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In the beginning there is only a sky.
A ceiling that I am looking up at.
The ceiling is brown.
It has tinges of cream in it.
There’s this light hanging down.
Just a normal, hanging light.
“Chica!” Zahra flings herself on me. “I was sure at the last minute you’d decide
not to come!”
I slip out from under Zahra. She flops back on the carpet. Her hair gleams and
her eyes shine. Her mouth smiles and glitters with red lip gloss – cheap red,
but it doesn’t look cheap on her.
“Of course I came. I told you I would.” I look around. The hotel looks bleary
and the enticing nightlife from outside San Francisco booms in like
a rose newly cut.
“Guess what!” Zahra’s eyes glitter more. “Guess what happened!”
I think morbidly of all the possible things
Zahra could be excited about. Doing E, screwing a
guy even though she’s gay, chugging three bottles of
Mountain Dew in one sitting.
I’m depressed. And she’s happy. Why are we always such opposites?
“We did it.” Zahra proclaims.
My mind is blurring. Did what? With who? Where? When? How? Why? The last
question sticks.
“Oh my gosh, it was the most fabulous night of
my life. Lena... mmm... she’s everything I could have ever wanted.”
“Great,” I say numbly. I don’t really want to hear about her love life. Next
month Lena will probably just be history anyway.
Zahra rabbits on and on for the next million years.
Meanwhile the ceiling attains a bluish tint.
I took a bus to San Francisco. I checked in at
this expensive hotel where Zahra’s “ally,” Zach, reserved
a room for her and me under fake names. I did
all that, then waited for five flipping hours here, terrified they would find
me. I waited for her!
“Oh honey!” She finally says. “I am SO sorry I made you wait here so long. My
goodness, it’s like 3 am! Shall I cook some food for you?”
I shake my head. Zahra’s always been into exaggeration. But sometimes in her
exaggeration she forgets the truth. But what is the truth anyway? I’m here.
There’s nothing really beyond that.
“Is that her smell?” I ask, realising this is a
cliché question too late.
“What?!” Zahra looks at me.
“You smell like...” I think, “fennel and alabaster.”
She doesn’t seem to care that the word ‘alabaster’ doesn’t fit in there.
“Are you mad I slept with Lena?” Zahra asks.
“No!” I get up. “Why would I be mad!” I go huddle up in on
a corner of the
bed.
“Nayaa...” Zahra sits down beside me. “Look, I’m really sorry I made you wait so
long. Really. I just... lost track of time.” She
looks at me with her “earnest look.”
I sigh. “Can we go to sleep now?”
It’s so easy for Zahra to pass everything off. I don’t know whether she’s
escaping or she just doesn’t realise.
Maybe it wasn’t such a good decision after all.
I’m scared.
If I was a lot younger than I am now, I would
have said Zahra’s my new best friend. But that could never really describe her.
She is the sky. Maybe like a female Zeus, only
with so much more clarity. She’s the kind of
girl who will never touch a cigarette but knows
every last detail about them, the kind of girl
a mental hospital can’t stop from smoking pot,
the kind of girl who hates purple eyeshadow but
says it looks fabulous on me, the kind of girl
who admires drag queens and hates Republicans.
With reason. Her parents are Republicans, you know. And they hate their own
daughter. Here Zahra might stop, pause in the middle of
applying a new layer of
black nailpolish.
“Well, maybe they don’t hate me,” She’ll say, and smile
a lip-glossed kiss at me. “They just wish I was completely different.”
She’ll laugh, cap the bottle of polish, and turn
around to look at me. “But if I was completely different, you wouldn’t like me,
would you? I wouldn’t like myself.”
Zahra loves black. She’d never wear black lipstick, though. “Imagine what your
lips would look like after kissing someone who’s wearing black lipstick,” She’ll
explain.
She has a black opal set as
a bellybutton ring. Reminds me
of a book for
some obscure reason. I hate bellybutton rings. I don’t have any piercings at
all.
