Motherland (8 page)

Reema auntie was asking a teacher some questions, and they walked out into the hall. As soon as the adults were at a safe distance, Brindha's bunkmates crowded around us. “So what did you bring for your cigar box?” they asked.

Each girl was allowed one cigar box to keep mementos and trinkets in. Brindha had thought hard over the last few days about what she wanted to bring to school this year. She had pasted scraps of wrapping paper around the outside of the box, and on the lid Reema auntie had drawn a picture of our house. This is what Brindha showed them as she took each item out of the box and lined them up on her bed: her red velvet-covered collar for her dog; a hotel soap carved like a conch shell from a weekend beach holiday to Cape Comoran; a photo of Ammamma from when she was young, black-haired, and shy; a pink embroidered handkerchief of Reema auntie's; a glitter pen that Sanjay uncle had brought from Bombay; and a shiny black locket.

The girls seemed to approve of Brindha's choices. They listened hungrily as Brindha described the new posh hotel in Cape Comoran where she saw not one but two movie stars. She agreed to let another girl try out the glitter pen to make a “We Miss You” card for a girl who this year had been separated from them for too much troublemaking and put in an older girls' hostel where she could be constantly supervised.

The upper-class girl, who had quietly rejoined the group, grabbed the black locket off the bed and asked sharply, “Where did you get this?”

Brindha answered airily, “I just found it somewhere.”

“Do you know what this is?” the upper-class girl said grimly. She said she'd seen them on the news, these Tamil Tiger lockets. She kept poking at the locket until she found a spring release that unveiled a cyanide capsule wedged inside. She threatened to give the locket to the headmistress. Brindha begged her not to. She hadn't meant anything by it, and it was only the first day of the new term. The upper-class girl dropped the locket into her blouse as the teacher walked back in to summon the girls to the storeroom to collect their textbooks for classes. Then Reema auntie reappeared and whisked me off with her for an appointment with the headmistress.

I could tell by watching Reema auntie dry her clammy hands in a crumpled handkerchief that she was nervous. We sat in Miss Granville's office for fifteen minutes before she even came in, and when she did she hardly looked at us. Standing at her window, looking off into the distance, she said tersely, “I don't usually like to meet with parents on the first day because there are pressing things that need my attention.”

“Yes, well, I won't take up too much of your time, Miss Granville, there's just one thing …” Reema auntie said. Reema auntie had asked the doctor and he said it would be better if Brindha could have a glass of milk every day rather than every other day the way the school scheduled it.

“So, let me see what you are asking, Mrs. Pillai,” Miss Granville said. “Just your daughter is to have this special dispensation because her bones are more important than all the other girls'?”

“Well, no, the other girls should have equal treatment,” Reema auntie said, weakly.

“So then the whole school is to undergo this additional expense because one doctor has it in his head that we should do something differently? Do you know all the parents who come to see me, Mrs. Pillai, asking for the girls to have castor oil once a week or sweet potatoes with supper or only wheat flour no rice flour or only rice flour no wheat flour?”

“Yes, but—” Reema auntie was cut off.

“1 shall take it under advisement, Mrs. Pillai.” Miss Granville stood up, dismissing us.

Brindha came to say good-bye to us at the carport. When Reema auntie turned to give some instructions to the driver, Brindha pulled me aside.

“Maya, there is a girl in my grade who is the cousin of that upper-class girl. She says she will get the locket back and make sure I don't get in trouble if I give her what she wants,” Brindha said.

“What is it?"I said.

“She wants your earrings. We can't wear earrings at school, but she wants to have them for her cigar box. I don't want to get in trouble already. Please, Maya,” she said.

I took off my earrings and gave them to her and she jumped up and hugged me.

“Where did you get the locket?” I asked.

“I took it from Rupa—she kept her things in my room. I know what everyone says about the Tigers, but Rupa would never hurt anyone. You won't say anything to Amma, please?” Brindha said. I was tackled in another hug. There wasn't time to ask even the obvious questions. Since Rupa had left the house anyway, it was not that hard to do what Brindha wanted and not tell. Telling would inevitably involve those smug, self-important men from the airport. I didn't feel like seeing, or helping, any of them.

Brindha was downcast and quiet saying good-bye to her mother. Reema auntie waved cheerily to Brindha as we drove out of sight.

