Bright Lines (3 page)

She’d even taken a couple of classes to make sense of her visions. Her Neurological Disorders seminar mapped the fearsome world of disorders and delusions, from migraines to schizophrenia. In the Hallucinations class, Ella devoured any literature she could get her hands on to figure out the cause. Getting an MRI at the medical center was easy enough, but she always found excuses to not make a doctor’s appointment. Poring through study after study led her to two conclusions: It was either a tumor or trauma that caused her phantasms. Each case bore a resemblance to Ella’s. Lilliputian beings or kaleidoscopic visions at dusk. Perpetual insomnia. Yet it didn’t happen every single evening; rather, something would set it off, if she was stressed or dehydrated or had a migraine. Ella wondered if years of depression, another possible cause, had done her in. She’d tried therapy in fourth and fifth grade, upon her teachers’ suggestion, but she didn’t ever find comfort in talking about herself.

She couldn’t figure out a way to tell Anwar and Hashi that she hallucinated without worrying that her aunt would fall into hysteria. So Ella picked up a prescription for antidepressants, after telling one of the student health center counselors her story. She hadn’t yet taken the pills the shrink so readily prescribed.

 * * * 

Coming home stirred up thoughts of the parents Ella had barely known. Anwar spoke about Rezwan and Laila like they were characters in an epic. Freedom fighters. They survived a war, only to be murdered just before her third birthday. There was one black-and-white photograph of them, perched against a graffiti wall marked with sickles and hammers. Rezwan Anwar, undeniably regal, in aviator sunglasses, standing next to Laila, nearly six feet tall, her arms holding baby Ella. She stood with her head cocked to the side, daring the camera to capture her. A teenage boy stood beside Rezwan, almost hiding behind his enormous bell-bottomed pant leg—Ella vaguely remembered the boy hugging her good-bye when she left Dhaka. Her only lucid memory of her homeland was leaning into her grandfather Azim’s chest in the car en route to the airport. He hummed a fisherman’s tune, smelled of sweat and cloves.

There was wriggling on the bed. Charu was kissing Malik wildly;
he flopped and gasped like a fish struggling in the open air. Ella was rigid. She had drifted off but was now witness to the spectacle. She was anxious to leave, anxious to watch. Charu squinted with the cunning of a girl who believed she knew how to pleasure a man, but then she started giggling; she must have felt the release of the Valium. Malik shushed her, to no avail.

Ella Anwar, orphaned, adopted, with her wayward visions, her frizzy hair, her large hands and feet, a bass voice. She longed to nestle in the burning that filled the air. She edged herself off the bed, leaving them to each other.

 * * * 

Crisscrossed parquet floors creaked under Ella’s step. Gold leaf wallpaper, beloved of the old Brooklyn bourgeoisie, gleamed in the dimness. On either side of the stairs were two archways: To her left were the living room and kitchen; to her right was her bedroom, and a bathroom behind the stairs. Hashi called this the “guest bathroom,” a bad habit from the renovation days, though Ella was the only one who ever used it.

She saw something looming in the living room—a headless naked figure. She went inside and touched the form.
Just one of Hashi’s mannequins, idiot.
She hurried back to her side of the house, to go to the bathroom. She scrubbed her hands raw and splashed water on her face. She looked up at the mirror. Mirrors were never a part of Ella’s day. Long arms and legs and coarse hairs everywhere. She was rough as a prehistoric man. She wore an oversize T-shirt with relaxed-fit Levi’s. She’d had these clothes since her freshman year of high school. Ella pressed her nose against the mirror for a closer facial evaluation. Her pores—at least what she thought might be pores—were enormous. She scraped her nose with a nail, loosening tiny, hardened yellow flecks.
Damn, you ugly.

 * * * 

Ella took in her old room—one wall with three rows of framed pen-and-ink botanical drawings, freshman biology textbooks on a bookshelf, a poster of Simone de Beauvoir. The windowed wall was painted verdigris, with the bed pushed up against it for the best view of the garden. Everything was just as she’d left it when she was
home over Christmas break, except—she blinked her eyes several times to be sure—there was a person sleeping in her bed.

This was a girl; Ella could tell from the slope of the body under the sheets and the scent of floral shampoo. Ella got on her hands and knees and stared at the girl. She was lithe, hair shorn in a pixie; a small diamond studded her nose. She shivered in her sleep. Somehow, she was familiar, but Ella did not know how she knew her. She found herself matching the sleeping girl’s breathing. She wasn’t about to climb into the twin bed with a stranger. For an evening without hallucinations, this was the weirdest (and maybe worst) night Ella had experienced in a long time.