“Oh, but you’re naive, Nayaa.” Zahra’ll laugh. I guess that’s true.
She could win any audition. But drama isn’t her thing. “I’m real,” She would
say, “I’m not a pretender.”
In the midnight sun her hair looks bluish and thick, waving around her face in
splendiferous curls. She’s got this aura – like a
Picasso painting – that emanates from her mouth in words that only convey half
of what it all truly means.
I don’t really know that I can describe her.
She’s her. Isn’t that enough?
Then Zahra starts to drag me along to parties. It’s interesting to see how the
*underworld* functions. Weed, E, pot, crack, coke – strange names for
a variety of
substances. Makes it seem like a gallery where
everyone is looking at paintings and admiring them, but instead
of paintings they’re drugs.
Zahra loves pot, but she doesn’t do anything else.
Her aura protects us both. And I just huddle up in a
corner with a book I borrowed from the library,
or my diary - and after a while someone comes
along and slips an invisibility cloak over me, and I become inconspicuous. I
like it that way, though.
So time passes. What can I really say about time? It dances, like
a gradual feeling you wake up with in the
morning that something’s going to happen, that fades by the time school is
underway, and then wakes up again on the bus ride home. Yeah, time.
I start to relax, almost. Forget about the people who must be looking for us.
Maybe that sounds really harsh. But maybe sometimes you have to do the things
you don’t really want to do, things that may not make sense sometime in some
different situation, but at the time it makes perfect sense.
Fade in, fade out, fade in.
A long time ago, when I was little, I used to
swing on the gate outside our house. The gate always creaked, but I wasn’t
interested when Papa said he’d put oil on the hinges. I was forever trying to
figure out what the hinges really were, though. The bottom
of the gate? The carvings near the sides? The
funny things holding the gate to the brick wall?
Then one day he fixed it. But now it swung too fast. Then I started class one.
School was terrifying. Mamma didn’t help; she was always doing this and that,
rushing here and there. It’s not that she didn’t want to spend time with me;
it’s just that I was always such a
solitary child,
a good child too
– I could fade away quite easily, and it wouldn’t matter.
I forgot about the gate completely by the time I turned seven. By then, I liked
ladybugs. When we went to Dalhousie I collected ladybugs and mica in jars. It
sounds cruel now but then I think I did let them free after I saw them crawling
among the mica, trying desperately to get out of
there. I wasn’t a cruel
child. I was just rather eccentric.
When my mother left two years later, my father became slightly reclusive and
Harleen bua moved in with us.
One thing about Harleen bua is that she likes socialising. While my father
stayed at his office moodily staring at business contracts, she invited the
whole city to come dine with us. In less than a
year her khichdi was famous for actually managing to turn
a hated dish into a
delight, her sari collection was renowned for its immense quantity and quality,
and her homemade hair oil made people collect at the door.
Mamma wasn’t like her at all. I think Harleen bua hated my mother simply because
she had stolen my father’s heart. His sister wasn’t used to being pushed aside.
Once Dadima told me how Harleen bua and Papa had been so close as children, and
how wonderful it was that she was now living with us again. But she didn’t talk
about Mamma leaving either.
When Papa shifted us out here, he was in a
really crazy mood. One minute he would laugh jubilantly, make all these absurd
jokes, and drink glass after precarious glass of
beer. Then he would wake up hungover, shout at everyone, be grumpy all day long,
and not speak to me at all.
They really tried to shelter me too much.
“You’ll become like your good-for-nothing mother if you don’t listen to us!”
Harleen bua threatened.
“She wasn’t good for nothing.” Papa would say, quietly. “Leenu, she was...
wonderful. She was....” He would turn away.
“Then why did that saali leave, you tell me that!” Harleen bua’s voice would
rise shrilly. She always sounded like such a
child.
“Don’t swear in front of the
child!” Papa would grab Harleen bua’s wrists,
twisting them. He got very angry when she degraded my mother. “Go to your room!”
