Priya in Heels (Entangled Embrace) (29 page)

Chapter Forty-Four

Priya

Papa shared a few laughs with me on the trip, a sound I thought I’d never hear again. At points on the longest flights—namely from New York to London and from London to Paris, and from Paris to Mumbai—we took turns sleeping. I didn’t trust the men around us, and Papa seemed to feel the same.

I read a dozen magazines and went through my music playlist until the songs annoyed me. Crying babies, people crawling over me to get in and out, and crowded aisles made me wish we’d gone into debt paying for first class. Four seats, aisle, six seats, aisle, then another set of four seats for each row made the international flight a nightmare.

From Mumbai, we hopped a flight to Gujarat’s capital, Ahmedabad.

Mummie’s two brothers, Dev
Mama
and Pranal
Mama
, met us outside. We greeted one another with partial happiness, partial loss.

“You’re so beautiful,
beti
. You were this little when we last saw you.” Dev
Mama
flattened his palm by his knee.

I laughed. “I was twenty-one!”

“Are you hungry?” Pranal
Mama
asked.

“A little.”

We bought vendor food. Oh sweet heavens, Indian street food was incredible. Roasted, spiced chickpeas in newspaper cones; smashed, curried potatoes sandwiched in bread called
dabeli
and dunked in chutney; and sweets, so many sweets.

Papa crossed his legs and ordered
cha
.
Cha
in India tasted different for obvious reasons: the milk came from local water buffalo, the water came from faucets, and the ingredients were true Indian. It tasted amazing. I closed my eyes with the first sip and shuddered, thrown back to the day at the
mandir
when Mummie and I had reminisced about how good the food was here.

I reopened my eyes to blurriness and wiped away pooling tears.

“
Beti
?” Papa lifted my chin.

I shook my head. “Just missing Mummie is all.”

He nodded to his brothers-in-law, and they gradually returned to airy conversation.

A frail, elderly woman in a thin sari, worn-out sandals, and old bracelets clamped her hands together and muttered in Gujarati about needing money to feed her starving children.

My heart broke. I gave her five rupees and the rest of my food. The woman clasped her hands together, tilted her head, and profusely thanked me, blessing me by the gods for my generosity.

“
Beti
, don’t spend your money on the beggars. I know you want to help them, but you can’t. Someone could be watching and think you’re a naïve, rich tourist and try to rob you.”

Flashbacks of the alley ran through my mind. Ty wasn’t here to save me. One thought of him made my stomach roil. God, I missed him, and it took everything in me not to dash to the closest internet café and email him.

“Yes, Papa.”

We returned to the Jeep for the long ride to a little dirt road village. The men were in high spirits and no one inquired about my engagement. I had a feeling they knew the basics. I relaxed and enjoyed the wind in my hair as I watched throngs of people cross uncontrolled streets whenever they could. People honked and yelled. This place was worse than Times Square.

When it started to rain, we attached the Jeep cover and rolled up the windows. It poured as if we were in the middle of monsoon season.

The streets cleared pretty quickly. In the distance, a woman and her son crossed the street. Rain drenched her. Her hair and sari clung to her face and body, but she wore a smile. The little boy wore a regulation school uniform: button-up, two-colored shirt with khaki shorts, socks, and black shoes. His mother held his backpack in one hand and an umbrella in the other, except she kept the umbrella over his head while she took the brunt of the rain.

I smiled. How heartwarming a mother’s love was, even when she was poor and soaked. She reminded me of Mummie’s selfless and abundant love. I blinked away tears and fought to accept memories of Mummie without them.

We drove through the city and a couple of small towns. Beautiful green fields and trees filled the spots in between. Endless fields with bright shrubbery edged toward untouched forests. There were probably lots of snakes in that beauty, too.

We rode over uneven and rocky terrain and more dirt roads until we entered the village.

“They’re here! They’re here!” kids cried as they ran ahead of the Jeep in excitement.

A crowd formed around us as we parked in front of Dev
Mama’s
house. His wife, Leeta
Mami
, came out to greet us along with their two young boys. The kids were shy, but everyone else in the village wasn’t.

Both
Mamas
brought the luggage inside. People stopped and gawked, strangers or relatives, I wasn’t quite sure.
Mami
stayed by my side the entire time.

It had been an exhausting trip and a long day. The sun set as we settled in, though I kept everything in my suitcase. The houses in the villages weren’t broken into rooms with specific purposes. They had an entrance room, two main rooms where cots leaned against walls, and a kitchen. So there wasn’t much space to unpack.

