In those early months, Baby Pearl had already started neglecting Amma.
And men vested in Patagonia and slacked in J Crew actually thought it was funny to tote cases of Corona down 7th Avenue into apartments with blow-speckled coffee tables. The banker had roared “Got that good rona,” and puffed out his chest with an aw-shucks kind of foolishness as he and Baby Pearl stepped through the threshold of his business school friend’s West Village apartment. Baby Pearl was surprised that the banker had proposed the idea of her joining him today. They had worked together for six months before a drunken street corner make-out three weeks ago led them to a kind of penumbral relationship vortex stage. She wondered if the invitation to meet his friends signaled his interest in advancing from mere flirtation to something else on the partnership track.
Baby Pearl was sandwiched on the couch between a punch-drunk blonde and a plastic surgery fellow. The fellow was leaning over Baby Pearl so close that an outsider could have easily mistaken their proximity for intimacy. The truth: he was attempting to lure the blonde to his place with leftover Botox units he had squirreled away from the hospital.
Phone buzz.
It was a text from Amma inquiring whether Baby Pearl had eaten that evening. She decided to respond later.
Her thighs were squelched uncomfortably against a leather couch gummy with beer. The Banker was across the room behind the makeshift kitchen island bar pouring Hibiki whiskey into a glass tumbler. He had the thinning brown widow’s peak and stage one whiskey nose of someone in their thirties who, in their twenties, was revered as the life of the party. He indicated that she should join him with a tilt of the head so Baby Pearl gathered her knees and pushed off the couch. The plastic surgery fellow peekaboo-ed around her to continue propositioning the blonde. Her head lolled forward onto collar bones that pushed through her skin like butter knives.
As Baby Pearl approached the island bar, the banker shifted his weight into his hips. Baby Pearl fingered the gold thakidu slung around her neck and placed the other hand on the banker’s shoulder. His Ferragamo belt grazed her belly button, and his sweet, hoppy breath cooled her forehead. His kisses always surprised her.
“I need a chain like yours. So gangster.” The fellow materialized suddenly beside Baby Pearl and the banker. He pronounced “ster” like “stah.” There was something decidedly graceless about his inflection. Baby Pearl glanced at the couch. It was empty; the blonde had left and apparently that’s all it took for Baby Pearl to become visible.
Baby Pearl stroked her thakidu once more in hopes that it would bestow upon her some kind of layman’s explanation of the vastness of the feminine divine. “There's a prayer rolled up inside,” she said. “My mom got it blessed by the goddess of power.” Against the doctor’s recommendation and to Baby Pearl’s exasperation, Amma had embarked on a temple pilgrimage after receiving a diagnosis for an auto-immune disease at the end of last year. The diagnosis provided little respite, but at the very least explained years of unrelenting body aches, fatigue, and a predisposition to catching any nearby cold. Amma had brought home matching thakidus, talismans imbued with ancient powers, to protect herself and Baby Pearl.
“Goddess of power? Is that what you call yourself when you’re riding this guy?” When the fellow’s fingers brushed the small of Baby Pearl’s back, she shrunk from them by a millimeter discernible only to her. The banker deftly navigated an expression between a smile and pursed lips to satisfy both parties before scanning the room for his next project.
Baby Pearl regretted saying anything at all.
“This guy’s at Columbia. Guessing that’s close to where you live? Harlem, right?”
With a startled shake of the head, the fellow asked her why. “I mean. I know why I live there. I gotta be close to the hospital. Saving lives and all that. But you work downtown, right?”
