Darshan (45 page)

Darshan glanced through the rearview mirror at Jai who was sitting directly behind him, her expression inscrutable. “It is only a precaution,” he told his father.

“Against what?”

“In the event something happens to you.”

“What will happen?” Manmohan asked.

“You never listen,” Navpreet said from the back, taking her sister’s hand. In the center seat, Livleen stared through the windshield, apparently not paying attention.

“The laws are different here,” Darshan said. “She will not have anyone to protect her if—”

“I will protect her,” Manmohan said, jabbing his cane into the car’s foot well.

Darshan took a breath and nodded. “I know you will, Bapu.” Slowing the station wagon, he parked in front of a considerably derelict building. “I only want you both to be free of worry.”

“This one?” Navpreet asked, looking at the building with angled bay windows and rotted hood moldings. The upper façade was a repulsive sea-foam green that contrasted horribly with the dark red hue of the entrance overhang. The paint was chipped and stained by car emissions, and chunks of molding were missing.

Circling around to the passenger side Darshan tried to help his father out of the car, but Manmohan drew his arm away, struggling with difficulty to get out by himself. When he was on his feet, he surveyed the street, the neglected condition of it, the shifty men on the street corners, the mini-marts run by Chinese and Mexican families, the shallow in the sidewalk leading to the building’s one-car garage littered with stray newspapers, cigarette butts, paper-coated wire-twists, empty soda cans, beer bottles, and wads of black, flattened gum. He wordlessly approached the entrance, deed and bank statement gripped in his fist, waiting for Darshan to unlock the gate. Pushing through, the family trailing after him, he climbed the narrow stairwell coated densely in colorful graffiti.

Assessing the broken light fixture on the first-floor landing, Manmohan guardedly opened a door to one of the units. The worn and grooved hardwood floors inside had been painted the same dark red as the front overhang. A grayish, black strip of dirt was tracked down the long hallway past the two bedrooms and bathroom to the kitchen and living room. Jai opened the kitchen cupboards, releasing a flood of cockroaches that darted into crevices and corners. In the living room, she touched the yellow-orange tobacco residue on the walls with her forefinger, disgusted by its stickiness. The bathtub and toilet were crusted with body dirt and oils, and the linoleum in the kitchen and bathroom had large holes, the glue once used to hold it down now flaking off. Livleen curiously opened the rear door to a back staircase that led to a small yard below, but Darshan stopped her before she stepped outside. “The stairs aren’t safe,” he told her. “We will have to rebuild them.”

“We do not belong here,” Manmohan told Darshan, stopping in the front bedroom to look out onto the loud and heavy Howard Street traffic.

“It is not for us to live, Bapu. It is only for money.”

Jai pulled her chuni up over her hair and gathered her heavier shawl more tightly about her shoulders. His mother appeared small to him now, but she had been so big in Darshan’s memories. She had never shied away from hard work, aggressively attacking the projects set before her, systematically accomplishing everything asked of her without complaint, still energized when everyone else had collapsed with exhaustion. Darshan had always attributed the success of the mill and their family’s prosperity in Fiji to Manmohan. Now, seeing an absence of the strength he had always taken for granted in his mother, he understood that it had not been his father. It had been her, beneath him, holding him up. As he glanced from his mother to his sick, bent father, he understood her fatigue. Manmohan, in this new country, was now a heavier burden.

“It is ours. It is everything we have,” Darshan told his father, who would not pull his eyes from the street below.

Formerly the refined residence of intellectuals and professionals who dined and entertained in splendidly decorated rooms lit by gas lamps, over the decades the apartments had eventually been laid waste by alcoholics, chain smokers, and aging couples too feeble to care for them. The building’s seventy-five-year-old Victorian spirit had been lost under layers of grime and thick piles of garbage. Upon inspection it was officially deemed hazardous, and the old and decayed apartments were hit hard with city code work, overwhelming the family with more labor than initially anticipated and requiring Darshan to continue working overtime to pay for more supplies and materials. The building, still outfitted with gas lighting, would need modern heaters, which would require complex and wall-invasive electrical work. They would need to re-floor, entirely replace weak walls as well as unsafe windows, reinforce the front stairwell, and erect scaffolding to repaint the exterior and change the window hoods and moldings that threatened to come loose and fall to the sidewalk.

