Aria watched them hug and Kendrik proceed to help Imani set things up on one of the foldable picnic tables. For the most part he was talking and she was listening. Aria missed his company when he left. The conversation had served as a welcome distraction from her worry about what was happening between Omkar and his parents just a few streets away. She also liked him. The macho impression that he gave was like a gloss he didn’t want people to see past. Underneath it, he was friendly, and she could feel the gravity of his caring.
Jarminder heard Omkar’s car pull up to the curb first. Neeraj had opened the store, but was not tending it. Instead, he had spent the morning failing to console his wife. Neither of them had slept the previous night. They had called everyone they knew, looking for Omkar. In her mind, Jarminder had run through every different version of them crying and running to hug each other if he came home, as she’d seen in all her favorite Bollywood movies. But in reality, when he showed up, the suffering she felt in his absence again turned into anger.
She sat on the couch and folded her arms. “I don’t want to speak to him,” she said in Punjabi.
Neeraj knew his wife beyond the wall she was presenting. He walked downstairs and opened the door for Omkar as he approached. “Hello Papa,” Omkar said, walking through the door.
Neeraj contained his relief at seeing Omkar standing before him perfectly OK, masked by his stern demeanor. “Your mother is upstairs,” he said.
Omkar walked up the stairs and saw her sitting on the couch. She defiantly turned away from him as punishment for what he had put them through. “Mama, I need to tell you something.” She didn’t answer.
Neeraj sat down beside her and spoke for her. “What is it, Omkar? What is so important that you have to treat us in this way?”
Although his mother showed no sign of yielding, Omkar began to speak. “You have always told me that a happy marriage is one where both partners want to be together. Otherwise, it feels like death. Mama, if I was with anyone but Aria, it would feel like death. I am not doing this to be funny. I am not doing this to disrespect you or Papa. I am doing this because I love her. I want to marry her some day.
“You also always tell me that there is no place that will give me as much comfort as my own home will. But Mama, that isn’t true. The comfort that I feel when I’m with her is better than anything I have ever felt. How can that be true unless she is my home, Mama? I love you. I don’t want to see you upset like this. But I need you to love what I love. A learned person is honored, except in their own house. I have learned something in this country. I have learned that a life without the person that you love is no life at all and it doesn’t matter if that person you love is black or white or brown or a man or a woman. This is not respected in this house, but it should be. Don’t make me choose between you and the person that I love. Mama, you can’t say that you love me and ask me to choose.”
Neeraj’s arms were folded across his potbelly. “Omkar, look at what you are doing to your mother,” he said.
“I’m not doing anything to Mama. She is doing this to herself. Love should be celebrated and she’s acting like somebody just died.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes before Jarminder broke that silence by yelling in Punjabi. She scolded him about the cruelty of his character and guilted him about his selfish capacity to discard the wishes of his family, using cultural sayings as scaffolding for each argument. Her outcry bled her clean of the life she had always imagined for him until the only thing that was left was her fear of losing him.
Jarminder started to cry. Neeraj handed her a tissue to blow her nose, but she continued to sniff. “I am your mother. All I ever wanted was your happiness,” she said.
“I know, Mama. My happiness is Aria. Mama, she is the light of my life and I cannot live without her, please understand me.” There was silence for a few moments.
“Where did you meet her? Where is she from? Who are her parents?” Neeraj asked, surprised at himself for being interested.
Omkar looked at the carpet, knowing that what he was about to say would not be received well. “I met her here at the shop. She came in one day and I started talking to her. Papa, it was love at first sight.”
Neeraj was surprised at his son’s answer. He had assumed that Omkar and Aria had met at school. Suddenly, he didn’t know whether he felt good about Omkar tending the store after all. He certainly hadn’t expected it to be the family’s undoing.
Omkar continued, “Aria doesn’t have parents. I knew this was going to upset you. But it isn’t her fault, Papa. She lost them just like we lost Ajit and Shashi. Papa, it wouldn’t be fair if someone thought badly of you because they died. It isn’t fair to think badly of Aria because her parents died. She was sent here to live with an uncle, but he started abusing her, Papa. When she refused to sleep with him, he kicked her out of the house.”
Neeraj was disgusted. His pride in the honor and decency of his own culture swelled within him. Only in white culture would a child be abandoned to a person like that. At the same time,
