“It’s tacky. This whole setup is tacky.” Dolly patted her hair. “If anything, it just highlights the difference between us and them. Weddings have turned into a sham, Moti. It’s all about showing off. Thank goodness I don’t have to worry about yours any time soon.”
Most Indian mothers don’t rest until they pair their daughters up with a nice boy, but my mother would be perfectly happy if I never got married. She’d constructed a whole reality for me, with boxed-in edges I could not cross. It wasn’t her fault, really. Well, maybe partly. When I was born, she consulted the woman who got her pregnant—not in the literal sense, because that would be my dad—but the woman who gave her the fertility potion that finally got her to conceive. A clairvoyant mystic named Ma Anga. Say it with me and let it echo in the dark recesses of your heart. Ma Anga. See how sinister it sounds? Mahhh Angahhh. My nemesis. Probably a toothless octogenarian now, and someone I’d never meet, given that she lived in a remote village in Goa, India.
The day I was born, Ma Anga plotted my birth chart. From the position of the planets, she predicted my soul mate would have two thumbs on one hand (talk about limiting an already-limited dating pool). I would meet this three-thumbed man by the water (thank God Chicago had an accessible waterfront). But I really shouldn’t be hanging around the water because I was going to die in the water (hopefully after I met my soul mate, because that would suck). If Ma Anga stopped there, I’d have been ever so grateful. But no. She saved the best for last: if I ended up marrying someone other than my soul mate, my mother would die within seven days.
Now, technically, I could skip the whole marriage thing, move in with a good old-fashioned non-soul mate and live semi-happily ever after, except my mother wouldn’t have that either. A good Indian girl goes straight from her parents’ house to her husband’s house.
If my life were a game of Monopoly, the rules would sound like this: Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. And do not, whatever you do, collect a boyfriend. Or two. Or three, you slut.
Anyway. I never bought into the idea of soul mates. The notion that the universe owed me this one perfect person who fit me completely, loved me unconditionally, gave me toe-curling orgasms, retained his hair, teeth and erections,andput up with my shit through every single phase of life, was a huge burden to put on anyone. Hell,I’drun the other way if someone expected all of that from me. Not to say I was a complete cynic. I liked theideaof a soul mate, but most days I was lucky if I found a hair tie that was compatible with my big, curly hair. So no, I didn’t believe in the stars or destiny or all the stuff my mother tried to impress upon me. I figured I would deal with it when I met someone worth putting up a fight for (although the part about my mother dying sat like a gargoyle on the shelf, giving me the side-eye every time I texted a guy). All I wanted was to live my life and not have Dolly play the martyr every time I went out with a normal guy (you know, a guy with an even set of fingers). You’d think she was going to choke on her chai and keel over before I got in the car with him.
A part of me believed deep down, Dolly was just lonely, and this was her way of holding onto me. My parents got married in Goa and moved to Chicago before I was born. They divorced when I was two. My father was long remarried. I didn’t see much of him since he’d moved to Atlanta to be with his new family, but he was always calling and checking up on me. I suspect having me had been Dolly’s way of trying to hold onto him. Obviously, it hadn’t worked. I wondered why Ma Anga didn’t predictthatwhen she was soakingtoadstools for Dolly’s fertility potion.
Ma Anga was also the one who named me Moti. It means pearl in Hindi, but only when you say it with a soft T—with your tongue between your teeth: Mo-thi. When you say it with a hard T, Mo-tee, like most people do, it means fatty or chubby. This slight mispronunciation ruined my childhood. It wasn’t the kids in school who teased me. They didn’t know their soft Ts from their hard Ts. It was my family—aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, and one elderly guy who showed up at every wedding—but no one knew who he was. Of course, it didn’t help that I was soft and doughy and jiggled when I ran—which, quite often, was to get away from them.