Little by little, however, spending his free time renovating the units, Darshan began to develop an affection for the building as the family restored some of its old charm, reconstructing the back staircase, exterminating the cockroaches, scrubbing the insides with bleach and industrial kitchen soaps, repainting, and clearing away the years of accumulated trash. In his mind, Ranjit was somehow linked to this place. He had been here, had stood across the street in the fog, wistfully watching the warm, yellow-lighted windows as children were tucked safely into bed, their parents extinguishing candles before sinking into their own blissful dreams, hoping that one day he would be free enough in this world to call this place his own.

It was difficult work, in particular for Jai. With Darshan and Livleen’s help, she handled her tasks—chiefly cleaning—with as much fortitude as she had done all things in her life, but now far more wearily, which made Darshan uneasy. On her knees, scrubbing claw-foot bathtubs, she appeared normal and as industrious as ever. But she was too quiet, no longer contentedly humming the Punjabi folk songs Darshan remembered her humming while working. And she was dangerously unsteady on her feet, often stumbling over one of the many stray nails lying around the units, staggering after landing too hard in a pavement dip on her way to the store, or lurching forward when one of her slip-on shoes came loose. Her surroundings seemed to have become irrelevant. As if there was no point any longer in paying attention to the world around her, she simply floundered through it.

“What can I do for her?” Darshan asked Elizabeth. He had not been able to sleep and had gone to see his girlfriend, to be reassured, to be told as she always told him that no problem was without its solution, without its measure of hope.

The smell of eggs in butter filled her apartment as she scrambled them in a pan with a spatula. “What was that?” she asked, sprinkling some salt over the eggs.

“My mother isn’t well,” he told her again.

Turning off the stove, she scraped the eggs onto a plate, shook some pepper over them, and sat on a floor cushion by the coffee table. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, taking a bite. The eggs still too hot, she waved a hand in front of her open mouth.

He frowned. “Elizabeth, I don’t know what to do.”

She set her plate on the table and placed the fork next to it with a dull click of metal on wood. She laced her fingers together around one knee. “Was there something in particular you wanted me to say about it?”

“Why are you so angry with me?”

“You haven’t even said hello.”

“I did.”

“No, you didn’t. It’s been over a week since I last heard from you, and you didn’t even say hello.” She picked up her fork and tried another bite.

Darshan sank to the floor beside her, pressing his forefingers into his eyelids. “I did not mean to ignore you. Or Stewart. If you knew what kind of person my mother was, you would understand.”

“But I don’t,” Elizabeth said, regarding her eggs with disinterest.

~   ~   ~

The sun was warm on the pavement outside Howard Street, but the cool Bay air cut into Darshan’s skin, intensifying his agitation. Elizabeth’s hand was clammy in his as he helped her out of Stewart’s Chevy. Tersely returning her smile, feeling pressured to bring her into the Toor fold, he gently pried her fingers loose to help his friend unload supplies from the bed of the truck. He lifted the tools mechanically, their weight straining his arms, stretching his tendons downward as he thought of his father waiting unaware upstairs, of the ruthless expectations that no son could ever hope to fulfill, of his own pitiful desire to fulfill them.

The three of them entered the lower left-hand unit that had become the Howard Street base of operations and set their tools down in the front bedroom. Darshan quickly stepped away, pretending not to notice as Elizabeth again tried to take his hand, and led them down the long, dim hall toward the living room where Jai and the girls were finishing their morning tea and his father was reading the
San Francisco Chronicle
.

Glancing up, Manmohan opened his mouth to speak, then slowly closed it when he saw Elizabeth, fixing her with a look of icy inquiry.

Darshan was acutely conscious of how close she was standing to him; of her warm shoulder touching his arm; her cold, nervous fingers brushing against his; of her delight when he had finally agreed to bring her here; of her hope for their future; of the sincerity in her voice when she had said she loved him; of everything good in her that his father would not see. She looked at him now, waiting, awkward and ill at ease, but full of optimism.

