Zigzags

Puligandla, Kamala

First edition

ISBN: 978-1-945649-94-3

Edited by Safia Elhillo

Proofread by Rhiannon McGavin

Cover design by Kassia Rico

Editorial design by Julianna Sy

Not a Cult

Los Angeles, CA

Imprimé au Canada

To all the dykes who have loved me.

CONTENTS

Prelude

Part 1: Return

Part 2: Down Shift

Part 3: Departures

Zigzags

by Kamala Puligandla

Prelude

It was no secret why I had come back to Chicago that summer. I could still recall the December night when I’d found myself slumped against Whitney at 3 a.m. in the Uptown Lounge, surrounded by dykes we had just met. One of them was a large woman with a bad platinum dye job and a leather wristband. She went by Peach Tea or Peach Tree or something I couldn’t keep straight. She was trying to go home with us or maybe just Whitney, or probably anyone.

You want another beer? Peach Tea was offering me her Miller Lite. She had already plied Whitney with IPA and gifted me a pilly pair of fingerless gloves I didn’t want. All of us seemed to notice that we were in over our heads.

Aneesha won’t drink that, Whitney answered for me.

Peach Tea shook her head and set it front of me anyway. Then she leaned toward the woman beside her—who I thought I recalled was an architect, which might have explained why she was carrying a briefcase at this hour. The two of them got up and headed for the bathroom.

I think they’re going in there to do it, Whitney whispered. Good, I said. She’s given up on us.

I like this, Whitney said. Come stay with me this summer. Her left eye was at half-mast, but she seemed otherwise serious. Don’t argue with me, Whitney continued. She was extremely confident when she was drunk, and rather commanding. You already know it’s the right choice. You love it here. We have the best time together.

Whitney and I were always having the Best Time. I understood that this was the risky tip of a peak that easily dropped off into a Bad Time. Once we had stumbled into the top floor of a leather dungeon called Jackhammer—it was the only place still open—and before our drinks were poured, we were approached by a woman in a leather vest. She had a grey ponytail flipped over the front of her shoulder, like a pet parrot, I remember thinking. These things didn’t happen to me without Whitney, and it took me a while to understand why the woman kept pointing at her apartment across the street. The two of you should come over, she finally said, and I felt her hand on my thigh.

At the time, I imagined this meant that Whitney and I looked good together—that my hawkish hair and tight jeans, her red nails and loose flannel provided a queer symmetry, but I’m sure, even on our better nights, we just seemed young and drunk, and it was always so late. I wasn’t altogether opposed to the vested woman, but then she knocked my drink over with a careless elbow, and that was enough to suggest I wouldn’t like what was in store.

Still, I wanted to think there were more nights like that ahead of me, and that one of them might lead to a place from which I would not fall, but fly off into some other dimension.

You’re thinking about the free pickle martini night, right? With that cute bartender? Whitney winked at me in a way that looked, for a moment, like she might be going to sleep. If you’re not, you should be.

Well, I am now. I decided I might as well have a few sips of Peach Tea’s Miller Lite.

I need your help dressing myself, Aneesha. I don’t think real accountants wear cutoffs. You can write all day and hang out, summer bear style.

Whitney was wise to appeal to my practical side, and I was touched to know that I would always have a place with her. Though I was vaguely aware of how precarious it was to spend the summer with someone who threatened to haunt my heart forever.

Whitney had never quite decided what she wanted with me. She had, however, offered me an ideal way to spend the summer in Chicago. Under the silver beer lights in the bar window, the summer blossomed in my mind. I imagined the crisp of dried sweat and sand on my skin, heard the crowd of us gathered around the musty wooden bar at the Heartland. So I agreed. It felt good to have a vision for the summer ahead.

Whitney pushed the end of her beer toward me and pulled out her phone to find the best route to J.B. Alberto’s for pizza.

You don’t want to catch up with Peach Tree in the bathroom? I asked. I’m sure it fits three.