Baby Pearl moved to Harlem from the Bay Area five years ago. She hadn’t known much about Manhattan neighborhoods, so she scrolled through Craigslist until she found a listing from a recent Juilliard graduate, $1,235 for a closet-sized room. A week later Baby Pearl arrived on the girl’s stoop on Striver’s Row flanked by two duffels and two suitcases. Since then, Baby Pearl had moved up the ranks in a customer success role at a tech start-up that helped large companies analyze data more efficiently. It wasn’t enough to be able to afford Chelsea or the East Village, but it was enough to manage yearly rent increases and weekly cocktails at the fusion Jamaican restaurant across the street. Sometimes she itched for something more and she’d think of their downstairs neighbor – Mrs. Abreu, who had lived in an apartment with the same floor plan as Baby Pearl’s for the past twenty years. Baby Pearl often ran into Mrs. Abreu at the trash chute impassively disposing of glue traps. Baby Pearl had seen a mouse in her apartment once. When she texted the landlord about it someone had come to take care of it within the day. She told Mrs. Abreu to text the landlord but Mrs. Abreu just shook her head with a pressed smile. “You don’t know how things work around here do you?” Something burned from Baby Pearl’s sternum to her belly as it dawned on her that this wasn’t her place. Now downtown with the banker and the fellow and the blonde, it didn’t feel much like she belonged there either.
Baby Pearl opened her mouth to attempt a response, but the fellow saw a woman from the Isabel Marant billboard walk in and immediately forgot all about her and the thakidu and Harlem. Baby Pearl wanted the banker to ask her why she didn’t give the fellow a piece of her mind. But the banker didn’t ask. His pants were tight around his crotch and he tugged the taut cloth to free himself before downing the last of his drink.
“I met that guy at Art Basel last year,” the banker said finally. “I know he can seem like an asshole sometimes, but he means well. Just awkward around girls. I know he’d have my back if I needed him though.”
Baby Pearl made a note to google Art Basel and wondered in what kind of situation the banker would possibly call the fellow for help. She let her silence draw out so long it settled into acceptance. She watched as the banker fished a clear pink container from his pocket. It was filled maybe a quarter of the way with snow and looked a bit like the container they crush eyeshadow samples into at Sephora.
Baby Pearl learned about eyeshadow in seventh grade. The girls had started wearing thongs pulled up into whale tales over low-rise jeans and her assigned gym locker had been next to Madison’s. Madison Thomas had cut-outs of Chad Michael Murray from seventeen magazine taped on the inside of her locker door along with a flimsy magnetic mirror from Claire’s. Madison was rumored to have gotten a pink chain thong as a gift from a high school freshman that wanted to sleep with her. Everyone jostled to sit behind her in class to see if it was true. Baby Pearl watched in fascination as Madison squeezed watermelon pink Lancome lip gloss over her puckered lips every day after P.E. One day she pulled out a small clear container filled with shimmering powder. Baby Pearl must have stared too long because Madison said, “It’s eyeshadow.” She brushed the applicator over her eyelid, closing one eye then the other to check if it was even. “Sephora. Free sample,” Madison screwed the jar shut and handed it to Baby Pearl for inspection. That night Baby Pearl asked Amma to go to Sephora for free samples Amma replied “What are you going to school for then? To study or to do fashion show?” That weekend though, Amma woke Baby Pearl up and ushered her into the car with mock teeth sucking and eye rolls. To Baby Pearl’s surprise, Amma marched them into Sephora despite never having been there herself. They were quickly adopted by a Beauty Advisor who led them around the store explaining various products that neither Amma nor Baby Pearl had seen before. They left with an eye pencil and eyeshadow, not a sample but a full palette, as well as knowledge of a complete “eye look.” Baby Pearl clutched the Sephora bag tightly to her chest on the ride home as Amma tried her best to look disapproving.
The banker handed the eyeshadow container to Baby Pearl. She dipped her apartment key into the container. Crystals pitched and poured off the edge of the key with each micro-tremor of her fingers. The bump gleamed in the low light for a moment before she brought it to her right nostril. She pinched the residue from her septum and offered the key to the banker. He pulled a small bronze spoon fit for a doll from his chest pocket. “Isn’t it neat? He got one for each of the boys.” The banker tilted his head in the fellow’s direction. He did a clean bump, no residue. He bumped till the spoon scraped the bottom of the container.
A half hour later, he opened his eyes wide as if to reset them. They had moved back to the couch. His arm laced the back pillows behind Baby Pearl’s head. “Ah shit. Need to message my guy.” He pulled his phone from his pocket, thumbed off quick texts, and asked Baby Pearl if she wanted to get some air, flipping his phone upside down and into his back pocket in one smooth motion.
