jerome as he relaxed his fist and stepped forward. All he heard, all he saw, was Spartacus and the promise of privilege.
“And WP,” the man agreed. Getting up, he handed Jerome a police scanner.
“Where’d you get this?”
“Who cares? First robbery you see in the neighborhood, you take care of it with some vigilante justice and get out before the cops show. Report back here.”
Jerome started asking questions, but Spartacus shuffled him toward the hallway.
“What if there aren’t any robberies?” he whined as the man pushed him out the door.
“Does your mom know you’re here?”
Jerome didn’t answer.
“Exactly. This is a whole city of people like you.” Spartacus ignored Jerome’s crestfallen expression and slammed the door in his face.
People like me? The boy’s hands balled into fists as he went into the afternoon alone. After I get some WP and set Mom up, he’ll know what people like me were meant to do in this country.
Several hours passed before Jerome saw an opportunity to cause some trouble. As a woman in her sixties exited from her bus, he noticed a man following her down a back alley. The WP gave him freedom to lag far enough behind that no one could sense he was following them. Before the man had a chance to breathe on the woman, Jerome would be able to seize him by the collar and throw him through a brick wall, if needed.
“Put the purse down and keep moving forward, lady. Slowly. I have a gun.”
“No problem.” Her voice rocked like a boat in the city’s harbor. “I won’t cause any trouble.” The woman’s hands trembled as she dropped her purse.
“Now keep moving forward, and don’t look behind you if you want to live.”
As the robber moved forward to retrieve his new prize, Jerome announced himself.
“That doesn’t belong to you.”
The man turned to face him. “Stay out of this, Spider-Man.”
“Does that mean I’m funny?” Jerome smacked his lips as he ran a hand through his cropped curls. “He was always the funniest superhero, right?”
“Move along, wise guy.” The man raised his gun. “The lady should know better than to wander down a dark alley.”
“And you should know better than to steal, yet here we are.”
Before the man could blink, Jerome leapt in the air and landed behind him. Swiping the legs out from under the robber, he threw the purse behind him to land at the lady’s side. Jerome looked to see that she had it, and in that moment the robber grabbed the gun and rolled aside before firing.
Jerome saw the weapon discharge as if he was Neo in The Matrix. He stepped out of the way and watched the bullet move past him before lodging itself in the brick building beside them.
“What kind of freak are you?” Dropping his gun, the man turned to run away toward the old lady, and in that moment, Jerome thought he still meant her harm. Bringing his arms up, he locked them under the man’s arms so the robber could do nothing but run in place as he tried to escape.
“I’m sorry! It won’t happen again!”
Jerome heard the man’s heart beating like a piston, saw the tears running down his face.
“I don’t believe you.” Using the man’s weight against him, Jerome launched forward into a brick wall. When he let go, the man slumped over and fell to his side, exposing his smashed face.
As Jerome turned to the woman, he saw she’d retrieved the man’s gun.
“Stay back!”
“Yo!” Jerome rolled his eyes as he smacked his lips again. “I’m trying to help you.”
“I’ve fired a gun before, you know!” Her hand was shaking, and Jerome knew he was in no real danger.
“Put the gun down before you hurt yourself. I just want to help.” He raised his hands to show his sincerity.
Dropping the gun, the woman ran without even taking the purse. Jerome scoffed as he heard sirens behind him.
“Crazy bitch.” He took the cash from her purse before running off and leaving it for the cops to find. If they were going to think he was a thug, he was going to act like one.
Spartacus knew Jerome had returned even before the kid knocked on his door. He’d been listening in on the scanners and heard about a botched robbery that had ended in death. He smiled to himself. I’ve no use for Superman. But someone willing to get their hands dirty for the greater good? I could use that kind of boy.
He opened the door and ushered Jerome inside. “Good job, kid. Come by Tuesday and I’ll have a real job for you.”
“Why not tomorrow? I got time.”
“Yeah, but I don’t. Besides, gotta give it a couple days for the buzz to die down here. You just fucking killed a guy.”
