by Rishi Reddi
ON THE TELEVISION, a baseball game was running its course. The camera panned the stands, again and again, thousands of people with paint on their faces, smiling in the sunlight. Los Angeles newscasters were speaking on national television. His grandson, the one who did not know a zucchini from a cucumber, said a game like this had never before been played. Ram’s son, Dave, had turned up the volume. A record was about to be broken. Ram watched his family as his family watched the game: even little Anika, even the dog.
“I don’t see why make such a fuss if a Negro man hits a ball,” Ram said.
“Black, Bapu-ji,” cucumber grandson said. “We don’t say Negro anymore.”
“Why?” Ram asked.
His grandson ignored him.
Ram could not deny it, he enjoyed annoying the boy. “In my day, they called Hindus Hindus. They called Sikhs Hindus too.”
Dave gave him a look.
“Nobody minded what you called them,” Ram said.
Leave the boy alone, Dave’s look said.
“Oh yeah?” said the grandson. “Maybe if you Hindus played baseball, people would have cared.”
“Robert!” Dave said. “Mind yourself.”
Ram made himself look at the television screen. He deserved the boy’s comment. He should not be provoking a child—his grandson, most of all. What was the matter with him? The truth was, long ago, some of those Sikhs had not liked being called Hindus at all. He sat like that, quietly, while the boys, Anika, the parents, the dog, the broadcaster’s comments filled the room. The Negro man hit the ball. Ram’s family erupted in cheers. Anika jumped on the sofa; his grandsons pummeled the air. Two white teenagers ran the bases with the black athlete, the reporters hooting, the fans’ static hum in the background. The television camera went in close. The black man had confidence, and a smile, and something else—humility.
“Dignified,” Ram said, meaning it. He felt the others look at him.
He rose slowly and made his way to the telephone. It was situated on a table in the corner, away from the noise. He had memorized the phone number. When Karak’s daughter answered, he told her simply, “Yes, I will do it.”
“Mr. Singh?” Grace said.
“Yes, yes. This is Ram Singh. I will speak about Karak. I called to tell you.”
There was a pause, then a small sound. He did not know if she was crying, or merely quiet, or if she had heard him at all. “Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Singh, very much.”
Her English words unsettled him. For years now, Karak had been the only person with whom he spoke Punjabi. The language was harsh, loving, the bearer of truth. Spanish was warm, comfortable. But English was cold, the language of strangers. Karak’s daughter spoke with him in English, because she did not know everything that had happened. That because of Adela, Karak’s life was spared, and he spent only ten years in San Quentin. That it was Ram’s threshold that her father crossed first, after that decade was done. That when she was a small girl, before her childhood memory lapsed, Grace Singh had called Ram “Uncle.”
Epilogue
SHE WAITED FOR HIM. A YEAR AT FIRST. THEN TWO, THEN FIVE, THEN more. In those years she waited for him with every breath she took, while she walked the outskirts of Lyallpur on that childhood path, the one she had walked with him. When the rain came, she waited for him, watching it fall, smelling life in the soil, sitting just under the roof’s edge, because he loved the rain. She waited for him while she washed clothes by the river, or gathered with the women at the waterwheel, or tasted the first mango of the season. She waited for him when she removed the rag, red with blood because another moon had passed, another chance lost to bear him another child.
There was one other who waited too. He had grown in her belly, waiting. When he was born, he was waiting. He spent his childhood waiting, his face taking the form of the man-boy for whom he waited, as if Nature were compensating him for his fatherlessness.
The letters came, and they were written by him. But as the years went by, they were only an odd reflection of a boy she had once known, a lad she had once loved. There were four people now: the boy and girl who had shared a moment upon this earth, and the man and woman who had lived on to write about them. The letters spoke of memories that had glowed orange and red but then turned matte and gray. What did it matter ten, twenty years later, that they both admired that grove of figs where they had first lain together? That they both loved Masiji when they were children? That Ram would say Padma’s kajal, rimming her eyelashes, was so dark it turned his day into night? That she still wore her wedding bangles?
She became angry and did not know it. Her son would not have a sister, and she could not show she cared. Slowly the truth grew apparent, even to her. In the waning years of her beauty, when the full course of her life had been revealed, she took up with an older man, a good soul, an ex-soldier. For a few years, he was the companion she had not had. She realized such kindnesses could be allowed: pretended ignorance, averted eyes, doors left unlatched at the appropriate hour. Her aged aunt, at the moment of her discovery, said only that she too had spent a lifetime without a husband.
