My mind is whirling in all sorts of directions. When did Mom ever have a job? And Dad was her boss? I mean, he controls this house. There is no question about that, but this letter mentions debts and an employer. Before I can entertain the remaining hundred and one questions that well up inside me, I refold the letter and carefully funnel it back into its envelope. I then stick the letter back in the middle of the stack and reshuffle the letters to restore order and disorder.
I stumble on the first step as I begin my tiptoed ascent back to my room. My burnt arm hits the railing as I catch myself from tasting the wooden stairwell. Without thinking, I bite extra hard on my lower lip to contain the squeal of pain that threatens escape. The taste of fresh blood mixes with new information with the strength of a cocktail that threatens a new kind of intoxication. I am drunk on the possibility of possibility.
As I falter up the remaining steps, I hold my throbbing arm against my chest. The numbness wore off so quickly, and I silently curse the ice packs for teasing me. They are soft, warm bags of mush now. I lay the blue packs on the bathroom counter top and adjust the tautness of the damp gauze. The choking tightness around my forearm reduces the stinging, ever so slightly. If only I could choke my father in his sleep for keeping my grandparents from me. From us.
I glance at the clock. It reads 2:15 a.m. I pull the covers over my head and wonder what it’s like. To be lied to. Taken from your parents. Told you’d have a better life. Only to find out you’re in debt like a slave. Oh Mommy! If your parents ever knew what happened? So many things about Dad make sense now. But so much does not. What kind of immigration lawyer is he after all? Who is he representing, and what did he hire Mom for?
I fall asleep with a divided heart. My mind swirls as I imagine a secret rendezvous in the garden. May 17 can’t come soon enough. Then I shift to the letter, wondering what it must have been like for Mom to leave her parents, unaware she’d never see them again.
I know now why the name Amit Shah sounded so familiar. Mommy said his name in her sleep during those last days. When I’d ask her about the name, she just shook her head and stared off toward the window. I know now that she was looking back. To her childhood. The time when she had a mom and dad. Perhaps a dad that could have protected her from all her hurts. From her cruel husband. From all the madness. A dad named Amit Shah.
I fall asleep with a divided heart, one half asking questions about my mom. About my grandparents. About a past I have no connection to. And a future I have no control over.
The other half can’t help but be thankful. For cucumber letters, the information on Dad’s monthly schedule, and grandparents who are alive. I do not remember which half held my mind’s hand as I walked into dreamland. I do remember thinking, Oh God, my arm is still burning!
CHAPTER NINETEEN
At night, I dream of Mom and her life before Jess and I arrived. A thousand nights. A thousand different jobs. One moment a nurse, like a nightingale. The next a writer of sorrowful tales. Then suddenly a hair dresser. And with the turn of her back, a dancer with her hair tossing here and there as she twirled. Then another turn and suddenly Mom is wearing a velvet purple robe like a queen, tucking lilacs in her hair, then tossing the rest in the air, letting them fall anywhere. A palace blooming with freedom. And finally, she becomes what I knew her least as—a teacher. Showing me how to braid my hair, paint my nails, and walk in heels. Things I never learned. Mom never had the time to teach me the little things. Whatever life lessons we learned from her came from watching her. And somehow, in this topsy-turvy, mental whirlwind, I journey to my little girl years, my eyes still closed.
When I was in third grade, one day shortly after winter break, my teacher Miss Cook got engaged. Few of us students knew what that meant. To acknowledge the importance of the occasion, Miss Cook gave us a night off of homework. We all giggled as she seemed momentarily lost in her gaze of her pretty, little, pale hand, too tiny for the sparkly diamond sitting atop her ring finger.
“I’m getting married, girls and boys!” Adding doubles and reading circles could wait, I thought to myself as she spent much of the lesson time spewing details that were beyond my scope of experience or understanding. But I listened. Watched, really. I’d never seen her so radiant, speaking so fast at times, I wondered if she forgot that she stood surrounded by a room full of antsy eight-year-olds. Some of the boys appeared to fall asleep with their heads on their desks while Miss Cook’s voice jabbered on.
