Tanya Tania (21 page)

My father said: The hospital was almost done, things would get better, this was just an idle threat, she didn't understand, she wasn't from here.

My mother stopped speaking. She sat there looking at nothing, holding Navi's hand in hers.

In my fantasies when I had imagined moving back to America, my mother never cried. In my fantasies, my mother just won. In my fantasies, my father softened and put his arm around us and said, okay my darlings, if the whole family wants to move back to America then we will move back to America. Sometimes in my fantasies, we went out for pizza and ice cream to celebrate. Sometimes in my fantasies, my parents kissed and held hands. Once, during a particularly lurid My Little Pony phase, we all flew back to America on lavender horses with luggage tied to their hair.

But never in my fantasies did my mother say, ‘It's America or divorce.' Never in my fantasies did my father grow cold like stone and say, ‘As you wish, Lisa. Who the hell am I to stop you.' Never in my fantasies was there a blood-dotted piece of paper on the table with every detail of my brother's life plotted out like a spider web.

Never in my fantasies did my mother, father and brother not even see me leave the room.

Everything is quiet again. My mother is back in her room, having done her damage, like a small, deadly lizard I once saw in a National Geographic video. My father is at the hospital.

Did I ever tell you we live in a beautiful house? It has pillars all along the front with a red verandah that runs all the way around the house. There's a large garden in front and an even larger garden at the back. We have lovely gardens.

In the mornings before school, I almost love this house. The quiet, the early sunlight, the sound of the birds, the mist from the gardener's hosepipe, the slap of wet cloth on the car as Salman Bhai cleans it for the day.

I don't know what's going to happen to us, Tania. Please don't stop writing to me. I don't know what's going to happen to me.

Love,

Tanya

September 21, 1992

Bombay

My life is over Tanya. My life is completely over. I mean I get that big shit is going on in your life but my life is over.

He told everyone. He told everyone at school. Everyone knows. That's why no one is talking to me. And I know him, I know him so well, I know he made it sound bad, I know he made it sound cheap. I bet you anything he told the guys I swallowed. I bet you he told them he fucked me from behind.

He took that night away from me.

I am beyond emotion. Neenee told me. Today at lunch when I asked her to sit with me she said she couldn't and I laughed at her and she told me. There was pity in her eyes. Pity in Neenee's eyes. For me. I hate her. I hate him. I hate everyone. I can't breathe.

Someone wrote slut in the back of my Hindi notebook today. It was really tiny and in capitals. In P.E. when I did a triple somersault, someone whispered, ‘You can see her cunt.'

Arjun wasn't in school. I went to his house after school but no one opened the door. I heard giggling inside. Him and his chutiya building friends.

I can't believe it. I can't believe it. Twelve years of hard work gone in a flash. I OWNED this school. Now I'm nothing. I'm worse than nothing. I'm a slut. I'm the girl who had sex with a guy who is not even her boyfriend.

I can't think. I can't feel. I am going to buy a ticket and come to Karachi. I can't stay here. I will die if I stay here.

Send me your address. I'm coming.

Tania

11

May 19, 1996

New York, NY

Dear Tania,

You had once told me that if something can happen to anyone in the world it can happen to you. The nightmares are back.

Last night I dreamt of Nusrat. In my dream she was in New York with me. We were walking down Broadway in the early 1900s after the university blocks end and before the posh blocks begin. I told her to hold my hand because it's not a safe part of the city. But she kept running away. She kept running into dreary buildings with steel jaildoor entrances and I kept saying, that's a homeless shelter Nusrat, that's a homeless shelter, come out of there.

But I couldn't find her. There was a snowstorm. I couldn't see her anymore. I shouted for her and shouted for her. There was a man leering at the entrance of one of the shelters. I knew that Nusrat was in there and that I had to go in and get her but the man was frightening and the building was frightening. And the snow kept falling, really fast, really silent until my feet were buried and then my legs and I was drowning and choking in the snow when I woke up.

Thankfully it is no longer winter and I no longer have to clutch at the heater to get warm. In fact, I opened the window and jumped out and sat outside in the grass for a little while, looking up at the stars. I like to imagine that those same stars look down on you.

I got the job at Goldman. It's a pretty big deal Tania, only four people got offers from my year and the other three are white frat boys whose fathers work on Wall Street. I'm going to hear a lot of talk about tokenism on the one hand and rich international students stealing away opportunities from minority American students on the other. Let them think I'm rich. I like it.

