Born Confused (37 page)

—Well, I do admit, if I were a drag queen I’d want to be an Indian one, said Gwyn thoughtfully.—Such great jewelry, and the clothes and the makeup. It would be drag paradise. But yeah, it is a bit of a mindbender.

—Come on, yaar, Sabina cried.—India is one of the most blatant places in the world when it comes to transvestism. Drag packs walk down the street in broad daylight. In fact, the drag queen was probably invented in India—haven’t you ever seen a hijra?

The drag queen invented in India? I’d always thought India was the only place they
weren’t.
And then I realized she was right: I
had
seen hijras. A horde of what I’d taken at the time to be heinous men in lipstick and solar spectrum fabrics had wiggled up to our window when we were stuck in Bombay traffic once and demanded money. They were scary up close, and even tried to reach into the Ambassador when it started moving away. I was relieved when we left them behind in the dust. But it had never occurred to me to make a connection between hijras and drag queens. I don’t know why. Maybe because men in India sometimes wore a lungi, a sort of skirt. Maybe because there were so many colors and sounds and smells there al
ready, so many forms of human—from stick-and-tire children whose hair had gone vitaminlessly red, to cloudy-eyed old people, bones like lace under the thin film of skin. The toothless, the turmericcovered bride. The extra-thumbed, the under-limbed. It jolted me that I had seen something as a child that, placed in a new context years down the line, was capable of throwing me off kilter. It was funny how much you knew without knowing.

Gwyn used the bathroom first to wash off the hardened henna. She returned with her calves and palms blushed a deep red, and rubbed lemon on the pattern to help it hold, as Sabina had instructed.

—I’m pretty wiped, she said, yawning.—You don’t know how late I’ve been staying up learning all those songs.

I was still drying so Gwyn went to work on the sofa, tossing the cushions to the floor. When she got the frame unfolded, we could see that the mattress was still shrink-wrapped, a warranty stuck just under the plastic membrane. It had never been opened.

—Cool, said Gwyn, bouncing on the mattress.—Firm but supple. Why’d they leave the plastic on?

—Maybe it’s new.

—But didn’t you say they’ve been living here a year already?

—Something like that, I said.

—Well, where the hello’s our cousin been sleeping all this time?

She seemed to have answered her own question because she abruptly desisted bouncing.

—Kavs and Sabz, said Gwyn, dropping her voice several decibels.—They know so much about drag queens. And all these
women’s books and no women’s magazines. I don’t mean to be rude, but are they…you know…together?

—More together than I’ll ever be, I said.

—You know what I mean.
Together
together.

—Yeah, yeah, I know. Yes. Yes, they are.

Gwyn was so overwhelmed she forgot to chastise me for not having 411’ed her a half-second before I knew myself.

—Dear Claude, she whispered excitedly.—I can’t believe I just met a real live drag queen and two real live lesbians in the same day. It’s just too much. This would never happen in Jersey—it’s too fucking cool!

My hands were numb with cold. I left her and walked to the bathroom, quietly so as not to wake anyone. As I passed the bedroom door, I could see soft light swirling out from behind it.

I heard a hushed giggle.

Kavita’s voice: That feels…nice.

Sabina’s: Wait till I take it off.

I don’t know why I did this, but I approached, breath in the back of my mouth, until I could see through the slit between door and frame and into the room.

Inside, a genie lamp whirred slowly, casting magic carpet shadows into glowing rotation on the walls and ceiling, deepening the already scarlet space. Kavita was lying on her back on the bed. Gone was the filmy nightgown and in its place something that looked skintight and intricately patterned. Sabina knelt over her, shirtless now, small-chested, with a look of great concentration; one leg on either side of her hips, she held the tube in her hand, dripping a rivulet of dark liquid in a whorling pattern upon Kavita’s chest. She sat back, capping the tube, and stared down at Kavita. Who I realized then was naked, the breasts turned to flowers with aureole cen
ters, a circus of petals hewn from henna and panning out from her nipples. Stems ran a thorned path down to her navel, intertwining all along the length from breasts to belly button, disappearing below in a soily mass. The burnished garden of her body lay breathing, the flowers seeming to exhale open.

