will marry him before you leave and that is that. You will forget this American and—”
“It isn’t that simple, Ma,” I spoke over her words. In the kitchen, the sounds of water and steel clashing stopped and when I didn’t say anything else the sounds resumed.
There was silence while Lata and Sowmya piled rinsed steel plates and glasses and ladles into the plastic tub for Parvati to wash the next morning.
I helped Sowmya carry the plastic tub outside into the back yard.
“Now what?” I asked unsteadily.
Sowmya just smiled. “Now we will have a family Mahabharatam .”
I leaned against the cement base of the tulasi plant, not too keen on going back inside. The tension was flowing out of the house in small waves slowly coming together to form a tornado. I plucked a tulasi leaf and put it inside my mouth to stop tasting the rising bile of fear.
“They’re going to kick me out or they’re going to tie me up and marry me to this Adarsh fellow,” I said. “What if they don’t want to ever see me again?” I asked, my eyes filling yet again. “Will they just let me go?”
Sowmya took her hand in mine. “No,” she said. “No one will let you go. They will be angry with you for a while but they will come around.”
Lata came outside and asked if everything was okay.
“She is scared,” Sowmya said sympathetically.
“So she should be,” Lata said. “Once your mother gets over the shock, she is going to beat you within an inch of your life.”
I sighed.
“And your Thatha is . . . Well, he is going to watch,” Lata continued with a grin. “At least it is done. Now you can let what has to happen, happen.”
“Let’s go inside,” Sowmya suggested. “Otherwise they’ll think that you ran away.”
Running away sounded like a real good idea, right about now.
Everyone was sitting in the living room when we came back in. There was still no sign of Nanna. He never just left without telling anyone where he was going, no matter how upset he was or how big the fight he’d had with Ma. This was unusual but then it wasn’t every day his favorite daughter not only broke his dreams but walked all over them with pointed shoes as well. Even though this was my life and I knew in my head that I had to live it the way I wanted to, I couldn’t shrug the guilt away. It was there, rock solid, without give. And there was another form of guilt, the guilt for feeling guilty in the first place. Nick was part of my life, the man who had accepted all my flaws and I was feeling guilty about loving him, living with him. I was wishing, in a small corner of my mind, that he didn’t exist in my life so that I could marry Adarsh or some other sap like him and not have this conflict with my parents.
“So we’ll tell the Sarmas that you are saying yes, right?” Ma was agitated and her face was flushed, her tone flustered. She was scared, I realized, afraid that I had actually meant what I said about an American boyfriend. My heart went out to her. Like Sowmya, she was trying her best to make Nick go away.
“No, Ma, we can’t,” I said, and sat down beside her.
She slapped me across the face and tears streaked down her cheeks. “How could you, Priya? We taught you well . . . we raised you right and . . . How could you, Priya?”
I buried my face in my hands. This was just as bad as I had thought it would be. I stemmed my tears by pressing my eyes with my hands.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Ma, facing her with clear eyes. “I didn’t plan to fall in love with Nick, it just happened. And I can’t just marry someone else. I don’t want to marry anyone but Nick.”
“Then you should have said something earlier,” Jayant said, looking just as agitated now as Ma. “What will we tell the Sarmas? You have put us all in an embarrassing situation.”
I wanted to remind them all that they had forced the pelli-chupulu on me, that I was not to blame for that, but I couldn’t because a part of me blamed myself. I knew that if I had told them about Nick earlier, they would’ve put a stop to it. Even if Ma and Thatha wouldn’t, I knew