“The wedding is at the end of August, two weeks before the school year starts. My wedding colors are honeydew green and salmon pink. I’m going to look for salmon bridesmaids’ dresses with honeydew buttons down the back. And the girls will all carry single long-stemmed, light pink roses, and I’ll hold a pretty bouquet of pink flowers with plenty of light green trim. And the groomsmen will have matching bow ties, and we’ll dance the night away, and...” She stopped to take a breath. “And when you see me next school year, my name will change. I will no longer be Miss Cook. Next September, when you see me in school, please call me Mrs. Drakowski.”
Dra-what? We all looked around at each other until Joey, one of the few boys who paid attention, raised his hand to ask, “Can we just call you Mrs. D.?”
She smiled and nodded yes. Her eyes looked so dreamy. I bet if he had asked, “Can we call you Mrs. Dracula,” she would have smiled and nodded yes.
After school, I raced home a few steps ahead of Jesse to tell Mom about being engaged. Even back then we had our chores and lists, but with a homework pass, I had a fleeting hour void of adding worksheets and cursive letter tracing. I made sure to still bring my reading book home. Dad didn’t know that I didn’t have any homework. I had a better plan for my stolen time. I planned to talk to Mom about my wedding and the day a cute boy asked me to marry him.
The smell of dhal and rice greeted my senses the moment we stepped inside. I guess we were having Indian food tonight. Yuck! I wanted to have mac and cheese like the other kids in my school. Or pizza. Or chicken nuggets.
I immediately made up my mind not to let tonight’s menu ruin my time of dreaming with my mother. After carefully lining my shoes in the closet in their assigned spot, I ran to find Mom in the kitchen drying dishes. She put the last of the tea cups behind the glass cupboard when I caught her in a squeezing hug from behind, as my backpack fell to the floor with a thud.
“Mommy! You’ll never guess what I learned today?”
“Math? How to read? More math?” Jesse came up from behind panting. Did his sarcasm have anything to do with the fact that I ignored his plea to “wait up” the whole way home? I continued to ignore him.
“Jesse. Talia. Clean up and finish your homework. Then get at least half your chores done before dinner. Chop-chop.” Mom spoke toward the kitchen window. Always on the lookout for Dad’s impending and dreaded arrival.
“Mommy, can I tell you a secret?” I whispered into her waist now that she had turned to face me. My hands clasped around her tiny waist, praying she might agree. To deviate. Just this once.
“Jesse, run along.” Jesse released an emphatic huff and shuffled up the staircase to his room.
I moved away from Mom to sit at the kitchen table. “What is it, Talia? You know your Dad does not—”
“Mommy, sit down. I know Dad’s rules. Just sit and listen for a minute. I have some big news and then some bigger news.”
“Homework first T! You know the—”
“Mommy, that’s what I’m trying to tell you! I have no homework tonight. Mrs. D., I mean Miss Cook, gave us a homework pass, just for today!”
“Well, why didn’t you say so?”
“Mommy!”
“Okay. If that’s the big news, tell me the bigger news, and then get your chores finished.”
“Mommy, Miss Cook got engaged!”
“That’s nice.”
“Mommy! Because she’s engaged, she’s getting married, and she’ll wear a long white dress, and there will be flowers, and dancing and, a
nd, and...” I sounded like my teacher. “And her name will change. We have to call her Mrs. D. in September.”
“That’s nice Talia. If that’s all you wanted to tell me—”
“Mom, there’s more.” I took a deep breath. “I want to get married. Someday. Not now of course. But I want a ring. I want to wear a pretty dress. I want to dance with a nice man who loves me and carry a large bouquet of purple lilacs. l love the smell of lilacs.”
Mom stared off to the kitchen window silently.
“What is it, Mommy?” Why wasn’t she happy? Laughing? This was exciting news after all.
“Baby T, you should go and clean your room now.”
“Did you even hear a word I said, Mommy? Mom? Weren’t you excited when Daddy gave you a diamond? When you picked your colors? Didn’t you wear a pretty, long, white dress?” Come to think of it, I never saw any pictures of my parents’ wedding. I guess I never thought to ask.
“Mommy, can you show me a picture of your wedding? Please! I want to see your dress.”
