Swimming Through Clouds (A YA Contemporary Novel) (17 page)

Dad stands next to me now with three cups of steaming water.
Not the kettle. Blood pulses in my deafened ears, beating with the thudding of
my heart, as he explains. “Since Professor Deans actually called and affirmed
your reason for being in my office, your punishment has been reduced to three
cups of boiling water. No counting necessary.”

And the pouring begins. The cups pour over my arms and my teeth
bite instinctively and rip fresh ridges into my lips. One cup. Two. Then three.
It’s over. My skin bubbles. But it’s over. My flesh stinks. But it’s over. My
arm stings down to my bone. Wound upon wound upon wound, my arm reads a
timeline of a history of hurt.

Dad refills the three cups and asks again, “Tea anyone?”

“No, thank you.” I choke to get out the words. “May I be
excused?”

“Sure.” Dad carries on. Same old, same cold. “Just hurry
back and start dinner. We have a lot to celebrate. Talia’s going to college.
Your father got a raise. Jesse…well, Jesse is breathing.”

I stumble out of the kitchen and run to the upstairs
bathroom. As I quickly fish through the medicine cabinet for the burn cream and
gauze, my right hand trembles, and I drop the tube. The remaining ointment only
covers a quarter of my forearm. The aloe ran out after the last incident, and
Dad never replenished it. I read somewhere that toothpaste works. Toothpaste it
is. I fish out the Colgate from the first drawer and spread the entire tube
over my burnt arm. The numbing covers the pulsing throbs like a thin blanket
during a winter storm. If only I could stick my arm in a snow bank and leave it
there. After wrapping my goop-covered arm lightly with gauze, what choice do I
have except to return to the kitchen?

Dad sits with his back to Jesse at the dining table. I see
the ingredients for lasagna lined on the countertop nearest the stove. The last
time we had lasagna, Mom baked a cake, too. We followed the steps on the bottom
of the box. Remembering Mom’s hands atop my little girl hands, the noodles
slipped from my tiny fingers, so Mom essentially held them for me. When you’re
four-years-old, you think you’re still holding stuff when an adult holds your
hands around the item. Now I know I didn’t hold the noodles at all. Mom held me
and my whole world together back then. Whenever her world wasn’t being ripped
to shreds.

Jesse’s eyes spell murder as he pierces Dad’s back with
invisible knives. Afraid to alert Dad, I silently pick up a cutting board and
chop up onions and tomatoes with my right hand, standing between Jesse’s face
and Dad’s view. As my hands move systematically, my burnt arm curses me
alongside an unfamiliar word.
Hope
. The number seventeen. The seventeenth of each month.

Four hours later, everyone fed, kitchen cleaned, and lights
out, I lay in bed, recapping the day. My mind is a Sticky Note. Lagan scrawls
I
heart U
. Over and over
again.

I cannot fall asleep for the life of me, my throbbing skin
prevents my eyelids from touching. I can no longer lay here. Even the flipping
of pages reignites the stinging. I listen for Dad’s snoring and make my way
quietly back downstairs to the kitchen for a cup of water. Gulping it down, I
open up the freezer to search for an ice pack. Two. We have two! Taking both
and sliding them in between the gauze and my pajama sleeve, after a few
minutes, relief seeps in. My arm is frozen, and I cannot feel. I know that I
can’t fall asleep with the ice packs. They will defrost, and the burning
sensation will return leaving me with wet sheets and awakened anger.

I don’t know why, but I walk back to Dad’s office and stand
at the door and reenact in my head how I clumsily tried to exit. How I failed
to notice the stack of letters on the corner of his desk. How I didn’t watch my
personal space and failed to escape. How I failed.