Shut up, she bought us beer. It wasn’t so bad. Whitney eased off the bench. Let’s get out of here.

We hastily threw on our layers and scurried out onto the snow-packed sidewalk. I shoved my hands in my pockets, and we both ran screaming into the night. The air was so fresh and frigid I felt like I was going to cough up glitter.

That was the thought that kept drifting through my head as I tried to get comfortable back home in Riverside. I had moved to the desert east of LA to get my master’s in creative writing, and each morning as the sky stretched out before me—taut and bright blue, like a sheet of plastic—I was reminded of where I was not. The arid climate had me rubbing lotion on my hands obsessively, and the radiant heat, which persisted well into October, felt thin and flat, as if I had been stuck under a warming lamp at a cheap buffet.

I was used to the constant shifts of my privileged youth, in which friends shuttled between coasts and schools, organic farms and countries without running water. We were aligned only for brief, golden moments, like popcorn kernels exploding together. Everything is fluid, a melodramatic dancer friend of mine was fond of declaring whenever she felt like leaving in the middle of something. And I was fine with that as long as I had my writing, my little pieces of solid ground.

So I expected to be thrilled by Riverside. It was a small town with no distractions, where my only responsibility was to write. It was my homework. In exchange for my writing, the State of California had invested in paying my tuition and stipend. That fall, however, I came to my stories only in stagnant afternoons or late at night, always with a grudging sense of obligation. Instead I filled vast stretches of time with my new classmates, getting soggy with booze, dazed by weed, lost in malicious laughter.

Anything to stave off the terrifying starkness of the stubbled mountains that surrounded us, and the vastness of human experience we intended to share with the world.

One morning I was sitting at the kitchen table, avoiding my current story, when I got a call from Richard. We were nearing Thanksgiving, and I hadn’t heard his nasal Southern-tinged voice in months. I won’t lie, doll, it’s been awfully quiet on your end. But there is plenty amiss out here in Chi-Town. Richard gave me the most recent Heartland gossip—that a veteran bartender had slipped booze to and then slept with the owner’s seventeen-year-old son. Richard also let me know that he was back on again with his elusive girlfriend, Karen. She was a textbook cougar: fun, beautiful, owned a production company, and lived on the Gold Coast. The few times I’d seen them together, she put a touch of class on the inappropriate mutterings that regularly spilled from Richard’s mouth. They had kinky sex and took fancy trips. I liked them.

She really doesn’t want kids, he mused. She wasn’t joking. She doesn’t want a family at all.

She’s forty-five, I said in her defense. I’m sure she knows exactly what she wants. I went on to describe the unlikely people who populated my new life and the exotic strip malls where I spent my afternoons. Richard cut in hesitantly before I was finished.

You know, honestly, you sound lonely, doll. You don’t have anyone to rub your knotted writer’s neck and whisk you away for a day trip. You’re on your own. Does anyone test your bike brakes before your drunk ride home?

Nobody had ever accused me of being lonely before, and my instinct was to disagree with him. I was spunky, and fun, and constantly surrounded by people—it was a gift of mine—but Richard saw through me, and there was no point in pretending otherwise.

Yeah, okay, I said. I see your point.

Come on back, Little A, he cooed. I miss my number one lesbian. I still save a seat for you at the bar sometimes, and get angry when you don’t show up.

From then on, as I drove the dusty roads to school, dodging tumbleweeds and waiting interminably for the trains to cross, it became clear that I wasn’t just lonely. The ache that I felt was homesickness. It surprised me. I’d always savored a fresh start. I fancied myself a perpetual visitor, a woman who, in equal measure, did and did not belong in any given place. I took great pleasure in minor reinventions of myself: deciding on a usual pair of shoes, and whether or not I was dedicated to composting, and when to reveal my always-surprising ineptitude with women. Chicago had only been a year, a stop on the way to graduate school, but I could tell this kind of fun had been ruined. Despite my conscious focus on the fact that I was living the dream—writing fiction for my livelihood—when the sun started to set, I still felt myself preparing to finish up and head to the Heartland.