He would roar at me.
And I would run.
I liked running. It gave me this sense of
escape. While some kids went and played hopscotch and “mother, may I,” hide and
seek... other silly games... or cycled, or talked with their friends, or picked
on younger kids – I ran.
You see, we had this place of our own. When it
got too freaky back at home, we went there. She’d know if I was there, and I’d
know if she was there. It wasn’t a telepathic
connection. Some things happen anyway.
We’d just lie there in the grass, or dangle our feet in the pond. No big deal.
My father and I have this phrase “no big deal man,” that I liked to say when I
was two years old. He reminded me of it
sometimes. Later I would ponder about the sexism of
the statement, but....
But if I ever go back, I doubt he’d say that.
I liked the trees. When I read “Walk Two Moons,” I would experiment kissing
trees. But I never actually kissed any of them.
I only got so far as hugging trees. For some reason I was afraid to kiss
a tree, the same way I’m sometimes afraid to
kiss my cat. But I have kissed my cat.
I miss my cat now. And I miss those trees.
She would link hands with me, and we would gaze up at the clouds, who gave sway
to their master – or maybe mistress! – the sky. We didn’t see shapes in the
clouds. Zahra said it was stupid and childish to say, “Ooh, look, that cloud’s
a rabbit!” or something equally vile.
I liked to see the clouds as they really were.
The summer is almost over. In three weeks we’ll have to decide whether we’re
really going to drop out of high school or what.
I’m not sure about this, but there doesn’t seem to be any other option. I can’t
go to school on my own; they’ll trace me down eventually. And I can’t go back
home.
Zahra doesn’t seem to care much about dropping out. It’s all okay with her.
She’s so cool everything bounces right off her.
But what will we do? Well, maybe we can stay like this in the hotel, if Zach’s
deal with the manager doesn’t just flop. No. That’ll never work. Maybe we can
move in with Zach, or with Lena. Whoever. Maybe we can find some sort
of jobs. And when we’re sufficiently incognito,
maybe we can try school again.
“Nayaa, babe,” Zach slurs.
Half of my life is now centred on taking care
of drunk people. But I’m scared to let Zach
inside when I’m all alone here. But it’s because of
him we’re here. I have to let him in.
“I don’t like being called babe,” I say, opening the door. And I don’t like you.
“Yeh, whatever.” He falls down on the couch. His eyebrow ring glistens. I turn
on the brighter light.
“Where’s Zahra?” I ask. It’s one-thirty already. Is she going to be out all
night?
“S’pose she’s with Lena....” Zach trails off. “Get me some beer, babe.”
“You’re already sloshed,” I say irritably. I head into the kitchenette, grab
a root beer from the fridge, and hand it to him.
“What’s this?” He looks at the root beer, his eyes swivelling this way and that.
“Girl, you think I’m gonna drink some shit like this?” He throws the can at me.
It skids on the floor, clanging.
“Well, don’t ask me for anything, then!” I yell, going into the bedroom part
of the suite, slamming the door.
I’ve known Zahra for almost six months now. Four months at home, and the rest
here.
When we first met, I was in a bathroom stall at
the mall, staring at an intricate design someone had made on the stall door.
“If you don’t want to follow the rules, leave!” Papa roared.
“Well, maybe I will leave, then!” I ran outside, the world blurring into some
kind of strangely surreal haze. Papa yelled
after me. But he was the one who taught me to run. When I was four we went
running all the time. He got tired much easier than I did. Now I was gone,
fluttering through the streets like a captured,
then escaped butterfly. The mall was the easiest place was the easiest place to
go, and a bathroom stall was the easiest place
to hide.
But she was there this time, clomping around in her heavy hot pink boots,
smoking weed. The fumes wafted everywhere. They made my head hurt. I wanted to
get out of there but I couldn’t stop crying.
By crying I mean flat out wailing. Look, I was trying to restrain it, okay? Just
maybe it wasn’t that easy.