“Good night, Papa.” I leaned down and hugged him from behind the lounge chair.

I glanced up at the spread of stars, brighter here without light pollution. My heart swelled as I excitedly told Papa, “Do you see that twinkling star to the left of the moon, the lower side?”

He and all the men studied the sky as if what I pointed at was the most important thing in the world.

“Tyler named that star after Mummie.”

They
ooh
’
d
and
ahh
’
d
. Papa grinned. “Tyler is a nice boy.” And then, to my shock, he turned to the men and explained, “Tyler works at NASA,” and went on to tell them of all the wonderful things that made up Tyler O’Connor.

He and all the men in the village sat around in the front of the house, blocking the road. He would probably sleep outside on a cot with the others.

In the morning, we ate
nastho
together with
cha
, fresh and delicious.
Mami
squatted while she prepared food on a low table and
cha
on an equally low stove. Then we ate cross-legged on a bare floor.

“Milk?”
Mami
offered as she poured a cup each for the boys.

I declined. Water buffalo milk made for a great ingredient, but it didn’t taste good alone. And this milk was fresh, unpasteurized, straight from the water buffalo’s teat next door.

Papa and Dev
Mama
left to meet friends and arrange the prayer for tonight while I walked into the backyard where
Mami
washed dishes.

“Do you want a bath?” she asked.

I nodded and returned with my bath things.

Mami
picked up a boiling pot of water and poured it into a plastic tub container already partway filled with tepid water until the mixture was on the hotter side of warm. She carried it into the shower stall where I locked myself in.

I checked for spiders first and foremost. Carved, latticed walls at the top acted as windows and let in light and air. I stripped off my clothes, squatted, and used a plastic cup to pour water over myself. I scrubbed and soaped up and washed my hair, then poured cup after cup of water over myself until I was clean.

Villagers didn’t waste much water and electricity here, and they had strong thighs from so much squatting.

I spent the rest of the day helping
Mami
and getting to know her again. She was so nice, like a second mother, and reminded me of Mummie. I loved spending time here.

That evening, we met Papa, and practically the entire village, at the
mandir
across the way. The sheer amount of people who came out to pay their respects to Mummie floored me and brought tears to my eyes. Their sympathetic faces and nods didn’t help my shaky control.

The crowd parted for us.
Mami
pulled her sari train over her head in devout respect. I wore a
salwar kameez
but didn’t wrap the
dupatta
around my head, mainly because I no longer cared about the rituals. We sat in a semicircle in front of an altar with the priest and Mummie’s ashes and prayed.

I couldn’t bear to look at Papa, though Mummie’s brothers held up well.
Mami
, on the other hand, wiped away tears. I dropped my head and released my own, letting them spill onto my lap. I didn’t wipe them away until we finished the ritual.

Papa carried Mummie’s ashes out of the
mandir
. We followed him and the priest through the village to the outer road that led down to the river. The priest chanted some more and sang mantras as Papa and Mummie’s brothers each touched the container and poured her cremated ashes into the water.

I exhaled and whispered, “Good-bye, Mummie. I’ll always love you…”

Mami
must’ve heard those words, because she drew an arm around me. I covered my mouth with my
dupatta
in hand and bawled.
Mami
cried with me.

The crowd sniffled and muttered. Papa and the
Mamas
wiped away a few tears. They walked toward me, patted my head as I stared, teary-eyed, at the river that washed away Mummie’s final remains.

“Let’s go,
beti
,” Papa said in a soft voice.

“Can I sit here for a while?”

He nodded. He walked with his brothers-in-law back to the house.
Mami
sat beside me on a boulder. We remained quiet, wiping tears and stifling sobs. After a while, we stopped crying and watched the soft, lapping waves in serenity.

Chapter Forty-Five

Priya

“Why this river?” I asked Papa the following day.

“Mummie loved the river of her birthplace. She didn’t want her ashes spread at a big
mandir
or in the Ganges river. She was born in this poor but beautiful place, and she wanted to find peace here.”

“Do you think she found peace?”

“If we are at peace, she’s at peace. We are at peace.”

I smiled. We were content not traveling to see touristy places or seeing friends and distant family. No Taj Mahal or horse rides this time.

Every remaining day I walked to the river, where the women washed clothes. They dunked the fabric in water, slapped them against small boulders, rubbed them down with a bar of soap, washed, repeat, and wrung.

Farmers brought the water buffalo and oxen to the river to drink and bathe. Children played upstream and bathed. I waved at the kids and strolled alongside the river in search of seashells.

