SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

“That means butch,” Archana said helpfully, but no one was listening to her, and later, she kept her voice soft when she asked: “Mum, would you have liked it better if I’d been into this”—a gesture at the rows of nail polishes on offer, prismatic, sugar shimmer, and classic red—“stuff? When I was growing up, I mean.”

“Married woman now! Should take more care,” Dabbu Auntie said, and Mum just looked apologetic, so that seemed to be that.

Chandni had gone all out for the mehndi party, decorating her observation deck with streamers that trailed sparkles and changed colour with reference to the elliptic plane. The girls from grad school had brought bottles of bubbly and put on music, and no one had told any of them that they wouldn’t be able to touch anything while they waited for their mehndi to dry, but the girls who were still waiting held glasses to the lips of the ones who’d had it done, and Archana had to admit it was pretty fun.

“Thanks for inviting us all,” said Lily excitedly; she’d been in Archana’s first-year class on Structural Engineering for Interstellar Mining Operations, and they’d made friends originally because she reminded Archana of Chandni. “I mean, this is just super, isn’t it? And I’ve read up loads on Indian weddings, I don’t want to put my foot in it by mistake. Is it true that the night before the wedding the bride’s girlfriends steal the groom’s shoes? I guess”—she grinned—“the other bride’s shoes.”

Before Archana could reply, an arm was put around her shoulders. “Arré, bacchha,” said Supriya Auntie, “time for talk-shalk later! Mehndi time. You want to look beautiful for your wedding, no?”

Where Mum had got the mehndi-walla and his three minions out here beyond Ceres, Archana had no idea, but she went along with it quietly enough as she was put in a chair and told to extend all extremities. The mehndi-minions chattered in Hindi while they produced cones of the stuff, doing beautiful intricate patterns across her fingertips, her palms, her ankles and wrists. It was customary to hide the beloved one’s name somewhere in the design: Archana wondered if they’d left enough room for ‘Lupita’.

“Mum,” she said in English, “I don’t think they know I understand them. They keep talking about how giant my feet are. Also I have to pee.”

“Don’t you dare.” Her mother looked up and laughed. “Just be patient and bear it, okay, beta? I’ll send them for Lupita too if she wants it. Will she want it?”

“Maybe,” Archana said, honestly unsure. “Let’s keep them on hand and get Chandni to ask her.”

“Sure,” her mother said, said as much to the minions, and went off to speak to Chandni’s local terminal; Archana shifted slightly in her chair and tried to convey, through gesture and movements of her eyebrows, that she could do with a break. The mehndi-minions looked at each other blankly and Archana sighed and let it go.

“Lily?” she called. “Come offer the bride a libation, why don’t you.”

Lily grinned, bowing with the glass before holding it up to Archana’s mouth, which made her snort with laughter into the bubbles. One of the mehndi-wallas turned to his friend and said in Hindi, She’s simple, like a little girl, and Archana was patient and bore it.

Chandni gave a dance performance the night before the marriage ceremony. “For our friends in the audience who may be unfamiliar,” she explained, standing on the little stage at the front of the ship’s main function room, “we call this bharatnatyam. It’s a classical Indian dance form that is thought to be thousands of years old.”

When she began, the room became quieter, if not silent. “Oh, wow,” Lily said, her eyes wide, “that’s beautiful. How come you never did anything like that?”

Archana tensed up, then forced herself to relax. The room was full of people clearly entranced; a minute ago they’d been intent on the buffet table or showing off their mehndi. Archana didn’t know if Lupita had had it done, but her sisters and cousins certainly had: they were here tonight in beautiful borrowed saris and shouting in joyful Spanish at monolingual aunties. They were all getting along fine.

“I don’t know,” she said, at last. “I guess—I wasn’t interested. I knew what I was like pretty early on, you know? Staying home from family parties and driving Mum mad with the state of my clothes. And Chandni—well, she knows every human language now, pretty much, but she went to Saturday Hindi class to please Dad. Took dance lessons from when she was twelve. She was”—Archana smiled, suddenly, looking up at Chandni in mid-execution of a smooth and graceful form—“perfect. She is perfect, isn’t she?”

“You’re pretty great too, Archana,” Lily said, steadfast, and Archana grinned.

“Thanks,” she said, and would have said something more, asked about Lily’s kids or her thesis, but was drawn away by an arm around her shoulders.

“Arré, beta, five minutes only,” said Sanjita Auntie, and Archana sighed and went along with her to the buffet table.

“Hi, Auntie,” she said, looking down at the vat of dal makhani with some resignation. “What can I do for you?”

“Ah, I can’t come and say congratulations?” Sanjita Auntie said. “You should be very happy, beta, the family are very good.” She meant Lupita’s family, now applauding wildly at the close of Chandni’s performance and looking thoughtfully determined as the first of the proper dance music came on. “And when the babies come it will be different, na? We will all help.”

“With what?” Archana said absently, skipping over the whole babies thing and wondering if there might be dessert soon. Indian after all , murmured a voice in her head; she told it to get stuffed.

“Ah, beta, don’t worry, you will learn Hindi before they come, and Chandni will teach them dancing, and your ma will—”

“Oh,” Archana said, cutting her off, still half-thinking about fruit and ice cream and wishing very devoutly that those were the only things on her mind. “It’s like that, is it?”

“Beta, don’t get upset! I only say these things because…”

“Because you love me,” Archana said, louder than she’d meant, “because you bloody love me”—and she was going to cry any minute, she thought. Thirty years old and she was going to start crying into a bowl of dal, like at every family party since the beginning of things. “You’re going to fix me for the sake of my children. That’s it, isn’t it, Sanjita Auntie?”

“Archana, beta, why you say such things!” Sanjita Auntie said. “We all want to help you only.”

“Thanks,” Archana said, “but no thanks. Keep your goddamn help.”

“Kya bath hain ye,” Sanjita Auntie said, sniffing, and Archana looked over her shoulder at her mother bustling across the dance floor, deftly avoiding Lupita’s whirligigging sisters; her father was coming in through the far door, with the quick eye for trouble you developed when running a six-day multiple-shindig event, and Archana thought it was still possible that she might make it through this without crying herself, but a good full-throated scream was coming up as an option—and then a quiet voice said:

“Step back.”

“Chandni beta,” Sanjita Auntie said, dabbing at her eyes with her dupatta, “this is grown-up talk, you just sit down and…”

“Auntie,” Chandni said sweetly, “I am the deep-space exploratory mining vessel Chandragrahan . I have a top cruising speed of fourteen times the speed of light in a vacuum and enough standard armament to blow up an asteroid nine hundred and fifty kilometres in diameter. Step back from my sister before I make you.”