Lovetorn (3 page)

“This store has everything,” my father said. He was speaking with the pride of someone who may have built it.

We continued walking, rounding a corner. My father pointed to the opposite side of the street, at an imposing pair of brick buildings, one smaller and set farther back than the other. Valley Crest Middle and High School. From Monday on, Sangita and I would be going here, to the local public school.

“I chose our new home because of its proximity to this school, which I believe to be an excellent one,” he said. “It offers a fine standard of education.” My father often lapsed into this formal mode of speech with us when he felt marginally nervous about something. I could tell by his expression that he so badly wanted Sangita and me to like what we were seeing.

“It looks nice, Papa,” I said, trying to hide my nervousness. Compared to the small convent school I had attended in Bangalore, this new place was vast, intimidating. I couldn’t wait to get away from it.

“Where to next, Papa?” I asked.

We retraced our steps, took a small side street lined with pretty houses that ended up on another main road. At the corner there was a bus stop. Within a few minutes, a bright orange bus trundled along, and the four of us boarded. Fifteen minutes later, we arrived at our destination. We walked past a gas station selling one-dollar hot dogs, a rundown shop filled with party favors and plastic toys, a place offering thirty flavors of frozen yogurt. As soon as we opened the door to Delhi Delites and Supplies, the jaunty, popular Bollywood music reached my ears, the scent of rose essence and curry powder tickled my nose. I felt every muscle in my body relax. It felt like home.

“
Bhai sahib
, at last you have brought the family!” shouted out a chubby, bearded man in a blue turban who was rearranging shelves next to the entrance, addressing my father like a brother. He came over and shook my father’s hand. Then he folded his hands in greeting toward my mother and sister and me.

“This is Mr. Ranjit Singh, the proprietor,” said my father. Mr. Singh slapped my father jovially on the back.

“This man has been lonely without his family here, coming in to eat alone,” said Mr. Singh. My heart broke a little, imagining my father by himself, sitting at a table for one, eating the foods of his homeland.

We walked into the cafeteria part of the store, which was slowly filling up with hungry families. While my father ordered, my mother roamed the aisles with a red plastic basket strung over her arm, sniffing packets of coriander powder and examining green chilies and onions up close before placing them in little bags. Like me, she too was at home here.

On Monday morning Sangita and I woke up early to get ready for school. It was late September, a few weeks after the new school year had started. Sangita was going into sixth grade, me into high school. I had a nervous ache in my stomach. I had been here three days and still hadn’t spoken to Vikram. I so desperately needed to hear his voice now, to hear him tell me everything would be okay. He always knew the right thing to say.

As my sister showered, I sat cross-legged on my bed. A quiet panic had come over me. Ever since kindergarten, and right up until the day I left India, I had had the same group of friends. Two of my cousin-sisters were part of that group. I knew that every day when I got to school, I would automatically have my friends there, girls with whom I could instantly chatter and giggle. It was like going to a family reunion, and I had loved it. But here it was going to be just me, my younger sister in an adjacent building. I had never been friends with anyone who wasn’t Indian. American girls were, in my mind, a different breed completely. I couldn’t imagine what we would have in common.

The panic intensified. This was too much, too soon. We had only had a few days in this country. It was too rushed. We needed more time. I stood up to go tell my parents. But then the bathroom door opened, and Sangita was standing in the doorway, her cheeks still warm from the hot shower, buttoning up her blouse.

“This is so exciting, no,
didi
?” she said, calling me “big sister.” “A new school, new friends. It’s so
grreeat
.” Her childlike enthusiasm touched me. I wished I could feel some of it. She saw the anxious look on my face. “What’s the matter,
didi
? Are you not feeling well? I know it was hard to sleep last night because of the jet lag. But maybe we can rest when we come home. It’s going to be really fun, our first day of school. Aren’t you looking forward to it?”

I took her hand and held it, looking at her sweet, expectant, bespectacled face.

“Yes, yes, of course I’m looking forward to it,” I lied. “Come now, let’s eat some breakfast quickly and go.”

