The Shape of Family Read online

  Dedication

  For Mira & Bela,

  may you seek widely, and always find home

  Epigraph

  We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us.

  Even while the earth sleeps we travel.

  We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered.

  Brief were my days among you, and briefer still the words I have spoken.

  But should my voice fade in your ears, and my love vanish in your memory, then I will come again,

  And with a richer heart and lips more yielding to the spirit will I speak.

  Yea, I shall return with the tide,

  And though death may hide me, and the greater silence enfold me, yet again will I seek your understanding.

  —from “The Farewell,” Khalil Gibran

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  May 19, 2015, 5:59 A.M.

  Home

  1. Karina

  2. Jaya

  3. Keith

  4. Jaya

  5. Karina

  6. Prem

  7. Jaya

  8. Karina

  9. Keith

  10. Karina

  11. Jaya

  12. Karina

  13. Keith

  14. Karina

  15. Keith

  16. Karina

  17. Prem

  Away

  18. The Olanders

  19. Karina

  20. Karina

  21. Keith

  22. Jaya

  23. Prem

  24. Karina

  25. Karina

  26. Karina

  27. Karina

  28. The Olanders

  29. Prem

  Sanctuary

  30. Karina

  31. Karina

  32. Karina

  33. The Olanders

  34. Karina

  35. Prem

  36. Serotina

  37. Serotina

  38. The Olanders

  39. Serotina

  40. Serotina

  41. Serotina

  42. Keith

  43. Serotina

  44. Jaya

  45. Serotina

  46. Serotina

  47. Prem

  Found

  48. The Olanders

  49. The Olanders

  50. Prem

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  May 19, 2015, 5:59 A.M.

  A young woman, hovering on the edge between adolescence and adulthood, is walking. She climbs over a bed of rocks that marks the border between city sidewalk and seashore. She wears clothing the color of snow, of clouds, of nothing. She wears nothing on her feet. She carries nothing.

  She walks slowly but deliberately toward the Pacific Ocean, yet she possesses none of the regular trappings of those who do so at this hour—no fishing pole, no surfboard, no wet suit.

  It is early morning, not long since dawn broke. The sun is beginning to spread its orange hue on the horizon, but the air is still brisk.

  In one of the houses that line the cliff overlooking the beach, an elderly man rises and switches on the light in his kitchen. He is pondering whether it is a gift or a curse to wake at this ungodly hour every morning. It is peaceful, to be sure, but nothing else makes him feel more alone in the world.

  As he fills the kettle at the sink, he looks out the back window, as he does every morning. There are few people out at this hour, usually only an intrepid jogger or dog walker. This morning, he peers closer. He squints his eyes and opens them again to verify what he’s seeing.

  She is almost a mirage, the young woman dressed in white. For a moment, from the pull of her hair into a loose knot at her nape, he imagines it is his late wife, come back to see him. This thought, however improbable, makes him smile.

  As the water overflows the kettle, he returns to himself. From this angle, he now notices her olive skin, her youthful face. She walks with intention toward the roaring waves. Something is not right: a young woman, alone in street clothes on the beach at this hour. He places the kettle in its cradle, picks up the kitchen telephone and dials the police.

  Home

  1 | karina

  2007

  Karina sat outside the principal’s office, kicking her feet against the wooden bench. She knew the noise was annoying the receptionist, who glanced up periodically with a stern look from behind the tall barrier. Karina didn’t care. What else could happen to her? She was already waiting in the principal’s office; her mother had been called. The only redeeming part of this whole situation was that Prem wasn’t here with her. He was, with any luck, outside with the other first-graders, playing tetherball or four square.

  Twenty minutes earlier, at the start of lunch, she’d been at the monkey bars with her best friend, Izzy, when she’d seen Prem across the schoolyard, sitting at the lunch table. Her younger brother, usually running around wild with his friends during this time, was cowering at the corner of the table, with an older boy hovering nearby. Karina crossed the yard and as she approached, she recognized Jake Potash from her grade.

  “Man, that stinks!” Jake pinched his nose and pointed at her brother’s stainless-steel tiffin, filled with rice and vegetable curry. “Get that crap away from me!” He kicked at the table, causing the tiffin to rattle and Prem, his face seized by fear, to slide farther down the bench.

  Karina, fueled by rage and protective instinct, marched up and grabbed the tiffin off the table. “You bother my brother again,” she spat out, “I’ll kill you.” The smirk lingered on Jake’s face, so before she could think, Karina raised her arm and hurled the tiffin at him. Jake yelped as the sharp metal edge struck him square in the face, and curry was left dripping down his cheek. Karina stared as he wiped his face, and Jake must have recognized the anger in her eyes, because even though it was an absurd threat for a scrawny eleven-year-old girl to make against the school’s biggest bully, he just spat on the ground and stormed away.

  Before Karina could check on Prem, a playground teacher jogged over, breathless. “I saw that, Miss Olander. Throwing an object at someone? You are going to pay a visit to the principal’s office.” Before Karina could explain, the teacher took her by the upper arm and moved toward the building doors. Prem looked up at her from the bench, his face now streaked with tears. She touched her nose with the fingertip of her free hand as she was being pulled away and he did the same, the invisible thread that bound them.

