“We can’t keep living like this, Amma,” Nithi would say. “We have to leave.”
“We will,” Priya promised. But the years passed, and they stayed, and they stayed, and they stayed.
Despite the cold, the park was crowded. A pack of blond women in athleisure gear circled the lake, clutching coffee cups in their leather-gloved hands. A young Latinx couple walked their Pomeranian down the hill from South Franklin Street. The tiny creature darted, startling a family of ducks. Nithi breathed deeply, trying to leash her spasming heart.
Nithi heard footsteps on the dead grass. In a minute, she saw that they belonged to a brown-skinned woman wearing a long green peacoat. The stranger stopped to watch the sunshine bounce off the lake, and then settled on the bench next to Nithi. Nithi turned away from her, hoping she would understand Nithi was not in the mood to talk. But if the woman saw the gesture, she ignored it.
“It’s not so bad in the sun, is it?” the stranger asked. She smelled like mothballs and talcum powder, like an antique store. “I love this lake, but the lake at the north end of the park, Smith Lake, is my favorite. You know it used to be a beach? In my mother’s time, people swam there. Well, she didn’t. Black people weren’t allowed. People like my mother. People like you and me.”
Nithi raised an eyebrow, wondering if she should correct her. Nithi’s skin was dark enough that she was often mistaken for Black, especially in Denver, where every person of color was assumed to be either Black or Latinx.
The woman continued, “My mother and her friends protested here once. The police came, and they beat them.” Nithi stared into the woman’s eyes. They were lighter than Nithi’s, almost golden. “That’s what men do, isn’t it? They hurt us. Especially when we fight back.”
Nithi thought of the sound of her father’s fist in her mother’s stomach, his open palm on her mother’s face. For the first time all morning, she shivered.
In her dreams, Nithi spoke to her father, but he never replied.
“I’m not afraid of you anymore,” she said, wondering if the dead believed the lies of the living.
Other nights, she asked, “Why did you hate us so much?” What she really wanted to ask was, “Why did you hate me so much?”
Still other nights, she chanted, “You can’t hurt us now, you can’t hurt us now, you can’t hurt us now.” Repeated it like a mantra, her body rocking back and forth until she exhausted herself, falling out of the dream and into a viscous, colorless sleep. Nothingness covered her like a weighted blanket, heavy and black and impenetrable.
It wasn’t pleasant, dreaming of her dad, but it was an improvement over her usual nightmares. Before Jason died, Nithi’s nights were plagued by nightmares of escaping her home with her mother, only to find her father following, hunting them like prey.
“He didn’t used to be like this,” Priya said sometimes. “For our second wedding anniversary, he surprised me with a home-cooked meal — baked macaroni and a salad. We ate it after you fell asleep. Some nights, he brought home flowers for no reason. In the fall he brought black-eyed Susans, my favorite. In the spring he’d bring home lilacs. His favorite.”
Nithi tried to imagine this man who pulled casseroles out of ovens, who knew the name of a flower whose blossoms felt like crushed velvet. She remembered nothing gentle about her father, nothing redeemable. Any kindness he had shown Nithi or her mother belonged to a history only Priya had known.
The ice on Grasmere Lake was lined with frost. Slowly, the sun’s strengthening heat bore down on it, fissuring its weakest parts. When it finally cracked, it sounded like breaking bones.
Nithi studied the woman on the bench. A pattern of bruises bloomed across her cheekbones, circled her neck. A raised scar mountained her face from her temple to her jaw. It reminded Nithi of the way Priya looked in the mornings, before she put on her makeup, her dupattas, her infinity scarves.
“Are you okay?” Nithi asked the woman.
“Oh, all this?” she asked, waving at her face with a gloved hand. “I’ll be fine.”
“Do you need help?” Nithi asked. “I could help.”
But could she? When Nithi graduated from high school, she got into Grinnell, her dream school. Instead of leaving the state, she registered for Community College of Denver. She said it was to save money, but really, it was because she was afraid that if she left Priya at home alone with her father, Jason would eventually kill her.
Instead of protecting Priya, Nithi’s decision made things worse. Her father cursed Nithi for staying home, for not getting a real job, even though, as far as she knew, Jason didn’t have one either. To appease him, Nithi took an early morning shift at the Whole Foods off the highway. Jason blamed Nithi’s lack of ambition on Priya’s parenting, her bad genes, her inability to be a role model. The beatings started earlier, and they lasted longer. Until he died.
Or, more accurately, until he was murdered.
This was why Nithi still feared her father. Why, when he came to her in dreams, insubstantial, furious, she shrank from him. Because she knew that the circumstances of her father’s death could destroy her. That his violence was larger than the grave.
“Are you okay?” the stranger asked. She pulled out a handkerchief and handed it to Nithi. It was only then that Nithi felt tears sliding down her face, freezing on her chin.
“No,” Nithi whispered, taking the handkerchief and wiping her eyes. It smelled fresh, like it had been dried in the sun. “I did something terrible, and now someone else is going to pay for it.”
“Oh, now,” the woman said kindly, “you seem like a nice girl. How bad could it really be?”
“Bad,” Nithi said, her body heaving with panic. “Really bad.”
“Huh,” the woman said. All around them, dead cattails rustled, their bodies stiff and broken. “Why’d you do it?”
“I don’t know,” Nithi said. “I was just so angry, you know? So mad.”
“There, there,” the woman said, patting the sleeve of Nithi’s down coat. Her hand felt insubstantial, like a gust of wind. “It’ll be okay. You’ll see.”
Nithi nodded dumbly, avoiding the stranger’s incandescent eyes.
Three months ago, Nithi took an evening shift at Whole Foods. Their family needed the money — Rose Medical had cut down Priya’s hours, and although Nithi’s father claimed he had a job in construction, whatever he made, he didn’t share. The extra shift meant Nithi wouldn’t be home until after dinner, when her father’s violence was always at its worst.
“I’ll be fine,” Priya had said. “Don’t worry.”
Nithi had told herself all kinds of lies about the consequences of her absence. It’s not like being there stops him, she reasoned. In the past, Nithi had tried prying Jason off of Priya, but her father was strong, and he would send Nithi ricocheting across the room. Once Nithi had called the police, but they took forever to respond. By the time they got there, the fight was over, and her father had driven away. The police hadn’t believed Nithi and Priya’s story, and even if they had, they said that there was nothing they could do. One of the officers — a woman — handed Priya a business card.