Everything Was Good-Bye Read Online Free Page A

knowing that they would go back to their homes full of sons thinking Better her than us , and congratulate themselves on their happy lives. After they left, others would take their place. It was a modern version of sati; instead of being burned on her husband’s funeral pyre, my mother was repeatedly singed by their reminders, cremating her life inside herself.

1.2
    T he furnace hummed over the sounds of the house settling. I pulled the blinds up. The sun was absent; the sky, a morose canvas of smudged graphite and charcoal. Streams of water trickled down the glass, puddling along the windowsill before settling into the veins of cracked paint. I wrote my name in the condensation and after a moment wiped it away.
    I didn’t mind walking to school in weather like this. I hated carrying umbrellas or wearing hats, and submitted to the steady stream of rain. I pulled my Walkman from my coat pocket, put the headphones on and trudged through the puddles and potholes, water seeping into the cracked soles of my shoes. I was listening to Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures. Harj had said that they were the pioneers of post-punk. She said it was real music, not like the superficial sound bites from rappers that were all mc or dj somebody.
    By the time I arrived at school I was soaked and my hair fell in dripping black waves around my face. As I walked down the hallway towards my locker, my shoes squeaking against the shiny linoleum floors, the janitor shot me a disapproving look. I curled my shoulders into my chest, shiv-ering a passive apology.
    I dropped my bag into my locker, shook my hair and combed out the knots with my fingers. Warm, dry white kids, driven to school by their parents, paraded past. Girls with syrupy laughs recounted their weekendsin giggles that dropped into accusatory laughter when they saw me watching them.
    “What are you looking at?”
    I clamped my jaw and turned away, pretending I hadn’t heard.
    Harpreet was walking down the hall towards me, spinning a basketball on his finger, performing for the popular girls who had only noticed him since he’d stopped wearing a turban and become the captain of the basketball team. He seemed to have forgotten that the kids who befriended him now were the same ones who had taunted him in elementary school— “Paki! Hindu! Turban twister!” Harpreet had been new back then, and didn’t speak English; he smiled at their insults. He didn’t know enough to be angry, but I did. I’d witnessed my mother’s anger when cars squealed by our house as voices yelled “Paki, go home!” and eggs hit our windows.
    One night when my mother’s brother, Mamaji, was visiting, it wasn’t eggs. The window exploded and a firecracker rolled towards me through shards of broken glass. I sat stunned; it looked like a sparkler. Mamaji leaped forward, picked it up and hurled it back out the window. It howled down the street, nipping at the heels of dark figures. Mamaji called to my mother to get the baseball bat that sat by the front door, and together they ran into the night. I wanted to watch from the window but Serena shut the drapes. She tucked us into our mother’s bed, assuring us that nothing had ever been thrown through that window. When they came back later that night, Mamaji was asking my mother why she hadn’t taught the sala kutta gora a lesson when she had the chance. My mother told him that she had taught the boys a lesson, one in compassion. When a dozen eggs hit the window the next night, I knew she wished she’d taught them a lesson in retribution.
    Once I’d tried to protect Harpreet from the kids and yelled at them to leave him alone. Two of them cornered me and pushed me down onto the gravel field. I picked up a handful of rocks and stood up slowly, my knees raw. I threw the stones at them until they ran away. When I asked Harpreet if he was all right, he kicked me in the shin.
    I waved across the hall to Carrie. She was with Todd. He was good-looking in a Miami