Baby Pearl nodded and let him lead her by the hand through the crowd, grabbing her coat from a pile that had fallen off a hook by the door. Conversations about short-squeezing Tesla stock, mild acknowledgment of a surge of COVID cases in Italy, and the absurdity of Elizabeth Warren’s presidential bid were paused momentarily to clock Baby Pearl and the banker’s exit. Baby Pearl wondered if they were being perceived as a good match; if people thought she was more beautiful than him or he than her. They emerged onto the street and the banker pulled a vape from his shirt pocket. The tip glowed green as he puffed. The banker blew a cloying plume of smoke into the starless night and fixed his gaze on Baby Pearl.
“I had a crush on you for so long. You’re really different than I thought.” he said, heading her off before she could work up the courage to confront him about the fellow again.
Baby Pearl readily accepted the bait. “What do you mean?”
“Well, usually our vendors just lie down and take the work we assign them because we’re the brains and they’re the muscle. But you came in with all these new ideas we never thought of.” He paused to breathe deeply from his vape. “Then again, I learned pretty fast in b-school that the Indians weren’t messing around. Honestly, I don’t know why you’re wasting your life at that piece of shit company. Race to the bottom. You can do anything you want babe.” He eyed a masked woman walking by and rolled his eyes.
A white Tesla pulled up in front of them and the banker opened the door to let Baby Pearl get in first. The driver handed another eyeshadow container to the banker without looking back. He exchanged the container for cash. A gold Patek Philippe watch glinted around the driver’s wrist. They circled the block and he dropped them off in front of the same nondescript apartment building. The banker got out first and walked around the car to hold Baby Pearl’s hand as she steadied on her heels. In a motion that caught her off guard he yanked her into his chest as the Tesla drove off. “I might really fall for you,” he murmured, stooping down to press his forehead to hers. She thought of Amma at that moment. Amma had often stooped to press her forehead to Baby Pearl’s all the way through elementary school and until Baby Pearl reached the age that it got embarrassing.
“Really? Let’s ditch then?” Baby Pearl said with a wink. The banker nodded emphatically, extending a lazy arm to hail a passing cab back to his place.
Baby Pearl woke the next morning in the detritus of the night. Clothes and pillows were strewn across his studio apartment floor. Half-filled cups and empty take-out containers littered the coffee table. A damp musk hung heavy around them. Baby Pearl rose from the swirling and gaping oyster gray sheets on his bed to meet a single beam of light straining through mangled blinds. She rubbed her eyes, excavating her phone from under her calf. It had miraculously retained 16% battery.
She had a single text from Amma. “Muthukutti. How are you? Haven’t heard from you in a week.”
Muthukutti. Baby Pearl. Legally her name was Navya, but Muthukutti was a nickname bestowed upon her by Amma. The name Baby Pearl was a sacred acknowledgment of that period of time when Amma, herself a bright-eyed youth in her early twenties, marveled at Baby Pearl’s small precious body and hoisted Baby Pearl onto her shoulders, affirming that no matter how old Baby Pearl got or how far Baby Pearl traveled she would forever be her brilliant, shining Baby Pearl. It was a name synonymous with “I’m thinking of you. I care for you. I love you” braided together. Baby Pearl had once tried to convey these multitudes to the banker. “That’s cute,” he had responded flatly before getting distracted with an email from a Managing Director. Perhaps Baby Pearl had been unable to find the right words to explain herself again or perhaps there were things the banker would never have the capacity to understand.
Baby Pearl made a mental note to finally respond to Amma later. The Juilliard graduate was expecting Baby Pearl at her concert that afternoon, so Baby Pearl gathered her things to begin the trek home to shower and make herself presentable. She leaned over to kiss the banker goodbye and caught a glimpse of the Hinge logo booting up on his phone screen. They weren’t exclusive but it stung all the same.