Part 1: Return

I hurtled out of the sliding doors at Midway and was greeted with the wet, sloppy kiss of Chicago in June. The thickness of the air caught me by surprise, the way my flannel stuck to my arms, and my hair to my forehead. I had to put down my bags to take off my shirt. I was stuffing extra items into my backpack when a familiar Hey cut through the rumble of cars. There was Georgie in her parents’ green Prius, carefree elbow perched on the window, turquoise sunglasses sliding down her nose.

Aneesha, you’re back. I am.

I’m getting out, she said, and I waited for her to pick the right break in traffic.

Eventually her door peeked open, and she darted around to the sidewalk so we stood facing each other. It had only been six months since I’d last seen her, but I was happy to find the same best friend I remembered. Georgie had a long, thin frame, broad shoulders and an asymmetrical, chin-length haircut, which made everything look intentional and chic. Something about Georgie’s posture reminded me of an elegant chicken. We looked each other over and nodded—hugging had never been a regular part of our rapport.

You’ll have to let me pluck your long blond face hair, she said. Thanks, I said. Just think of the damage that that one hair could do.

We settled into the car and slipped silently off into traffic. So you want to go get a hot dog? she asked.

I said we’d have lunch with Richard. I hope that’s okay.

Georgie sighed. I don’t mind. I’ll prepare myself. I feel bad about cancelling our last few Two Person Bookclub meetings. He’s just a lot to handle.

The strip malls slid past us and I inhaled a delicious waft of something fried. I knew what she meant, but that was also Richard’s charm. He was too much and you were permitted to be too.

In other news, you staying with Whitney for the summer is an interesting choice. Especially since I offered you the option to stay with me.

I glanced across the car at Georgie, whose pursed lips told me she was waiting for me to address this egregious insult.

With you at your parents’ place, I added.

Georgie had finished her MFA in poetry that spring and was temporarily living in her childhood home. The Summertowns’ three-story townhouse in Andersonville was known for being lively and full of strange, international guests. Georgie had written me pages and pages of letters, detailing each and every annoyance of residing in a space over which she had no control.

Alright, good point. But, for the record—

I know you think it’s a bad idea, I said. But for the millionth time, Whitney and I are good friends.

Ugh, fine, she replied. I am still so neutral about her.

We drove in silence for a while longer until we turned on to Lakeshore Drive, and the buildings of downtown sprang up around the bend. Every time I saw the Sears Tower, like a giant remote control, and the flat diamond face of the Smurfit-Stone building, I felt I had finally arrived. I didn’t even particularly like downtown, but the skyline gave the impression that you were entering an elegant party, and I wanted to be welcomed like that. I rolled the window all the way down to let the hot breeze blow in.

Georgie did the same. She yelled something to me through the roaring wind. What? I asked.

Fun! she cried. I hope we have fun!

You? I screamed back. You hate having fun!

Georgie had professed herself, on a number of grumpy occasions, to be averse to fun. Though it wasn’t entirely true, she did prefer to work anxiously and meticulously, even on pointless projects, like sewing new armpits into her old t-shirts, rather than simply relaxing.

Maybe I’ve changed, she said. Maybe I like fun now!

Georgie’s hair was a short lion’s mane dancing around her face, and her loose grip on the steering wheel gave me the confidence to believe that in the year since I’d moved away, we had taken one step closer to becoming better versions of ourselves.

•

At Tank Noodle, Georgie and I sat across from Richard. He hummed as he flipped the pages of the menu. Oh, I don’t know, I’m not married to the spring rolls, but I do feel they’re a good warm-weather choice. He looked up at me. You know what, doll? You’re the guest so you choose an appetizer, I trust you.

Since when are you the boss of lunch? Georgie asked.

Richard waved a hand at her. Oh, you’re around all the time, Georgie, and I know you’ll pick those crispy wonton things.

Those sound fine to me, I said. Pick whatever you want.

