The Gurkha's Daughter

by Prajwal Parajuly

  It was nothing. When she demonstrated to Anne’s grandchildren the art of picking shreds of chicken from the bones, the way her family in Nepal did toward the end of their meals, she misunderstood their disgust for enthusiasm. It was only now that she realized they weren’t encouraging her to continue slurping and sucking on her chicken bones but to stop it. The memory of it prompted her to slap my thigh as she shook with laughter.

  Saturday evenings, we went to Central Park, where I encouraged her to speak to everyone. She asked for directions, talked to children, and behaved like a clueless tourist. When someone understood her on the first go, she gave me a jubilant look and skipped happily. Sometimes children, especially, didn’t understand her even after she repeated herself. She then hit herself on the forehead a few times, cursed her stupidity in Nepali, and asked me what was wrong with the question she framed. Often, it was just the diction and the tone, but she was convinced of a bigger problem.

  With my German maid gone, Sabitri did the dishes, the mopping, and dusting and also helped with the laundry. I wouldn’t allow her to clean the bathroom, and I think she was thankful for that. To her, it meant I respected her, that I thought the job wasn’t dignified enough for her although it wasn’t beneath me. She had a key to the apartment and when nothing happened at Anne’s, which was often, she let herself into my place and spruced it up or cooked an unexpected meal, which greeted me with a Post-it note—in English—mentioning what it was. Smiley faces abounded.

  May brought with it a problem in an envelope. My office received a returned letter containing the check it sent to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. When I called a Pakistani acquaintance from college, he told me his check had been returned, too. We were among the people whose H-1B visa applications had been turned down. Because the number of applicants that year had far exceeded the number of visas allotted, the USCIS had adopted a lottery system, just like the year before. It made no sense at all. I was a homeowner in Manhattan with a six-figure salary, and I was rejected. It was a cruel joke, a nasty game played by fate. I talked about it with my colleagues and tried crying in the bathroom. I even considered calling my parents in Darjeeling. My boss and the human resources director asked me if they might be able to help, but I knew they could do nothing. Just an hour ago, the Pakistani friend let me know that the petition of one of his friends who graduated from Yale had been rejected. There was nothing he—or I—could do.

  My flawlessly laid plans had been derailed. I was aware of what went on in those IT offices in Jersey. Of fake résumés, doctored degrees, and H-1B commissions. I was aware of at least two companies that applied for H-1Bs for people who weren’t even going to be employed there. I heard and read about the semi-legal industry this H-1B craze had given birth to. Were the USCIS to probe into it all, America would realize how easily it has been taken for a ride. Salaries had been concocted, positions recreated, and numbers reinvented. It was a mutually beneficial relationship between conglomerates desperate for labor at subsidized rates and South Asians anxious for a shot at a green card and the American dream. Because everyone is too busy worrying about illegal immigrants, the issue never made its way into newspaper headlines. The people who lost out were people like me, people who had played by the book and actually deserved an H-1B.

  I talked to my boss about continuing the job until the end of December, when my OPT, which facilitated my current year-long employment, would expire. I could then either go to graduate school or leave the country. I couldn’t possibly keep up with my mortgage payments if I went back to college. I had used all the money I had saved since my freshman year to buy the apartment. Leaving the country meant returning home without having accomplished a thing. I thought of calling Sabitri, but the idea of having to explain everything to her as if she were a child while my mind raced at an unfathomable speed dissuaded me from it.

  The next Tuesday, on our ride uptown, Sabitri asked me what the matter was.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “It is something.”

  “Can I speak to you in Nepali?”

  “No,” she said in shock. She was perhaps offended at the idea that I thought she wouldn’t understand me.

  “Okay. I’ll tell you.”

  “Yes, I am listening.”

  “My H-1B visa got turned down.”

  She was quiet.

  “My work visa got rejected.” I hoped she wouldn’t catch the ballooning lump in my throat. The last time I cried was eleven years ago.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “I can only legally work until the end of December.”

  “What will you do after that?”

  “I’ll probably have to leave the country, go back home.”

  “You mean Nepal?” She still hadn’t made peace with the fact that I was from India.

  “Yes, India.”

  “Any more options you have?”

  “Graduate school.”

  “That’s better.”

  “But I need to pay my mortgage.”

  “You can do that. You can get job in school.”

  “That may not happen. I need to get into a school in New York if I want to continue living in my apartment.”

  “What if you get roommate?”

  “You’ve seen how small my apartment is. Who would want to live there? Even a full-sized bed barely fits in my bedroom.”

  “You can put advertisement for it.”

  “It won’t work.”

  “You’re being—” she stuttered—“pessi-pessimitic now.”

  Despite what I felt like, I had to smile. This was a heroic effort, a decent word for someone who barely knew English.

  “Pessimistic,” I corrected.

  “Oh, yes,” she said, hitting her forehead.

  “But it’s a great word. And you used it correctly.”

  “But pronounce it wrongly.”

  “I still think it’s great you used it.”

  “Okay, now be optimistic.” She smiled. She was full of surprises today.