  When Prem had started kindergarten at Karina’s elementary school last year, he worshipped his big sister and her friends by extension. Her parents were happy knowing they were at the same school, where Karina could look out for him. Prem was so nervous that first day as Karina showed him around, pointing out the playground where she would see him at lunch. “Look, you love monkey bars!” Prem smiled at her, then spontaneously threw his arms around her torso and squeezed tight. “Okay, okay,” she said, unlatching him before anyone saw. “You’re a big boy now.” She touched him lightly on the tip of his nose. “You’ll be fine. I promise.” He nodded solemnly, placing his fingertip on his nose, then hers.

  Karina had had a hard time adjusting at the school herself, mainly because there wasn’t a single other person there like her. There were the white kids, the Chinese kids, the Indian kids and the Spanish-speaking contingent. But the combination of Karina’s features—milky tan skin, dark eyes, thick wavy hair, promi
nent nose—made her feel like she didn’t quite fit in anywhere. People were not unkind, but she sometimes felt like a puzzle to be figured out. The first time her father had picked her up from soccer practice, the other parents looked on with confusion when he waved from the car, trying to reconcile his pale, freckled complexion with hers. One mother intercepted her on the field to confirm Karina knew him before letting her go, making her acutely aware of how mismatched they looked. Her name only made things worse. Derived from carus, the Latin word for “love,” it was also a Hindi name meaning “flower,” “pure” or “innocent.” Her parents were drawn to its meanings in different cultures; it appealed to their sense of their two ethnicities coming together in one child. When she was younger, Karina bought into their explanation, but now she resented having to repeat and spell her name for everyone.

  Prem wound up with a different combination of features: his skin fair, his hair straight and fine, and his long, dark eyelashes looking as if they’d been curled and given a heavy application of mascara (totally wasted on a boy, in Karina’s opinion). People were always surprised to learn they were brother and sister, and while there were moments when she wished they weren’t, it still bugged her when someone expressed disbelief. Karina and Prem were the only two members of their club, even if no one believed they could belong together.

  The school receptionist raised her head and looked at Karina now, peering over small wire-rimmed glasses that hung from a chain around her neck. “Your mother will be here in about twenty minutes, so just sit tight,” she said with a stiff smile. Karina reflexively stopped swinging her feet for the few moments the woman addressed her, then started up again.

  Karina had learned to be cautious of people, especially those who treated her with curiosity. Fortunately, she didn’t need many friends; she had Izzy. Isabelle Demetri, a dark-haired, large-eyed girl, had found her in first grade, marching up to Karina at the swings and declaring they would be friends because of their identical purple lunch bags. Izzy was fearless, fun and didn’t have much use for the boys who were always hanging around. Her passion was horses. She went to the stables to ride twice a week after school, sharing access to a pony named Mr. Chuckles, because her parents said buying one was too expensive. Karina loved going to the barn with Izzy and watching how her friend managed the large creature, the two of them engaged in a silent, gentle interaction of meeting each other’s needs. But Karina had a special fondness for Dominick, the Demetris’ charcoal cockapoo, who slept curled up at the foot of Izzy’s bed, and who followed them patiently from room to room for no apparent reason other than to be close to them. Dominick seemed good and reliable in a way that was uncomplicated compared to many people she knew. Karina could trust Prem, her parents, Izzy and her animals, and that was enough.

  Jake Potash had not been sent to the office, and Karina knew how the incident had looked to the playground teacher, so when she was called into the principal’s office, she knew what to say. “Jake was picking on my brother. Prem’s only six and I was sticking up for him.”

  The principal removed his reading glasses. “Fighting is not a way to solve disputes, Karina. Mrs. Kramer was right there; she could have helped you.”

  Karina nodded, looking down at her hands. She didn’t mention Jake’s comments or that he was only more brazen with his insults than other kids, whose questions could hurt just as much. At that moment, the door opened and her mother entered the office. When Karina saw her, with her blouse partially untucked from her pants and her forehead creased with lines, she felt her first pangs of regret about the situation. The principal asked Karina to explain the incident, while her mother sat, hands clasped in her lap, muscle pulsing in her jaw.

  “This is her first infraction,” the principal said, “so it will go on her school record, and she’ll have to apologize to the other student, but we can leave it at that. And of course, she’ll need to leave school for the rest of the day.”

  Her mother politely apologized and thanked the principal without ever looking at Karina. In the car, she drove with her hands tightly gripped on the steering wheel for several blocks before she spoke. “Karina, I don’t know what is going on with you. Getting in fights at school?”

  “He was making fun of Prem, Mom. That kid was teasing him for being . . . different.” Even as she said it, she knew her mother wouldn’t understand. Her parents were not part of the same club.

  Her mother glanced in the rearview mirror and changed lanes to make a turn. “You should be proud of your Indian culture. Educate that boy, tell him everything Indians are responsible for—the invention of mathematics and chess, centuries of tradition, poetry, music.”

