Lovetorn (4 page)

“I have just arrived from Bangalore on Friday, sir,” I said. “Everything is still new.”

“Well, at least you’re interested in great literature. So as far as I’m concerned, you’ll do well in my class.” He smiled at me, and I felt a little heartened.

“Thank you, sir,” I said. “I hope so.” I turned to leave, but Mr. White summoned me back.

“Oh, and Shalini. There’s really no need to stand up every time a teacher talks to you.” He grinned. “It just makes everyone else look bad.”

Outside the classroom, I looked at the schedule. Mathematics next, followed by art. Then lunch and more classes. I wondered how Sangita was doing, where she was. I looked out a window toward the wide pathway that connected the building I was in to where she was, as if it were the one remaining artery keeping me alive. In all this strangeness, I surprised myself with how much I needed my eleven-year-old sister by my side.

The hallways were crowded. I had no idea where the next room was, so I summoned up the courage to ask a girl passing by. She didn’t make fun of me, barely even noticed me. She gave me directions, and I made my way to the classroom. Mathematics was easy; the teacher—a short bespectacled man named Mr. Jeffries—handed me a worksheet to complete so he could see where I was academically, leaving me grateful for the opportunity to sit quietly and work without having to engage with anyone.

After Art, I managed to find the cafeteria, which could be accessed by the students of both schools, although it seemed that there was barely any crossover. But finally, at lunchtime, Sangita found me there. She came rushing up to me.

“
Didi
, how was it?” she asked, her eyes opened wide. “How were your classes?”

“Okay,” I said, balancing a tray on which wobbled a solitary bottle of water. “Come, let’s go sit somewhere.”

“I already ate,” she said. “But I’ll sit with you.”

We found a table. I fished out the lunch my mother had packed. It was made up of three small containers linked together by a wide clasp. Sangita’s was identical, differentiated only by a sticker of silvery pink wings on hers and a shiny red heart on mine.

I carefully unclasped the first container. There was white rice dotted with mushy green peas, faintly scented of cloves and cinnamon. Underneath that was shredded cabbage fried in oil with green chilies. And in the final one, yogurt whipped with water until it was a creamy liquid, garnished with cilantro and flavored with salt and paprika.

“How was your morning?” I asked Sangita. “Did you enjoy your classes?”

“We did a cool science project,” she said, her voice sounding enthusiastic. “We were experimenting with static electricity. I had a partner, a nice girl named Amy.” Sangita began scanning the area for her new friend. She talked excitedly about her experiments. I wanted to listen but found myself distracted, wondering at how she seemed to have had such a pleasant morning while mine was not. Nobody had teased or made fun of her, and I hated the fact that this made me feel more alone.

“Hey, you,” said a voice from a table behind us. I turned around and recognized a boy, Charlie, from homeroom. He had spiky hair and was wearing a faded black T-shirt that looked like it had been washed too many times. He was sitting with two other boys.

“What crap do you have in there?” he asked, pointing to my lunch. “It’s stinking the place up.” His eyes were narrowed. The boys with him stared at me.

Heat rushed to my face, a cold fear clutching my heart. Sangita opened her mouth to say something, but I shook my head at her. She remained silent.

“So what happened? All the call center jobs were taken, and you had to come here?” Charlie said. A boy with him laughed. “You know, my dad lost his job ’cuz it was outsourced. One of you people must have taken it.” His voice was menacing.

I was suddenly scared. Sangita put her hand on top of mine. Tears stung my eyes. My mind raced frantically to think of something to say. But nothing came to mind. I was trembling and humiliated and speechless.

“Dude, leave ’em alone,” his friend said, nudging Charlie with his elbow.

With that the three boys picked up their trays and walked away. Charlie glared at me over his shoulder as he left.

Sangita looked at me, our hands still clasped together. We finished eating in silence. Her break ended before my lunchtime was over. When she had to leave, I remained there, my shoulders hunched over, tears dripping into my mother’s food.

Science and Social Studies still to go. I didn’t know how I would get through the rest of the day. I was terrified that Charlie would be in one of my next classes. I couldn’t face him again.

