Blue Jasmine (5 page)

Mommy smiled and squeezed my hand.

Before school started I got to see Ria and Jennifer a few more times. Slowly, talking in English was getting easier. The night before the first day of school I said to Pappa, “I hope Ria, Jennifer, and I are in the same class.”

“How many sixth-grade classes are there?” he asked.

“Four or five, I'm not sure. Why?”

“Well, the probability of all three of you being in the same class is . . .”

Before he could say anymore I interrupted. “Don't tell me about the probability. I'm hoping that we are all in same class, that's all.”

“Sometimes all that calculation is of no use,” Mommy said.

“Calculations are always of use,” he said.

“Only in your laboratory, Pappa.”

“And what if someday you want to work in a laboratory?”

“I'm not going to look at bugs through a microscope, the way you do.”

“They're called bacteria, and they're fun,” he said.

“I don't want a share of your fun. You can have it all,” I said.

“I will.”

For those few minutes while we talked I didn't worry about school, but that night, in bed, all the fear that I'd pressed so hard in my heart began to balloon.

I
was glad my school, Grant Elementary, started at eight in the morning, leaving no time for my fear to swell again. All my life Raju and I had left for school at ten-thirty, except on Saturday mornings. Saturdays, we had four hours of morning school. In Iowa City there was no school on Saturdays.

I gulped down the milk and whole-wheat bread that Mommy had set on the table. “Pappa, let's go,” I said, wiping my face.

When we reached the school, the hundreds of children in bright clothes made me feel like I had come to a giant party. I tried to imagine all of them in school uniforms like the ones Raju and I wore in Vishanagar.

My hand clung to Pappa's arm while my eyes searched for Jennifer and Ria. I didn't see either one of them. Pappa said, “Let me walk you to your class.”

The classroom was buzzing with activity. All the students' shiny backpacks matched their excited faces. Everyone had someone to greet, someone to talk to, someone to laugh with, someone to hug, except me. I tightened my grip on Pappa, wishing he were Raju; then we could sit together and it wouldn't be so bad.

“Are you ready?” Pappa asked.

I thought of what Mommy had told me the night before:
Be thoughtful and kind, Seema, and friends will follow as clouds follow wind
.

“I'm ready, Pappa,” I said, and walked into the class. Not only was my throat dry, but my mouth and even my lips were dry. I sat at the first empty desk I saw. Before I could look around, a lady walked toward me. Had I done something wrong? I wondered. She was young, with hair so golden that it reminded me of the flame of the
diya
, a prayer lamp that Dadima lighted every day. “You must be Seema Trivedi,” she said.

“Yes,” I whispered so quietly that I couldn't hear my own voice.

“I'm Ms. Wilson, your teacher. I'm glad to have you in my class.”

Before I could arrange a reply in English, someone
called her. After talking to Jennifer and Ria I was getting better at stringing words together in English. Still, I always thought in Gujarati first and then translated into English. I wanted to say,
I'm also glad to be here
, but I couldn't think fast enough.

Ms. Wilson introduced herself to the class and then she announced, “This is the first day of class and for everyone this is a new beginning. However, there are two students who are new to our school. Sam Bally, who moved here from California, and Seema Trivedi, who came all the way from India.” When I heard Ms. Wilson say my name I stood up. Everyone stared at me.

She continued, “Let us all welcome them to Grant Elementary school. I'm glad they're in our class and I hope you'll help them out and make their transition easy.”

I was still standing up. As I waited for Ms. Wilson to ask me to sit down, I looked around and realized that Sam Bally had not stood up. I didn't know what to do.

“Seema, do you want to say something?” Ms. Wilson asked.

“No . . . Yes . . . I . . . I . . . sit down?”

“Yes, you may sit down,” she said. I was so embarrassed that I wanted to hide my face in my hands and become invisible. As I sat down I heard a snicker from behind me, and my face turned warm with shame and anger. Instead of sitting down, I wished I could run away
from the class, from the school, from the country, back to my old school. I wouldn't complain even if they put me next to Mukta.

In India when the teacher said my name I stood to show my respect. During Ms. Wilson's class the students didn't get up when they asked a question or when she called on them. They answered sitting down! Since there were only twenty-two students in the class, everyone got a chance to talk to Ms. Wilson. They seemed to like her and she seemed to like all of them, but they didn't get up to show their respect.

Ms. Wilson gave us a lot of instructions on our first day of school. I wished Jennifer and Ria were in my class, because I understood so little. In history we were going to start by studying World War II. Sam Bally was very excited and kept asking questions. Although we were both new students, we were not alike. The class felt like a fast-moving train; Sam Bally had hopped onto it, while I was still standing on a platform frantically searching for my ticket.

By the time recess came my frustration turned to anger. I'm so dumb that I will never learn English. If I never learn English how am I going to pass the sixth grade? I wished I had stayed back in India as Dadaji and Kaka had wanted me to.

When I walked toward the cafeteria for lunch break,
I noticed a nauseating smell. It got stronger as I got closer to it. I realized it was the smell of food I'd never had in my life. I tried not to inhale the smell, but the more I thought about not inhaling it, the more I was overcome by it. The cafeteria was huge and everyone had a place to sit down. As soon as I walked in I heard, “Seema, Seema, come here!” It was Jennifer, waving. “Come, eat with us.”

