Free An Unrestored Woman by Shobha Rao Page A

had been accepted for early admission at Dartmouth, and yet I knew Meena would have her way. There was nothing I could say that she wouldn’t find a way around. “Come on, Anju, it’ll be fun. You can invite that friend you have, what’s her name?”
    â€œCelia.”
    â€œYeah. Invite Celia.”
    â€œWhat if Mom and Dad find out?”
    Meena stared at me. “Who would tell them?”
    By nine o’clock that night, over thirty people were at our house. More carloads seemed to arrive every few minutes. The kitchen counter filled with bottles of alcohol; one group of freshmen was doing shots in the dining room. A stereo blasted through the rooms, and all the windows were swung open to the warm summer night. Yet, even in the midst of the crowds of people drinking and shouting and sweating, I could smell the loamy, humid scent of the creek. I leaned out the back window. The Finleys had moved long ago but the creek still flowed between our houses, a beguiling, silver thread. Its tinny ramble, cloaked beneath the other night sounds—the crickets and frogs and rustle of birch leaves—felt to me like a greater music than the one coming from the stereo.
    â€œHey,” a voice said behind me. I turned. A boy I recognized from the swim team. “You don’t have a blanket or something, do you?” His skin was alabaster, and his light hair and blue eyes haloed in the moonlight.
    â€œWhy do you need a blanket?”
    â€œOne of the girls is cold.”
    â€œIt’s eighty degrees out.”
    He smiled mischievously. “We filled a tub with ice. To hold the liquor. She fell in.”
    I sighed loudly. He followed me to the upstairs linen closet where I handed him a blanket. As he started back down, he called to me, still smiling, “Hey, I know you. Aren’t you Anju like un-happy?”
    â€œFuck off.”
    People were upstairs too. A clump sprawled on Meena’s bed, smoking. Another group congregated around the bathroom door. A girl shrieked and ran past me. On the second floor, the air was still and hot, and the music wailed as if through a long tunnel. I felt strange, as though I were in an unfamiliar house and had to find my way out. I was also dizzy from the beer I’d drunk, and as I walked through the rooms I strained to hear the sounds of the creek. By the time I opened the door to my parents’ room, my head throbbed, and the heat pressed against me like a wall.
    At first I thought the mounds on the bed were coats. Then I saw movement. I leaned to close the door and that’s when a hand reached out and pushed the sheets away. I saw the boy first, a boy from my junior year math class. Below him was Meena. He stirred above her with small grunts, but Meena was turned toward me. Half her face was shadowed by his body but her eyes were alive to me, watching me with an intensity that quieted all other sounds.
    Then she smiled a half smile and her hand left the bed and reached toward me.
    Neither one of us blinked. I saw the slope of her breast, its glistening peak. The gold granules of her skin, so like mine. As I stared, a stillness settled on me like a blanket. Her hand remained. In her gaze, in her outstretched hand, seemed to be the thing that had eluded me all my life, a gesture of such pale and abiding love—thin as gauze—that I nearly stepped forward and took it.
    The moment passed. The boy looked over at me and laughed. Meena punched him in the chest and told him to hurry. I slammed the door shut, terror and disgust rising. My legs quivered as I descended the stairs. In a week I would leave for college. I would never return home to stay. My visits would become shorter and shorter. I would study abroad, in France, and would move then to New York and through a string of lovers and heartaches. But something of that night would always remain.
    The next afternoon, after I’d cleaned the house and taken all of the bottles to the curb,