The concert at Lincoln Center was a first of its kind global collaboration between two throat singers – Canadian and Mongolian. Reading between the lines of their accolades in the program, it became clear they had collaborated to teach the white woman that throat sang for Hans Zimmer’s latest score everything she knew. The Juilliard graduate had met the director of the program at an artist networking mixer. The program director had told her his passion was providing a global stage for underrepresented talent and that she reminded him of his daughter. Three gimlets later he laid sloppy kisses on her cheek and asked her to play the piano accompaniment for a short fusion piece in his next show, so she resisted the urge to squirm from his grasp. The crowd of septuagenarians surrounding Baby Pearl clutched shawls to their pearl-strung necks and brushed fuzz from the elbow pads of their tweed sports coats as they stood for numerous standing ovations. Baby Pearl wondered whether the crowd at this concert would be similar to the crowd that the banker mingled with at Art Basel. She pulled out her phone and clicked away from Amma’s text to her thread with the banker. She sent a “Hang Friday?” before standing to join the crowd.
The Juilliard graduate earned $100 for her performance and insisted on treating Baby Pearl to Cafe Luxembourg across the street. The Juilliard graduate had waited tables there to pay for her yoga teacher certification, so they often received a dessert or a cocktail or two on the house from her ex-colleagues. She crunched the tip of a breadstick between her front teeth with a delicate click as she waggled her eyebrows at Baby Pearl. When she found out Baby Pearl was going to meet the banker’s friends, she had supplied Baby Pearl with numerous options for asking the banker whether they were an official couple or not ranging in tone from “cheeky” to “dark femme.” The urge to fib tickled Baby Pearl’s tongue. “I didn’t ask,” she relented. The Juilliard graduate paused mid-crunch. When Baby Pearl had shown the Juilliard graduate his picture she had pressed her lips together as if sucking on sour candy. She was accustomed to a different breed of banker – the kind that courted her openly to the tune of a live piano accompaniment at Bemelmans Bar or lobster for two at Don Angie. She never said it but Baby Pearl knew she did not tolerate “you up” texts after 11PM or dive bar drinks, never dinner, around the corner from his apartment. Baby Pearl couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps these were not different breeds of bankers after all but rather avatars of the same banker that morphed according to their appraisal of a woman’s worth. On the 2-train home, Baby Pearl checked for a response from the banker but there was none. When she got into bed a few hours later she still hadn’t received a response, so she sent him a photo of the Lincoln Center with the message “Classy vibes today. Hope you had a good day!” She paused for a moment before adding a kissing face emoji and pressing send.
A week passed and with it went February. Baby Pearl considered double texting him but willed herself to wait through the second week of March as she weighed reinitiation tactics. She had considered “We good?” for a full day before finally settling on “You good?” She then navigated to the Delta Airlines website. Her company had instituted a four-week work from home period so she thought she might as well hole up at Amma’s house. She’d make up for how aloof she’d been recently towards Amma as well as put some distance between her and the banker. Even if he did text her, she’d be out of town being the unreachable one for once. She booked a flight leaving in three days and texted a screenshot of the itinerary to Amma. Amma responded with a bitmoji of herself cheering. Baby Pearl’s mind wandered to the banker again. She replayed the last conversation they had about how she was wasting her life at her current company. She was twenty-five and he was older than her by seven years. If someone in his thirties and as accomplished as him thought she could do better, then maybe there was truth to it. She spent the rest of the evening scrolling through LinkedIn posts and sending off applications, imagining what she would tell the banker when she scored a better role just as he predicted.
The next day Baby Pearl was in the shower when the banker wrote back. She caught a glimpse of the name and half slipped out of the tub as she lunged to read the full message “Hey. Sorry. I actually got COVID but I’m way better now.” It contained no inquiry about how Baby Pearl was doing and no plea to see her again. Another text came through. It was a photo from Amma of tupperwares stacked in the fridge with different curries that she had made in preparation for Baby Pearl’s arrival. “Waiting for you Muthukutti,” it said. Baby Pearl liked Amma’s message before thumbing instinctively over to Instagram where she saw the plastic surgery fellow’s picture at the top of the screen ringed in purple indicating that a new story had been posted. She clicked it without a moment’s hesitation. The first photo was of the fellow masked and wearing white coveralls alongside other colleagues in identical personal protective equipment. Their arms were crossed, and they were staring down the camera. The text over the image read “Honored to serve with my brothers in arms.” Baby Pearl wondered if any of the pictured colleagues were women. She thumbed to the next photo in the series. It was a photo of another one of the fellow’s colleagues who had passed away from COVID. “Fuck Rona,” the text overlay read. Baby Pearl’s disdain for the fellow thawed ever so slightly as she considered the physical and emotional toll he was undergoing. Perhaps the fellow’s behavior at the party could be explained away by a need to escape the stress of his profession for a few moments. The next few stories depicted more harrowing hospital scenes but at the last photo Baby Pearl’s heart beat double. It was a photo taken from the back seat of a car. The banker was sitting in the passenger seat, vape raised partially to his lips. He was grinning at the driver – a woman. The location was unrecognizable to Baby Pearl – a long stretch of single lane highway flanked by greenery on either side. It could have been anywhere. The Instagram stories cut off there. She immediately regretted viewing it. It had been posted a mere three minutes ago so she would be one of the first to have seen it. Would the fellow notice and tell the banker? Would they exchange smug, knowing looks about that one naive girl that the banker hooked up with for a few weeks? Baby Pearl deactivated her Instagram. She checked her email to see if any companies had responded to her job applications – no responses.
