English Lessons and Other Stories (7 page)

I followed the phone call in my mind, hearing the static rush over the Atlantic, felt it cross Europe, dance over the Khyber pass and drop through Pakistan, bridging the winter-dry riverbeds of the Jhelum, the Chenab, the Ravi, the Sutlej, the Beas, finally swooping down to the plains of Delhi. I felt it sidle into Simran's house. There was a ringing, trr-trr trr-trr. Someone — was it Simran? — said, “Hello?”

And then I said, voice cracking like a schoolboy, “May I please speak to Simran?” I felt as though I would choke.

“She is not here,” said the voice that was Simran's and yet not Simran's. And then, click. That was all. And the risk I had taken to call her brushed aside, the sacrifice I had made in following
her to Grand Central ignored. Any minute I could be arrested. I would tell them then, “It was all for her. The woman tempted me, arrest her, that wanton harlot!”

None of this passed my lips. I had the credit card and I would call again.

I went back to my new friend and gladly paid him ten dollars, saying, “It worked but I will not try that again. Once is enough, mia. I don't want to get caught.”

He said knowingly, “As you please. Consider it a gift — just a small tofah — in case of emergency.”

Then he was gone, and I took the train back to Raleigh. By the time I got back to my empty, silent room, I could stand my thoughts no longer, and so I ran out again to the pay phone at the corner convenience store and tried to call my heartless love again.

My daughter seems intent on ruining this family. I went into her bedroom and had a talk with her after that call, asking her, “Who is this man who thinks he can call you in your parents' home?”

She looked so surprised and so innocent, and she said, “Mummy, I don't know who it can be. Did he say his name?”

But I was not born yesterday and I said, “How did he get your number?”

She looked worried and said simply, “I don't know.”

“What do you mean you don't know? So he just dreamed it or what? Ten o'clock at night and he thinks he has the right to call you?” I was beginning to sound shrill, but I was frightened for her. Better that she should get a taste of my anger first, for Veeru would not spare her.

“Mummy, maybe it's important — why didn't you let me speak? I would have told you what it was about.”

“Let you speak! That man didn't have an American accent,
my dear, he had…” I searched for the right words but my fears made me say, “he had a Muslim accent.”

Then she laughed. Laughed in my face as if my fears were nothing. “Oh, that must be Mirza,” she said.

“Must be Mirza. How well do you know this Mirza?”

“He's just a friend, Mummy.”

And there I had to let it go — until he called again.

It was five in the morning and the doves roosting in our air conditioner were just waking when the phone rang. I answered it and there came that man's voice again, “Is Simran there?”

“There is no Simran at this number,” I said in my severest teacher's voice.

“No, no, please. Don't hang up,” said the voice. “I know she is there. Please let me speak to her.”

Veeru was stirring in bed so I said, “You have the wrong number.” And I hung up.

“Who was that?” said Veeru sleepily.

“Wrong number.” I wrapped my shawl around me and put on my warm slippers. Our house is built for cross-ventilation in the ten months of Delhi summer, and it's draughty and cold in the short winter.

I padded into Simran's room and said, “That man called you again.”

She said, “So why didn't you wake me? I would have told him you don't like my getting calls from him and I'm sure he would stop.”

“To think I believed you when you said he was just a friend,” I said.

“He is — was — just a friend, Mummy!”

I wanted to smack her as if she was five years old. “Are you mad? No man calls an unmarried woman from overseas in the home of her parents if he's just a friend! You must have encouraged him somehow.”

She considered this carefully. “No, I don't remember encouraging him. I felt sorry for him, but I didn't feel anything else.”

“It's not a question of what you felt, Simran. How do you think it looks?”

“But I'm telling you how it was, Mummy. Isn't that enough?”

I wanted to believe her, but my fear was too strong. I said, “Well, don't let him call again, because I will have to tell your father.”

“Don't worry, it costs money to call India all the way from America. He's not a rich fellow, I know. Anyway, next time I will pick up the phone and tell him.”

“You will do nothing of the sort.”

