Indie Girl (9 page)

But this was a Sunday night tradition in our house. My mother would often joke that on Sundays her “kitchen was closed.” I guess even she needed a break. So apart from her brewing some tea in the morning, we usually had to fend for ourselves, food-wise. Sometimes it was Chinese, on other days it might be kebabs and pita bread from the local shawarma place. But it was almost always too rich, too salty, too fried.

I peered into the white box; my mother had left two slices of pizza for me, plus some garlic bread. While I knew I could go into the kitchen and fix myself a salad, the smell of pepperoni called to me. After all, I’d been really good that day, eating only some fruit this morning and then basically being on an Aaralyn-enforced starvation diet while I was babysitting. The woman kept absolutely no junk food in her house. I stared at the pizza for a minute longer, thought back to Aaralyn’s slightly accusing and completely withering look, and then gazed down at my “jiggly bits.”

Yes, I would be good today. No pizza.

After my hastily arranged salad, I went upstairs and logged onto the GossipAddict.com website. I had heard of it before today, but never had a chance to visit it. I knew how popular it was, though; it was always being cited as a source by those anchors on the entertainment news shows that I loved watching in the evening. But between keeping up with my weekly issues of
Celebrity Style,
glancing at my Daily Candy snippets, and occasionally checking out style.com, I barely had time to see what else was out there in Cyberspace. Homework, unfortunately, tended to get in the way of that.

But once I went to GossipAddict.com, I was able to see what Aaralyn had been so upset about: There, as the lead story, and complete with exclusive pictures, was a full detailed story on Gina Troy’s wedding to her leading man lover, Pascoe Donovan. These were pictures nobody had ever seen before—and
shouldn’t
have seen until the next week’s issue of
Celebrity Style,
judging by what I had overheard from Aaralyn’s conversation with her
husband. Just reading the words on my computer and remembering the exchange earlier today sent a chill up my spine. It excited me no end to be close to such drama.

I went back downstairs and joined my parents in the den. A commercial was on in the middle of
Desperate Housewives.
My father turned to speak to me; somehow our family managed to have entire conversations while ads for cars and beer rolled on unheeded in front of us.

“So, what are your plans for all this?” he asked.

“Dad?”

“What is all this for? What is the final objective?” my father repeated. “By doing this babysitting, what are you hoping to achieve?”

It was a reasonable question, and one that I wished I could have easily answered.

After all, I did have a plan: to make myself so invaluable to Aaralyn and her family that she would find a place for me at her magazine.

I knew that confessing this to my dad would make me sound hopelessly naive. But I decided that I should tell him the truth.

“Well, Dad, I actually did have a plan,” I said thoughtfully. “You know how much I love fashion and how I’ve always been interested in fashion journalism, right? You know that there’s never been anything else I’ve ever wanted to do?”

He said nothing and just stared back at me.

“Aaralyn Taylor, the woman whose son I babysit—I really love her magazine. And there’s possibly an internship available there this summer, and I
really, really
want it. More than anything. But lots of people want it. So when she asked me to help look after her child on weekends, I figured it would, you know, get me closer to her. That maybe she would see what I’m really all about, and would offer me the job. There’s really nothing wrong with babysitting. It is a perfectly respectable thing to do. You know, Julia Roberts wished her nanny a happy birthday on television, at the Oscars. We provide a valuable service.”

Even I had to concede that I sounded ridiculous at that point, comparing myself to the probably very experienced and competent nanny of a twenty million-dollar-a-movie film star.

My father sighed deeply, lifted himself out of the armchair he had been sitting in for the past two hours, and came toward me, easing down onto the couch next to me.

“Indie, my dear, what are we to do with you?”

He looked at me like I was five again, like I had never really grown up.

“Do you really think you have a chance?” he asked softly. “Do you really think that she would choose you, when there is no end to the more qualified girls who are available?”

“But I
am
qualified!” I yelled out. Eva Longoria was back on screen, her tanned cleavage peeking out through a snug white T-shirt. She was mouthing off at someone, but I couldn’t really focus, because my eyes were tearing up. My dad hit the MUTE button on the remote control.