After thirty-five years, her Ram returned home. He arrived with no announcement, only a small suitcase that stood beside him on the doorstep. She thought it unfair that he would have known about his arrival a full month before she would, traveling toward her by ship and train and bus and rickshaw while she performed her daily routine—cooking, washing, helping their son’s wife care for a young boy and girl. Miracles were possible: the white men could depart, the nation could be cleaved in two, Ram could cross the threshold of the house that he had built but never seen.
When he entered, their son rose from his seat. Then, after Ram accounced his name, after Santosh realized who he was, he stooped and took the dust of his father’s feet; he was a Hindu child, after all. They embraced for the first time: her husband and her son. Ram gazed into Santosh’s eyes.
But Ram barely looked at her. His gaze rested on her face for only a moment longer than it did on the others’. She was glad for this. She feared that if he looked for long at her face, he would see the anger, or perhaps it was hatred.
She could not deny that he glowed—resplendent, luminous, come from another world.
The news spread that he had arrived. His son and uncle and cousins took him to see the lands that he had purchased, the school that he had built, the households made prosperous with the dowry he had provided. A lamb was slaughtered. A servant was sent to market to buy eggplant and fish. With the other women, she cut and cooked and bent over the heat of the stove, preparing the feast. In the evening, the men talked of the infant government in Delhi, the new laws that had allowed Ram’s visit. She heard it all, sitting by herself in the kitchen, long after the meal was finished. He spoke of returning home, and she thought he meant returning home to her, but then she realized: he was returning home to that other place. There is, after all, a land of one’s birth, and a land of one’s work and action. Which should one call home? Perhaps if she were a different woman, another kind of wife, it would not have mattered. But it mattered to her. Who was there with him, in that other place?
Her granddaughter came and brought her to bed, but did not stay with her as she usually did. For the first time in years, Padma lay there alone.
Hours later, she heard him outside the bedroom. His hand swept aside the curtain. He stood silhouetted in the doorway. She lit a lamp and allowed herself to look him in the face, the way she could not in the outer rooms. She thought he would read her hatred, know her hardness of heart, but in the glow of the lamplight, she knew that was not what he saw. She recognized in him the beginning of an old man—the shadow of the boy she had known. That fold around his lips, that length in his cheek—yet, still, the youth in those eyes that had seen her grow from a girl to a maiden. Yes, he was radiant. Had he not died and come back?
She could not know how he grieved for his childhood, for the man-boy waiting at the San Francisco dock, for the father he had
not been.
He stepped forward and clasped her. Together, they wept.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful for the support, encouragement, and resources provided by the following individuals and institutions: the South Asian American Digital Archive (www.SAADA.org); the Imperial County Historical Society/Pioneers’ Museum, especially Lynn Housouer CEO, Tim Asamen, Donna Brownell Grizzle, Dianna Newton, Norman Wuytens, and the members of the Agricultural Gallery; the University of California Desert Research and Extension Center, especially Khaled M. Bali; the Stockton Gurdwara Sahib, especially Bhajan Singh Bhinder and Tejpaul Singh Bainiwal; the Angel Island State Park, especially Casey Dexter; the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, especially archivist Jeff Jewell; the Clatsop County Historical Society, especially archivist Liisa Penner; the website www.SikhPioneers.org, founded by Tejinder Singh Tibia; the California State Library; the Oregon Historical Quarterly; and the staff of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. Many thanks also to the MacDowell Colony, Alice d’Entrement, and Natalie Tarbet for providing me—at crucial times—with a much-needed room of my own.
I deeply appreciate and am indebted to the members of the Pioneers’ Museum’s East India Gallery and their families: Robert and Karmen Chell; Dr. Gurbax Singh Chahal; Norma Saikhon and Richard Fragale, who both left us too soon (Norma—how I wish I could place this book in your hands); Emma Singh Jimenez; Lilia Singh Santillan; Virginia Gutierrez; Richard and Shirley Dillon; and the late Anna Singh Sandhu. With warmth and courtesy, you invited me into your homes and hearts, sharing stories told over your dinner tables and passed on to your children. I hope I have not disappointed.
For opening the portal to far-away places and next-door neighbors, I say shukriya, gracias, arigatamaya, and Danke vielmals to Zyanya Ávila Louis, Louis Cid, Amrit Deol, Kaori Hattori de Panepinto, Harjot K. “Sonia” Gill, Adam L. Kern, Judd Liebman, Sophie Liebman, Luis F. López González, Angela E. Radan, Katherine Seidl, Bunty Singh, Harpreet Singh, and Mako Yoshikawa. Thanks, too, to Deborah J. Bennett for her translation of the corrido, La Rielera.