I might’ve outrun most of my baby fat, and I was done contemplating a name change, but as I sat between my mother and grandmother—Dolly and Naani—I still felt like apologizing for taking up too much space. Too much air, too much food, too much water. Maybe if I’d been named Isabelle, things would be different. Maybe I’d be able to wear billowing organza skirts and be okay peeing in front of other people. I mean, Isabelle is a statement in itself: She Is A Belle. Don’t get me wrong. I was plenty hot—in an Adele-esque way. I could set fire to the rain. Yes. Yes, I totally could. I sat up straighter, pulling my shoulders back.
My grandmother patted my hand under the table. Maybe she caught me watching Isabelle. Maybe she overheard all the times my mother said, “Why can’t you be more like your cousin Isabelle, or Monica or Rupa, or [insert name of random brighter, prettier go-getter]?”
“Tumhari baari bhi aayengi. Aur tabh, tum sirf apni dil ki hi soon na,” Naani said.Your turn will come too. And when it does, don’t listen to anything but your heart.
She spoke English but reverted to Hindi when she was dishing out advice. My brain was hardwired to sort her speech accordingly. Everything she said in English went into the temporary cache. Everything she said in Hindi got etched into my subconscious.
Naani leaned in and winked. “Khaas kar ke, uski baaton me mat aana.”Most especially, don’t listen toher.
I laughed. She meant my mother.
“What did you say?” Dolly tuned in, but Naani had already gone back to her phone.
“Oh look. They’re here! Come, Naani.” I helped her up. “Rachel Auntie wants us all to welcome Thomas and his parents together.”
Dolly, Naani and I made our way to the entrance of the banquet hall, where Thomas was struggling to breathe as Joseph Uncle held him in a tight, wiggle-free hug.You’re here, and you’re going to marry my daughter! There is no getting out of this now.
Isabelle cheek-kissed her future in-laws—George and Kassia—while Rachel Auntie beamed as bright as the shimmering beads on her sari.
Growing up, all Isabelle and I heard was, “You have to marry an Indian fellow. Marriage is hard enough without having to gap cultural differences. Make your life easier, and ours too. Marry an Indian fellow.”
Indian fellow.
Indian fellow.
What they’d neglected to tell us was the footnote, the loophole, the asterisk: “Marry an Indian fellow unless you land a gazillionaire. Then marry him.” Money circumvented a lot of things—opinions, traditions, cultural differences. Of course, the gazillionaire couldn’t be a total asshole. And he had to love masala chai, because you can’t really bond with someone until you’ve poured steaming hot masala chai from cup to saucer, swirled it with practiced precision, and slurped it together. That’s the way things rolled in my family.
“God, he’s a looker,” Dolly mumbled under her breath after Isabelle introduced us to Thomas and his parents.
I wasn’t sure if she was talking about Thomas or his silver-haired father, who had excused himself to answer his phone. Naani, on the other hand, had more important things on her mind. Like food. She was already zigzagging her way back to the table. She had no problems walking but her balance was off, and she refused to use a cane.
“It’s okay. You go.” Rachel Auntie traded places with me, standing behind my mom.I’ve got your mother. You look after your grandmother.
It was a blatant switch of our familial roles, but she’d obviously hedged her bets. Between my mother playing dead and my grandmother crashing into the chocolate fountain, the latter was a bigger concern. Much easier to pick Dolly off the ground than clear up a gooey mess of ganache with panache.
“Beta, can you get me a glass of water?” asked Naani, sinking into her seat.
“Of course.” I scanned the room and noticed pitchers of water lined up on a table in the back. Picking up the train of mylehenga,I made my way toward them. The lady at the store had helped me pair the long embroidered skirt I was wearing with a matchingcholion top. It was emerald green, with gold embroidery at the border and a scattering of small stones that caught the light.
“So beautiful against that lovely dark hair of yours,” she said. “Use some kohl to rim your eyes and you’ll knock ‘em dead.”
“What about this?” I pointed to the patch of skin peeking between the top and skirt.