The summer air was warm and crisp. The sky had not yet brightened. She moved past the headless mannequin, the overwhelming smell of onions in the kitchen, out the sliding back door. She would sleep outside.

T
he songs of sparrows stirred Charu awake at dawn. Soft computer glow beamed on the high ceiling, eerie as an alien confessional. Ella’s glasses sat in the mess, an artifact left behind in a raid. In her high, Charu had lost track of her sister, who had managed to slip out of the room.

After four months of chaste skateboarding and two-slices-and-a-soda specials at Luv ’N Oven, things between Charu and Malik had changed in the past week. Each day after school, a new lesson, the unfurling of their desire. Monday, riding the G train back and forth between Queens and Gowanus, kissing. Tuesday, humping jeans over jeans in his empty apartment in Bed-Stuy. His mother worked interminable shifts at JFK airport at the British Airways counter. Malik missed her, but freedom (and free trips to the West Indies) was a fair trade. Wednesday, he rolled Charu a joint (
the most potent shit, courtesy of Uncle Bic
); they ate Luv ’N Oven and watched
Total Request Live
, which killed the vibe. Thursday, he churned her insides with strong bassist fingers.
Playing chords in your pussy
, he had chuckled. It hurt terribly. But it was the first time she could ever remember something that hurt terribly but felt good all at once. Maybe Chinatown massages or tattoos or gym class, but she didn’t know much about those things either.

Charu closed her laptop and watched Malik sleep. Her mouth watered, wanting to nosh and suckle flesh like a newborn. She raked him with her teeth, tasted hard salty shoulder, vein ridges along his sinewy arm, a slim wrist and musky fingers. He whistled air from
his nose. She straddled the morning tent that sprouted from his underwear and bent down to kiss his snoring mouth. His locks lay gnarled on his chest like a prized fleece. She sucked his breath and kissed him harder. He heaved and gasped as if drowning and pushed her aside.

“Whaaat?”

“I—I—couldn’t breathe,” said Malik. “Stop.”

She flinched at his tone. “Maybe you should leave,” she told him, peeling herself off his body.

He took a few more deep breaths. “Relax. No need for salt, sugar,” he said, chuckling. He spread his fingers over her belly. She stiffened, but let him suck on her breast, eyes still half-asleep. She pressed against him to imprint a raspberry star, one more in a galaxy of bruises.

He pulled her closer, swiped a condom from her bedside table.

“Wish we could listen to music,” he said. “Maybe we should just wait to do it in my house.”

She ripped the wrapper with her teeth. “We can’t wait.” She handed him the condom, uncertain.

He slipped it on and rubbed himself on her thigh. She took a few deep breaths and closed her eyes.

Malik grinned and she grinned back. She looked up at him as a drop of his sweat fell onto her cheek. The silver cross on his neck brushed her mouth, and she opened to swallow it. She clasped the charm under her tongue like a thermometer. Rays of morning sun filtered inside her eyelids. Somewhere, far away, she heard the crackle of thunder.

She opened her eyes to find Malik’s face stricken with fear.

“Oh
shit
,” he wheezed. He jumped out of bed and froze, then brought a finger to his lips.

“What’s wrong? What’s
wrong
?”

Her locked door rattled furiously.

“Charu!” yelled her mother. “How many times must I tell you not to lock the door? You took my thread! I have fifteen bridesmaids’ eyebrows waiting!”

“One sec, Ma!” said Charu. “I-I’m getting dressed.”

“You are already awake? You must be hungry,” said Hashi. “Hurry up, child!”

Go go go!
Charu mouthed to Malik, pushing him inside the closet. She grabbed the spools of thread and opened the door a sliver to drop them into Hashi’s extended hand.

“What is the matter, are you getting sick?” asked Hashi. “Let me make you breakfast now. Come. Ella will join us.”

“No!” yelped Charu.

“No?”

“I’ll do it. I’ll make brunch for all of us.”

“You sound like me,” said Hashi, laughing. She pinched Charu’s cheek. “It’s still early, child. Get some sleep.”

As soon as Hashi’s footsteps faded, Malik broke out of the closet. He headed toward the window. “Fuck this,” he mumbled, looking down at the drop from the tree.

“I need to get downstairs. I forgot Maya is sleeping in Ella’s room.”

“Looks like it,” said Malik, pointing out the window. There lay Ella, snoozing on the patio tiles.

“Ah, that’s her usual weird,” said Charu.

