6/30/2023 0 Comments An unaccustomed earth![]() She’d refused to emerge from the closet until the policeman lifted her by the armpits and dragged her forcefully from the apartment, telling Paul to see her home. “Sang had got down on all fours and crawled into Farouk’s coat closet, weeping uncontrollably, at one point hitting herself with a shoe. We had been careful, and you had left nothing behind.” ![]() It might have been your child but this was not the case. Those cold, dark days I spent in bed, unable to speak, burning with new life but mourning your death, went unquestioned by Navin, who had already begun to take a quiet pride in my condition. By then I needed no proof of you absence from the world I felt it as plainly and implacably as the cells that were gathering and shaping themselves in my body. A small obituary ran in The New York Times. In February, Giovanna got in touch to say she had heard the news from Paola. It was another winter in Massachusetts, thirty years after you and your parents had first gone away. I returned to my existence, the existence I had chosen instead of you. We were married, we were blessed, my hand was placed on top of his, and the ends of our clothing were knotted together. ![]() And yet without his even realizing it, firmly but without force, Navin pulled me away from you, as the final gust of autumn wind pulls the last leaves from the trees. ![]() I was repulsed by the sight of him, not because I had betrayed him but because he still breathed, because he was there for me and had countless more days to live. “At the end of that week, Navin arrived to marry me. ![]()
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