Riot by Shashi Tharoor

always taken for granted. But also for being careless enough and thoughtless enough to do it there, in Mom’s and his bed, on that afternoon, and letting me find him. I hated finding him like that. For years I wouldn’t, I couldn’t, let a boy touch me. I would shudder remembering my father, seeing him naked like that, moving in and out of that woman, slapping her behind, I’d remember the noises they made, his whoops, her moans — it was awful.”
    â€œI understand,” I said, holding her, and this time she did not shake herself free of me.
    â€œBut then I decided I couldn’t let him ruin the rest of my life too. Mom had brought us back to the States — we were in New York — and you have no idea what the peer pressure is like, if you’re halfway decent-looking and not obviously crazy. Every boy in my grade and one or two grades up wanted to take me out, carry my books home, invite me to the movies. When I resisted at first, or when I agreed but wouldn’t do anything they wanted me to, it was awful. Kids in school were beginning to whisper that I was a freak, that I wouldn’t even let a boy kiss me, that maybe I was a lesbian. I couldn’t stay sealed up like that. And then I wanted — I wanted a pair of strong male arms around me again. I wanted to be thrown up in the air again, and caught as I came down. I wanted so much to find someone who’d help me forget Dad, someone who was as different from him as possible so that he couldn’t possibly remind me of him.”
    And then you ended up with me, I couldn’t help myself thinking. Another married man cheating on his wife with an exotic foreigner.
    But that was not where she was leading: not yet.
    â€œSo in my senior year at high school I got involved with a kid in my class. Well, I may as well say it, a black kid in my class. Darryl Smith. He was an athlete, the captain of the basketball team, not particularly bright or anything, but a really nice guy. And God, was he tall: the thing I’ll always remember about my first kiss was having to stand on tiptoe like a ballerina to reach his lips, even though he had to bend down a long way to reach mine.” A light shone in her eyes like a distant star, pulsing through the clouds. “People started talking at school, of course, and I suppose I should have felt I was doing something daring, something risky. But in fact with Darryl I felt completely safe, completely free of the shadow of my father. When he took his clothes off for the first time, I couldn’t keep my eyes off his lean and well-muscled body It was as if I was soaking every detail into my memory, registering another set of images over the ones of my father that had haunted me for so long.” She looked at me, suddenly, as if she was conscious for the first time that it was me she was talking to. “Does this bother you, Lucky? I’ll stop if you want me to.”
    â€œNo,” I lied, my voice thickening, because it was beginning to bother me a great deal. “I want to hear what you have to say.”
    She hugged me tightly. “It’s important, for us, don’t you see? I want you to know everything that matters to me. I want you to understand.”
    â€œI know,” I said. “Go on.”
    â€œWhen my parents found out, they were both upset with me. My father was back in Atlanta, working at Coca-Cola headquarters, so I saw him just three or four times a year. But he was furious, just because Darryl was black. ‘They’re not like us,’ he kept saying. And, ‘How could you?’ To which I couldn’t always resist replying, ‘That’s a question you ought to answer first, don’t you think, Dad?’ And of course he refused to meet Darryl, not that I particularly wanted him to, anyway. Mom disapproved, too, in that dry way she has, never raising her voice, never even mentioning his color, just saying, ‘Priscilla,