Fiction: Selections From Swetha Amit

Rosy

 

The first thing I ever destroyed was the thing I loved most. My doll Rosy had thick eyelashes that fell like curtains over her deep blue eyes. Her golden hair was tied in a thick braid. Her forehead was hidden beneath a fringe. She wore a blue dress sprinkled with white stars. At seven, I carried Rosy everywhere. At the supermarket, strangers often mistook her for my baby sister. She sat beside me at dinner. I fed her fish fingers dipped in ketchup, wiping the red smudges from her painted lips with the corner of my napkin. At night, she slept tucked beneath my arm, her plastic cheek cool against mine.

My parents began arguing every evening. It was always about too much salt in the lentils, overcooked rice, or vegetables that were too oily. One afternoon, Ma returned from the doctor carrying only a folded brown envelope. She disappeared into her bedroom for days. I heard muffled crying through the wall. Pa stopped complaining about the lentils. After work, he sat beside her with the bedroom door half open.

When Ma finally recovered, she moved through the house like a zombie. She no longer tickled my stomach before bed or tucked the blanket beneath my chin. One night, I climbed into her bed as I always had. She kissed the top of my head without opening her eyes.

Weeks later, while searching for my pink sweater in her closet, I found a tiny blue knitted cap tucked beneath a pile of her dresses. I closed the closet before she entered the room. That evening, I tucked Rosy beneath my blanket a little more carefully.

When I turned thirteen, pimples bloomed across my forehead and chin. My chest felt bigger, and my old skirts felt tight. Ma bought large T-shirts and baggy jeans. 

“You're not a little girl anymore,” she said one afternoon, watching me cuddle with Rosy. 

The other girls at school had glowing complexions and stayed smooth even after gym class. They talked about clothes, makeup, boys, and parties. I watched them run like the wind during games period. They mocked my thick thighs and called me pizza face. I called them painted dolls, though only when they were far enough away that they couldn't hear. 

I stayed near the fence, drawing circles in the dirt with the toe of my shoe. At night, I talked to Rosy until her face was blotched with my tears, hid behind lace curtains faded pale by the sun, and read Harry Potter aloud as Rosy leaned against my pillow.

The following week, Ma invited the neighbor's daughter over, hoping we'd become friends. She was tall and athletic, with flawless skin and shoulder-length auburn hair, and she spent every afternoon on tennis practice.

“Do you play any sports?” she asked. 

I shook my head.

“Oh, you should,” she smiled politely. “It's easier to stay thin.”

Then she told me about kissing a boy behind the tennis courts at summer camp. As she talked, she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear without once looking in a mirror. I scratched at the sore bump beneath my chin until it bled. That night I sat Rosy on my bed. Her porcelain face hadn't changed in six years. The same blue eyes. The same tiny red lips. One corner of her smile had chipped years ago—a flaw I had once loved because it made her seem real. I brushed her hair. It slipped through my fingers like silk. Then I brushed my own. My ponytail snagged halfway through. I stared at the dark hair creeping over my arms and legs, the angry constellation of pimples across my chin.

I took Rosy's hand. Smooth. Mine wasn't.

Outside, branches softly scraped the bedroom window. Their shadows drifted across the walls. The scissors lay on my desk beside a dried-out glue stick and scraps of blue paper. I stared at them, then looked away. After a few minutes, I reached for them. Rosy's braid slipped between the blades.

Snip.

The braid fell beside my math homework.

Another snip.

The scissors cut through her blue dress, white stars splitting as the fabric gave way. When I finished, Rosy leaned crookedly against the pillow. One side of her hair was jagged. The scissors slipped from my hand. I picked up Rosy's severed braid. Its ribbon had come loose, so I retied it. I carried Rosy back to my bed and laid her beside me. 

In the morning, she was still there. The braid lay where it had fallen, neatly tied with its blue ribbon. I touched the jagged ends of Rosy’s hair. I never stitched her dress or glued her hair back in place. Across the room, the mirror caught my reflection. I stared at it for a long time. A thin crack seemed to run across the mirror. I couldn't remember whether it had always been there.

The Goat Hike

 

Before we broke up and he moved out, Daniel said, “I'm sorry this isn't working.”

He stood in our kitchen, both hands wrapped around a black mug of coffee gone cold, looking at me with the expression of someone apologizing for a delayed flight. Anger would have been easier. A slammed door. A glass breaking. Something sharp enough to hold on to. Instead, he left quietly, as though he were stepping out for groceries, suitcase in hand.

Three weeks later, after another day spent marking up manuscripts with a black pen at the small publishing house in San Diego where I worked, I drove to Pioneertown to hike with goats.

At work, I circled messy paragraphs, trimmed unnecessary sentences, and fixed endings. Every manuscript believed it could still become the story it aspired to be. Mine still resisted revision.

The desert smelled of hot stone and dry earth. Joshua trees twisted skyward. Granite boulders rose from the sand like ancient ruins. Outside the ranch gate, the guide in a faded straw hat waited beside a restless herd. Four other hikers—two couples—stood nearby. A brown goat with curved horns pushed through the gate ahead of the others.

“Before we begin,” the guide said, “you must understand goats.”

He looked toward the herd of ten. 

“If you trust a goat, it will find its way.”

The herd shuffled forward, hooves clicking along the trail. An occasional bleat drifted across the desert. The couples walked ahead. I stayed beside the guide as our boots crunched over loose gravel. Each goat inspected a shrub before deciding whether to eat it. A small white goat wandered over a ridge and disappeared.

