BY Vaidhy Mahalingam
Jaspreet wants to stay at the wheel till she drives past the end of the Earth but has to get out of her car now, so she can breathe. She remembers, with terror, an incident she had heard from a mailman colleague of hers at work. While on the road, he was once so paralyzed by indecision that he plowed his car straight into a dirt bank between the right lane of the freeway and an exit.
She should text Simran to apologize. Or not. When Simran, her nineteen-year-old daughter, and she had left home together at half-past five that morning, she had resolved to use the fifty-five-minute drive to SFO to iron out things, to scrub out the previous night’s hastily spoken words from her daughter’s memory, before they could fester into septic resentments. She had wanted to send her daughter off to her fourth semester in college with a composed mind, secured with the silken ribbons of mother’s trust. However, by the time she had pulled into the curb at Southwest departures after driving in a period of enraged silence which stretched all the way back to the Bay Bridge, she realized she had restated or rephrased those same words repeatedly and emphatically. Her daughter had jumped out of the car to spurn a hand that was tentatively reaching out to her. Simran’s slamming of the car door was surely a prelude to a phone block that was coming. Block her own mother? Would she do that again? The young woman disappeared through the automatic glass doors,
She sees an exit and swerves right immediately. At least this exit doesn’t have a middle path, with a dirt bank or otherwise. After a few frustrating minutes of driving through parking-less roads with air freight warehouses on both sides, she spies a little peninsula jutting into the bay to the left. It has a chunky block of a featureless building with a sparsely filled parking lot. She slides her car into the first available space and races out, not knowing where to, taking in big gulps of air. And when an aluminum picnic table bench blocks her path, she crumples into it.
###
“I packed some parathas for you. You will be hungry when you reach San Diego. See? Triple wrapped in plastic. The oil from the achaar won’t leak.” That’s how it started last night. Jas was feeling smug about having staved off an excuse for not accepting her food before her daughter could wield it.
“It won’t fit, Ma! I got too much stuff.”
“What do you mean, it won’t fit? This tiny packet of parathas?”
Jas knelt down and started moving things around in her daughter’s suitcase, which was lying open on the floor. She could feel her daughter’s rising rage burning through the air behind her back, but she was no less irate. During her daughter’s two-week-long visit, they had barely scraped together a couple of ‘together’ dinners. Simran was always rushing off to ‘hang out’ with her God-knows-who friends, causing plastic containers full of home-cooked meals to pile up in her mother’s fridge like a brick wall of spurned love. This was mother’s one last chance to launch a small piece of that monument into the unknown for a possible distant rendezvous. One less piece to catch her attention later in the exhibit of failure in her Frigidaire.
Jas shoved aside a folded pair of ripped jeans to make space for her package, mumbling about kids dressing up like savages. Simran tried to slam the suitcase shut over her mother’s hand, and what caught Jas’s attention at that point was a blister pack of pills, half empty. In the ensuing chain of disconnected and non-causal accusations, those hastily spoken words were uttered, which made Jas lay awake for most of the night. She propped herself up on the headboard, smoldering over Simran’s choices, or perhaps over the idea that she could have choices, ‘til the memory of seeing the hurt in her daughter’s eyes cut a deep gash into her heart and she spent the rest of night frozen, scared to allow the tiniest creak from her old bed, lest she miss some sound, some comforting whisper, from her daughter’s room, intimating her that things were all right.
###
At the picnic table, while repeatedly muttering to herself that she should have not said those judgemental words to her daughter, she reaffirms her judgments were correct after all, which just signifies her failure as a mother. She sobs years of dammed up tears into her calloused palms, but after a bit, her whimpering sobs fade into the heavy breathing of the breakers. It is then she notices the table she is sitting at, facing the bay shore from a few feet away. She rubs her naked forearm vigorously across her face at random angles, hoping to dry her face and build up a little bank of composure for a few moments before the next big wave of despair breaches and pulverizes it.
“Yeah, like that helped! You just smooshed your mascara all over your face.”
Jas looks up. A waif of a pink-haired girl in an oversized heavy Raiders jacket is standing on the other side of the table, also facing the bay. She has a steaming cup of something in a plain white paper cup in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
“Sorry, I didn’t see you.”
“Never mind me.” She turns around, sticks the cig into her mouth, and does a couple of swiping motions across her face. “I am invisible. I’m nothing. Nada. You be you and do your thing.”
