consent

My brother and I have a nickname for our sister's fiance: Jerkface.

Not sure if it was because he smelled like ass or if it was the tattoos or the red-brown teeth. He stayed at the Khairatabad clubs drinking pig swill and standing in the smoky restroom queues chatting up those ladies-who-used-to-be-men until three in the morning. Jerkface got kicked out of college twice for getting into drunken fights. Even before getting thrown out he was no scholar; he averaged five on tens and six on tens, a straight-F student. Somehow in the few short months he stayed in college he managed to get into my sister's skirts. And now she wanted to marry him.

I kept my mouth shut whenever my sister talked to me about Jerkface. We couldn't talk often anyway. She worked at Infosys and those guys had their claws in her ten hours a day. Not sure what she really did, but she took a lot of trips, retreats and knew her boss intimately on the telephone. My sister had a real thing about lonely people. Maybe that's what drew her to Jerkface.

She called me last week to tell me they were going to be married. I sat in my rathole Rahway apartment looking out my window, staring at the brilliant convertibles and the long-legged miniskirted Black girls piling into them, when I got the phone call. I could tell that her "Hello?" was quiet and excited, even if we were separated by seven thousand miles. I waited a second, my ass on my bed and my feet against the wall. My room was tight.

Turned out she told the folks about Jerkface, and they weren't impressed. I knew why. (It's not like my aversion to Jerkface came out of nowhere.) Nobody wanted her to end up with this fool. When she told me about the part where Amma and Appa reacted to the announcement, she started to cry. She kept asking me why they wouldn't come around.

That was a rhetorical question and we both knew it.

I haven't talked to anna yet, she then said, sighing, But I know he's not happy. Nobody's supporting me.

It's so sudden, I said.

If my brothers don't help me, she said, who else can I ask?

She pulled her Brahmanastram on me; the ultimate Guilt Trip. I never figured how to handle it. She took advantage of my silence to tell me that Jerkface was coming to Jersey to find a job.

Then she said, tell me you're OK with it. Please.

It was time for me to strategically roll over my phone and cut the call.



I should have given my consent then. There's such a rich precedent for this kind of defiance in my family, especially in our women. Two of my aunts ran away from home. (My mother eloped with my father when they were both students at Andhra University but that was different. My father had brains, a half-dozen degrees, and an actual job.) I knew my sister would elope with Jerkface whether or not she had anyone's consent.

I got a lot of flak for this attitude from the Girl.

You still have to tell her, she said. You're lying to her if you tell her it's OK. She stood over me with her war chest hanging out, her unbound hair turned into frizzy rays by the Jersey humidity. I pulled her down to the bed by her bra strap.

Telling her everything was a bad idea. She went on to scare me shitless reciting one doomsday situation after another. What if he never got a job? What if he wouldn't let her go out? What if he beat their kids? What if she gets nightmare in-laws? It's funny how, when she rants, she waves her fists and spits a little. The questions soon became a steep price to pay for her shirtlessness.

Then when I tried telling her it was none of our business, Girl went apoplectic.

She said, If I had big brothers I'd tell them to beat you up. My very Central Jersey Girl had a much younger brother and impossibly strict parents. If they knew that we were together in my shoebox I'd be incarcerated. If Girl had an older brother, she'd be holding up my bloody carcass, so I told her that I was very happy she wanted me dead.

I think you should go see Jerkface, she said.

It took me about five extra seconds and creative bra hook maneuvering to get her to shut up. Half-an-hour later she was sleeping, nose into my pits, my leg twisted up in a Charlie Horse. I though through the pain, why not? My phone seemed light years away, sitting up on my dresser next to the weak fan.

Later.




My sister is a tenacious girl. She's asked me to meet Jerkface before. Set up a dinner date and everything for the two of us at the Hyderabad House the summer before I got accepted to Rutgers. I blame this on a supreme display of brotherly affection, I went. I knew he wouldn't show up before he didn't. I even made a good show of waiting for the guy, but half an hour later, I just went home. My sister called me later, sheepish.

I think he's scared, she said.

The problem was her prettiness. It's unfortunate she was born into our family. From the time she could talk the folks have been keeping her away from the guys who always scuttled around to get a second look up her skirt. You'd think that having two older brothers might scare these monkeys away but that never stopped them from coming around the place, sneaking a look up the balcony, waiting for my sister to drop a plait so that they could climb their stinky selves up the coconut-oiled Rapunzel ladder.

Before Jerkface she'd seen three serious boyfriends, two stalkers and a thousand wandering eyes following her every move. My brother and I were in college by the time she started getting serious with Jerkface, so we couldn't stop her or advise her. It was unfairness on a cosmic level that someone like him could get a girl.

It'd be stupid for me to say that no one knew. Of course we knew. Every time Jerkface snuck up the side stairs into the balcony, we knew what was going on. My brother and I came home on vacation and we'd see them talking. A lot more went on than just talking, we knew. Somewhere downstairs my folks would have fistfuls of yogurt rice in their palms, their eyes glued to the news. Masters of Self-Deception. Now that my sister had taken it to the illogical next step they were flustered. In their game plan they got to choose the groom. Now that the plan was almost collapsed I was its last hope.

So when I sent Girl home that night I called my sister and said I'd meet Jerkface. She pierced a hole through my right ear, that's how loud she shrieked.




I went to meet Jerkface on Thursday after five. I even started so early that, though my train managed to stop for close to fifteen minutes along the five minute stretch between Rahway and Metropark, I got there before time. Bastard didn't show. I waited at the Dakshin express for a hundred thousand years while I kept ordering mirchi bajji. I always manage to impress the Girl with the way I can eat these like candy, these supposedly spicy as fuck juicy peppers with fat seeds. The fan pulsated into the summer heat and the thousands of screaming kids and embarrassed parents threw each other at their food, scattering grease all over the floor.

To my credit I sat there so long even the owner became concerned. He offered me some free bajji, pawned off some of my vital statistics, and asked me if I was married.

When my sister called me I'd tell her that sorry, her loss, couldn't do anything about it. I couldn't give her my consent. Couldn't my indifference be enough?



Girl and I were on a very, very interesting trajectory when Jerkface called. Make that Fartface. Dickface. Fuckface.

"Sorry, ra" he said, "Can we do it again?"