The next day, one day before her scheduled flight, she woke to two more sets of texts. The first set was from Amma. It contained a picture of a bougainvillea creeping up the side of Baby Pearl’s childhood home in San Jose where Amma still lived. Amma had received her diagnosis shortly before Baby Pearl left for New York. Baby Pearl was worried that with no one to coax her to step out for fresh air that Amma would lay bedridden. So she came up with the idea of planting the bougainvillea. Training the bougainvillea to climb up a trellis took diligent fertilization during the growing season, pruning to ensure an aesthetically pleasing shape, and regular weaving of its tendrils through the trellis gaps. Amma and Baby Pearl had donned old rags and taken turns wielding an old, rusted shovel excavated from the depths of the garage. Neither of them had a penchant for yardwork but Amma took up the task with zeal only because the task at hand was her daughter’s suggestion. Baby Pearl had taken a photo of Amma’s face screwed up from the effort of digging and the heady scent of the fertilizer. Amma had evidently continued nurturing the bougainvillea according to Baby Pearl’s instructions as it gleamed magenta against the white façade of the house. “Have a small cough. Will let you know if it gets better by tomorrow otherwise maybe you shouldn’t come,” Amma had added.
Baby Pearl decided to check her other texts before responding. They were from the banker. He was coming back to the city to pick up some things before heading back to the Hamptons and he wanted to see her. She wondered whether he would offer to bring her with him as an escape. She navigated back to the texts with Amma “You’re right. It’s better that we both isolate. I don’t want to accidentally bring COVID to you and make you more sick,” she responded before canceling her flight. Baby Pearl felt a small worm wriggling in the pit of her stomach, asking her whether she really believed it was best not to go.
The next day came and went with no word from the banker. Baby Pearl’s face felt hot for most of the day and she couldn’t concentrate on work. At around 11PM she reactivated her Instagram. The first ringed story was the banker’s. Reflex trumped logic and she tapped it to reveal a picture of a large swimming pool adorned with a blow-up flamingo. The location tag read “Southampton, NY.” Baby Pearl tapped to the next photo. It was of the banker wearing a handkerchief around his face, begrudgingly satisfying the mask mandate. He was sitting in the back of a pick-up truck with his arm around a woman also handkerchief-ed but Baby Pearl handily clocked her as the same one from the fellow’s story. Baby Pearl’s chest burned orange like the Long Island beaches under the setting sun. Baby Pearl couldn’t resist the urge to click on the woman’s handle. Her profile was public. Baby Pearl thought this bitch must either be confident as hell or insecure as hell. She hoped it was the latter, but immediately felt wicked for it. As she scrolled, her heart blackened further. Every post was from a new location – Ibiza, Seychelles, on stage with a DJ in Miami. They were captioned with things like “Be a voice, not an echo,” or “She believed she could so she did.” The composition, lighting, and pose of each photo were staged in that effortless way with the express purpose of assuring the viewer that the subject might actually be perfect. As Baby Pearl zoomed in on the woman’s waist in a bikini photo, to analyze whether there was any potential body tuning, she accidentally double-tapped the post and received a heart indicator that she had liked the photo. In a panic she un-liked it immediately and began googling things like “How quickly does Instagram send a notification to account holder after someone likes their photo?” and “Will notification disappear from account holder’s lock screen if I un-like the photo?” All searches yielded mostly Quora and Reddit scholars with differing perspectives. Baby Pearl imagined the woman clicking on this notification and noticing that the banker was a mutual friend. Maybe they’d be in the middle of sharing a lobster roll on the beach and she’d turn her phone to the banker to ask who Baby Pearl was. The banker would respond “Oh wow. Some girl I saw for a couple days that got obsessed with me I guess,” and he’d apologize to the woman for inviting this crazy into her life. They’d scroll through Baby Pearl’s unmanicured profile giggling at her desperation.