  “I am trying to. It’s just that my plans went out the window.”

  “I thought I will go to Ratna Rajya College for my BBA. I am servant now.”

  “This is different.”

  “How different? It’s the same.”

  She used an article, goddamnit. “You moved to better things. I am moving to worse.”

  “Better things? I am wiping shit of Madam’s grandchildren. This is not better things.”

  “I don’t want to go to grad school.”

  “Grad school is better things.”

  “How will I afford it?”

  “By savings.”

  “Like that’s possible.”

  “It is. If you start now.”

  “Ugh, I need to find a roommate. I will have to sleep on the couch now.”

  “I think I know of roommate for you.” Wow, she was full of surprises today.

  “Who?”

  “Is it problem if it is girl?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Me.” She corrected herself. “I mean I, myself.”

  Sabitri moved in two days later. She repeatedly told me that she chose to live with me not so she could help me with the mortgage payments but because her male roommates were drunk every night, making her and her female friends uncomfortable. This was like it was meant to happen, she added. A suitcase, half of it filled with English textbooks, was the lone item she brought. She took the closet by the kitchen despite my repeatedly telling her that her clothes would reek with kitchen smells. I insisted that she take my bed and that I would sleep on the couch, but she wouldn’t have any of that. If she was unyielding, so was I, and I slept on the bare hardwood floor. When I peeped into the living room, I saw her sleeping on the floor, too. The couch and the bed lay empty.

  I heard her turning—the floor creaked—and asked her if she was asleep.

  “I fell asleep if I sleep in something comfortable,” came the answer.

  �
�Then take the bed.”

  “No.”

  “Fine, then sleep on the couch.”

  Silence.

  “We both know we will not fall asleep on the floor.”

  “Okay, I will sleep on couch, but you sleep on bed.”

  “All right, I will do that.”

  She climbed on the couch.

  “It folds out,” I said.

  She didn’t reply. It was our first argument.

  The next morning, she brought me tea while I was still in bed.

  “You don’t have to do all this,” I said in Nepali. It sounded awkward even to me.

  “I made tea for myself,” she said, a smile acknowledging my slipping into Nepali. “No extra work make it for you.”

  “But even then. I am not paying you for it.”

  “But look how much my English improved. From now, you teach me all English, and I do all housework. Groceries and rent fifty-fifty.”

  I didn’t know if it was the finality with which she said the last sentence or the sight of her bare legs that unsettled me. Until then, I had only seen her in pants or skirts, but this morning, she still wore the shorts she slept in. The discomfort likely showed, for she avoided my gaze and quickly left the bedroom.

  We developed a new routine. She brought me coffee in bed, I headed to the shower, we ate breakfast, left home together, I got off at Midtown, she went to Gramercy, she was usually home before I was, and we ate dinner together. We talked about our days, and I’d study for the GRE while she read. I was successful in getting a friend from Darjeeling to courier us some of my old Enid Blyton Noddy books. She went through them cover to cover, read and reread them. When I was bored of studying and lingered in front of the TV too long, she switched it off, placed her hands on the back of my shoulders, as if she were pushing an immobile car, and steered me into the bedroom. She had found a job for Saturdays and Tuesdays, taking one of Anne’s elderly friends on long walks. She didn’t mind sacrificing her days off. To her, it was easy money and a chance to work on her English, which showed decent progress.

  We argued, too. She wanted the books out of the bathroom. I didn’t. She said I could take whatever book I was reading and bring it back with me. That way, my magazines and newspapers wouldn’t clutter the floor. I told her I’d try, and she looked victorious.

  “Finally, you take maid’s advice,” she said.

  “You don’t have to refer to yourself as that. You’re a friend.”

  “No, no, I am maid—once maid, always maid,” she sang in an off-key voice.

  “You’re not a maid. You’re friend.” These days, I sometimes ignored my articles, too.

  “No, maid,” she argued.

  “Stop it, stop it, goddamnit,” I screamed. The intensity astonished me.

  Her eyes grew bigger, and I could see the fear in them. I had never seen that look before.

  I couldn’t sleep very well that night. I knew she wasn’t doing so well either. Should I have apologized? But it was she who kept ranting about being a maid. She was a maid, sure, but she was so much more than that. And what was she if not a maid? My head was heavy with thoughts, and when four Tylenols and every possible sleeping position didn’t help, I staggered to the bathroom with a random book, hoping it’d distract me.

  The light was already on, and crouched on the commode, reading a book, was Sabitri.

  “Sorry.” I closed the door and went back out into the narrow hallway. “I didn’t know you were here.”

  “I didn’t want to disturb you by put the light in living room on. I will be right out.”

  She came into the living room wiping her hands on her shirt. “So you’re reading in the bathroom now?” I tried smiling.

  “I do that from long time back.”

  “But you made fun of me.”

  “And you yell at me,” she retorted.

  “It’s your fault.”

  “No.”

  “You are not a maid.”

  “You are IT professional; I am maid. It’s simple.”