In Science I was distracted and jumpy, looking up at the door every time someone walked up and unable to concentrate on carbon compounds.

As I walked to Social Studies, I kept looking over my shoulder, convinced that Charlie was trailing me. In the class, led by an Armenian teacher, we read about the rise of industrialization and how it changed the face of early America. The teacher, Ms. Jalashgar, was animated and fun, and I could see that the other students liked her. Part of me would have loved to listen fully, to learn. But all I could think about was how little I wanted to be here, that America was the last place in the world I would have chosen to come to.

I had never been so happy to see my father, who was waiting outside the school at three that afternoon to take us home. He was leaning on the door of Mr. Phil’s taxi.

“Come, girls, you must be tired,” my father said jovially. “It’s a short drive home.”

My first day had gone worse than I could ever have imagined. I hated the fact that I was teased and had ended the day as friendless as when I’d begun it. I just wanted to get away from school and never come back.

“How was it?” my father asked once Sangita and I were settled in the back. My satchel sat heavily on my lap, weighed down with textbooks and papers. My new black shoes pinched my toes. I felt suffocated.

“It was okay, Papa,” I volunteered. Mr. Phil looked at me through his rearview mirror.

“And you,
beta
?” he asked of Sangita.

“Actually, Papa, it was fun. It’s a good school. They have a lot of cool things. I met a nice girl, Amy. She was my science experiment partner.” The more Sangita spoke, the worse I felt. My father turned to me again, a look of worry crossing his face.

“Sangita, it seems like you are settling in. Shalini, tell me,” he asked. He wanted more details from me, but I wasn’t prepared to give them to him. If I started talking about the awful things Charlie had said to me or the way Sasha had referred to me as “Miss al-Qaeda” as I walked past her locker this afternoon, I would start to cry.

“Papa, don’t worry. Everything was okay. We will adjust,” I said.

“Tomorrow will be a better day,” he said finally. “Every day will be easier. Before long you will be telling me you are loving it here.”

We rode the rest of the way in silence.

At home I went upstairs to change. I stopped in the doorway of the bedroom that was to have been Sangita’s. My mother had transformed it into a makeshift temple. She had brought everything to replicate the daily prayer ceremonies of our home in India. A low dresser was overlaid with one of her saris: a flowing blue-and-gold fabric that smelled of her. Over it she had placed a dozen figurines of Hindu deities: the gods Ganesha, Vishnu, and Shiva; the goddesses Parvati, Laxmi, and Durga.

In the center was a tall statue of the blue-skinned Krishna, his baby face framed by bouncy black porcelain curls, his rose petal lips curled around his flute, his most potent instrument, intoxicating all who heard it, bringing
gopis—
maidens—to their soft-skinned knees. Here, in this otherwise plain room, the golden flute on the statue stood out like a beacon.

I stepped inside and stood in front of the shrine. The stone figure of Durga was painted in bright, garish colors. She was sitting atop a tiger, her eyes wild, her ten arms carrying a myriad of weapons. Under her golden, gem-studded crown her hair was long and loose. I realized now, staring at her, that I had never really looked at her before, that this statue—like so many I had grown up with in our home temple in India—was just another piece of carved and decorated stone that I had bowed to every morning. I realized I hadn’t prayed since we had left India. Given the way I was feeling now, empty and lonely, it seemed a good time. I looked straight into Durga’s wide eyes, folded my hands together, bowed my head, and said a prayer that tomorrow would be a better day at school.

Chapter Five

ALTHOUGH MY FATHER’S BOSS,
Mr. Jairam Thakker, was Indian, he liked to be called Jeremy. Jeremy Tucker. Or as Sangita and I would refer to him, Mr. Jeremy.

My father was talking enthusiastically about him, his smarts, his vision, his drive. Work was going great, my father said. This was really the right move.

