The Henna Wars(32)

“To me? Are you sure?”

“She said, ‘Can you tell Nishat to come over?’” Priti’s trying to be all light-hearted and charming, but I can see from the way her eyes roam around the room, never landing on me, that she’s just as nervous as I am. Ammu and I have barely spoken since I came out to her. She hasn’t even looked me in the eye since that fateful day. What could she want with me now?

“Did she say what she wanted to talk about?” My mind is running through a million worst-case scenarios. My palms are sweaty, my heart is as fast as a hummingbird’s, and I’m pretty sure I’m shaking. What if this is it? The end? What if they’re done skirting around the topic and now they want to do something drastic? I can’t stop thinking about all of the gay people thrown out of their homes.

Priti shakes her head, her eyes finally landing on me. She gulps and it makes me gulp.

“She just said to call you. She’s in her room. Do you … do you want me to come?”

I mumble, “no,” even though I want to say yes, yes, a thousand times yes. But if Ammu does want to do something drastic, I don’t want Priti to sit there and take it all in.

“I’ll be okay.” I try to make my voice as reassuring as I can, but it still wavers. Pushing past Priti, I walk toward Ammu and Abbu’s room. It feels like the longest walk ever, even though the corridor takes only a few steps to cross. I actually begin to pray during the walk. Which is probably hypocritical, but I don’t care. I keep thinking, Ya Allah, if you are there please please please please please let my parents still love me.

“Ummm …” I poke my head through the door. Ammu is sitting on her bed and there’s a half-knitted scarf in front of her that she’s slowly stitching together. She looks up at me for only a moment before bowing her head again. Like she can’t look at me for too long.

She reaches out her hand and pats the empty space beside her. “Come, sit.”

My heart is hammering so loudly that I’m surprised Ammu can’t hear it, that it hasn’t somehow burst out of my chest. I gingerly walk to the bed and sit down, peering at her hunched form. It’s the closest I’ve been to her since that day at the breakfast table. She’s just had a shower—I can tell because her hair is still slightly damp and she smells like coconut oil.

“Did I ever tell you the story of how me and your Abbu met?” she asks. This is the last thing I expected her to ask. I’m so stunned that I only keep staring at her. I want to say something. Words! Where are my words? My tongue is dry and my mind has gone blank.

Ammu doesn’t need me to prompt her, though. With the knitting needles in her hands weaving up and down on the scarf, she heaves a sigh and starts speaking again.

“It was summer and I was studying at university. I had traveled up to Dhaka to study, and I was living with your Aarti Khala and Najib Khalu. Your Nanu used to worry about me all the time. She still lived in our house in the village back then, and your Nana was still alive. They would call every day, even if it was just for five minutes, to check up on me specifically. They were worried that, well … what happened would happen. That I would meet someone, fall in love, shame the family.” She pauses and sits up straight.

For a moment I think she’ll look at me, finally.

I will her to look at me, but she doesn’t.

“It wasn’t some big romance or anything,” she continues. “Your Abbu and I shared a class together, so we started talking, even though both of us knew we weren’t supposed to. I wanted to tell your Aarti Khala about it, but I didn’t think she would have understood at the time. I think she would have tried to talk me out of it, and I probably would have let her talk me out of it. So we used to sneak around, knowing that what we were doing was wrong. That your Nana and Nanu would be horrified to know that I had been defying the request they made of me—to not have a romance, not fall in love.”

“But why?” I croak out. Ammu’s eyes snap to mine. Only for a moment, and then she’s back to looking at her blue and white wool scarf. I wonder who it’s for, if it’s for anyone at all or just something to do while she’s recounting this tale.

“Because there’s shame in it, Nishat. I didn’t realize it then, everything that your Nana and Nanu had to go through because of my mistake. How they had to listen to people talk about me and what I had done. I brought shame on them. That’s something that lives with you forever, that follows you around no matter where you go.”

“So you regret it?” I always thought Ammu and Abbu were proud for defying tradition, not ashamed of it. Can you be both proud and ashamed at the same time?

Ammu shakes her head. “Regret isn’t the right word.”

“The right word is … ashamed?”

“For doing that to your grandparents, yes. For tainting our family, yes. Shame runs deep in our lives, Nishat. It can taint you forever. Do you know what people say about us living here? That we moved to a country where people are immoral, where the gays are allowed to marry. Where a gay is the president and—”

“He’s the prime minister,” I mumble, even though that is definitely not the point and I feel like Ammu is physically stabbing me in the heart with a knife of her own making.

“That’s a choice we’ve made. We’re living with it. Now, you’ve made a choice—”