Grounded

Abstract

Grounded Geeta Kothari (bio) 1 In those days, I shared an apartment in Queens with three other women. We had two bedrooms and rarely appeared in the space at the same time. The one I saw most often was Becky, a pale thing with knobby knees who worked for Delta. Our building was under the flight path, filled with other transients like us. Occasionally, there was a wild party, but mostly we used the place to sleep and park our clothes and souvenirs. We had nothing in common—education, background, or even the flights we crewed–yet somehow we all managed to sleep with the same pilots. We passed men around like cigarettes, and we didn't care about any of them, but this one guy, he became our shared obsession. He lived alone in a studio on the second floor. Chander claimed to be descended from royalty, and he spoke with a crisp British accent that passengers found reassuring. Knowing that his name meant "moon" in Punjabi gave me no armor. He was as beautiful as the moon, with his green eyes, his silky beard, and fair skin. 2 My father fell one day, and that ended my days in the air. I moved back to Manhattan and took the translator's exam at the United Nations, and that's where Becky found me, in the rose garden, staring across the river at Long Island City. She still had her blond secretary hair, but the years had given her some pounds and some lines. "This is his child," she said. She held out her phone and scrolled through a series of photos of a toddler with curly black hair and brown eyes. She didn't look like Chander. Or Becky. She looked like me. "I have to get back to work," I said. "He has no idea. But a girl should know her father." "Why didn't you tell him you were pregnant?" Chander had broken up with her several months before he started working at a private jet company. "I heard he got married," Becky said. I'd never liked her. I was glad she was fat. "At least meet me for a drink after work?" Becky said. Her voice remained steady, like she didn't care. Across the river, Long Island City seemed as far away as Paris. 3 No one expects to own the moon. After our affair ended, Chander let me keep his key. He had nicer furniture, a king-sized bed, cable TV. "Use the place as much as you want," he said. I never slept there, [End Page 24] but on nights when I couldn't sleep, I enjoyed going through his photo albums while watching reruns of I Love Lucy. I drank his duty-free scotch, and in exchange, stocked his refrigerator with fresh milk and orange juice. He'd been raised in an aging haveli in Hoshiarpur—not quite a palace, as Becky claimed, but his family had money, and he was the only son. A British boarding school for his teen years, an unremarkable university degree, and then, turning his back on the family business, he went to flight school. "You have to learn to stand up to them," he said. "Indian parents are the worst." He lectured me on things Indian, with all the authority of someone born and raised in India. One of his sisters still lived at home, and I wondered if this was the same advice he gave her, and if she recognized the irony. Without her living with his parents, surely he wouldn't have been in New York, acting as if he had no family obligations? 4 I met Becky at an Irish bar on Third Avenue. I knew she hated beer, but I couldn't think of anywhere else. I did all my drinking at home, in my bedroom, while reading Paul Bowles. "By the time I found out about the baby, he'd left," Becky said. This was after the plane he was scheduled to work exploded off the coast of Ireland. He had the flu and took a sick day. When he quit, she assumed it was guilt. She thought he...