Jerome didn’t respond to that.
“How’d it feel?”
The boy slouched against Spartacus’s wall before answering, sticking his hands in his pockets, one finger tracing the WP-laced ring on another. “Not good. Not bad. Just life.”
It was after dusk by the time Jerome got home. Despite this, he still managed to beat his mom back and had dinner ready by the time she returned from her shift.
“What’s this?” A few twenty-dollar bills sat next to her plate of spaghetti and meatballs.
“Rent is due soon, right?”
Therese Johnson scoffed before responding. “Yeah, and like always, I’ll take care of it. Now I ask you again, what’s this?”
“I wanted to help.” Jerome backed away. His mom had never hit him before, but she looked murderous now. Through his shorts, he fiddled with the ring in his pocket.
“What did you do today?”
He hadn’t meant to tell her anything, but Jerome never could lie to his mother. It’d been just been the two of them for so long.
“I cannot believe you stole some WP like some skin grafter.” She spat the slur out like it was acid.
“A what?”
“You’re gonna have to learn the lingo if you want to play in this space,” Therese said. “People who steal WP, people who think taking it makes them better than the rest of us, makes them equal to Caucasians, they’re called skin grafters. As if any drug existed that’d let you change centuries of prejudice. As if you could take WP and suddenly get new skin grafted to your Black self.”
After almost an hour, her eyes were still wet with tears that accentuated her crow’s feet. She sighed, looking at the food that had gone cold. “It’s my fault. I guess it’s time to supplement that public education of yours.” They both sat at the wooden dining table. “You ever learn why the government started regulating WP?”
“Something about the Civil War, right?”
“That was the tipping point, yeah. For years, they made our kind pick WP from the fields like cotton.”
Jerome had laid the ring out on the table after telling his mom the truth. At this revelation, he tried to pick it up, but she slapped his hand away.
“As surely as my name is Therese Johnson, I will protect you to the best of my ability.” Picking the ring up herself, she tossed it behind her where it landed under the TV. “WP isn’t safe for our kind.”
“We weren’t always in danger of overexposure?”
“Before the Civil War, it was the white man who had to fear too much WP. They had us pick it only sporadically since being around it too long made us more powerful than they could manage. It was littered throughout the country, but too much drove men like Jefferson insane.”
“What?”
“Oh yeah, big government conspiracies.” A cold laugh escaped her lips as she massaged the arthritis in her hands. “You can learn from YouTube how Jefferson clawed his own eyes out after years of WP abuse. Ain’t no one gonna teach you that in school.”
Jerome bit his nails as his mom continued, convinced that some of the white powder was trapped within them.
“They got us picking and picking away until one fine day it got to be too much. Evolution or whatever you want to call it seized our kind and made us hungry for blood. Didn’t take long after that for them to figure out we couldn’t be trusted. The war wasn’t about equality, it was about making sure we never got our hands on enough WP to get revenge.”
“What happened?”
“Peace was made. President Grant promised the freed slaves WP, but it never happened and pretty soon all kinds of legal barriers sprouted up making sure we’d never get our due.” Therese got up as she finished her speech. “The point, Jerome, is that we can’t have WP. Not in this house, not anywhere. Something changed in the nineteenth century, and there ain’t no going back. Don’t ever try to go against the system because the system will always win. Always.”
Jerome stood, too. “Maybe it’s been long enough. Maybe there’s hope now. After all, they got those hearings happening soon.”
Therese bit her lip before responding. “Maybe…but I ain’t risking your life to find out.”
She sat back down, silently announcing an end to the discussion.
After dinner, Therese retired to her bedroom while Jerome did the dishes. Kneeling before a mirror set on the ground by her bed, she prayed to the cross wrapped around it. Telling Jerome the truth had been a good thing, she told herself. He had to know the true history of their people; it would keep him out of trouble.
Going to bed, she didn’t notice him on his knees searching underneath their TV. She didn’t notice him put the ring back in his pocket before he retired for the night.