Page 50 of Next Time Will Be Our Turn
“I know,” I said. I squeezed her arm gently, hoping she wouldn’t push me away like she always did.
She gave me a tiny smile, and for the first time since we were kids, I felt the bond of our sisterhood between us, strong and shimmering. I made my decision then. I would be there for Iris, no matter what. I wouldn’t let anything come between us again. Not Erik, not Parker, not Mama and Papa, not societal expectations, nothing. “Stay here,” I said. “Stay with me.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Yes, you can.” My voice came out as steel. I wasn’t going to lose her again. I knew if I wavered, even a little bit, that something would whisk her away. “Tomorrow I’ll set up the guest room for you. Leave Erik. We’ll figure out the rest one step at a time.”
We settled down on our sides of the bed, facing each other. There were very few similarities in our features. You wouldn’t know from a glance that we were related. Something I hadalways hated, because who wouldn’t want to look like Iris? But as I lay on my arm and let my eyes focus on Iris’s features, despite the terrible wounds on her face, I saw the resemblance underneath. It was there in the way our eyebrows shifted when we frowned, and in our unwavering, determined gazes, and the strong set of our jaws. When it came down to it, taking away the surface-level things—Iris’s thorny facade and my pliant one—in our cores, she and I were similar. I placed my hand over hers, and she turned hers palm up and squeezed mine. Right then, with her huge belly between us, I felt the new life she was growing inside her. I felt all three of our heartbeats thrumming in unison, and I knew that as long as we were together, we’d be okay.
Chapter 17
MAGNOLIA
2007
The next few weeks were a minefield to navigate, and it was during this time that I finally found my voice. First, there was Parker to convince. To be fair, I didn’t have to try too hard. Parker was reluctant in the beginning, but for the first time in my life, I refused to back down. I leaned hard into the whole terrible situation, telling him that Iris had nowhere else to go and that if she went back to Erik and got hurt again, it would be on his conscience. I didn’t hold back at all. I think maybe that was what tripped Parker up the most, that I wasn’t acquiescing, wasn’t merely nodding and swallowing his words. In the end, he agreed to let her stay for a couple of weeks while she figured out what to do. The thing is, he didn’t understand why Iris couldn’t just go back to Mama and Papa’s house. It was a fair question, but you really had to be there to understand why that wasn’t an option.
Mama called the day after Iris arrived at my house, askingwhy Erik was calling them nonstop, asking where the hell Iris was. Iris agreed to let Mama and Papa come over so she could fill them in on the situation. When they arrived, their mouths dropped open at the sight of her brutalized face, and Papa immediately asked if the baby was okay. Not if Iris was okay, but if the baby was okay. I felt a stab of irritation at that, but I pushed myself past it. I was being too sensitive. After all, the baby was inside Iris’s belly, so it was a natural extension of Iris. Right?
In the living room, the four of us seated around cups of tea grown cold, Iris told them the bare-bones details; she and Erik had a disagreement that went bad. Yes, Erik had done this before. No, she had never reported it to the authorities. No, she wasn’t planning on pressing charges. All fine, normal questions to ask, I thought, even though dread never stopped coiling in my belly. Which was strange, because these were my parents, for god’s sake. People I’d looked up to all my life. People whose words and lessons I’d trusted. So, why then was there this awful tightness inside me, this wariness that kept my hackles raised no matter how many times I told myself to calm down?
Then Papa said, “Iris.” And from the tone of his voice, my entire body tensed. So did Iris’s. I put my hand over hers. “This is why we kept trying to teach you, time and again, to give in. Not to be so hotheaded.”
It felt as though I’d left my body. I hovered over the scene, watching the four of us hunched over our teacups, and I screamed silently at us, at everything, at how fucked up our culture was that this would be the reaction a father would give to his daughter who’d just gotten the shit beaten out of her. I screamed at the utter helplessness I felt, because I knew that mydistance from the situation granted me some clarity and that if it was me he was saying it to, my instinctive reaction would be that of guilt. Of shame. Agreeing with him that it was my fault, that I had failed in my duties as a wife time and again, and my failure had pushed my husband into doing this, and how could I have placed this burden on him, the burden of educating me, didn’t my parents teach me right? But because I was a third-party observer, I saw the fucked-up-ness of it all, and I felt my soul tearing from its confines, wrenching itself free from the bindings of tradition and duty.
“This isn’t her fault,” I said.
Mama’s head snapped up, displeasure and surprise written all over her face. How dare I disagree so openly with my father!
“Well, it’s not,” I pressed on. “Couples have disagreements, that’s normal. But to do this”—I gestured at Iris—“that’s not normal.”
“Of course it’s not normal,” Papa said. “I’m not saying that at all. Obviously Erik has…some issues he has to work on, but you need to help him overcome them. And one of the ways you can do that is by not provoking him.”
“You’re still blaming it on her!” I cried, incredulous at what was unfolding right before my eyes.
“Magnolia!” Mama hissed. “Don’t be rude to your father.”
I blinked at them, mouth open. “You are our parents. You’re supposed to protect us.” Never before had I felt so betrayed, not even when Ellery told me she was leaving for London. I’d always trusted fully that no matter what, our parents would always have our backs. It felt like someone was taking a hammer to my carefully crafted image of my family.
“We are protecting you,” Mama said. “How can you not seethat, you foolish child?” She turned to Iris. “What’s the alternative here? You get divorced? Your reputation would be ruined. Our reputation would be ruined.” She glared at me. “What do you think Parker’s family will have to say about that? You think they’d be okay with it?”
As much as I wanted to tell her that it was none of their business, I knew she had a point. You know as well as I do, Izzy, how a marriage in Indonesia isn’t just between two people but between two families. And not just the core family but the entire clan. If Iris were to get divorced, it would besmirch our family’s name, as well as Parker’s. And Parker’s family would not be sympathetic at all. But then I thought of all the sacrifices I had made to please Parker and his family, all the times I’d bent over backward to please them, to honor them, and I thought:Not this time.
“She’s right,” Iris said softly.
“What?” I said.
“Well, Parker’s family won’t be happy if I did get a divorce. It’s going to make things really hard for you.”
“Don’t worry about that,” I said. “I don’t care about them. We need to focus on what’s best for you. And the baby.”
“A baby needs two parents,” Papa said. “Not a broken family. What are you going to do, raise it as a single mother?” His voice dripped with derision. In the Chindo community, few things were considered as unsavory as single mothers.
“God forbid!” I moaned with exaggeration. “That’s almost as bad as raising a baby with an unhinged father who uses his wife as a punching bag!”
“Magnolia, watch your mouth,” Papa said, his displeasure giving way to anger.
Normally, I would back down at the first sign of anger. Well,actually, normally I would never even have pushed this far. But the ember inside me had well and truly caught fire, and there was no stopping me now. I looked my father in the face, unblinking, and said, “Or what, Papa? Are you going to do the same thing to me that Erik did to Iris?”