There is such innocence in her face. Young, too. She could have easily fit in with Simran’s high school graduating class. If not for those rotten-looking teeth.
“Smoke?” she asks.
Jas shakes her head.
###
Not that she couldn’t understand that Simran was blending into the pervasive fog of American values. It was more a matter of her own difficulty in accepting, or even getting comfortable, with those values. Simran being sexually active disgusted and embarrassed her, no matter how much she had prepared herself for such an eventuality. She had done everything she could to control and influence her daughter, but the child had left home, had snapped out of her reins and was running free like a wild mare. How often had she told Simran that the first time she saw her husband’s face, the first time she touched a man, was on the night of her wedding?
“Creepy!” Simran used to respond, when she was young and deferent. As she got older, she just rolled her eyes. Or became more creative with snarky responses.
Jas had trudged on, hoping that by feeding her daughter Indian food and by taking her to the Gurudwara every Sunday, she could instill some of the old country virtues in her daughter. She herself wasn’t averse to hooting with joy when hearing those incessant ribald stories from her workmates at the post office. In her mind, her daughter, too, would relegate such experiences to stories, to fiction and imagination.
“Stay focused on your grades. Don’t get into boy dramas and mess your life up like these stupid American girls. There will be plenty of time for love-shove and all that later in your life,” she had advised her daughter when she left for college. “You know, the first time I..”
“And how did that work for you, Ma?” Simran had responded.
And in one and a half years since then, they had worked on perfecting their imperfect departures and awkward separations.
###
The waif ruptures her thoughts.
“Jaspreet?” she calls, in a whisper.
“Oh my God! How long have I been staring at you?”
“Well, you watched me finish my cig and my coffee. To the last drop. Act I and Act II!”
“I am so sorry! I didn’t mean to stare at you.”
“I know. I am invisible.”
Jas manages a weak chuckle. “Wait! Did you call me Jaspreet?”
“You know you have your name tag on, right?” the waif says with a measured infusion of teenage sarcasm, running her finger across the logo on her own jacket.
Jas looks down at her shirt. She is in her mail clerk uniform.
“Uh, oh! I need to be at work at eight. I am never late.”
The girl pulls out her phone and looks at the screen. “Never? Well, not today. You ain’t gonna make it.”
Jas stands up. It is a freezing January morning at the bay shore, and she is in short sleeves. The wind is blowing hard. She pats her pant pockets. “Dang, where’s my phone? I have to call my boss. What I need now is a good excuse.”
“That’s not what you need,” the girl says, sounding firm and authoritative despite her squeaky girlish voice. She lights up another cigarette. “I am going in. Gonna get another cup o’ coffee. You want one?”
“Oh, no, no. I have to head back. Work, work, work, you know!”
An icy gust from the bay creeps up through her sleeves and burrows into her bones, spawning goose pimples all over her arms. She hugs herself and hastens to the car, and unhugs to delve into her pockets for the keys. Oh shoot, she never locked it in the first place. The key is still in the ignition. She gets into the seat, turns on the engine, and cranks up the heater. She hears the waif’s yelling over the roar of the wind and the ding-ding-ding of the seat belt warning.
“You need to get laid, Jaspreet. You need to get laid. That’s what you need.”
She slams the door shut. Her first instinct is to pound the pedal and run the insolent girl down. What is wrong with these girls? For them, it is always about sex, sex, sex! Last night, it was her daughter and then this piece of …. What would this slut know about love and sacrifice? She is barely an adult. What would she know about putting a child’s interests above one’s own, putting responsibilities above lust? What it takes to raise a child as a single mother, to deliberate about every move, knowing that her child is watching? And judging. And this girl, this little kid, comes out of nowhere, opens her dirty mouth, and tells her what she needs?
And after they had only exchanged greetings. How presumptuous of her!
Her thoughts are interrupted by another jet taking off over the bay in front of her. It has Thai Airways markings. ‘Smooth as Silk’ used to be its motto. Did they still use that?
###
Her husband left by Thai. When was that? Seventeen years ago? Said he was fed up with his long-haul trucking gig, nights on the road, crashing in cheap motels in paindu towns, struggling with snow chains in biting blizzards up in the Rockies and all that. He said he really needed a month’s break in his village with his parents to recharge, and then he would be right back.
Village life must have suited him, or perhaps discharged him. He never returned. She could still see him, disappearing behind those glass sliding doors at the same airport, his silky smooth eyes framed by a bright pink turban and a well-groomed beard, frozen in time.