Usually it’s hard for me to get enough tears out. But that time it was so easy.
“Okay, that’s enough.” Zahra grabbed the door and yanked. The lock jarred off
course and hung there, sadly swinging from side to side. I was revealed,
suddenly silent.
“Honey,” She leaned down, stubbed the weed out and flushed it down the toilet.
Then she grabbed my hands and pulled me up.
She was strong.
I knew her.
I had seen her at school. She was in my creative writing, English and Health
classes. She had kind of intrigued me. Maybe it
was her sensualism.
“Nayaa, is that your name?” Her mouth twinkled at me.
“Yes,” I said. I was surprised she knew.
“Look, I know you’ve moved from – er, India, right? – you probably have
a lot to deal with. It must be stressful, all
that shit.”
So she had paid attention to me?
“But it can’t be all that bad.” She started to wipe away my tears. She brushed
them away so easily. Her fingers lingered on my cheeks for
a moment, and I could smell some sort
of violet perfume emanating from her. Then she
withdrew her hands sharply.
“You’re beautiful,” She said matter-of-factly. “You seem really smart, and you
write good. You’re utterly and hopelessly naive, but it doesn’t really matter.
You’ll learn. Want some weed?”
“No!” I was horrified. She laughed.
“I wasn’t going to give it to you, babe.”
“I don’t like being called ‘babe.’ It’s derogatory.” I said automatically.
“Well, little miss politically correct,” Zahra raised an eyebrow at me; then
stopped. “Okay. Introductions first. You’re Nayaa – I don’t know your last name
– and I’m Zahra. Well, my real name is Catherine Myers, but nobody can ever call
me that. Catherine.... was never, and will never be... me.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Why were you crying?” She asked, leading me out of
the stall. I slid up onto the counter. She studied me. When psychiatrists study
me I get the sensation of being some sort
of specimen. In biology back in India once PD
ma’am made us pass these ancient specimens in yellowed jars around. I refused to
touch any of them, so my friends would pass them
over me. They were horrifying. I couldn’t even like the starfish. One
of the jars even leaked, oozing
a poisonous-looking yellow liquid. Knowing that
it was formaldehyde didn’t help.
“Hey Nayaa,” Zahra waved a hand in front
of my face. “You seem spaced out.”
“I am spaced out,” I said, slowly. “Why shouldn’t I be?”
“I never said you couldn’t be, hun.” She laughed, gently, then –
a laugh somewhat peculiar and, for some reason,
nostalgic.
“Life sucks, like I was saying,” She continued, “but it really can’t be that
bad.”
“It is that bad.”
She shrugged. “If you say so.”
“What do you mean, if I say so? I hate it when people say that!” I bit my lip,
starting to drum my knees. She reached out a
hand and stopped me.
“You’ll have to get used to it sometime,” She turned and smiled at me. “People
can be real assholes.”
“I already know that.”
“Yeah, I guess you might.” She jumped down. “Look, you’re not the kind
of person who rants out all her troubles to
someone you’ve just met – unless, maybe, if that someone is
a shrink – and I’m not the kind
of person who sympathetically tuts in all the
right places.” She sighed. “Let’s go get a
coffee.” She grabbed me and I followed her...
.... like I always do.
“I’m home!” Zahra calls. I don’t come out. I’m sitting on the bed, and I’m
crying, as usual.
I can hear strains of conversation between Zach
and Zahra. Yelling. Then she flings open the door, and she swoops down on me,
flinging her arms around me.
“Honey, you know you shouldn’t pay attention to Zach. He’s just an asshole!” She
says endearingly. “Anyway, he’s gone now.”
“He didn’t do anything,” I say.
“Well, he was drunk. And he admitted he was rude to you. And I know how
sensitive you are.”
“I’m not sensitive,” I say coolly. I get off the bed. “Look, Zahra, this is just
so fucked up. What are we really doing here?”
“You didn’t have to come.” For a moment her eyes
glint. Then she walks out, slamming the door as she goes.