  Sometimes, when her father was traveling, eerie Indian music emanated from her parents’ bedroom, illuminated only with a nightstand lamp. Mom sat with her eyes closed, moving her head in rhythm, looking more peaceful than she did in her daily life with them. This bothered Karina, as if her mom had to go somewhere else to be that happy, somewhere she couldn’t take them.

  “You don’t understand,” Karina muttered. “You never do.”

  “Excuse me?” Her mother turned around and shot her a piercing glare. “What did you say?” She turned her eyes back to the road. “You know I count on you to be a good sister to Prem, a role model for him. You can’t be violent, Karina. You know better.”

  Karina remained silent, staring out the window as the shops and street signs went by. She knew her mother’s approach of proudly defending Indian culture would only have stoked Jake Potash further. If the issue rose to the level that Mom deemed it important enough to share with Karina’s father, he would have a different reaction. He would call up Jake’s parents, tear into them with calmly spoken criticisms of their parenting, and threats to their child if anything similar ever happened again. Then he would meet with the school principal and file a complaint with the police. He would scorch the earth all around Jake Potash and the family from which he came, to isolate him in fear. That strategy could work, and if things got any worse, she might consider telling Dad.

  But after that day of the incident on the playground, when Karina felt as if she’d been taken over by some external force, anger and energy coursing through her veins, Jake Potash never bothered her or Prem again.

  2 | jaya

  2008

  Jaya pulled on her gardening gloves and handed another pair to Karina, who turned them over, exposing the ladybugs embroidered on each one. “Mom, these are . . . they’re for little kids. Can I just use some normal ones?”

  “They still fit, don’t they? The other ones will be too big.” Jaya bent down to lift a large bag of potting soil from the garage floor and hoisted it into her arms. “Grab a couple of those, honey.” She nodded to the plant trays and began walking around the side of the house, toward the backyard. “So, how was soccer this morning?” she called over her shoulder.

  “Fine.”

  “Did you win? Lose? Who did you play against?”

  “I don’t know, some school. We tied.”

  Jaya placed the bag down near the flower beds and studied her daughter, assessing the flat expression that frequented her face so often lately. At twelve, Karina was already beginning to take on the manner of an American teenager—the disinterest, the sullenness—about which Jaya had been warned. Suddenly, Karina didn’t like anything Indian, not the food Jaya cooked, not the outfits she deemed scratchy and uncomfortable, not even going to the temple. The experts said this kind of behavior wasn’t personal, but how could it not be, when Karina was rejecting Jaya’s very culture? It was hard not to miss the lively young girl who had brought so much life to their family. Thank goodness, Prem, only seven, was still thoroughly childlike and curious about the world. Jaya had a few more years to bask in his boyish affection. There were some good things about having her children so far apart, despite the heartache it had caused. Jaya found the garden shears in the bucket of tools and sliced open the soil bag. “Must be tough without Isabelle on the team this season
.” This was what she did now, poked around delicately since she never quite knew what might be bothering her daughter.

  Karina shrugged. “It’s fine. It’s not like I don’t know all the other kids on the team. We’ve been together since first grade.” She flopped down on the grass, cross-legged with her arms propped behind her.

  “Yes, that’s true.” Jaya smiled and thought about how different Karina’s stable upbringing was from her own. Jaya’s father, a diplomat, was posted to a new country every few years, where Jaya attended top English schools and their home often hosted visiting dignitaries. While their family life was cosmopolitan, it had the effect of accentuating, rather than diminishing, how properly Indian they were. Jaya’s mother knew how to prepare Indian delicacies from all over the country: thin crispy dosas from southern India and rich lamb curries from the north. Their homes were tastefully decorated with hand-carved furniture and sumptuous silk rugs. They subscribed to Indian periodicals and their dinner conversations revolved around current events back home. Jaya and her brother, Dev, were raised with the implicit notion that India, rich in its vastness and contributions to the world—raga music, great poetry and exquisite cuisine, to name a few—was superlative to whichever country they lived in.

  “Okay, you know what to do,” Jaya said to Karina, gesturing toward the empty flower bed. “Start digging the holes, then.” Karina didn’t move from her slouched position in the grass and shook her head slightly. “Where do you want me to put them?”

  “Come on, honey. Same as always, eighteen inches apart for the front row, farther for the row behind. I think we’ll need three rows total—flowering cabbage, kale, marigolds,” Jaya said, pointing to each of the trays. “What are these?” Karina touched a plant with gray, velvety foliage that looked like underwater coral.

  “Aren’t they interesting? Feel the leaves. Those are called dusty millers,” Jaya said. “Why don’t you decide where they should go?” Jaya marked out spots for each of the rows in the flower bed and went to retrieve the garden hose. She took profound satisfaction in this act of planting flowers in the ground and watching them grow. Her mother had always kept beautiful floral arrangements in their houses, since they often had spontaneous visitors. But those cut flowers inevitably made Jaya sad, the way they began to wilt and smell rank within days. There was never the opportunity to plant a garden outside, with only one or two years in each place, often during winter, when the ground was frozen. So, Jaya learned to cultivate an inner life through her practice of classical dance, her own sense of grounding she could take wherever they lived. She had learned to be comfortable anywhere since home was nowhere.