Anaya

           Ajaya hung. She hung from the silver showerhead, while water dripped down on her brown skin, and mingled with her tears. She hung while her baby girl leaned against the bathtub edge on her wobbly, unsure legs. She hung while her first mistake, Anaya, wailed and stroked the smooth, cool surface of the tub.  Ajaya hung while those deep brown eyes stared up at her from the floor. She hung while her sari soaked with her involuntary despair, clinging to her legs like the little boy she wished she’d been blessed with.

            Ajaya hung while he smoked a cigar in the doorway idly twisting his wedding band around his finger. Ajaya hung while her second bundle of gloom lay swaddled, writhing in the dampness of the bathtub floor; yet another mistake. 

            She hung while the silken belt tested the limits of the skin on her neck and slowly sliced its way deeper and deeper. Ajaya hung while her toes, slick with her urine licked the sides of the tub, as they tried to support her weight. She hung and hung and hung. She hung until spit bubbled from her mouth with her failed attempts at pleas for help. She hung until there was nothing left no husband, no children, no mother, and no father. Ajaya hung.

            Fanish watched. Fanish watched while his hopes and dreams strangled to death. He watched as what was supposed to be his gifts for all his unyielding servitude to the God of fertility, Lakumi, cried up at their mother. He puffed the cigar Nandi had given him on what should have been the happiest day of his life and ignored the screams of the useless newborn. Nandi had three boys, three healthy strong boys, and all Fanish had were two worthless mouths that could bring him no happiness. Fanish watched as Anaya cried for her mother. He watched as she kept glancing back at him while her mother flopped against the shower wall. He peeled himself away from the doorjamb, walked across the expanse of the bathroom and stepped into the tub. Fanish faced his wife, their noses nearly touching. He watched as her brown eyes bulged even wider with the threat of his proximity. Fanish smiled around his cigar and removed it from between his teeth. He tapped the end of his cigar and the ashes fell upon the newborn at his feet while his wife slipped from this world into the next. Fanish watched.

            Anaya wept. She wept as the man stared down at her, but she didn’t know why he made her feel so frightened. They were always in the same room with the bright yellow floor and the tiled walls. She was sure she had never been in this place before, but yet it felt so familiar to her, like she belonged there. Anaya wept and gasped in a panicked breath as the man disappeared and reappeared right in her face their noses nearly touching. Anaya woke up with a scream just as their eyes met.

            Anaya sits up in her bed and looks around. She realizes she’s not in theb right smolderingly hot room with the man’s unflinching gaze. She’s in her bedroom. Anaya breathes. She takes a deep breath, in through her mouth, and out of her nose. The air feels fresh and clean.

            “I’m in my bedroom, my bedroom is in my house, my house is in Vancouver, and...” Anaya sighs takes another breath and says, “my family is from Vancouver.” She repeats this to herself several more times just as Doctor Baiter suggested. She repeats it until she’s sure that when she places her feet on the floor it won’t be yellow tile, but an ordinary brown wooden floor, a floor that marks her home as a cookie-cutter suburban house.

            She knows that when she gets out of bed she’ll walk down the hall and pass all the photos of her brother, Jacob, her dad, Jonathan, and her mom, Linda, at her fourth birthday party. Then she’ll pause right before the stairs begin and stare hard at the photo of the young, beautiful Indian woman wrapped in the gold and fuchsia sari. Anaya will stare hard at the picture until she can see her reflection in it. Then she’ll kiss the beautiful lady and wish her a good morning.  She’ll continue down the stairs to where her adopted mother will be waiting with the rest of the family for breakfast.

--Jasmine Dawson