A month into their visit, Sanjay started staying out after work, and when he was in, he preferred to stay in the bedroom, watching TV there. He came down for dinner and made perfunctory efforts at conversation with Daddy alone, but the strain showed on everybody.
Amma, like many Indian women of her generation, had mastered the art of dichotomy.
“What a strange man. He acts like a paying guest in his own home,” she grumbled. “What to do, Tara. This is an Indian woman’s life. We have to accept what we cannot change. At least he is perfect in every other way.”
Without a pause for breath, she added, “When my friend Savitha visited her daughter in San Diego, her son-in-law treated them with so much love, like they were his own parents. He even took them on a road trip to Seattle and Vancouver. Our ears grew ripe listening to her stories.” Then, shaking her head, she added, “Not that I want to travel. I’m just saying. Men of your generation are not like the old timers. They are more understanding. Your husband, he is still an old timer, no doubt about that.”
Tara said nothing to Amma. Yet, every day, observing her parents’ behavior toward Sanjay, she was reminded of her own dysfunctional relationship with him. Like them, she was happier when Sanjay wasn’t around to stifle her spirit.
At the end of their three-month-long visit, Tara dropped her parents off at Hartsfield–Jackson airport. They were flying to San Jose to spend a month with Vijay, before heading back to India.
They said their good-byes at the security check line. Amma burst into tears, hugging Tara, mouthing gibberish, making Tara choke with frothing emotion. Surprisingly, even Daddy, who admonished Amma for creating a scene, gave Tara a long, warm hug.
“Take care of my vegetables,” he said, eyes glistening, hands gripping her shoulders. “And take good care of yourself.”
Tara was too late to stifle a sob; it escaped her throat and wet her eyes. She dug into her purse as the tears flowed, found a pack of tissues, offered one to Amma, whose nose had turned red, and dabbed at her eyes with the second one. She stood waving until she could see Amma and Daddy pass the security check; then she twisted her neck from side to side to catch a last glimpse of them.
The emptiness hit her in the chest on her way back home. Love, warmth, and companionship had quietly taken the place of pain, resentment, and reticence. She had not snapped at Amma, and there had been no awkward silences with Daddy. Her parents had never been on her team before, united against an opposing force. All her life, they had been the others, the abandoners. Now, with them gone, she was left stranded alone in the hollow space of her American dream.
Her shoulders hurt from the simple act of driving back in thick, crawling traffic on I-85 north. By the time she reached home, Sanjay had reclaimed his spot in front of their family room television. She flopped on the couch, carelessly discarding her shoulder bag on the floor.
He did not look at her or greet her. Perhaps it was the realization that, with her parents gone, he didn’t have to put on an act anymore. Perhaps her parents had reminded him of the lacerations to his ego when he had to grovel with them for Tara’s return. Perhaps he had reached the breaking point, like she had. The silence gnawed into her ears, despite the CNN reporter’s inflected summary of news from Washington DC.
“God, I miss them already,” she said at last, to the ceiling, rather than to the man next to her.
“They are not taking over my house again.” She hadn’t been expecting a response, any response. She looked at his hard face, stunned.
“Your house, Sanjay?”
He didn’t respond, save for the tightening of his jaw. They continued watching CNN: underwater shots of a Roman shipwreck found in the Mediterranean, an ancient wreck languishing on the ocean floor for centuries. She tried to make sense of the find, of the silence between them, of similar evenings that lay ahead of them. It was as if she were suddenly on the seafloor herself, the water filling her lungs. She couldn’t breathe. She rushed to the backyard, to Daddy’s little green patch, where life grew in neat little rows, taking in large gulps of air through her mouth. She bent over to pull a rogue piece of crabgrass out by its root, her eyes dripping large pearls over it. She had promised Daddy she’d keep his patch alive. But she was consumed suddenly with the need to find life for herself.
She rushed back in, as suddenly as she had rushed out to the garden, and stopped a foot away from his recliner, hands balled into fists, nails digging into her palms.
“It was a mistake, Sanjay.” Her voice was quavering from all that was churning inside of her. “How I wish I had never come back.”
She watched his mouth harden into a thin line; heard the sharp intake of his breath.
“You ungrateful bitch.” He jerked up from his seat and loomed over her in a giant stride. She knew what was coming—the savage fury she had seen before. She took his first blow calmly. The second one sent her sprawling on the floor again.
“Sanjay, think of the consequences. I will call nine-one-one,” she part implored, part threatened, her eyes streaming with pain.
“I’m beyond caring. I’m a dead man anyway.” She felt his foot in her abdomen, kicking again and again, then a series of blows to her face, her head, her arms, until she wished she would just pass out and feel nothing.
“You are sorry you came back? I was kind enough to take your ugly ass back in, you worthless piece of shit,” she heard him bark through the fog in her brain. She looked around for her sling bag, remembering that her cell phone was in it, but her vision had blurred, she could see only a haze, and through it, a bare foot repeatedly and violently assaulting her. She closed her eyes and gave in to Sanjay’s relentless rage.
He stopped when he had had enough. Or perhaps, when he realized that the physical pain he was inflicting on her did not assuage his bruised ego. She was alive, conscious, and free when he left the room.
It was still dark when she emerged from upstairs into the family room, dressed in a bright yellow blouse and blue jeans, a small suitcase in her hand. He had dozed off on the recliner, a half empty glass of vodka on the side table. He woke up with a start when she called out his name. His face darkened, as recent events of the night flooded his mind.
She hesitated, but only for a moment before she embarked on her short leap of faith to the garage door. There, she turned around to face him a final time. His eyes had been on her back, but he quickly looked away.
Her voice was placid when she said, “I am not worthless to me, Sanjay.”
She shut the door behind her, not waiting to see his reaction.
Chapter 20
Her new apartment was on the third floor, in a sprawling community of corn-yellow and green buildings called Sanctuary Hills that looked deceptively small from the road. Before moving in, Tara stopped with Ruth and Dottie at Target, only a quarter mile away, to pick up a single bed-in-a-bag in bright floral print, a shower curtain and toiletries for the bathroom, and basic necessities for the kitchen. Her car was already loaded with a new box mattress, knick-knacks from the Indian store, and a suitcase filled with her new clothes.
Alyona was waiting for them in the parking lot when they got to the apartment community. They lugged the new buys to her apartment. Tara boiled milk in a new stainless steel pot in her small kitchen, and let it gush over the stovetop. An Indian housewarming tradition to signify the flow of prosperity, health, and happiness into the new house, she explained to her friends. She was careful to mop the mess with sheets of Bounty before sweetening the milk with some sugar and filling three cups a quarter full for her and her two friends to sip.