Isha, Unscripted

Chapter 1

When Mummie sent me off to college ten years ago with a prayer over my head and a sweet to my lips, she'd said, "Excel in school, beta. Don't bring shame to your family."

Shame came.

Everyone and their uncle had my dad's ear on how he could've possibly allowed this embarrassment to continue. That was right. The Asian equivalent to American kids going to raves and experimenting was being a lit major. Every auntie locked up her sons when I came around toting my voluptuous love of the arts and sultry grasp of grammar. Forbid that my mastery over the written word seduce good Indian boys.

Worse yet? I left college.

Hello, two-time college dropout, was that you?

Third time was a charm. But it wasn't exactly what my parents had hoped for.

"A degree in film and theater!" Papa had bellowed. "Was that what I'd been paying for this entire time?"

Um. Yep. Surprise . . .

"Oh, ma . . ." Mummie had muttered, rubbing her temples in complete dismay and invoking the gods to ask what she'd done in her past lives to deserve this punishment.

I swore their yells haunted the house to this day like wraiths reminding me that I wasn't meeting my potential.

In the past six months, to make matters worse for a struggling creative soul, rent had skyrocketed (thanks, Apple, Tesla, SpaceX, and other Californians mass migrating to Austin and tipping over the market), and without a full-time job, I ended up moving back home.

Whomp-whomp. Adulting fail.

So here I was: twenty-eight, somewhat jobless, practically friendless, and living back with my parents. What a prize, right?

And, yes, yes, I know twenty-eight sounded too damn old to be living with one's parents. But not-so-fun life fact: things don't always turn out to our best expectations, no matter how hard we try.

To add insult to injury, I was destined to spend yet another Friday night home alone.

Papa grabbed his keys from the kitchen counter and tilted an invisible hat to me. "I'm off!" he said. I wished I had his big weekend-project energy. It practically sizzled through the air.

"Are you sure you trust YouTube enough to fix Uncle's broken sink?" I asked warily.

"Ah. We're civil engineers." He shrugged as if that explained anything, or in some way gave him handyman superpowers.

"Right. Because Indians can suddenly do anything when they don't want to pay a professional."

"Between us and YouTube, we can fix anything."

"Can you, though?" I asked from the kitchen, the heat from the stove warming my side.

He flashed a grin. Wow. I was jealous of his sense of confidence as he went in headfirst with a wrench in hand to tackle a plumbing issue he'd never seen before at someone else's house. And he didn't even bother wearing jeans and a T-shirt like someone who was about to tackle a sink. He was, as always, decked out in a button-down shirt and khakis. I mean, talk about dad swagger.

He jerked his chin toward the simmering pot at my side. "Making Maggi?" he asked, referring to the desi version of Top Ramen and quintessential food for singles.

"No noodles tonight," I replied. Then I remembered. "Oh, here!" I said, whipping toward the cabinet beside the pantry and then back to Papa to hand him his blood pressure medicine. "You usually have this with dinner, but since you're eating over there, take it now. You don't need food with it."

"Thank you, beta," he said, taking the medicine with a swig from the cup of water I offered. "Always looking out for me."

"Of course, I'll always look out for you."

"What's on the agenda for you tonight?" he asked as I walked him to the foyer.

My younger brother, Mohit, rushed down the stairs like a thunderclap. Rogue, my ferocious miniature Yorkie, barked with annoyance from the living room around the hallway.

"Motiben's going to binge on chocolate in her sweats," Mohit jested. "Like every Friday night."

He shoulder-shoved me and I shoved him back. "That is not what I do."

"Sure, sure." He hopped into one shoe, then another, and flew out the door before Papa even slipped into his loafers.

Papa shook his head and called after him, "Be safe!"

Then he smiled warmly at me and patted my head. "Make use of a lovely night, huh?"

"Hah," I said as I closed the door after him, my back hitting the wall as I stared into the near-deserted house.

I returned to the kitchen and checked the timer. Another minute should do.

