Paradoxically a Woman

Copyright © 2012 by T. Darshan

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-3453-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-3454-0 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-3455-7 (dj)

iUniverse rev. date: 07/26/2012

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

EPILOGUE

To my loving son, Tristan Darshan

&

My beautiful mother, Pamela Darshan

CHAPTER I

It was time. The end of the road is never farther away than it is before you take the first step along it—and it was time to take that step. Even as the tears burst from her eyes and ran suddenly down her face, the mother knew it was time. And still each tear fell with philosophical patience, each giving her a chance to think things over. She wiped them away before taking a knee on the scathing concrete, before gazing into the infinity of her daughter’s eyes. They appeared brighter than her own ever had. Never did they fail to convey something deeper about life, something she’d yet to figure out. As with the innocence of fertility, they were still untouched by the scars of time. For they were buoyed with a splendor that seemed beyond time, one that illumined greatness and sublimity, something from which authenticity emanates and courage peers out; they illumined the woman inside her.

People live long after they die, sweetie. You know that, right? the mother whispered in a soft voice. The curious spectators walking on the train platform, their inquiring eyes and subtle accusations, were the least of her concerns. Right now she was only concerned about her daughter. They live right here. She pointed to the inner sanctum of her daughter’s heart. And they live right here, she said, now tapping on some metaphysical point around her daughter’s stomach. Of this higher point, most ten-year-olds were unaware. But not her daughter. She’d encountered real pain, and she’d survived its worse blow.

You reach down here if you ever get lost. She engulfed her daughter’s hand in the palm of her own, placing both hands near her daughter’s heart. If you ever feel forgotten, you reach for your gravity, baby. You’re a woman, and so you’re born strong. Reach for your gravity; it’s there.

Tears resurged, aging the mother’s face with every drop.

Watching helplessly, her daughter suddenly remembered what her mother once said about crying. It’s healthy to tear up every now and again; just let it out and release the sweat on your soul. But this time was different, her daughter knew. This time her mother wept.

The little girl placed her half empty can of 7 Up to the side, wiped the trailing tears from her mother’s eyes, and attempted to understand where all this was coming from.

Decisions are made in life, baby. You make them, and you stand by them, the mother declared.

The little girl could only offer a blank stare. Her mother was talking randomly again, the clarity in her words only faint.

They’re what make us who we are, sweetie. They define us in the end, she continued, sweat now pouring down her forehead, a mark of the unrest in her calmness. She could see the confusion in her daughter’s eyes, but she had to get this out. Don’t let anybody tell you different, you hear me. Through thick and thin, you stand by your decisions—don’t let ’em tell you different. Her throat became heavy with the weight of her words. We women always have a choice. The powers that be have stopped us of a lot, but we have a choice and must make a decision. Don’t you lose sight of that, baby. Don’t let this world limit you by losing sight of that.

Her mother was far too pretty to be this serious, her daughter thought quietly to herself. Besides, people didn’t take mothers seriously. Her daughter watched closely as her mom stood in a deep pause, seemingly collecting her thoughts. Sometimes she did that—just stood there like a sticker in place. And sometimes the girl would mimic her mother, and the two would stand there like human statues, seeing who could stay frozen in time, without flinching, longer. Her mother usually won.

Suddenly, her mother drew another deep, long breath. Looking at her baby girl was like looking into a mirror, its brighter side. She ran her fingers through her darling’s curly hair; parted its brown, wavy bangs; and stood in admiration of her little Indian princess.

You’re such a pretty little thing, you know that? she asked with a smile on her face.

This new sweet tone of endearment, after the mixture of insistence and patience in her mother’s previous words, was no longer disturbing, and the girl was no longer mystified. She simply nodded her head up and down in approval, as though her mother was stating the unassuming obvious. I know that, Mom; you know I know that.

You’re almost as pretty as your mommy! she teased her daughter.

I’m just as pretty as you, Mommy. Sometimes you even say I’m prettier! The little girl yanked on her mother’s jeans, as if to say stop pulling my leg.

Neither the pounding racket chiming from the train nor the disembodied clamor shrilling about the platform mattered. Only her daughter did. To love someone more than yourself meant she mattered—always.

Suddenly, her fleeting thoughts halted and her thinking grew reflective. She contemplated the road that lay ahead of her baby girl. A free road. No veil. Only America, she thought. There would, of course, be hurdles; there always were. But American hurdles in particular could spin a person right off the path. They were like whirlwinds that twisted your sense of direction into a fermented disarray. That was the danger of too much freedom. Trying to determine whether the American experience would have room for her daughter’s hyperactive imagination had brought her to the brink and back, only to revisit the brink again. America’s expectations were so euphorically high; its reality was much more sobering.

