Love Edy (17 page)

“Hassan called me,” he said.

She looked up. It made no sense to be
surprised, and yet she was.

“Called?” Edy said with forced indifference.
“Oh really? About what?”

Bean studied her. “I talk to him every day.
Suddenly.”

Edy had no idea what to say.

Bean took a gargantuan bite of out his
bagel. “You guys are tighter than ever these days. “I assume that’s
who you’re gabbing with when your phone’s buzzing all night.”

Edy’s gaze dropped to her food. Suddenly,
gnawing on fish and bagels seemed a damned sight more appetizing
than continuing her talk with Bean. Better that than explaining how
Hassan was only half her nighttime equation. Better to eat crap
smelling fish than explain her odd conversations with Wyatt,
conversations where she attempted to convince him she hadn’t been
gone
that
long and her absence really shouldn’t affect his
mood so.

“I meet friends on the Lower East Side,”
Bean said. “After I drop you off each day.”

“And?”

“And we dance.”

Edy’s gaze dropped to his body, and she saw
him, really saw him for the first time. Lean, muscular, controlled
movements. Hassan had a dancer in the family.

“I’d like to say dancing was what sent my
pitā
over the edge, but really it was his total repulsion
with me.”

He took another bite of his bagel, appetite
unsoiled by his father’s rejection.

“Repulsion?” Edy said.

Bean shoved the last of the bagel into his
mouth and began to wrap Edy’s in napkins.

“Come on. Eat it on the walk. Talking time
is over.”

Eleven

Roland Green opened the door and sighed at
the sight before him.

“You,” he said and turned his bottle of
Heineken up, swallowing until it emptied.

“Just let me in,” Sandra Jacobs snapped.

Her uncle made a sweeping bow and nearly
pitched, before righting himself with a quick snatch of the
doorknob.

“Right this way, your highness.”

Except he went only as far as the shadow
swallowed living room before collapsing in his arm chair. A litter
of green beer bottles chinked at his feet.

“Well, where is he?” Sandra snapped. She
shoved a lock of hair behind her ear and cautioned a glance upward.
She wore the look of a girl who expected the ceiling to cave post
haste.

Roland Green rummaged through the pile of
bottles on the floor, found an unopened one and rid it of its
condition.

“Not dark enough for you to be over here,
yet,” Roland said. He took an indulgent swig of beer. “Can't have
anyone seeing you and figuring out you're white trash, too.”

“I am not white trash,” Sandra spat,
trembling with the declaration.

Roland laughed. A hearty, choking, belly
aching guffaw that had him swigging beer after to quench his
thirst. “Your cousin’s upstairs eating his Banquet dinner. Grab one
out the freezer if you're hungry.”

Sandra stomped up the stairs, only to slow
at each creaking groan it earned her instead. The house did look
fragile. A few kicks to the wall might topple it.

The dust and darkness overwhelmed her. Up
the staircase and a turn right had Sandra easing down a thin
hallway. She could run a hand down either wall as she walked. With
her heels on, she could touch the ceiling.

Though she knew a string dangled from above
somewhere along the way, she didn't bother with the absurd swipes
necessary to find it. Already, she knew this corridor, knew the way
the floor warped. Sandra eased down until she found the right door
and threw it open.

Wyatt didn’t look up from his furious
scribbling. Seated at a peeling white desk in a plastic folding
chair, he worked to fill in the last details of Edy—shadowing in
her hair, touching up a subtle smile, easing in curving hips, or
whatever. Sandra had seen enough of them not to bother with
looking.

“Lottie’s home,” Sandra said.

That earned a pause of his pencil. Then he
started back in, furious.

“She asked about you.”

Wyatt’s pencil snapped. “Asked who?” he
said.

“Only her sister. That’s who told me.”

Wyatt opened his desk drawer and lined the
broken pieces in with an assortment of others. Before he could
reach for a fresh one, she put a hand over his.

“I'm sorry I accused you,” she said.

Wyatt said nothing, breathing steady,
labored.

