Authors: Rakesh Satyal
My father keeps on yelling, scolding my mother about me—not just with regard to tonight’s spectacle but with regard to my detour from last weekend, I’d wager. And it occurs to me that for some cruel reason, my migraine problem does not resurface now. Sure, it can happen at the least convenient times, like in the park, but now, when I would much rather pass out and earn at least a little sympathy from my parents, it’s nowhere to be seen. My body has opted for the cruelest possible attack on my mind; it forces my mind to endure every possible pain.
Finally, just when it seems that my father is going to lose his voice entirely, he storms upstairs, and I hear the master bedroom door slam.
My mother, after a few silent moments during which I continue to look at the floor, makes the tea. She takes the one remaining mug and goes to the sitting room, leaving the teakettle cooling on the stove. I take her cue and go upstairs, which should feel like a relief but, because of my mother’s cold behavior, feels like a silent exile. Whatever the reason, once I reach my bedroom, I collapse on my bed, expecting tears but instead falling straight to sleep.
That night, Rodney appears to me in a dream. Instead of being alone in the park, he is accompanied by a man who wears a white sweatshirt and a baseball cap. They kiss.
The kiss is more comical than shocking at first because of the tussle between their hats. The wide brim of Rodney’s ranger hat dwarfs the smaller one of his companion’s baseball cap, and when they kiss, both of the hats slink backward from touching each other, edging off their owners’ heads. I can’t even make out the two men’s mouths; instead, it is the steady movement of their heads that gives them away. As my eyes adjust more and more to the nocturnal park, I can see their arms around each other. Once in a while, one or both of them will take a breath of air and a small wind of condensation will once again rise from them. Then it is back to their embrace.
WHAT IN GOD’S SAKE IS GOING ON IN THIS PARK? I scream to myself in my head. For the love of all that is holy, when did Crestview become such a den of sin?! I am raging now, almost doubled over from my anger. Where have I been all this time? How long has this debauchery been happening? I give a quick look around me to see if I can sense anyone else moving through the underbrush, if there are any other visitors to the Crestview Fuck Park this evening. No, it doesn’t seem so, although for all I know, the massive swing set at the other end of the park is being used as a sexual jungle gym, a bunch of drunken people bouncing around on the seats before bouncing around on each other. Such a thing could have been happening all these years while I lay in my bed at home, trying to sleep, pining for something greater than myself.
That is, until Rodney and his companion start to take off their clothes. Now, in a delayed reaction, I realize when I see the masculine heft of their bodies that I am not looking at a man and a woman, as I have in the past. I realize that this is the first time I have ever seen two men kissing. My stomach does not prove a very reliable barometer of my feelings about this; simultaneously, it recoils with distaste and expands with eagerness. But there is the movement of these men’s bodies to guide me. There is the way that they embrace each other, as if attacking each other. Their clothes are mere casualties in the line of battle; slowly, they fall to the ground. All the while, the hats keep sparring until they, too, fall. When I see Rodney push the man away from him, almost slamming him against one of the stone pillars, I feel that something even more drastic is about to happen. Sure enough, Rodney turns the other man around and begins to do to him what I saw those boys doing to that girl.
Only now am I able to fully understand what being called gay means. It does not just mean that you play with dolls. It does not just mean that you can’t play basketball. It does not just mean that you hang out with girls instead of boys because you feel more comfortable that way. It does not just mean that you take ballet. It does not just mean that you think over and over again about the mole on a boy’s neck, and it does not just mean that you feel a flutter in your stomach when a boy compliments you.
It means that you are wired for a different life entirely. It means that your body, your feelings, your responses toward all other people are different. You do not look at men the same; you do not make love to them the same way. Your sex will be more rugged, rawer. Rodney, once soft-spoken and endearing, approaches this other man with a violent pleasure that I would never have expected of him. His wife must have no knowledge of this whatsoever. He must exist away from her. He must feel the way I feel when I walk through the hallways at my school or when I walk through the cavernous, curry-smelling houses of our Indian friends. Being gay is a self-contained, alternate world.
All the same, I feel an undeniable distaste about Rodney and his companion. Their physical act is too new to me to register as normal or natural. Instead, I feel myself repulsed just as much as I can’t look away. Is that what I am expected to do with my body? No, no, it can’t be. I am not made for that. I want to be normal. I need to be more like my friends, not less like them.
But if I make myself too normal, I lose my godlike presence. If I renounce my individuality, I make myself as vulnerable as all those other babies were to King Kamsa. If I renounce my singular power, I am no longer that one blue boy protected by his own powers. Which will I choose—conformity or delectable deformity?