“I’m out, sugar.” He leaned out to set his foot on a branch and then grabbed another to steady his hand. Feeble and slick with dew, the smaller branch snapped. Sparrows shot out of the tree and he lost his balance and plummeted down, somehow managing not to scream. She heard a thud against the wet mulch Baba had set under the tree. Malik sprung up without turning up to look at her, his cutoffs falling to his knees.

He shuffled around the side of the house onto Cambridge Place.

Charu heard the B52 bus whoosh by, and she crossed her fingers that Malik would hail it in time before her mother caught him. From her bedroom window, she looked again at her sister snoozing in the backyard.

“Shit.”

 * * * 

Charu ran down the stairs, past the living room and kitchen, through the sliding glass door. Ella snoozed against a vine-covered cucumber trellis. In sleep, she shed her grumpy awkwardness. She was strangely handsome lying there. Charu bemoaned her curves. Why had she not inherited the lanky build of the Anwar line like
Ella and her mother? Charu put on her sister’s glasses, and held her face close to Ella’s ear.

“You know, you look good without those glasses,” Charu said, in a nerdy voice.

Ella’s eyes popped open. “You scared me!”

“Second time I’ve done that today.”

“I’m . . . tired,” said Ella, squinting up at the sky. She rubbed her eyes and sat up. “I need my glasses. I need water.”

“You
are
blind,” Charu laughed, peeling off the glasses. She dangled them in front of Ella. “Not giving you these unless you get your ass up and help me cook brunch.”

“Come on, Charu, just give me the damn glasses,” said Ella, swiping them back.

“What time did you get to bed? I passed out.”

“Do you . . . remember anything?” Ella asked.

“Valium isn’t for kids?”

“Not funny, you addict. Where’s your boyfriend? And who the fuck is the chick in my room? You know I like to keep my shit private.”

“First of all—chill the fuck out.”

“Chill the fuck out? You ask me to hang with you and Malik. Then I get to sit there watching you two freaks act like it’s normal to start fucking when someone’s
right there
. And when I try to get sleep like I wanted to all along, there’s a stranger sleeping in my bed. You know I can’t sleep, bitch; I’m not going to chill the fuck out.”

“Bitch? You’re a bitch!” Charu smacked Ella’s chest in surprise. She and Ella had never once had a true tussle, and it was odd to begin so late in life. Ella didn’t even curse much. She looked at her sister’s face, all dirt streaked and wet. Pitiful. Charu took a breath. People told her that one of her best qualities was that she never stayed mad. This was some grudge-worthy shit, but she didn’t want to lose the title.

“I came down here to check and see if you were all right. You slept outside. Come on.”

“There was a girl in my bed.”

“Come. Meet her.”

Charu led Ella inside to meet Maya. The girl lay on her belly, legs crossed upward, black nail-polished toes curled, at home in Ella’s
bed. In her hands: Ella’s copy of German biologist Ernst Haeckel’s 1904 volume,
Kunstformen der Natur
, a book of biological lithographs.

“To see the world like this you’ve got to be a genius,” she said, closing the book on
Cyanea annasethe
, the tentacled jellyfish. “I’m Maya.” She extended her hand to Ella, but didn’t get out of her bed.

“Jellyfish reminded Haeckel of his dead wife’s hair,” said Ella.

“And here’s my infamously morbid sister, Ella,” said Charu. “Maya’s going to stay with us for a few weeks.”

“Hi,” said Maya, waving.

“And you were going to tell me this
when
?”

“Don’t—” warned Charu, but Ella didn’t seem to hear her.

“There’s a
stranger
in
my
bed and you’re telling me she’s staying with ‘us’ for a few weeks? You mean with
me
. You mean, ‘Ella, handle this shit while I’m busy fucking around,’ literally fucking an asshole who can’t climb a goddamn tree—”

“So, Ella, I’m figuring things out,” interrupted Maya. Her voice was hoarse, as if she’d smoked a pack of cigarettes. “My father doesn’t . . . want me to go to college.”

“Not just college—she got into Berkeley, and he wants her to stay home!” cried Charu. “It’s a fucking travesty.”

“I deferred a year to figure shit out. My father wants me to stay home because Mema’s got lupus and my twin brothers are devils, so you can imagine—oh goodness!” Maya caught sight of something outside the window.

“What?” asked Charu, hopping onto the bed for a better look.

“Seems your boy left part of himself behind,” Maya said.

The three of them leaned into the window. Sitting in the mulch, translucent and forgotten, Malik’s rubber.

“Disgusting.” Ella left the room, slamming the door behind her.

“At least it wasn’t used,” Charu called after her.