She looks out the little window into the rainy openness where runways greet planes full of departing or arriving strangers. The outside is a gray vastness with the metropolis's skyline in the distant horizon. She has never been to that city yonder; she is just in this airport to change planes. Around her, in this warm, economy class cabin, is a lot of chattering in English and Dutch. A child is screaming in a distant aisle. A man now sits down next to her.
His arrival startles her. She realizes that it's now or never. Soon everyone will have entered the plane and the main cabin door will be closed. That would be too late.
Her alabaster hands now are just pale with a tinge of purple, and they are shaking more. One of them suddenly rises to push the attendant call button. Nothing after the beep. They are probably too busy with the arriving passengers. She pushes again. And after the third attempt, a middle-age lady with a slightly annoyed face arrives with a forced smile and asked what the young woman wanted.
"I need to get off the plane," she said.
The attendant asks her to repeat, being understandably dumbfounded.
"I can't make it. I need to get off and go back," she said.
"Are you sure? You know you will have forfeit the whole...."
"I know what I am doing. Please just have my checked in bags removed from the plane. I will take care of the rest."
After a few more failed attempts of dissuasion, the attendant notifies the proper people and lets young woman get her carry-on out of the overhead compartment. The noise dies down noticeably. But she doesn't care. She doesn't want to see what is happening around her, if anyone is staring, much less what anyone is wondering. She walks down the aisle, bypassing the families and then business men who are still streaming in. She feels better now. It doesn't matter if the decision is wrong or right, at least a decision is made. It is no longer gnawing her soul as it had been happening on her way to this city she has never seen or care for.
This is a city at the end of its glorious era as the center of America's auto industry, the pride of yesteryear's success of the most proud nation in the world of a recent past. It is gray and made of pure steal, and it is slowly decaying as the world for the past decade had been turning its attention to what was deemed new economic regions. This city contrasts her life but also is linked to it. She is a rising star, represents still the hope this country still has because despite its economic slowdown, it still has the most brilliant men and, more importantly, women in the world. She represents one of those women. She received a scholarship a few months ago with all the money she needs to go do her own research in a country that has been getting more and more attention from the world at the expense of a city like Detroit, whose skylines in the distant horizon seems to be rotting away in the mist and engine fumes of the airport. She just graduated from a college few in the world, or this country, has heard of, and her hard work and brilliance, among other laudable reasons, earned her the coveted scholarship.
"But why India?" her mother asked a few months ago. Same question were posed, explicitly or implicitly. In the same way, the old management of Detroit's auto industry kept asking why they should innovate, why they should consider "greener" cars, why they should keep making huge, American cars because they believed that was what Americans would always want. Why do something different? Why do something so different that it at the very least irritates the heart?
The answer to her mother's question, or answers, didn't matter. Her aunt had been shaking her head ever since she found out about the news. And the shaking bothered her mother even more than it bothered her, but the effect on her mother quickly made things worse. Her mother would cry and lament that her only daughter was going to such dangerous, dirty, despicable place. One day, while at a family gathering, the subject invariably came up again. The young woman's aunt, pretending not to know that she was within hearing distance, was speaking to her husband, the young woman's uncle, "I didn't know they would give so much money to a graduate of a Southern school that I don't think anyone from the scholarship office had ever even heard of. And what business did they have sending a Southern woman to a God-forsaken land like that?"
The day was hot but not humid. Traditional Southern iced tea was being passed around more often than water or soda. The beautiful house was made possible by the successful career of her uncle as a pediatrician, a profession not only full of money but also full of pride. Her aunt doesn't need to work, and she busies herself anyway with her new grandson. Needless to say, her aunt is very proud of what has happened in her life, a successful husband and a daughter whose success is proven by the screams of the newborn. It didn't matter that her daughter always seemed exhausted and constantly fighting to pay attention to the new creature she had bought to this world. Her family was a success.
