The look on his face when he’d shown up at the restaurant one evening out of the blue had never stopped haunting her. The hurt in his eyes when she’d walked away from him without acknowledging him had burned inside her all weekend. The terror that she’d lost him, the certainty of it, had been worse than anything she’d ever experienced.
How could she have acknowledged him? It had been one of their busiest days, and Baba lay drunk in a room upstairs, unable to move.
As Rico had stood there, eyes expectant and probing, waiting for her to unfreeze, Baba had soiled himself. Tara, one of the hostesses, had whispered the news in Ashna’s ear with Rico watching.
It had been the most humiliating moment of Ashna’s life. Or at least the most humiliating moment that she cared about. When her parents screamed at each other in front of the whole family, in front of her cousins, she had learned not to care about the shame. This had been different. Rico saw her as strong. With Rico she got to be self-possessed, like her mother. Droll and humorous, like her father. She got to be a version of herself unstained by irreparable pathos, because he gave her the gift of not coloring his vision with sympathy like everyone else in her life.
It had meant everything. Especially when all the stories of his childhood had felt so wholesome, his parents’ love for each other and him so undamaged.
That night, cleaning Baba up without having him create a scene had taken an hour. The crowd in the restaurant hadn’t thinned until after the midnight closing time. Ashna had slept on the floor next to Baba in his room behind the kitchen, because she didn’t want him alone, in case he threw up in his sleep. The EMT had performed CPR when that had happened the month before, and he had choked on his own vomit. She couldn’t have him go through that again.
The next day had also raced by. Sunday-brunch prep started at five in the morning, and Baba hadn’t risen until almost twelve hours after that.
Her finger had hovered over Rico’s number several times on Sunday evening after she was back at the Anchorage. But he hadn’t called, and she hadn’t been able to.
On Monday when she got to school, Rico was waiting for her at their usual spot near her locker. There had been a moment of terror when they studied each other, not knowing where to go from there. All Ashna wanted was to go back to how they had been, to erase those moments when he had stepped into a different part of her life. A part of her life that could take away what they had with each other. Because how would he even recognize her in that part of her life?
Rico had grabbed her bag from her, taken her hand, and asked her about calculus homework. Just like that he’d given her her wish, erased those moments that could have changed everything. And he never brought it up again.
Ashna found herself all the way at pier 24. She had walked from pier 33 without realizing it. She leaned into the railing, letting the cold metal dig into her belly, and stared at the Bay Bridge. Sure, the Golden Gate was beautiful, but this one, this one seemed to have all the magnificence but none of the glory. The female in the marriage between San Francisco’s two beloved bridges, Shobi would say.
For some reason the thought made her laugh. It started as a soft whimper of a giggle. Then it broke through her. Laugher pumped out of her, hard and fast, until she doubled over the railing of the pier. Her feet left the ground. For a second she was suspended. She leaned farther, needing to turn herself over, inside out. Needing to empty the laughter out of her. Get rid of it once and for all.
She let it go. Spat it up. Let it convulse from the very depths of her like deeply settled morning phlegm. And expelled it. Shaking out every last drop, wave upon wave pumping out of her. On and on and on.
When she finally straightened up, unfolding from over the railing, the world whirled around her, a twister spinning her and forcing her to close her eyes.
Had she really forgotten how to fight?
She was fighting for Baba’s restaurant.
No, she hadn’t forgotten how to fight. She had never learned how to win.
Shobi had picked her war. Everything was female pitted against male to her. She saw nothing beyond that. It’s why she had won.
It’s how Rico had always been with the ball. Nothing else, only that one thing. The world distilled down to one point, one thought, his goal, the deepest meditation.
Ashna wanted that. The GB High girls’ soccer team had been undefeated her senior year of high school. She had loved winning.
What makes you happy?
Go to hell, Shobi!
Maybe you’ve forgotten how to fight for anything.
Go to hell, Rico!
Her ebbing laughter swelled again, wrapping around those words. Tightening and loosening with the muscles of her belly, shredding them inside her and throwing them out, laughter and sobs mixing seamlessly inside her.
Shobi and Rico were the two people who had stolen from her the ability to fight. Now they dared to shame her for it. And she was letting them win.
Throwing her head back, she let the last of her laughter hiccup out of her. The calm gray-blue bay stared back at her, meeting the sky along the jagged lines of Oakland. She wiped her eyes and patted her bun in place. Everything inside her told her to turn around and run, but there was nowhere to go.
There had never been anywhere to go. From the moment she’d heard that shot, there had been nowhere to go.
The phone rang in her bag.
Shobi.
She touched talk on the screen and didn’t wait for a hello. “You said you wanted to help me, right? Then tell me how you do it. Tell me how you keep from caring.”
“Hello, beta,” Shobi said. Then a breath. “I do care.”
“You were married to someone, had a child with them, and then when they died you weren’t even there to pick up the pieces.”
“I tried. I tried to be there for you. You asked me to leave.”
She had. She had told Shobi she hated her, that she wanted nothing to do with her.
I want you to leave. I don’t ever want to see you again.
What Ashna hadn’t been able to say was I killed him. I left him too, like you did, and it killed him.
Self-loathing twisted her insides.
You’re just like your mother. Selfish. The last words Baba had said to her.
“What is it you really want to ask me, Ashi?” Shobi’s voice was gentle. The kind of gentle Ashna would have killed for growing up, when all she’d gotten from Shobi was a general’s marching orders.
“Do you ever feel any guilt?”
“Yes. More than you can imagine. But for what you went through. Never for what Bram did. Why do you? He was an adult. He cheated you out of the life you should have had by not thinking about you.”
“He was ill, Mom! His mind had become entirely sick. Don’t you have any empathy?”
“Is it guilt, then? The reason you don’t let yourself live? Is it that he had no life and you deserve the same thing because you couldn’t save him?”
What was it with everyone suddenly coughing up these insights for her? “I thought you wanted to help me. When will you understand that shitting on Baba doesn’t help me?”
“Why does every conversation we have end up being about him? My leaving you was never because you weren’t precious to me. Every single time I left you it tore my heart out.”
“You still did it.”
“And that was my fault, the fault of my circumstances. Not your fault. I wish I could tell you how sorry I am. The fight exhausted me, beta. There were many times when I gave you up because I didn’t want to put you through a battle you were too young to be caught in the middle of. My only hope then was that when you grew up and saw my side as an adult you’d give me a fair chance and I’d be able to explain myself. I’m sorry.”