THE SIKH PATIENT---Chapter 13---ABSENCE

ABSENCE

                                             For Anna

            “I don’t know you that well,” my psychiatrist would say years later, after years of therapy.  I thought it was strange.  I thought it was kind of funny.                                    

            “We’re going to the AA meeting,” my mom said to my dad behind closed doors.

            “Ay-Ay-Those assholes, don’t they know that absence makes the heart grow fonder?”

            “I’m going to be absent from this house if you don’t go with me tonight,” I could hear my mom giving him a dirty look.

            “I got a call today, Yasmine was absent from her first-hour class,” my dad said, I knew he was putting on a tie.  He always wanted to look smarter than everyone at the AA meeting; because he was the only one not doing a single thing they told him to do.

            “See what you’re doing to your daughters, you’re ruining their lives,” my mom whined, but she wasn’t crying.  She would cry later.

            “Who ruined my life?” my dad asked.

            “You did.”

            “Oh, I forgot.”

            “Like Ronald Reagan, right?”  Wrong.  Wrong mom.  Ronald Reagan’s head wasn’t working because of biological reasons; my dad’s head is not working because he doesn’t want it to.         

                                                                        *

            The same day, the day my music died, that same morning I was sitting with Mona at Einstein bagels.  “Einstein never ate any goddamn bagels, what is this bullshit?” my dad asked when the joint first opened up.  And my blind uncle, Tarak, proclaimed just a few months before to my cousin Uma: “E does not equal MC squared. I can prove it.”  Uma said that her father once watched an Indian movie called Natcho Maurie, a true story about a famous dancer in India who had one leg.  Uma said her dad wanted to be like her.  “Einstein was wrong,” Tarak Uncle said so causally.  I’m thinking Noble Prize.   Tarak Uncle is a mathematician.

            I had gone to a literature reading the night before since all my creative writing professors mandated that we go to readings.  I asked a question to this panel of very New Age women, “Do you ever cry when you write?”

            “Cry?” one of them asked.  They all looked at each other. 

            Then one of them, an African American woman, looked at me sympathetically, “Writing is a catharsis, if you are crying; it is probably because you are reaching places that are very difficult to touch.” 

            “Oh,” I said and sat down…

*

            “I wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole,” Mona said, as I mentioned some guy I thought was hot at the other end of Einstein’s café.

            “So, O.K. if you could have any guy, and you know, there was no Khalid, who would you do?” I asked and stared at this dark-skinned guy with a ponytail and a prominent nose.

            “Oh, umm, actually I have a list, but you know I can’t remember my own name most days.”  She wasn’t kidding.  Once we went to Blockbuster to get a movie, we spent half an hour picking out a movie, and half an hour into the movie, Mona remembered that she had seen the film before.  Seven was the name of the movie.  On a good day, Mona could probably recite Pi to the umpteenth decimal, but she couldn’t remember the number Seven.  I don’t really get it, but she’s not senile.  I think it’s because she’s so smart, and you can only remember so much, at some point your brain makes a decision to eliminate the crap. Mona doesn’t study for her Calculus exams.   She derives the equations or something and then comes up with the answers.  I don’t know.  I am the antithesis of a mathematician.  Although I was once criticized in a fiction workshop that my stories were too mathematical, that there was an equation underneath them that was too obvious.  “I know, I know, you want Ralph Fines,” Mona whined, “That man is old, very white, and I don’t know.  I’m just not feelin’ it.”

            “It was the way he looked at her in the movie,” I said, referring to The English Patient. 

            “How many times have you seen that movie now?” she asked, looking sort of concerned, sort of annoyed, and sort of superior.

            “I don’t know, I can’t count that high.”  I watched as a man put mustard on a bagel.  MUSTARD!  The English Patient was still in the theaters and I had seen it five times already.

            “Lenny Kravitz!” Mona said proudly, “I’d do him in a heartbeat.”

            “Really?” I watched as the mustard man walked out the door.  “Yeah, I could see that.  Actually, I could see it more for myself.  I never pegged you to be the ‘alternative’ type.  I mean if anyone else were to guess, I think they would put you with Ralph Fines and me with Lenny Kravitz.”

            “Yeah, well anyone else would probably be more interested in their actual sex lives.  Teeny boppers talk about actors and rock stars.”  She looked right at me.

            “No, I haven’t come yet.”  I looked down at my cinnamon bagel.  “I mean we haven’t had sex, so maybe that’s the problem.”

            “No, that’s not the problem, orgasms have nothing to do with sex,” she shook her head.  “Can I talk to Nick?  No, I can’t.  Maybe Khalid should talk to him.”

            “God no! Maybe it’s not his fault.  Maybe it’s me.”

            “No, I know you.  You had your first orgasm when you were four.”  She spread some cheese on a poppy seed bagel.  I can’t believe I told her about that and she still remembers.  Of all the things to remember.

            “You know if you eat poppy seeds and take a blood test, you’ll test positive for Opium,” I said and took a sip of a Mocha.

            “That doesn’t change the fact that your boyfriend has not been able to please you unless you think Opium will help,” she said in a monotone voice.  I laughed.  I don’t know.

            Nick’s a recovering alcoholic, I don’t think it’s wise to introduce him to Opium.  What am I talking about, I don’t do drugs.  The Reagan Empire was partly evil but Nancy Reagan had an effect on me. She told me not to do drugs.  So I just don’t do them.  Most of the time.

                                                                        *

            I’m afraid to talk about this.  Do you cry when you read?  I should ask Boy George; apparently, he knows all there is to know about the crying game.  It is a game, isn’t it?    

What does the word, “fear” mean?  Nothing.  The only thing we do with words is say them.  But do we know what fear is?  It is not a thing.  It is something unspeakable, something without words.  It is like death, it has no definition and it makes no sense.    Deepak Chopra said that, “Everything we fear has already happened to us.”  Fear is not something to understand, but something to dread.  I was scared. 

            What is hair?  Does it have any use?  It’s like the appendix, you might as well just cut it off.  But unlike any organ in your body, if you cut your hair it will keep coming back.  Why does God keep giving it back to us?  In Sikhism you are supposed to keep your hair long for two reasons:  Our identity, it separates us from the rest of the crowd.  And the energy, the spiritual energy that hair contains.  When you meditate, it is said that all the hairs on your body react to the sensations of your soul and there are actual sensors in hair that bring you closer to the larger energy within the universe.  That’s why you have the most hair on your head, it’s most important that your brain gets that energy.

            But trimming and styling those senses?  What’s wrong with that?  My hair is still long, it’s just not completely natural.  But I was still cutting it myself, I couldn’t bring myself to enter establishments that profit from something I’m afraid might be a sin.   

            Do you want to know what really happened?  Or do you want to pretend?

            Let’s pretend.

            It’s more fun, isn’t it?

            That’s not a question, is it?

            You ever wonder why we have question marks?  Because we have to mark them.  The Questions.  We’ll forget them if we don’t mark them.  The answer though.  There is no answer mark. 

            There is no answer.

            There are no answers.

…to be continued…

  By

Nina Kaur