  “I am sorry I screamed at you.”

  “It’s fine. It’s okay. Don’t do again.”

  “I won’t.” My voice was soft.

  “Thanks. Screaming is scary.”

  “I know. I am sorry. Are we fine now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You read in the bathroom?” I chuckled.

  “You teach—taught me.”

  “I am a great teacher.”

  “A good teacher never yell at his student.”

  “See, you are not my maid. You are my student.”

  “Okay, I agree. I am student.”

  Once we had established what she was in relation to me, Sabitri brightened up and told me about her early-morning phone call with her parents. She seldom spoke to them, and her conversations always involved money. Sometimes the parents were happy, and often they were dissatisfied. They had begun building a house—a cement house, she said—and depended on her to finance it. She wasn’t bitter about it, but she wasn’t too happy either. She said she made all that money—more money than her father could ever dream of—so she should help them out, especially because she lived in a gorgeous apartment and had such an easy life. When the demands for money kept increasing, she told her mother she’d send them a fixed amount of $500 every month. They’d have to budget accordingly. I seethed at their selfishness but stayed silent, which was strange because I didn’t keep a whole lot to myself these days. When Columbia rejected me a few weeks later, for instance, I didn’t hesitate to tell her about it.

  “I am not depressed, because I knew I wasn’t good enough,” I said, switching on the TV.

  “Promise me you will not be angry,” she interrupted.

  “No, I won’t.” I turned the TV off. “I promise.”

  “I am still afraid you will be getting angry.”

  “I promise I won’t.”

  “First, I think I will take GED.”

  I was amazed. I couldn’t have been prouder. She was taking the American high school equivalency exam. That she even knew about it astounded me.

  “Wow, you will do very well. I am so happy.”

  “But that’s not the main issue.”

  She was about ready for the GED. With her diligence, she could prepare for anything. “What’s it?” I asked.

  “You didn’t get Columbia.”

  “No, I didn’t get into it.”

  “So what? Will you go home?”

  “I guess. Let me hear back from NYU, although I don’t know if I will be accepted. It’s almost as tough as Columbia.”

  “I talked to a lawyer about this,” she said.

  Wow, she had a lawyer, I thought, and repeated it aloud.

  “Yes, Anne’s son is a lawyer. His friend is an immigration lawyer.”

  The articles in her speech sounded beautiful.

  “What did he say?”

  “You promise you won’t be getting angry?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, first listen to what I am going to say.”

  “All right.”

  “Do not interrupt me.” Another commendable word. I was a good teacher.

  “Shoot,” I said.

  She cleared her throat. “I know I am only servant.” She raised her hand when she saw I was about to say something. “I don’t even belong same kind of family as you do. And I am your servant only. No one will have to know. I am citizen of America. You need to stay in country legally. You can marry me. It won’t be real. No one has to know.” She was nervous now and didn’t look at me. “And after marry, you can continue your job. We can get divorce in no time. Please don’t be getting angry at me.”

  “You’re not a servant,” I said. “You’ve never been a servant. You’re not even my student. You and I—what we have is different. You’re the only reason I am here today. I’d probably have given up a long time ago and returned to Darjeeling had it not been for you. You will never, never, never call yourself a servant, promise me
that.”

  She sat there, unmoving.

  “I would be lying to you if I said how many times the thought didn’t occur to me,” I said. “It came to me every day and every night, but I have too much respect for you to broach it. I thought it would anger you, that you’d think I took this relationship for granted, so I didn’t bring it up.”

  “You should have brought it up.”

  “And spoil this great thing I have with you?”

  “And what thing do we have, Amit?” It was the first time she had used my name.

  “We know it’s special, it’s different, so why mess it up?” This sucked the life out of me. We aren’t a very vocal race, and I’ve never been comfortable with talking about feelings.

  “You’re angry, are you?”

  “I’m not. I just think I shouldn’t marry you just so I can stay in the country. We will get married when I get a green card on my own account. I’ll marry you because you’re the one person I want to get married to.”

  “It’s because I am servant, I know. You don’t have to be married to me in real.”

  She began to cry. I let her.

  GLOSSARY OF FOREIGN WORDS

  Words may have alternative meanings. Each word has been translated in the context used in the book.

  THE CLEFT

  Aamaa: mother

  aatmaa: spirit

  adivasi: indigenous people

  arrey: Oh!

  Baba: father

  bajiyaa: rascal

  Bhaanjaa: nephew

  Bhauju: sister-in-law; a brother’s wife

  bokshee: witch

  chiwda: beaten rice

  chyaa: expression of disgust

  Daai: brother

  darji: tailor

  dera: rented place

  dhaarey: fattened-up head louse

  gori: a white woman

  halla-gulla: hustle-bustle

  harey: exclamation conveying frustration or surprise

  Hulas: Nepalese cigarette brand

  jumraa: head louse

  jwaai: brother-in-law

  kaam: thirteenth day purification rite; takes place thirteen days after a person’s death

  keti: girl

  khaini: tobacco

  khanchuwee: glutton