There's Something About Sweetie(8)

Groaning, Ashish lay back on his bed and covered his face with a pillow. He knew the truth; he just didn’t want to face it. Maybe he hadn’t ever needed help before. But he was all kinds of messed up at the moment, and he probably could use a little help. Or even more than a little. Maybe dating was like basketball. If the play wasn’t working, it was time to try something new.

Still, asking his parents? That was totally outlandish and completely off the table, right? Ashish took the pillow off his face and stared at the ceiling. Yep. Completely off the table.





CHAPTER 3





Sweetie felt a heavy, sinking weight as her car edged closer to home. Her foot eased off the gas pedal automatically, and she turned up Kesha’s “This Is Me,” a favorite that always made her feel just a tad stronger. She pulled into the garage just as the song faded. Putting a smile on her face for her mother, Sweetie walked into the house.

Amma looked up from the stove, where she’d been stirring something that smelled like a heaven made out of cardamom, coconuts, and sugar. Amma didn’t have a full-time job, but she did keep the Indian stores and bakeries within a fifty-mile radius stocked with her delicious sweets. She could be a serious businesswoman if she chose; she just didn’t choose. Her full-time occupation, she always said, was being Sweetie’s mother. (But her love of baking had obviously bled into the naming of her only child.)

“Hello, mol!”

“That smells so good, Amma.” Sweetie walked over and dipped a finger into the pot and then stuck it immediately into her mouth before it could burn her. “Mmmm.”

Amma swatted her arm. “No sweets for you.”

Sweetie sighed. “Amma …”

“Go in the backyard.”

“Can I at least have a minute to get a snack?” At Amma’s arched eyebrow, she raced to add, “An apple.”

“No. No snack. First you run, then you can eat.” Amma brandished her spatula at Sweetie, and sighing, Sweetie made her way out into the yard.

The utter indignity of having to run laps around her backyard every day after school had not faded at all over the past three years. This had been going on ever since freshman year, when Amma decided there was a link between Sweetie’s size and her activity level. The fact that Sweetie was on the track team meant almost nothing; Amma was convinced that Sweetie somehow slacked off during practice. Of course, Amma weighed about ninety-five pounds soaking wet, which might have something to do with her sincere belief that if only her daughter tried a little bit harder, she could be just as thin. The fact that Sweetie was built like Achchan and the rest of his family was totally lost on Amma.

The weird thing was, Sweetie thought as she ran, Amma wasn’t happy with her own appearance either. She frequently pinched the skin on her hips and complained that it was too fat or that she was gaining weight in her “old age.” If she ate more than a tiny serving at dinner, Amma moaned about how she’d have to eat only kanji the next day, this really disgusting, tasteless rice gruel she made Sweetie eat when she had a stomach bug. But Amma didn’t seem to notice the contradiction in her own actions and words. She was adamant that Sweetie would magically gain happiness when she lost weight.

After the requisite ten laps, Sweetie came in and grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl. “I bested my time on the sixteen-hundred-meter run, Amma. And it’s the best time on the team, too.”

Amma, who was now scraping the mixture onto a pan, smiled at her. “Wonderful, mol. Now just imagine how much faster you’ll go once you lose weight.”

Sweetie froze on the way to biting into her apple. Her brain reacted in the perfect way: But I’m already beating my own time and everyone else’s, it said. Like, there’s literally no one faster than me.

But no matter how confident she felt in her own skills as a kick-ass athlete, all of that confidence evaporated under her mother’s gaze.

“Everyone knows,” Amma continued in the silence. “Thinner is healthier.”

Sweetie bit into the apple, swallowing all the things she wanted to say: How she’d legit downloaded research papers off university websites about how what you saw on the scale did not necessarily correspond to what was going on internally. How this entire freaking “We’re afraid for your health” angle was perpetuated by a society too afraid and too shallow to recognize a person’s worth in any other way besides their dress size but too “polite” to always say it in those words.

What would it feel like, to just let loose? To finally tell her mother how she felt? Sweetie imagined it would feel like the sweetest, freshest breath of a spring breeze, but she really wouldn’t know. The words always shriveled up before she could expose them to light and air.

“I’m going to the farmers’ market this weekend,” Amma said, washing her hands at the sink. “You want to come?”

Sweetie cleared her throat and finally broke her silence. “Sure.” She always helped Amma run her baked-goodies stand at the farmers’ market. Amma and a few of her Indian auntie friends all had booths for various things, and while the pretext was that it was good for a bit of pocket money, it was really more of a social networking (aka gossiping) opportunity for them all. Sweetie liked sitting in the sunshine, letting their rapid-fire accented English wash over her. “By the way, Amma, what do you know about Ashish Patel’s family? You know, the basketball star at Richmond?”