The Henna Wars Read online

  The

  Henna

  Wars

  adiba jaigirdar

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  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

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  to queer brown girls,

  this is for you

  content warning

  This book contains instances of racism, homophobia, bullying, and a character being outed.

  “I donate my truth to you like I’m rich The truth is love ain’t got no off switch”

  –Janelle Monáe, “Pynk”

  1

  I DECIDE TO COME OUT TO MY PARENTS AT SUNNY APU’S engagement party.

  Not because of Sunny Apu and her groom, or the buzz of the wedding in the air. And not because everything about a Bengali wedding is so palpably heterosexual that it’s almost nauseating.

  I decide to come out because of the way Ammu and Abbu look at Sunny Apu, with a mixture of pride and love and longing. It isn’t directed at Sunny Apu at all, really; it’s directed at the future. At our futures, mine and Priti’s. I can almost see Ammu and Abbu stitching it together in their heads: Castles in the air, made of deep red wedding saree dreams and lined with thick gold wedding jewelry aspirations.

  I’ve never thought of my parents as traditionalists before this. I’d seen them as pioneers, people who made things happen even when those things might seem impossible. They’d broken rigid tradition, and have what Bengalis call a “love marriage.” Though they’ve never told us the story, I always imagine a movie-moment meeting, exactly like in a Bollywood movie. Their eyes meet across a crowded room, maybe at a wedding of distant relatives. Ammu’s in a saree, Abbu in a sherwani. Suddenly, a song starts in the background. Something romantic, but upbeat.

  My parents’ “love marriage” is one of the reasons they work so well here, despite the lack of family and support. Without anything, really. They uprooted their lives one day to come to Ireland. To bring us here. To give us a better life, they said, even when in some ways they are stuck to the past. To Bangladesh. To everything Bengali custom tells them.

  Unfortunately, one of those things is this: a wedding consisting of a bride and a groom.

  But my Ammu and Abbu did make it past the customs that told them love before marriage was unacceptable, and that love after marriage was to be hidden in a locked bedroom like a shameful secret. So maybe—just maybe—they can accept this other form of love that blooms in my chest sometimes when I see Deepika Padukone in a Bollywood movie, and not when I see her male love interest.

  So that is how I spend Sunny Apu’s engagement, trying to construct the perfect coming out moment, and wondering if that even exists. I try to think back to every movie, TV show, and book that I’ve ever seen or read with gay protagonists. Even gay side characters. Each coming out was tragically painful. And they were all white!

  “What are you doing?” Priti asks when she spots me typing on my phone in the midst of the engagement ceremony. Everyone’s eyes are turned to the bride- and groom-to-be so I thought this was the moment I could Google “gay happy endings” without someone peering over my shoulder.

  I quickly slip the phone into my bag and shoot her a wide-eyed, innocent smile.

  “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  She narrows her eyes like she doesn’t believe me, but says no more. She turns back to the bride- and groom-to-be.

  I know Priti will try to talk me out of it if I tell her what I’m thinking of doing. But I also know I can’t be talked out of it now.

  I can’t keep living a lie. I have to tell them at one point or another.

  And tomorrow is going to be that point.

  It’s weird, but after I’ve made my decision I feel like I’m on borrowed time. Like this is my family’s last day together and something is about to break open between us. When we’re driving home from the engagement party, it’s past midnight. The streetlights cast a strange glow on the road ahead, marred by the bright, full moon in front of us. It’s a clear night, for once. Priti is dozing in the backseat beside me. Ammu and Abbu are speaking in a low hum, so I can barely understand what they’re saying.

  I wish I could bottle this uneventful moment—a flash of time when we’re all at peace, together and apart at once—and keep it with me forever.

  I wonder if this is what things will be like tomorrow too, after I’ve told them.

  But then the moment’s over and we’re home and stumbling out of the car. Our churis jingle against each other, sounding too loud and bright in the dead-of-night quiet on the streets.

  Inside, I strip my face of all the heavy makeup Priti carefully dabbed onto it just hours before. I slip out of my itchy, uncomfortable salwar kameez and bury myself in my blankets, where I pull up Google again and translate the word lesbian into Bengali.

  The next morning, Priti flits off to her best friend Ali’s house with a smile on her lips. She’s promised to tell Ali every detail she can about the engagement party, and the upcoming wedding. With pictures.

  There are still a few hours until Abbu has to leave for the restaurant, so it’s perfect, really. I take my time making my morning tea, stirring especially slowly and going over the words I practiced last night. They seem lackluster and silly now.

  “Ammu, Abbu, I have something to tell you,” I finally say, trying to breathe normally but somehow forgetting how breathing works.

  They’re sitting at the kitchen table with their phones in their hands, Abbu reading the Bengali news, and Ammu scrolling through Facebook—so reading the Auntie news/Bengali gossip.

  “Yes, shona?” Abbu says, not bothering to glance up from his phone. At least my momentary breathing amnesia isn’t obvious.