Quietly, he removed her hand from his arm
and retrieved another pencil.

~~~

With the drapes to Edy’s window open and the
moon shimmering on the shores of the Hudson, Edy lay on her back,
legs wide, flats of her feet touching and tucked to touch her
bottom. The
Supta Badda Konasana
was a hip relaxing yoga
pose she’d learned two years ago in India. Edy held it with ease
for sixty slow breaths before releasing, hoping that the stretch
and meditation would help with the stomach cramps. She flipped into
a smooth headstand and held it, counts and breaths steady till the
phone interrupted.

“Hassan,” she said, the second she answered.
“Tell me how it was.”

“It” was a football camp sponsored by
running back Earl Rush.

“Oh.” Hassan breathed, enraptured. “Crazy
intense. And hands on. I even got some guidance from the man
himself.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did.”

“He called me a show stopper. Said he would
keep out an eye for me.”

Edy threw her head back and squealed. She
shimmied a little too.

“How’s ballet?” he finally said.

“Good. Hard, but good.”

The silence between them turned heavy.

“Are you staying the whole summer? Seems
weird, having you gone this long.”

Weird. Interesting choice of a word.
Detached, too.

“Yeah,” Edy said. “Well, I didn’t think you
cared all that much.”

They held the phone for awhile.

“You’ve been on my mind,” Hassan said and
all the air sailed out the window.

She didn’t trust herself to say anything
sensible, anything safe, so Edy hunched forward and gnawed on a
fingernail.

Hassan sighed. “I’d better go.”

“Oh.”

Oxygen slammed back into her, finally, but
the rhythm and ease of breathing had yet to return.

“Call me tomorrow,” Hassan said. “But don’t
tell me what time. Just . . . surprise me.”

“If you want.”

“I want.” He paused. “Night, Cake. Love
you.”

“Love you too, Hassan.”

Edy felt the distinction between his
absentminded declaration of love and the unequivocal devotion in
hers. Her belly flamed hot in response. Just as she hung up, it was
in time to see Ronnie Bean standing in the door, smile
unmistakable. He let out a low whistle, tilted the brim of an
imaginary cowboy hat and turned on his heel.

Gone, Edy thought. But silent for how long?
Sleep eluded Edy, leaving her to toss and turn and wrestle
comforters on a cool summer night. ‘I love yous’ played in her mind
like a misfit melody, taunting her, mocking.

She hadn’t thought she’d slept at all. Yet
Edy woke to a tangle of melded sheets plastered to her thighs,
bottoms, and back. She sat up slow, brain fogged and baffled by the
contradiction of sweat and cold air. She didn’t
feel
feverish. And yet . . . Edy peeled back the quilted white comforter
and gasped. Blood stained bedding and body, saturated down to the
mattress in a massive arc. Edy scrambled from the bed, feet
tangling, pedaling sheets to the floor in her panic to be free. And
her mess only spread. Why hadn’t all the books she read warned her
about how
repulsive
menstruation would be?

On her feet, Edy twisted to glimpse the
backside of her nightgown. She’d been stabbed in the back a
thousand times, butchered by a maniac, it seemed.
Think.
Of
all the girls on the planet, she had to be the most prepared. So,
what should she do?

Rani was forty-five and may or may not have
entered menopause. Kala was younger at forty-two but childless. Had
Edy heard something about Kala not being able to have children?
Would that mean she did or didn’t have periods? She felt
insensitive and ignorant for wondering.

A gush of something sickly sloshed down her
leg, and Edy scampered. Down the hall, stomach lurching, as she
shouted Rani’s name. Edy banged on her door, rattled it in
impatience and willed her to hurry up and help. New York or Boston,
one house or the other, in crisis, Rani was the one she needed.

Rani emerged, bleary eyed and yawning.

“
What’s wrong?”

With a morbid whimper, Edy spun round to
show the fast spreading red on her backside. Rani gasped, bloodshot
eyes sprung wide.

“This is what we’ve been waiting for! Your
womanhood has arrived!”

Edy glanced down the hall, half expecting
Bean to pop out and see some of her “womanhood.”

“Help me!” she hissed. “
Do
something.”

“Come.”

Rani grabbed her by the arm and pulled her
toward the guest bathroom. She shoved Edy inside, flipped on the
light and crowded in with her.

