“When I realized you were making all the wrong ones for her.” Raj folds the paper carefully and slips it into his top desk drawer. “If you have a problem with my decisions, too bad. You have no choice.”
“That is your first mistake,” Marin says, her mind whirling. “I always have a choice.” She finally sees what she hasn’t been able to. What she has avoided since the first night of her marriage. “If you and I can’t agree on Gia, we have nothing left.” She begins laying out the steps in her head. Separate rooms, separate bank accounts. Whatever it took to separate their lives.
“You want to split?” Raj barks, his words ripped out. Clearly filled with incredulity, he stares at her.
Marin knows they are lost in a maze, one with no exit. Every turn they make is the wrong one, every corner leading to more darkness. If there was once a way out, it no longer exists, having been destroyed by their distrust, the belief that each one knew better. Hubris in its purest form, the price to pay higher than anyone could calculate. She doesn’t respond.
“It’s that easy?” he asks, quietly.
“When it comes to my daughter, everything takes a backseat. Including us.”
Raj’s shoulders slump; he seems to accept her decision without a fight. “If that’s all we are, then I’ve been mistaken all these years. I thought we had a marriage. I now see it was just a charade.” He stills when his phone begins to ring. He takes the call, turning his back on his wife.
It’s raining. The Bay Area has four seasons—sunny, sunnier, rain, and rainier. Today the rain comes in sheets, blinding anyone who dares to venture onto its war path. For Marin, it is a welcome distraction from her life. She sits in her car, the windshield wipers at full speed but failing to stop the water from covering the glass. Staring at her phone, she wonders whom she can call.
Her contacts are filled with numbers of colleagues and subordinates, none of whom would care to hear about her woes, since she has never bothered to hear theirs. Births, deaths, weddings, and joyous occasions—all of them she’s glossed over with a few perfunctory words before returning to the task at hand. Not once did she bother to ask the people these things happened to how they were feeling, if there was anything she could do. Now, when she is in need, no one will offer her a hand, an ear to listen. She is alone because she refused, over the years when it counted, to walk alongside anyone in their time of need.
Reincarnation is an established tenet of Hinduism. As children, Marin and her friends would play a game where they would guess who and what they were in their previous lives. From princesses and movie stars to cockroaches—the lowest reincarnation possible—they fantasized about all the possibilities.
“You had to be a man,” one of Marin’s oldest friends said as they sat in the safety of her mud-and-brick home, staring at the monsoon raging outside.
“Definitely,” the rest of them agreed.
“Why would you think that?” Marin demanded, playing with her braided hair. “Are you saying I look like a boy?”
“No,” they assured her. “But you don’t let anyone tell you what to do.”
“Why should I?” Marin demanded, sure of herself. “Just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean anyone is the boss of me.”
Marin hated the inferior status of women in their culture. It was standard practice; men controlled women. Males were assumed the superior sex, smarter, wiser, and more powerful. Women, no matter what age, were required to obey and follow their dictates. Cover their heads in respect, ask for permission to leave the home, with opportunities for higher education few and far between. It was the reason Brent gave everyone for leaving India, the sacrifice he made for his daughters. Better educations so they could have better lives.