* * *
Our days have become finite. The sun rises daily anyway. Except for one day when it rains. I seize the chance and say goodbye to the silver raindrops dancing on the ground under the mango trees. For a while, I try to dance along with them, but their grace pronounces my lack of it so I stop and let the warm rain wash me through. Perhaps I cry, but the rain keeps its secrets.
Because it is raining, the blue mountains on the horizon gain waterfalls. I sit on a rock under a tree and squint into the distance. When I was younger, I wished to climb these mountains and see the waterfalls. Perhaps I will someday. Probably I won’t. Just in case the future isn’t kind, I say goodbye to the mountains and their waterfalls too.
* * *
My ammi gives me a suitcase and tells me to start packing. I have to fit seventeen years of my life into one suitcase. I stare at her, but she won’t look at me. She won’t listen to me. No one will.
I don’t have many things, but they are still too many for this one suitcase. What do I leave behind and what do I take with me? I am being told to divide myself into pieces and choose which parts of me are the most important. My heart will remain behind. It has told me its decision, and I cannot convince it otherwise. I will leave, a hollow version of myself.
The walls of the place I call my own are now a collection of empty spaces where things used to be. Shelves have been emptied and closets are now a spectacle of hangers and little else. All rooms except the one used by my brother are affected by our upcoming excision from this land.
I drift in the empty spaces like a ghost-to-be, learning how to haunt a house. A house that will now belong to my brother. A house in exchange for a family. I wonder if my brother feels like the trade is worth it.
* * *
One crisp dusk when the skies are a red befitting my mood, I say goodbye to the azaan that comes from the east where the masjid is. After night eases into all corners previously owned by light, the people at the mandir start their puja. The music of the sitar and the accompanying voices raised in prayer fill the air. I stand outside in the garden, alone for once, and the frogs skirt the area I stand in as if they too know the state of my heart. I look up at the sky. I don’t have a camera to capture the heavens heavy with stars, so I look my fill and try to impress the image into my heart. I know there will be other skies and other stars, but nothing will ever compare to these.
* * *
Even though I am still here, close enough to touch, a new distance breathes itself into existence between me and my cousins. They do things without including me. They share secrets without telling me. I have been pushed out even though I am still here. Even when I am still a branch of the tree. They have cut me off and set me free, even though I don’t want to be cut off or free.
* * *
The night before we leave, we are invited for dinner at my grandmother’s house. My aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents are all there. Our neighbors are there. Everyone from the village is there. First, second, and third cousins are there. The adults talk about our good fortune and how we are lucky to be leaving. They wish us happiness and pray for our health in the new country that belongs even less to us than this one does. My great-grandparents were brought to this country, and they chose to stay here. They clung to this land, mixing their blood and their sweat with the soil, wanting to belong to it and wanting it to belong to them.
I sit ensconced among my cousins, turbulent and stormy. I am one gale away from being a hurricane, but my eldest cousin has her arm around me. She squeezes my shoulders and reminds me to be respectful in front of people who have sheltered us at our worst and held us up at our best.
* * *
I spend the night with my cousins. The adults leave us alone. The mosquito netting around the bed gleams ghostly in the dark. An hour after midnight, my cousins and I slip out of the room in which we are to sleep and onto the veranda wrapped around the house. We can hear the beat of the lali, urgent in the thin night air, coming from the direction of the Fijian koro. My second-eldest cousin lights a candle and sets it on the floor. We sit around it, a circle of island witches, browned limbs and bright eyes. No one speaks for a moment, but I feel their gazes on me. The purpose for which we are gathered thrums unspoken between us. They are readying themselves to finish saying the goodbye that sits warm on all our tongues.
My youngest cousin cries, gasping sobs that rise in the honeyed air of the hot night. My eyes sting in response, and I bite my lip. Our faces are illuminated by the flickering flame of the candle. My eldest cousin whispers a story then, about the time we were chased by angry hornets. Someone speaks about the time we were almost carried away by the sudden flood that made a river out of a drain. A guffaw suddenly breaks loose, and we are a cacophony, caught somewhere between laughter and tears. This is their goodbye to me. I will myself to remember each detail of this last night.
* * *
The next morning, I skip breakfast to visit my house one last time. I touch the green cement walls and kiss the hibiscus plants. I plant a tear in the soil and hope it grows up to be a wish that will bring me back.
* * *
On the way to the airport, I say goodbye to the road. I am not reconciled to the idea of leaving. I cannot separate myself from these islands, but my cheeks are wet and taste of salt. The salty sea that surrounds these islands is retreating from me.
* * *
At the airport, I say a farewell to my uncles and aunts whose homes have been my own ever since I learned the meaning of family. Their faces, their smiles, their smells, and their stories are home. I hug my cousins extra hard.
My brother, I save for last.
I stand in front of him and hold on tight to his hand. Seven years stretch between us. Our conversations have been awkward and uncomfortable, as if we don’t speak each other’s language, but there are times when we don’t need language to speak. I remember the times his warm back comforted me when I most needed it. I remember his weird snorting laughter when I told a joke no one else would laugh at. I remember fighting over the last fry in the box. I remember him singing me to sleep once.
I have been trying to learn the planes of his face, afraid that I will forget it and him. Afraid that I will forget the scent of him that I define as brother: the smell of sunshine, sea, and a sweetness I haven’t been able to find elsewhere.
I have been running away from this moment, but time has caught me in its grasp and refuses to let go until I live through it.
You see, I have been haphazardly saying goodbye to everything—even to the stones in the backyards—but only at this moment do I realize the immensity of goodbye. Only at this moment do I realize the brutality of it. What is goodbye? Does it mean I will see you again? Or perhaps I love you? Or perhaps it means hold on to me and don’t let me go, because I am not certain I will be myself anywhere but here. I don’t know. I haven’t lived long enough or experienced enough to have the answers.