A Girl Like That(77)

“Now you’re being facetious.”

“Of course I am.”

It was not what I’d imagined, this afterlife. Of all the things I could be doing after death—burning in hell, perhaps, or maybe doing hard labor in purgatory—I was here, hovering in some strange zone between life and death, over the scene of my own accident, talking to Porus the way I would have been at the mall or inside his car on a normal day. Since when had he become my constant—my anchor between life and death? But then, when had he not been my constant?

I thought back to the time in the colony, his big, infectious smile, the blue Tendulkar jersey he always wore. I never knew, never imagined that I would strike up any kind of friendship with him, or that I would see him again in Jeddah. I was never a believer in destiny, but this felt a lot like it.

“So I’m your destiny, huh?”

I scowled. He was reading my thoughts again. “Stop that,” I said.

But I didn’t mean it. And from the way he squeezed my hand, I could tell that he knew.

“Have you ever been happy?” Porus asked. “I mean, really, Zarin. The way you talk, anyone would think you had the world’s worst childhood.”

I sighed. “Fine, then. It was at school. The first time I played in the rain. I was seven. The playground had filled up with water. My feet were ankle deep in it and everyone around me was sailing paper boats. When I came back home, Masi was pouring out a bucket from the window. She was so busy doing that, she didn’t even yell at me for jumping around on the carpet and making those horrible squishing sounds.”

He laughed and everything around me was suddenly more buoyant. My heart swelled with warmth. I felt his fingers loosen ever so slightly.

“Pappa told me that he would be there when I died,” he told me. “Of course, when he said that he meant that I would be really old. He expected Mamma to be there with him too.”

His pappa, who had always been there at his school functions, until the leukemia confined him to the hospital. His pappa, who had shown him that heaven was a ball of light rising from the sea. I wondered what kinds of creatures lived in those waters, if they truly were as colorful and winged as Porus’s father had said.

Of course he would be here, Porus was thinking now. And the minute those thoughts came, panic set in. I tightened my grip on his arm.

“Ouch!”

“Sorry!” My fingers slid down his arm and linked with his hand once more. “I didn’t mean to grip so hard. But you were growing heavy again.”

I could feel it around me, the weight of unspoken words and memories, anchoring us to the ground, to the wreck on the highway, which was now being cleared away by tow trucks.

Then: “Zarin, I am going to try something, okay? Don’t be afraid.”

His hand slid from my fingers.

My heart dropped and so did I: a rock in the middle of a pond.

“Porus!” I shouted, panicking. “Porus, what are you doing?” He caught hold of my wrist again and there I remained, bobbing on air, buoyed by his lightness, until he pulled me up again.

“Good one.” I forced a laugh. “You had me there.”

“It isn’t me, Zarin,” he said. “It’s you. You’re the one weighing us down.”

“What do you mean, it’s me?” My heart felt as thin as a wire; any second now and I would be gasping for air. “It can’t be me. It’s you who’s doing all the thinking! Remembering those moments with your father.”

He pulled me closer now, a gentle tug that drew me toward the warmth I’d felt when he first started talking about his father. “Which is what you must do too. You need to remember, Zarin. You need to remember everything and then let go of it. You must allow yourself to feel.”

“What’s with the ‘letting go’ stuff? Did you turn into a Buddhist now?” My throat closed. “Besides, I don’t have many happy memories.”

Porus closed his eyes. Even though we weren’t touching each other except with our hands, I could feel the brush of his lashes against my cheek, a moist warmth coating my eyeballs, like a pair of lids shutting over them. I closed my eyes as well. I saw his mother, sitting in her room in Jeddah, watching the cars go by on the road below, laughing when Porus clapped his hands over her eyes and said, “Guess who?” I felt the memory flow through my veins: cool and liquid, like saline through an IV.

When I opened my eyes again, the scene beneath us seemed more distant, separated by a thin filament of cloud. The road was flowing with traffic once more, everyone we knew long gone.

“Do you know what I’m talking about?” he asked me. “Do you understand?”

A shudder went through me. I closed my eyes. In the darkness, a shape slowly emerged. A woman sitting in the corner of a room, her bangles tinkling, singing softly: a moon-filled lullaby. A toddler brushed a tiny hand over her lips. She caught hold of it and kissed the palm.

“Mother?” I found myself saying, and then grew embarrassed by the confusion and longing I heard in my own voice. “Was that my mother?”

Was that me?

Porus’s breath washed over my cheek. “Try,” he whispered. “Try again.”

*

A man with a mustache and a golden wristwatch tossed me high in the air. “Majhi mulgi,” my father called me in Marathi. My girl. Later, he raised his hand and brought it down on a dark-haired woman, cutting open her lip with the edge of his shiny gold watch. “You will not tell me to leave my job again, Dina!”