Blue Boy (15 page)

Never mind, I never like sports.

I descend the stairs and see a familiar scene. Handsome Ashok is playing Ping-Pong with nappy-haired Ajay. Ashok moves the paddle effortlessly; instead of standing up to the table and pecking at the ball, he stands a foot behind the table and when the ball comes toward him, he holds out his paddle and catches the ball on it, as if nestling it, then swerves his arm up and across, releasing the ball to the other end of the table, where Ajay lunges forward to hit it and loses it in the net. While Ajay reaches his paddle across the table to scrape the ball back to him, I look to the other end of the room, where Shruti the Big Bitch is sitting on a white wicker bench. Fat Neelam is sitting on the stone frame of the fireplace, her plump arms plopped on her knees. She is listening attentively to what Shruti is saying, as is Shelley, who is trying to compensate for the sharp almost-hook of her nose with an enormous gold nose ring looped through it. In the corner behind the girls, Ashish and Arun are playing Egyptian Ratscrew.

At first, I’m not sure how to enter the daunting hubbub of the basement, but then I remember that there’s a TV under the slant of the staircase, so I whip around when I get to the bottom of the stairs and plop myself on the couch opposite the tube. I flick through channels until I come to
Antiques Roadshow
. On the screen, a spaghetti noodle of a woman with huge plastic glasses affixed to her face and a wispy mess of mousy hair that looks like she just put her hands on one of those lightning balls they have in children’s museums is having an ornate mantle clock appraised by a silver-haired man. She looks so uncomfortable and can’t seem to figure out what to do with her hands. She clasps them in front of her, then puts one on her hip and the other on the table, as if attempting to do her best
Price Is Right
Girl impression. Then she puts both hands behind her back, like a little child being complimented in public by a doting parent. It doesn’t even seem like she is paying attention to what the man is telling her, despite the stream of exciting words that is pouring from his mouth. At one point, the rhythm of his speech slackens, and a quizzical tone creeps into it. Suddenly, I become very concerned about this poor woman. She grows ever more visibly addled as the appraisal progresses, and the more she fidgets (her arms are now behind her head), the higher the potential heartbreak becomes. I well up inside. Nothing gets me like this moment before the blow—the moment of hope overtaken by fear—and even though this woman and I have nothing in common, I think her to be a part of me.

“Buella,” the silvery man says, “You brought in this antique mantle clock that has been in your family for three generations. Now, you had an appraisal done about eleven years ago?”

“That’s correct!” Buella says, with a fan of one hand accentuating the GRITTY EXCITEMENT of her situation.

“And at that time, the curator told you that the clock was worth roughly a thousand dollars?”

“That’s correct!” Buella repeats, fanning her hand again.

“Well, Buella, I must tell you that, after my assessment today, even taking into consideration the gold plating around the edge and the topaz-encrusted crest here, this clock is worth
only
”—there is a glint of melodrama in his voice, tinged with a bit of sarcasm, as if he is just pulling our legs, so that Buella and I both lean forward, our hands flailing around us, ready to hear the grand figure Mr. Silver is about to dispense to us, which is—drumrolllllllllllll—

“This show sucks,” Arun says, plopping his fat butt down on the couch and flipping channels away from Buella and her Moment of Truth. We are flipping away, away, through reruns of
M*A*S*H
and a grave-faced Peter Arnett on CNN and a Saturday night showing of
Pretty in Pink
to ESPN, which Arun settles on with a grin and a hefty lean against the back of the couch, remote propped on his knee. I want to turn around and scream at him, pummel him, grab the remote back and see if I can catch Buella while she’s either leaping for joy or sobbing. But instead I lean forward and dip a Dorito into a small dish of salsa that Nisha Auntie has put out for us.

“So, Kiran, what’s new?” Arun asks, taking my cue and grabbing a handful of Doritos at once, the orange dust on them covering his hands like the turmeric that stains my mother’s hands when she cooks.

“Umm, nothing too new,” I say, surprised that Arun is speaking to me in so normal a manner. “School.”

“Besides school.”

“Well, we have the fall talent show coming up.”

“Talent show? Talent shows are for dorks.”

