Temporary Suspension
by Garima Chhikara
On her way home, Tanya is thirty thousand feet above the ground, heading toward a place that feels more like a layover than a destination. For now, she hangs in suspension, the aircraft’s frosty silence swallowing the static in her head.
Her first flight was exhilarating, like riding a giant glider crashing through clouds. Her father, beside her, sipped whiskey more premium than the bottles her mother had smashed days earlier. Growing up, she had liked this side of him when he was tipsy and not awfully drunk. He seemed cheerful then, not drowning in guilt or failure, or calling out for his mother, who never loved him. He would give her money, spin exaggerated versions of her childhood stories, and tell her how proud he was of her. They discussed college, and when he dozed off, she peered at the iPad screen of the man watching Rick and Morty, a show she’d eventually binge on her own when high.
During her college orientation, he had snuck away to a local liquor store. On the return flight, his affection had taken a dangerous turn. He could burn the world for her. She shut her eyes, lowered her head in shame, briefly wishing the plane would spiral just so she could escape. It felt brutal, being untethered from the safety of the world below, from her mother’s steady hands that held her father when he was too drunk to climb the stairs to home. It felt as if the glider were dragging her down, just as he once had, limping around her room at night.
Now, she feels relief in these suspended hours. She can simply exist in a space where time seems paused. All she has to do is settle into a reclining seat and let the engine’s thrum wash over her. She is at the mercy of fate. If only life could always be like this, with things simply happening to her. She reaches places without effort, and if something goes wrong, it wouldn’t be her fault. It’s a hazy surrender to the pull of time and space, a comforting escape from choice.
What she craves is the numbness. A mind free of worry, of the past, of anything she has to feel or decide. The hum of the aircraft settles into the hum in her head.
Then the plane shudders violently, jolting passengers from sleep, screens, conversations. Oxygen masks drop from above. The vents blast icy air against her face. Outside, smoke from the engine bleeds into the clouds.
The air hostess’s voice crackles through the microphone as she asks passengers to remain calm and tighten their seat belts until they leave marks. The familiar safety script now sounds like an urgent demand.
They say that in the face of death, you think of your loved ones, the regrets, the unfinished ambitions, the faces you disappointed, the chances you let slip. But that didn’t happen to her. She didn’t think about her father, who had loved her selfishly and fitfully, depending on how intoxicated he was or what achievements she had to her name that could outshine a boy’s. She didn’t think about the first man to ever love her, the one who smelled woody and spicy, gave her outrageous compliments the night they met, and told her he loved her strangely pensive laugh. She had spent many nights with him, drifting between conversations and comforting silences. He told her she was worth every effort. She has left him, though he wouldn’t realize it until much later, unable to see it through the cave of imagination he calls ambition, a dark, cluttered place filled with the things he prioritizes over her.
She didn’t think about her mother either. Her mother was probably praying for her safe arrival, as she does for every flight. The same mother who didn’t leave her father, supposedly for Tanya’s sake, so she could have a home and money for college. She can’t quite trust her care and praise; it feels like compensation. And isn’t she obligated to offer them?
What Tanya thinks of instead is a vivid dream from around a year ago. Bugs crawled from her mouth, some landing on her palm, others scuttling across her skin, while some, dragonfly-like, aimed toward her mouth. The doctor in the dream, his gaze filled with pity, diagnosed them as internal parasites. There was no cure, only the grim certainty that she would die.
While others clench their armrests, mumble prayers, exchange fearful glances, and start taking quick breaths, Tanya scans her tongue for any presence. Then she notices the woman next to her, whose face she hasn’t seen before because of the hoodie pulled over her head. She looks like one of those perfect women, composed, elegant, mature beyond her years. All things Tanya could never be. The turbulence doesn’t faze the woman; her eyes blink in a slow, deliberate rhythm.
Her calm is unsettling, as if she knows something Tanya and the pilot don’t, as if she knows it’s just a false alarm. Or perhaps she’s simply ready for anything that might happen. Her face stays steady, almost too confident. Lately, only when her head was clouded with powdery dust has Tanya felt that kind of confidence.
The woman’s slender fingers rest lightly on the armrest. They twitch once, barely noticeable. A hangnail dangles from one of her fingers. It is the only flaw in her perfect stillness.
Tanya starts to feel an itch, somewhere inside or outside her skin. Soon, it spreads across her legs and into her hand, lying on the armrest like a corpse’s limb. Gradually, her whole body feels hollowed out, weaker than usual. She has been this way for a long time now, ever since she stopped fighting the way things are. People seem content with whatever version of herself she gives them. Even her job in the gleaming tower, once something she dreamed of, has lost its shine. Most days, she spends her time inventing problems only to charge for solving them. The itch sharpens. She wants to scratch, but can’t find where it begins.
A loud thump. The baggage falls from above. The smoky trail seems to have grown denser. Then comes the screaming, bawling, and gasping from the passengers.
