Colors of ownership...

A short story

“Belonging somewhere” Photo by Reena Kapoor (c) 2022. Instagram @1stardusty

Today [deep breath] for the first time I’m publishing one of my short stories.

Well, not strictly the first time. Because I participated in the Great Substack Story Challenge 2 in March and wrote a short story as part of that. That however was a story written within defined parameters that all 10 writers were bound by. I wrote in a mixed genre that I’d never tested before. A great deal of fun was had, and I’m beyond glad for that collaboration as I met several inspiring substackers of unbridled talent and generous spirit.

My short story here is different in almost every way. Firstly, it’s completely my own. Secondly it’s more my genre — albeit a bit dark.

Anyway, without further ado I just want to tell you that it was written, then revised multiple times and rejected by lit mags probably twice as many. Finally it was accepted and ran in 433 Magazine, over a year ago.

Colors of ownership and other approximations of happiness

a short story by Reena Kapoor

She came daily to sit by his bed for an hour. There was rarely any exchange. But today, as soon as she sat down, he whispered, Sumitra, I have to go… Did she imagine it? He was looking at her. He rasped again, Sumitra... I must go! An unfamiliar hope bubbled up in her, but fear rose faster. 

Five years ago a devastating stroke had left him bedridden, barely able to talk. Sumitra had rushed home from a funeral in New York to a life where suddenly she was in charge. Even then she followed his instructions from the “IMPORTANT: Do this in case of emergency” list he had meticulously created for her years ago. It mandated instructions on what was to be done along with the order of operations. It also included a list of approved care facilities. 

Within a month of the stroke she had moved him to one on the list. Now she came to see him daily in this spacious room, with a window over the Santa Cruz mountains and a TV large enough to swallow any remnant attention. Early on, caregivers at the facility had urged Sumitra to decorate the walls, bring family photos, beloved objects to his room. She smiled and never did. When friends wanted to visit him she refused. Visits agitate him, she lied without compunction.

Now when she came, often the same nurse would stop by to clean him and change his clothes. She was a garrulous woman, seemingly in her early 40s, portly and pink. She would wink at Sumitra, Handsome dude your husband, Mrs. Soomeetra! No wonder he went for a tan hottie like you…, she’d giggle. Sumitra would smile without comment. Stupid nurse didn’t understand that someone like him would never choose Sumitra’s darkness without a price! 

Sumitra’s daily visits continued the familiarity of their inert arrangement. In their 30-year marriage, he rarely noticed her including the thirteen times he had fucked her. She learned to abide by his pronouncements, directions, displeasures that were expressed with a bare minimum acknowledgement of her existence. She was free to live as she chose as long as she didn’t get in his way. And if she did, his disapproval came fast without threat or drama. She wondered if this was how those patronized by royalty lived. 

Early in their marriage, in foolish bewilderment she had fought for more. Within a year she returned to her parents. They’d looked at her with incomprehension. Didn’t she understand her place? But when she found herself pregnant, she stopped thrashing and went back, finally settling into her dark-skinned fate. Even bodies with so much loathing could make babies, she marveled. Maybe the arrival of new life would change things? But their daughter arrived beautiful, self-absorbed, inheriting her father’s advantages, never learning to traffic in tenderness or contrition. Sumitra’s invisibility only deepened. 

Sumitra’s earliest memory was from her own childhood. Age three. Her grandmother scolding her to scrub harder as she bathed. Wash it off! Rub turmeric. Fair & Lovely cream! Nothing worked and that half millimeter of darkness pervaded every square inch of her life. Family legacy from your father…, her fair-skinned mother would scoff.

Luckily her father was rich. As soon as she turned 21 he arranged her marriage to “the catch of the decade” - well qualified, American job. And bonus - decent-looks! The wedding was suitably accessorized. Arriving on an elephant, the groom was awarded a car, a posh south Delhi flat, a nice check. No one used crude words like dowry, etc. Sumitra didn’t ask what measure of guilt, expedience and ambition were exchanged in this bargain. Or if her parents were aiming for some measure of happiness for her, or even an approximation?

Now thirty years later she was standing over her husband’s helpless body shaking because he had called her by her name. Probably a random neuron firing in a disintegrating brain, she thought, as he fell back asleep. The next day he was restless again.

She was about to sit down when he called her pleading, Sumitra! Take me to Monica. Don’t tell your father. He won’t let me. His eyes were spilling tears onto the pillow.

She went to him, Monica? Who Monica?

The only Monica she knew was her cousin - her father’s younger brother’s daughter. Younger than Sumitra by a couple of years, with the same legacy of dark skin. But Monica was no invisible creature. She had earned the family’s disapproval for her brashness, even refusing marriage. A foolish bargain considering she was even darker than Sumitra. As if they would have lined up for her! She had moved to New York to study and live there. Five years ago she died in a freak accident.

