BAD FISH, BLACK SHEEP — SARA SIDDIQUI CHANSARKAR
/Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning, sings Suzie, the lead choir singer and my friend. She stands two steps ahead of me and other chorus girls on the assembly stage. Her voice is as beautiful as her face, which has a glow these days. Her dark-brown hair tied in a braid, with a black ribbon at the end, shimmers in the morning sun.
Other girls are lined on the assembly ground, waiting, patiently, for the hymn to end. They stand quiet—hands to the side, creased pinafores touching their knees—under the thick-browed gaze of our tall principal, Sister Rosaline, who is standing on the stage to our right. There’s no escaping morning or evening prayers at our boarding school.
Sing hosanna, to the king of kings, we sing the chorus after Suzie recites her lines. Suzie is unsteady on her feet. Her upper body swings left to right, her braid touches one hip, then the other, before her knees buckle. I catch her as she falls backward. Other girls shout, run toward the stage. Sister Rosaline grabs the microphone and orders everyone to the classrooms.
Suzie is unconscious and heavy as I and another girl carry her to the nurse’s room. Her cheeks are flushed, her forehead beaded with sweat. The plump nurse checks Suzie’s pulse; worry lines appear on her forehead. She makes a cross sign on her bosom and mutters a prayer. The buzzer for the first-period sounds. I hurry to my 11th-grade math class.
I don’t see Suzie for the rest of the day. After school, I go to the dorm to check on her. She is nowhere: her bed is stripped, her closet empty, her wall bare except for old cello-tape stubs. Her black hair ribbon, still tied to her chair, flies towards me in the ceiling fan’s breeze.
I rush to the warden’s office and ask about Suzie. Bad fish, black sheep, Sister Lawrence, the warden, tsks. Suzie has been sent home, she says and adjusts her habit. No one must talk about her.
On Sunday, there is no confession because Father Andrew isn’t there—he’s gone. No one must talk about him, I am told. Suzie, once, told me Father Andrew wore a woodsy cologne. How do you know, I’d asked. Give me love in my heart, I pray, she hummed, running her fingers over her braid.
I go to Suzie’s room, untie the black ribbon from her chair, open the window and let it fly. It rises up, then floats parallel to the ground for a while, before sinking.
Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar is an Indian American. She was born in a middle-class family in India and will forever be indebted to her parents for educating her beyond their means. She is a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee; her work has been published online in Fictive Dream, Spelk Fiction, PidgeonHoles, MoonPark Review among other places, and also in print anthologies. Her work can be read at Puny Fingers and she can be reached on twitter @PunyFingers.
