CHAI【चाय】

WARNING: MENTIONS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT, HOMOCIDE, GUN VIOLENCE, ALCOHOL, AND GENDERED CURSING

My cousin is making chai in the kitchen. I am at the table with my mother. Her husband is sitting in his chair in the darkness of the next room. The television flickers on and a commercial for a new movie is playing on the television. It’s called My Subconscious. It’s coming out soon.

The sound of the microwave is humming a song to my loneliness. I want for warmth against my lips. I long for it on these dark month’s cold nights. I’ve never been single. I’ve always been a serial monogamist, sometimes a cheater.

My last boyfriend called me ‘Bunny’. I am small and fluffy, and I hop from one man to the next.

A voice on the television says: ‘I’ve never introduced a single one to my family.’

I want to eat all the pista rolls in front of me, but I’m waiting for my drink. The microwave has beeped and it’s steeping.

‘Where are you? I still see you in my dreams.’ The tv is talking again. It’s the sound of my boyfriend’s voice. All I’ve ever wanted was to hear it again.

I know if I get up from this table, the nice day we had together will turn into a nightmare, but he’ll be out there and we’ll be together again.

I want to say, ‘Give me one more chance. I won’t cheat on you again.’

I think I saw my rapist at the police station the other day. He was behind the counter telling me he wouldn’t be taking a report.

I drove to the next town and went to that station. He was there again. He told me to wait there. I am waiting for a long while. I am bleeding. The adrenaline wears off. I collapse.

He returns. He tells me he was never going to take a report. He wanted me to wait while he called every town or county office to tell them I was crazy. They know I’m not.

My family thinks I’m crazy. My boyfriend knew I wasn’t; my ex-boyfriend. I know I’m not. He just couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t stop. I wanted control again.

It was in me like a cry from the deep, an unvented volcano, hysterical, a clawing pistol.

The voice on the television is like a siren. I feel the compulsion to see him again. I walk in and it is not my boyfriend, but him. He’s wearing different clothes and talking about invading a foreign country, but it’s him.

‘It’s great, you know, oil, war, it keeps the economy running smooth.’ He is dressed like a general and rubbing baby oil on a woman’s back while she’s on commercial break, pretending she is anywhere, but where she is in that moment.

I am filled with grief again, disappointment. I told myself I wouldn’t do this again. I told myself I would stay at the kitchen table and drink my chai and pretend it never happened to me the way my mother pretends it didn’t.

I am the actor, but my mother plays the part of ignorance so well. The world is ending outside and they do not want to see it.

There is a knock on the door. I know I am going to see him again. He is outside. I am at my house and it is midnight. He tells me it’s over. He’s finally done it. He can’t hurt me anymore.

I am crying in my sleep. A bang is ringing in my ears, it must be my alarm clock. No, not an alarm. My boyfriend’s superior is dead. He shot him on my cousins’ front lawn. I am glad of it.

The sky is red. I thank God it’s all over. I don’t need to be afraid anymore. I’m going to lose my boyfriend, I’m sad for that.

The hum of the microwave in the background of Ragnarök. The universe continues. The chai runs into my lap. I’ve spilled it. The smell of it rises up from the table cloth and sticks to my pants. The stain is spreading. Everyone flusters over it.

My family cares for me. For the smallest thing, they will come to clean and fix. They are generally very neat people. They have swept near everything about me under the rug.

I only come out for birthdays and holidays. I live in the city now and I don’t see them often, unfortunately. They have ceased to love me just because I am who I am.

It was not endless. It did not last forever. They’re older now and have outgrown looking up to me with that guileless admiration that springs from the youthful fountain of unconditional love. It is like Pinochet locked that spring of love off long ago, frozen by winter, by the cynicism of capitalism, by apathy. I miss his sweaty palms.

I miss that night we stood under a construction awning from sunset to dawn to Denny’s terrible coffee. My nose was cold, his arms were around my waist, and my back was warm where his body touched mine. My hands on top of his and then his over mine. We took turns, keeping each other’s hands warm as we watched the early September rain. From sunset to dawn to Denny’s terrible coffee, I loved everything about you. I miss the white noise of your snoring the day after we made love for the first time.

The roof is leaking with chai. The ceiling is bubbling up and then breaking into tears. The house is flooding inside. I am crying so hard I cannot

My nostrils are leaking. I am snorting, snorting, and then I am crying so hard I cannot breathe through my nose.

