Page 58 - What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

later, she checked her watch, kissed him on the cheek, and left the café beaming.

She was late to meet a friend, but he’d agreed to do her the big favor she’d asked
for. Only he had no idea what the favor was supposed to be. She’d lost him
about four words in.
He asked a woman sitting nearby if she’d overheard the conversation, and if
she could by any chance tell him what had been asked of him, but the woman
was elderly and said: “Sorry love, I’m a bit hard of hearing nowadays.”
A couple on the other side of him categorically denied having heard anything,

even after he told them the future of his relationship depended on it—this was
England after all, where minding one’s own business is a form of civil religion.
So all he could do was wait for Jyoti’s furious I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU phone
call, and vow to win her love again one day, when he’d become a better man. I
was learning a lot from Arjun. And I had lots more to learn. In those days when

anyone spoke to me I became a flustered echo, scrambling up the words they’d
said to me and then returning them as fast as I could. Blame it on growing pains,
or on the ghost I shared my bedroom with.
—

MYRNA, BEFORE YOU I could only really talk to my brother and the ghost. There
was something disorganized about the way she spoke that rubbed off on me. Plus

she (the ghost) had warned me that the minute I grew up I wouldn’t be able to
see her anymore. “How will I know when I’ve grown up?” When I started using
words I didn’t really know the meaning of, she said. I said I did that already, and
she said yes but I worried about it and grown-ups didn’t. (Of course I’m
paraphrasing her; when I think back on her syntax it’s like hearing a song played
backward.) So then there’s this trepidation that you’re going to suddenly find

yourself having a conversation that turns you into a grown-up, a conversation
that stops you being able to see things and people that are actually there. My
brother knew about the ghost, but described her as an alarmist, said I needed to
get out more and invited me to his friend Tim’s nineteenth birthday party. The
party where I met you, Myrna.
“You can be my date tonight if you like,” Arjun said.
“Won’t people think it’s creepy?” I asked.

“Nah . . . if anything females are into males who are nice to their verbally
challenged little sisters,” he said. “Gives the impression of having a caring side
and stuff like that.”
“What a relief! I’d hate to come between you and the females.”