If I Tell You the Truth Read online

  Dedication

  for Gayatri,

  whose wisdom guided

  so much of this work

  trigger warnings

  sexual assault

  police brutality

  immigrant trauma

  victim-blaming

  domestic violence

  alcoholism

  depression

  anxiety

  Foreword

  This story was imagined and written prior to Covid-19. For an in-depth discussion on how the pandemic would have affected protagonists Kiran and Sahaara, please see the notes section. If you wish to avoid spoilers about key plot points, do not read the notes section until you have completed the novel.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  trigger warnings

  foreword

  kiran: august 2001–march 2002

  i wasn’t exactly sure

  when i landed the earth did not immediately shatter

  like morning sickness choices felt foreign to my body

  the phone call home

  so i simply spit out the two words she needed to know

  the reason

  lost and found

  the morning after

  in the kitchen

  biology major

  freshie

  funland

  hey, kiran?

  a lovely family dinner

  sometimes i wondered

  the talk

  it’s not a terrible thing

  another universe

  searching for my spine

  joti told me

  weighing my options

  a cup of cha and light conversation

  spilled milk

  an ultimatum

  dear mom,

  this isn’t a poem.

  the vaginal exam

  three months

  six months

  nine months

  ਸਹਾਰਾ / sahaara (n)

  the social worker

  on the perfect mom

  our paths diverged

  and so i stayed there

  kiran: january 2005–september 2005

  a very long day

  how i survived

  august 4, 2005

  the tragedy of september

  sahaara: august 2012–june 2019

  being a kid sucked.

  grade five

  grade six

  grade seven

  then came my anger

  my heart crashed into the rocks

  google search

  a confession

  another confession

  jeevan

  welcome to eighth grade

  the anxiety came heaviest at night

  sahaara, can we talk?

  grade nine

  the wounded deer

  grade ten

  learner’s permit

  grade eleven

  sahaara: august 2019–january 2020

  an introduction

  just before i left the party

  grade twelve

  halloween

  the house party

  ਪੰਗਾ / panga / trouble

  trigger

  so how was your night?

  by the end of november i’d already told him too much

  an honest self-portrait

  flirting with temptation

  things to do when the boy you liked couldn’t make it (again)

  all the reasons why i am enough

  selfie

  it was an unspoken rule

  january 1, 2020

  revelations

  why didn’t you tell me?

  sahaara: march 2020–august 2020

  the unexpected blooms of spring

  my grandmother’s smile

  for a child to sponsor their parent’s immigration

  choosing one half of my heart

  the doe

  just look at me

  coping

  my random-point-in-the-year resolution

  a thread of joy, severed

  prom

  grad caps & feels

  we didn’t go to dry grad

  this summer

  the last days of august were slipping through our fingers

  the fight at the restaurant

  the butterflies in my stomach

  an impossible woman

  financial planning

  dead prez bumped

  my mind was a whirlpool

  a series of collisions in the parking lot

  desperate measures

  kiran: midnight, september 1, 2020

  beneath a moonless sky

  behind the veil

  the veil tears

  sahaara: september 2020–february 2021

  if i tell you the truth

  the unspeakable

  hari ahluwalia

  tonight

  the next morning

  waking from a bad dream

  i google his name again

  we mail the pr application

  sahaara: february 2021–june 2021

  i have never known a rage like this

  the letter

  i didn’t mean to find the letter

  conflicted

  nervousness flutters in mom’s voice

  speaking sach to power

  helpless

  before i get into my bed

  on sunday, the world will know my truth

  perspectives

  at the gurdwara

  of course, the aunties weigh in

  hope

  despair

  depression feels like

  at four in the morning

  i am unraveling

  questions for an absent mother

  we knock on the door

  project (re)proposal

  the water in his eyes

  how do you know it’s real?

  what would lisbeth do?