We drove in silence for a few minutes, and then Reema auntie asked the driver to stop the car. She asked if I could sit up front so she could have the back seat, she said she wasn't feeling very well.

“You don't mind do you, Maya dear?” she said.

I moved to the front seat, not looking at the driver. I was conscious of his dark-skinned, hair-covered arm with the sleeve rolled up to the elbow, lying between us, loosely gripping the gearshift.

Reema auntie lay down in the back, her arm up over her eyes, and cried quietly. Hearing her, I thought: So that is what it would be like to have a mother who loved you. When she had stopped crying, she slept. For the seven hours homeward, I stayed awake, afraid that in sleep I might make an odd expression or look disheveled, or even accidentally lean into the driver's arm. I was too embarrassed to take off my shoes or open buttons at the neck of my salwar kameez to feel cooler in the heat. I tried to keep before me what I had observed about how to conduct one-self around servants, how to project the sense of being the mistress of the house. I sat straight and still and quiet into the night.

CHAPTER THREE

Secret Garden

R
EEMA AUNTIE'S GARDEN
was full of what my mother called illegitimate children. Some of Reema auntie's rose bushes had five kinds of roses on the same bush. My mother kept trying this at home, but the grafts wouldn't take. She had a pathetic-looking branch with other buds taped onto it, like something a kid would do, believing in alchemy. She attempted to re-create a tropical garden—lilies, jasmine, curry leaves, hot peppers—brought from Texas, Florida, Louisiana. Each of our three vacations to Disneyworld included excursions to nurseries and hothouses.

No one brought plants to the U.S. from India because it was against the law, and it was a credible fear that we would bring some plague or pestilence to the Western hemisphere that had never been seen there before. But everyone drew the line at different places; one friend of my mother's brought seeds, but not plants, and some others would sneak plants from Mexico but not from India, arguing that airborne and waterborne diseases traveled back and forth across that border anyway. My mother didn't finesse; she just worked within her constraints, telling us that that was a certain feat in itself, to re-create India from all things American.

In India, you only went to a nursery if you had no friends. Usually, you just took cuttings from everyone's garden. In America, everyone's plants were so small and frail, you dared not ask for cuttings. Except we had grown our curry plant strong enough that my mother was proud to offer cuttings, and people would take plastic sandwich bags with a root and a stem back home to Boston and Chicago and Toronto, where they anxiously abided by my mother's stern instructions as to special light and special food and special soil.

So my aunt's garden had unnaturally created things I didn't recognize, and some that I did: hibiscus, bougainvillea, hydrangea, nasturtiums, foxglove, sweet william, delphinium, jacaranda. Loads of water hyacinths and a few lotuses in the artificial pond, and trellises sagging under the weight of tea roses. And exuberant yellow flowers that a doctor had brought from South Africa a hundred years ago and grafted onto the tree at the far corner where they declared blooming domination over their host. And jasmine everywhere—like our cherry tomatoes at home, it just insinuated itself in every bare patch of dirt.

Jasmine was what South Indian girls smelted like—not soap or spice or perfume, but the heavy honey smell of jasmine, threaded into long necklaces and wound through freshly braided hair in the morning. My hair wasn't long enough for a braid, so my aunt would clip a few stems behind my ear, but it looked silly like that. I usually pulled them off once I was out of her sight.

The special triple-bud jasmine was what my aunt wanted me to wear to the annual dance at the country club. “This will be your chance to meet everyone,” my aunt said. She said this as if there hadn't been a steady inflow of my uncle's colleagues and friends and local officials whose presence at our home was eventually less notable than their absence.

“I'm still not that close to anyone up here. So it'll be nice to have someone to go with,” my aunt said.

“Isn't Sanjay uncle coming?” I asked.

“Yes, of course,” she said.

“But then you're not going alone anyway,” I said.

“Well no, but the men will be with the men,” she said. I didn't know what that meant.

The dance was on the coming Friday. “Isn't that Ammamma's birthday?” Some birthday cards had arrived for Ammamma in the mail yesterday and today.

“Yes, that's right,” Reema auntie said.

“Shouldn't we do something to celebrate her birthday then?”

“There's nothing to celebrate about turning seventy-one. Cakes and candles are for children, and for special, auspicious years. The only special year Ammamma has ahead of her is eighty-four, when she's lived for one thousand moons. Then we'll have a big feast. But that's not for a long time.”

