Fida TK

One Of

Novel extract

1.

In the middle of my phone call with Leena I ask her, do you remember when Ma found out that her brother, our uncle, that slippery temperamental shit who lived up in Saskatoon, he had died -some, what, eight or nine years ago now. Eight. Do you remember how it went, it was me and you and Ma and Bab in a crowded hotel in Bangalore, scratchy cots and boiling heat and the burnt soles of our feet. Nine years. Definitely. And do you remember, the stink of sweet jackfruit. Late in the morning, we were about to have breakfast, it was hot and sticky and humid and across the world there was a sudden violence inside of our mother’s brother, none of us had spoken to him in years, home-brewed feni had swollen his liver, and there had been vodka, cocaine, sometimes gin, and it was enough, eventually. 

And Ma, she received the call that her brother was dead and let out a sharp whine. The kind of wounded ugly that lasts outwardly for seconds but maybe, no way of knowing, digs deep into the sides. Of ribs, of lungs. 

Then she stood up. And asked what we would eat for breakfast. 

“Christ, I remember that,” Leena tells me, while I walk through the park. “That was fucked up.”

“Yeah.”

“But the botanical gardens were cool.”

“They really were.”

She doesn’t ask me why I bring it up. Sometimes memories of our family slide into focus and have to be mentioned. I don’t know why. Maybe to make sure it really did happen. We’ll ask each other, do you remember when. When our uncle’s liver exploded, and our mother cried for seconds, and then wanted to have breakfast? We went to see the botanical gardens later that day and never talked about it again, do you remember?

“How’s work going?” she asks, as our dead uncle slides out of focus.

“Doesn’t exist.”

“What happened?”

“Pervy boss. Shitty tips.” I trail my shoe through the dirt before continuing. “So, I’m in Ottawa.”

Silence, then. My heart beats wildly in my chest. There has been something heavy and intense and awkward between Leena and I in the past few weeks, with a handful of scattered bland phone calls and avoidant texts, I am sure she felt it, puzzled over it, and now its reasoning has revealed itself. I stop walking, squinting up into the sky. Then,

“You left Amsterdam,” Leena finally says.

“Yesterday.”

“And now you’re in Ottawa.” 

“In a park, by the bus station,” there is a sign to my left, made of splintered old wood. I squint at it. “Bridgeport Park. Heard of it?”

“No. You’re going to see Ma and Bab?”

“Seems like the right thing to do, doesn’t it?”

“Okay,” is her response. I can’t tell what she’s thinking. And I want to take it all back, now, telling her that I’m here. Coming here. 

“Just don’t stay too long, okay?” she finally says. “It always drains you.”

“Yeah, I know. Can we talk about something else now?”

“Like what?”

“Collapsing economies. State terror.”

“The economy seems to be collapsing,” she says. “And the state is terrifying. I have to go to work.”

“Don’t.”

“I am.”

“Please?” I beg, even though I don’t know why, this has been a terrible phone call. I don’t really want to stay on the line and neither does she, I can sense her irritation. So I cling. “If you hang up now I’ll do something terrible.”

“Looks like you already have,” Leena replies. “Call me later, okay?”

Then she hangs up. I stuff my phone back in my pocket and look around. The park is a square patch of dried grass slotted in the middle of a federal government city, two benches, splintery wood, one muddy green portable toilet. Squirrels. Rabid fuckers. I never spent much time in Ottawa. Its most notable trait is its proximity to my hometown, roughly an hour away.  

I should text Bab. But then I hike up my duffel bag and walk out of the park –because, why have I never explored this city? Marveled at its airport hangar, or trimmed hedges, or a canal that stinks of shit? A paved road. A tree. And the potential social experience, a coffee snob who rolls up their jeans to show off sexless ankles, or a doctor that doesn’t really know what menstruation means, or a Boxing Day legacy where people fucking stab each other over a TV. Yes. This could all exist. I could be entertained for weeks and months and decades before I manage to see my parents.

