Chapter 4

Ashi hated the idea of being left behind. There was this thing that happened in her chest when Mamma was about to leave, like giant hands were crushing her ribs. The need to stretch her neck and gulp air pushed at her, but she couldn’t move because she was hiding.

Hiding behind curtains was never the smartest idea, but Ashi had found that you could hide anywhere without the fear of being found when no one cared about looking for you.

Still, she shrank into herself in her little alcove in the bay window of Baba’s den.

“I will never let you use a child to tie me down.” Mamma’s voice had a way of getting deeper when she was angry. How many times had Ashi heard her mother say that the stereotype of the shrill woman had to be broken? That it was something the patriarchy used to prove us too emotional to care for ourselves? “Not that this marriage needs more deadweight to suffocate me.”

Ashi’s hand tightened around the curtain that hid her from her screaming parents. Actually, they weren’t screaming, at least not yet, just hissing at each other in those muted whispers that adults used when they wanted to scream but couldn’t.

“How can you say such a thing? How can you look at Ashi’s face and think such a thing?” Baba sounded how he always sounded around Mamma—nothing like himself but like a spoiled child who was trying to sound grown-up.

Ashi loosened her grip on the fabric. Having the curtain collapse on her head would certainly give her away. If Mamma and Baba knew she had heard them, she’d never be able to face them again. The shame of knowing that her mother had never wanted her was bearable only so long as no one knew that Ashi knew. Shame had a way of multiplying when other people saw it. It made you naked and gross.

“This isn’t about Ashi. Stop trying to use her. You put us in this situation. And now I get to make all the sacrifices. I get to be the mother who disrupts her life yet again, and you get your excuse to go off the rails and do what you do,” Mamma said in her deepened voice. The slit between the thick velvet curtains exposed her in slivers, making her look as though she were being reflected in a broken mirror.

“In the end, that’s all you want,” Mamma continued. “To be His Highness Bram Raje, free to do whatever the hell your rotten heart desires. Don’t pretend you care about Ashi. Anyone with half a brain can see that you only want her here so you can make me look bad. Everyone knows that the child babysits you more than the other way around. She’s twelve, Bram. Have some shame!”

“You’re abandoning your twelve-year-old again and you want me to have shame? At least I’ve never left her.”

“Is getting drunk and passing out not abandoning her? Your brother and his wife had to take her in and you want me to have shame? This is the problem. You should have married a stupid woman, or at least one who lapped up your overentitled crap.”

“If I’m such a bad father, you should stay here and protect her from me.”

Mamma’s hand went to her forehead, her gold bangles crashing together on her wrist. Even in America Mamma never bothered to remove her bangles or the big red bindi she wore in the center of her forehead. She always dressed like she was in the Sripore palace, no matter where she was. Always in her starched white saris, with her waist-length hair in a bun at her nape. She didn’t care about fitting in or about not looking foreign, the way Ashna did when she dressed for school every day.

“How low can you fall, Bram? When will you stop using people this way? I don’t leave her here with you, God knows I’m not that heartless. I leave her with Shree and Mina. Your brother and his wife are better parents to her than either one of us anyway. I’m the one who has to make the choice between my child and my work. You don’t. You get to have both. You don’t lose anything. Men never do. Your hands always stay clean.”

“I lose you. I want you. And I don’t get to keep you. I love you.” Baba’s slurring always got more pronounced as these arguments escalated and their voices got louder. The glass of scotch on the table between them wobbled as Ashi’s vision blurred with tears.

“You bastard, I’m not a thing you get to keep. I begged you not to force me into this marriage. But you let them pack me up like a piece of meat and hand me to you. How is that love? If you knew what love meant you’d have cared what I wanted. You’d have seen that this could never work. Not just because I had already chosen my life partner, but because you and I have nothing in common, even without Omar.”

Baba stood, swaying on his feet so much that Ashna almost left her spot to keep him from falling over the coffee table and crashing through the glass. But he sat back down, unable to bear his own weight. His voice boomed. “Do not say that man’s name in my house. You hear me?”

Mom looked over her shoulder. “Keep your voice down! All that child needs now is to hear you bellowing at me. Already she hates me, blames me for this mess.”

Ashi didn’t. She didn’t blame Mamma. Mamma was not the one who had tied her parents up in this mess. Ashi had done that. She was the one who couldn’t be the kind of daughter who made her mother want to stay. She was the daughter who wasn’t enough for her father to give up whatever it was he got from his scotch.

“What is wrong with the two of you?” Her aunt walked into the room and Ashi had the immediate sense that everything was going to be okay. “I could hear you shouting from the driveway. Where’s Ashi?” She threw a glance at the window seat Ashi was hiding in and Ashi pulled herself back. “Seriously, Shobi, come on! Give a thought to what you’re doing.” She took Mamma’s hand and patted it comfortingly.