Whenever Mummie had visited her village, she’d walked to the river almost every day. This place had cleared her mind. She had found serenity here. When I started going with her I understood why. A field of nothingness waited on the right, a steep hill to the village to the left. Life slowed down at this crossroad.

Once I had found a seashell and I’d search for them on every trip.

“Why do you want these? We can buy these in the States,” Mummie had once said to me.

“Because they’re from our village, and this river that we love so much.”

“What are you going to do with all these shells?”

I had lost or broken most of them. I’d threaded a few to make tassels for bookmarks, and the rest I’d piled into a small bowl on my dresser. The shells that I collected on this trip would be used to make a frame for a special picture of Mummie. I hadn’t chosen which picture because I held so many dear.

Our time in India came to an end far too soon. We left with hugs, cheers, and well wishes. Papa and I rediscovered our close relationship again, not to mention precious closure.

When we arrived at Papa’s house in Austin, I dragged my suitcase out of the trunk and looked at the lawn. It had been clipped and cared for during our absence. I asked, “Who mowed the lawn?”

Papa shrugged. “Maybe someone from
mandir
?”

“Welcome home!” a neighbor called from across the street.

Papa waved.

“Nice fellow came by to take care of the house.”

“Who?” I asked.

“American guy, said his name was Tyler.”

Papa cracked a smile. “What a nice boy.”

“Yeah,” I whispered.

I spent the evening helping Papa unpack and organize and headed home in the morning.

…

I bit my lower lip in dreaded anticipation of turning on my cell phone, but I did it anyway.

Vicki:
Are you back? Call me ASAP!

Vicki:
Nothing serious, just need to know you’re safe.

Jeeta:
Are you okay? I haven’t heard from you in a while.

Jeeta:
Priya, don’t scare me. Where are you? How are you? Call me!

Tulsi:
We’re freaking out. Where are you, hooker? Vicki says India. Did you run off and get married?

Manuk:
I emailed my address for you to return my stuff.

Ty:
Are you home yet?

My heart beat faster. That was all Ty texted. Gone all this time and he’d only sent one message, and the message was shortly after I’d left for India.

I cringed. He was getting over me. Well, I had to tell him the truth about me turning down Manuk. He could make a decision then. No. What was I thinking? He wasn’t going to make the stupid mistake I’d made.
I’d
left
him
. He’d fought for me, and I had continued to reject him. It was my turn to fight for him, no matter what. I made my resolve.

I returned all the text messages first, including Ty’s. I crawled out of the car and dragged my things upstairs to the apartment but paused at Ty’s door and knocked. Nothing. I waited another minute before trying again. Ty wasn’t home.

“Priya!” Vicki hugged me as soon as I walked in. “You’re home! How was it?”

“Emotional but good. I brought some sweets for my sweetie.” I handed her the golden-wrapped treats.

“Yum,
halwa
.” Vicki drooled.

“Have you spoken with Ty?”

“Yes, but only once a couple of weeks ago. He asked how you were.”

“That’s all?”

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “He’s still talking about moving, but I dunno.”

“I need to talk to him.”

“He’s been busy, or avoiding me and Raj. He hasn’t texted or returned our calls in a while. I don’t see him at home much. He hasn’t played at The Harmon’s since the engagement incident.”

“Oh.” I worried. “All I can say is that I’ve made a firm decision and all parties know about it, except Ty. There’s no crawling back to Manuk, not that I would. We saw where trying to be with him got me. I have closure over Mummie. Papa and I are close again and happy. He’s accepted Ty. And we’re feeling some serious peace.”

“I’m glad. You scared us.”

“Any news on the wedding front?”

“Raj and I picked a date.”

“When?”

“This summer.”

“That’s wonderful, but a few months away? Is that enough time?”

“Sure. We already have our clothes. The
mandir
and the priest are booked. We checked there first before making any announcements. Thanks to one huge donation, the
mandir
will take care of everything from catering to decorations. Our family is already in Texas, so no waiting for people to buy airline tickets.”

“I’m so happy for you! Have you told the girls?”

“Not yet. Speaking of the girls, they’ve been hounding me about you.”

“I should’ve told them before I left. I texted them earlier today that I’m back.”

Vicki watched me as I dumped box after box of small notecards onto the dining table. “What’s that?”

“I’m getting Ty back.”

She grinned. “How?”

I arched a brow. “First, I need you to help me bring some stuff up from the car, and then I need you to help me with these. In fact, let’s call Tulsi and Jeeta over to help, too.”

While I unpacked, Vicki called the girls. They didn’t hesitate to rush over, and by the time we had unloaded the car, Tulsi and Jeeta were at the door.