I wandered around the campus for hours, peering into empty classrooms, turning lights on and off, taking the stairs one at a time, two at a time, three at a time. I went to the Union and sat before the TV eating candy bars and popcorn and trying to laugh when the sitcom audiences did. Even the janitors — sweepers, we call them in Pakistan — looked at me without expression. I went down to the gym thinking exercise would bring sleep, but I found I didn't know how to use the exercise machines, and there were women shamelessly baring their bodies in the swimming pool, so I left.

And from every pay phone I passed, I tried to reach my lost Simran. By this time I was convinced her parents had her engaged, and married off as well. I was in mourning already, imagining her committing suicide on her wedding night rather than marry anyone except her loving Mirza. Then I would become incensed, shouting “I hate her!” across the deserted football field.

I began to read the Koran and feel its truth. “Oh, you who believe, do not take My enemies and your enemies as friends.
You show kindness to them, but they reject the true way that has come to you. They expelled the Prophet and you, for you believe in God your Lord. If you have come out to struggle in My cause, having sought My acceptance, do not be friendly with them in secret.”

I told myself I should not have loved her in secret. That was my sin. I should have told her the words every day so that she could not forget, so that she would begin to think about her unbelief and know that I would wish for her to believe, that she might be mine. Every time her mother cut the tenuous connection between us, the more desperate I became to speak with her, just once.

Veeru found out about it, as I knew he would. How many times could I protect her by saying the phone calls at all times of day and night were just more wrong numbers? He had a long, intense, sorrowful talk with her, explaining how much she had disappointed him, describing the dreadful things people would say if they ever found out that she had consorted with a Muslim fellow. Still she denied it, as he explained disgrace as patiently as though she were a visitor from some other country. I felt now she was definitely pretending to be innocent. I even began to worry if she was still a virgin. I would look at her face and think, “America has taught her to lie to her parents.”

When the phone calls became more frequent, so that the phone would ring almost as soon as I pressed the hook, we forbade the servants to answer the phone, just as we had forbidden Simran, but they could all feel our discomfort, our suspicions. Kanti watched me from the kitchen, wondering. Always she had been my confidante, my own loyal woman, but this was a family matter and I could not speak of it to her, could not admit my
daughter had so betrayed her parents, we — enlightened, well-travelled, English-speaking parents — who had always allowed her as much freedom as if she had been a boy, we who were even willing to spend fifteen thousand dollars on a woman's foreign education. My own father would never have wasted his money in such a fashion.

We concentrated on introducing her to several very well-to-do families, hoping for a quick engagement that would protect her from all men, Muslim or otherwise, but the mothers of well-educated boys were wary.

“Did you live in a co-ed dorm on campus or in a girl's dorm?” they asked.

And she, with a stupidity that made me want to throw out all her fancy books, replied truthfully, “In a co-ed dorm.”

Then I would watch them encircle their precious sons with mental shields against my dim-witted daughter.

She seemed to delight in telling them just what she had been studying, although the effect it had was to make them afraid for their sons. Veeru even explained to her, “If you want to get through to the boss in America, don't you have to be nice to the secretary?” But his words were lost on her.

Now she stopped protesting her innocence as much as before and began to sit in her room for hours on end.

“What are you doing?” I would ask.

“Thinking,” she would answer.

With her three-week visit drawing to an end and with the phone calls showing no sign of abating, Veeru and I had a difficult decision to make. How could we send her back to America knowing that Muslim fellow was lying in wait for her there? Of course we could not. We did not want her to be ruined.

If I had any remaining doubts about her absolute ingratitude and total disregard for our feelings, she managed to dispel them completely the day we caught her trying to give Kanti a letter to
post. It was addressed to that Muslim fellow. She swore it was only to tell him to stop calling her, to go away, but by this time I wanted no more lies.

“Why don't you read it if you don't believe me?” she wept.

I said, “I don't have to read it, you shameless, ungrateful girl. You think I want to read your love letters to a Muslim?”

Veeru said, “That's enough. You are not going back to America. Not now, not ever.”