“She’s leaving again,” Baba said, barely making the words.

“That was the deal,” Mamma said. “We had a deal that I’d do three months here and three months there. But if he’s going to make such a tamasha every time, how can I do this? How can I?”

Mina Kaki tucked a lock of Mamma’s hair behind her ear. “You can’t argue with him when he’s like this. We’ll figure it out in the morning. But you two can’t do this with Ashna in the house. If you were going to have this conversation, you should have called me and I would have picked her up early. Where is she? Go look for her.”

“I didn’t mean to have the conversation. He started it.” With that, Mamma left to look for Ashi.

“Bram, come on. Let’s get you into bed.” Mina Kaki called out to Aseem, Baba’s valet, and he rushed into the room. “I’ve told you to call me when they start arguing. The next time you don’t call, your employment here will be terminated.” Her aunt was the sweetest person Ashi knew, but she could bring down a hammer like no one else.

Aseem made apologetic sounds and dragged Baba off the couch and into his study, where there was a daybed he used when no one could help him up the stairs to his room.

“I can’t find Ashi anywhere,” Mamma said, coming back into the room.

Mina Kaki stroked her arm. “I know where she is. Go up and calm down. I’ll take care of it. She doesn’t need to see you like this. Not just before you leave.” She tried to whisper so Ashi wouldn’t hear. She failed.

Mamma, who went to battle with everyone about everything, never argued with her sister-in-law. Especially not about Ashi. She left and Ashi quickly wiped her cheeks on the flannel sleeves of her pajamas. It was her first grown-up pair, pink plaid instead of the soccer ball and lollipop prints she used to wear. Mina Kaki had taken her shopping for them. Mina Kaki shopped for all her clothes, and Ashi had wanted pajamas just like her aunt’s.

“Is it okay for me to come in?” Mina Kaki asked from the other side of the curtain.

Ashi let a sniff escape.

“I’m going to take that as a yes.” Even so, Mina Kaki parted the curtain slowly, careful to allow Ashi a chance to pull it back if she wanted. But Ashi wanted nothing more than to crawl into her aunt’s arms right now. She was cold. The cold was trembling inside her chest.

Mina sat down on the window seat next to her and ran a hand over Ashi’s head. “I’m sorry.”

Ashi wanted to tell her it wasn’t her fault, but if she said anything she would never stop crying and she couldn’t do that to her aunt. So when Mina Kaki pulled Ashna’s head into her lap, she went easily.

Then, despite her best effort, she proceeded to wet her aunt’s linen pants with her tears as her aunt stroked her hair.

For a long while they sat there without words, just the solidity of her aunt’s lap beneath her cheek and the comforting rhythm of her hand on her hair.

When the tears slowed and Ashna sat up, Mina Kaki met her eyes, her warm, clear brown gaze fierce. “The only thing I want you to remember from anything that you heard today is this: It is not your fault. None of this is your fault, beta.”

SOMETIMES ASHNA WONDERED how time hadn’t touched her aunt at all. The Mina Kaki of her childhood had seamlessly transformed into the Mina Kaki of the present day. If anything, she’d become more energetic, thanks to her obsession with running marathons. Even her hair was the exact same color—rich, perfectly highlighted auburn—and the same length, a sharp-edged bob that skimmed her jaw, and no one ever saw her until she was impeccably dressed in perfectly fitted linen pants and tailored blouses. Their mother’s seeming perfection was a point of amused frustration for her daughters, Trisha and Nisha, but to Ashna it was such a comforting cornerstone that the world fell back in place anytime she saw her aunt.

It wasn’t like Mina Kaki to open the front door herself, but Ashna had called ahead instead of texting, which meant her aunt had heard something in her voice, which in turn meant that despite the placid calm on her face, Mina Kaki was freaking out on Ashna’s behalf. Her overprotectiveness toward her children was legendary. Ashna wasn’t certain of much, but the fact that Mina Kaki considered Ashna and her cousin Esha her own was an undisputable fact.

“I’m fine.” Those were the first words she said when her aunt dropped a kiss on her cheek.

“I can see that.” Mina Kaki would never do something as inelegant as rolling her eyes. She didn’t need to because she could achieve the exact same effect with her tone. She had been a Bollywood actress before she married Ashna’s uncle and moved to America more than thirty years ago, and her voice inflections were impressive things. “I’ve had tea sent to the upper floor. Let’s head up there?”

The Anchorage, her aunt and uncle’s estate, nestled in five acres of redwood forest in Woodside, was much more the home of Ashna’s childhood than the bungalow she lived in. Ashna dropped off the bitter melon in the kitchen and followed her aunt up the stairs.

