All Eyes on Her by Poonam Sharma

other women. Naturally, we cope by either placing other women on pedestals from which they are destined to fall—begrudging them their humanity—or by simmering with quiet aggression beneath a thin veneer of propriety. When aggression goes underground, and when physical attacks are replaced with emotional violence, can psychological terrorism among women be far behind?
    “Woe be to the woman who underestimates her adversary on the playground or in the workplace. Because if there is one thing that holds true across females of the different species and socioeconomic classes which I’ve studied over the last thirty years, it’s that the most vicious attacks are those which come as a surprise.”
    “So what does this mean for our society as a whole?” the host asks the camera. “Maybe Ms. McNulty should have the last word.”
    “Humanity is at a critical point in the evolution of our social mores. Never before in human history have we been able to openly acknowledge these issues and recognize their universality. As a culture, we only have two options. Either we can acknowledge woman’s capacity for aggression and begin to talk about it openly, or we can start telling our girls what we tell our boys, and let them take it out on each other physically. Maybe then, rather than growing up to be socially anxious, deceptively dismissive or sarcastically aggressive, a larger majority of our daughters can grow up to be the type of women who can get it off their chests and get on with their lives. Even if it means that most of us will have a few childhood scars to show for it.”
     
    The upside of having taken care of my mother after dad passed away was that ever since then, while most people were trying to convince their parents that they were no longer children, she presumed I could also take care of myself. The downside was that she assumed I still wanted to take care of her.
    “Did I wake you?” she asked me through the telephone, in the moment before I would have drifted back to sleep.
    “Of course not.” I tilted the alarm clock display away from my face, not even wanting to know how few hours were left until I had to get ready for work. “What’s going on?”
    “I don’t want to upset you, but the situation is that…I have decided not to move back to Los Angeles just yet. Darling, I’m sorry. I’ve been thinking about it and I am not ready for it. I thought I was, but there are still too many memories of my life with your father there. So I need to ask you to please sell the house for me, and try to get a little more than I paid for it, if you can. Can you do that for me, honey?”
    “Sure, mom.” I rubbed my forehead, wondering how long it would take me to view, list and sell this house for her, with no real estate experience, and for a profit. “Sure I can.”
    “I feel so much better knowing that you have Raj there with you,” she added, imagining that the middle of the night before a workday was as good a time as any for some girl-talk. “How is he doing these days? You haven’t mentioned him lately.”
    “Oh, fine, Mom.” My voice almost cracked. “He’s fine.”
    “Yes, well, good. Very good. Tell him I thought of him a few days ago when I saw a young man who looked like him from afar, walking here in London. The man was crossing the street in front of my taxi. With some pretty young woman with the most beautiful red hair. He looked so much like Raj that I almost called out to him. Of course I didn’t because then I would have ruined the poor man’s evening, whoever he was. Anyway, you’ll tell him to tell his parents that I said hello, all right?”
    My father’s best friend died of cancer the year that I turned twelve. Ashok Uncle had been my parents’ first neighbor when they moved to the U.S., and my parents’ only connection to their culture for the first five years of their life here. Eventually, he became my father’s partner in his hedge fund. His wife of seventeen years