Mummie walked into the space between the open-concept kitchen and living room, all dolled up to hit the town with her auntie squad.

"My spinster daughter," she teased dramatically with a cluck of her tongue as she twisted on the backs of her earrings. "Did you even change out of your pajamas today?"

"Yes," I muttered, glancing down at my faded green sweatpants and gray T-shirt, the delicious scent from my coffee-and-sugar-scrub soap still lingering on my skin.

"If you made an effort to meet people, you'd dress better and look nicer."

"Hmm . . ." I mumbled. How could my own mother, after all this time, equate my introverted nature to laziness?

"What are you doing? Cooking?" she asked from the hallway.

I placed a hand on my hip and leaned against the counter, watching boiling water roll the little pink plastic item over as it floated at the top of the saucepan.

"Can I sterilize my menstrual cup in peace?"

The color drained from her face. "In my cha pot!"

"It's the small one. Mummie, you never use this."

"That's unsanitary, Isha," she chastised.

"Umm, no. The entire point of boiling is to make it sanitary. It's clean before it goes into the pot."

"Why can't you just use pads?" she heaved out, exasperated.

"Don't be disgusting," I teased.

"Unmarried girls use pads."

I rolled my eyes. "Mummie. You're a nurse. You know mighty well that tampons and menstrual cups didn't take my virginity. I mean . . . that sort of monumental moment would be quite disappointing, huh?" I couldn't help but grin.

Then it came. The inevitable. With a deep sigh, as if bringing this up caused my mother a great deal of stress, she said, "Your papa and I have been discussing your life."

I knew this conversation was bound to roar back to life, and yet I wasn't entirely prepared for it.

"You can't keep living like this. You are an adult. You're almost thirty. You must find a job, a real career. It took you eight years to finish college. You've been out of school for two years chasing this dream, beta. It's time to get serious and get to work," she said firmly as she braided her hair.

"I do have a job," I protested. But also, why did it matter if it had taken me so long to finish college as long as I finished with the degree meant for me?

"What? This writing business? I don't see income from it."

If words could cut, then my mom had just slayed me. "I mean the freelance communications job."

She waved her hand, dismissing my attempt to pass that off as enough. "That's not a steady job. You need continuous income, forty hours a week if not more, good benefits, 401(k), grow your savings, think of building up for a house and marriage, retirement, for so many things you have left to do in life. You're working part time so you can focus on writing, and that has been a dead end."

I scrolled through my email. C'mon, agent extraordinaire. Where were you with a lifeline by declaring you'd sold my script? But alas, there was no such miraculous, long-awaited email to support my stance.

Mummie sighed as she took a good look at me, her eyes crinkling in the corners, before touching my cheek. "So much potential."

Ouch. Having an Asian parent say that to their eldest child was a verbal stab straight to the gut, an absolute disembowelment. I felt the pain down to my emotional bones.

She went on. "Don't let it go to waste. You're not going to be young much longer. You should be working as much as possible while you can, while you're strong and healthy, and making as much money as possible. A full-time, regular job with consistent income and benefits plus a side hustle. Make this writing thing a hobby if you must keep pursuing it."

Her tone was soft. Her words were meant to gently push me out into the world, usher me into reality. My mother was, in essence, disappointed in me. Even at my age, her words sent my heart fluttering deep into despair, possibly never to be seen again. I wondered if her disappointment would hurt this much at forty. Worse yet, I wondered if she would still be disappointed in me at forty.

Probably. I would probably be sitting right here on this couch in my sweats on a Friday night while she went out to party with the aunties and Mohit was married with kids. In fact, my future sister-in-law would probably be cooking dinner and quietly wondering what the hell was wrong with me and how she hadn't signed up to take care of me when she married my brother.

Mummie checked her phone when it pinged. "Heena Auntie says there are lots of openings at the IRS."