When Ashna had moved here from the Sripore palace at ten, a room decorated to match her room in Sripore had been waiting for her on the second floor. Ashna had lived here during the week and gone to school in Woodside. She’d spent the weekends with her father in Palo Alto. She’d only moved permanently into the bungalow after she returned from culinary school in Paris two years after Baba’s death.

Her room in the Anchorage remained untouched to this day, same as her cousins’ rooms. Although they all had their own places now, her aunt refused to entertain the fact that the Anchorage was not their primary home.

Yash, her aunt and uncle’s oldest child, had been the first to move out. Or rather, he hadn’t moved back home after college, as the traditionally Indian part of Mina Kaki’s heart had wished. Yash was currently running for governor of California. So, the hope was that he’d be moving into the governor’s mansion soon. That certainly made up for some of Mina Kaki’s heartbreak over not having her children live at home.

Nisha, their older daughter, had been married for ten years and lived in Los Altos Hills, and Trisha and DJ lived in a Palo Alto condo down the street from Ashna. Vansh, their youngest child, was always off traipsing across the world trying to search for things that made him feel useful. He was currently in Zimbabwe working on water filtration systems.

The only one of “the children” who still lived at home was Esha, Shree and Bram’s oldest brother’s daughter. Esha and their grandmother occupied a suite in the uppermost floor of the mansion. Esha hadn’t left the estate in close to thirty years because of a condition where she couldn’t handle any stimulation outside of what was familiar.

Every time Mina Kaki worried about Ashna, she tried to convince her to sell the Palo Alto bungalow. But the bungalow and Curried Dreams were all Ashna had left of Baba. Without them she had no idea who she’d even be. It was like asking her to cast off her body and rely on the promise that her soul would still be here. Or maybe it was like losing her soul and being left with only a body. Well, she’d never have to find out.

“Mom called,” she said to her aunt as she followed her up the sweeping marble stairs. “To tell me about the Padma Shri.”

Her aunt stopped midstep and studied Ashna as though she were an event spreadsheet from one of her fund-raisers.

“I’m happy for her,” Ashna said, hoping like crazy that her voice sounded happy. “I really am.”

“I know you are. It’s huge.” Pride flashed in Mina Kaki’s eyes. She and Shobi were inexplicably close. Ashna had always wondered what someone who treated motherhood as sacredly as Mina Kaki did had in common with Shobi, who treated it like nothing more than bondage.

Mina Kaki sank down on the spotless marble staircase and Ashna sat down next to her.

“She wants me to come to India and speak at the ceremony.”

“That’s nice, right?” Mina Kaki took Ashna’s hand.

“She wants me to shut down the restaurant, move there, and get involved in her work.”

The pressure of Mina Kaki’s grip on Ashna’s hand tightened. “Shobi said that to you?” Irritation slipped into her voice.

“I said no.”

That got Ashna a tilt of the head. An impressed and slightly disbelieving tilt. “And Shobi agreed?”

“Well,” Ashna chewed her lower lip. “I told her I’m working on a Food Network show.”

“No!” Mina Kaki threw her head back and laughed. “I can’t believe Trisha and China pulled that off.”

“They came to you first to try to convince me?” Of course Trisha would try that first. Trisha knew Ashna would do it if Mina Kaki asked her. But Mina Kaki must have refused, and that made Ashna want to hug her aunt.

Her aunt smiled. “Trisha really wants DJ to do that hosting gig. But she also believes it’s the perfect solution for Curried Dreams.”

“I know. I don’t think I can do it, though,” Ashna said.

Her aunt pulled her hand to her lips and dropped a kiss on her knuckles. “Are you joking? You’re going to be spectacular. You’ve done far harder things.”

Ashna’s only response was a twist of the mouth.

Her aunt cupped her cheek. “The real question is, do you want to do it?” She paused, weighing her next words carefully. “You have to start giving a little more thought to what you want, Ashi.”

Ashna pulled her hand away. She didn’t want her aunt to feel her hands go clammy.

“You don’t have to figure that out right now. Just think about it, that’s all.”

Ashna wondered if she would bring up selling Curried Dreams, or offer to bail her out again. Like everyone else in her life, Mina Kaki believed that Ashna’s obsession with Baba’s restaurant was unhealthy. Ashna knew they meant well, but they didn’t understand. Her family was everything to her, but Curried Dreams was hers and hers alone. She had to be the one to save it.

“Trisha is right,” Ashna said. “It could help pay off the debt on Curried Dreams once and for all. Give me a clean slate if I win.”

Mina Kaki blinked as though Ashna had spoken a foreign language.

She stood and pulled Ashna up to standing. “Well then, you’re doing this.”

