Gold Diggers: A Novel by Sanjena Sathian

Author:Sanjena Sathian [Sathian, Sanjena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780593401088
Google: LZHwDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0593401085
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-04-05T23:00:00+00:00

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Anita and I hadn’t spoken since her final night in Hammond Creek. I spent that summer in East Lansing as planned, despite the turmoil I’d caused by admitting to drinking. Quitting debate, it was judged, would sabotage my college chances, so my parents reluctantly released me into the nonsense-filled outside world. And how nonsensical that summer was! Wendi Zhao wrangled a job at the camp, teaching admiring ninth graders. At night, she’d creep into my dorm room bearing beer and drugs and soon dispensing with my virginity. Afterward, I’d write to Anita, woozy with weed and Wendi’s smells. I’d tell her how painful the dull ache of moving from day to day was, how Shruti came to me in the darkness, how I felt tugged sometimes to follow her into the Land of the Dead, not to try to bring her back, but to live down there with her, too. Anita never replied, not even to my most dramatic declarations.

During the intervening years, I’d googled Anita here and there, usually stopping before going too deep. But that evening, after seeing Anjali Auntie, I wound my way through the tornado spiral of the internet. I clicked and scrolled. Neither Anita nor I was on social media. She was always private—having a secret at a young age perhaps does that to you. But I located a blurry image of her playing tennis on the Stanford club team, and another shot of her at a techie event next to a tall Indian guy with a sharp jawline and gelled hair; the caption identified him as Jimmy Bansal, investor at Galadriel Ventures. I wondered if Anita leaving the firm had meant leaving him. I found a site from the year prior featuring her annoyingly impressive half marathon time. I went on, as though pressing harder on the internet would puncture it, send guts oozing onto my fingertips, delivering a visceral reality of present-day Anita.

It took about twenty minutes to stumble upon a YouTube clip I’d never before seen. It was labeled “guest spkr @ 2014 miss india teen new jersy.” I gathered from the text below the video that a twenty-three-year-old Anita had been invited to address the MTI finalists. Someone commented, “this video had gotten taken down few years back thank you for riposting.” Someone below that replied, “she is 1 ungrateful girl.”

The video, taken on a phone camera, was washed out. Behind Anita fluttered the Tricolor and Chakra next to the Stars and Stripes. The phone refocused on a Jumbotron, where Anita’s face had been supersized. There, through a camera on a camera, came the simulacrum of Anita Dayal. Her features looked slathered with too much cakey makeup, and her cheeks were chubbier than they’d been in Hammond Creek. Her hair hung down to her breasts, thick and artificially curled. There were the thank-yous and the lead-ups, and then the meat of it:

“So, why did the Miss Teen India committee choose me as one of your speakers today?

“For one,” she said, “because I won this pageant some years ago, as Miss Teen India Georgia.

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