(27) Julie Mehta: Festival of Colors
“Michael says Indian girls aren’t his type. I heard him tell Jacob that during gym,” says Meera. “They were talking about that lady who does the evening news on channel 5, you know the one with the boobs?”
Yeah, I know. I open my locker and stare at the books crammed inside. “I can’t believe he actually said that.”
“Trust me, Rach, I heard him. I was so tempted to call him out on it.”
I glance behind me at the hordes of students shuffling down the hall and semi-whisper to Meera, “But he totally flirts with me when we go to debate tournaments.”
“Sure you’re not just imagining that?”
“We talked for like two hours straight on the bus ride home from Sacramento last week.” I grab my chemistry book and shut my locker as the warning bell rings.
“I just don’t want you to get hung up on him when there are so many other guys out there. Like Daniel, for example.”
“Ugh, not again. You know I’m not into short guys. I’m a heightist.”
“Ha, ha. You’re going to the thing for Holi this weekend, right?”
“Of course. My parents want me to take along Sunil and make sure he doesn’t get too crazy.”
“I heard a bunch of people are coming from school.”Penny and Zoe were asking me for a recipe for making color, something ‘authentic, like your grandma would make in India.’”
“Seriously? What did you tell them?”
“I asked them if they’d heard of the internet.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yeah, I did. Was going to ask them if they’d heard of cultural appropriation, but I didn’t want to offend them.” We laugh and hurry to the third period as the hallway rapidly clears.
***
The Holi festival on the athletic field of Finley Community College is especially packed this year and I can’t find Meera amid the chaos despite several texts. Sunil keeps me on my toes, and I have to stop him several times from shooting a water pistol of colors at the widows in white sitting on canvas chairs on the fringes of the field. The smell of frying samosas and pakoras fills the air and the shimmery morning light makes the powdered hues pop against white shirts and brown foreheads and black hair. Joyful clouds of color hang above our heads. My baby brother uses up color quicker than a jar of glitter but friendly college students keep handing us more bottles of strawberry red and twilight blue and dandelion yellow. The front of my old tee shirt is like a rainbow on steroids and the bottom half of my ponytail is purple. When I tell Sunil it’s almost time to go, he squirts me with a barrage of orange.
That’s when I feel the tap on my back. I turn around and for a minute I don’t recognize him. His face is half purple, half red, and his hair is green. “Hey, Rachel.” Michael. My heart seems to climb up into my ears. I’m too stunned to do anything but stare at him.
“This is fun. Do you do this every year?”
I manage a nod. Suddenly I feel exposed, as though the colors are revealing the feelings I’ve kept under wraps all those hours we’ve practiced mock trials. I think of that long bus ride last week when we talked about music and books as dusk settled outside, of how I waited for each passing streetlight to light up his face for just an instant.
“You look so different.” Michael reaches out and touches my cheek, getting a smudge of green on his relatively unmarked hand.
The emcee taps his microphone and the feedback is shrill, cutting through the crowd noise like a knife. “Five more minutes, everyone. Five more minutes.”
With a jubilant cry, Sunil takes off through the crowd, launching color in all directions. I toss a handful of blue at Michael before taking off after Sunil. His eyes widen and I hear him chuckle as he chases after both of us. “Hey, wait up.”
We race around the periphery of the crowd, and I notice a big group of white kids from school, speckled with colors and gathered under the oak trees drinking from water bottles I know are not filled with water.
Suddenly, I slip on a discarded plastic bag of color and face plant into the technicolor grass. Michael leans over to help me. “My little brother,” I say, helplessly watching his speedy toddler legs carry him into the thick of the crowd. Michael takes off after Sunil. I leap to my feet to go after them, my face burning. I’ve been coming to this festival for as long I could remember. But now those kids from school are using this as just another excuse to drink and act dumb.
Michael is closing in on Sunil but can’t stop him from soaking a particularly stern-faced group of widows with a stream of chartreuse. I am surprised to hear their laughter as I call out an apology and muster my let-them-hear-you-in-the-back debate voice to get Sunil to stop. The emcee announces the end of the celebration and everyone cheers. Sunil turns around and around in front of me. “Am I all colored up? Can you see my ‘sin’?” No, I tell him, I can’t see your skin. I can’t see anything but colors.