She only got mad at me once. Enough to last.
I went into her room. I knew all the places. Stuffed in socks, in the secret
compartment in the third dresser drawer. In the medicine cabinet, in the bottle
marked “facial wax.” In the corners of her bed.
Didn’t her parents ever see?
I took all of it. Two hours. Then I went out and
ran down to the river. Zahra lived close to the river, which I envied her for.
She was so close to our spot, too.
Away, afar. Pot, weed, marijuana, hemp – whatever you want to call that shit.
Then home.
After school she slammed me against the school bathroom wall. When I was little
I pushed my friend against the fridge once, but I’d never been pushed like this.
Her hands drilled into my shoulders and it was like she was tying me to the
wall. I forgot about trying to slip away; my legs didn’t seem able to. I didn’t
fight back either. I didn’t want to, and I couldn’t have either.
Her eyes and mouth were merciless.
Fear.
“You fucking bitch,” She snarled, “friends never go against each other, you hear
me? Do you hear me?? fuck you!”
She started to shake me. Confusing screams. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t listen to
her. And then – adults. “The ones in charge.” She had detention.
Yelling, crying, shrieks, yells....
And I ran.
I don’t know why my mother left. I never really knew at all. My father wouldn’t
talk about it, and all Harleen bua said was nasty things. “Your good-for-nothing
mother.” “That little sneaky slut.” “That saali.” “She won your father’s heart
and then broke it.” “A silly fling in college.” “I always told your father it
would never work out.” “Doesn’t she even care enough about her own beti?” “How
can she possibly leave her daughter all alone like this.” “She always knew
Harish wasn’t a child-carer.” “She could have
been a good daughter-in-law. How she broke our
mother’s heart.” “She had no respect for Indian values.” “Such
a radical kutti.” “No values. No morals.”
She never said why. Even when I got in a fiery
mood and yelled and screamed and ranted, all she would yell back was that I was
becoming just like my mother.
And then she always loved me too.
I never quite understood why Harleen bua loved me at all. If she really hated my
mother so much, why did she love me? Just because half
of my genes were my father’s?
“We’re going to have a blast tonight,” Zahra
says, smiling at me. For a moment I’m scared.
But she seems happy now. It doesn’t matter that I want out
of this.
She rambles on about some party.
We get ready. Clothes, makeup, glitter, hair....
When we get there, I assume my role naturally. In the corner I can see what is
really happening, while she loses herself in more oblivion.
When the party’s over Zahra staggers over to where I am holed up, wanting. At
one point I remember wat[b]ching her snogging Zach and wondering if Lena was
anywhere near. If either of them cared.
Now she is drunk, stoned, high. And I have to take care
of her, because at the end Zach is gone, Lena is gone, everyone’s gone.
Well, I’m left.
“Nayaa,” she slurs, and my name comes out sounding like “Neya.” I think for
a moment that maybe Neya sounds better than
Nayaa.
“Zahra,” I echo. She flops down on the sofa, almost on top
of me. Her head in my lap, her curls
spread-eagled.
After some time I help her get up and we stagger out and I get
a taxi. It’s coldish out even though it’s only
late August. It must be a rainy night or
something, though the rain hasn’t begun yet.
At the hotel she falls into a slumber easily
enough. She no longer gets hangovers much, so I’m not too worried about that. It
sounds strange but she doesn’t, but Zahra’s pretty strange that way.
In the early morning she wakes up and I am still awake, staring out
of the window. She sits up, tossing her hair
back.
“I dream of you,” She suddenly says. I turn,
looking at her.
I don’t want to hear what she dreams about me.
“In my dreams, I kiss you.” Zahra laughs
suddenly. She gets out of bed and pulls me off
the window seat, down onto the carpet. She leans against my knees. I huddle
closer to myself. She stares at me. The worst part is she’s not high or drunk
anymore. “We make love,” she continues.