You know what I'm going to do with my signing bonus? I'm going to buy first class tickets for my mother and me to go to India. We will go to Delhi and see the Red Fort and Humayun's tomb and Jaipur and Agra and the Taj Mahal. My mother wants to do an Ayurveda stay in Kerala. I want to go to Goa.

Your mother is coming to meet my mother. I might go to the Andaman Islands when she comes. It is always uncomfortable when she calls to speak to my mother and I pick up the phone. She starts to ask me about classes, about Columbia, about my job search and she abruptly stops. I wait for her to finish her question, finish her sentence and then I realize she isn't going to.

Just so you know, I have never asked her any questions. And she hasn't told me anything. But she has been a really good friend to my mother. I often wonder what it is that my mother gives her. Maybe it's just nice to have someone who allows you to take care of her. Your mother, unexpectedly, has a lot of tenderness. My mother is unresisting of your mother's tenderness.

Do you have someone like my mother in your life? Who do you give yourself to? Your bony wit and sudden squalls. Your unexpected wells of empathy. It could have been me. It should have been me.

Do you know how hard it is to be the person responsible for the life you're living? Every day I wake up and regret that one day, that one evening when everything had gone wrong and I didn't stop myself from writing that one letter, from taking it out to the post office and watching the impassive woman behind the counter stamp the envelope and drop it in a large metal bin?

I want to make something of my life, Tania. I'm not yet a whole person but I'm trying to be. That must mean something.

Then why do I feel like none of it will matter until I have your blessing? Is it because I know I will never have it?

Love,

Tanya

October 2, 1992

Bombay

Dear Tanya,

If something can happen to someone in this world, it can totally happen to you. That's what I've learnt over the last few days in school. If someone had told me that I would one day be treated like this at school I would have laughed in their face.

But it has totally come true. I am the opposite of popular, I am the most despised person in the class. Well, to be honest not the whole class. Ever since this happened and people stopped sitting with me and stopped letting me sit in the best seats at the back, I've realised that there are other people in my school, even in my class. I just never noticed them before.

I don't regret that night one bit. No matter how he acts now I know what he was like with me. I know that he crawled into my arms and cried like a baby (I mean literally like a baby because he was like all squashed into my boobs, it was a little weird) and no matter what he says now, I know he loved me that night. And I loved him. I'm not ashamed.

But my life is shit. It's a slow meanness. No one says anything mean directly to my face. Actually no one says anything to me at all. I wasn't picked to play basketball in P.E. class and I am the basketball captain. Stupid girls, girls like Parul and Mona who have never had any lift, who never even
tried
to call me on the phone, are the worst. I can almost see them drooling in triumph. I guess small people like it when big people fall. But it's not clever. If they were really clever, they would be my friends now. Because when a girl has been the most popular girl in school for twelve years she'll be back.

Because obviously I'm going to be back. This is temporary. This will blow over. I'll do something really cool. The Gymnastics championships are next week so that'll be good because I look really hot in a leotard. Boys are too dumb to play politics for too long. And soon the girls will be bored with it. Life is more exciting with me in than out of it.

But from now on I'll be a cool girl who did ‘bad stuff' even if people forget the details of what the bad stuff was. Everywhere I go, there'll be an invisible reputation attached and sometimes it will enter rooms and meet people before I will. It's funny. Arjun has made me a girl version of him.

But I'm not going to talk about him. I am never going to talk to him or talk about him again. He is dead. So don't bring him up in your letter, don't ask about him, nothing.

What's going on in your house? How is your mother doing? What have they decided about Navi?

Listen, if you like need money you can borrow from me. I mean of course. I get quite a bit of pocket money. And I have an insane number of CDs and I like don't listen to most of them anymore. You can get good money for them at this shop I know. I have no idea how to send it to you or whatever but you're the clever one, you'll figure it out. But just saying. We don't have to tell anyone.

Love,

Tania

October 12, 1992

Karachi

Dear Tania,

I don't want your money. If you offer again I will stop writing to you.

I'm sorry Arjun did that to you. I'm not surprised but I'm sorry.

Chhoti Bibi gave the exam. I went with her. She came out before the time was up for every exam. She said cheerfully that she answered only four of the questions in Math. She's convinced me she did fantastically in Urdu and says she's pretty sure she has passed in all the other subjects. I asked her if she felt good about having done it and she turned to me in the car and said, Baji, do
you
feel good?

What a ridiculous question.

And then, believe it or not, she promptly forgot all about it. I have no idea what she's done with the books, they've disappeared from my room and she hasn't once asked when the results will be out. (They will be out in a month.) She positively glows when she joins Bibi in front of the living room TV in the evening to watch soap operas. Clearly she misses studying very much.