“My daughter doesn’t need you to tell her what I want.” Amma’s voice was sharp, but it was the hurt in it that made Ayesha jump away from Emmitt.
“Amma! How long have you been standing here?”
Long enough, Amma’s eyes said. “You lied to me.”
Ayesha wasn’t sure which lie her mother was referring to, but Amma didn’t wait for a response. “You told me you were interested in Samrat, and you’re here with this boy!”
The word “again” stayed unsaid, and that of all things made old rage roar inside Ayesha.
“Don’t, Amma!” The words came out low. She fought to hold her scream inside. “Please.” It was a whimper, and Emmitt’s head bowed in defeat.
“Please what?” Amma goaded.
“Please don’t say anything to Emmitt.”
Her words seemed to hit her mother harder than all the screaming matches of their childhood.
“He left you, kinni! At the worst moment in your life. Why do you want a man like that? One who leaves when you need him most.”
Ayesha turned to Emmitt. His face was entirely shuttered.
“He didn’t leave me,” she said, her voice a whisper. “I left him.” That came out louder, more forceful. “I was the one who forced him to leave.”
“Why?” How dare Amma look incredulous. How dare she act like she didn’t know. Anger screamed like a siren in Ayesha’s ears.
“Because she thought it would make you happy,” Emmitt said, meeting Amma’s glare with heartbreaking gentleness.
For a beat they faced off. Then Amma’s gaze slid from Emmitt to Ayesha. “Why would it make me happy to see the only child I have left lose the love of her life?” She pressed a hand that was at once demanding and despondent into her waist. Such an Amma gesture.
The roller coaster of Ayesha’s emotions plunged into sadness. The two people she loved most looked distraught, and Ayesha didn’t know how to help either without betraying the other.
All she knew was that staying silent wasn’t the answer. The realization came to her in a flash of pain.
“Because you told me I’d be dead to you if I thought about Emmitt as anything more than Ajay’s best friend.”
Tears sprang into her mother’s eyes. Ayesha didn’t know if it was from hearing Ajay’s name, but she went on, because if she was letting Emmitt go, Amma could at least hear the truth.
“Emmitt left his home, Amma. He spent five years in a foreign country just so he could find a way to honor Ajay’s memory. He’s never stopped being Ajay’s best friend, and I would never insult their friendship by thinking of my love for Emmitt as more than that.” Then, without waiting for a response, she fled.
By the time Ayesha got home, her body felt heavy with grief and heartbreak, as though they were plastered on her skin, layer upon layer calcified to cracking.
Amma sat tall and proud on Ayesha’s father’s recliner in the family room. One look at Ayesha, and Amma got up and came to her.
Then she threw her arms around Ayesha and pulled her close. The time warp spun. When they were children, Amma had hugged them all the time. When Ajay and Ayesha left home, when they returned to it, before bed, and when they woke up. Even when she and Ayesha fought, Amma had hugged her after. Not an apology, just a reinforcement of love. Even when Ayesha had said unforgivably harsh things to her, even when Amma had slashed Ayesha with her brutal criticism, even then, Amma had always pulled Ayesha into a quick and fierce hug.
I never met two people who were so unafraid of losing each other. Who were that confident of each other’s love.
After they lost Ajay, the hugging had stopped. The demonstration of feelings had turned suddenly redundant. Just like they’d stopped fighting because they were no longer unafraid.
“I wish you hadn’t left the wedding like that,” Amma said imperially. But worry creased her forehead.
Ayesha had needed to leave. She’d needed to walk the three miles home to clear her head, even in her lehenga and heels.
For a moment Ayesha thought she’d crumble, throw her arms around Amma again, and sob into her shoulder. Let out the pain tearing through her. Let her mother see the gaping hole inside her where she’d found and lost Emmitt in the span of a day.
“I’m sorry,” Ayesha said.
After she’d run from Amma and Emmitt, she’d found Bela. Without a single word, Bela had known.
“Go home. There’s five hundred people here, and I know only about a hundred of them. I won’t even notice that you’re gone,” Bela had said.
“I’m just tired,” Ayesha had explained lamely. “You know I’m not running away, right?” Those words had fallen heavily from her tongue. An admission of what exactly she didn’t know. “I love you.”
“I love you more.” Bela had bitten her lip, weighing her words. “Sometimes running away is the only way to survive. It doesn’t mean you can’t go back when you’re ready. Maybe what you’re seeing as an end is a new beginning.”
Those words had swirled in Ayesha’s head all the way home.
The way Amma wiped Ayesha’s cheeks now did feel like a new beginning. Ayesha just wasn’t going to begin what her mother wanted her to begin.
Amma tugged her into the warm kitchen, with its perpetual coffee and cumin smell. “I met that Samrat. For an ob-gyn, he wasn’t that handsome.”
It was such an absurd statement Ayesha smiled. “That makes no sense,” she said. Then, “I really did mean to give him a chance. He said I was too dark for him.”
Amma looked more livid than Ayesha had seen her look in years. “I might have to find him and give him the slap his mother never gave him.”
Love for her mother filled Ayesha’s heart. “He wasn’t talking about the color of my skin—just my personality.”
I’m looking for someone a little less sullen. Darkness depresses me. That’s what Samrat had said to her last night.
“Well, he’s an idiot.”
“I’m sorry, Amma.”
“For what?” her mother snapped, shaking her head as though it was Ayesha she wanted to shake. Hard. “For some lady-parts doctor? Silly girl. You should be sorry, but not for that.” She fixed Ayesha with scolding eyes. “You should be sorry for thinking that I would ever want you to be with someone who doesn’t understand how lucky he is to have you. What was that you said about Bela and that Eddie? ‘How can you do better than someone who sees you exactly the way you want to be seen?’”
Tears sprang into Ayesha’s eyes. How was her body still making tears after how much she’d cried on her walk home?
Her mother pulled her close again. “Oh, kinni, it’s going to be okay. On Monday we’ll hire that new manager we’re interviewing, and you’ll have more time to yourself.” Then she smacked her forehead. “I mean, you’ll have more time to make me happy. To live for me. To crush your own feelings and dreams out of a sense of duty.”
It took Ayesha a moment to register what she was saying. “Are you angry with me?”
“Angry with you?” Amma gave the angriest smile. “Why would I be angry with you when you’ve spent the past seven years treating me like a weak and selfish mother?” Her voice rose to a pitch this kitchen had not witnessed in a long while.