I thank Michael for his help. “Sure, this was awesome,” he says. “Hey, a bunch of us are going up to Logan’s for pizza later after cleaning up. Around 5:30. Want to come?”
Meera was wrong. She had to be.
“Okay.” I flash him a smile. “I’ll see you there.”
At home, I admire myself in the mirror before stepping into the shower. I let the white suds of my body wash blend with the riot of colors and slip merrily down the drain.
***
Logan’s is an easy walk from my house, and I try not to rush despite my excitement. I’m wearing the plum-colored sweater Meera says makes me look hot and skinny jeans and just a hint of lipstick. When I open the door to Logan’s, all eyes are on me. There’s a table of about 20 people from school, all white. Penny and Zoe are there. And a couple of guys who used to tease me in grade school before moving on to easier prey. Someone snickers. “What is she doing here?” I hear someone else whisper. Michael looks surprised like he didn’t really expect me to show. I hear his voice, so quiet you’d never know he’d taken second place at county debate finals last year. “I invited her.”
I hear “Kavita,” the name of the news anchor on Channel 5, followed by a chorus of laughs. I lock eyes with Michael and he sort of half-shrugs. “Is there an extra chair or something?” he mumbles.
“I-I just remembered something. I’ve got to go,” I say. And the tears are already filling my eyes by the time I’m out the door. I go home as fast as my pointy little heels will allow and get back in the shower again. I notice stubborn spots of blue and orange on my forearms and rub at them, remembering during middle school when Nisha Auntie came to visit and told me boys liked fair girls and the fairer the better. Mom shushed her instantly but the damage was done. I started taking long baths and rubbing one white lotion after another into my wheat-colored skin. Luckily, high school started and I found out Nisha Auntie was wrong about what boys liked. At least most of them.
***
At lunch on Monday, I’m finally ready to tell Meera about what happened after ignoring her texts the rest of the weekend. She had spotted me at the end of the festival but didn’t want to interrupt. “Maybe I should have though,” she says.
“So why did he even show up?” I ask her.
“Because he likes you. I think that’s obvious now. But I know what I heard him say. And Maggie said she heard he’s going to ask that girl Kristina to junior prom.”
Of course. Kristina with her smooth strawberry blonde hair and freckles and green eyes that always have enough mascara to give her face a haunted look.
After lunch, we part ways and I stop at my locker to grab a sweater. March always gets me that way. One glorious warm day and you believe spring has finally come but then it’s nippy again and it feels like winter will never end.
A tap at my back again and I know who it is. I shake the hair back from my face and turn around.
“Hey, why’d you leave like that the other night?”
“I didn’t feel welcome.”
“Yeah, sorry, I know the guys can be idiots sometimes. They don’t mean any harm though.” He gives me a curious look. “You looked so different the other day.”
“So did you.”
“Back to normal now, huh?”
“Yeah, same old, same old.”
“What was that festival supposed to symbolize again?”
“It’s about the beginning of spring and the triumph of good over evil.”
“Hey, so how about going to that taco place across the street after school? We can practice for next week’s tournament.”
Sorry, but racist guys aren’t my type. I totally want to say it. I imagine Meera’s squeal of delight when I tell her. I imagine the badass slo-mo scene as I strut off to some brown girl power anthem.
But instead, I shrug and shut my locker. “I think I’m already ready. I’ll see you next week.” I wonder if he’s watching me as I walk away but I don’t turn around and in a moment I am carried along in a crowd of blue backpacks and red sweatshirts and pink hair and green high-tops. I spot Daniel waving to me from the doorway of Mrs. Brown’s English class. I smile at him and stop to say hello.
Julie Mehta writes and edits for magazines and websites when she’s not revising her novel about a young widow in 1940s India who risks everything to pursue a career and a second chance at love. She is based in the San Francisco Bay Area and can be found at twitter.com/meaningseeker.