What the young woman wanted to do with her scholarship seemed, then, very idiosyncratic, to say the least. Although the South has been modernizing, looks are easier to change then minds. No one really supported our heroine's earlier decision to go to college. But that at least wasn't so strange. More and more Southern women went to college, and some even got a job from it too. But to do something crazy like doing research in some country where you don't even have many stereotypes was too much. It was too much for her mother, but when her mother heard her sister talk like this, she felt ashamed of her own daughter.
And in place of pride, this shame was very visible to the young woman. When her aunt was saying these words, the young woman was talking to her cousin, the one who had recently claimed the grand prize of being a mother. She brushed it aside, as she always had done. She noticed the change of expression her mother's face. It got gloomier. Angrier. Sadder. No, her mother should have stood up for her, should have expressed her pride. But like many previous occasions, she didn't have the strength to support her own daughter. By now she's used to her mother's perceived weakness. It bothered her, it saddened her, but she would bear it, like all the other disappointments and frustrations she had to bear with her family.
Then she her gaze was drawn to someone else's face, someone whose equal measure of disappointment and sadness and frustration with her decision would mean much more to her. And her heart sank seeing that he, too, heard what her aunt had just said. They have been arguing about this issue too, and now, his face also changed expression, as if in unison with her mother's.
That evening they returned to their little house they'd lived in for four years. It hung almost precariously on the cliff overlooking one of the bluish valleys of this part of the Appalachian mountains. The sun had set an hour ago but the sky still whispered a soft lullaby of twilight as if the memories of the day could not yet be erased. Other houses, though invisible, showed their presence with shy streams of smoke emanating from the darkening hills and forests. The evenings are chilly here, especially compared to the young woman's aunt's city closer to the sea. it did not feel like summer here, though the richness of the forest could suggest neither winter nor fall. The temperature took its steady and inevitable path downwards as she finished fixing something up. There was, as always in these Southern gatherings, plenty of food, even at the house of her aunt, who tended to work on the stingy side of things. But they had to eat, and she cooked regardless of how full they were or how rich or poor; she never appreciated restaurant food more than her own home cooking. But that was the only thing she allowed herself to share in common with the stereotypical Southern woman of a humble background. Her fiancé sat in his couch, but this this time he wasn't watching TV or reading his comic books. He was quiet, and he even forgot to turn on the light, which she had to turn on for him. She didn't say much, though she felt her anger boiling to the rim. She didn't know why she was angry. She had been angry the whole day. She had been angry for the past months. She probably had been angry for a long time.
She almost didn't want to announce that she made warmed up some biscuits from the earlier gathering along with some ham and stir-fried vegetables from the previous day. She had wanted to make something with the avocado, but today all her love and creativity in life suddenly went on vacation. She wished she were on vacation. She wished at that very moment to be in the airplane to that horribly scary place called India. She almost didn't announce that food was ready.
But she did.
And he hesitated, as if pretending not to hear her just to let her know how displeased he had been, but he relented and mumbled, "Comin'."
"Still upset?" she asked?
"About what?"
"You know what."
There was silence. Then he finally answered, "You think everyone is wrong.... I respect that."
"No you don't," was what she wanted to lash back. But she held her tongue that wasn't really tasting the otherwise delectable ham, albeit extremely salty.
The last of the twilight had by now been absorbed in the darkness and the clouds that had hidden from the sun the whole day had conquered surreptitiously the skies above the valley. The only thing visible outside from the inside is the porch illuminated by the incandescent light. For a second when the forks were not touching anything but food, the only sound that sliced through the silence was the sporadic murmur of their cat. Their cat, which was really his cat but cherished more by her, wasn't aware that she was leaving him. But if he did, would he also show his displeasure? But she wouldn't have cared as much. She loved the cat, and in some ways, more than anyone else in the world, but somehow she didn't feel any desire to please him.
But she wanted to please the human male in front her who was pretending to eat. He wasn't looking at her and probably wasn't noticing the food he was shoveling in his mouth. They had gone through so much together, they had had many previous fights and this wasn't the worst one, in her opinion. But somehow she was angrier than she had been in the past, or at least it felt that way. She wanted him to be happy, and she invariably felt the weight of guilt for having chosen to go to India, or even guilt for having won this scholarship.