Thank you, I will, Georgie said, leaning toward him indignantly.

Richard had checked out and was watching the street through the window. Do you think it’ll rain today? he asked.

Maybe later? I turned back to discuss the avocado smoothie with Georgie. It was an indulgent choice, but this was a celebration.

I sure hope it does, Richard said. When I looked up, his face had melted into a leer, and I followed his gaze out to where a girl in a flowy blue tank top was unlocking her bike. Because she is something, and I would love to see her shirt, soaking wet, flapping in the wind, maybe get a little wrestling—

I stopped listening after that because she was cute, the smoothness with which she stepped onto the pedals, the bounce of her hair. I didn’t want to imagine any of the scenarios Richard might possibly construct—the disaster, the calamity of him befalling her. She rode away and I admired the tiny flexes of her calves.

Don’t give me that look, Georgie. Aneesha is thinking the same thing, Richard was saying when I tuned back in.

They were both looking at me expectantly. I wanted to deny vehemently that Richard and I shared any of the same thoughts, because I was never hoping for a sudden thunderstorm to render a woman naked, but I had been watching her too. What, I said instead.

Georgie threw her hands in the air. It’s not boner hour, you guys. Get it together so we can order, I’m starving!

Oh, Aneesha, I’ve missed you, Richard said. His pinhead was plastered with a smile. He had a long, sharp nose and a gentle chin, which only accentuated the girth of the grin.

Oh, Richard, I said, and I did feel a sudden wave of affection for him. You always bring out the worst in me.

Georgie shook her head. I guarantee Aneesha wasn’t thinking anything as nasty as you were, Richard.

That is an unfair assumption with absolutely no proof, he said. Just because she’s a woman she’s less crude? Give women some credit.

It’s not a man-woman comparison, I said. It’s a you-me comparison. I once heard you say aloud that you wished you could smell a girl’s bicycle seat. I had never once thought of that.

Richard laughed. That is pretty disgusting, huh?

Case closed. Georgie shut her menu and placed it at the edge of the table.

Richard reached for my hand. None of this is to dissuade you from our baby. I promise you I’ll find a way to keep from saying these things to our child.

For some time, Richard had been convinced that I’d find it convenient to have his baby one day. When the iron was hot—this was the actual phrase he used—he would donate his sperm to me and my hypothetical long-term partner. I wouldn’t even need to ask. It was his solution for being involved in but not responsible for creating human life. Lesbians are the most intentional parents was one of his favorite aphorisms. As if I wanted a baby at all, let alone one with his DNA, to raise with a woman of my own choosing, who, based on my past, wouldn’t be fit to mother a succulent. This should have made it perfect joke material, but instead it was Richard’s open desire for fatherhood and its dependency on me—not his repertoire of certainly more crass behavior—that was starting to grate on me.

I’m never having your baby, I said. But don’t think I’m not flattered in a disgusted way.

Just think about it, he said cheerily. My son with your hair. It sticks straight up all on its own. He’d be the belle of the ball. Georgie? Maybe if you and Youngsu break up, you’ll consider it? We could expand the Two Person Bookclub. Kids love reading.

We’ve been over this, Richard. Never going to happen. Georgie waved over one of the ladies in camouflage to take our order.

We’d like to start with the spring rolls, please, Richard interjected. And the fried wontons, I added.

Richard rolled his eyes. Fine, yes, and the wontons too.

When we had placed our order, Richard put his palms flat on the table. I’m glad we have the gang back together for a while. I’m already looking forward to Iowa this summer.

Oh yeah? Georgie asked warily.

It was amusing that Richard thought he had ownership over this trip. The Summertown Farm in Marshalltown, Iowa was where Georgie’s grandpa lived, where her dad had grown up, and was her proclaimed favorite place on Earth. When Georgie and I met in our first year of college, she told me I had to visit her there in order to really know her. So I did. We had been taking blissful getaways to the farm ever since. She and I sped down dirt roads blasting Billy Idol remixes on cassette, drank beer in the pond, and ate neon popsicles in the cornfields. I’d never experienced the freedom and privilege of doing whatever I wanted on acres of land that belonged to a person I knew, and it blew my mind. The past summer we’d invited our friends to join us at the farm, and though it was a ball for everyone else, it had caused Georgie great stress.