“Bapu,” he said.

She smiled encouragingly at him.

“Bapu,” he said again, then faltered when Manmohan shifted in his chair. An apology flickered across his face as he reached around her and affably patted Stewart on the shoulder. “This is Stewart’s friend, Elizabeth. They have come to help for the day.”

Elizabeth blushed.

“You good,” Jai asked. “Tik?”

“Yes, thank you,” she mumbled. “Nice to meet you.” She extended a hand, which Manmohan took with skepticism.

 “You don’t need me, then,” Navpreet said, gathering up her coat and book bag. She nodded at Elizabeth. “Nice to meet you.”

“Sit down,” Manmohan told his daughter.

“Elizabeth,” Darshan said, forcing a breezy tone, picking up a plastic spatula, and pointing to a container. “The plaster is there if you want to start with that.”

“I know what to do,” she replied, retreating to the corner with Stewart, who was clearly displeased.

Livleen collected the empty tea mugs and went to fill buckets with soap and water.

Navpreet put on her coat. “Bapu, you have enough help.”

“Sit,” he said flatly.

“This is ridiculous,” she said, lifting her book bag onto her shoulder. “I have an exam.”

“He told you to stay,” Darshan said.

“It looks like she wants to go,” Elizabeth told him, the bucket of plaster hanging at her side. She set it down, her face pink with anger. “You can’t force her. She’s not a slave.”

Darshan shook his head. “That’s not what we were saying.”

“I may not be able to understand the words, but it’s clear you are forcing her to stay.”

Darshan appealed to Stewart. “She doesn’t know the whole situation.”

His friend lowered his eyes.

Navpreet raised her chin defiantly. “You see? It isn’t fair.”

“I never know the situation,” Elizabeth told Darshan. “You never tell me.” She dropped her spatula with a clatter on the wood floor, walking briskly away down the hallway. Stewart went after her.

“Wait,” Darshan said, running outside to stop them.

“Leave me alone,” Elizabeth said as Stewart opened the truck for her.

“I will explain,” he told her, grabbing her by the arm, spinning her around. “I’ll tell you everything.”

“Why don’t you ever put me on the same level as your family?” she asked, her face hot with misery. “Why do I always come second after everything? You aren’t even happy with them.” She pulled her arm away and climbed into the truck.

Darshan watched the Chevy drive away and make the turn onto the highway entrance, disappearing into the congested traffic. When he returned to the living room, Manmohan was alone. He could hear Navpreet blowing her nose in the bathroom, complaining about her exam. Livleen was with her, softly murmuring something.

“They are different,” his father said. “They will never be like us.”

“Her mother doesn’t think like that,” Darshan mumbled.

Manmohan reached for his cane and slowly rose from his chair. He removed his turban, revealing the shiny pate of his bald head. He shoved his son’s chest with a hard buck of his fist now padded in the six yards of cloth. Holding the turban against Darshan, he glowered for several moments before covering his head, sitting, and again opening his newspaper.

~   ~   ~

Elizabeth’s clothes were damp from the night drizzle. She stood with Jai, lost and afraid in the center of the 24th Street living room, shivering beneath her coat, thick strands of her hair pasted to her face. They did not see Darshan as he observed them from the hallway. Jai took the girl’s hands and pressed them between hers for warmth, then reached up and touched Elizabeth’s face to gently wipe away the cold and wet. He knew the feel of those weathered hands against his own cheeks, knew how much affection was contained within them.

Elizabeth noticed him first. Embarrassed, she stepped back.

“She came for you,” Jai told her son. “She is wet and tired. She needs tea.”

“Bapu—”

“Sleeping,” she said, leaving the room.

Elizabeth removed her coat, gesturing around. “It’s different than I remember.”

“Did you come across town on the bus?” Darshan asked.

She nodded. “My mother told me I should see you.”

“I was wrong yesterday,” he said. “I should not have done that.”

“It wasn’t your fault. I pushed too hard.”

He sighed. “My father is angry.”

“I should go,” she said. “I don’t want to make it worse.”

“Elizabeth,” he stepped toward her. “You are important. They are important. All of it is important.”