I wake up in a fit.
What sort of dream, what sort of mirage is this? Don’t mirages show us what we
desire
to see? Isn’t a mirage the pool of water in a desert? But in my dream, I felt as repulsed as I was intrigued. What if I had not just let Rodney’s hand rest on my stomach but had touched his hand in turn? Would I be the man in the baseball cap?
I don’t know how I got to this place. How, in just a few weeks, has my lust been cracked open like this? I feel absolutely different. Sometimes I feel like I am so sexually charged that I might blaze myself up, that this blue flame is burning so intensely that I will explode. I spend too many nights not being able to sleep, jerking off or tangled in my comforter, its pink fabric like a sheet of scratchy insulation, the cotton candy-like type that I could see when my father’s mug punched that hole in the wall.
I need to be Krishna. I just
need
to be. That can be the only possible explanation for this madness. Yes, I know that Krishna is simply one avatar of Vishnu and that, by asking for reincarnation, what I’m really asking for is to be Vishnu. But that’s not it; every time I see a picture of Krishna, I cannot help but see myself. I cannot help but recognize something glowing—hurt, but glowing—in His beautiful, made-up eyes and in His brilliant skin. The way my body burns with longing can only be the work of some Greater Force—a divine force. I recall Cody saying that “smite” is his pastor’s favorite word. Perhaps I am being
smitten
with a celestial wind of lust. Buffeted by
bhagwan
.
All the while, Neha and Ashok are continuing their normalcy, their steady romance. I had no part of their romance before, and I certainly have no part of it now. The same can be said of my supposed friendship with Cody and Donny. The other children I know are living their lives, growing up while I grow apart. I remain the lone warrior, staring out my window at the sky, which turns blue as the sun comes up. What is the sky, I think, but the blue, bruised skin of the Earth?
Then I fall back asleep.
I wake up gradually the next morning. Once in a while, I hear the sound of a kitchen cabinet thudding shut or a large spoon hitting the side of a stainless steel pot or the padding of my mother’s feet against the linoleum. Or I hear the powerful heave of my father sneezing in the cool morning air or the sound of his accountant’s calculator printing numbers onto thin scrolls of paper with a screeching zap. These plain, regular sounds comfort me; they show me that there is a way for things to go back to the way they were.
I go downstairs carefully, checking to make sure that my dad is still in his study and my mother still in the kitchen. It is a question of whom I should address first, since each of them can hear me talking to the other. My father would probably appreciate getting the first hello, but with his outburst last night, perhaps it is wiser for me to say hello to my mother and get her on my side before approaching him. But would my mom even be on my side? Her behavior last night would indicate no. I end up making it halfway down the stairs before deciding to turn around and go back to my room. I shut the door, deciding to hide out in here for a little while longer before facing those two.
I take out my markers and paper and start drawing again. In all the hubbub of the past week, I have really neglected the planning particulars of my talent show act. I have yet to pare down the details and decide what this show is going to
be
. Sure, it can be a really beautiful montage of interpretive dance and song, but I can’t just get up on a stage and expect a miracle to happen. I’m no Hanuman, that dancer we saw so many years back. I can’t just get up on a stage and improvise for hours on end. Well, I
could
, but I don’t think it would do as much justice to my great Krishna revelation to wing it. I need to decide on what my outfits are going to be, where I’m going to stand and what steps I am actually going to do. With less than two weeks to go until the show, I am going to have to make some real decisions.
I start with a blank sheet of paper, as I have so many times before. I draw a blue body with my marker. I pause for a few seconds, trying to decide which color I should make my costume. I can’t wear a dozen different costumes; I must pick the color that best captures what I want to convey in the piece. When I realize what it should be, I let out a small sigh of relief, and soon I am drawing beautiful, flowing magenta pants as the bottom of the outfit. The other details come soon thereafter. I ridge the pants in flecks of yellow and orange to evoke gold. I draw a half dozen shining bangles on each wrist and then craft the well-made face of the drawing—full, red lips, dark eyes rimmed in
kajol
. It seems so right, after everything that’s happened in these past few days, to have stripped away all the different visions I’ve had and settle on this one simple yet graceful image of myself.
I know just how to make this costume, too. My mother has an old magenta sari that she keeps tucked away far in her closet, behind several other saris—many of them magenta yet new—and I can use that for the pants. She also has so many sets of bangles that I could take a few and escape her observation. I shudder, remembering that I thought the same thing about the makeup, only to find out that my mother knew all along about that, as well.