In that moment, Tanya grows envious of those around her, like the man with the tattooed sleeve in the adjacent row, whose shirt says “99% who cares 1% rock,” as if he has it all figured out. “Who cares?” The perfect mantra. Her boyfriend lived by it, too, didn’t he? Once, after joking about “women’s rights” with a smirk, he waved her off. “Of course I’m a feminist. Who cares what people think? It’s just a joke.” Funny, really. Now this man is muttering something, maybe the same mantra or maybe a desperate little prayer to God. At least they have something to cling to, something to reach for. She doesn’t even know what she’d pray for, or to whom, if she tried.
She needs something to believe in. A god, a master plan, a version of herself that matters. A cure for the bugs still eating away at her. Apparently, belief is the secret to a fulfilled life. The motivational speaker at last month’s corporate retreat had said so. Tanya has never believed in much of anything. Maybe the need to belong, to connect, to find answers is just another seed planted by an overthinking brain desperate to make itself matter. But maybe not every life needs to.
Perhaps too many antidepressants were no better than too much pot. If she took an IQ test now, she’d be that idiot convinced the right answer was the one they didn’t give her. A trick. A way to keep the real geniuses hidden.
The woman next to her chews on colorful gum, blowing tiny bubbles. It’s hard to tell if she’s amused or simply bored. Suddenly, she turns and looks directly at Tanya, holding her gaze just long enough to make her feel naked. The woman raises an eyebrow, then calmly turns back to staring ahead.
The itch seems to have disappeared. Tanya still searches for it, craving proof that she didn’t imagine it. A man must stay occupied, her father always said. That was life’s purpose, even if whatever kept you occupied was useless, even if she wasn’t a man. But the weight crushes every effort and thought. She feels submerged in something, almost as if underwater. Is it the fear of dying? She wishes. She tells herself it must be, as if that makes her human.
A man’s voice from somewhere behind her, thin and wavering, says, “We’re not going to die. It’s just bad weather.” She feels an impulse to see if he really believes it or is just offering a comforting lie, yet she can’t gather the strength to check.
Her legs stop tapping, as if stuck in mud. Soon her whole body seems to crumble into dust, weightless, unable even to reach the ground. She pictures the dust drifting endlessly through the air, farther and farther from the world.
She thinks of the night her father hurled a whiskey glass at her, shards and the sour smell cutting through the air. Afterward, she scrubbed at her face. For a moment, his eyes flickered like he’d forgotten who he was aiming for. She hadn’t been trying to hide the marks. She wanted to scrub until her face turned a painful red, until she barely recognized it. She had felt pity then for her own pale face, so much like her mother’s, and for his savagery over things that didn’t matter. Yet she never took the bigger step and simply left. She still picked up his calls, if not on the first ring. She still picked up her boyfriend’s calls, too, even when he kept disappearing. And now, that same pity stirs in her, for herself, for everyone around her, all of them closing in on their end.
The pilot’s voice cuts through the cabin, snapping her back. The plane is coming down safely. Relieved sighs spread through the cabin. The vents breathe softly again, and the plane settles into its old hum. Everyone is alive.
Tanya searches herself for some flicker of feeling. She glances to her side and sees the woman with her eyes closed, head tilted, her face like a satisfied baby’s, someone you wouldn’t dare disturb. Is she replaying it all, locking it into memory? Or has she already fallen asleep? Perhaps the bugs have drifted to her, softened into butterflies in her dreams.
Outside, the clouds part, revealing the hard, familiar ground below. Tanya waits for relief to come. It doesn’t. Only the same murmur, inside and out. The bugs are still quietly eating away.
When she finally reaches home, the sky has already darkened, illuminated by city lights. Moths buzz around streetlights and electric poles, typical of Delhi’s summer nights. Tanya’s mother rushes to shut the balcony door, banging her knee against the dining table, cursing softly, then shouting at Tanya for not noticing. With anxious eyes, she scans the room for any moth that might have slipped in.
Tanya watches her mother move, fetching food, glancing at the clock, trying to make the most of the time before her father’s return, asking about work, whether she’s been eating properly. Her smile seems rehearsed and fragile, but somehow genuine.
“Ma,” Tanya asks, “what would you do if a moth army came in, if they were all over you?”
Her mother freezes, eyes darting. “Why would they come in? Did one come in?” She sweeps the room again, as if bracing for an invisible swarm. Somehow, fearing the bugs might get in feels more suffocating than knowing they are already beneath her skin.
She opens her mouth wide and eats a spoonful of crunchy puffed rice, daring the bugs to come if they will. For the first time in a long while, she feels alive.
Garima Chhikara is a writer from Bangalore, India. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Forge Literary Magazine, Hypertext Magazine, Hobart, Cherry Tree, Carte Blanche, and elsewhere, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Find her at garimachhikara.com.