For sharing with me their knowledge, time, and expertise, my thanks to Paul A. Davis, Paul Rudof, and Pamela Talbot.
My affection, admiration, and appreciation to my longtime friends in the Cambridge Writers’ Group—I’m lucky to have had your unwavering insight and counsel for many, many years: Richard “Pic” Harrison; Betsy Hatfield; Betsy Morris; and Jeanie Stahl; and to those who still sit with us in that gracious circle, William R. Crout, Joan Powell, and Mary Ellen Preusser.
I am grateful for my tribe, who lift me up and feed me and always have my back, who have read and re-read countless times, and who know what it is to face the blank whiteness: Deborah J. Bennett, Eve Bridberg, Daphne Kalotay, Thomas H. McNeely, Julie Rold, and Mandeliene Smith.
For assisting in so many ways, I thank: my friends at MassDEP’s Office of General Counsel—you know who are—for picking up the slack when the line hung loose; Carolle R. Morini, Lisa Starzyk, and Mary Warmement, librarians extraordinaire; Megan Lynch, Helen Atsma, Sonya Cheuse, Sara Birmingham, Laura Cherkas, and the team at Ecco; Maria Massie, for her grace and calm, for always pointing me toward true north; and Lee Boudreaux, who took the leap and had faith—your words have stayed with me a dozen years.
I am indebted to the following writers whose works of nonfiction helped me understand the created world of Fredonia and beyond: Benny J. Andres Jr.’s Power and Control in the Imperial Valley; Tara Singh Bains and Hugh Johnston’s The Four Quarters of the Night; Rajani Kanta Das’s Hindustani Workers on the Pacific Coast; F. C. Farr’s edited History of the Imperial County, CA; Harold Gould’s Sikhs, Swamis, Students, and Spies; Jayasri “Joyce” Hart’s documentary film Roots in the Sand; Yuji Ichioka’s Issei; Joan M. Jensen’s Passage from India; David Laskin’s The Long Way Home, which conveys many moving accounts of real soldiers’ adventures in the Great War; Karen Leonard’s Making Ethnic Choices; Patricia Preciado Martin’s Songs My Mother Sang to Me; Johanna Ogden’s article “Ghadar, Historical Silences, and Notions of Belonging”; David Omissi’s edited Indian Voices of the Great War; Elena Poniatowska’s Las Soldaderas; the writings of Dalip Singh Saund; Eric Michael Schantz’s article “All Night at the Owl”; Nayan Shah’s Stranger Intimacy; Baba Gurdit Singh’s Voyage of Komagata Maru; Khushwant Singh’s authoritative History of the Sikhs; Seema Sohi’s Echoes of Mutiny; Ronald Takaki’s Strangers from a Different Shore; the writings of Bhagat Singh Thind; Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler’s The Japanese American Family Album; and Otis B. Tout’s compilation Imperial Valley, The First Thirty Years, which perhaps reveals more (by its exclusion of certain residents’ stories) than he intended.
I am grateful to Bharthi Reddi, Mamatha Reddy, N.S., Alexi Lownie, Kathy Seidl, Lisa Youngling Howard, and Angus, who every day, through living and being, made possible the writing of this novel.
And finally, my abiding love, respect, and gratitude to Raghunath and Rekha P. Reddi, who came to believe, truly and deeply, in the way only parents can.
About the Author
RISHI REDDI is the author of the collection Karma and Other Stories, which received the 2008 L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award for fiction. Her work appears in The Best American Short Stories, has been broadcast on National Public Radio, and was chosen as an honorable mention for the Pushcart Prize. She was born in Hyderabad, India, and grew up in Great Britain and the United States. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Also by Rishi Reddi
Karma and Other Stories
Copyright
PASSAGE WEST. Copyright © 2020 by Rishi Reddi. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Cover design by Allison Saltzman
Melon vine illustration from Italian Fruits and Vegetables by Ulisse Aldrovandi/age fotostock
FIRST EDITION
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Reddi, Rishi, author.
Title: Passage west : a novel / Rishi Reddi.Description: First edition. | New York : Ecco, [2020] | Summary: “A sweeping, vibrant first novel following a family of Indian sharecroppers at the onset of World War I, revealing an unknown part of California history”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019050704 (print) | LCCN 2019050705 (ebook) | ISBN 9780060898793 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780060898809 (trade paperback) ISBN 9780062198587 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Domestic fiction. | GSAFD: Historical fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3618.E4265 P37 2020 (print) | LCC PS3618.E4265 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019050704
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019050705
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Digital Edition APRIL 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-219858-7
Version 02262020
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-089879-3
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