The door to my bedroom opens and my mother walks in. She looks very tired and is still in her nightgown. Her eyes are puffy. Usually, this shows me that she’s been crying, but that doesn’t seem like the reason right now. I think they are puffy because she’s been standing at the stove all morning.
“Vhat are you doing,” she asks, although now I hear it: she has phrased the question in that terse manner that my dad uses, when his questions are not questions but statements.
“Drawing,” I say softly.
“Drawing vhat?”
“Just drawing. Trying to work on my talent show act.”
She bows her head and touches it with one hand. Her fingers still have flour on them, and her nails are full of dough.
“Kiran, I don’t vant you to do the talent show anymore,” she says. “I need you to focus on your schoolvork and try to put things back together.”
I am completely speechless. This is the first time in my entire life that my mother has not supported me outright. Where is the woman who stood up to Pansy, making sure I got my ballet slippers without a real fight? Where is the woman who still smiled when I decided not to take
khatak
but chose ballet instead? Most of all, where is the woman who sat across from me at that kitchen table and laughed and bonded with me? I do not see her in this woman. I do not see her in this woman’s puffy eyes or in her harsh words.
“But Mom, I have to do the show.”
“No, you don’t. You’ve done it enough. You need to focus.”
I fight back a knot in my throat and persist, extemporizing a lie. “But I already gave Mrs. Nevins my permission slip and they’ve already made the programs and set the order, so I can’t quit now.” This could very well be true, but I don’t know for sure. All I know is that I have to do the show. There is no question. Surely my mother can understand that.
“Listen, Kiran.” She closes my bedroom door. “I am tired of this. I am tired of your behavior. You don’t think I see vhat you do, these dolls you play with, this makeup problem? I am your mother. I see these things. I have tried to ask what is going on vith you, but you never give me a straight answer, and I am tired of trying to figure you out. Vhat am I supposed to say to your dad vhen he asks me about you? He is alvays asking vhy you are so different, vhy you act so strangely, and I can’t give him any excuses anymore. You need to show me that you can behave and focus on vhat is important.”
She leaves immediately, opening the door and walking out. I hear her steps along the stairs, the sliding of her hand along the banister. My father is still tallying figures, and his calculator is still spitting up paper.
I look down at my drawing, where a couple of tears have dropped and smudged the marker. One has landed just to the right of my face, so that the right eye bleeds black into the rest of the face. I rip it up, wanting to scream but even in this emotional storm knowing that I can’t. I don’t want my parents to hear me scream. So I just keep ripping. I look around my room and rip all the other pictures to shreds. I stuff them into my trash can, punch the pile deep into it.
Sitting on the floor and panting, I already regret what I’ve done. All of those hours of creation gone to waste. I have to get out of this room, which I do, walking down the stairs and opening the front door and stepping outside. It is no longer hot but cold, our lawn shellacked with frost, the idea of fog suggested in the street.
My gaze is pulled somewhere else, though. On the porch, rimmed in dirt and scratched—but there all the same—is my recorder.
Two days later, on Tuesday, Mrs. Goldberg can sense my addled state. The sentences I have diagrammed for homework are all jumbled up, subjects and predicates switched so that the sentences, when reconstructed, read things like “I my homework to do like” or “With the boy his dog running went.” What is more, there is no doodling in the margins as I normally do. After going through a few spelling flash cards—including the words “magnanimous,” “incongruent,” and “mellifluous”—Mrs. Goldberg puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes it gently.
“Kiran, are you all right? You seem a little down.”
“Do I?” I say. “I’m totally fine. I did have a little bit of a fever this weekend.”
She puts the back of her hand against my forehead. Her hand is cool and fragrant, a touch of lilac in it. “Really? You feel all right to me.”
“Yeah, well, I still feel a little under the weather.”
She examines me with her eyes for a second, the way one might do to an apple before taking a bite of it. “Now that you mention it, you do look a little zapped. But are you sure there is nothing else?”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay. By the way, my husband saw the drawing you gave me and said he thought it was really beautiful. You really have quite a gift, Kiran.”
I try to smile, but I can tell how fake it looks when I do so. Mrs. Goldberg’s face falls, and I realize that I have to tell her what has happened with the talent show.
“Mrs. Goldberg, can I ask you a serious question?”
“Sure, Kiran.”
“Have you ever felt…different from everyone else? Like you didn’t belong anywhere?”
She sighs. “Kiran, I think everyone feels that way from time to time. And especially at your age. It’s not easy being twelve.”