  I stumble forward, nearly spilling my tea, and somehow make it to the chair at the top of the table.

  “Ammu, Abbu,” I say again. My voice must sound grave because they finally look up, twin frowns on their lips as they take me in, trembling hands and all. I wish all of a sudden that I had spoken to Priti. That I’d allowed her to talk me out of it. I am, after all, only sixteen, and there’s still time. I’ve never had a girlfriend. I’ve never even kissed a girl, only dreamed of it while staring at the cracks on my ceiling.

  But we’re already here and my parents are looking at me with expectation in their eyes. There is no turning back. I don’t want to turn back.

  So I say, “I like women.”

  Ammu frowns. “Okay, that’s good, Nishat. You can help your Khala with the wedding.”

  “No, I’m …” I try to remember the word for lesbian in Bengali. I thought I had committed it to memory, but clearly not. I wish I’d written it on my hand or something. Like a cheat sheet for coming out.

  “You know how Sunny Apu is going to marry Abir Bhaiya?” I try again.

  Ammu and Abbu nod, both looking equally bewildered by the turn this conversation is taking. I’m right there with them, if I’m being perfectly honest.

  “Well, I think in the future I won’t want to marry a boy at all. I think I’ll want to marry a girl instead,” I say lightly, like this is a thought that just popped int
o my head, not something I’ve spent years agonizing over.

  There’s a moment when I’m not sure they understand, but then their eyes widen, and I can see realization settling into them.

  I expect something. Anything.

  Anger, confusion, fear. A mixture of all of those things, maybe.

  But Ammu and Abbu turn to each other instead of me, communicating something through their gaze that I don’t understand at all.

  “Okay,” Ammu says after a beat of silence passes. “We understand.”

  “You do?”

  Ammu’s frown and the chill in her voice suggests anything but understanding.

  “You can go.”

  I stand up, though it feels wrong. Like a trap.

  The mug of tea burns into my skin as I grab hold of it and carry it upstairs, stealing glances back the whole way up. I’m waiting—hoping—for them to call me back. But there’s nothing except silence.

  “I told them,” I say as soon as Priti slips in the door. It’s just past nine o’clock. I don’t even give her a chance to breathe.

  She blinks at me. “You told who what?”

  “Ammu and Abbu. About me. Being a lesbian.”

  “Oh,” she says. Then, “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Nothing. They said … ‘okay, you can go.’ And that was it.”

  “Wait, you actually told them?”

  “I just said I did, didn’t I?”

  “I thought maybe … you were kidding. Like an April Fool’s joke or something.”

  “It’s … August.”

  She rolls her eyes and shuts the bedroom door behind her before flopping onto the bed beside me.

  “You okay?”

  I shrug. I’ve spent the last few hours trying to figure out exactly that. I’d spent years going through all of the various scenarios of coming out to my parents. None of those scenarios had included silence. My parents have always been forthcoming enough about their thoughts and feelings; why is now the moment they choose to shut themselves up?

  “Apujan,” Priti says, wrapping her arms around me and resting her chin on my shoulder. “It’ll be okay. They probably just need to think, you know?”

  “Yeah.” I want to believe her. I almost do.

  To distract me Priti pulls up a movie on Netflix, and the two of us slip under my duvet. Our heads touch lightly as we lean against the headboard. Priti loops her arms through mine. There is something comforting about having her there; I almost forget about the rest of it. The two of us must drift off to sleep because the next thing I remember is blinking my eyes open.

  Priti is softly snoring beside me, her face pressed against my arm. I push her off—gently. She groans a little but doesn’t wake up. I sit up, rubbing my eyes. The clock on my phone flashes 1:00 a.m. There’s a murmur of voices off somewhere in the distance. That must be what woke me.

  I crawl out of bed and push my door open a smidge, letting in the air and the voices of my parents. They’re speaking in low, careful voices just loud enough for me to make out.

  “Too much freedom and that’s what happens. What does it even mean?” Ammu says.

  “She’s confused, she’s probably seen it in the movies, heard her friends talking about it. Let her work it out and she’ll come back and change her mind.”

  “And if she doesn’t?”

  “She will.”

  “You saw the way she was looking at us. She believes it. She thinks she’ll … she’ll marry a girl, like that’s normal.”

  There’s a deep sigh and I’m not sure if it’s Ammu or Abbu, or what it means, or what I want it to mean.

  “What do we even do while she works it out?” It’s Ammu’s voice again, dripping with something akin to disgust.

  Tears fight their way up my body, trying to burst out. I choke them down somehow.

  “We just act normal,” Abbu says. “Like nothing’s happened.”

  Ammu says something else, but it’s lower. I can’t make out the words.

  Abbu says, “We’ll talk about it later.” And the night descends into silence once more.

  I push the door closed. My heart is going a million miles a minute. But before I can even think, even process, Priti flings her arms around me in an embrace. We both stumble backward, making more noise than anyone should at one o’clock in the morning after eavesdropping on their parents’ conversation.

  “I thought you were asleep.”