So I start, first at a café a few streets over; the coffee is dark and hot and overpriced. No exposed ankles in sight. Later, a pharmacy lined with the kind of sunscreen that turns brown skin purple, and finally, the most anticipated: a bakery. I buy a donut and sit outside. Pretty stale. Ottawa isn’t known for its yeast.

Ottawa has failed me. I fold up the greasy donut paper and toss it in the bin. Then I pull out my phone, and compile the most sophisticated text I can come up with:

Me: Baba!!!!!!! How’s ur moustache 

Him, immediately: hi Yahvi

Me: soooo I left Dam. The people were too tall

Him: Where are you?

Me: Ottawa. Surprise

Him (again, immediately): I’ll pick you up now

It all feels too full. Of an older taste. So, another donut. Better now? Still bitter, like bay leaves stuck in sugar. (Choking.) Another circle around the park, maybe. Another minute to pull out grass, and another, for an easier mistake: hey x Miss me? Sticking my phone down my shirt and taking a snapshot of my nipple. Then I squint at the wrinkly brown close up and delete it, disappointed. Not easier. Not worth it, but, another coffee, now? Another is a convenient word, because home is too close, and also, did you even think this through, and also, your gut is cowering in the soles of your feet. 

(Choke)

(Get over it)

So I click on messages again, where Bab has now sent me three different ones: 

Him: Helo 

Him: hello where are you

Him: hi yahvi can i come pick u up

Me, finally: im at Dale park, by the bus station

Him (again, immediately, again, no questions asked): Ok

2.

Bab’s hugs are always brief -a stint of warmth, a kind of skittish pat on the back and then release. He is the type of man who has worked too much and lived through too many wars, and now his feelings of it all are buried deep within him, and the ability to express himself is lost somewhere back in India. 

“Hi Yahvi,” he says, after we have burdened embrace, and then he watches me throw my duffel bag in the backseat of his car, unsure of how to help. I tell him it’s fine. The duffel bag has been secured. So he gets into the front seat, me in the passenger. 

“How are you?” he asks.

“Oh, great,” my seatbelt clicks. I can’t remember the last time I was in a car. “Everything’s still intact, all my bits.”

“Okay,” he starts the car. And I grin, because I have forgotten how well he knows me. It was not always this way, it used to be that I bewildered him, worried him, I was brainwashed by western lawlessness, I was missing a soul, my friends were appalling, I was appalling. I don’t remember when it changed. Now he just nods and says okay, to anything, to everything. So maybe it’s not exactly that he understands me. But he has accepted that he never will.

“Wait,” I say, as we drive past our usual exit. “You’re not exiting on Bronson?”

“Bronson’s closed,” he replies. “We have to take Kent. You haven’t been here in a while.”

I stare out the window. Soon we leave the city, and I hate to admit the way it makes me feel, like my chest is lighter. When the roads get cramped and narrow and the car starts to shake over unfinished gravel, and I crane my neck to try and see where the fields end, barren, scenic in a mediocre way, so flat out here that you can see for miles.

“Are you hungry?” Bab asks.

“Yeah.”

“We’re home soon,” he turns left onto Carp Road and passes Stittsville, a cluster of grocery stores and three terrible bars and a high school. My old one. We live twenty minutes past it. Our home is squished onto a bend off a road called Twin. A secluded patchwork of houses decently spaced from each other by a spurt of mossy trees, its own small forest. The armpit hair of the countryside.

We are almost nearing Twin. And, is it a mistake? Because, how do I describe my mother? I can’t, so I won’t.

“Actually,” I say, “Why don’t we keep driving? Racism in the west sounds nice–”

“Yahvi,” there are all types of opposing sentiments in the way he says my name.

“She’s happy you’re home–”

“She’s going to go on about my weight and how I need to grow my hair–”

“Yahvi,” there it is again. Harsher than a hug. “She won’t. Really. She can’t wait to see you. Let’s go home.”