“Yes, but it’s even harder being
me
at twelve. I don’t feel like any of the other kids understand me.”
“But you seem to have a few good friends. I’ve seen you hanging out with Cody Ulrich and Donny Howard lately. They are nice boys.”
I cringe, inside at least. Yesterday, when I ran into them on the playground, they didn’t act the way I expected them to. I expected an outright badgering, with Cody telling me how I ruined the sleepover and Donny saying that it was my fault that they didn’t see anything good. Instead, they looked at me quizzically, like an exotic bird they’d never seen in these parts—a peacock on the blacktop. When I mustered up the courage to ask them what happened at the rest of the sleepover, Cody scoffed.
“We had a great time, thank ya very much. My mom wouldn’t’ve even known ya were gone if yer stupid mom would have kept her mouth shut and not called ’er.”
I wanted to shout at him to leave my mother out of this, but I was too embarrassed that she had thought to call Beverly in the first place. My mother was too smart to think that my escape was all Beverly’s fault, but she had wanted to embarrass me by scolding her; she had further sealed the punishment by depriving me of the talent show. My mother was smart.
“Cody and Donny are not really my friends,” I tell Mrs. Goldberg. “Nobody is. I don’t have any real friends. All I really have is you, Mrs. Goldberg.”
“That’s sweet, Kiran, but it’s not true. You have your family, you have your faith. And you have your intelligence. You are the brightest student I’ve had in fifteen years of teaching. That is something to be proud of, and people will see that. Maybe they don’t right now, but they will.”
“Do you feel like you’re sort of an outsider because you’re Jewish, Mrs. Goldberg?”
She is speechless at first. Eventually, she goes with, “I’d rather not get too caught up in the religion question in light of what happened the other day with Mrs. Buchanan—she was right, you know, in keeping school and religion separate. But yes, I guess I’ve felt like an outsider sometimes, having been in a minority.”
Something about the word “minority” stops the conversation for me. “Thanks for the talk, Mrs. Goldberg. I appreciate it.” I say this weakly, and I can tell that Mrs. Goldberg is not all that satisfied with our conversation from the way she sighs, then takes a sip of her coffee. Fifteen years of teaching. She has been at this for a little while. Perhaps she does know more than I think. Perhaps her advice is sound.
But as I wait outside the school for my mom to come pick me up, I think again about the word “minority.” Being a minority implies being part of a group. But to what group do I belong? Yes, I am Indian, but my recent experiences have only reiterated that I am not really a part of that group. There are so many unique qualities about me that I can’t be put into one category. It reminds of Venn diagrams, which Mrs. Nevins taught us about—those intersecting circles that represent different groups; when they overlap, the area that they both contain is something that they have in common. What happens when you are represented by so many circles that the area you take up is so miniscule no one else could possibly fit into it?
When my mother arrives, I get into the car in silence. She looks a little better, her eyes not puffy, but I can tell that she is still upset with me. It is not until we turn onto our street that she looks over at me to say something. Then I hear her make a disapproving click with her tongue.
“
Beta
, are you feeling all right? You look a little strange.”
“I do?”
“You look very tired.”
“Well, I haven’t been sleeping well.”
Her tongue clicks again, but this time I can tell that it is not a click of disapproval but of compassion. She cannot stop from sympathizing with her son, and I loosen up a little bit knowing that the old version of my mom hasn’t left entirely.
When we get home, my father is still not back from work. We pass through the kitchen as we normally do, except now there is that unsightly hole in the wall. My father called a contractor to come and fill it as soon as possible, but the contractor took one look at it, whistled softly, and said he hadn’t brought the right tools to take care of a project that serious. The contractor came across as a no-muss, no-fuss guy. He stood there in his plaid flannel shirt and dirty jeans, his hair in tangled, dishwater curls, chewing gum and breathing heavily through his nostrils. He was an ugly man, and that had perhaps hardened him against people like my father, who shook his head at the contractor’s inability to take care of the mess. I was stunned to hear this man reply, in turn, “Sir, don’t shake yer head at me. This here’s a big ole hole and you shoulda been more specific on the phone when ya called me.” It was the first time I had ever heard someone talk to my father like that, and even he seemed taken aback by this snippy remark. The contractor left soon afterward, and my father was in an even worse mood because of the quick but effective dressing-down he’d received in front of my mother and me. I heard him saying various curses under his breath while he was in his study, and even though my mother and I didn’t look at each other conspiratorially as we would have in the past, I could feel us both dying to do so.