I expected her to be repentant, to beg for forgiveness. But she didn't. She just went into her room, and after a few seconds we heard a quiet click. She had locked the door.

She never used to lock her door before she went to America.

I went to the railway station to meet every train for three days before the new term began. Then I took the bus to her dorm and saw the residence hall manager in Simran's room packing her belongings into cardboard boxes.

“What are you doing?” I asked. How dare she touch Simran's clothing?

“She's not coming back. I have to pack up all this stuff and ship it back to someplace in India. I oughtta get extra pay for this work.”

I sat on Simran's bed and looked out her window. They had engaged her to some fat Sardar, maybe someone with a business in London or the Middle East.

Then I smiled at the January sun. She would find a way to contact her Mirza. I just knew it.

DayTimer, lipstick, briefcase, skirt, slip, pumps — not too overstated, I'm training bankers today. Power blouse, though — black for authority. Pearls look Canadian, don't they? But I can have ethnic individualism in my earrings. Let's see… lucky I have fair skin.

Yes, I know, Bibiji. Airport cab's arriving in a few minutes. If |they send an Indian driver he won't mind waiting a bit, and if he's from our area of India we'll have a nice long talk in Punjabi all the way to Lester Pearson. You heated the milk, Bibiji? I can't drink that — Omigod, with sugar! I keep saying I like it cold. Yes, Canadian way. OK, give it here — don't look like that.

Where's the computer? Yes, I have to carry it. Achcha, on the luggage cart, then. No, it's not that heavy, Bibiji — how you fuss. It's the-top-of-the-line-Compaq. What? Yes, I have my make-up powder packed away.

Haanji, yes, I will be home tonight. Windsor is very close, Bibiji. Tell Bhaiya hello when he comes home from the factory. He'll be asleep by the time I come in. Awright, Saala kahin ka! Bye, Bibiji. Have a good day. Keep busy — talk to Masi on the phone, all right?

She's not all that young, you know. Twenty-four, she's going to be. Eat your dal, I made it special strength today because the talk is serious. All day at the factory. You must be tired, son. But listen — don't say you've heard me before — this time I'm serious.

I ask you, is it decent for a not-married girl to go travelling all over Canada, computer or no computer, ji? And when her brother is not a nobody on the street but a foreman in Metal Products and Co. Don't tell me it is a small factory. Your masi's son — he's not even a foreman, just a welder. He was never very bright.

Haan, where was I? Your sister, son. Everything till now has been good. First you got us immigration here, she did her classes at the Polytechnic. But now I don't like this too-much freedom. I'm telling you something bad will happen. Now she's talking of buying a car — did she ask you? No. She says, “I need a car — I think I will buy one.” And she's gone to the dealers, looking, you know.

Beta, I know they won't allow her to wear salwar kameez in her big company, but now she won't wear it in the evening either. Says it is too much “hassle.” I tell you, this is not good and something has to be done.

Are you listening? Eat some baigan. It's your favourite, no? What I am saying, beta, is that it is your duty to find her a proper match. A boy from a good family. But then I was thinking — when do you have the time, all day working. So I think if you write a letter to my brother in India and ask him to find a decent family — Jat Sikh, of course — I am sure he will do the needful. She's got a fair complexion, send a picture.

See, I made kheer. It's your favourite, no? Best basmati rice, I used. Will you promise to write? I know you love your sister…

Four weeks since I was hired at the accounting firm, but even if it had been four years I doubt if my behaviour would have been forgiven. Company party, yesterday. Open bar, then they planned a sit-down dinner complete with motivational speeches.

Just before dinner, some old fellow with a red face and white hair stands up at the next table and says, “Please stand for a toast to the Queen.” I thought I heard wrong. Stand for a toast to whom? The people at my table began to rise to their feet. My boss nudged me — “All rise for a toast to Her Majesty.” My face flamed red. I finally understood what they wanted me to do. They wanted me to stand and toast the British Queen, the symbol of the empire my grandfathers fought against for independence, the one whose line had sent my grandfathers to prison.