Short Fiction
Golden Hour
A Short Fiction Story
While growing up, Niru was told that someday she’d have to get married and make babies: preferably boys. That’s how she was raised. Then she met Sarah.
Niru was standing in the middle of Penn Station atrium, looking at the ring — something she didn’t think she’d ever own. She was being confronted by the love someone had for her — a form of emotion completely foreign. Most importantly, she was being asked — not ordered.
She hadn’t anticipated this. Even if there were hints, she hadn’t seen them.
These yearnings were not on her wish list while growing up. She was an obedient kid with set boundaries, unable to look beyond.
Niru just stood there, frozen, grasping the meaning of the feelings Sarah had for her. Despite the newness of it, she embraced the feelings immediately, as if walking in a garden of roses, smelling the fragrant air and feeling rejuvenated with every breath.
She had hopped on a train from New Haven on a Saturday morning expecting it to be a weekend like all the others. A weekend of holding hands and taking long walks on the busy streets of New York. Maybe sharing a falafel wrap at one of those food trucks. Something she found immense comfort in. Something they did together almost every weekend after Sarah moved to New York for a job.
But her expectation of a mundane weekend had been falsified by Sarah’s confrontation.
She looked at Sarah with renewed fervor. She felt the magnetism in her aura. Something she was drawn to with very little control over.
“Wow … gosh, Sarah! I don’t know what to say,” Niru responded as her hands scavenged for a tissue in her pocket.
“I know it’s a bit hasty, but I love you. The time we’ve spent together in the last year is the most memorable of my life. I want you to know what it means to have you in my life, and I want to spend every moment of it with you.” Sarah’s disclosure of her feelings felt like drops of water on parched land. It felt surreal.
The words coming from Sarah hit Niru like a burst of rose petals. They felt smooth. They felt comforting. Most importantly, they felt pure. They didn’t come with a burden of expectation.
But, Niru’s mind withdrew from the present, to a past she’d tried to forget but couldn’t. The past she always kept to herself. The past that hardly anyone knew, not even Sarah.
She thought of her family, whom she hadn’t spoken to in years. They didn’t know her whereabouts. She remembered the dreadful days of getting closer to her wedding to a guy she’d hardly known. The event that had forced her emancipation. She recollected the struggles of her father selflessly working on someone else’s farm and conserving his entire earnings for her wedding.
She remembered witnessing her mother going through the pains of labor, her disappointed father after the births of every unwanted sister. It also reminded her of her half-blind grandmother wearing the same outfit every day and begging for oil to massage her cracked heels.
After her emancipation, she spent her nights awake, thinking, hoping for answers to the letters she sent. Days spent in the fading hopes of forgiveness for stealing the money from her father’s secret spot in the rice jar.
She recollected her deliberate measures to close her eyes and memorize their faces, each day pondering how they would transform and whether she would be able to recognize them someday.
Before she could control it, a wave of tears made their way to her cheeks, this time out of guilt. The guilt of selfishly escaping rather than fighting for the right disgusted her.
Niru suddenly felt the soft touch of Sarah’s hand. It brought her back.
“I wanted to do it in the morning by Times Square, but I chickened. I wanted to do it today, on our dating anniversary,” said Sarah.
“Sorry I’m acting weird. I’m just surprised,” Niru replied.
“That’s ok. It’s getting late, and you should head back to Yale. I don’t want you to feel pressured. I want you to take your time and think over it. Here — take the ring home. Just tell me when you feel like talking about it,” said Sarah.
Niru took the ring in her hand. The rendering portrayal of Sarah’s love for her. She felt every bit of it. It felt like the touch of her hands. It felt like being closer to her.
Deep down she wished to say yes and wear the ring with pride. She wished to hug Sarah with open arms and kiss her on her lips while the whole world was watching. But her cloudy past didn’t allow her to be frivolous. It just kept pushing her down in the darkness where she’d lifted herself from years ago.
Did I have any other option?
Was there anyone thinking about what I wanted?
Did anyone care to know what made me happy?
All these questions hovered over her in the quest for vindication.
She tried her best to embrace the moment and held Sarah’s hand — this time their fingers more tightly entwined, as they walked towards the platform.
She aspired to stay in the present, but her mind forced her towards the lightless past. The life she’d lived before coming to Yale. The life she’d lived where she’d disguised herself to everyone around her. A life that demanded her to marry a guy and carry his children.
Niru sat alongside Sarah on one of the benches waiting for the train. Her mind continued to drag her on a slippery slope of the past that tattered her. She felt tired of contemplating nothing but shame in the eyes of her family. The family she once loved and cared for.
The approaching squeaky noise of the wheels confirmed the arrival of the train. The train Niru was desperate to get on and relive everything that’d just happened.
Niru embraced Sarah while fidgeting with the ring. As the train stopped, she held the ring tight and hopped on. As the train rolled forward, she kept looking back at Sarah’s thinning figure waving at her from a distance.
The train was lifeless, which offered Niru the choice of seating. She sat on a window seat observing the change in the landscape, reminiscing about the events from today. She replayed Sarah’s proposal countless times as her eyes envisaged every minute detail. She felt the ring over and over again.
Niru looked through the window as her mind flipped through the pages of her relationship with Sarah. It had started with an ad for a shared apartment, which quickly transitioned to coffee dates, sharing food at food trucks, long weekend walks in central park, marriage equality marches, small getaways here and there. She adored everything about Sarah. Her soul had been craving for a haven that was found in the comfort of Sarah’s arms.