“So you think she won't mind on her birthday coming along to this country club thing?” I said.

“She's not coming to the club, Maya. There will be dancing, and loud music, not anything your grandmother will want to sit through.”

“But we can't leave her at home and go out on her birthday,” I said doubtfully.

“It'll be fine with her; you can go ask her if you want.”

It was true, she didn't want to go, and she didn't seem bothered that we were going. “You'll have a nice time,” my grandmother said. “Your aunt and uncle want you to meet their friends—they want to show off their smart, pretty American niece. “

“Everyone has an American niece these days,” I said. There was a time when having a relative in America was a big deal, it meant you had a direct representative on the frontlines of the gold rush.

“It's not because you're American,” my grandmother said. “It's because you're still ours.”

I felt bad making plans on Ammamma's birthday—she certainly honored mine every year, not just special years. I was starting to feel, reluctantly, that I should back out from the dance. Then we received a telegram that my aunt's youngest sister had given birth.

“It's her fourth boy,” my aunt said. “I'm sure she's so disappointed.”

“Maybe they'll have a girl next,” I said.

“No,” my aunt said. “She's going to have a surgery now so that this is her last one. But she had hoped it would be a girl.”

“When Brindha was born, had you wanted a girl or a boy?” I asked.

“Oh, a girl, absolutely,” my aunt said. “In our Nair families, you want girls. Girls keep the family together and they keep the family name going.”

“So when do we get to see auntie's new baby?”

“You can go see them in a few weeks if you'd like. I'm going to go see her now, because the baby came early and needs a lot of care, she asked me to come so she doesn't have to manage with only her mother-in-law and the ayah.”

“You're going to leave now?”

“Tomorrow morning I'll go with the driver down to the city, and then catch a train, maybe book a sleeper compartment.” She was lost in thought.

“So I guess we're not going to the dance, then?” I said. I was simultaneously disappointed and relieved.

“Sanjay can't possibly miss that; it's a big company affair. And how lucky that you're here, at least he still has an escort.”

“I'd been thinking that Ammamma—”

“Ammamma must take some photos when you and Sanjay are all dressed up. We can send them to your parents, too.”

The point at which it was still possible to back out had passed. At the very least, I would tell Ammamma to wait up for us, and when we came back from the country club, we would have a small birthday celebration. Even if it was late and it was just me and my uncle and Ammamma, I would sit with her and tell her about everything at the party and repeat myself if she asked and be very patient.

My aunt wanted to make sure everything was arranged before she left, so she laid out dozens of her saris and salwar kameezes on her bed, and I modeled one after another. I didn't have many sari blouses, so that limited my sari options.

“We'll have to get more blouses made for you this summer. I'll let the tailor know,” my aunt said. “Try this sari on, I think it will match that blue blouse you have.”

Having dressed me in six yards of blue and gray shot silk, my aunt seemed, finally, satisfied. Then she changed her mind. She asked me to take out my things from home so she could look through them.

We settled on my black dress with a cream colored border at the neck and hem, with strappy black sandals of my aunt's. Reema auntie was happier with this. “You don't look natural enough in a sari.”

“Mother never lets me wear black to Indian functions at home. She says it's morbid.” A few times, my mother had brought home her idea of proper, perky dresses from Bloomingdale's. They always had a little bow at the back of the waist: I made her return them. Inevitably, I gave in and wore salwar kameezes to most family parties rather than listen to my mother disparage my clothes.

Reema auntie laughed. “The older people may say it's morbid, but the ladies at the club read fashion magazines, they know the modern styles.”

Reema auntie took out box after box of jewelry from a safe under her bed. She gave me a set of gold jumki earrings and a gold choker with a teardrop pendant. I hoped she couldn't see Steve's necklace under my dress collar, because she would want me to take it off. She slipped my American gold rings—14K yellow gold rather than 22K Indian red gold—off my fingers, saying, “Better to wear nothing than to wear something too plain.”

