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Maya’s Law #27:
If you bury your problems, they’ll dig themselves out of the dirt.
Back in the day, the mehendi ceremony was a small gathering of only the women of the bride’s family, who were responsible for adorning her with henna. Nowadays, it’s a joint effort between both the bride’s and groom’s sides of the family, and everyone attends. It’s basically a day for both sides of the family to present performances to show off whose side is better. All our relatives live in Pakistan, so I haven’t had many chances to participate, but once in a while we were able to make it back to Pakistan for a family member’s wedding, and I would dance with my cousins to show that we were the best side of the family.
After a restless night, I’m summoned early in the morning and ushered into the first of three bridal outfits I’ll wear over the next couple of days. It’s usually tradition for the bride to wear yellow on her mehendi day, and I’m no exception. The blouse, known as a choli, is long-sleeved and stops at my midriff, meeting the high-waisted skirt and leaving only a sliver of skin visible. Pink flowers decorate the choli, from the chest all the way down to the wrist. The skirt is purple, with yellow and pink swaths along the bottom and more elaborate pink flowers stitched into the fabric. I sit still while my hair and makeup are done. Gold covers my lids, with layers of mascara and a cold swipe of jet-black eyeliner to make my eyes look bigger than they are. My hair, straight and flat before, now rests against my back in elaborate thick curls.
Ammi tears up as she fixes the pink jewel-studded choker around my throat. “You look so beautiful,” she sniffs.
Hibba Baji pauses from where she’s adjusting my tikka, the large piece of jewelry that rests in the middle of my forehead. “Ammi, the mehendi hasn’t even started,” she reminds her. “Don’t start crying yet. You’ll ruin your makeup.”
Ammi blinks away her tears. “Right, yes, of course.” She tilts my chin up. “You do look beautiful, beta.” She takes a few rupees out of her clutch and waves them over my head. I politely dip my head down so she has easier access. This is something done to ward off nazar, and though I’ve long given up on avoiding the evil eye’s cruel gaze, it makes my mother happy. Once she’s finished, she puts the money back into her clutch. “Remind me to give this to Awais so he can give it to the poor.”
Hibba Baji grabs the chudiyan from where she left it on the vanity in front of me. “Okay, Ammi, I think Maya and I are almost done here. You can go down and we’ll meet you there.”
“Okay.” She kisses the top of my head, careful not to move the tikka, then leaves the room.
Hibba Baji picks up my wrist to slide the chudiyan on, but at the last second, my stomach drops and I remember. “No!” I screech, but before I can pull away from her, she’s lifted my sleeve up.
Her eyes widen when she catches sight of Sarfaraz’s name written there. She whips her head up. “Maya, what is this?”
I wrench my arm out of her grasp. “Nothing,” I mumble. “I told you guys what happened on our way to Karachi.” I told them, including Imtiaz, the bare minimum. Just that Sarfaraz and I had bus trouble, we’d been held hostage at gunpoint, and that we stayed in a village until a new bus could show up and bring us here.
I take the chudiyan from her, fiddling with them. “Remember the family we stayed with? The daughter redid my mehendi, but she thought Sarfaraz was my husband, so she wrote his name. By the time I noticed, it was too late.”
I meet her worried stare. “Baji, it’s nothing,” I assure her, trying to regulate my erratic heartbeat. “It was a mistake, that’s all. It’ll wash off in no time.”
Hibba Baji stares at me for such a long time, sweat trickles down my neck. Her voice is a sad whisper when she breathes, “Maya...do you like Sarfaraz?”
I freeze. “Of course not,” I say, a beat too late. I stare at the beauty mark under her left eye. “That’d be dumb. I’ve only known him for like a week.”
Hibba Baji’s jaw drops. “Oh, no, Maya. You like him.” She lifts her fingers to her face, pressing them against her mouth. “Oh, I knew there was something different about you when I first saw you in the driveway. You seemed more chill, and you didn’t slump around as much. That, plus you guys were acting really intense during the maiyun. I thought I was imagining it, but I guess not. Sarfaraz must have had a profound effect on you in such a short time.”
“I don’t like him!” I insist. “And I’m certainly not acting different because of him.”
“Oh, please,” she says, clearly exasperated. “You’re practically walking around with a stormy cloud hovering above your head. You haven’t been carrying yourself the same, and it’s very noticeable.”
“It’s not!”
Hibba Baji crosses her arms over her chest. “You’re really going to try to lie to your sister? You’re acting as if I haven’t caught you in every lie you’ve ever tried to tell me.”
“Name one time!”
“Remember when you took money from my wallet to buy snacks from the convenience store when we were kids?” she lists. “You said that the jinn in our house took it, but then I found the receipt in your waste bin.”
“In my defense, we did have a jinn in our house. Stuff was always going missing, and doors opened on their own.”
Despite my interjection, she continues, “When you borrowed my CD player without permission and broke it, when you used my hairbrush, when you eavesdropped on my phone calls—”
“Okay, okay, I get your point, I’m a terrible liar. But I’m not lying about this.”
Hibba Baji sighs. “Maya, do you know how I always knew you were lying to me?”
“No.”
“You never look me in the eye when you lie. You’re good at not making it look obvious sometimes, but you can never look me in the eyes when you lie to me.”
Damn it. I hate that she’s the older sister. I set my chudiyan onto the vanity table before facing her. “Okay, fine,” I grit through my teeth. “Maybe I have a little...crush,” I finish, cringing at the fact that I admitted it out loud. “But I don’t like him enough to leave my fiancé for him. Besides, he figured out that I was Imtiaz’s fiancée and then didn’t even tell me. I can’t trust him after that.”