###
There is a tap on the window. The girl is back, balancing two cups of coffee on her left forearm. Jas glowers at her for a few seconds. But something in her light-colored eyes makes Jaspreet’s ballooning rage deflate into a limp smattering of nascent, unadulterated warmth. She slides the window down and grabs a cup.
“Thanks. Come inside,” she says in a slow, defeated tone. She nods towards the passenger side, unlocking the door. Did she just invite the foul-mouthed girl to come inside her car? Perhaps her loneliness is getting to her, scaring her. Or worse, she relented because it was the first time since her mother’s death decades ago that someone actually tried to figure out what she needed. But what a stupid answer this girl has come up with!
The girl discards what is left of her cigarette and fidgets into the passenger seat. A whiff of a strange odor with hints of unwashed clothes, tobacco breath, and burned coffee seeps into the car. Jaspreet mentally juggles her busy weekend schedule to create a half-hour slot for shampooing the seats. She is proud of how clean she keeps her car, the one her husband had left behind and the only one she has ever had, even though it has north of one hundred and seventy thousand miles on the odometer. She carefully presses around the edges of the Ek Onkar sticker on the dash, even though it is firmly adhered to the plastic and she knows it. One God for all.
“It’s nice and toasty inside the car, dear. I will wait for you to finish your coffee. I am already late, so ten minutes more isn’t gonna make it worse,” she says.
The girl pats her jacket. “I got all the warmth I need here, but thanks!”
They sip their coffee in silence for a while. No sugar. No cream. Just bitter comfort.
Jas blurts out, “That was rude. You don’t even know me.”
The girl stares into her cup. “Yep, I don’t.” she says. “When you don’t know someone, you have nothing to lose. The way I figured, if your car was gone when I returned, I was a bitch. Two coffees for me, yay! If it hadn’t moved, I would still be a bitch, but an honest bitch.”
“I didn’t stay for you. I have my own stuff to worry about. But don’t use words like that for yourself. You shouldn’t put yourself down. People will …”
The girl locks her youthful pale blue eyes into Jas’s dark tired ones. As Jas stumbles, trying to stop herself, recognizing who she is actually speaking to, the girl, too, seems to recognize the voice behind the tone. She bursts into a big grin, unabashedly displaying her damaged teeth.
“You are missing being a mom, aren’t you?”
“Do you always say whatever nonsense comes to your mind?” Jas tries to sound cross. If the first dart that the girl had cast at her, before she left to fetch the coffee, had hit close to the bull’s eye, the second one landed dead center and pierced even deeper. And she was still smarting from the first jab.
“Uh, not always,” the girl says, twirling her pink locks with one finger. “Sometimes. Mostly when I am not talking to myself. And that’s only because I have heard what’s in my mind too many fucking times.”
Jas feels a strong urge to place her hand gently over the girl’s.
“You are one crazy girl. But I like you. I really wasn’t waiting for you, you know. But you talk. Talk with your heart open. Maybe you don’t understand everything, but you are honest.”
“Maybe I just don’t know when to shut up. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be this fucking mess.”
“There you go again, putting yourself down. It can’t be that bad. You are still young. I am sure you have a lot of things going for you.”
Drops of rain splatter down on the windscreen and distort the view of the bay and the distant cloud-covered hills into an impressionist painting. Jas lets herself enjoy the opacity of her window to the world, till it gets disconcerting. She nudges the lever to work the wipers.
“You know, he left me with a two-year-old child in my hands.”
“He?”
“My husband. Left me. Seventeen years ago. Just like that. Abandoned me. In a weird country full of strange people.”
For years, she had been feeding her daughter lies and more lies – lies manufactured as reasons to respect her father. But today, to this strange girl with bad teeth, she says whatever nonsense comes to her mind. It feels different. She suppresses a sniffle; it’s too late for the tongue.
“What a dick!”
“Hey, you are talking about my husband!”
When the girl rolls her eyes, she looks just like Simran.
“I had to choose between my libido and my daughter.”
“You should tell your daughter that. When you do that, I am sure she will agree with me. You need to get laid.”
Jas tries sipping the non-existent bitter stuff from her empty cup, gives up on that, and crushes the paper cup into the cup holder. She purses her lips and looks into the rearview mirror. She uses her fingers to stretch the dark bags under her eyes.
“Everything is not about sex, uh … Ms. Oakland Raiders.”