Mom gulped like she had just swallowed a golf ball. “I don’t have any.”
“Why not?”
Instead of answering my question, Mom rose from the table, removed her apron, and hung it over the door handle, grabbed my right hand, and said, “Come on! I don’t have any wedding photos, but there is something I can show you. I have one picture of myself when I was younger that I can show you. But you have to promise me that you’ll never breathe a word of this to your father. Or even Jesse. Can you do that? Can you keep a secret?”
“Let’s pinky promise, Mommy! Kids at school do it all the time. You just do like this...” I wound my pinky around hers and then continued. “I promise to keep your secret if you keep mine. I don’t want Dad to know that I want to get married. I just don’t think he w—”
“Needs to know.” Mom finished my sentence and rubbed her chin atop our entwined fingers. “Pinky promise, it is.”
Then we raced up to her room. I followed on her heels. Jess looked busy in his room as we scurried past. Perfect. Mom closed her bedroom door behind me when I stepped in. Then she knelt down by her bed to remove the corner of her sheet nearest her pillow. After which she unzipped the mattress cover just a tad. She reached into the space between the mattress and box spring until her arm disappeared. What was under there?
“He doesn’t trust me with anything.” Mom lowers her voice like she doesn’t want the walls to hear. “I don’t even know where he keeps all our birth certificates, passports, and such, but there’s one thing I saved. Your dad has no idea I have this. Here it is.” Mom pulled her arm back, her hand holding a thin, faded magazine.
“Quickly. Come sit next to me on the bed. I’ll show this to you, and then I have to hide it again before your dad comes home.”
She flipped it open too fast for me to read the cover. From the pictures, it reminded me of the kind of magazine you found by the grocery check out. The colors were faded and there were very few words on each page, just numbers under each lady’s photograph. The woman on the first page was a young Indian model wearing a poppy red sari and lots of gold jewelry—even a dainty chain ran from her nose to her ear. Her heavy black eyeliner created a dark and mysterious gaze.
Mom began flipping the pages carefully, and gorgeous women who looked similar to my mother plastered the fragile paper, wearing bright colors, sitting on sandy beaches, lying on intricate rugs, and poised in complicated dance positions.
“Mommy?” I needed to ask a question. “Is the picture of your wedding dress in here?”
“Not exactly. Hold on. Here it is.” Mom smoothed the page open and leaned back for me to take in the picture her hand rested over.
“It’s you! Mommy! You were a model?” I didn’t wait for an answer. Now my hand caressed the page of a young teenager dressed up like she was invited to attend a fancy dinner at a royal palace. “Mommy, you’re beautiful! Where’s this blue dress? I mean sari. Do you still have it? Do you still have all these sparkly blue and silver bracelets?”
“They’re called bangles.”
“Do you still have this pink lipstick? I’ve never seen you wear it. And these sparkly silver high heels with rhinestones? Where are they? How old were you, Mom?”
I read the digits $500 underneath her photo in my head. “Mom, did your sari cost $500? That’s so much money!” My eyes squinted to read the small blackened word under the price, still faintly visible through the ink. “Es-cort. Mommy, what’s an escort?”
Mom shook her head and moved her hand to cover the word. “I thought I... That’s nothing. They just spelled the word skirt wrong. Yeah. That’s all that is. A mistake. They made a mistake.”
“Mommy?” Why did she sound so unsure? “Why would they charge $500 for a skirt? Unless there were rubies hidden underneath it. Because there’s nothing fancy about a sari skirt.”
“Yes, Baby T. The jewels lay under the skirt.” Mommy exhaled a long sigh.
Then she moved to close the magazine, but my hand bookmarked the spot. “Wait. Can I look at it just a moment longer. I want to remember you as this beautiful queen. In case I never get to see this again, just let me look at it for a few more seconds.”
Reluctantly, Mom opened it back up and said, “Okay. But only for two seconds.”
“I bet this is why Daddy fell in love with you! Did he buy you these fancy clothes? Did Daddy marry you because you looked beautiful in this picture, Mommy?”