Tulsi planted her hands on her hips and looked around at the boxes and boxes of red and white streaked carnations. “Looks like a floral shop barfed all over your place.”

“Hey!” I jumped up and hugged her.

“What, hey?” she snapped but hugged me back. “Where the hell have you been? Why am I just now getting your text?”

“I just had so much to take care of since I got back. Sorry I didn’t text you as soon as I landed.”

“How did it go?”

“Great…for what it was. Mummie is back in her place of birth, and I think Papa and I are okay.”

“I’m happy for that.”

“We were so worried!” Jeeta scolded.

“I’m sorry. I had to,” I replied.

“So what happened there?”

“We had prayer and spread Mummie’s ashes in the river in her village. Other than that, I had a good time with her side of the family. Two weeks was too short.”

They gave sympathetic nods.

“Don’t be like that, guys. We found peace and closure. Papa and I are reunited and stronger.”

“We’re happy for you. You took it really hard. You scared all of us, especially at the ceremony,” Tulsi said. “We wanted to talk to you, but Vicki said you needed time alone.”

“I did. I needed to think, be alone, and figure out how to break the news to Manuk.”

“What happened?”

“I took him to the park by the house and told him the truth.”

“Which is…” Tulsi and the girls leaned in.

“You know already.”

“We want to hear you admit it.”

I sighed but smiled. “I can’t marry him because I’m in love with Ty.”

They
ahh’d
in unison, even Jeeta. I looked at her. “I thought you wanted me to marry the righteous Indian man chosen for me.”

She batted her eyelashes and dreamily looked off into the distance. “Where would I find a friend living a Bollywood movie? It’s so romantic,
yaar
, and tragic. I bet you could sell your story to Bollywood.”

“Well, they might have to readjust the ending to make it a happy one.”

“Don’t fret!” Tulsi encouraged. “He’ll come around. Did you tell him?”

“I haven’t talked to him yet. I wanted to wait to see him in person, but he’s not home.”

“Don’t wait!”

“You’re right. I’ll call now.”

“I’m so proud of you, Priya. You stood up for love, for yourself, for your parents, for everything that means the world to you. And you did it against society. People better watch out, because Priyanka Patel is not taking any of its crap.”

I looked each one of my best friends in the eye. They all possessed qualities I wished I could cultivate better within myself. Vicki had wisdom, independence, and knew how to maneuver around traditions to gain happiness and be with the man she loved. Jeeta had conviction and didn’t cower under peer pressure. Tulsi—well—Tulsi was in her own world where she didn’t care about anyone else’s opinion. They were all amazingly strong women in their own rights.

“I’m going to get Ty back,” I declared.

The girls grinned and squealed.

“This is a start.” I opened my arms and looked at the boxes around us. “Can you guys help?”

“Of course!” Jeeta exclaimed.

Vicki gave them directions while I ran to my room and called Ty. I couldn’t wait.

“Hey.” Ty’s throaty voice echoed in my ear, and my gut clenched in a very good, longing way.

“Hey,” I replied out of breath, because hearing his voice after so long left me breathless.

“You feeling better?”

“Yes. I texted you earlier.”

“I know. It took you that long to return my text?”

“I was in India.”

“I know. What the hell? You left the country without saying anything to me?”

A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. “You care?”

He groaned. “I shouldn’t, right?”

“I need to see you, Ty.”

“I’m busy at work.”

I swallowed at the sound of his disinterest. “Tonight?”

“Maybe.”

“I really need to see you.”

“Tell me why.”

“Because you’re right.”

“About what?” he asked, his voice deeper.

“That I love you. I messed up, and I’m sorry.”

There was a pause. I half expected him to laugh and shoot back, “Life’s a bitch, right?” I also half expected him to come flying through the door, swoop me into his arms, and make sweet love to me. Neither happened.

“Ty?”

“We’ll talk later. I gotta go.”

“Wait,” I pushed out the word.

“Yeah?”

“I’ll be waiting. For as long as you need.”

He sighed on the other end. “I’ll see you tonight. I’m glad you’re home safe.”

We hung up and I held the phone close to my heart. My hands shook. I thought Ty would be excited to hear from me, to know that I wanted to see him, but maybe he truly had given up on me. I worried, but then again, I had expected to fight to win him back.

“Showing up wearing nothing but heels and a trench coat works,” Vicki suggested from the doorway.

“Shut up!”

She grinned.

“Did you listen to that
private
conversation?”

“Sort of. Anyway, we’re done with the flowers.” She waved a handful of pens. “What to write? What to write?”