I’m suddenly remembering that movie, Isadora. I really admire Isadora Duncan.
Vanessa Redgrave played her pretty well, too. I kind of
see why she’s one of my father’s favourite
actors.
Zahra looks at me for a while longer. She traces
her fingers on my cheek, and I blink nervously. She holds up my chin, leans in
and kisses me.
I’ve never been kissed before. I guess I was one of
those people destined to be *sweet sixteen and never been kissed.*
Isadora is smiling at me. I’m terrified. It’s like the time my father got mad at
me because I talked back at him too much, and suddenly he was yelling all over
the place. He threw me out of the house, and I
stared down the stairwell for fifteen minutes.
Then he let me back in.
Normalement, j’aime mes copaines tout, I think. That doesn’t sound right. I
really need to brush up on my French.
I can taste the liquor on her mouth. Somehow I kiss her back, though I can’t say
how. Is this what pot tastes like? I don’t know how to French kiss. I don’t even
know if this is what should be happening.
“Relax,” Zahra laughs a little, trailing her
fingers over my mouth. She laughs again, kissing me again and again, pushing me
down into the carpet.
They would never understand. They hate me already.
But this feels nice. She touches me so softly; she’s not taking advantage
of me. This is love, isn’t it?
Infatuation. Sex. Teenage lust. Dreams.
Illusions. Sinful. Underage Sex. Drugs. Drink. Bad girls. Pot. Bad Influence.
Sex. So what!
She slips off her shirt and then mine. Deeper, deeper. I’ve never been kissed
before. I can’t do this. I can do this. My heart’s pounding, but that’s such
a cliché. I hate clichés. I want her. She wants
me. But isn’t there a limit? No, there are no
limits.
I’m a girl. She’s a
girl. But what’s wrong with that?
Isadora’s finished her finale. She bows as the audience screams, “Encore!
Encore!” and the curtain sweeps down in front of
her. Zahra sits up, grabs a bottle
of red wine, and pours me
a glass. It no longer tastes bitter. Maybe it’s
spiked with something. But it feels good. I watch her drink from the bottle,
then put it back. I toss my glass aside too, and some
of the wine spills on the carpet.
I want her.
I hardly remember enough of my mother. I should.
I spent nine years of my life with her. But it
seems like the next seven years were the truly important years
of my life, and all I remember are vague
childhood things about my mother. She was always too engrossed and caught up in
other things anyway. I don’t even really know what she did. She seemed to have
so many jobs. I have a vague idea that she was
some kind of social worker. But I don’t know
what she really did. When she did come home she would treat me like
a child. Well, I
was a child. I
guess I couldn’t have really expected her to treat me like
a peer or something. But she never really acted
like my mother either. She acted like one of
those aunties, except she didn’t pull me cheeks like they did.
But I do know that I loved her. I don’t know why. There must have been some sort
of reason, though.
In the late morning the stars have gone away and the sun smiles down on Romeo
and Juliet. Shakespeare wakes up, washes his face, and trails
a finger across a
dusty railing.
“I have to go,” Zahra says. She slips out of the
blanket we were curled up in, getting into her clothes.
“Where?” I ask. I’m frightened. A droning
feeling – the feeling of doom, maybe – sinks and
sweeps around us, playing with the air. The room is whispering something, but I
can’t hear it. I pull the blanket up around my chest, and suddenly being naked
feels wrong.
“Nayaa....” Zahra smiles somewhat affectionately at me. “Honey, this... this was
never supposed to be.... your life. You need to go back. You said it yesterday.
What are we even doing here? But the real question is, what are you doing here?
I can deal with it. I can brave it out. But you have the potential to be so much
more than this.”
“Why?!” I scream. “Don’t do this to me... you can’t leave me here all alone!”
“Of course I won’t!” She grabs some bags lying by the door that I have only just
noticed. ‘I’ll call your father, aunt, whoever. They’ll be here in less than two
or three hours.”
