Marin arrives in Brent’s hospital room late at night. She left the house after Gia’s declaration, driving first to her office at the company’s headquarters. She closed her office door and sat staring at the walls for hours. She reviewed all her options and even placed a call to a number of divorce lawyers, setting up times to meet next week. But some quick Internet research proved her fears correct: at the age of fifteen, Gia’s choice would take precedence. Once she told a judge she preferred to live with her father, there would be no reason not to let her do so.
Marin wondered how everything had gone so wrong. She had it all, everything laid out in exact detail, and now, without any choice in the matter, it was all crumbling around her. She had never loved Raj, she could see that now, but she had accepted their roles, their place, in each other’s lives. Understood that under the dictates of their Indian culture, the marriage was forever even if only on paper.
Now, nothing seemed certain. The concrete foundation she had built her life on was cracked, leaving her life susceptible to collapse. For Gia, Marin had strived for perfection but was deceived by the illusion. There was no excellence to be attained. No superiority to hold over those less accomplished. In offering Gia the world, Marin stole her daughter’s sense of self.
After leaving her office, finding that the walls that once offered her a reprieve felt like a coffin, she arrived at the one place she never would have thought to go. She sat in the hospital parking lot for over an hour, begging herself not to go in. It was too late for answers; too much had happened to try and scrutinize. Besides, she was not one to lie down on a sofa for a stranger to analyze. In doing so, she’d be admitting there was something wrong, and she refused to make such a concession. No one knew better than she how to chart her life. No matter what happened with Gia and Raj. No matter what the future held.
But she ignored her own words. Under the light of the moon and the glare of the fluorescent ER lights, Marin found her way to the hospital’s front door and inside the sterile walls. Taking the empty elevator to her father’s floor, she made her way to his room. It seemed like only yesterday she had walked down a separate but similar hall, leading Gia to the Trauma Unit. Yet, it was not yesterday. If it were, maybe she could undo the steps that followed. Change the course of her life and chart a new direction. Find a way to keep Gia as her own instead of losing her to circumstance.
“You won,” Marin says to her father as he lies very still under the white sheet. “I thought I could beat you, show you that I wasn’t yours to rule, but I was wrong.” She takes the seat next to her father’s bed, refusing to touch him. “All those years, you controlled me with an iron hand, but I convinced myself that in time I would prove I was stronger, smarter than you.”
After the first time he hit her, soon enough it became a regular occurrence. Marin never expected the violence initially, always believing she could do something wiser, earn a better grade to avoid the beating. But no grade was ever good enough, no behavior acceptable. It wasn’t until two years after their arrival in the States that Marin learned a very important lesson on how to deal with her father.
They had just arrived at an Indian function celebrating Navrati followed by Diwali—the festival of lights. Over nine days, the members of the Indian community, dressed in their finest attire, would gather to dance with sticks. Most of the women wore saris, while the girls wore chaniya cholis—ankle-length skirts and short blouses that left their stomachs and arms bare. A sheer shawl thrown over their shoulders and tucked into the back of the skirts was the only other covering. Each outfit had fake jewels threaded through, making the girls sparkle as they danced. Around statues of the Goddess Lakshmi—the patron of wealth—they would twirl. Diyas lit the room, and incense permeated with a rose essence burned. It was nine days of beauty, filled with hope and a sense of community.