I shake my head, and as I stare at the letters in mixed up
order as I had left them, I realize that Dad never returned to his office to
organize them. He would never know which order I left them in either. Before I
can stop myself, like a magnet that has no power over the pull, my feet move
swiftly, my hand takes the stack of letters, and I quickly place them one by
one back on the desk, after reading the senders’ names. Utility bill. Mortgage
bill. Another bill. Business mail. Credit card statement. More business mail.
Then I read a name that stops my dealing fingers. “
Amit
Shah.” The return address is Kolkata, India, and the plethora of colorful
stamps suggest that it cost a pretty penny to deliver.

The name sounds so familiar. Like it’s been filed somewhere
deep in my memory, and I just have to remember who he is. I don’t have the
luxury to think while standing here—guilty as charged if Dad catches me
returning to the place of my destruction. I make a split second decision to
peruse the already opened letter and return to my room in no more than three
minutes. My fingers carefully remove the letter written on blue-lined
stationery and read as fast as my eyes can move.

[
Amit
Shah asked me, a teacher at the district school, to
write this letter for him. His wife has been our faithful household help for
years. This is the least I could do in return. Please accept this letter on
their behalf.]

Dear
Gerard-Sir,

We were
recently told that Gita died several years ago by a neighbor who has some
connections with a family friend living in Michigan. Why did you not tell about
our daughter’s death? Doesn’t her death clear all her debts to you? We only
hoped that she might see a better life in America. We’re still in shock that
we’ll never see her again.

In all the ten
years since she left us, we only received two letters from her, which our
teacher friend read to us. In the first, she told us that she gave birth to a
daughter. The second told us she had a son. That is all we know. We are
devastated to hear the news and still cannot believe our precious Gita is
really gone. Never to step foot again in the country of her birth.

We forgive
you. We simply desire to contact our grandchildren and perhaps bring them to
India one day for a visit.
We
hoped one day our Gita would return to see the room we built for her, run in
the fields of rice paddies like she did as a child, and break bread with us.
Since that dream is dead, we can at least hope to give our grandchildren a
comfortable place to lay their heads when they visit India. Please do not
discard this letter. Stamps are still very expensive for us, and we cannot
afford to write often. Please tell our grandkids that we want to see them.
They’re all we have left of Gita. Please, we beg you, tell the kids about us
and give them our love.

Thank you,

Amit
Shah

P.S. Gita’s
mother sends her best.

My mind is whirling in all sorts of directions. When did Mom
ever have a job? And Dad was her boss? I mean, he controls this house. There is
no question about that, but this letter mentions debts and an employer. Before
I can entertain the remaining hundred and one questions that well up inside me,
I refold the letter and carefully funnel it back into its envelope. I then stick
the letter back in the middle of the stack and reshuffle the letters to restore
order and disorder.

I stumble on the first step as I begin my tiptoed ascent
back to my room. My burnt arm hits the railing as I catch myself from tasting
the wooden stairwell. Without thinking, I bite extra hard on my lower lip to
contain the squeal of pain that threatens escape. The taste of fresh blood
mixes with new information with the strength of a cocktail that threatens a new
kind of intoxication. I am drunk on the possibility of possibility.

As I falter up the remaining steps, I hold my throbbing arm
against my chest. The numbness wore off so quickly, and I silently curse the
ice packs for teasing me. They are soft, warm bags of mush now. I lay the blue
packs on the bathroom counter top and adjust the tautness of the damp gauze.
The choking tightness around my forearm reduces the stinging, ever so slightly.
If only I could choke my father in his sleep for keeping my grandparents from
me. From us.

I glance at the clock. It reads 2:15 a.m. I pull the
covers over my head and wonder what it’s like. To be lied to. Taken from your
parents. Told you’d have a better life. Only to find out you’re in debt like a
slave.
Oh Mommy! If your parents ever knew what happened?
So many things about Dad make sense now.
But so much does not. What kind of immigration lawyer is he after all? Who is
he representing, and what did he hire Mom for?

I fall asleep with a divided heart. My mind swirls as I
imagine a secret rendezvous in the garden. May 17 can’t come soon enough. Then
I shift to the letter, wondering what it must have been like for Mom to leave
her parents, unaware she’d never see them again.