Despite their closeness, Niru maintained distance to protect her past.
She envied Sarah, looking at the life she’d never had. She envied her fearless attitude towards building a life for herself. She admired her belief in not hiding or running away but celebrating who she was.
But when it came to opening up about her personal struggles, she shirked. She didn’t feel like expanding her misery beyond her own fringe. So, she kept it to herself. Whenever she was questioned, she lied. She made up stories. Now all of those stories were gaping back at her asking for answers. How was she going to justify that, especially after today? She dreaded to think about how Sarah would react if she told her the truth.
“How did your parents react when they first found out?” Sarah had asked one day while they were sipping coffee at a Starbucks on campus.
“They supported me through and through,” Niru lied. Her family didn’t have the slightest idea.
All these false disclosures confronting her past stabbed her like thorns.
Due to her baggage, Niru remained isolated without making friends. She found the needed comfort in Sarah and was content with the sole acquaintance.
She didn’t want to open up her life’s scuffles in front of someone she’d hardly known. But deep down the question haunted her. She speculated how her conformist family in the small village plucking crops in someone’s farm would have reacted to something so radical.
Whenever the topic of her parents came up, she lied. She dreaded to tell the truth. Mostly because she loved her family. She valued the sacrifices her parents made to give her the life that they knew. There was nothing wrong with it. The only thing was, Niru was not in a position to accept that. She would have never been able to, but her parents would have never understood her preferences.
She got off at the train stop closest to the campus and started walking. The snow from last week’s storm was still stuck on the ground. She felt tired in her mind and thought of skipping work for the night. But then she remembered she was yet to record her expenses from the day. She picked up speed while continuing to toy with the ring in her pocket. She thought of taking it out to see how it looked, but she feared the possibility of dropping it in the snow.
She badged herself into the building where her office was located on the east side of the campus. She rushed there, skipping alternate steps.
Niru entered the office and hurried to her desk. She took out the ring and placed it by the old diary. She delicately turned its flailed pages and started writing her expenses. The ritual served as a daily closure from constant guilt, providing a cleansing. The burden of stolen money now felt light, the memories appeared less haunting, the past looked less dark after its daily conclusion.
Niru closed the diary and walked to the window of her office. It had a view of the street with lamps on both sides. The campus at this hour was dead with hardly a soul around.
She wiped the dew on the hazy glass window and opened it to embrace the cold breeze. She felt the cold air with her eyes closed, yearning to be somewhere else. Maybe in the arms of Sarah, maybe somewhere closer to her family. She closed the window to bring back the silence she craved.
Usually, at this time, she would be too deep in her research, but she didn’t feel like reading a word. She glanced at her desk full of research papers. She felt like burning each one of them to ashes and running back to her parents. But deep down she knew she’d lost that opportunity on the night of her emancipation. Now she’d no other option than to keep running.
Niru put back her oversized sports jacket and paced her office, stopping at the mirror in the corner, gawking at her appearance, missing her long-plaited hair having to cut it off to disguise herself, her once dusky complexion from working on the farm was now looking pale. She thought about the cow, the one traded for her wedding and the empty harness of which now hung on the wall in her office.
She glared around the room at every little thing that gawked back at her. The rapidly fading sense of belonging questioned her motive for being at Yale, yet again. She looked at her empty hands. She’d craved freedom but running away had only given her a fake sense of liberation.
She gazed at the mirror from a distance to perceive the reflection of her young self, wearing the petticoat that was frayed in different places. She observed her long-plaited hair, her hardworking parents, her old grandmother living a hollow life, her countless siblings going hungry every alternate night. She saw the rice jar with the money to marry off her sisters without asking for their permission. All of them were gazing back at her offering forgiveness. All of them accepting her with open arms to return back home. All of them demanding her return to the darkness like a black hole.
Her mind furiously scavenged for alternative outcomes, but it offered emptiness every single time. She’d get married someday. Most of all, she’d get married to a guy. The protest would have just resulted in severe condemnation, and nothing more. The result would have been the same. The ideologies possessed were as clear as the wound marks. They were to stay until the body had life in it.
Niru hurled the ring at the mirror with vexation. She dropped her shoulders and collapsed in front of the mirror. She loathed the illusion of the figures in the mirror. They only looked like people who once had a strong presence in her life. But that image was also filled with darkness. The life in it looked uninviting. There wasn’t a moment where it offered pure love like Sarah did.
She tried hard to see if she could see the world she likes in the mirror. A world that accepts her relationship with Sarah. A haven where she doesn’t have to keep reproducing until she gives birth to a boy.
But she failed to see any of it. She could clearly see her transition from being a young girl to a child-bearer at a young age all the way to an old lady begging. Her returned senses rejected that transformation. Suddenly the force that was sucking her into the black hole dwindled.
Niru dropped her shoulders and remained seated on the floor. She had come to a consciousness that she had defeated her own demons and reprieved herself.
She’d run away to finally find the destination she’d hoped for. It was her dissolving in Sarah’s arms forever.
Niru picked up the ring in her hand and stood up looking at the mirror. It offered the true reflection of her she was ready to venerate.
She put the ring on her ring finger. It fit her perfectly.
Niru walked to the window of her office. The fog from last night had disappeared. She opened the window to embrace the distant warmth of the first rays of the sun.
The wounds still hurt, but it felt like they had started to heal. She’d overcome her demons. She missed her family, but she was about to become one.
