The Rearranged Life (32 page)

My embryology class on the Wednesday before our trip to Connecticut is about blastocyst development and sexual differentiation in gametes. I’ve already learned it in previous classes, but I listen anyway. Most people are genetically and physically the same sex, my professor tells us. That is, their
xy
chromosomes form a weeny (the fact that I still can’t say the word makes me question whether I’m doctor material in the first place) and
xx
forms a vaginal canal. Sometimes the signals get crossed in the process, creating situations with
xy
chromosomes and lady bits or
xxy
. Scientists are doing research on these conditions, and psychology professors are researching the implications… So naturally, my thoughts turn to research jobs.
I’m not looking, I’m just curious. Aren’t I?

I apply Thursday night to a research firm in Tribeca. My cover letter sounds desperate.
Please hire me!
It screams as it recites my accomplishments. By the third draft and the third job I’ve found that vaguely piques my interest, I begin to believe my own hype. I close my laptop with minutes to midnight, and don’t bother to clamp down on a touch of reluctant optimism.

Nanna calls me Friday morning. I haven’t heard from him since he told me he was disappointed in me. “How are you, Nithya?”

“Better. But sometimes, I don’t know, Nanna.”

“That’s okay, me either,” he says with a hint of cheer.

“Is Amma still pissed?” I haven’t spoken to her either since our blowup. It’s the longest we’ve ever gone without speaking.

“It’s quiet in our house.” His euphemism is a guise for the truth: Amma has been unleashing on everyone. She said this was Nanna’s fault, so I imagine it must not be easy at home for him either.

“That’s funny. She wasn’t quiet with me,” I mutter.

“She’s very upset, Nithya, that’s all. You have to give her time. We aren’t happy.”

I notice the shift from
she
to
we
.

“It’s not easy for me either,” I tell him, quietly. “I just want to be happy.”

“Mmm,” he hums. This vocal response is similar to the side-to-side nod, except right now, I’m the one who doesn’t understand.

“She told me I was a disappointment.”

“You are not the disappointment. This situation is,” he says gently.

“That doesn’t make it better, Nanna.”

“Well, then, know this. This is not ideal for us either. Everyone is hurting. We will get through this.”

“How?”

“Like we always do. Together. It may take time, but I have faith.”

“I thought your disappointment in me meant you didn’t love me as much,” I confess.

“Nithya, I am not happy because I’m uncomfortable. But you will always be my daughter, so you will always be my greatest joy. Disappointment and arguments don’t change that,” he finishes. Whether I want to admit it or not, it does make me feel better.

ophia settles on my bed before she notes the frantic state I’m in as I shove clothes into a duffel bag.

“Why are you so worked up?” Her eyes follow an airborne sweater that I toss away.

“I’ve never even slept at anyone else’s house who wasn’t family or an Indian friend. I’ve never met a boyfriend’s family. Too much newness!”

“You never had a sleepover?” Sophia asks, puzzled after her giggles fade.

“No… besides my Indian friends back home…” Her understanding eyes make me conscious of the fact that I have missed another normal American milestone.

I begged my parents to sleep over at my friends’ houses growing up. Each time Clara or Danielle would invite me for a slumber party or an overnight birthday thing, I would be the one leaving in the middle of a horror flick at midnight when my dad would dutifully be waiting in the driveway.

“What’s the point? You’ll be sleeping at night anyway, so it shouldn’t matter where it happens,” my mom would say, missing the point completely that sleep was the last of our intentions.

“Amma, why can’t you let me be normal?” I had sobbed in fifth grade.

It was after one particularly humiliating experience where a cousin of Clara’s had said, “It’s so weird you can’t sleep over. Aren’t you allowed to do anything?”

“Kanna, in India, a girl doesn’t sleep over at other people’s houses. It is not safe,” she’d said, using stories of her childhood.

But the truth was, her childhood and mine were vastly different. In retrospect, I can understand that this was a new situation for my parents too. They had to raise their daughters in a situation they had not grown up in, navigating cultural differences and their own children’s deviations in attitudes… an adjustment any parent has to make, I suppose. At the time though, I could only see that I was the odd one. The one who couldn’t watch horror movies at three in the morning, the one who had to say, “I’m sorry but I have to go,” and be awkwardly walked out by my friend in the middle of her party. I was the one who missed out on the girly conversations about what a boy looked like
down there
in middle school, and how everyone got their first kiss. I may not feel bad anymore, but the absence of the experience stands out now that I’m an adult.

By the time I had gotten my period, all sleepovers, whether they were at an Indian family’s or not, had ceased. My mother had reasoned that when you get your first period, you become a woman. In the Ramayana, one of India’s greatest epics, Ravana, the villain of the story, abducts the hero Rama’s wife Sita. He lusts after her and she, wholly dedicated to Rama, thinks of Rama the entire time, even refusing to look Ravana in the face because of her commitment. I wondered for the longest time what the story had to do with me until my mother told me when Sita was finally rescued, she and Rama had to prove her fidelity to the subjects of their kingdom through a literal trial by fire. Instead of allowing a similar situation to happen again, some families chose to disallow their daughters from spending nights at ‘stranger’s’ homes.

“It is because of that tale women are not supposed to remain in another man’s house,” my mother had finished her story.

“But why can’t
I
have a sleepover?” I had whined, completely missing the point.

“Because now you are a woman. Your friends are all respectable, but the principle is that you are not allowed to stay in another person’s house without a family member there. End of story.”

“Nanna!” I had appealed.

“I don’t see the big deal,” my father had said, “we can let her go. Clara has been her friend for most of her life.”

My mother had shot him a look that could kill, and the discussion in their room ensued late into the night. The following day, my father had told me Amma was right.

“How did I not know this about you?” Sophia asks, bringing me back to present day.

“I guess it never came up! Time to learn. Don’t do anything gross with Luca in the apartment while I’m gone.”

“No promises.” She giggles.

icture for our first road trip!” I exclaim, once James and I have hit the highway.

James leans over, his eyes on the road as I count down, “Three, two, one!” He glances at the camera and flashes a smile right when I hit the button. Our faces, flushed with excitement, gaze back from the display screen.

“Our first road trip,” James repeats to himself like he doesn’t believe it.

We gaze at each other excitedly–this is a big day for us. Despite the nervousness and the anticipation of meeting his family, an undercurrent of electricity thrums like a live wire. As we get farther from Penn State, we leave our own world of limitations behind. My body relaxes. For once, James and I don’t jab at the radio buttons every other song.

Our music choices are vastly different.

“Yours are quite possibly inferior,” is what James always says to irk me. He tends to listen to R&B, rap, and heavy rock. When we had gone on our first few dates, I had stared at him incredulously when eardrum-cracking screams had blared from his speakers. I didn’t expect such a preppy boy to be into such angry beats. We frequently roll our eyes at the other’s choices. My Top 40 and relatively eclectic tastes clash with his as much as the cacophony he calls music. I ask him how he got into those genres, my leg tucked underneath me, already comfortable.

“I had a phase in high school,” he says with a smile.