The Taste of Ginger(19)

The more I thought about it, I did have vague memories of a tall, scrawny boy I used to play cricket with on our lawn outside Lakshmi. I hadn’t seen him during our last few visits to India. I recalled my mother telling me his family had moved to Mumbai.





10


That night Neel stayed behind at the hospital, and I went back to Lakshmi with Virag Mama and my parents. I was too emotionally and physically drained to have a substantive conversation with my parents. Other than the short exchanges in the waiting room, we had all been relying on our old family standby: avoidance. While we had dinner with Virag Mama and his family, we avoided talking about my parents walking out on me when they found out I was shacking up with a dhoriya. As we unpacked my luggage, we avoided the fact that he and I had broken up. Then when we discussed sleeping arrangements, we avoided the fight with my mother last month.

I was thankful that Indira Mami suggested I sleep in the small room they used as an office but could pull a cot into. It allowed my parents and me to have separate spaces and continue to practice the avoidance we had adopted as a religion—the one aspect of Indian culture we could all agree upon.

As I sat on the bed my cousins Hari and Bharat had prepared for me, I thanked them. On previous trips, the firmness of the mattress and pillows had jolted me, but this time I didn’t care. I was grateful for the chance to lie down, undisturbed, for the first time in two days.

“Sorry this happened before your wedding,” I said when Hari handed me a clean towel. His hair was styled the same way as his father’s, the unruly, thick waves tamed with almond oil.

“It cannot be helped. We very much hope everything will be fine.” Despite spending a year in America while earning his master’s degree, Hari still had a strong Indian accent. But his skinny frame had filled out and become more muscular while he had been abroad, and our relatives joked that the added weight was evidence that America had been very “prosperous.”

“Hopefully.”

“I am sorry that it is under these circumstances, but we are very glad you were able to come,” Bharat said, pushing his thick, black-rimmed glasses back into place.

Hari nodded. “Laila is very excited to meet her didi.”

I opened my mouth to ask who Laila was and then snapped it shut. How could I have forgotten the name of his fiancée, my soon-to-be cousin? Their elaborate wedding invitation had sat on my front table for months, and I hadn’t bothered to learn a key piece of information from it? I had no doubt memorized the holdings of several useless cases during that amount of time.

“When is the wedding?” I asked.

“In twelve days’ time for the wedding itself, but the events start in just one week,” Hari responded. “But of course, we will change if it is necessary.”

“Whatever happens with my family shouldn’t affect your wedding.” I smiled at them. “I can’t believe how grown up you both are. It’s been so long since I’ve seen you.”

“It is okay. We know how busy you are being such a high-powered lawyer,” Hari said with admiration in his voice.

I made a mental note to check in with the Warden about the brief I had emailed him earlier.

Pulling my legs onto the bed, I said, “I should go to sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”

As I rested my head against the dense cloth brick that served as my pillow, I thought about how Hari had called me didi. I barely knew my cousins. Hari had been a toddler when we left, and Bharat hadn’t even been born. I’d spent summers with them when we were kids, but they were so much younger than Neel and me that it was hard to form any lasting relationship with them. I couldn’t help thinking that family was a feeling more than genetics. I would move mountains if something ever happened to Carrie, but would I really change something as important as my wedding date for cousins I hadn’t seen in fifteen years?

Certainly, my relationship with Hari and Bharat was nothing like the one I had with Neel. When Neel had called to tell me about an accident in India, if it had been Laila or Hari or Bharat, I would have felt bad. Of course. But I couldn’t guarantee I would have jumped on a plane. Today I realized that if something had happened to Neel or me in America, our family in India would have raced to be with us, even though we hadn’t spent time together in over a decade. In India, family trumped all else even if there wasn’t an emotional closeness in addition to the bloodline.

I pulled a heavy rajai over my body. The weight and warmth of the blanket were soothing and felt so different from the feather-light, fluffy down comforter I used in America.

Despite being exhausted, I tossed and turned, unable to sleep. After what felt like an hour, I picked up my phone, my finger poised over Alex’s number. With one move, it would be calling him. I wanted so desperately to hear his voice again, to update him on what was going on. But he’d made clear I shouldn’t call him again. As difficult as it was, I had to respect that. I tucked the phone into my bag and closed my eyes.

My sleep was restless. Several times during the night, I heard two packs of stray dogs in the vacant lot behind the house barking with all their might, the all-too-familiar sound of a turf war. I covered my ears with my hands but couldn’t drown out the noise. It felt like I had just closed my eyes and fallen asleep when my nose twitched, and I awoke to the aromatic smell of khari biscuits and chai. It was still dark outside. My eyes adjusted to the moonlight. I tiptoed past Hari and Bharat’s open door; they were sound asleep. Years of living in India must have made them immune to the cries of animals. I, on the other hand, was out of practice.