Even though Arun looks ridiculous right now, Dorito crumbs all over his shirt front, chubby cheeks rising and falling as he chews, he has a certain authority in calling me a dork for a reason I can’t quite put my finger on. Or I guess I can put
a
finger on it, as I stand up and flick him off gracefully, then turn on one heel and stomp off. I give a quick glance back to see his nonplussed reaction, but he is entirely engrossed in his ESPN, not having even seen my effrontery.

I walk over to the girls. I sit down on the floor next to Neelam.

“Zack is totally hotter than Slater,” she is saying. It seems that the girls have this conversation during every single party—that is, who the hottest guy on
Saved by the Bell
is. “Zack has nice hair and nice arms.”

“Please,” says Shelley, putting one hand up in protest. “Slater is totally hotter. You think Zack has nice arms? Slater has huge
muscles
. That shot of him lifting weights during the theme song? He’s got a perfect body.”

Neelam rolls her eyes. I can see her large frame stiffen a little bit when Shelley speaks the words “perfect body.”

“Hi, Kiran,” Shruti says. “Who do you think is hotter, Kiran—Zack or Slater?” She stares at me for a second, then laughs, the other girls joining in. I laugh, too, making a melodramatic sourpuss face as if to say,
Oh, Shruti, you’re such a card!

“Here’s a good question,” Shelley says. “Who do you like better—Kelly, Jesse, or Lisa?”

“‘Whom do you like best?’” I say.

“What?” Shelley says, confused.

“‘Whom do you like best?’” I repeat.

“Wait—I just asked you guys that,” Shelley says, still confused.

“No, no,” I say. “I’m not asking you. What you said was grammatically incorrect. It should be ‘Whom do you like best?’ Not ‘Who do you like better?’ See, ‘who’ becomes an objective case because it is the object of the sentence. As for ‘better,’ there are more than two possible options given, so you can’t say which one of the three is better because it’s not a one-on-one comparison. You have to choose which is best of the three. You see what I mean?”

She looks at me as if I just smacked her mother across the face. “You’re such a show-off, Kiran.”

Show-off.

“I just thought you might want to know what was right!” I say.

“Well, when I want your opinion, I’ll ask you for it.”

“Well, in that case, my opinion is that I like Lisa best.”

She crosses her arms and pouts, then rolls her eyes to the other girls, who laugh and proceed to ignore me as they discuss other TV shows—
Full House
(of course),
Growing Pains
(Neelam decides that Kirk Cameron is the hottest guy on TV, an opinion with which Shruti agrees), and
Beverly Hills 90210
, which warrants a half-hour discussion that touches on everything from Shannen Doherty’s lopsided face to Jenny Garth’s good skin to Luke Perry’s forehead to Jason Priestly’s hair and, since it’s the same style, whether his hair or Zack “Saved by the Bell” Morris’s hair is better.

“I like Zack’s hair best,” Shelley says, shooting me a sharp glare. Annoyed at her literal and grammatical ignorance, I cough out, “Better.”

Then Shelley pulls the trump card out. She starts speaking in Hindi. Right away, my thorough comprehension of all things
Saved by the Bell
deteriorates into a heady mix of intricate, nasal Hindi sounds peppered with the same character names. Shelley gives one last dismissive look at me before smiling slightly and continuing her conversation. She knows I’m the only one whose Hindi is terrible at best.

Why is this?
I often ask myself. Have I been lazy? There were times when my mother tried to sit me down at the kitchen table and teach me the alphabet or a few choice words, but I eventually pushed away the books that she gave me, opting instead to sing to myself in my room or dance in the backyard or have another tryst with Estée. Or were my parents too focused on learning English to devote enough time to my Hindi? I still remember the two of them listening to this set of white cassette tapes that had a man not unlike my Richard Simmons ballet coach indicating the proper ways to pronounce certain English words. They would sit on the couch—the same one my mom sat on crying that day when my father threw the pillow at her—repeating the sounds on the tape like zombies as they stared blankly at the tea in the their cups. Or were they just busy? Was my mom too industrious frying
puri
in a dark well of vegetable oil to beg me back to the kitchen table to study? Was my father too busy calculating figures in his head, his face greenlit by the accountant’s lamp on his desk? Whatever the reason, I am walking away from Shelley now.