They ran up the remaining stairs—Mina Kaki, probably because she was excited, Ashi, because moving helped curb her anxiety.

“Ashi is going to be a TV star!” Mina announced as they emerged into the suite of rooms Ashna’s grandmother and her cousin Esha shared.

Aji, Esha, and Nisha were lounging on the white leather sectional and turned to Mina and Ashna as though that announcement were a simple hello.

The first thing Ashna did was lean over and squeeze her grandmother in a hug.

“It’s been a full week!” Aji said indignantly, returning her hug. It was her way; she always counted off how many days it had been since she saw her grandchildren. She also always exaggerated the time. It had been five days since Ashna had been by to see her. But of course it was futile to point that out, because Aji would only tell her that five days was a working week, or that it felt like seven days, or something else no one in their right mind would argue with.

Instead, she said, “Sorry, I thought about coming to see you every day”—the truth—“but a lot’s been going on at the restaurant.”

Sadness flickered in Aji’s eyes. She was the only one in the family who saw the value in holding on to Curried Dreams. It was a link to her youngest child. “A lot should always be going on at one’s workplace,” she said with a smile that crinkled her nose.

Ashna hugged Nisha, who stood to display her adorable baby bump, which seemed to have doubled since Ashna had seen her last, then turned to Esha to see if she was up for a hug. She wasn’t, but she squeezed Ashna’s hand and made one of her declarations. “Being in public needs armor.”

Wasn’t that the truth. Esha wasn’t just incredibly wise; she was also clairvoyant. There was no armor from her sight, and what she saw always came true. Ashna had a sense that Esha not only saw but also felt her pain, no matter how hard Ashna tried to hide it. She sat down next to Esha, careful not to touch her except for the firm grip Esha’s soft hand still had on hers.

Esha had suffered seizures ever since the plane crash she’d been in when she was eight. The accident had killed the other thirty passengers on the family’s private jet, including Esha’s parents. Esha had been the miraculous sole survivor. No one could explain how that had happened, or why the seizures and visions had started after.

HRH and Mina Kaki had brought Esha to California before word of her clairvoyance leaked out of the Sripore palace. Just the rumors had caused lines to form outside the palace gates for one look at the “Little Goddess” even as the poor little goddess went into seizure after seizure at the least stimulation.

Staying within the Anchorage estate and restricting contact to only the family had finally minimized the seizures.

“So, what is this about being a TV star?” Esha said with mischief in her smile.

Nisha poured tea from Aji’s china service, a blend Ashna mixed specially for her grandmother that she called “Aji’s Hug,” and Ashna found herself smiling as she filled them in on China and Trisha’s midnight visit and offer.

“I’m so glad you’ve decided to do it.” Nisha rubbed her belly. She’d had to slow down her work. With her history of miscarriages, she was being cautious. It had to be hard given that she ran Yash’s campaign and the election was less than a year away, with the California primary nipping at their heels.

“Have you found someone to help you with the campaign yet?” Ashna asked, only partially deflecting. She wished she could help, but strategy and politics were alien to her. Asking people why they wouldn’t vote for the best man they would ever meet in their pathetic lives was not a workable approach.

Nisha let out a long-suffering sigh and popped one of their grandmother’s ladoos into her mouth. “The last guy who seemed promising tried to ‘handle’ Yash. He also tried to tell him that his policies were too complex for the simpleminded voter. You can imagine how that went.”

Yash’s theory was that people rose to the levels you expected of them. Ashna wasn’t sure that was true; she was certain it wasn’t how recent political campaigns had worked. But Yash knew what he was doing, and he would only do things the way he believed they should be done, not in ways that would get him elected.

That was why she had the urge to shake anyone who didn’t get him. Definitely a terrible strategy.

“We’ll know when the right person comes along. Yash knows what he’s looking for,” Mina Kaki said with the kind of certainty that dissipated every iota of doubt in Ashna’s mind about the existence of such a paragon who combined strategic wizardry, ideological integrity, and the family’s nonnegotiable requirement: trustworthiness.

“Until then, I can totally handle it,” Nisha said, part bravado, part desperation. “So long as I don’t have to travel.”

“Only, you can’t run a gubernatorial campaign without running from district to district at the drop of a hat.” This from Esha. Such an uncharacteristic thing for their ethereal cousin to say that they all burst into laughter.

“What?” Esha said, her always peaceful face quirking with humor. “It’s time for Nisha to loosen the reins.” She patted Nisha’s hand when Nisha pouted. “Don’t worry. The person you’re waiting for is almost here.”

There, that was much more like Esha. All would have been well with the universe had Esha not reached over and patted Ashna’s hand too, as though the words were also meant for Ashna.

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***