A few months later I open a fat envelope with trembling fingers and buckle in joy. An acceptance letter to UC Berkeley. Amma holds me and cries, openly joyous; everything has been worth it, all her long hours, her weariness, America itself. She holds my face in her hands and says, “I am so-so proud of you.” My heart leaps. This is all I’ve ever wanted. To be told I am worthy of her love.
In September, she drives me to the leafy campus, my many new college-student necessities piled high in the car. In my room, she packs my tiny fridge with containers of rice and curry. Then I bundle her out and watch as she drives tearfully away. I feel guilty to be leaving her. But more than that, I am finally, gloriously free.
I have done it. I have won the immigrant prize, a scholarship to an American university. In just four years I have achieved this holiest of miracles. Below me, the campus spreads out like an ancient city waiting to be unearthed. This is the place in which my life will change, the place where my life is finally my own. I lie on my small bed in my dorm room. My roommate is coming tomorrow. The hours are my own. Sunlight pours onto me from the window like a rainstorm. It flames into the room, sets everything aglow, a thousand shades of burnished gold. The doors of the world swing wide open. I see my future self beckoning me with both hands. She is beautiful. She wears my face. It has lost the soft padding of youth. She is lined around the eyes and the mouth, silver glittering in her tumbling hair. Her body is heavier, rounded. It is exactly the body of the Sigiriya Queen. Her eyes, they shine with so much that is coming. “Hurry! Hurry!” she says. “Come now and grasp our life! I have been waiting for you, and I am everything.”
Eleven
Dharshi calls from her dorm at the University of Texas in Austin. She too has made good, made her parents’ college dreams come true. She says, “You won’t believe what my mother is on about now.” I can picture her eye roll, the phone balanced against her ear as she walks around her room, excited to feed me some tidbit of gossip.
And I, equally eager for her news, say, “What, what?”
“Okay, are you ready?”
“Yes, for god’s sake. Just tell me.”
“Okay. So get this. She says I’m running wild at college, so she thinks it’s high time I settled down and got married.”
“No!” I suck my teeth to express my horror. “Is she mad? It’s still only our first year.”
“I know. You won’t believe this. She’s already written my matrimonial ad. She wants to put it in those awful Lankan papers that run in Toronto and London and Australia.”
“Oh my god. Do you have it?”
“Yah, listen to this. ‘Parents of Sinhala Buddhist girl. Govigama caste. Wheatish complexion, well educated, looking for similar boy. Must be well educated with potential for financial growth and strong family background. Dowry and astrological details to follow.’ And then there’s pictures of me.”
“Wheatish … ha-ha!”
“I know, right? I’m much darker than that. He’s going to have a fright when he sees me.”
“Why is your mom doing this?”
Dharshi sighs. “She says dating like Americans is stupid. Leaving everything to love that can end at any time. She says marriage needs to be based on something much stronger, you know, wise parents who can pick properly for you without being confused by hormones and whatnot. She says she’ll find me an amazing guy. And also she says architecture school is expensive. If I get a nice guy with loads of money, then he can pay for it.”
“What’d you say?”
“I said if that’s the case, she should marry him and go to architecture school herself.”
I can picture my aunt’s face when Dharshi said this. We break into peals of laughter.
She sighs. “I think she thinks she’s just being practical. We aren’t rich, and architecture school is expensive. Amma and Thatha had an arranged marriage, you know, and your mom married your dad, who was older and richer, so she thinks it’s normal.”
I stumble at the mention of my parents’ marriage. She and I have never talked about the things that had happened before we arrived on the set of our parents’ lives.
“So what’d you tell her?”
“I said if she ever talked about it again, I’d go out and find the whitest boy on campus and marry him.”