“Aren't you worried?” I asked.

He smiled.

“Goats always come back.”

I nodded as though I believed him. My body had spent weeks bracing for footsteps outside my apartment, the scrape of Daniel's key in the lock, or a text saying he'd forgotten something important. I kept replaying the end of my relationship. The last argument. The last dinner. The last time his hand reached for mine.  Before he left, Daniel and I used to drive the Pacific Coast Highway on Sunday mornings with the windows down. We'd stop wherever the ocean looked bluest, share fish tacos from a paper basket, and argue over whose playlist was worse.

His parents visited us from Florida last fall. We took them out to dinner. His father asked if I planned to find another job. His mother asked what I liked to cook and whether I liked children. When I mentioned ordering takeout because of my long, demanding hours at work, my parents' divorce, and my brother's overdose, she lowered her eyes to her plate and continued eating her grilled zucchini and baby corn in silence. His father cleared his throat and stared at the ceiling. Under the table, Daniel reached for my hand and squeezed it. By the time dessert arrived, I had begun answering in shorter sentences, focused on my plate of grilled lobster as the minutes ticked away. 

Midway through the hike, I paused. My breath was fast, and my heart was pounding loudly. Sweat trickled down my back. I took a sip from the bottle I carried in a small backpack. The brown goat wandered over and pressed his nose against my palm. His fur was dusty and sunlit. He let out a soft, questioning bleat, then slipped behind the rocks. For a moment, I almost followed. Instead, I just watched him. Sweat trickled down my back and onto my forehead. 

“People think goats are stubborn,” the guide said. “They are just sure of themselves.”

I wondered what surety felt like. My life had dissolved into endless revisions—replaying conversations and imagining different endings to scenes that had already happened.

On the walk back, the goats would gather and keep vanishing—behind boulders, around bends, and into the shrub. Each time, they would find their way back to the trail.

At the ranch, the guide opened the gate. The goats wandered in one by one. No commands. No one called after them. The brown goat came in last. He rested his forehead against my hand for a moment, then joined the herd. The guide closed the gate and waved us goodbye. As I drove toward Yucca Valley, the Joshua trees became silhouettes in the fading light. 

At a stoplight, I stared down the empty road. The light turned green, and I drove forward. Somewhere behind me, a goat would keep climbing the rocky terrain it had always known. Ahead of me, the road was a series of bumps and small inclines. Above me, the twilight sky displayed messy streaks of pink, purple, and orange. Suddenly, the journey didn’t seem arduous or dark anymore. 

The Appointment

 

Ma clutched the appointment card as sunlight streamed through the kitchen window. The scent of cardamom tea still lingered in the air. She traced each letter of her name with her finger, then read it aloud. She folded the card along its original crease and slipped it back into her handbag.

At the hospital, the waiting room was crowded. It carried the faint, bitter scent of coffee from the vending machine near the lobby. Plastic folders, swollen with scans and prescriptions, rested on laps. Some were clutched tightly, their corners bent from being opened and closed too often. Every few minutes, a consultation room door opened with a soft click, a name was called, and someone disappeared inside.

“Whose appointment are we here for?” Ma asked as we found some empty seats. 

“Ours,” I mumbled.

She nodded. I scanned the room. An old man folded yesterday's newspaper, then unfolded it and smoothed the same page flat. A toddler wandered between chairs, his shoes squeaking on the polished floor, until his grandmother gathered him back by the wrist. Ma sat beside me, smoothing the border of her sari. Her fingertips kept moving over the embroidered threads.

“Whose appointment are we here for?” she asked again.

 The door to the consulting room opened, and a nurse stepped out with a clipboard. 

“What is your name?” she asked Ma. 

Ma paused for a moment before answering.

“Do you know where you are?” The nurse tapped her pen against the clipboard. 

Ma looked around the room. Her eyes moved past the rows of plastic chairs and the patients fiddling with newspapers or phones. Finally, she looked up at the framed sign above the lobby.

“Yes, at the hospital,” she said, tugging at the edge of her sari. 

“And who came with you today?”

Ma's steel-gray eyes fixed on me.

“I'm not sure,” she said after a moment. “This young lady was already here when I arrived.”

The nurse glanced at me.

“The doctor will see you now,” she said, beckoning us in. 

The doctor's office smelled faintly of paper. A calendar still showed the previous month, its pages curling at the corners. The paper on the examination table rustled whenever he shifted. He spoke quietly, pointing to the scan. I watched Ma's face rather than the images. She nodded politely, as she always did when listening to someone, even when she no longer understood what was said.

When we stepped outside, another family was already standing at the door. Ma slipped her hand into mine as we walked toward the elevator. Her fingers felt smaller than I remembered. Her skin, once rough from years of cooking and washing dishes, was unexpectedly soft. Her bangles clicked softly against my wrist, the same sound I had heard throughout my childhood as she cooked dinner, folded laundry, and brushed and braided my hair.

At the parking lot, she gently squeezed my hand.

“Thank you for accompanying me,” she said. 

“My daughter couldn't come today.”

 

 

 

 

 

Swetha Amit holds an MFA from the University of San Francisco and is an active member of the Writers Grotto, where she chairs the Literary Salon series. She has authored a memoir and three chapbooks. Her stories have appeared in Bending Genres, Ghost Parachute, McNeese Boudin, Gone Lawn, and others. Her works have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and Best Small Fiction.