Monica? You mean my cousin?, Sumitra hesitated as the skin on her neck started to heat.

He continued pleading, Take me to Monica. Your father...paid off the house and won’t let me go to Monica.

She felt bile rising, My father is dead. So is Monica! She died five years ago, you fool! Sumitra found herself shouting.

He looked at her as if he'd never seen her before. Then he started to whimper, I love you Monica, I’m sorry Monica….

People like him never worried about their precariousness. Sumitra’s hand rose and slapped him hard across the face. She looked at her hand, and then at him. Then her hand rose again. And again. He was sobbing. She walked back to the chair to pick up her things. He was still crying when she walked out. 

She was panting when she reached her car. An accounting of years past was unveiling itself. His stroke had arrived exactly five days following Monica’s death. Sumitra had gone to New York to console Monica’s parents and had rushed back. Those five days in New York were the only time in their marriage that he had called her daily. She had almost let herself believe that maybe her penance was paying off. But then she didn’t hear from him on the 5th day and she had called their neighbor to check on him. Now here he was immobile, paralyzed, and recklessly drooling all over the one spark of hope she had dared. 

When she reached home she went straight into his office. A place she had not been allowed into when he ruled. Even after his stroke she had left it alone for another time. Now she rummaged around unlocking cabinets, shuffling old files, tapping for hidden drawers. She pulled house papers from a folder and saw her dead father’s signatures - everywhere. A neat sum had paid off the house, signed over by her father forever securing her future! Another approximation of happiness or just ownership changing hands? At least payoff to preserve a marriage was, strictly speaking, not dowry.

She couldn’t sleep that night. An old nightmare returned. The house was on fire. Sumitra stood at the window looking out at her father who simply watched. Her mother was nowhere. The soot from the fire was settling on her skin. She tried to scrape it off but the soot stuck. She woke up sweating and went back into his office. This time she opened the top drawer of his desk.

There was Monica, in plain sight. Standing in the middle of a family photo from over a decade ago, with her head thrown back. Taken in her grandmother’s garden, the photo included Sumitra and Monica’s parents - two dark brothers with their fair-skinned wives - and Sumitra’s daughter and husband, and Monica. Sumitra was not in the photo. He was standing next to Monica, and she was leaning towards him. His hand may have been resting on the small of Monica’s back. It was hard to know for sure. But she knew. For sure. She turned the photo over. In his handwriting were two dates - Monica’s birth and death. 

Sumitra noticed his face bore an expression she had never once seen - of gratitude. For a fleeting moment Sumitra felt a twinge of pleasure at Monica’s darker skin. Then a fury curled her lip. Monica was laughing straight into the camera, her chin raised as if refusing to apologize. Defiant bitch! Who granted her permission to walk away from the tariffs laid down by her darkness? 

Sumitra did not go in to see him the next day. Or the next, or the next. A week later her phone rang. She picked it up. It was the pink nurse talking very fast, Hello? Mrs. Soomeetra I’m so very sorry. I found your husband this morning…

Sumitra stopped listening. She was staring at the walls of her home. They were covered in soot. How was she ever going to scrape it all off?

~THE END~

*An original version of this was first published in 433 Magazine in May 2022*

So… What did you think!? I’d love to hear your comments and reactions!

This story is of course about Sumitra, and the terrible social metaphysics that governed her tragic life. In strong cultures where notions of what is acceptable or condemnable are deeply hardwired, it’s hard to face social rejection and give up our place in the tribe. I see even the most gifted and privileged among us crave social attention and approval.

Social rejection is even harder to dismiss when those who raise us turn out to be the architects of our cages — sometime with the best of intentions in the name of “our own good”, sometimes because they themselves are slave to tribal affirmation, and sometimes to, well, simply control us. Often we have little control on such circumstances. It takes inordinate strength to break through. After all none of us exists - nor wants to - in a social vacuum.

Yet... we all know that that’s not where the human story ends. I’ve always been fascinated with the notion of what we own — our agency — in the face of stultifying social norms that can be enslaving, even paralyzing.

My story speaks also of Monica who seems to have rejected a potentially similar fate. We can’t fully know why. Maybe she somehow had it easier, left home sooner, or some alchemy of spirit or temperament just made her tougher?

Nevertheless, the suggestion here is that there are and have always been people — the iconoclasts, the rebels, the inventors, the questioners, the outliers, who are willing to reject society’s last word on them, sometimes risking it all, sometimes quietly, and sometimes fiercely. That inexplicable human spirit that says: Sorry! YOU got it wrong. This here, as I define it, is me!

Often such people live amongst us, sometimes unbeknownst to us until we learn of their story or struggles, to become beacons for us when we struggle. I look for such inspiration when I struggle, and feel thankful for life’s unlikely, often unnoticed, and mostly unsung heroes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on my story, or other stories this one may have reminded you of.