mirror, mirror, on the wall

Trisha Khattar

previously published in Kalopsia Lit — vague descriptions of sex, explicit language.

“You’re with a woman.” 

“Yes.” 

“In... love. Pyaar.” 

“I- that’s complicated.” 

“How?” 

Curled up on the seat of the toilet in the aftermath of The Argument with tear-stained cheeks, I know what he’s asking and yet I don't respond right away. 

“I don’t know,” I murmur, freely handing over the ammunition he needs to rip me apart. It’s 1 a.m. and at this point, I just want to hear his voice. Tonight feels like the moment the music turns off at a dance, and you’re snapped back into reality — reminds me of days painted in a midnight blue before a night of blinding beautiful red. Today the strokes of the brush are rough, color a darker shade closer to black.  

I need this. Everything is healthy in moderation, right? I haven’t looked into the mirror of this bathroom in weeks. I deserve this. 

“You don’t know. So you’re not in love with a woman?” he remarks, quite predictably. He raises one eyebrow, gazing down at me. It’s apparent in the scorn of his faint smirk that for once, he’s glad to have something over me. 

“What do you want to hear, Kabir?” I sigh. “Yes, I’m in love with a woman? She seduced me, drew me away to the dark side. I bet that’s it.” 

The smile slips off of his face. 

“Or no, I’m not in love with her because — what is it you say, again? Aise nahin hota,” he flinches as if the words are a knife at his throat, and they are. I intend them to be. This is not how it’s done, Ananya. I giggle hysterically. 

He shakes his head, and it’s too much to hope he’ll give this up so early in the night, isn’t it? “This woman… She loves you?” he asks, eyes indecipherable.

I don’t answer. I fix my gaze on the bottle of toothpaste up on the counter instead, idly noting that it’s running out. I know I’d written it on the list I gave Maya when she left to buy groceries last Saturday. We had just fought, I remember. Her brows furrowed, words sharp and biting. The corner of the crumpled stained post-it peeking from her clenched fist and her soft voice when she paused in the doorway, I can feel you pulling away. 

Maybe I should call her now.

But I know that when she comes back, smile as wide as her arms, she’ll pull me in to tuck my face into the curve of her throat. I’m sorry, she’ll whisper, and pretend it was her fault. Her hand will inch upward to the hem of my shirt. Her fingers will brush the underside of my bra. She’ll kiss my neck, fingers a steady pressure at my waist, a light pull downward at my pants, and — 

A sickening feeling will well up in my gut. I know how this will begin and I know how it will end, but I won’t have it in me to stomach it. So I’ll pull away, missing the comfort of her embrace already. I’ll wrap my hands around her wrist where her hand slid under my underwear. The hurt in her eyes will catch on my heart, but she’ll brush it off the way she did yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that. I’ll let her.

I think about her laugh now, remember us tangled underneath a flimsy bedsheet on a hardwood floor as she confesses her deepest secrets. I remember the way she slides up to the counter at night on days when the power cuts out, curling in to make herself smaller so she doesn’t hit her head on the broken cupboards. I remember how her scratchy laugh reverberates in my chest and squeezes my lungs till I can’t catch a breath, her smile barely visible in the flickering candlelight. 

And I remember that when my world slips into a passing whim, she loves me. When I’m adrift amidst panicked hysteria and lifeless calm, deafening clamor and pin-drop silence leaving behind nothing but scratched bloody cuticles and torn out hair, her voice pulls the storm away. She cups the swirling winds and heavy rain in her steady hands, tilts her head against mine until the clouds above our heads are the only sign of catastrophe left.   

And yet. 

What does love matter if I flinch at her every suggestive touch? If every instinct I’ve ever ignored screams Bloody Mary at the caress of her fingers near my thighs? But — sometimes, I’ll let her touch my body like she wants to. She’ll bite, moan my name, whisper exactly what she wants to do to me and I'll let my fingers grip her hips the way hers grip mine (tight but not too tight, fingers spread, move your hands back and forth — you know this, Anya). My face will turn to the ceiling as she climbs over me again. I’ll squeeze my eyes shut, search within me for the answer to a question I've been asking for my whole life — why can’t I just be normal? It’s childish and juvenile, something out of a teen novel, but it strikes true.  

