Chapter Twenty-One
KIRAN
It was a Tuesday evening, and Kiran had been sluggish all day, uncharacteristically leaving off attachments on emails she sent colleagues, forgetting her lunch at home, and making mistakes on work assignments that she typically never would have.
She hadn’t woken up on the wrong side of the bed; she was sure she’d proverbially fallen out of it.
And she couldn’t get Nash out of her mind.
Kiran replayed their close contact on the bench at the zoo over and over again like a film reel on a loop. She could have kissed him. Maybe she should have. Maybe that would have cleared up how she felt. He would have pulled away and said, “Sorry, I don’t feel the same way,” or kissed her back, and she’d have a clear-cut answer on how he felt and what to do.
But instead, they’d sat close, with her cupping his face in her hands, and the warmth of his skin had gently cascaded through her palms, up her arms, and all the way to her heart.
To the outside world, perhaps they looked like lovers sharing an intimate moment. But to Kiran, it was a sweet aberration that had only muddled her heart further as she thought of Baba and Ma.
By the time she walked up to her apartment building at seven in the evening, she was mentally wading through quicksand.
“Kiran!”
Nash came from the opposite direction, clutching a plastic bag in his hand from the bodega around the corner.
“Hey, you.” She tried to muster a smile, but the glumness in her voice was obvious.
They paused in front of the steps to the building.
“You look like you could use a drink,” Nash commented. “You okay?”
“Just a very long day.”
“Do you actually want a drink? We can go grab one if you want to vent.”
Kiran sighed and closed her eyes for a second. She couldn’t shake the irrational irritation with herself at the bumbling way she’d gotten through the day, and she was certain she would be terrible company.
But the hope in Nash’s blue eyes turned the impending no, thank you to a sure before she could think twice.
“I’m giving you fair warning that I’m cranky today.”
Nash smirked. “I can handle it.”
Kiran gave him a small smile and gestured for him to lead the way.
They walked a few blocks in silence until they reached Avenue A and First Street. Boulton & Watt was a place Kiran had gone to multiple times before. Their brunch was a favorite of Sonam’s after a long night shift.
Unassuming from the outside, the restaurant was on a corner, built with a gray brick facade and industrial windows. The inside was decorated with Christmas lights, planters hanging from the ceiling, and aluminum paneling above long, wooden tables with old-fashioned industrial bar benches underneath them.
Kiran and Nash took their seats at a table for two.
“Do you want to tell me what’s on your mind?” Nash asked gently as they perused the menu.
But before Kiran could speak, a tall woman with beachy waves of blond hair and blue eyes touched Nash’s shoulder.
“Dr. Hawthorne!” she chirped, her eyes flitting over Kiran for a millisecond before she devoted her attention to Nash.
“Oh, hi…” He stood. “It’s nice to see you.”
He placed his arm loosely around her waist when she reached in for a hug, his back stiffening.
Kiran waited to be acknowledged, plastering a small smile on her face in case someone turned to her. The woman didn’t give her a second glance, speaking directly to Nash instead.
“What’re you up to? Drinks?”
Nash’s eyes darted to Kiran before gesturing to her. “Yes. Kiran, this is Doreen. We work in the same wing of the hospital. Doreen, this is my friend and neighbor, Kiran.”
Friend.
Kiran barely had a second to ruminate on the word before Doreen turned to her.
“Karen?”
“No, it’s Kir-an,” Kiran enunciated slowly, the way she always did.
Doreen laughed. “I always have trouble with foreign names. Can I just call you Karen?”
“I–I’d really rather you didn’t…” Kiran frowned.
“It’s not that hard, Doreen,” Nash said easily. “Kind of like that Irish name, Kieran—have you ever heard it? It’s a really pretty name.”
Kiran tried to force her face to cooperate and look pleasant at Nash’s attempt, but she couldn’t help but feel like she’d been slapped.
“That’s true, it’s not so tough. Just unusual.” Doreen shrugged.
Sweat began to dot Kiran’s forehead as the hair on the back of her neck stood up.
“Excuse me, I need to use the restroom,” she said, and she loudly pushed her chair back, the metal legs grinding against the wooden floor and emitting a screech.
Once in the restroom, she hunched over the sink, closing her eyes and taking stabilizing breaths that did nothing for her racing heart and the heat rising in her chest.
Foreign. It was funny that a word could be weaponized so quickly.
Kiran thought to earlier in her workday, where a colleague had explained the mechanism for bioengineering a synthetic virus and that a key to it was making sure the human body didn’t see it as a foreign body and attack. In that case, it was clear—foreign meant it didn’t belong. It deserved to be attacked.
Kiran hated feeling like she didn’t belong.
“People are stupid. You’ve had a bad day. Get it together,” she mumbled to herself.
Sonam had warned her in college—when some frat guy had called her a “dot head” when she was walking back from a Hindu Students Association meeting. Kiran distinctly heard her voice now. Kiran, I’m sorry…but you’ve got to grow tougher skin, because it’s only going to get worse from here. The onslaught of narrow-mindedness would be a constant assault, not an occasional fight.