  after all this running

  the night before the flight

  mom’s rules for mumbai

  departures

  the plane builds speed

  my daughter sleeps in my lap

  mom is drifting off against my shoulder

  customs

  arrivals

  the taj hotel

  i suppose it’s beautiful

  please

  miss dhanjal

  motherhood is

  just before sleep steals her away

  the silence is haunting

  sleepless, i check whatsapp

  a rough start

  wrong move

  aasra shelter

  the interviews

  portrait ii: khushi

  portrait iii: saima

  portrait iv: radhika

  an afterthought

  friendship

  sahaara is getting her makeup done

  now or never

  that which is etched into my bones

  you are not your dna

  dear universe

  hardeep

  closure

  lotus & bee café

  amid darkness, a glistening moment

  the city is in motion

  the physics of my honesty

  checkmate

  on the napkin

  breaking free

  dear body

  while mom sleeps

  him

  jeevan

  i’ve been poring over priyanka’s book

  the rest of the painting

  election day

  to be read aloud

  Notes

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Praise

  Books by Jasmin Kaur

  Back Ad

&n
bsp; Copyright

  About the Publisher

  some stories

  bury themselves so deep

  within the flower bed of the mind

  that the earth trembles. throbs.

  when they are dug out.

  Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

  You’ve done this before. You can work through a panic attack.

  Focus on something specific. Something that can bring you back down to earth.

  I remember my daughter’s eyes. They are oceans of deep brown, but if you catch them in the light, they are liquid amber. Round as my own and glistening with a hopefulness that is foreign to me, they are so very similar to another pair that still appears in my dreams. A pair of eyes that she will never meet, although their owner still breathes. She has a smile that digs deep into her cheeks, a smile that soothes my trembling hands more times a day than I can count. Her mess of wavy, jet-black hair is just as unruly as mine. It frames honeyed brown skin that illuminates beneath the sun and hides a tiny, rose-shaped scar just above her right ear.

  And then there’s her jaw.

  It is a sharpened blade so unlike my rounded chin. I suppose I should confess that there are moments when the resemblance is too much. When, out of the corner of my eye, I think I see someone else hidden there: the man who has, unknowingly, placed me in the back seat of this police vehicle.

  kiran

  august 2001–march 2002

  i wasn’t exactly sure

  if this could be considered

  running away from home

  when my parents were the ones

  who put me on the flight

  and waved goodbye at the terminal

  go to school

  study hard

  come home

  don’t get into any trouble

  in between.

  when i landed

  the earth did not

  immediately shatter

  and wasn’t it dizzying

  how my aunt and uncle picked me up

  from vancouver international airport

  and i made perfectly polite small talk

  all the way to surrey

  as though absolutely nothing was wrong

  as though i could, in fact, be the girl

  mom had always expected:

  the well-behaved girl

  the masked girl

  the studious girl

  who would go to school

  and then marry the perfect man

  from the perfect family

  just for her mother’s

  nod of approval

  as though i hadn’t thrown up twice on the plane

  and rehearsed the phone call exactly eleven times

  (i still wasn’t ready)

  i’d left chandigarh

  the only home i’d ever known

  at the height of a humid august

  with a tiny secret blossoming in my belly

  and canada greeted me with chilly wind

  dry as bark against my unexpecting skin

  as if the earth herself needed to remind me

  that nothing would be the same.

  like morning sickness

  choices felt foreign

  to my body

  my parents’ demands usually

  came packaged as suggestions:

  biology is the best field to enter.

  don’t you want to be successful?

  good families want foreign-educated

  daughters-in-law with homegrown morals.

  you should study in canada.

  imagine how easy

  your life would be if you

  married into the ahluwalia family.

  go meet their son for lunch.

  get to know him more.

  the engagement doesn’t

  need to be soon.

  why don’t you marry prabh

  after you finish your

  university program?

  when i missed my period

  two weeks after xxxxxxxxx

  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

  that day i needed to scrub

  from my mind forever

  when i smuggled the pregnancy test

  from a shop where no one

  would recognize me

  when i stared at that little +

  unblinking, unmoving

  something cracked

  beneath my chest

  i knew i needed

  to make a decision

  —and quick

  i knew that this decision

  could only come from me.

  the phone call home

  there was no blueprint for it

  no easy way to tell my mother the truth

  when we were two icy continents

  who only knew each other from afar

  i didn’t know how to say

  that the boy i thought i loved

  had called me a liar

  that his brother had done something

  i needed to burn from my memory

  that my body had become an enemy

  i was forced to live with day and night

  that i was terrified and shattering

  and ached to be held

  that i needed my mom.

