Queen of Dreams by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Page A

choose to misname because we all love dreams. Dreams that are like kites cut free from cause, from the ground-glass-dipped string of guilt.
    Also: she hasn’t had a single dream since her early teenage years, since those recurring nightmares that her mother finally bought from her with a dollar and a string of Bengali words she didn’t explain to Rakhi.)
    She’s sitting in the back of the classroom, near the window, her usual spot. She looks out on the confetti of humanity on Sproul Plaza—old hippies with guitars and bandanna-necked dogs; earnest students in Birkenstocks handing out Earth Day flyers; people queued up at the burrito stall; evangelists, fervently sweaty in black, describing with relish the torments of hell that await unbelievers, among whom, surely, Rakhi is included. Spring is in the air, a faint throbbing, like the drums people sometimes play in front of Zellerbach Auditorium. She thinks she smells hot-and-sour soup from the Chinese cart on Bancroft Way and decides she’ll go there after class.
    She doesn’t see him come into the room, but she feels it—a tingling at the base of her spine. Though why should this be? It’s the middle of the quarter already; he must have entered the class many times before this. Still, with her shoulder blades she senses him checking out his seating options. There’s a chair next to a blonde in the second row, and there’s one next to her. He makes his choice, and her life changes.
    Even in her not-dream she is amazed at how exactly she remembers certain things about him. He was wearing a faded black T-shirt with Carlos Santana’s face on it. His hair fell over his forehead as he bent to write in his notebook. Good Indian hair, thick and glossy and true black. It was clear he had not combed it that morning. A little shock ran through her as she realized this. In all her sheltered life (the adjective rises in her, unexpected—already he’s started unpacking her so she can see herself better) she hadn’t known anyone who came to class so unashamedly uncombed. He wrote without stopping through class, but when she sneaked a look over his knuckles—solid and a little battered, like a carpenter’s— she saw that he’d filled the page with squiggles from a green fountain pen. Later he would tell her they were notations for a bhangra remix he’d been hearing in his head. He was taking the lit class to fulfill a requirement, but he was really a musician. He couldn’t afford to be interested in anything else.
    “Not even me?” she’d say, greatly daring, her heart beating fast. She wasn’t used to flirting—she’d always been a serious girl. And he would dip his face toward hers—. But all this would be much later. Weeks? Months? Time blurs into Before and After when she thinks of Sonny.
    Sonny is the one who made her take her art seriously. Until then, she’d puttered around. But seeing his passion made her want to have something like that of her own. And he’d encouraged her. He’d been the first person she believed when he said she had something special.
    But she’s jumping ahead. On that first day, he didn’t even notice her, caught up in the web of sound in his head. Or maybe he did. Because he sat in the same place next time, and the next, and the next, and then he asked her what she was doing for lunch.
    Dreaming, she wonders what it was that drew them to each other. Was it their similarity? They were both of Indian origin, though he never spoke of his past—parents, hometown, high school, habits. (In this he was like her mother. Was this core of secrecy the reason they’d taken to each other right away when Rakhi introduced them?) She didn’t even know if he’d been born in America, like herself, though she could tell he’d lived in it long enough to be uncomfortable anywhere else. (She wanted to ask him if he longed for India like she did—India, which she’d never seen but had every intention of visiting next year. She didn’t know then