Page 11 of The Love Match

Sheknows I’m right.

But then the ice in her eyes cracks, leaking big, fat droplets of tears. Lifting her trembling hands to suppress her sobs, she pivots away from me and dashes toward her bedroom. The door slams so loudly, the lightbulbs above my head quiver in their fixtures.

Frankly, she could give Aishwarya Rai a lesson in crying on cue.

I take a few breaths to temper my frustration, then stoop to pick up the scarves and other accessories that got tossed all over the couches and carpet earlier that night. When I glance up at a rustle, I discover my grandmother watching me and shake off the disappointment that it isn’t Amma coming to grovel.

“Did we wake you up, Nanu? Sorry.”

Nanu evaluates me for another few seconds, a somber cast to her weathered face. You can tell she’s Amma’s mother because we all share the same doe-brown eyes, long upturned noses, and Cupid’s bow lips, but that’s where all resemblances end. While Amma has all the scorching passion of the sun, Nanu is like the moon, cool and soft and dark.

Usually, I appreciate that about her, that she’s the stolid lighthouse at the heart of all our churning waves, the voice ofreason I can turn to when Amma’s theatrics make me want to tear clumps of hair out of my scalp, but right now, I can’t tell what she’s thinking.

She beckons me forward. “Obaidi ao.”

Knot in my ribs, I plod after her into the kitchen. She raps on the nicked wooden table with her knuckles. When I sit down, a wisping cup of tea appears in front of me, and I blink, wondering if she’s been puttering around in here the whole time Amma and I were at each other’s throats. “Isn’t it kinda late for caffeine, Nanu?”

A tiny smile graces her face. “I have a feeling none of us will be sleeping well tonight.”

She’s got me there.

“You heard everything, huh?”

Silence reigns as we sip from our cups. It’s not milk tea, but rong saa—strong and black, with a pinch of grated ginger and salt, sweetened by honey—that immediately thaws me like a comforting blanket.

“You know, there’s something to be said for the old ways,” she says at last.

I groan. “Not you, too, Nanu. I thought you’d takemyside.”

She trains a meaningful look on me. “Kun deen tumar ‘side’ nee see na?”

“You’re right….” I force my hackles down. “Youdousually take my side.”

Nanu has always been my confidante. She’s a good listener,and though I know her vision of my future isn’t that far off from Amma’s, she’s never turned her nose up at my hopes for college or writing. When I told her I couldn’t go to Columbia, she was more devastated than Amma and me combined.

“I met your nana at seventeen….”

My eyes spring to her face, but though she never talks about my grandfather, it’s as placid as ever as she takes another sip of tea, lips red from the faan and gua she always chews.

“He was already twenty,” she continues. “It’s what was done when I was growing up. Much of my father’s ancestral gram had been burned by Razakar soldiers during the Liberation War. I was one of five daughters. Baba thought we’d be happier married.”

“Were you?” I whisper.

She peals a melodic laugh. “For a long time, no. I spent years of our marriage sleeping in his mother’s bed, missing my own, not yet ready to be a wife, but…” Her eyes go misty from the memories. “He let me. During that time, he traveled to Saudi Arabia to work, wrote me letters, sent home money and gifts. Perhaps there’s something to be said forthat, too.”

The affection in her voice is gossamer-fine, but so clearly present.

“So you came to love him?”

“Love?” she muses. “I know he worked hard every single day to keep a roof over our heads and food in our bellies. I know we laughed together when his business saw profits and mourned together when we lost our children before yourmother to miscarriages.” She considers the sifting surface of her tea. “He never told me ‘ami tumare bhalo bashi,’ like actors do in natoks. But when he died… I didn’t know how to be without him. Your mother was only a girl then, not even twelve. Had I not had her to live for, I don’t know that I could have gone on. Is that love?”

All I can do is nod, a lump in my throat and tears prickling in my eyes. I can’t tell if what I’m feeling is sadness, just that I’m bursting with it.

Deeper crinkles form around her eyes. “The Emon boy… do you find him handsome?”

Snapshots of Harun’s face return to me. The strong set of his jawline, the sharp angles of his cheekbones, those infinitely dark eyes and that thick head of curls.

“I—I guess he’s not a complete raikhosh.”

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