“But... but...” I can’t think properly. I grab my clothes. I’m in
a panic. I need to catch her, make her stay
before... before... I don’t know what before. “What do you mean, the potential?
You have it too! You can’t just “brave it out”! I could never leave you! This
would never work!”
I don’t want to leave now. I can’t go back.
“I love you,” Zahra crouches down beside me. “I love you so, so, so much more
than you will ever know. But... this can’t go on. It’ll never work out. In the
end, we’re just children, trying to pretend we’ve got money, power... in
a world that denies us power. We’re pretending
we’re free. But we’re not. I wish we could be. But you and I.... we’re so
different. You’re naive and lovely and... wonderful... and I’m just
a screwed up druggie.”
“You’re not!” I’m crying now, and my voice sounds shrill, high, whatever. My
clothes look silly and preppy on me now.
“Yes, I am.” Zahra sighs. “Look, we both know it, okay? And face it, honey...
you’re not cut out for this.”
“Oh, I’m not cut out for this?” I yell, standing up, running my hands through my
hair over and over again. “Me? What the fuck are you talking about? You know I
can’t go home. I came with you to get away from them, and – and to be with you!”
“But it’s never gonna last!” Zahra yells back. There is despair somewhere in
that. “Don’t you see how unreal this all is? Do you honestly think we can ever
live well as two teenage high school dropouts? We’ll just become heroin addicts
or something! And I never want that to happen to you!”
“That won’t happen! We can try to make a good
life if we want to.” I’m desperate. Maybe she is right. “You’re just
pessimistic!” I scream.
“And you’re too optimistic!”
I sink back down on the bed. I can feel Zahra soften. She drops her bags, takes
my hands, and kisses me deeply for a long time.
Then she draws away.
“I can’t believe you’d fuck me and then leave!” I cry. She always thinks she’s
the one in charge, that she knows how to do everything right. And I just follow
her.
She looks hurt, sad, aghast. “That’s such a
nasty word. Didn’t you like it?”
“Of course I did!” I shake my head, then lean back. “But if you loved me, you’d
stay, wouldn’t you?”
“I do love you,” Zahra says quietly, “But I can’t stay.”
She grabs the bags again and is out of the door
so fast I can’t say goodbye.
I didn’t try hard enough to stop her. I didn’t go after her.
End of the movie act.
The leaves are green, the grass is green, the ocean is green, even the sky has
a tint of green
in it. Summer awakes from its cove, its gothic dwelling, after
a rainy night of
sadness. Birds sing, cats meow, the air of
a lost song returns. All that bullshit.
I’m alone in this strange white room with a
perplexing photograph of
a teen popstar wearing some weird red sarong
glaring out at me. This poster appears to be on the wall directly in front
of me, but the room is circular and all the
walls eerily blend into each other, so I can’t be sure.
Yesterday it wasn’t at all summery. How things change.
Oh. Oh my god. “Zahra,” I say weakly. “Zahra!”
So she did leave then.
“Beti, what is it?” Harleen bua is peering at me. I blink. Her eyes are huge:
pools of liquid, beady brown framed in strange
black cilia. The cilia quiver! I draw back quickly.
So she did leave then. Later, I am sitting by the pond, in that spot. Our place.
The trees are still creating a magical haven
around us. Not us anymore. Me. My feet feel the tingly clarity
of water. They look odd, refracted in the
greenish water like that. They morph. I wonder if there are any fishes in this
pond.
The sun is bright but not hot; the shadows dance around my white dress with the
sequins here and there; and I feel Zahra everywhere.
Six months. Was it some kind of - dream? Did I
never really meet her? Two months we’d been gone, but the other four seemed so
unreal too. I close my eyes.
Zahra showed me how to live. Didn’t she?
But she said she loved me. Then why did she leave me?
Back to non-existentialism.
Maybe she’s gone somewhere. But I will always wonder about her. Maybe she’s
a wilted rose, or a
stone on a solitary
beach, or a four-leaved clover.... we know each
other, though.
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