A FaceTime request from Amma took over her phone screen. When Baby Pearl answered she could see Amma was in a hospital gown. Her cheeks were pale and her forehead was beaded in sweat. “Muthu. I’m in the hospital,” she said weakly, stating the obvious. “Don’t worry. I will rest here for some time and be home soon,” she said before going through some logistics the doctor had asked her to cover. Baby Pearl would be her emergency contact.
Baby Pearl tossed and turned alternating between wishing she hadn’t canceled her flight and then convincing herself it was the responsible thing to do. She fell asleep for an hour and woke up around 5AM to a text from Amma’s phone. “This is the on-call PA Maggie. We’ve put your mother on a ventilator,” it read and listed a contact phone. Baby Pearl madly called the contact phone back repeatedly, but no one picked up. She looked up the hospital website and went down the list calling every department including unrelated ones – pediatrics, obstetrics, even the pharmacy to no answer. She waited feverishly, refreshing the phone screen every few minutes, to no response. In the evening, she finally received a call back letting her know Amma was still on the ventilator. The call was abrupt as the PA clearly had no conclusive information about Amma’s progress and certainly no more than a few minutes to spare.
Baby Pearl sank off her bed onto the floor and lay splayed face down on the ground. Minutes, hours, or a whole day could have passed. The Juilliard graduate’s parents had picked her up and taken her back to Connecticut the week prior so there was no one to check on her anymore. Her phone vibrated with a FaceTime from the PA, masked. “Hi, Navya? I’m so sorry to be telling you this. We’ll be removing your mother from the ventilator shortly and I wanted to give you an opportunity to say goodbye.” Baby Pearl was dumbfounded as the PA moved the FaceTime camera to pan over her mother. She could make out her mother with a plastic mask over her face. Her eyes could have been open or closed, the service was poor and the image resolution was too blurry to tell. The only feature that stood out was her mother’s gold thakidu gleaming against her neck. “Wait is there any alternative treatment? Is there anything I can do? I’ll do anything,” Baby Pearl’s voice rose to hysterical levels and the PA put on her kindergarten teacher voice in response. “I can’t imagine what you’re going through Navya. I’m devastated for you and your mother,” she said simply before assuring Baby Pearl that this was the only course of action available.
Baby Pearl sat paralyzed in the dark as her phone buzzed and buzzed. A text from her uncle: “Any update on Amma?” A text from her coworker: “Did you see the email? Permanent work from home until further notice!” A text from the Juilliard graduate: “Hey checking in on you. The news reports on the city are crazy. Bodies piling up in the streets? Call me.” A missed call and voicemail from a recruiter at Facebook who said Baby Pearl’s application was just what they were looking for. A text from the banker: “Yo yo.”
A knock sounded on the apartment door but Baby Pearl barely registered it. The knocking continued until the door opened with a soft click. Baby Pearl must have forgotten to lock it. Mrs. Abreu knocked once more at the door of Baby Pearl’s room this time before putting a tupperware filled with stew on the floor down in the door frame and backing away. “Sancocho.” she said. The words were muffled behind her mask, but Baby Pearl could feel their embrace all the same.
Contributor Notes
Divya Nair is an alumna of the Kweli Art of the Short Story Workshop. Baby Pearl is her fiction debut. She is a writer whose work explores diaspora, technology, and revolution in the ordinary. Raised in Cupertino and fine-tuned in New York City, she now calls Los Angeles home. Her writing has received support from Kundiman. Divya is currently drafting her first novel.