Still the idea was to be free. She’d brought her daughter here to experience freedom. But now her doubts begged to differ; could the certainty of social freedom somehow provide true self-liberation? She begged and pleaded with herself, worrying that the essence of the Indian culture could never reconcile itself with the superlatives of Western thought. So maybe she was dumb for peeling back Maya’s veil so soon. Her daughter’s eyes were still so innocent, and the world already so corrupt. Yes, she was dumb for this.

What had she done? It all dawned on her that she had made one big mistake. The veil protected. That was its function. It screened the pain, preventing it from channeling into suffering. But now she had removed the veil, and as the veil was thrown to the side, so was the person behind it thrown to the world. No crutch would be available; nothing would break her daughter’s fall. To catch the American dream, her daughter would have to hit the road running—she would have to wipe the dirt from her knees, hope her achilles was strong, and pray that the air in her lungs was stubbornly stout.

New York moved at the speed of light. Hesitate and you would be left behind. The mother knew this, and so she had done her best to show her daughter how to walk the intellectual track across the highest of ideological tightropes early on. She had paid special attention to proper technique and crafty footwork. Her daughter would have to learn to walk across the wire on her own; we all learned that on our own. Yet reality stretched out, the wire suspended in front of her; every inch made across it would only strip another inch from the veil—from their heritage, the mother felt, unweaving the Indian essence into separate strands until it chanced becoming but a traceless memory.

But there was no turning back now. Henceforth, forward could be the only direction, and that meant never turning back to peep over your shoulders. It also meant that decisions were made, and facing forward was the best way to live them.

Too much freedom makes responsibility hard, baby, her mother said. Her voice had grown stuffy, and her head was in pain from too much thinking. She now had both her knees on the pavement, and she looked about as if seeing the unseen. It’s just … you know, one says yes while the other tells you no, and coping with both at the same time is very difficult.

She was rambling again. She could tell by her daughter’s reaction—her lack of reaction, the seamless look on her face. Then her daughter looked aghast, confused all over again. What’s going on? Why are you acting so strange, Mother? her face seemed to say. No longer precious, innocent, or full of splendor, her eyes now looked incredulous; they demanded an explanation, for one was in order.

She deserved one, yet when there is so much to say, only very little gets said. Isn’t that how it goes? her mother thought to herself. We rush the words—blurt them out, leaving our message to the mercy of representation and tricky wordplay. And so our meanings crack, breaking at their core, stuttering their most articulate moments into relative distortion.

Mama loves you so much, she managed to say. You just don’t know. I love you more than … It wasn’t supposed to be this way. It was supposed to be so much more than this, baby. This part hurts. I knew it would. But that lets me know it’s right. That’s the nature of making tough decisions, sweetie; they hurt because they’re right, and that’s no excuse for what I have to do. We don’t make excuses, she declared in a powerful tone. It was as if the bare soul of her message was contained in this statement. None. We just do what’s right. We live inexcusably. We roll our sleeves up, tie our hair back, and endure what there is to endure. No excuses. We just don’t make them.

Although the how is often undetectable, the where of an emotional strike is usually less confounding. And the little girl found out that it came from the bottom of the very bottom—that was where pain hit after love released it. And still, her mother looked so beautiful, like an Indian goddess, so otherworldly in her own flesh. Even that bottom produced afresh new possibilities, new laws, another depth. When the bottom caved in, revealing the new depth, we must make of it what we will, but we must make something of it. We must not simply exist as if playing dead; we must become more than that.

Then her mother wiped away her tears, kissed her on the forehead, and took the first step along the road she had come to take.

An indefinite thirty minutes of the little girl’s soul were stolen that night. Mama, don’t go. Mama, please stay, she wanted to say. And perhaps she said it. Perhaps these words, too, trailed off into the night and left her for dead.

A train is the fastest-moving object on the ground and the air, her mother said finally. Her disarming smile never failed to make the moment lighter than the crucial message defining it. Did you know that, sweetie?

The girl didn’t know that. Her mother always knew something she didn’t know.

That’s because it’s the only object that moves on the ground and through the air simultaneously. Some struggle with that concept, baby, just as some struggle to be on time when their train arrives. But others know their stop. They’ve been waiting for some time to get off—waiting and waiting, sweetie, all in anticipation of one lasting departure.

Then there were no more tears. Paralleling both time and space into one vanishing point, pure reason eluded the mother, and this spawned a new mystery. Her mother martyred her metaphor into life, martyred her life into death.