Why not? Why not be proud to have gotten a college education and just work here, get married as they had planned, have a family that would be infinitely better than the broken one she had had all her life. Why wasn't that enough? Guilt was growing now, encompassing the room and extinguishing all the already dim light that she had to turn on one by one.
They talked about other things, carefully avoiding the topic of the day or just India. But once they were done putting the last morsel in their mouths, he stood up and went back to his couch. There was no offer to help putting the dishes away, let alone washing them. He was in his own world again, and her anger grew large enough to overshadow her guilt. She made plenty of sounds while cleaning up, the clanging of the dishes, the throwing away of food. Then she stood in front of him and asked, "You don't want me to go. Say it!"
He didn't dare to look at her. He was already ravaged by the guilt of his own selfishness. But he didn't understand her, didn't understand how someone engaged to him would disappear to a foreign country, disappear to pursue a short term goal. He said, softly but audibly, "If you go, we will be through. I just know it."
There was no explanation needed. She realized she agreed with him. She realized she knew too little about him and too much about their relationship to know that what he said was right. The cat yawned as if he had heard this all, that all the drama they had had just now had reached its climax and she had to decide if it was a turning point in their lives together or a new beginning.
She is now waiting for the ticket agent to issue her a new ticket back home from Detroit. Her mind is now clear. They have won. They all have won. They have managed to dissuade her from her erred ways. Her attempt to be someone different is now vanquished. No matter how wrong it felt, she is now going back home. Strangely, she doesn't feel closer to her fiancé. She doesn't feel they have a brighter future now. On the contrary, she feels nothing has changed. Later she will probably realize that they were through whether she went to India or not. But now she just feels very little. No anger, no frustration, no sadness, not even relief. She just wants to get her ticket and go home. She just knows they will all be relieved, though not happy. People who have subdued the desires of others don't feel happy, just relieved.
After rechecking in her collected luggage she sits in her numbness for the flight to begin boarding, which is not for another two hours or so. There is still no regret, no anger, nothing. She looks out the huge windows of the waiting area into the planes that are leaving or parking. A lady sits down next to her, and she greets the young woman in the Southern accent familiar to her.
At that moment she feels a sudden built-up of feelings and her alarms go off. She desperately tries to build a dam, and as it has been the case most of her life, she succeeds. Her feelings are now kept at bay, like the tides that constantly menace Amsterdam. They chitchatted for a little while, then the conversation dies away. Finally, she boards and would never see that nice, friendly lady who reminds her of her home, the home she is returning to. She sits at her window seat, makes a real or imaginary space for herself away from the world. She buckles up immediately and turns her face to the window. It is already evening. The sky is pitch black because the rain clouds still lingered even though the rain has stopped. It is her and the lights outside, the finite space that allows her plane to take her back home. And when the plane lifts off, that feeling of losing your footing the moment the tires of the mega machine detaches itself from earth, her dams collapse and her tears pour out into the wild city of Amsterdam, the city of unconventionality, the city that would have been her stopover to an unconventional journey. Being different means less acceptance, means away from the comfort of those who make up part of your life. If that lady had found out that she was going off to such a scary adventure alone against the wishes of her family and fiancé, she probably would not have wanted to connect with her. And this thought nearly chokes her in the little space of her own safety. In this nearly full flight, she is left alone in her aisle to her years of loneliness, years of neglect, years of disconnectedness from especially those whom she loves the most. They will be relieved to find her. They don't even know at this point that she is returning. she will find the airport empty of love. Her mother won't be there to greet her being relieved that by the will of God her daughter had returned to the right path and that she wouldn't be harassed any longer by other members of the family by this recalcitrant and daring young woman. Her fiancé would not be there either, but he is already out of her life. Then there is no one. It is by her own efforts that there be no one in the airport to greet her. She would go to her mother's home in a taxi, and then later drive back to her precariously hanging little house in the mountains.
Now there are not thoughts. Just the flooding of Amsterdam, drowning of everything present by the tidal wave of the past.