***

We come into the house through the backdoor. It shuts hard behind us. Immediately, I hear quick footsteps, then long, thin hands wrap around the kitchen door, and the beginnings of a head, curious, shy. We lock eyes. Ma looks at me.

“Hi,” I say. 

She doesn’t stop looking at me. Half melon frown. “Hi,” she repeats it. Like a parrot, like a mock. Then, “You lost weight?” 

I turn to Bab, who decides, at this moment, to examine the crown moldings of the doorway. Then I look back at Ma.

“That’s the first thing you say to me?”

“It looks good!” Ma protests. She bounds forward. Excited now. “You look good. Boys want to marry you, eh?” she cups my cheek, even when I try to shrug her off. Then her tone shifts to something solemn. “Yahvi, grow your hair. I want to cry. Okay? My love. I’ve missed you.”

How do I describe my mother? I can’t, so I won’t. I look into her eyes, small and hazel and nothing like mine, but her nose, crooked, soft, and the square shape of her face, both of which I’ve taken from her.

There is space inside me where the heart is supposed to be, space she ripped apart for herself a long time ago, space for being near her, for being away from her, Ma, I’ve missed you.

“Ma,” I say. “I’ve missed you,”

“Then hug me,” she orders. I can see Bab behind her, smiling. So I fold myself into her arms, my head resting on the smooth plate of her breast bone. Her embrace is warm and long, release, relief, there is none of it. She grips me until I squirm. Gag. Get off. Okay. A cackle, and she shoves me off. I stumble back, but her hand shoots out to grab my wrist, catching me, the bones of her side against the bones of mine, and her arm slings around me as we amble into the kitchen. Bab follows behind.

“You talked to your sister?” Bab asks me.

“Yeah, she’s good.”

“Let me make you chicken,” Ma walks to the fridge to pull out leftovers.

I always like this part of coming home. Ma heats up some chicken curry and places it in front of me, and then both my parents watch me eat, fascinated by my very presence in their kitchen. 

“Are you staying for the whole weekend?” Ma asks.

I chew slowly. Thinking. “Maybe I’ll stay longer than a weekend?”

They are both silent for a long time, and I stare at my plate, preoccupied with my chewing. I wonder what my face looks like, I wonder what they see. “Okay,” Ma finally responds. “It’s okay.”

They don’t ask why. Not yet. To look into Ma’s eyes and feel her skepticism and her worry but also her silence. The willingness to give me space. It is new. It makes me emotional, all of a sudden.

“As long as you grow your hair,” she adds.

“There it is.”

“And you have to come to church every Sunday. You have to. And all the Konkani Association events.”

I lick the last bit of curry off my spoon. “Fine.”

“You know Barbara Gomez? Her son–”

“Alright,” I push my plate away. “I’m going to bed.”

“It’s only nine o’clock.”

“I want to be unconscious.”

“Okay, go upstairs, now,” Ma orders, and I walk towards the stairs, holding my hands up in surrender.

“Wait,” she commands. I stop. “Take out the garbage before you sleep. And tomorrow, Father Augustus is coming for dinner.”

“Why? Ma, I just got home–”

“You need blessings,” she interrupts. “Now go.”

***

Gaudy Indians, it’s the only way to name it, new money floats through and they get a remodel, a crystal chandelier, statues of elephants and vigorously patterned rugs shipped directly from India. In this shit-hole of a town with low rusted crusty bungalows they have an upstairs, two cars, marble countertops. My fingers skin the flowered wallpaper as I walk, aged, peeling, the last hint of nostalgia. At least nothing matches. Endearing after years of Scandinavian design. 

As promised, I take the trash out of the bin and open the front door. No signs of human life at this hour. Just the shrill beat of crickets, two flickering street lamps. Frogs soaking in swampy ponds further up our armpit. In the thick midnight of a humid summer, out here, the darkness feels bright, glowing like we’re underwater.

