Fight Like a Girl - Sheena Kamal Page 0,23

fifty-year-old spinster on how to live. I think she must have read the thought in my mind, in the witchy new way of hers. She turns quiet on the train ride back. Everyone in our carriage is strangely subdued, too, except for a couple having a hushed fight at the opposite end of the car. It’s like Aunty K’s mood has expanded outward like a force field and has knocked everyone into some kind of examination of their life choices.

Or maybe thinking about a whole new year of the same shit does this to everyone. People talk about the New York magic, but I dunno, it feels dark here. Like everyone thinks it’ll be like something out of a film and it’s never what you expect.

Columbus and Noor text me to say Happy New Year, so I text them back. After two minutes of thinking about it, I text Jason, too. I get a fireworks emoji from him, like right away. I know it’s silly and I shouldn’t think anything about it, but it feels nice.

fourteen

Ma picks me up from the airport and she doesn’t have a whole lot to say besides asking me how my flight was and whether or not I’m hungry. She’s quiet and I don’t want to be bringing up anything that will send me back to the roti shop, so I just keep my mouth shut until we get home.

She pulls into the parking lot and turns off the car. I’m about to get out but she stops me. “Trisha, I have to talk to you about something.”

For a moment I think she’s going to bring up Dad, but then she says, “Ravi is going to be around more often. I know you don’t like him, but I think you should give him a chance.”

I think she shouldn’t give him a chance, since he ditched her on New Year’s. She gets out of the car before I can reply.

It takes me a while to follow her into the townhouse, which has always been her space. Never mine. Even when Ma’s not there, her presence spreads like bacteria after a sweltering July day at the gym. It’s everywhere. In the furniture she’s chosen, the colours on the wall, right down to the arrangement of the dishes in the cupboard. Even my father, when he was alive, was careful to leave as small an impression as possible on her house, since he lived half the year knocking about in Trinidad anyway.

But now there’s Ravi, and his presence feels like a more permanent thing.

When I go inside, there he is. Fixing the back door. “I already did that,” I say, as I grab clean hand wraps from the clothesline.

“You did it wrong. I should have fixed this weeks ago.”

He digs through his toolkit for something. “I knew I broke it when I came in,” he says absently. “Damn flimsy thing.”

I stare at him. “You’re the one who broke the lock on the back door?”

He freezes. “I hear your mother calling you. You better go see what she wants.” He says this easily, like I’m going to forget about this anytime soon. Ravi broke our back door trying to get inside, even before he and Ma got together.

Around the time Dad died.

What the hell is happening here?

“Ma,” I say, when I get upstairs. She’s in the kitchen, heating up some lunch. “Ravi’s the one who broke the back door—”

She slams a pot down on the counter. “Trisha, I swear if you bring up that door again, you won’t be going to that gym for the rest of the school year.”

“But—”

“I mean it!”

This is so ridiculous! But effective. She really knows how to get to me sometimes.

Fine.

I ask her if by saying Ravi’s going to be around more often, she means he’s living here now and if he’s got a job to go to maybe?

“Yes, he’s here now. And he works at a warehouse.” She sighs and turns away from me.

I’ve never seen her so tired. I get the feeling that Ravi keeps her up a lot at night, but I don’t really want to think about that, because ew.

I find out later his part-time warehouse job is in Mississauga, where he operates a forklift. When he’s not doing that, he’s shirtless on the couch, his saggy chest sprouting new hairs every day. My father was no peach in that department either (too much roti and fried rice can do that to a person), but at least he kept his