I rolled my eyes and opened my mouth to defend my degree and explain how working at a desk for fifteen dollars an hour was a bit embarrassing and time spent there was time taken away from writing. But I didn't have much of a leg to stand on.

Mummie sashayed across the room to get her purse and said sternly, "The career websites are always available. In fact, your papa and I have to put our foot down. Apply now. No more arguing about this. We've been too lenient."

I needed to get back onto my own two feet. I needed to sell a script. Or get a full-time job, but a job that helped me advance toward my goals. Not just anything. And this wasn't a new thought for me. It wasn't as if I hadn't tried, and horribly failed, at getting through the door. Because the truth was, little known to my parents, that I'd tried very hard to get into a steady role, but at production companies and outlets that could help me get my foot into the industry. If they knew that I had a spreadsheet of over two hundred failed applications, they would never understand why it had been this difficult for me when it seemed so easy for others to get work.

She added, "And go back to mandir and make some friends at least. Get one aspect of your life together before it's too late and you're set in these bad ways."

"Do you mean if the entire Indian community thinks I'm a failure better suited to be brushed under the rug like Mohit's slew of subpar grades?" I asked, my eyebrow cocked. Wow, that didn't sound bitter at all.

She waved off my comment. "Eh? It's okay if your brother has senioritis and doesn't put in as much effort in the last months of his classes. He'll still get his degree. He already has a nice job, you know. They're not going to retract his offer because he has a few Cs. He is set. But you need to get set. I only want what's best for you. In a couple of years, you're going to be thirty and look back at all this wasted time and regret it. What will you have to show for yourself, huh?"

What she meant to say was that they didn't have to worry about Mohit the way they had to worry about me.

I was genuinely proud of my baby brother. But by now, "wasted potential" had become synonymous with Isha Patel.

I was screwed if she wasn't going to back down, and the disturbing tentacles of an anxiety attack slowly reared at the edge of my thoughts.

"Maybe you'll make friends and find a nice Indian boy, no?"

I almost cackled. What nice Indian boy? None of the guys at mandir came around me. It was as if they might combust if they laid eyes on this wild child of wasted potential.

"What say you, Rogue-alicious?" I asked my Yorkie.

She played viciously with her pink stuffed pig no bigger than a tennis ball. She sat on the edge of the couch with her toy between her paws, chirping and nipping wildly like she had an entire monologue to execute. Then she looked me dead in the eye and gave her toy a swat, pushing it over the edge to join the other toys. It was like she was sending a message to her other toys that snitches get stitches.

I petted her soft, shiny, dark brown coat and sucked my teeth. "Rogue says no."

Mummie grabbed her keys on her way to the foyer, where she rummaged through the shoe rack for her best sandals. "Remember, you have twenty-four hours in a day and the majority of that time should now be spent on job applications," she said. "In fact, I want to see proof. Otherwise . . ."

I arched a brow. Lord, what was worse than my parents treating me like a child and me feeling like said child trapped in this unmoving nightmare?

"We'll have to get the family elders involved," she said matter-of-factly, and then just left.

I swallowed hard.

Well . . . damn. I might as well be on trial for career crimes against my kin.

My heart tried to catapult out of my chest as I panted for air. Going to the family elders was a desperate move that could only end with me leaving my family in shame or being manipulated into a future they wholly controlled.

With my menstrual cup in its pouch, I picked up Rogue and walked through the hall. She had her claw at my throat and side-eyed me as if saying I'll cut you, bitch if I made one false move.

I went upstairs in a sort of dizzy haze. I could barely breathe as I walked into my room, put away the pouch, and paced. My skin itched and my neck was on fire. Until I finally slumped into my desk chair and checked my shared drive.

"Let's see, let's see," I mumbled, scratching a nonexistent itch on my chin, as Rogue chomped down on kibble near my feet.

As soon as the video presentation of my script was ready, I could go full blast on any and every pitch session coming up. On websites, social media, in person . . . anywhere. I dropped my head back. C'mon. Please, universe, let me have this before my family descends upon me.