I know now why the name
Amit
Shah
sounded so familiar. Mommy said his name in her sleep during those last days.
When I’d ask her about the name, she just shook her head and stared off toward
the window. I know now that she was looking back. To her childhood. The time
when she had a mom and dad. Perhaps a dad that could have protected her from
all her hurts. From her cruel husband. From all the madness. A dad named
Amit
Shah.

I fall asleep with a divided heart, one half asking
questions about my mom. About my grandparents. About a past I have no
connection to. And a future I have no control over.

The other half can’t help but be thankful. For cucumber
letters, the information on Dad’s monthly schedule, and grandparents who are
alive. I do not remember which half held my mind’s hand as I walked into
dreamland. I do remember thinking,
Oh God, my arm is still burning!

CHAPTER
NINETEEN

At
night, I dream of Mom and her life before Jess and I arrived. A thousand
nights. A thousand different jobs. One moment a nurse, like a nightingale. The
next a writer of sorrowful tales. Then suddenly a hair dresser. And with the
turn of her back, a dancer with her hair tossing here and there as she twirled.
Then another turn and suddenly Mom is wearing a velvet purple robe like a
queen, tucking lilacs in her hair, then tossing the rest in the air, letting
them fall anywhere. A palace blooming with freedom. And finally, she becomes
what I knew her least as—a teacher. Showing me how to braid my hair,
paint my nails, and walk in heels. Things I never learned. Mom never had the
time to teach me the little things. Whatever life lessons we learned from her
came from watching her. And somehow, in this topsy-turvy, mental whirlwind, I
journey to my little girl years, my eyes still closed.

When I was in third grade, one day shortly after winter
break, my teacher Miss Cook got engaged. Few of us students knew what that
meant. To acknowledge the importance of the occasion, Miss Cook gave us a night
off of homework. We all giggled as she seemed momentarily lost in her gaze of
her pretty, little, pale hand, too tiny for the sparkly diamond sitting atop
her ring finger.

“I’m getting married, girls and boys!”
Adding
doubles and reading circles could wait,
I thought to myself as she spent much of the lesson time spewing details that
were beyond my scope of experience or understanding. But I listened. Watched,
really. I’d never seen her so radiant, speaking so fast at times, I wondered if
she forgot that she stood surrounded by a room full of antsy eight-year-olds.
Some of the boys appeared to fall asleep with their heads on their desks while
Miss Cook’s voice jabbered on.

“The wedding is at the end of August, two weeks before the
school year starts. My wedding colors are honeydew green and salmon pink. I’m
going to look for salmon bridesmaids’ dresses with honeydew buttons down the
back. And the girls will all carry single long-stemmed, light pink roses, and
I’ll hold a pretty bouquet of pink flowers with plenty of light green trim. And
the groomsmen will have matching bow ties, and we’ll dance the night away,
and...” She stopped to take a breath. “And when you see me next school year, my
name will change. I will no longer be Miss Cook. Next September, when you see
me in school, please call me Mrs.
Drakowski
.”

Dra
-what?
We all looked around at each
other until Joey, one of the few boys who paid attention, raised his hand to
ask, “Can we just call you Mrs. D.?”

She smiled and nodded yes. Her eyes looked so dreamy. I bet
if he had asked, “Can we call you Mrs. Dracula,” she would have smiled and
nodded yes.

After school, I raced home a few steps ahead of Jesse to
tell Mom about being engaged. Even back then we had our chores and lists, but
with a homework pass, I had a fleeting hour void of adding worksheets and
cursive letter tracing. I made sure to still bring my reading book home. Dad
didn’t know that I didn’t have any homework. I had a better plan for my stolen
time. I planned to talk to Mom about my wedding and the day a cute boy asked me
to marry him.

The smell of dhal and rice greeted my senses the moment we
stepped inside. I guess we were having Indian food tonight. Yuck! I wanted to
have mac and cheese like the other kids in my school. Or pizza. Or chicken
nuggets.