“Is there anything I can do? What if I fly ahead of you guys to get rid of everything?”
He looked like he was going to shake his head, probably out of instinct. He and I both had a hard time letting people help us. Probably part of our parents’ “take care of yourself and never have any obligation to others” philosophy. But then he paused and looked at the floor.
“You know what,” he said, finally looking up. “I think it’s not a bad idea for someone to do that. But it doesn’t have to be you. You probably have to get back to work too, right?”
I turned my gaze away from him, but he knew me too well.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” I said, not wanting to burden him.
He rolled the rickety chair he sat on across the white marble floor, one of the loose wheels squeaking as he glided closer to me. “What’s wrong?”
Pulling myself up so I was sitting on my heels, I glanced at the open door and said in a low voice, “I quit my job.”
Neel’s eyes grew wide. He, too, glanced over to make sure no one could overhear us. “You did? When?”
“I’m not really sure when the technical date is. But I said some things to my boss before the wedding started . . .”
“Pree, why?” He pulled back for a minute, the color draining from his cheeks. “Is it because you came here?”
I emphatically shook my head. “No, I wanted to be here with you. You’d have done the same for me.”
“But you loved that job. You were great at it.”
“I never loved it. I liked that I was good at it. And I liked how much it paid. But I never felt comfortable at that firm. And I never loved the work.”
“What do you mean, you weren’t comfortable there?”
I played with the thick green seam of the rajai folded neatly at the end of the bed. Neel and I had not talked about our race and culture since those early years in Chicago when we were actively trying to assimilate. We knew what the end goal was, but we had never stopped to check in on each other about whether we felt we had reached it. The assumption was that by getting good educations and having successful careers, we’d transcended any suffering it took to get those things. We never discussed the parts of ourselves that might have been lost in the process. It was as if we both knew that if we tugged even a little at the thread, then the world we had built around us would unravel. Neither of us was the type to let that happen.
“It was just hard being the only Indian person around,” I said. “Law isn’t like medicine; it’s still a very white profession. I guess I thought that was a good thing in the beginning. Like if I could make it in a superwhite profession, I could make it anywhere.” I’d never shared any of these thoughts with anyone and had barely even admitted them to myself until this moment. “I wonder if maybe it would have been nice to not always be the only other in the room.”
Neel looked at me sympathetically. “I didn’t realize that had bothered you.”
I shrugged. “It’s not like I have anything to complain about. I have an ocean-view office and a large paycheck. And the financial stability Mom and Dad were searching for after we left India. I work around the best of the best—or at least people who see themselves as the best,” I said with a wry smile. “But after working so hard to be at that prestigious firm in the first place—harder than many of the others who were there—it was annoying that I was still the one partners turned to when they wanted someone to order sandwiches for a meeting, or grab a file from their office, or be the notetaker rather than the speaker. Those things happened every day and were a constant reminder that no matter how far I’d gone, I still had further to go.” My words hung heavy between us, and after a few moments I pasted on a forced, bright smile. “But that’s all behind me now! At least until my next job, when it starts all over again. For now, my professional life doesn’t matter, and we need to focus on you!”
“Maybe there shouldn’t be a next job like that, then,” Neel said, not letting me off the hook.
“It’s a nice thought, but bills have to be paid, right? No trust funds for us!”
Neel let out a laugh. “No, we certainly don’t have those. But we also aren’t at the same place as when we first arrived. Maybe we are okay enough that the rest of your life doesn’t have to be spent chasing something you’ll never get.”
It was the first time he’d alluded to the fact that the goal we’d set as kids—to blend into white culture at any cost—was one we could never fully attain. But we could never have known that at that age. And I’m not sure either of us would have done anything differently if we had. Even if we could never be fully accepted by our white peers, we still had to strive to get as far down that path as possible. Life was easier that way.