—You are too beautiful to put into words, whispered Sabina.

—Then don’t say anything.

I pretended it was just a picture, a beautiful image, the way their skin flushed to one, the roses trapped between their undulating bodies, the scent of sweat and honey and mud and mushroom and baking cake stemming into open air. But when I closed my eyes I still couldn’t lid off the vision of the two of them, the view from an unhinged door.

In the bathroom, I turned on the faucet and furiously washed my hands. The henna splintered off as I rubbed under the stream of flowing water, crumbling in tiny twiglike pieces into the white basin. Pattern emerged vividly in its wake, a vermillion stain intertwining with the lines of my palm to create a new design on old skin, to write a new fate on the written one.

The world was shifting in my very hands. I could feel it, and I closed them into fists to hold on to it. But even then I had the sensation it was slipping through my fingers piece by piece, grain by grain, a coastline eroding before my very eyes.

In the morning, I wasn’t so shocked but I don’t know if it was due so much to an opening of my mind as a numbing of it. Like the broken door—you can only push it so far before it goes loose, stops blocking the thieves, the uninvited guests and ideas.

Gwyn, however, couldn’t contain her excitement when Sabina and Kavita emerged dressed and ready to go.

—I just want to tell you guys. Women. That I think it is so
cool
you are together. I mean, wow, it’s just so efficient. Your best friend and your lover all in one package—I wish I could do that! It’s so…
rad.
You are my first lesbian friends, and I’m really proud of it.

—Uh, thanks, Gwyn, said Sabina.

—Do we really need to label it? asked Kavita.

—Isn’t that what this whole conference has been about? cried Gwyn, slapping them on the back.—Now come on—out of the closet and into the day! It’s gonna be a good one.

—Gwyn, I said when we had a moment.—You might want to kinda not talk about this with my parents. I don’t get the feeling it’s as out there as you might think.

—Oh, yeah, no prob. And Dimps—while we’re on the topic. I don’t think you should say anything to them about me and Karsh either. Until we’ve got something really solid going on. I don’t want them to think I stole him from you for, like, a fling. I mean, I know I didn’t
steal
him—but parents are funny that way.

—Gotcha, I said.

The Subcontinental Breakfast, which also turned out to be
subedible, was being held in the lounge of the Modern Culture and Media department, a room that reeked of cigarettes even at this hour. After a round of passive inhalation the four of us were waiting for my parents outside, and they arrived only mildly IST, in a jubilant mood having scored a parking spot smack in front of the building (my mother had stood in it, bounding wildly from side to side like a goalie till my father got back from circling the block).

And when I saw who they had in tow I realized that unmetered parking wasn’t the only source of their triumphant gigglishness.

—Karsh! we all cried in unison, an orchestra of elated, plaintive, cool, and amorous voices.

—We ran into him on his way here, my mother beamed.—It is the fate.

—Gwyn invited me along, Karsh grinned.—I hope you don’t mind.

—Oh, Gwyn, beta, said my father, turning to behold the golden one.—What a good friend you are.

—So you made it, Karsh said to me.—I thought you might have walked out by now. That being your specialty.

He turned to Gwyn.

—And how’s my favorite spin sister? he said, ruffling her hair. I found myself running my hand through my own as he did. Gwyn didn’t even rearrange her bobby pins, just hung out there, all googlyeyed. Everyone seemed to rewrite the rules when it came to Karsh.

—Much better now, she said.

—Come on then, chalo yaar, said my mother.—Let’s get us some real home cooking.

—Oh, so we’re heading back to Jersey then? said Gwyn.—Cool—I’m on at Starbucks later, so that’ll give me more time with you.

—Jersey? snorted my mother.—I meant Sixth Street. And let’s
give Radha a ring, too—she’s only working Shakti a half-day, isn’t it? What’s the office number?

—They don’t give it out, said Karsh.—But she has my mobile today.

Gwyn had already pulled out her own cell and was dialing. Or pushing, to be more precise. One button. I tried not to look but it was too late; I’d seen it.

One.