I don’t even dare join the Ping-Pong, although I do give a quick look at the game and try to imagine myself playing Ashok and hitting the ball like he does. Then I realize that it’s not as Ashok’s
opponent
I’m imagining myself but as Ashok himself.

I venture upstairs and pass the kitchenful of aunties again. My mother is sitting at the kitchen table eating a handful of dried chickpeas. Ratika Aggarwal is droning in that same dry tone next to her and my mother is nodding her head. To anyone else she would seem attentive and engrossed, but to me she is simply considerate. She is not really paying attention to Ratika Auntie’s monologue about the prices of Indian groceries these days. My mother is too big a spendthrift to listen to Ratika’s monetary talk; she hears my father talking about these things enough already. For my mother, thinking of money probably conjures up the same vision that I have: my father hunched over stacks of bills and spreadsheets and indigo-inked receipts. Instead, the glaze over my mother’s eyes tells me she is thinking of sliding her foot into a new pump, its tan belly rounding under the pressure. I catch my mother’s attention for a second. She smiles and shakes her head from side to side in that
khatak
way, then lifts her chin and raises her eyebrows in question, as if worried that I am in trouble. I shake my head “no” and point toward the bathroom that is tucked around the corner in a dark cove, indicating that I have to use it, even though I don’t. As I duck into it, my mother relaxes and returns to Ratika Auntie’s conversation.

I flick on the light and the fan and shut the door. The Singhs’ house is decorated very much like ours, which is to say that it’s pretty bare. It is all white, only the pearly pink of the bottled hand soap and the peach flip of the hand towel adding color to the surroundings. Even the trash can is the same off-white as the floor, as if it’s an animal blending in with its surroundings. I put down the lid of the toilet and sit on top of it, resting my elbows on my knees.

By this point, you must think I’m kidding. No one spends parties like this—in the bathroom, staring at a plain white wall, tracing his finger along its blank surface, standing in front of the bathroom mirror and imagining another crest of peacock feathers creeping over his head. No one takes the hand soap bottle and uses it as a microphone and mimes singing “One Moment in Time.” No one turns on the hot water and puts his hands under the running water and just stands there,
just stands there for five minutes
, clearing his mind. But why shouldn’t I do this? It’s called a restroom, after all. I am just trying to get some rest.

I stay in here for about twenty minutes until the locked door-knob has been jiggled for the third time by someone waiting. When I emerge, I expect the person to accost me, but it seems that he or she has gone to use another restroom. I consider going downstairs and wresting the remote control from Arun to return to
Antiques Roadshow
, but I chicken out. I can’t go into the den and join the men because kids never hang around such conversations. I consider joining my mother and the aunties in the kitchen, but then I will have to suffer Rashmi Auntie’s flesh again. And so it is upstairs I go, my socked feet light on the cool marble. I make sure to keep an eye out for Neha, who seems to have disappeared but as the eldest child of the party-giving family must perform various errands throughout the house.

The coolest part about the Singhs’ house is the prayer room they have upstairs. It is no bigger than a closet—in truth, I’m sure the contractor who built this house thought that’s what it was going to be before the Singhs requested him to slap marble tiles all over its walls, its floor, even its ceiling—but the Singhs have crammed all of their shiny Hindu icons into it. For each god, there is a painting depicting Him or Her and then a miniature gold statuette of the same god below the framed picture. A sturdy, bright pink Hanuman lifts a pile of emerald land into the air above Him while His metal remora lifts a smaller patch below. A fat Ganesh, His elephant head brilliant white, smiles over a similarly gleaming round chunk beneath Him. I spot myself in the corner—in the corner!—playing my silver flute sweetly while I play a gold flute below myself. But overtaking all other gods in the Singhs’ shrine is Lakshmi, the beautiful goddess of wealth and prosperity. Copiously and beautifully armed, She drops shiny gold coins, strung on wires, into the water around Her while Her mini-self mimics the same movement. Hers is the only statue that is not gold metal; instead, it is porcelain, accented in bright hues, the skin white but Her crown orange, sari magenta, lotus flower pink. If unobstructed by my body, Her eyes, rimmed in a thick coat of
kajol
, would stare out of the painting, through the doorway, and down the long hallway to the high arch of the master bedroom, which is guarded by two large, sliding pine doors.