I hope you decide to invite us back, I said to her.

Georgie sipped her water and crossed her arms. It does feel good to have everyone here. I thought we’d lost you to California forever, Aneesha.

Really? I asked.

Richard adjusted the napkin in his lap and sipped his water. He was gracing us with an uncharacteristic silence. I watched their faces and felt a sudden, fluttering panic. It occurred to me that my little corner of the world had been perfectly prepared to continue on without me. It seemed I was the kind of person who would draw up a neat ending and blithely walk away.

Well, I’m not gone yet, I said lightly.

•

After Whitney finished work, she met me at her new apartment building. She was wearing a navy blue blazer with a silky salmon blouse, and I felt an unexpected surge of pride at how smart and professional she looked. She had a jaunty walk and tight, long curls, which made it seem that she was always bouncing.

Your outfit is great, I said.

She tossed her hair and pointed down to her tan Top-Siders. The dyke shortcut to business casual. And they’re even women’s shoes!

You’re so classy.

Duh. So this is the new place, she said, pointing upwards. What do you think?

It was a red brick building with arches above the windows, old-fashioned streetlamps and short posts in the front, as if somebody might want to hitch up a horse. It was intended to be impressive, but without making a complete effort, and for that I docked it several points. Though it was still nicer than anything I’d ever lived in. It aims for majesty, I said.

We walked toward the door, and I found Whitney’s placard in the shiny, silver callbox: Ash/Winters. Logan Ash was the boyfriend. Whitney was not known to date seriously. It was more than a little shocking that she had suddenly moved in with a 23-year-old med student. She had met Logan at a fundraiser for a youth nonprofit where she was also a member of their young professionals board. All of which sounded like an elaborate joke to me, something the real Whitney Winters would have invented to make people laugh at a party.

You’re moving up in the world, I said. We took the back stairs, past a series of porches that her neighbors had decorated with paper lanterns, potted plants, and neatly fanned copies of GQ. Something tells me you do not have a drug dealer landlord anymore.

You know, my drug dealer landlord used to give us free Internet. I kinda miss Rogers Park already. But Logan and I spent forever with the apartment lady and this place has in-unit laundry. Can’t beat that.

I nodded and imagined an apartment lady. She would wear a knee-length skirt and reasonable pumps, and know to mention selling points like in-unit laundry. Apartment ladies were for serious, busy people—which I supposed Whitney was now. I remembered what a kick we’d gotten from setting up a fake office in her living room, complete with plants, a dress code, and mandatory office parties. I took a moment to examine the watering can on her deck and recalibrate my concept of reality.

What are you thinking about? Whitney asked. Do you think you’re an adult now? I asked her.

Do you think you are? She opened the door into her kitchen. I’m sleeping on a cot in your craft room for three months, I said.

She laughed hard and went to the fridge to pull out beers. Somebody has to enjoy the fruits of my labor and you’re the best candidate. Magic Hat or Two Hearted? she asked, and I grabbed the nearest one.

My room for the summer had French doors with cream shades that opened into the living room. There was a door that led into the kitchen, but it had been blocked by a set of black bookshelves, lined with Logan’s manga and public health textbooks. Whitney’s old bedroom had been covered in drawings and posters made by her friends in Knoxville—bears in overalls, bearded men on bikes, portraits of gawky mermaids—and these now adorned my room. On the wall across from my cot was a pen-and-ink of a screaming Courtney Love: the patron saint of making bad decisions look good. I imagined that she would watch over me and offer me guidance in all of my questionable endeavors that summer.

Hovering in the back corner was Whitney’s headless mannequin, in a boxy floral