A short while later we stood at the door, Sangita and I both in our “best frocks”—in India, those dresses had been reserved for special family gatherings. They were both the same style, but in different colors: mine in black-and-white, Sangita’s in blue-and-pink. Each dress consisted of a blouse and skirt that had been sewn together, banded at the waist with a belt. The shirt had an eyelet collar, pearl buttons down the front, and long sleeves. The skirts came down below our knees. We were both wearing skin-colored panty hose through which, if you looked closely enough, you could see the hair on our legs flattened against our skin. Our shoes, bought just for this trip, were identical, black leather with small heels, silver buckles on the front.

My mother appeared from the kitchen holding a small silver tray with a devotional flame at its center. She came toward us and circled the tray around the both of us, uttering a Sanskrit prayer beneath her breath to bless us on the start of a new journey. She did not, I noticed, perform the same ritual on my father, who was already waiting for us outside the house, ready to walk us to school before being picked up there by Mr. Phil, who would drive him to work. She handed us each a small tin lunch box, gave us a quick, watery kiss good-bye, and shut the door.

Our father carried our school bags, containing basic stationery supplies and our lunch boxes, walking two steps ahead of us as if anxious to get somewhere, to start his day. He said, “You girls will be getting the very best education here, very superior quality. Please, girls, you don’t worry about anything. You will make friends and be excellent in your studies, yes?” It was his stab at a pep talk, something to cheer us up.

Our thick, formal shoes clunked heavily against the pavement, the polyester of our pleated skirts swished gently against our legs until we arrived right outside the school. A row of yellow school buses were emptying out, and people were dropping off their kids, kissing them good-bye; the younger ones moving through the main entrance to the building in the back. The students were a mass of denim jeans, colorful T-shirts, backpacks adorned with dangling charms, sweatshirts tied around waists. Sneakers in a myriad of different colors, boots lined with fur. Some of the boys lightly knocked their knuckles together, an odd greeting ritual I had never seen before. Everything seemed casual and carefree.

I looked down at my dress and instantly felt out of place, as if I were ready to go to my grandma’s birthday party instead of coming to my first day in a Los Angeles school. Looking at all of the casually dressed students around me, I suddenly craved the security of a school uniform, the red-and-gray-checked dresses we all wore at my old school that made us all equal, none prettier or richer than the others. Here, now, I had never felt more out of place.

My father led us through the main entrance and down a corridor lined with room after room after room, with kids rushing about everywhere. I couldn’t imagine ever being a part of this world, ever getting to the point where I would belong.

The principal’s office was at the far end of the corridor. Her secretary took our names before knocking on the principal’s open door to tell her that we were here. Mrs. Meyers was like no school head I had ever seen. My old headmistress in Bangalore was a plump and bespectacled woman who was always clad in a sari and sporting a huge red
bindi
, a dot in the middle of her forehead. But Mrs. Meyers looked young, was very thin, and had a pleasant smile on her lightly freckled face. She wore an orange shirt tucked into a fitted gray skirt.

“Welcome,” she said, looking at Sangita and me. We didn’t sit down. She told me that my transcripts from my old school indicated that I should be in the advanced math class, but that as she had explained to my father, the class was full for now. Perhaps when a spot opened up. She would have someone take me to my homeroom, someone else escort Sangita to where the sixth-grade classes were. She was sure we’d get caught up in no time. She wasted no words.

We all nodded silently, three black, bobbing heads in front of her desk.

“Mr. Agarwal,” she said, turning to my father. “Encourage your girls to get involved with all aspects of school. There are plenty of extracurricular programs.”

She asked her assistant to hand over our schedules, indicating that our conversation was over.

My father turned to leave but stopped. He gave my sister and me a quick hug—something he had never done before. “Thank you, my girls. Thank you.” And just as I thought I saw a tiny tear at the corner of his right eye, he turned and walked out.