Mom took another deep breath, and her silence made me turn from the picture of her to gaze up into her face. Tears began to gather at the ridges of her eyes. “Yes, sweet T. Something like that. Your dad bought me—I mean, brought me—to live out his American dream. He told me I fit perfectly into his plan, so he married me. But...” Her voice faltered. “But there was nothing fancy about it...”
And with that, the magazine collapsed shut. Vacation over. Time to file the past away. We scooted off the bed, and Mom carefully returned her secret back beneath the mattress while I stood guard at the bedroom door.
Mom’s words made no sense to me. I lay down to sleep that night thinking of a beautiful, older Mommy dressed in sky blue, wearing silver, her long hair glistening in the sun. How did you find her, Daddy? And why didn’t you buy her the sari? Wouldn’t you want her to wear something pretty for your wedding day?
I made a childish vow to find a sari like that when my day came. Forget white. I would wear a sky blue sari and silver bangles on my wedding day. Mommy would walk me down the aisle, wearing a matching sari. I began dreaming of my husband that night. I had never thought to name him. Until tonight. His name shall be Lagan Kumar. Remembering how Lagan told me what his middle name means, I giggle to myself. Prince Lagan, it is.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Tuesday morning, I don’t notice my burnt arm until I finish brushing my teeth and the hand towel brushes it as I wipe my dampened face. It doesn’t sting. I partially unwrap my arm. It still looks bubbled, blistered, and discolored. But it doesn’t burn anymore. As if my arm is infused with anesthesia or maybe my brain is? Am I awake or still dreaming? I pinch my good arm to make sure. Ouch! Odd.
Running through my morning tasks, I stop whenever the wall, the sheets, the counters, or anything, makes contact with my forearm—the burnt arm—and it feels fine. Numb really, like it fell asleep, but without any pins and needles. I find a loose, green, long-sleeve shirt to throw over my lighter green tank and call out to Jess to say goodbye.
He doesn’t respond, so I drop my pack at the door and run by his room to make sure he hears me. He’s not lying in bed or sitting in his chair. He’s standing! Holding one side of the bed railing and one side of his chair. His arms shake like vibrating harp strings. I hold my breath as I watch from the doorway. He’s trying to walk. Jess is trying to walk! My brain screams silently as I run up behind him and nearly knock him forward, squeezing him with all my might.
“Jesse! You’re gonna walk again. I just know it. You are so gonna walk again!
”
“Your. Arm?”
I let go, and he moves to sit down in his wheelchair.
“I have to run, or else I’ll miss the bus.” I have to give him another hug. So I do. He looks at my arm in surprise. “Oh. My arm is fine. What can I say? Bye. Love you. See you after school.”
“Okay.” I can hear Jess speak as I leave the room and race to the front door.
“Byeeeee!” I yell through the house as I lock the front door and sprint for my bus stop. Doesn’t help that I’m wearing extra layers on this hot May afternoon. Remembering the letter, I bet the temperature in India this time of year has even the cows sweating. I board the half-empty bus and find an empty seat, relieved that I made it and thinking of how I’ll tell Jesse about the letter.
On the ride over, I think about the pleas of my faraway grandfather. The rice fields. Mom not seeing her parents for over a decade. And the shock they must have felt when they found out she died. When no one came to Mom’s funeral, Jess and I just assumed that we had no relatives. To think there were family members, two people out there, who actually wanted us. The thought of living in a small hut on a rice farm with homemade bread sounded like a resort compared to all I’ve ever known home to be.
When I enter school, the hallways seem less busy. I walk over to my homeroom and slip into an empty classroom just as the bell rings. Ms. Miller looks up from her magazine and rolls her eyes.
“Of course you would show up. One always does.” She talks into the magazine she’s reading, then she looks up at me with an odd expression, like I’m a green cat. “Did you forget to check your calendar, dear?”
“Excuse me?” I stop organizing study cards for AP History to field her question.
“Senior Skip Day.” She’s back in her magazine. She flips a page and keeps talking. “It’s today. You are a senior, right?”
“Oh that.” Sheesh.
“You want to take a walk around the parking lot?” She genuinely wishes I weren’t here. “You know you don’t get marked absent today. It’s your one freebie. Sure there isn’t any place you’d rather be?” She looks up again, and if eyes could push, I’d be halfway out the door.
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