As she mouths at my neck, teeth scratching the skin lightly, I’ll try to muster anything more than mild disgust. Flutter my eyes as if I won’t spend a half hour staring numbly at the hickey the next day, resisting the urge to vomit. 

“—Ananya?” 

My eyes flicker to Kabir instantly. “It's Anya,” I reply sharply. 

“Accha?” He raises an eyebrow. Really? “It’s Ananya,” he corrects. “I know your type, wasting your life away drunk and —” his eyes flicker to the bottle of pills on the counter and he clenches his jaw, “— God knows what else. Going by some gora name, sauntering around with - with girls in some kind of rebellion — I know your type. You’re pathetic.” 

A bout of bitter laughter escapes me.  It’s a familiar feeling, this ball of incredulity wound tightly in my chest until I can’t find where the anger ends and despair begins. It unfurls now, spills out from my chest, climbs up my throat. 

“You think you have the right to call me pathetic?” I hiss. “I don’t know, Kabir, you don’t seem as if you’re in a very favorable position to cast judgments on being pathetic right now.” I stand up from the seat of the toilet and lean into the mirror, my breath fogging up his neck on the glass. “Or are you not the same man who drove his daughter away?” 

“You don’t know anything about me or my daughter,” he spits, crossing his arms petulantly. 

“And you don’t know anything about me. So shut the fuck up and go back to wherever it is you go when you’re not in my fucking mirror.” 

His eyes flash. “My daughter was misguided, I simply set her straight.” 

“Set her straight? There was a reason she ran away from you — don’t pretend you knew her, you knew nothing about her! She hated you and your condescending lectures and your stupid family values, she hated you!” 

The mirror shatters at the edges, thin cracks spreading like a spider’s web to the edge of his face. The darkness behind him pushes forward and his face twists with rage, eyes squinted, nostrils flaring. I stumble back into the cabinet, banging my head on the edge of its open door. Rows of shampoo bottles and razors scatter around me, clattering against the floor and sink.

“My daughter loved - loves - me, she’s been led astray. You’re nothing like her, meri beti, she’s a good girl —” he cries desperately. My daughter. The darkness pulls him back into the mirror at last, and his voice cuts off, leaving the bathroom silent. 

I slide down the cabinet, trembling. My head throbs. I wince as my hand comes back wet and sticky after I gingerly touch the back of my head. The mirror clears a little, cracks and darkness gone, to reflect my face. I exhale shakily, ignore the dark circles, the bone-deep exhaustion in my eyes. 

The fading echo of my father's voice rings incessantly in my ears. The imprint of his face still lingers on the dirty glass. 

This time it was my fault, I tell myself firmly. I lost my temper too early. 

I’ve missed him. 

Meri beti, she’s a good girl.  

Wiping my eyes with the backs of my hands, I tilt my head, watching my reflection smile back brightly. My lips remain flat. She waves, raises her eyebrows at the toilet in a gentle reminder. I nod. Her figure blurs until it disappears completely.  

On my way out of the bathroom, I pause at the toilet and reach for the nearly empty bottle of pills on the bathroom counter my father had been glancing at and tilt the oblong disks into the bowl. The toilet clunks as the pills swirl down into the sewer. We’d have to get that fixed, too, I remind myself, the noise was quickly becoming annoying.   

I decide to leave my makeup the way it is, smeared and dripping; Maya will be back soon. She’ll take one look at me and apologize, fawn over my drawn face and smudged eyeliner with her hands pressed delicately to my cheeks. Maybe we would have sex. I think I could handle that today. I owe it to her, if nothing else.  

It’s alright, I’ll assure her when she asks the next morning if I took my dose yesterday, I can afford to miss a day or two now.