“Indie, you might think that you are qualified in that you seem to know a great deal about fashion,” he said. “But there are other things at work here, other things that people will never discuss with you.”

I wiped my eyes and turned toward him.

“Dad, what are you talking about?” I asked, a note of irritation in my voice.

He took a deep breath.

“People like your lady, this Aaralyn, don’t really associate with people like us. They might be friendly and civil and polite. They might come to us for dental checkups and chest exams or to have their taxes done. But they don’t see us as their kind of people.”

“You’re babbling, Dad,” I said. Actually, I knew what he was trying to tell me, but didn’t want to agree with him. I thought back to that very first day, when I had accosted Aaralyn Taylor in the parking lot of my school as she was being driven away. When she had made that comment about people from “my part of the world” being good at “domestic duties.” It had been, on the face of it, an insulting thing to say. Completely and utterly politically incorrect. She was looking down on me. But I
was so desperate to be close to her, to find any way at all to work with her, that I had chosen to ignore it. Now my father, who wasn’t even there, was able to express something that I hadn’t been willing to confront.

“Think about it, Indie,” he said, using the tone he employed with patients when he was trying to talk them into some kind of surgical procedure. “What kind of high-profile success have we, as a community, had in this country in the arts or media? Ismail Merchant made beautiful movies, but it’s not like he was ever as well-known as Steven Spielberg. And that girl, that wonderful actress from
Bend It Like Beckham,
that Parminder Nagra—how many Americans even know her name? But her English sidekick on the movie goes on to Oscar nominations and all that.”

I was impressed. My father, for all his professed disinterest in these things, was actually keeping track. He had obviously given this some thought.

“Look at Aishwarya Rai, the most famous person in all of India, the most beautiful,” my father continued. “She appears on
60 Minutes,
even hires a Hollywood agent. There is talk of her being a Bond girl. Ha! It didn’t happen. It could never happen! We are known for certain things and for those things only. Fashion and movies and the arts—in the minds of the average American, these are not our skills. And your Aaralyn, she is no different.”

My mother emerged from the other room to tell me that
Kim was on the phone. I was relieved. I just wanted to get away from my dad and this uncomfortable conversation.

“I think she wants you to go over and watch a video at her house,” my mother announced. “It’s late, but because tomorrow is a holiday, I don’t mind if you go. I’ll drive you, if you want.”

“Hey,” I said, picking up the phone. That always drove my mother nuts, forcing her to ask me why I couldn’t say hello “like normal people.”

“Interested in seeing
Brokeback Mountain?
” Kim asked. “My mom won the DVD in some supermarket raffle.”

“Not really,” I said. “Gay cowboys, right?”

“Yeah, but I’d be totally into checking out some guy-on-guy action when the guys are as hot as those two,” she said, giggling.

It wasn’t my preferred choice of things to do, but I agreed.

I just needed to get out of the house.

As my mother drove me to Kim’s, I replayed my dad’s conversation in my mind. I didn’t want to admit it, but he was right. The last time I had gone to India, one of my cousins had asked me if there was racism in America. My cousin, a wide-eyed thirteen-year-old girl, had read of such things.

“Especially after 9-11,” she said. “That’s what my teacher said.”

I had grown up in America and saw myself as an American girl. Yes, I had that tongue-twisting name, got straight A’s at school, and had the educated upper-middle-class parents, and therefore fit into every stereotype that most people might have of us. But I was American, really. I listened to Beyoncé and shopped at Wet Seal and hung out at the mall and spoke with no trace of an Indian accent.

But my father’s words to me had reminded me of a thought I had the first time I saw Aaralyn Taylor’s column at the front of her magazine. I imagined, in my prepubescent naïveté, having a similar column one day in a similar magazine. A photo of me would appear underneath, my skin dark and my hair black, and I would sign off, “Indie Konkipuddi, editor in chief.”

Even then, somewhere in my psyche, it felt unreal.