  “I woke up.”

  “Clearly.”

  “It’ll be okay,” she says.

  “I’m okay,” I say.

  But I don’t think either of us really believes that.

  2

  AMMU AND ABBU ARE TRUE TO THEIR WORD. THE NEXT morning it’s like nothing has changed. It’s like I haven’t told them this huge secret that’s been weighing on me for years.

  “Sunny wants to know if you’ll go to the parlor with her tomorrow?” Ammu says to Priti and me at the breakfast table. These are our last few days of the summer holidays so Ammu wakes up and makes us Bengali breakfasts whenever she has time. This morning it’s norom khichuri with omelets. I spoon the soft, yellow rice into my mouth, but for once it doesn’t really have much of a taste. I spent the rest of the night running Abbu and Ammu’s words around in my head on repeat; looking at them in the morning light, I don’t know how they can just ignore the truth I’ve told them.

  “Apujan?” Priti nudges me with her shoulder.

  “Huh?” When I turn, she’s staring at me with a raised eyebrow. I realize she must have asked me a question. There’s a spoonful of khichuri uneaten in front of me. I shove it into my mouth and chew slowly.

  “Do you want to go to the parlor? Sunny Apu is going to get her henna done, so that the color is all set for the wedding.”

  The last thing I want to do is think about this wedding, but we’re smack dab in the middle of it. All it’s reminding me of now is that Abbu and Ammu think that somehow I’ll come back to this. Somehow, after everything, I will be exactly like Sunny Apu. Ready to marry a Desi guy like Abir Bhaiya.

  “No.” I shake my head. “I don’t think so. You can go if you want.”

  “If you’re not going, I’m not going.”

  Ammu rolls her eyes like she’s tired of our antics.

  “You’ll go to the wedding with no henna on your hands then?” she asks with a frown. “You’re bridesmaids, how will you look?”

  That’s true. Sunny Apu will have henna spiraling all the way up her arms, and I’m sure the other bridesmaids—whoever they are—will be decked with henna as well. Plus, I don’t think either of us have ever attended an event like this without a full hand of henna.

  When we were younger, our Nanu used to spend hours applying intricate, beautiful henna patterns to our palms. But that was years ago, when we lived in Bangladesh. Or when we visited during peak wedding season. Back then, one coat of henna could last us for at least three or four weddings of people we barely knew but were somehow related to.

  “I can put henna on us?” I offer with a shrug. Ammu looks at me with narrowed eyes. I don’t know what she sees, but a moment later she nods her head.

  “Fine, but make sure it’s nice, okay?” Ammu says. “There are henna tubes in the storeroom. I’m going to your Khala and Khalu’s house.”

  Sunny Apu’s parents aren’t really our Khala and Khalu—which are titles usually reserved for your maternal aunt and her husband. But Ammu and Abbu became joined at the hip with them when they moved to Ireland a year ago. They’re the only relatives we have here, even though they’re very, very, very distantly related to us.

  “We should just go to the parlor,” Priti says when we get up the stairs and slip into my room. I grab a bunch of henna tubes, a piece of disposable cloth and my open laptop before spreading it all out on the bed.

  “Sit.”

  “I’m going first?”

  “I can’t go first and then do your henna after. My hands w
ill be all covered.”

  She casts a wary glance at the things I’ve laid out on the bed and then up at me.

  “You know you don’t have a lot of practice in this, right?”

  I know. I definitely know.

  I only started practicing henna last year, now that we only see Nanu on Skype every other weekend. It’s something that makes me feel a little more connected to her, even though she’s entire oceans away.

  Though my work is nowhere close to Nanu’s, I’ve definitely gotten better. Compared to the lopsided flowers and inconsistent vines I was drawing on Priti’s ankles a few months ago, I’m practically a henna genius.

  Priti shifts around on the bed for a frustratingly long time before finally settling in and holding her palm out. I take hold of her bony wrist and rest her entire hand on the old, ratty cloth I laid out on the bed.

  “No shaking,” I warn her, taking hold of the tube of henna. With my eyes flickering between my laptop screen and my sister’s outstretched hand, I finally begin my work. I draw half of a flower on one side of Priti’s hand, and if I have to say so myself, it looks pretty good. The half-circle petals are slightly uneven in shape and size, but from a distance they more or less look the same.

  “Can you remind me again how Sunny Apu is related to us?” Priti asks. It isn’t that we don’t like Sunny Apu—we definitely do. She’s kind of like a fun, cool cousin who is also a family friend. But ever since her wedding was announced, it’s like she might as well be our sister from the way Khala and Ammu are acting.

  I frown. Trying to apply henna to my sister’s hand while explaining complicated family dynamics to her isn’t exactly ideal. But if I don’t keep talking, Priti will get so bored that she’ll definitely start shifting around again. She’s the kind of person who can rarely sit still.

  “She’s Ammu’s aunt’s husband’s cousin’s daughter,” I say, drawing a curved line from one of the flower petals all the way up to the tip of Priti’s ring finger.