  so i simply spit out

  the two words

  she needed to know

  i’m pregnant.

  what do you mean?

  i mean—i’m

  pregnant.

  this is why i told you

  to be careful

  when you are alone with prabh!

  it doesn’t matter whether

  you are engaged or not.

  a man is still a man.

  i hesitated for a moment.

  i couldn’t bring myself to tell her.

  the reason

  when mom asked

  whether i’d scheduled the abortion

  it wasn’t so much a question

  as it was a matter of fact

  in what universe

  would her teenage daughter

  who had just crossed an ocean

  plan to raise a baby?

  she would never know

  how my frost-coated heart

  pined for someone

  to call its own.

  lost and found

  between the pages of a story

  i could hide from all of them

  and me

  but in poetry

  i found a mirror

  a place where light

  could return to my chest

  on this endless, tearful night

  the sea of my stomach churned

  as i searched for rest

  in a bed that wasn’t mine

  and i tried not to shiver

  thinking of the storm brewing

  in my mother

  slowly but surely

  the star-drenched words

  of hafiz and rumi

  steadied my breath

  asking me to trust

  that stiller waters could exist

  somewhere in this body.

  the morning after

  My thumb traced over the words printed on yellow-worn paper as a fresh tear betrayed me. Rumi’s Sufi poem insisted that what I sought was also seeking me.

  I wanted, so painfully, to believe him.

  A fat droplet slipped through my fingers and landed directly on the ghazal. Over the months since the violation, it had almost become a ritual to cry into this book. Dried tears jutted from its pages like ribs peeking out from skin. Each tear was an emblem of a lonely night when I wanted to break free of my body. They were evidence of hurt but also proof that I could solidify and survive.

  I was seeking safety. If safety was seeking me in return, I would kiss its hands in gratitude. In my eighteen years of existence, I’d never felt more alone, more vulnerable, more heart-shatteringly afraid.

  Last night, my aunt and uncle picked me up from the airport and drove me to their home in Surrey. Sitting in what would be my
bedroom while I was living in Canada, I made the most terrifying phone call of my life.

  I told Mom that I was pregnant. My mom. As in, Hardeep Kaur. As in, the woman who once told me that I couldn’t use tampons because they’d take away my virginity.

  There was no going back, no more delaying the inevitable series of catastrophes that would arise from her only child being pregnant out of wedlock. What was going through her mind? What was she doing? Where was she sending her earth-rumbling rage now that I was no longer in arm’s reach?

  I dabbed at the fallen tear with my gray cotton sleeve and reluctantly closed the book’s saffron cover. Its spine couldn’t support me forever. Chachi had already knocked on the bedroom door twice, asking if I was ready for breakfast.

  It was nearly noon.

  With a sigh, I dropped The Musings of Rumi among the perfectly folded chunnis and jeans and hoodies sitting in my oversized suitcase. I would try to unpack later today. Perhaps it would help me settle into these new surroundings.

  Right now, I had to put on a show for Chachi. It wouldn’t be long before she’d return to the door, wondering if everything was okay. I’d be forced to sit with her in the kitchen and make small talk without:

  a) Bursting into tears because of the cells proliferating in my abdomen and my mom’s burning anger and, well, my entire catastrophic life

  b) Projectile vomiting, courtesy of violent morning sickness

  Two very difficult tasks, but if Mom had prepared me for anything, it was holding it together before an audience. Composure, she would say. You keep your composure no matter what. Digging through neatly packed stacks of clothing, I carefully drew out a thick black shawl that could hide my blooming stomach.

  At nearly three months pregnant, I was starting to show. I mean, I didn’t think I was showing until Mom made those putrid comments outside the security gate at Delhi Airport. In my mother’s typical fashion, she went on a heated tirade about how I didn’t look like a girl worthy of marriage into the Ahluwalia family. Kiran, you need less butter on your praunté and more sit-ups in your workout routine, she had said. At the acid of her words, I squeezed my nails into my sweaty palm, willing my tongue not to snap back. I was about to leave her and Dad’s side for the first time in my life. Four years of university in Canada. Four years of oxygen. Four years to figure myself out without the fire of my parents’ scrutiny hot against my skin.