She worked diligently, quietly, taking the
time to explain to Edy things that her mother should have. How to
clean her clothes, how to combat her bellyaches, how to cope with a
tender and sprouting body.

As Edy showered, Rani brewed tea and
straightened up. After, the two returned to her room, where they
sprawled on her bed whispering about her family half the night.
Bean’s father, her brother-in-law, had ejected him from the house
and disowned his only son. No one knew why. Given that boys were
revered in their culture, it seemed an extreme thing to do. Had
Bean pushed him so far? Edy couldn’t help but wonder.

“
He’s changed,”
Rani said in Punjabi.
“You can see that for yourself.”

“
We’re all changing,”
Edy said.
“Look at what just happened to me.”

Rani, whose eyelids had been fluttering,
went wide awake at her words. She studied Edy’s face with unguarded
curiosity.

“
You are becoming a woman,
” she said.
“This is as it should be.”

“
If becoming a woman means having the
Incredible Hulk’s temper and agonizing cramps, then yeah, I’ve
accepted the womanhood challenge wholeheartedly.”

Rani smiled.

“
Is there a boy?”
she said.

Horror sliced her to the gut. Edy tripped
over a swallow, then another, as her brain flung contrary commands
to her mouth. Say something. Say nothing. The wide eyed fright that
swept her face was a horror in itself. Rani absorbed it, face
unreadable. Finally, Edy found control.

“
There’s no boy,”
she said, aware
that she’d already blown it.

Rani appeared to comb her thoughts, sorting
through each one before deciding to speak.
“What about Wyatt
Green? Do you like him?”

Edy laughed. Leave it to an adult to steer
right off the map.
“He’s a friend. If that changed Hassan
would—”

Hassan. Jesus Christ.

Rani sat up, and again, she took care in
studying Edy.
“Your romantic interest can be of no concern to
Hassan. His bride has been selected for him since birth.”

Edy flinched.
“I know that.”

A sting set in her eyes. Tears, she
supposed. She willed them away with gritted teeth and sniffed as an
old memory came to her. Edy recalled a trip to India. She and
Hassan had been nine at the time and pissed about most
everything—heat, traffic, the absence of cartoons, and the amount
of time it took to get to Chandigarh where Rani’s family lived.
Like always, the warmest, rowdiest reception swallowed Edy there:
the feeling of home jumping up thrilled on the opposite side of the
globe, of hugs and kisses set to smother, of love kicked into
overdrive. They knew her in Delhi, Ali’s home, and in Chandigarh,
Rani’s, and in little villages where cousins dotted the way. Maybe
they all knew her a little too well.

“
Tomorrow, Hassan meets the girl that
will be his bride,”
Rani had explained back then, with nails
digging Edy’s shoulder.
“And she’s not you.”

She’d cut to kill. Like a double edged
serrated sword, dragged throat to stomach and twisted back again.
Maximum damage inflicted.

Edy hadn’t bothered to hide the tears when
they came. She let them roll like only a child could, mopping hot
drops with the hem of her dress until Rani drew her in and there
there’d her. She’d shushed Edy with whispered promises of eternal
friendship and devotion and even then, even then, Edy’s heart
whispered
more.

Through beaded curtains she’d glimpsed Mala
Bathlar, Hassan’s future wife. A slight and trembling thing who
looked like she couldn’t kick a ball, or climb a tree, or skate
forward, let alone back. She certainly didn’t seem as formidable as
she ought to have been. And Edy wondered did the girl even own a
bike? As soon as she had the thought, the two were whisked away for
supervised alone time.

It lasted three minutes.

A flood of shouting adults returned with
Hassan at the helm. Edy had howled before tearing after him. He’d
burst out a side door with her on his heels and them on
her
heels. They’d run and run, rounding corners until they’d lost the
adults. It hadn’t taken long at all.

“No way,” he’d said to her. “I cursed them
and said I’ll never marry her.”

Rani’s mask of steel said she remembered
their trip to India, that she remembered Mala Bathlar and Edy’s
tears about the girl, and she remembered Hassan’s foul-mouthed vow
to forever disobey his parents.

“
I understand you love him,”
Rani
said.

And the words snatched at Edy’s heart with
iced fingers. When she opened her mouth to protest, Hassan’s mother
silenced her with a hand.