“Lisa. Call me Lisa. And yes, we have drugs and rock and roll, too. And paying attention to your libido will stop you from being jealous of your own daughter, I mean, like, when she finds hers.”
Jas stops running her fingers over the recently formed wrinkles near the corner of her eyes and turns to her newfound confidante. “You won’t get it, Lisa. You just won’t.”
“No?” Lisa finger-brushes her hair, taking her turn at the mirror. “Your daughter does? Gets it?”
Jas honestly doesn’t know. But she doesn’t get her daughter, that’s for sure.
###
It was the night of senior prom and Jas was rolling out rotis with Simran on the kitchen counter. The mother grabbed an Australia-shaped roti that the daughter had just rolled out and crumpled into a ball of dough to be re-rolled.
“Why did you do that? It tastes the same even if they are not perfect circles,” Simran sounded chagrined.
Jas ignored her whining and vigorously rolled out the next roti, throwing the full burden of her daughter not having a prom date onto the pin. If only she was wealthy like these techie Indians and doctor Indians, she could have moved to a neighborhood where a daughter could have grown up with more of her kind. Perhaps then she wouldn’t be making these grotesquely misshaped rotis on prom night. Anyway, it was nice that her daughter did not seem too worked up about missing the prom. Easy-going kid, no fire in her. She should have a low-stress life. Jas mumbled, “There is a right way to do things, and wrong ways to do things.”
“Ooh, aren’t we grumpy today, Ma? You could try being a little chill like those clownishly innocent Indian moms of Netflix shows?”
The clockwork motions of Jas’s arms came to a sudden standstill. She didn’t even look up at Simran. She raised the rolling pin and smashed it hard on the rolling board, splitting it at a seam.
“Chill? Do these moms deliver mail in the rain and sun in a neighborhood full of drug dealers and pitbulls? Let them walk my route for a day and we’ll see how chill they are after that.”
Simran was staring at the broken board.
“Those moms are the worst!” Jas screamed. “Letting their daughters run around with boys, allowing them to go to proms and fool around. Why? For your entertainment! You want me to be like them, huh? That’s who you want me to be?”
When Simran left for college, their relationship too slowly separated at the seams.
###
Jas finds some words that she can say and can hear herself say.
“At her age, daughters will only hate their mothers. It doesn’t matter what we do for them, how much we care for them, they will say we are mean, controlling, overprotective, something or the other. What can I do?” she says with a shrug.
“Well, I know nothing about your daughter, but you could try being her friend.”
“Friend?” Jas is puzzled. “But I don’t want to be her friend. My job is to be her parent. There is no one else to do that job.”
“Like fuck it matters. My mom was a good parent, I could say. But what’s the use of having a parent when you don’t have a friend? When your fucking soul cries for a friend? Oh, after a while, I couldn’t stand that bitch.”
“Lisa! You can’t talk about your mother like that!” Jas spits some acid into those words, remembering what Simran called her last night.
Lisa, unlike Simran, isn’t bothered by the rebuke, but she reaches for the door handle. Jas feels like a kid whose newfound toy is being snatched away before she can figure out what it is. She hasn’t had a coherent conversation of this length with Simran, or anyone, in ages.
“Did you guys ever make up?” Jas persists.
“Make up? Girl, I left home when I was seventeen! I haven’t seen her ugly face since then. Why do you think I am here?”
Jas works the wipers once again to clear up the windshield. She looks up to see where ‘here’ is. Beautiful white-topped waves sloshing in the icy breeze. Roaring jetliners disappearing into the gray skies. The muted squawks of squabbling seagulls from beyond the car windows. And a white building, square and stolid, with an empty parking lot and a boisterous vinyl banner convulsing in the wind. She gathers the letters on the banner amidst its fluttering frenzy. “Good Samaritan Shelter/Free Services for the Homeless,” it says.
“Oh, Lisa! If I can help you in any way …” Jas starts.
“Cut that shit out, Jaspreet. It’s all right,” Lisa says, giving Jas’s shoulder a friendly squeeze. “It is not me who needs your help, you know. I gotta go.”
She watches Lisa while she mentally traces her route back to ‘here.’
Lisa softly shuts the car door behind her. She walks towards the shelter into the strengthening rain, wiping her cheeks with her hand.
Jas hopes she won’t plow into a dirt bank again while trying to figure out who needs her help, but she feels she knows now how to respond to Simran.