The Taste of Ginger(6)
My mother waved her hand as if shooing away a fly. “Why do you always have to talk back? I reached out. You are the one who did not respond.”
I thought back to the birthday card she had mailed me last month. It remained unopened in the shoebox in which I stored all the birthday cards I’d received from my parents since we’d first moved to America. There were a couple voice mails before the card, but I’d ignored those too.
“You’d already said enough. I wasn’t going to read whatever backhanded, gloating comment you put in some card too.”
My mother wrinkled her brow. “What? You didn’t . . .” Her voice trailed off, her expression shifting from confused to sullen. She nodded, more to herself than to anyone else. Maybe she was understanding for the first time that I had been so hurt, so infuriated, by what had happened between us that I couldn’t even open her birthday card and see her familiar scrawl.
Neel walked back in, the kitchen towel slung over his shoulder. “You two still at it?” He swiped a pakora from the aluminum pack our mother was wrapping.
She and I both glared at him, but he seemed oblivious.
He said, “Maybe the best thing would be to start fresh and spend some time together as a family. Pree, we’re not leaving till Friday. You can still get a ticket. It’ll be fun.”
Easy for him to say. He was going to India with his perfect Indian bride and new baby on the way. He wouldn’t be branded a “failure.”
Our mother said, “Neel is right. You are the only sister. It will look bad if you don’t go. Who will do the duties you must perform?”
She still didn’t get it. I dug my nails into my palm so deeply that I knew I’d leave moon-shaped marks. All she cared about was what people would think. It was all she had ever cared about.
“I’m sure someone else can fill in.” I gestured toward the living room and plastered on an innocent smile. “Like Dipti.”
“Come on, Pree. It’s important to me,” Neel said.
There was that word again. Important. The last time he’d used it was for this baby shower. When I knew something mattered to him, I rarely turned him down. But the thought of being in India, of dealing with my parents on their turf, amid the pollution and noise and assaulting smells, made my stomach churn.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Neel. “I should head to the airport. I don’t want to miss my flight.”
Without a glance at my mother, I picked up my camera and marched up the stairs to my old bedroom and grabbed my packed suitcase. I had put in my time and was ready to get back to California. My mother and I got along much better with thousands of miles separating us.
3
Back home in Los Angeles, I managed to avoid thinking about my mother by relying on a familiar standby—work. Freedman, Lerner & Foster occupied five floors of ocean-view real estate in Santa Monica, but I rarely had the opportunity to appreciate the panoramic vista of the sun setting over the Pacific Ocean. Most days were like today, in which my fingers were glued to my keyboard, hammering out a summary judgment motion.
I’d billed over a hundred hours during the week and a half that I’d been back. This was, in part, because my mentor, Mike, whom the Warden had assured was a lock for partnership given his nine years of unwavering dedication to the firm, had been passed over and was told to leave. If partnership hadn’t been attainable for a white male like Mike, then what chance did I have unless I worked harder than everyone around me? When I graduated from high school, my father had made sure I understood that I needed to work twice as hard to get half as far as a white peer, but I didn’t want just half of what white people had, so I worked four times as hard. As the only Indian woman at my firm, I had always known I had to make up for not being white, and I was confident I would. I’d keep my head down, not make any waves, and continue being the top biller in my class so there would be no way they could turn me down for partnership when the time came to decide.
My office, no larger than a prison cell, was cluttered with binders, files, and a rainbow of highlighters and sticky notes. Having no plans for the upcoming holidays made it easy to focus on work. My entire family had left for India four days ago and would not be back for a month, so even if my parents and I weren’t fighting, I couldn’t have gone to Illinois. I hadn’t received so much as a text from Alex since he’d moved to New York. I couldn’t believe that after nearly two years together, it was so easy for him to make a clean break. There hadn’t been a single day since our breakup that I hadn’t wondered if I should have gone with him, but maybe that was because dwelling on the past felt easier than dealing with the present.
I allowed myself only a moment to take in the last of the vivid blues and purples streaking the sky that Tuesday evening. There were so many times I’d wished I could forget work and take my camera to the beach to catch the sunset. While I was crafting arguments for the brief that was due on Friday, my cell phone began belting out its melodic ringtone. My fingers fumbled around in my oversize purse trying to find it. A long string of unfamiliar numbers flashed on the screen. Only the first two mattered. Ninety-one. India’s country code. I nearly dropped the phone in my haste to answer it.
“Something’s happened,” Neel said.
I jerked up. Neel’s tone sent a shiver down my back. I pulled my cardigan tighter around my shoulders. Was it our parents? Cousins? Mama or Mami? I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing myself.