The water is up to our ankles, to our knees, Then all the way up to my eyes and I cannot breathe. The dream is repeating in a loop. Every time I pull myself up and out, the whirlpool pulls me back down. My family is outside. They have gotten out. I do not know how.

In this reoccurring dream, I reach for them so they can pull me out. I want to join them on the front lawn. What would my life have been if I had joined my boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, when he moved overseas?

‘Come to Indonesia. Keep the Wonder.’ The voice on the television is muffled. It sounds like cotton in my ears, like it is before my ears have popped on the plane I did not take.

His voice,

‘Runaway. Stray.

Hair I brush back.

Come with me,

why won’t you come with me?’

A torrent of anger,

another commercial jingle,

‘Come away with me, let’s fly away,

Why won’t you come with me when I killed him for you?’

The television static warps his voice,

slows it down like the power going out,

the tv goes dead,

a groan like a ship breaking,

another outburst,

and then the house falls apart completely.

I wake up with my heart is pounding inside, knocking so hard like it’s trying to get out, another nightmare.

My t-shirt is soaked through and I can’t breathe. I look down at my chest. My nose started bleeding in my sleep. My landlord turned the thermostat up too high again and the air is stifling dry.

I throw off my blanket. I throw off my shirt and head into my bedroom’s water closet for nose drops.

‘I wish my ex really had killed his chief.’ I think as I brush my teeth.

I think of the way my jailbird ex would softly caress me in the hot shower. He’d wash my hair when I couldn’t even get up to bathe on my own. The lather peach scented shampoo and coffee body scrub were my comfort.

Those were the days of wine and roses. He’d buy them and sprinkle them over our baths, only the scented candles’ light to guide his mouth to my shoulder. I didn’t want him to see me well when I was still cut up.

Cops protect their own until one of them does what is right. They liked my ex until he pushed to bring charges up against “a few bad apples”.

‘Some Rosen rot, rotten apples,

who were running a human trafficking ring,

Squeaky clean records,

polished boots,

wearing the cologne of hypocrisy.

the smell of old, disgusting f***ers

clinging to my clothes.’

The steam of the water opens my sinuses open again. I turn the water off and hop out.

I got paid last week and bought the biggest, softest, fluffiest towels. I wrap one around my body, step out of the bath, and walk back into my bedroom. I throw an old, cropped taekwondo tee and a black as depression sweatshirt that I wore out during the pandémie. I push my thumb through the hole on the left cuff, pull on black running shorts, and double up on black, thigh high socks (for warmth).

I head into the kitchen and brew myself hot water, a cup of nothing. I grab a bottle of Grey Goose to forget how empty I feel inside. I turn on my pill and listen to Yamê’s Call of Valhalla.

‘F***ing p****,’ I half mumble; so quietly to myself that it almost stays a thought. ‘He should have just shot him.’

I look out the window as I crack open a carafe to carelessness. The sky is grey. Snow is falling. It’s already piling up. I wish I was a bird, so I could fly away from the price of this rent not rent in two.

They made a pretense of being on the side of justice. Then they f***ed him over and shifted the blame onto him. They put him away six years ago.

We haven’t spoken in as many years. My mother would kill me if I did. I went once in the beginning. Now that rapist calls her from the station every month and threatens to kill her if I go again.

I wonder if the snow is too deep to walk to the gas station to buy cigarettes. I call them over the phone and the chick who works there tells me they’re open, but they’ll be closing in an hour or two because of the weather. It’s supposed to be a three foot pile up. I take a swig of my vodka and tighten the cap back on to the bottle.

After we hang up, I grab my Harvard sweatshirt and sweatpants that I left on the couch last night and put it on over the rest of my outfit.I pull my sheepskin, Sacai jacket out of the front hall’s closet and slide my feet into my black Doc Martens. I grab my wallet and shove it in my coat pocket as I walk out of my apartment door, the auto-lock clicks shut behind me.

I don’t smoke, my ex doesn’t either, but he writes a list every month and they’re always on it. He trades them for commissary money, so I send them. He bought me this coat between the nothing money they pay in the kitchen and selling this crap to other dudes. It’s a bribe, this jacket, to not date anyone while he’s in there.

I walk down the hall and hit the elevator button.

‘Don’t hop off and be another man’s bunny. Don’t fly off and be another man’s lovebird.’

He sent me that in a letter to me once, at the end of his list. It made me cry like an idiot. Those words repeat themselves in my head for the next five flights down and occupy my thoughts like my reoccurring dream. This, the crunch of my boots in the snow, and the dancing steam of my exhalation engross me for the whole walk to the gas station.