0 PROLOGUE
As beauty begins…
Ayaan Mistry was a man who had truly carved out his own happiness. Like the lotus flower born within muddy waters, he was a soul hungry for light. And when light showed itself to him, he grabbed its rays like ropes and pulled himself out of the muck.
Born in India under harsh conditions and living a life of impoverishment, he came to the United States to pursue a business and marketing degree. He then proceeded to amass a small fortune with his position as the top salesman of a rich company that sold costly and luxurious pashmina shawls and scarves.
But the best part, the physician Crystal Shetland was his, the love of his life. And they had a beautiful daughter named Kayla.
Kayla's mother had long blond hair, pale skin, and blue eyes. Consequently Kayla's features turned out to be lightly olive, maybe two shades lighter than her father's. She had wide blue eyes like her mother, and dark curling hair. She definitely looked exotic.
Theirs was the happiest family for so long. Life was wonderful for them. Kayla's father's business continued to flourish, and Kayla's mother spent her free time away from the hospital doing the second thing she loved best in life after healing people, and that was helping the less fortunate to their feet. She belonged to many local charities and was renown in the county for her generous contributions and hands-on assistance.
Then the U.S. banking system was hit hard as The Great Recession took hold in 2007. At the time Kayla was only nine years old. Her father lost his job in the pashmina business due to company-wide layoffs. After that, he just couldn’t seem to get back on his feet.
That’s when Kayla's mother took over. Not in an angry or bitter way, no, she was happy and determined for their beloved family to keep flourishing. At first Kayla's father was so stubbornly proud and it was so difficult to watch his wife leave for work in the morning. He would just stand inside the doorframe and watch her car leave the driveway, and the look on his face was utter shame and guilt, as if he had let his family down greatly, it was the type of shame in his heart that was equal to the societal stigma of Ayaan having even tried to murder his wife and daughter. For, in his eyes, in his culture, what he had let happen was equivalent to murder. He tended to believe in strict notions for male and female roles in society, and Kayla's mother and he could get in heated debates. But he always showed his beloved wife respect and demonstrated understanding for her viewpoints, even if he didn’t agree with them.
And Kayla's mother, though she worked impossible hours, still found the time to donate herself to her precious causes.
It had been maybe a week after Kayla's eighteenth birthday when her mother organized and funded a black-tie fundraiser whose purpose was to find and free those in child slavery. That very night Kayla was busy packing and preparing for the next day’s trip to what would be her new home, a dorm room at the University of Pennsylvania. Her dream was to study the stars. She was sifting through a pile of mismatched underwear when her mother came into her room.
“I’ve got a present for you, Kayla,” her mother said, coming towards Kayla to sit beside her on her bed.
“Aw, Mom, you didn’t have to do that.”
“Sure I did. My baby is going to college and that deserves a celebration!”
Kayla’s mother presented her with a little white box. She took it from her gently and opened it. Inside was the most exquisite silver necklace with a lotus flower pendant in the shape of a teardrop.
Kayla’s mother closed it around her neck as tears brimmed softly behind her daughter’s eyes. “Remember, when the lotus sheds its seeds,” she spoke softly, “it also blossoms. You are casting off your youth, my lovely girl, and embracing your life as a grown woman.”
“I love you so much, Mom,” Kayla said, throwing her arms around her mother. They hugged each other tightly in silence for some moments.
Kayla dried her eyes on her sleeve. “Okay, kids, off you go, be home by one or no TV.” She teased her parents with her whole heart of love.
Kayla’s mother laughed her radiant laugh. “Yes, Mom.”
Kayla walked arm and arm with her mother through her bedroom. Her mother walked to her father’s side, and they made a stunning couple at the door, she in her black velvet dress and pearls, and Kayla’s father in his tuxedo, so handsome and dashing and mysterious-looking. They smiled at Kayla with true love in their eyes, and it was palpable through the air.
She was a lucky young woman. She had truly experienced a life of being loved and cherished, just as a female child should.
Sometimes you look at someone you love as they walk out a door, or leave the car, or their form shrinks gradually into a little ball and disappears. And there is that little voice inside your head, saying, this may be the last time I ever see them. And you laugh in your mind and shrug it off, because you know it’s not possible.
That is exactly what Kayla did as her loving, perfect parents were swallowed into the black velvet mouth of the Chicago night.
* * *
Kayla lit the gaslights for her parents, those tiny beacons like breadcrumbs to lead them home, and went into her room and changed into her nightgown.
She thought of her Sylvia Plath as she crawled beneath the sheets of her bed. Plath’s writings seemed to speak to Kayla. Maybe she was feeling the anguish of her father’s depression despite her love for him. She read about Plath’s accolades on the Internet and the New York Times Book Review journalist, Joyce Carol Oates, who described Plath as a celebrated and controversial of postwar poet.
She read of how intensely autobiographical Plath’s poems were as they explored her own mental anguish, her troubled marriage to the fellow poet Ted Hughes, her unresolved conflicts with her parents, and her own vision of herself. So much of this story resonated with how she saw the pain of her father’s heart in his eyes.
Kayla felt like a blank sheet of paper being sealed within a clean white envelope. Her extra blankets against the chill caressed her legs and thighs in soft swathes of heat. Then her Eliot came to mind, and like a patient etherized upon a table, she slipped into the darkened sea of sleep.
Somewhere in the blackness, the calm, soft, melting blackness of slumber, came another blackness, but this one was heavy and clawing, and trying to pull her down within its depths.
She struggled, her eyes trying to push their way open. An ocean of light suddenly flooded her vision, and something hard yet soft was pressing against her mouth. She tasted sweetness and the dentist’s office when she was ten, and the blackness succeeded in pulling her down with it.