Her words stayed with me as my French-doored entrance, into the club rooms. There were lots of candles, everyone glowed and glittered in the hazy light. How could my aunt have let me go in there with this shapeless dress on surrounded by ladies in beautiful filmy chiffon things? And yet I could hardly have attracted more attention if I were wearing nothing—I tried not to look back at the many eyes turning to follow us as my uncle maneuvered us through the room. He introduced me to the club's director, Ravi, and his wife Lalu. Ravi was a big, broad-shouldered man wearing a tight jacket, sloshing a glass with a lot of ice so it made clinking noises. Lalu wore an ice-queen sari of ivory bordered in gold and black, her upswept hair was lacquered and untouchable. Her expertly cut sari blouse framed a heavy diamond choker that climbed high on her thin neck. Lalu had an aimless pink smile and eyes that constantly fluttered around the room. I tried to smile and nod as they talked about cricket, labor disputes at the factory, what kind of tea season the weather would produce.

“Our tasters are concerned—the tea may not be as high-grade from these parts this year, and we hear from up north that Darjeeling is having a splendid growing season,” my uncle said.

“Then we'll all drink Darjeeling tea this year in India and export our low-grade stuff to Chicago or some such place, why don't we?” Ravi said. Everyone laughed loudly. He pronounced the “ch” in Chicago like “cherry.”

“Can I get you a drink to start or would you rather play first and drink later?” Ravi asked.

“Lalu, you'll take her, won't you?” my uncle said.

“Of course, Sanjay, she'll be fine with me,” Lalu said. Ravi clapped his hand on my uncle's back and they walked across the dance floor to the long sleek chrome bar. Lalu put a bony hand on my shoulder and steered me in the opposite direction, out through one room into another, and then into a small alcove. There was dark wood and cane, and plush cushions tossed haphazardly on carpets and couches. Ladies were sitting and standing, a blur of saris, and everywhere, the clinking of glasses.

Lalu nudged me to a sofa and sat on another sofa next to a fat lady who looked like she had sunk deeply, irretrievably, into the cushions.

“Lalu, we thought you'd left us,” the lady said, handing a lipsticked glass to Lalu.

Lalu drank a sip, then nodded a waiter over. “The ice has melted in this drink. Can you bring another one, please?”

“Is it punch, mem?”

“Yes, and also a cola for the girl there.” She pointed to me, the waiter nodded, and walked away. To everyone else, she said, “This is Maya, Sanjay and Reema's niece.”

“Aren't you the lucky duck?” the fat lady said. “We've just been talking about them, and we've decided Sanjay and Reema are by far the nicest couple we know. “

“Yes, Reema's an absolute favorite up here,” another lady said. “It's too bad that they'll be leaving us.”

“Oh, has Sanjay got his transfer already then?” someone else said.

“No, no, it won't come for a while, they like him, and they will give him what he wants, but he hasn't put in enough time yet.”

“If Reema were only tougher, they would do better to stay here, he's well positioned at the company, my husband tells me.”

“Reema's too sensitive about her daughter. We all have our children in boarding school and we manage, she should realize that.”

“What can you do? If your daughter was having difficulties at boarding, you would have to think about living somewhere else, wouldn't you?”

“But children are adaptable—they can handle anything if they are told that they have to. If the mother's too easy on them, or if she wants the child home for herself, then that's where the problem is—it's the mother, not the child.”

“Strange, too, because Reema and Sanjay seem to get along well, you'd think they would be happy now that they have time to do meaningful things together, not run after homework and dance lessons and such.”

I had to say something. “There's nothing wrong with Reema auntie and Sanjay uncle, they just want to be able to raise Brindha themselves.”

“Parents are not always the best people to raise their own children. They can't provide discipline and structure as well as a boarding school can. You'll see these things when you're a mother, betta.”

“And children learn so much from their peers, the best thing you can do is make sure they're schooled in an upstanding environment, with the right sort of people.”

I didn't want to argue.

I was brought a glass of ice with a bottle of Limca soda.

“No ice please,” I told the waiter, and, with a quick turn of the wrist, he simply dumped the ice onto his tray and handed the glass back to me.

“I'm sure the ice cubes are purified—you needn^t worry we'll make you sick,” Lalu said.

I hadn't thought anyone would notice my carefulness. I felt my face grow hot. “Oh, I don't really like ice anyway.”

“In this heat? Ice is the only thing that gets me through the day,” the fat lady said. She held up her glass, fogged and beaded with water, in an imaginary toast.

“Remember how ghastly it was before the company gave us backup power supply through the factory?” said a lady in a sparkly red sari. “When the electricity used to go off for days at a time, I would go to bed dreaming of ice, and soft drinks, and mango lassi.”