11.2
Satya would not let her brother defeat her, she told herself as she disembarked from the bus outside school, too late for registration and assembly. For a few minutes, she had deliberated whether to give her lessons a miss again, but she did not think she could bear to share the house with her mother all day. She knew that her mother had sent Jaspreet up to their room to check that she was okay, but she did not feel like acknowledging her and had left for school without saying goodbye. No, she insisted within, her brother would not subdue her; putting a smile on her face, she pranced through the school gates confidently, longing for a reunion with her precious one.
When she saw him from afar in the corridor, her heart skipped a beat, her eyes opening wide. When she saw him again on the stairs, she felt a coolness settle within and a great joy in her heart. She could not wait to speak to him again, she kept on telling herself whenever she seemed to miss him, watching sadly as he disappeared, oblivious to her presence. Exhilarated by her recollections of yesterday, she did not ponder what occupied him, imagining every turn of his head to be a misfortune of timing alone; at least this is what she wanted to believe.
‘Ben,’ oozed her voice as they met on her return from her locker later on. She smiled at him affably and tried to catch his eyes but looked on uneasily when his eyelids drooped shut, a frown filling his face. She tried to engage him with soothing words, but watched instead as he turned away from her as if in pain. ‘Ben,’ she cried out, following after him alarmed, ‘wait for me.’
At first, she tried to convince herself that he simply had not heard her or that his mind was elsewhere, distracted by a deadline or an unfinished essay. It was easy to make excuses for Ben, it seemed, the happiness he had wrought causing her to skip along still optimistic, unaffected by her brother’s words or the sore bruises on her skin.
She saw him again at the start of morning break. This time she would speak to him, she told herself, hurrying to catch up with him before he passed through another set of doors. ‘Hi Ben,’ she exclaimed at last, tapping him on his shoulder, pulling his gaze back towards her. ‘How’s it going?’ she asked when their eyes met, but soon she was frowning too. ‘Hey,’ she cried when he turned away from her once more, ‘what’s going on? Why are you ignoring me?’ He looked at her briefly, but no words emerged. ‘Didn’t we have a nice time yesterday?’ she asked him pleadingly.
‘At first,’ he said abruptly, shrugging her away.
‘What does that mean?’ she asked, chasing after him.
‘It means I didn’t want any more of this shit,’ came his vehement retort. ‘It means it wasn’t worth it.’
‘But we had a brilliant time.’
‘Until your brother turned up, and then it was just the same old rubbish. I don’t even know why we bothered.’
‘Well I got the worst of it,’ she snapped back at him, only to regret speaking to him that way.
‘How the fuck would you know?’ he yelled, regretting not a word. ‘About twenty minutes after you left, they came back. They smashed in my front door. And then I get yet another beating. That’s all I seem to do these days; take one beating after another. I’m constantly covered in bruises. I wanted to escape all that. I thought I could tolerate living on my own if it meant everyone left me alone. It was all meant to get better. Yes, I’m cold. Yes, I’m hungry. But at least there’d be no more beatings. Ha! Nothing changes. And then you ask me what’s wrong with me. Why aren’t I glowing about yesterday?’ He glared at her. ‘Because yesterday your brother threw me down the stairs because I was so stupid as to agree to be a part of your fantasies.’ Shaking his head, he pushed himself against the wall. ‘Oh, don’t get me wrong, Satya,’ he muttered, ‘you were beautiful yesterday. You were a delight to behold. Who wouldn’t dream of a companion like that? But it wasn’t worth it. The momentary pleasure wasn’t worth the lasting pain.’ The way she looked at him: hurt, offended by his words, but he did not care. ‘Now I regret spending the day with you,’ he told her plainly. ‘I wish I’d just walked away the first time your brother threatened me. I wish we were still enemies. I wish you still hated me. I wish you were still calling me the loser. I wish you still had no time for me.’ He glanced at her as if he had been vanquished. ‘Because now I’m split in two. Because I think I’m falling in love with you, and I know where that will lead. I once told you I’m not scared of your brother, but that was a lie. Because me and him have crossed paths before.’
‘What do you mean?’ she snivelled anxiously.
‘You know it.’
‘Know what?’
‘Tuesday the twelfth of March 1991,’ he said, looking on as the colour drained from her face. ‘Oh, so you know what I’m talking about then?’ he asked when she glared back at him, aghast. ‘You know what your brother did, don’t you? Fuck, it’s not rocket science.’ He stared at her contemptuously. ‘It was me, Satya. It was me,’ he said, watching as she stumbled backwards. ‘You know what your brother did.’
‘To you?’
‘Yes, me,’ he murmured awkwardly, ‘The last time our paths crossed, he left me in hospital for weeks.’
‘It was you?’
‘Yeah, so I’m the idiot, aren’t I? Getting mixed up with you, as if this is the first time he’s ever threatened me. Yeah, right! This has all happened before. Only, last time, I ignored his threats. That’s why he and his mates beat me to smithereens.’
‘But you never said.’
‘I never said it was me. That’s all. It wasn’t relevant. You just had to put two and two together. You know what he’s capable of. You just had to fill in the blanks.’
‘If you’d said…’
‘They were this close to blinding me for life. My eyes looked like tennis balls. They fractured my skull, broke my nose, snapped two of my ribs and ruptured my spleen. But I was the one who ended up in trouble. The school said I brought it on myself, that I should’ve known better. It was my fault for crossing some imaginary cultural boundary. It didn’t matter whether I had or hadn’t. It was all hushed up, brushed under the carpet. It seems that the only person who took it seriously was your dad. Everyone else just said I’d ignored non-existent cultural sensitivities and got what I deserved. So I was the one who got suspended. And your brother? Well here he is again, threatening me. So what do you expect from me? Of course I won’t make the same mistake twice. Yes, I admit it Satya, I’m scared of your brother. I tell myself he’s nothing, but I still have nightmares of the day he decided to show me my place.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me it was you before?’
‘Why does it matter? It could’ve been any white boy who got beaten to a pulp for his alleged crimes. Why does it matter that it was me? Surely what you knew was hideous enough to make you think twice, and surely the fact it was your brother was enough.’
The look on his face nearly broke her heart.
‘I thought I’d broken my wrist last night after he threw me down the stairs, but it was nothing. I was just grateful he stopped there. Because you’re his sister. You’re not some stranger he didn’t even know. After last time, I thought it’d be worse. But there’s still time, I suppose.’ Suddenly he thumped the wall and slid down it. ‘I’m falling in love with you, Satya,’ he moaned desolately, ‘and I hate you for it because we can never be together. There’s your brother on one side and my family on the other. If your brother doesn’t get me, my cousins will. Whatever I do, I’m doomed.’ Quickly he pulled himself upright and turned his back on her. ‘Why bring trouble on your head?’ he asked, his eyes far away from her. ‘I’m sure your parents have a nice Jat in mind for you. Why bother with these stupid games?’
Satya watched as the back of his head nodded up and down.
‘We can never be together,’ he told her, listening out for the door slamming closed behind him. Her escape was not as sudden as he had anticipated, but still that bang reverberated back at him, echoing all around, standing witness for her indignation.