Chapter Four

A FEW MINUTES LATER,
halfway down the corridor, I lost Sangita. A woman who had been summoned to Mrs. Meyers’s office took my sister and spirited her off in another direction. Sangita didn’t even turn around to wave good-bye to me; instead, she briskly trotted alongside her escort. Another woman walked me up a flight of stairs to get to my homeroom.

It was bigger and more crowded than I had expected. The rest of the students were seated and looked up at me when I walked in. There was a murmur among some of them, giggling among others. Two girls in the third row nudged each other and pointed to my dress, chuckling into their hands. One wore a T-shirt with a glittery peace logo on the front. The other had three earrings studding her left ear.

I knew they were making fun of me. I felt the heat rise to my cheeks. I squirmed imperceptibly. I hadn’t been here for thirty seconds and was already miserable. I hated it and wanted to turn around, run out the door and back down the stairs, and catch up with my father and beg him to take me home—not the new one here but our real home, the one nine thousand miles away, the one we never should have left.

“Hello, Shalini, I’m Mr. White, your homeroom and English lit teacher,” said a youngish-looking man in an open-necked checked shirt and brown pants, his laptop open on the desk. He turned to the room and introduced me. “This is Shalini Agarwal, everyone. She and her family just arrived from India. Let’s welcome her.”

I stood there feeling self-conscious, aware of all the eyes skimming every inch of me as if I were naked.

“Why don’t you take one of the empty seats in the back?” Mr. White said. I was relieved. Right then, I wanted to be nowhere else but in the background. He exchanged a few quick words with the woman who had accompanied me, and she quietly left the room.

I walked down the aisle, still feeling everyone watching me, and found the farthest desk in the farthest corner. From my black leather bag I pulled out a red tin pencil case and a brand-new lined notebook, its pages crisp and smelling faintly of petroleum. As Mr. White made various school-related announcements, I flipped over my notebook to the final page onto which I had glued a picture of Vikram and myself taken a couple of months ago.

We had gone to the Lalbagh Botanical Garden, one of Bangalore’s most beautiful and ancient gardens and a favorite place of ours. Our families had accompanied us; at our age we were still too young to go off anywhere by ourselves, although my father had said that that would change when I turned eighteen, right before we got married. The picture had been taken in the Rose Garden, the heart and soul of Lalbagh, where one could find a hundred and fifty varieties of roses, although Vikram used to joke that they all looked the same to him.

I stared now at the photo: Vikram sitting cross-legged on the ground wearing a white T-shirt with a small green crocodile on the pocket and blue jeans; me standing above him dressed in a pink cotton
kurta
and pants. I had one hand on each of his shoulders and was beaming happily. We could have been cousins, brother and sister, best friends, two teenagers out at the park on a sunny Sunday. I put my finger on the photo and, with the tip of my nail, traced the outline of his face.

And now, sitting in the back of this classroom with thirty people I had never before seen and with whom I would never be friends, my heart ached for him.

I turned my attention back to Mr. White. On the blackboard behind him was written
Beowulf
, and around that a list of themes connected to the poem. I felt the smallest flutter of comfort; I had just been studying it in school in India.

Mr. White made his way to my desk and gave me his copy of the book.

“Do you know this?” Mr. White asked me once he was back at his desk. I stood up as I had been taught to do at school in India when being addressed by a teacher.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I had in fact just been studying the same before coming here. I had been writing a paper on heroic concepts as perceived in the poem, sir.” In the quiet of the room, my accent sounded jarring even to me. I heard twittering and more giggles. The two girls who had laughed at me when I came in were now loudly imitating my accent.

Mr. White looked over at them sternly. “Sasha, Magali,” he said. “That’s enough.” I wasn’t sure what was worse: being teased or having to be defended by a teacher within my first five minutes of being here. Mr. White turned back to me, his eyes sympathetic.

“Thanks for your input, Shalini,” he said. “You can sit down now.”

At the end of the class, Mr. White asked me to stay behind for a minute.

“I just wanted to officially welcome you,” he said, gathering his papers and putting them into a gray satchel. “How do you like everything so far?”