And you can debate if there is valor in suicide, whether it may be a form of taking fate by the throat and locking horns with it. But there is little to say for leaving your daughter on a deserted platform, lost and distilled. Little if anything can be said for leaving her unsuspecting of all that has happened. She remains a blank slate, seemingly nothing more, whereupon her fears and thoughts enmesh and entangle, their destinies webbed into one unanimous spin.

It would seem the burden of true valor—to simply not be a victim—would fall on the daughter’s small shoulders. She would have to walk alone and not falter. It was the only way her mother would have it.

CHAPTER II

Pam and Karisma rode the A train with the same first-class ease that a flight attendant boards a private plane—yet Karisma sat stung by the certainty that this would be their last time riding together.

As was custom, the two sisters sat inalienably close to each other. As was also custom, Pam stared at her sister with bright admiration. The clear competence beaming from her sister’s eyes never failed to make her feel safe and secure.

Riding the train all night like her sister intended, however, did tinkle a splash of fear across Pam’s heart. It would never escape Pam that the subway represented the very haven of their cultivation, but she still deemed it unwise to provoke the hands of time when they were at their most dark and unknowing. She also deemed it unwise to ignore the very serious issue of train-hopping being illegal, but explaining such hazards only seemed to achieve the reverse effect, making their journey legal in Karisma’s mind. We should never be afraid of their rules, Pam, she would say. Don’t let these people command you.

Understanding her sister was no easy task, Pam felt, and challenging her over a difference in opinion was a still harder one. She preferred when they simply agreed and, like right now, as the train took off, spoke naturally.

Do you think that guy’s belly has anything on Louie’s? Karisma whispered to Pam in light jest.

Discovering a shirt far too small to contain, let alone conceal, a stomach gravely out of proportion with its waistline, Pam’s face lifted with laughter the moment she turned and saw the man. He’s got nothing on Louie! Pam laughed.

That’s how you’re going to look if you don’t’ lay off the cupcakes.

No way, K; I don’t eat that many.

You eat enough.

I do not.

You never know, Karisma teased.

You would never know that they were currently at odds, at least not by the hearty laughter that ensued between them. While it was not enough to cause a disturbance, their shared glee was laced with such ardent affection that a neighboring passenger should have noticed.

No one paid them any mind, though, and this often prompted Pam to stare at passengers for minutes that turned into hours if only to discern how long it would take before someone did notice. With childlike fascination, Pam endlessly looked at her sister every time a passenger’s head remained down, disinclined to acknowledge her. Karisma could only shake her head regrettably at her sister’s little hobby, noting more seriously that the train contains a strange silence and a strange tension that will one day come to the surface. Mark my words, Pam, one day somebody will make it come crashing to the surface. Karisma had a clairvoyant way of making such predictions come true.

Pam could feel the train, this enhancement to life, running through her soul; the electromagnetic energy of steel and iron ground reacted beneath her, within her. The train’s thick, triple-coated glass appeared hardwired and static and permitted no sunlight to enter. It mattered little that the train was spearing its way through a dark tunnel. The sun simply had no place here, Pam felt, and she permitted herself the full protection of living beneath this screen.

This would be the last time she rode the train—and Pam had her personal reasons, some perfectly irrational, some perfectly valid.

The idea of explaining her intimate relationship with an inanimate locomotive, one that never discriminated against who boarded or left was, even she knew, an irrational venture that would only arouse confusion; so she never did explain. She just knew, despite all evidence to the contrary, that this was her train, the only train. Suppressing her contempt toward those who only had an impersonal connection to the train deeply hurt Pam. These people used the shuttle in the precise spirit of a MetroCard, token, or cold hard cash—put simply, in the artless spirit of exchange. An express that moved them from one location to another—this was all the train meant to them. For Pam, it was destination unto itself—something she experienced and wished everyone else could experience—not a break in time one slept through and senselessly forgot. It would, of course, be quite presumptuous to think that people shouldn’t commute on the train simply because they failed to be enamored by it, and Pam was not one to presume much. She just wished, a tendency in thought that often left Pam confused and misguided, that the other riders identified with the train in a more self-moving, meaningful way.

But the people of the train weren’t easily moved, and further, it was more difficult to deny that Pam’s connection with the train was anything but an obsession that no regular passenger could ever equal. Surpassing that of the very architects who laid the measurements, Pam’s knowledge of the train’s every inch was masterfully astute. The glimmering eight-foot poles of bright aluminum that stood fifteen yards from each other, except on the last cart on the left where the poles were twelve yards apart, served, at least for Pam, as markers that divided not only space from time on the cart but space from time in her life. The total number of individual train seats varied from cart to cart, Pam knew, their width and overall depth slightly uneven as well. And while Pam once felt her seat retained a perfect measure of comfort and captivity for serious thinking, she could no longer say whether she was meant to fill this seat. It was beginning to become unmistakably clear that this, the departure of the shuttle’s spirit now eluding her grip, was no longer her train.

