The lights go out.
Let’s fly.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Shantal
Ibrought Sonia’s photo with me to Dubai at the last minute, grabbing the frame off my bedside table and taking it with me in a well-packed suitcase to ensure it didn’t crack. Now, with a pit of guilt building in the bottom of my stomach, I am back where I started: in the guest room of Navin’s house in the Emirates, with Sonia, hoping she can give me some kind of answer.
‘You won’t get to see any of this, will you?’
I catch the sob that begins to creep up my throat as I meet my sister’s eyes. Perfect. She was perfect. And she was so, so tormented.
‘My engagement. My wedding. You won’t get to see me off when I leave Ma and Babu.’ I push tears from my cheeks with a force that takes off some of my fresh makeup. ‘What would you have wanted, huh? I feel like that’s always been the question. Would you have wanted our parents happy, or me? Because the more I think about it, the more I realize – we can’t have both.’
They’re happy. But I’m you now.
I picture Darien lining up for the race in mere hours – Abu Dhabi, the race that will decide the outcome of his season. He’s points from Miguel. This is his chance to prove himself, and he’s doing everything in his power to make that chance worth it. I can’t even begin to define who I am, what I stand for. Am I myself, or am I the weight that was placed on my shoulders when my parents found out why we lost Sonia?
When the doctors talked to my parents, Ma had fallen into Babu’s arms with cries so horrible they made my stomach turn. She couldn’t believe Sonia would hide such a thing from us for so long. None of us could, and I don’t think any of us accepted thetruereason she made that choice because of it. We were in shock. We didn’t want to think about the sacrifice she’d made. We are still in shock, and instead of recognizing that something went awfully wrong, we made her a martyr.
Sonia did everything right, with meticulous skill. Dance, teaching, pageants. But there is a sharp sting that stabs at my heart when I think of the emptiness in her eyes that last night before she died, when she turned to me with those final words. ‘Don’t waste your time in making everyone else happy.’You think I’ve done it all right. But this is evidence that I have not.
I stand up, set my sister’s photo in its frame back on the nightstand. I shake the wrinkles from mylehenga, my engagement dress, a pale lavender embroidered with gold designs and glimmering pearls and diamonds. I check my face in the mirror, make sure nothing is out of place, straighten thedupattapinned to my bun. This is what it’s going to be now. I can hear the commotion in the yard already, all the guests waiting eagerly as I sit here and pray for the minutes to pass by until I no longer have any choice but to leave my room.
I look terrified.
I grab my phone from off the bed and shoot Anjali a quick text. I don’t think I can make it down there on my own. But just as I’ve hitSEND, she bursts through the door.
My yap-happy cousin is dead silent as she paces the room for a full three minutes before sitting down on the bed with dramatic emphasis and looking up at me, eyes heavy with disappointment.
‘Seriously?’ she finally says. ‘You’re stillhere?’
‘What do you mean?’ I reply slowly, with a hesitant gesture to the windows beyond which the ongoing party is visible. ‘All these people are—’
‘Shantal, tohellwith all these people!’ she sighs, voice rising. ‘These peopledictated everything we did all our lives. They’ve been telling us what to do for ages, and never once has it made sense to me. Sometimes we’re told to keep our chins up and be good wives. Other times we’re told to lower our heads and have some emotion. Sometimes we have to put on makeup and curl our hair. And other times we’re ridiculed for the extra effort. We get assigned a role in society, and when we raise our voices about it, we’re told we have options.
‘I’m sick and tired of being the perfect daughter. Of being the perfectgirl. Our parents suck all the love out of us, take us for granted, and then ask us why we don’t love harder. Everyone always tells us to be quiet, until they hurt us, and then they ask us why we weren’t louder. Look at Sonia, Shanni. Perfect daughter, perfect sister, perfect dancer, perfect teacher. None of us realized that something else was going on behind all of that. So tell me, what kind of a world are we living in? Are we living in it, or is it just using us like everybody else is? And are you going to let it use you as well?’
Anjali’s eyes fill with tears as she deals the final blow. ‘When are you going to realize that it’s time for you to stop being thelistener,didi? To stop sitting there with nothing to say, listening and listening? Someoneseesyou, and you love him. If you don’t – if you stay here and do this, I’m just scared you’re going to keep serving everyone else until you just … disappear. And then there won’t be anything left for him to see.’
My eyes slowly travel to behind Anjali, and they widen significantly as I realize it’s not the two of us alone here.
‘Ma,’ I barely whisper.
Wrapped up in her purple and gold saree, my mom takes quivering breaths, her hands shaking as she takes in this entire scene, this tangle of lies she’s just now getting the truth about.
‘Vaani, what’s—’
My father stops in his tracks directly behind Ma. Babu’s glasses slide down his nose, and he pushes them up with urgency, his line of sight flitting from me to Anjali and back to me. ‘Shanni, what’s wrong?’
‘Babu …’
Anjali clutches my hand in hers, and then my rebellious cousin does something that I fully believe comes from both herself and my Sonia. She tells the truth that undoes everything I’ve hidden from my parents since I got back.
‘Aunty, she’s inlove. She’s in love, and it’ll cost her everything. She’s willing to sacrifice all her dreams, the life she wants, to make you happy. She’ll do whatever it takes, even if it means pleasing everyone before herself, just like Sonia did. And I know, I know this isn’t my place, but that would be a mistake. She wasn’t born to be Sonia; she was born to be Shantal.’
They are both silent for a long minute as they take this in, and then my father looks up at me with what I think may be disappointment. Is it disappointment? I can’t tell, but it’s the worst kind of stabbing pain.