Jennifer was sitting with Ria and three other girls. I hesitated for a second, but she and Ria made room for me to sit right between the two of them. I looked at their lunches. They were small. They each had a sandwich, fruit, a cookie, and juice. Once I opened my lunch the strange odor was replaced by the whiff of cumin, ginger, and red pepper. I wondered if anyone thought my food smelled strange. Mommy had packed me
rotli
bread, spicy peas, rice, plain yogurt, mango pickles that we had brought from India, and sweet
shiro
, made of semolina roasted in butter and flavored with cardamom and saffron. In India our biggest meal was lunch. Pappa had told Mommy to pack a small lunch for me, and yet it was too big. I couldn't finish half of my food. At lunch everyone talked so fast that I understood very little.

I had math and science that afternoon, and it was a relief. Unlike words, the equations were written and solved the same way in America as they were written and
solved in India. Scientific principles were universal, and the pull of gravity was the same in America as it was in India. I grasped more and learned more than I had in the morning.

When I walked out of Grant Elementary, Mommy and Mela were waiting for me. “How was the first day?” Mommy asked.

“Not very good, not very bad,” I said.

“Tell me,” Mommy said.

I told Mommy how nice Ms. Wilson was, how little I understood the instructions, how I ate lunch with Jennifer and Ria, and how easy math was. But I didn't tell Mommy how miserable I felt in the morning, because she'd worry about me and yet she could do nothing about it. “I missed Raju.” I told Mommy and Pappa that evening. They nodded as if they understood, but I wondered if they really understood how much I wanted him to be with me.

The next morning I asked Mommy if I could take a sandwich for lunch. She made me a cheese-and-tomato sandwich, and at lunch I ate what everyone else was eating. It felt comfortable to eat a sandwich, even though I preferred
rotli
with spicy vegetables.

In school, Ms. Wilson made sure I understood my assignments. After she gave instructions to the class and they began their work, she sat next to me and explained what she wanted me to do. Her voice was sweet and kind,
like that of Mukta's mommy. They were two different people living in different countries and yet they were so much alike.

On the third day of class Ms. Wilson gave us some math problems. We were reviewing last year's, math, and it was easy. “Does anyone have the answer for problem number five?” she asked.

I looked around. No one had their hand up. I gingerly raised my hand.

“Yes, Seema. What did you get?”

“One
lakh
.” I said.

“One what?” Ms. Wilson asked.

“One
lakh
,” I repeated.

“I am afraid I don't understand you,” she said.

“Maybe I did it wrong,” I said, confused.

“Can you show the class how you did it?”

I got up. My hand was shaking as I wrote on the blackboard. Between me and the blackboard was my warm breath, which made me break out in a sweat. I wrote down the problem the way I had done it. I underlined my answer:
1,00000
.

“You're right,” Ms. Wilson said, “but in your answer you need to put the comma after the second zero.”

“I put comma after one because it is one
lakh
,” I said.

“I'm sorry. I don't know what you're saying. In English it's called one hundred thousand.”

I stood there like a wooden doll, unable to move or breathe.

“You can sit down,” Ms. Wilson said. I don't know how I got back to my desk.

When I went home, I wrote
100000
without adding a comma and asked Mommy what it was called. She looked at me and said, “
Kem
, why Seema, don't you know that is one
lakh
?”

“What is a
lakh
in English?” I asked.

Mommy's brow became tense and after a few seconds she said, “A
lakh
is a
lakh
, isn't it?”

“It isn't. Ms. Wilson said that this is called ‘one hundred thousand,'” I said, adding a comma after the second zero.

“She must be right.”

“If I don't even know the numbers, how am I going to learn math?”

“You will learn soon. We will all learn soon,” she said.

That night I talked to Pappa about what had happened in school. He had heard about a hundred thousand and a million when he was here the last time, but had forgotten about it.

“But Pappa, in India even the
Times of India
uses
lakhs
and
crores
. If they are not English words why do they use them?”

“Everyone in India knows
lakhs
and
crores
. It is always hard to count in another language,” he said.

“What do you mean? If you can read and write in English, why can't you count in it?”

“I don't know why, but I can never count in English. All day long I think and talk with people in English. I write my papers in English and I present them in English, but I still count in Gujarati, and I still use the three sections of each finger to count by hand.”

“Then how do people understand what numbers you're talking about?”

“I convert it into English before I say it.”

If Pappa had a problem counting in English, I knew I would. I wondered if I would forever be counting in Gujarati and converting it into English.

That night I wrote a letter before I went to bed.

Five weeks of school had passed, and I noticed that every day when I came home, the sun was getting lower and lower in the sky, and it was getting cooler. One day I saw some leaves that had turned red. I picked up two and brought them home to show Mommy. She thought they were pretty, and we put them in a glass jar. A few days later more trees were changing colors. It was as if the trees were tired of wearing their green saris and were trying on red, brown, yellow, and purple ones.