But as I walk down our driveway I see her. Coming up the road, a black shadow that morphs into a familiar face. Myra. I look at her and then I remember what she tastes like.

“Oh,” is all she can say, as she stares at me. “You’re back.”

I grip the trash bag tighter. Then I look behind me, at my parents’ house, and back at her. “Yeah,” I say. “Good observation.”

It slips out and just as immediately I regret it, when I see her face contort. “Great seeing you,” she says, there is an edge there. Then she starts up her own parents’ front steps.

We kissed, once, back when we were in high school. We were never close, never friends –but it was a party and Myra picked a fight and I was shitfaced, so I leaned in and kissed her, just for a minute, and then pulled back, and we stared at each other. Then we went our separate ways, and never spoke about it again –never spoke, in fact, except for our stiff yearly conversations when I visit my parents, and we deal out our neighborly hellos.

Sometimes it slides into my mind at aimless moments. I’ll slice a lemon and my brain will slip and think about my tongue in Myra Khan’s mouth. That’s all.

“Hey,” I call after her. Myra turns around again, with a slow reluctance, and we meet at the point where Cunha grass touches the Khan’s. Our two story remodel next to their slanted bungalow. 

“I heard you’ve started at Carleton,” I say. “Med school. Impressive. I should offer my congratulations.”

“Thanks,” Myra replies. “I heard you went to prison.”

“I went to Amsterdam.”

“That sounds nicer.”

“Sure. Different, to be fair.”

“Well, that’s what we say about you.” she says. Then flushes. “Sorry, I didn’t mean–”

But I smile. “Don’t worry about it.”

“No, that’s–”

“It’s fine.”

“I really didn’t–”

“Honestly. Don’t be sorry. It’s my choice, at least.”

Now Myra stops. It takes a minute for her to get everything together, staring at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Hm?” I walk over to the end of the driveway, and drop the trash in our can, shrugging. “Nothing.”

She follows me. “Say it.”

“No thanks. Don’t want to piss you off.”

“Too late.”

I raise my eyebrows. “How many aunties and uncles gave you an extra laddoo if you said you’d grow up to be a doctor?”

“It was my choice,” her reply is defensive. I smile.

“Bred to believe it. You know, when brown kids become doctors just to please their parents, it makes for a lot of shit surgeons. What a waste.”

The Cunhas and the Khans, people know us, they have to, two of the very few immigrant families in our pocket-sized redneck wasteland of a town. Through our differences (we can name them as: her, the head down and self-righteous, straight-A poster child of two hard working immigrants, and me, the gay degenerate of the flashy we-made-it), we have both always understood that when the school day ended, we would step into another world entirely.

“I’m going to be a good doctor,” says Myra.

“Cool.”

“Fuck off,” she replies. “How’s the great life of a brown individualist, then?”

It feels a bit shit, actually. I want to say that and then she is staring at me and I realize that I actually said it out loud, and it hangs in the air for a minute. Disorienting. I want to laugh. But instead, in a hollow voice I say, “I’m sorry about your brother.”

She blinks. “Are you?”

“Yes.”

The road suddenly feels large, removed from us. The wind has gone quiet, the streetlights seem to dim, the crickets hold their breath. Myra takes a step forward. Her eyes are drawn to my face. I know what she’s looking for.

Then she lifts her hand. Hesitantly at first, it hovers in the air, but then she seems to make her mind up, she takes her index finger and traces the bridge of my nose, her eyes focused intently. Clinical. This is an examination.

Broken once or twice or many times. She knows this.

Then I flinch and she steps back. Looks at her parents’ house. Then back to me.

“Do you regret it?” she asks.

I don’t really understand the question. “No,” I reply anyway.

The street feels small again. Myra jerks her chin towards her house. “Enjoy being home,” she says, “for however long you stay.” Then she makes her way towards her own driveway.

“Enjoy med school,” I call after her.