Kiran ran some cool water on her hands and rested them on her cheeks, uncaring whether the wetness would ruin her makeup. She breathed in deeply again, picturing ocean waves, the sound of a rainstorm, and whatever else would calm her mind as she carefully dabbed a paper towel across her face.
Then she stared at her reflection in the mirror, nodded once, and chucked the paper towel and opened the door.
She could see Nash was alone at the table again, but she didn’t have it in her to get a drink and act as though she felt normal.
Today, she felt anything but.
“Nash, would you mind if we go home?” She collected her bag off the seat and flung it over her shoulder.
“No drink?” Nash appeared surprised.
“No, but thank you. I’d just like to go home.”
Once again, they walked in silence. Unlike on the way to the restaurant, Kiran didn’t feel comfort at Nash’s presence. He hadn’t done anything wrong, but she couldn’t help the anger at being marked as an outsider in front of him.
Kiran unlocked the doors to the building without a word, and Nash followed her through the lobby.
As she paused outside her door, trying to figure out what to say, Nash leaned against the frame.
“Are you okay?” he asked softly.
Kiran sighed and shook her head. “No. I’m not.”
“Tell me what’s on your mind.”
She nodded. “Come inside.”
She took off her shoes and he followed suit, reminding her of the first time they’d met. She tossed her bag on the table and sank into the couch.
Nash quietly took the blue armchair he favored.
“Do you want some chai?” Kiran remembered her manners—Nash was a guest after all.
“No, thank you. Just talk to me.”
Kiran crossed her legs and tucked her hands under her thighs. “I had a rough day today at work. Nothing crazy. It was one of those days where things went wrong from the second I woke up. I spilled coffee on the first shirt I chose this morning, then ran ten minutes later than usual to work. It was basically a series of annoyances all day. And then I sent no less than three emails without the attachments on them and made a miscalculation of data that took me two hours to figure out, rectify, and inform my colleagues about.”
“Bad days happen. I’m sure your colleagues understood.”
Kiran shook her head. “Nash, it’s much more than that. For me, a mistake is never a simple misstep. A mistake is one more tick mark against my very existence here.”
His brow furrowed. “I don’t understand.”
“I see it on some of my colleagues’ faces. The sympathetic glance when I ask someone to repeat their directions because they weren’t clear. They not only go slower but enunciate, as though I didn’t understand English the first time. When my coworkers forget an attachment on an email, it’s an oversight. Today, I got asked by a person who has worked under me for two weeks if I knew how to use Outlook. I made a mistake on some data analysis that took me time to figure out. It was silly, yes, and not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. But people like me? Every day, we have to prove we earned the right to live here. Each mistake counts against that.”
“That must be a burden to carry,” Nash said softly.
“I don’t break the rules—not because I don’t want to but because of the massive assumptions that will be made about me and, by extension, immigrants from India if I do. Forget an attachment on an email? I must have grown up in a country that didn’t offer technology. Cut someone off driving? Indians can’t drive anyway. My God, I spelled ‘color’ with a ‘u’ in college once, and I had a professor suggest I take an ESL class—as if American English is the only English spoken anywhere in the world.”
“It must feel like you’re trying to outscore people keeping an invisible tally.”
“Yes. I can’t even say anything, because if I do, I look combative and not thankful to be here.”
“You feel like you have to stay in your lane.”
“Exactly. And Doreen tried to force that too. It was upsetting.”
“I didn’t think she meant anything by it.” Nash frowned again, confused.
“She said my name was foreign and difficult. Did you not notice that I had to debate my own name? You had to stand up for me—and I appreciate you doing so, it was very thoughtful—but she didn’t trust me on my own identity until you, a white man, told her my name was similar to an Irish one. But I am not similar to an Irish person. I am Indian. That is who I am. And it is not an argument.”
He gazed at her, unmoving.
Kiran could see the cogs turning in his mind and his eyes slowly registering all that she was saying—and that her words didn’t come from a place of anger at him but that this conversation was much bigger than the two of them sitting in this living room.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made that comparison. I didn’t realize it was reinforcing a problem.”
“You have a lot of privilege, Nash,” Kiran said softly. “It’s not something you have to apologize for. But the word foreign doesn’t mean I’m an exotic flower. It means I don’t belong. And today was one reminder after another that I’m still on the outside, looking in, at a country I’ve called home for ten years.” Kiran blinked back angry tears. “Sometimes, it’s tiring.”
Nash nodded. “Do you want a hug?”
She couldn’t help the giggle that slipped out. “Yes.”
He sat next to her and wrapped his arms around her. She tucked her head into the space underneath his chin and breathed him in, the scent of clean laundry and faint cologne wafting up to her. Her hands rested on his chest, and they sat, curled up on the couch, and after feeling like a stranger all day, she finally felt like she was home.