Someone named Indie Konkipuddi stood virtually no chance of ever becoming editor of a high-flying magazine. We might be hardworking and competent and law-abiding, we might win book awards and direct good movies and run investment banks and even become Nobel laureates.

But we weren’t the national news anchors, the chart-topping singing stars, the lead in a major Hollywood blockbuster. We worked quietly and did our jobs and then went home to our families. We spent American holidays with other Indians, eating
tandoori
chicken
instead of roast turkey and not even considering throwing around a football afterward. We were Americans, but we didn’t barbecue our meat on outdoor grills or sing carols or camp overnight outside Wal-Mart the day after Thanksgiving or
ever
drink milk with our meals.

In our house, we woke up every morning to
bhajans—
devotional Hindi songs. And my dad, no matter how late it was or how tired he felt, would end his day listening to something from his own boyhood in India, a lyrical and melancholy
raga
or an enduring classic from an old Hollywood film. These were the songs my parents grew up with and even though the bulk of my days were filled with MTV hits, those same days were bookended by songs that were nostalgic and soulful, linking my youth to that of my parents.

We were Americans but in name only. And although I had insisted on calling myself Indie, I still didn’t have the right name for the job.

If I had been listening to my iPod, as I often was while walking to class, I wouldn’t even have heard Brooke’s softly spoken “hi.”

I was strolling past her, making my way to second period, when she actually broke free from the clutch of girls she always hung out with and casually tossed that tiny word in my direction. Maybe she was going to comment on my outfit. I thought I looked especially awesome today. It was April—my favorite month because it was my birthday month—and I was wearing a top from Abercrombie & Fitch that still had its price tag on it that I had found at the local Goodwill. It shocked me what people tossed out. It was a charcoal-gray hoodie with a waist-tie and a slouchy pocket on the front. I wore it with leggings that had a lace trim that Kim had given me the previous Christmas. I had been horrified at the prospect of wearing leggings—after all, Hilary Duff I was not. But the length of the top covered my chunky thighs, and the fact that both pieces were the same color made me look leaner than I actually was. Around my neck I had strapped on a choker that I had made from one of my father’s old belts, and on which I had sewn on tiny golden bells that often adorn Indian clothes. Kim had loved it so much she had offered to buy it from me. I told her I would get around to making her one.

But I was wondering why Brooke was saying “hi” to me today. The last time Brooke had talked to me was maybe a month and a half ago, on Valentine’s Day. She had glided into school, carrying a single red rose adorned with a pink ribbon, which she said somebody had left on her doorstep that morning. She insisted she hadn’t been able to find a bud vase at home and felt compelled to bring it to school. Then she stood in a corner with her gaggle of girls, showing them all the cards she had received that day—one, two, three … there were five. One contained two tickets to a movie, another a dried flower, another a slim silver chain. It had never occurred to me that teenage boys could be this romantic, but Brooke obviously brought out their better nature. She was beaming, enthralled. I had muttered “show-off” under my breath, gently patting my bag that contained the handmade card from my brother, which I knew he had only given to me because it was part of a class project.

“Lovely, aren’t they?” she had said, glancing over in
my direction, fanning out the pink and red envelopes in front of her. I knew that she wasn’t really talking to me, but just wanted to canvas as many witnesses as possible to the expressions of love before her.

So technically, Brooke had never really spoken to me. Maybe last week had changed that.

Truthfully, that weekend—the one where I had babysat Kyle at his mother’s office—had changed everything. After I had come home from Kim’s house, I just felt depressed. I had stared in the mirror for a while, looking at the face of the girl I thought I always knew, the girl who was mostly confident and had some sense of her place in the world.

But that evening, I could only see myself through Aaralyn’s eyes. I didn’t fit the mold, didn’t have the kind of physical qualifications that would ever endear me to a woman like her. It didn’t matter, I suddenly realized, that I had something of a unique sense of style. I didn’t come from the right kind of family, didn’t have those pretty light-skinned looks and willowy bodies of the girls that are employed by these magazines. I didn’t have the connections or clout. I wasn’t Brooke and never would be.