Perhaps it could only be considered rational that, when the passing innuendos of unscrupulous politicians began to steal from the train’s inch, Pam’s inch, Pam would have endured something that could only be described as an unspeakable torment. As if their physical bodies foreshadowed the work that their heavy paintbrushes and outsized talent for incompetence would do, men with dense shoulders and bombastic biceps poured streams of color all over the cart and believed themselves to be repainting the train seats. Pam granted that this upgrade wouldn’t have been so terrible if they had perfected a smooth color transition, say, from high orange to powder blue. Instead, they plastered the borders of the seats with an ominous but careworn cream. And while the blue remained striking, Pam thought the cream was already lifeless and already dissolving. For reasons Pam still couldn’t surmise, the cream had come to represent not only the color code of the cart but also the failing spirit of the passengers who rode it.

Pam felt her dislike of the video cameras was perfectly valid. Her reservations when it came to the omniscient eyes of the train weren’t steeped in the fact that they had sprout without the public’s consent. She simply didn’t like being watched. To her pleasant surprise, their life expectancy was shorter than authorities had projected. Be it vandals with only time to kill or martyrs protecting public privacy, someone always volunteered to remove the panoptic content of these all-knowing gadgets. It was not uncommon to find remnants of a camera scattered on the train floor. Such juvenile antics led to more police frequenting the train, however, prompting a stop-and-frisk frenzy that law-abiding citizens complained about but never really resisted. What Pam found ceaselessly entertaining about all this was the emerging latent effect; the more officers were assigned to monitor the train, the more cameras seemed to pop up dismantled or completely missing. Rewards were offered—and to be sure it stunned Pam to witness a brooding young teenager with bright blue eyes and dark blue hair strip a camera into pieces in less than sixty seconds and not even feel compelled to report him—but no arrests were made.

Perhaps it was because no reward could match the resounding sense of privacy she and others felt with the cameras off and only their thoughts projecting. How the atmospheric rise of the train could be experienced as a solitary beauty set in motion was something Pam felt only the soul could imagine and words could never explain. A solemn sense of meaning came over her and enfolded itself in the rush that accompanied the train’s movements in time—movements running ambitiously into some promising future. But Pam long conceded that no good thing lasts forever, and as of late, she felt the cameras were always on, that time was somehow slipping away, and that something, somebody, was standing over her incessantly.

Hovering between the irrational and the valid, Pam really didn’t need a reason to despise the stranger sitting sloppily across from her. The wave of alarm beaming through her was something that immediately challenged her better senses. Indignantly snoring and wildly unkempt, the sloppy stranger happened to be occupying a very special seat on what Pam believed was a very special train. It was this particular train, this particular cart, and that particular seat where her mother had once envisioned intellectual realities that had transformed this cart into a shuttle of our highest thoughts.

Her mother was tirelessly brilliant, and if bright ideas had their scale along the revolutionary and the innovative, she and her army of thinkers could be seen maneuvering across either end. So Pam could only gasp at the sight of a shiftless man with an equally shiftless purpose occupying the very seat that had once brimmed with such incomparable energy and cerebral insight. Suddenly, and even Pam would hasten to add inexplicably, some uncanny sense of social responsibility compelled Pam to violently cough and sneeze in the man’s direction. The train dipped off course, and the man immediately woke up startled, the disquiet in his eyes hardly difficult to discern. Pam, feeling his growing glare upon her, looked to the ground obediently. She had not anticipated that he would actually notice her, and she did not at all want to spur a confrontation.

Karisma, a person Pam felt perfectly validated for leaving but a sister she ultimately loved to the irrational end, was never so accommodating. As though daring the man to initiate a response he doubtlessly would come to regret, Karisma decisively looked him in the eyes. After realizing that nothing but a hollow feeling could be sensed upon meeting her stare, the man simply slumped back into his seat, confused. Karisma threw Pam a wink that immediately put her at ease. It went without saying that she understood the causes behind Pam’s sudden allergic reaction.

Pam loved Karisma the same way the earth must love the sun to revolve around it every day. In the countenance of each other’s presence, they shared this critical intimacy for the train. But their romance for the train was quite distinct in its abstractness.

The many unknown souls who freelanced about the train, moonlighting as riders while living as thinkers, finding solace in the privacy of their own seats—this was the higher value of the subway experience to which Pam felt connected. Looking at a complete stranger engrossed in the still of self-reflection moved her closer to the human experience than did the platonic smile of a knowing acquaintance. These were the people, the only people, Pam felt, that should accompany her on the train.

Pam could neither name