We decided to walk to the restaurant; my mother didn’t want to lose the parking spot she’d so athletically acquired, and Karsh pointed out that by the time we parked again we’d already be there. My parents had tried to flag down a series of occupied taxis (they never checked the light on top before embarking on their cab-hail jumping jacks), and that failing, claimed their boots were paid for walking.

As we made our way through that island with the sculpture where the streets cross, my mother played her favorite outdoor sport, Spot the Indian. Not as in bindi application, but as in:

—Look! An Indian! she said, gesturing excitedly across the street to where a spindly turbaned fellow hunched, paranoiacally withdrawing money from an ATM.

—Mom, there’s no need to whisper, I think he knows already.

—Aaray, and there is another one! my father joined in.

Sometimes they spoke in Marathi or Gujarati to cover their tracks. But for some reason they always seemed to do this when the person under surveillance was potentially either Marathi or Gujarati.

—Jo—Gujarati chhe!

—Bagha—Marathi aahe!

I suppose after years of using these languages to talk code in
public, or even around me, they’d never fully realized it wouldn’t work with speakers of the same native tongue. I don’t know why it bothered me so much when they did this. Maybe I felt like they’d just stepped out of baggage claim or something, like those people who thought the king was still in when Washington became president.

Gwyn, of course, didn’t like being left out.

—Look! An Indian, she said, poking her finger right into Karsh’s ribs and smiling.

Interestingly, by the time we got to Second Avenue and the Indian restaurant row they seemed to have stopped noticing. Or maybe it simply would have been too tiring to call it out every two seconds.

We went to this place called East Is Feast. It was the only one on the strip, my mother claimed, that was not run by Bangladeshis, who to her palate destroyed the cuisine no question (it was they who had invented chicken tikka masala, which she deemed a diabolical Tex-Mex type perversion of true Indian cooking). I personally don’t see how she could tell the difference. The same Christmas lights twinkled in the windows, but I wasn’t sure what we were celebrating.

I was forced to join my parents to wash our hands before the meal, something they’d been making me do since I started riding the New York subway, even though I pointed out that we had walked to the restaurant and been in contact with nothing but air and pockets and each other the entire way. By the time I got back to the table everyone was just about seated, having left the king and queen seats open for my folks.

Sabina planted herself with a resounding flump on Kavita’s left. On my right was Gwyn, who promptly turned away from me and towards Karsh, on her other side. This was the strategic position she was to assume nearly the whole meal long.

My mother was peevishly studying the menu.

—No, no, she said, clucking her tongue.—Who is translating these things? Saag paneer—
cottage cheese chunks floating in spinach.
That hardly gives the correct impression of paneer. It is sounding even…ruminatory.

She slammed down the menu and a gust of cool air blew into my face.

—Shall I just order for the table? she asked, guising what was inarguably a dictatorial command as democracy.—Radha won’t mind, correct, Karsh? She’s running late anyways, and I think I still know what she likes.

She didn’t wait for a reply but turned and began to issue instructions to the haggled waiter to ensure that the turka (spice mix) would be fried to her liking by the chef.

—Why don’t you just go in the kitchen and show him? said Sanjit (nametag), exasperated.

—Why thank you, young man! she said, standing. And she vanished into the recesses of the restaurant.

A moment of silence ensued, which my father filled like a dad with a tableful of kids he doesn’t understand.

—So Sabina, he said.—It is wonderful to finally get a chance to talk to you. Kavita has told us what a special part of her life you are.

—She has? said Sabina, arching an eyebrow; her mole arched up with it.

—Of course—we know you are her roommate. You have changed the college experience for her! my father proclaimed.—Now, what are you studying again?

—Women’s Studies, said Sabina loudly, even menacingly, it seemed.

—Women’s Studies? he said, chewing on a toothpick.—Like
cooking, sewing? Are there instruments involved? Personally I have always found the veena a very feminine and romantic instrument.

Sabina didn’t even dignify the comment. I thought it was pretty funny.

—That’s a good one, Dad! I said, winking big so he could catch the drift.

—Good one? Ah, yes—a good one!

—And South Asian Studies, Sabina continued.—It’s a combined major.

—Meaning, how to be South Asian?

My father looked puzzled.