We were sitting around the coffee table in the living room after dinner. Sangita was peering intently at a new needlepoint project, and my mother was reading the Hindi newspaper she had picked up from the Indian store the other day. I was on the floor, wrapped in a pink crocheted blanket, its tiny frayed threads brushing against my cheek. On my father’s iPod was a recording of a golden oldie, a song by Kishore Kumar, who was known for his sad, melancholic ballads. I wished that we could be listening to something a bit more cheerful, perhaps one of the new hip-hop–inspired Hindi tunes that were all the rage in India. But now, with these soulful songs playing in the background, I was overcome by homesickness, something that took me a few minutes to define because I had never felt it before. In the still quiet of the night, with only the occasional sound of a car whooshing by outside, I longed profoundly to be back at a house where two sleepy old men stood guard outside beneath a dusky sky, chewing betel leaves wrapped around areca nuts and gossiping about the neighbors.

My father hadn’t had much of a chance to talk about his new job before this. Everything had happened so fast: the offer, the plans, the departure. He had flown to Los Angeles, gotten everything set up, flown back to bring us. In all the chaos of the transition, we hadn’t had a chance to hear anything about this man who had changed our lives, who had taken me away from a boy who had loved me since I was an infant. Jeremy Tucker helped big companies plan technology, had needed someone skilled in Core Java and J2EE middleware. And in hiring my father, he had wrested me away from the life I had known. My father was the only one of six brothers not to be in my grandfather’s textile business. The only way Dada and my father had come to any sort of peace over the departure was because my father had promised to return to India when this was all over in a couple of years.

“Was it a good day for you, Papa?” I asked now, resting my head on my shoulder. “Do you like it there?”

“Yes,” he said, his eyes shining. “I will be working with a new client, an important insurance company. I am confident things will go well. Really, I am very lucky to be here.”

My mother let out a little grunt and went back to her newspaper.

Apart from the music, it was quiet for a moment. It was morning in India. Vikram would soon be on his way home from his grandfather’s. He’d be calling me in the morning. I could predict his actions like clockwork.

“Papa, tell me again,” I said, breaking the silence.

“Tell you what,
beta
?” he asked.

“About the day that everything happened. With Vikram. My third birthday.”

My father sighed deeply. I’d heard the story a hundred times but never tired of it. And I needed to hear it right now, like a newborn needs to nurse at a second’s notice. I needed the comfort, the distraction. The details were etched in my mind: how my father had been best friends with Vikram’s father, Uncle Bhushan, for thirty years—from boyhood. They’d met when they were ten, two scrawny and bespectacled boys sitting on top of the brick wall that stood between their homes tossing tiny pebbles into the street. That wall was the only thing that stood between them. They had crammed for exams together; and when my father had his first college crush, Bhushan had been the only person he had told. During religious festivals, my father would finish family prayers at home and then climb over the wall to Bhushan’s house. They had gotten married within eleven days of each other. Uncle Bhushan and his wife, Aunty Bharati, had their first child—my Vikram—within a year. I had come along three years later. At my Namkaran—naming ceremony—when the priest whispered
Shalini
in my ear, thus giving me my name, Vikram had held my tiny fingers in his pudgy hand. Forty days after I was born, when there was the customary ceremony before my mother was allowed to take me out of the house for the first time, we had gone to visit Uncle Bhushan and Aunty Bharati. They had moved an hour away by then; but my father likes to tell me that, after crying in the car the entire trip, once I’d heard Vikram’s voice, I had been instantly soothed.

“That was something, the day of your third birthday,” my father said now, a look of nostalgia crossing his face. I pulled the blanket tighter around me. “Fifty children playing inside the house. It was crazy. I went outside to the garden for some peace and quiet. Bhushan was sitting there, in the same white wooden chair we still have. He was drinking Limca. Then out you came, crying because the pink icing from your cake was all over your pretty white lace dress.”

I laughed a little now. This was my favorite part.

“Vikram put a handkerchief to his mouth,” my father continued. “He licked it and tried to wipe the stain off your dress, telling you, ‘
Na roh
, don’t cry.’ You stopped immediately. He took your hand and led you back to the party. It was then that Bhushan turned to me and suggested it, that we should pledge you two to be together in marriage. I was very surprised. Even in our tradition, it rarely happens like this anymore, when two people are so young. But it made sense. It would have happened anyway. Vikram’s father and I simply decided to take matters into our own hands.”