An American Brat

by Bapsi Sidhwa

  Feroza turned on the ignition and put the car into first gear. In the flashing moment of lucidity that the diversion afforded her she decided to stop looking at David.

  Feroza drove away from the curb, the small Chevette bucking like a recalcitrant goat. She could feel the nervousness and tension mount in the man sitting next to her. She knew, almost intuitively, what he would say and at which point.

  “You let go of the clutch too fast,” David said.

  Feroza looked straight through the windshield, her heart threatening to leap out of its cage, determined not to meet his eyes.

  David glanced at her profile. It was impassive, imperious.

  “N-never mind,” he stammered quickly. “I-its all right.” And then, “You could shift into second now.”

  Feroza changed gears. The car lunged forward. The engine roared in her ears. There was not a peep out of David. Feroza wondered at the roar and, with a start, blushing furiously, realized she should have shifted into third. She slowed to turn west on University Boulevard and, drawing assurance from the deserted stretch of road ahead, smoothly accelerated into top gear.

  Feroza could feel David relax. As they cruised along the deserted road, Feroza all at once recalled what her grandmother had once said about the kindness and wisdom of Jamshed Metha.

  Jamshed Metha’s photograph, that of a slight, humble, and ascetic-looking man in a Parsee coat and feta, adorned Khutlibai’s prayer table. In trying to convey the impact of the philanthropist’s personality to Feroza, she had said, “One could not look at him.”

  “Why?” Feroza asked, surprised.

  “Why?” Khutlibai appeared confounded by the question; as if what she had said was self-evident and needed no explaining. “You’d fall down!”

  Noticing the astonishment wreathing her granddaughter’s features, Khutlibai explained, “One could not face the power of his eyes.” Then, groping to define the essence of a man who had attained a formidable divinity, she continued, “I was about twelve; we used to stand in front of him when he talked about our religion, and he would tell us, ‘Look up. Raise your eyes,’ but none of us dared raise our eyes above the third button on his coat. We knew we’d crumble.”

  David was like that, Feroza thought. Not to be gazed upon.

  The mountains rose in smoky billows, tier upon tier, their spectacular crown of clouds kindled by the setting sun. This scenic grandeur contributed its own exquisite tumult to Feroza’s already tumultuous heart. She wanted to head for the hills — drive like this into the heart of the mountains, lose herself in their profound solitude with David.

  On an irresistible impulse, she turned her head slightly to glance at David and caught him looking at her dreamily out of the corners of his sapphire eyes. Their eyes ricocheted off each other, the impact of their colliding glances as difficult to sustain as a glimpse of Jamshed Metha’s awesome divinity.

  Feroza had a vision of driving David through a crowded street as people fell on either side of them like walking sticks, struck down by the dazzle of his eyes.

  But the bright-eyed entity sitting by her had visions of its own. It cleared its throat and told Feroza to turn left at the next light. “I know there’s a Friday’s a little ways down the street,” David said and then diffidently, “Feel like a drink?”

  Feroza nodded, incapable of speech. Her heart leapt so wildly that it alarmed her and almost squeezed the breath out of her. Then she was swept by an intoxicating wave of happiness mixed with terror.

  Feroza swung left into the street and headed for the bar as if towards the blue mountains of her daydream, confusedly wondering if her paralyzed tongue would regain its power of speech.

  “We’ve passed it.” David turned to look back and then, as Feroza swerved erratically to shift to the left lane, quickly said, “It’s all right, take it easy. You can make a left anywhere. We’ll get to it.”

  How could she have missed the blazing red neon signature of Friday’s? Feroza turned into a small shopping arcade and, after crossing a couple of small streets, drove into the bar’s parking lot. She found a small space between two cars and nosed the Chevette into it.

  “That’s the advantage of a small car,” David said. “You can park it any place.”

  Feroza felt more comfortable once they went inside. The atmosphere of the bar was at once warm and familiar, filled with associations of the good times she and Jo had had way back at the bars in Twin Falls and of the spell she had spent working in one.

  As the waitress led them to their seats, Feroza was grateful for the convivial buzz of people talking and the dim, reddish light reflecting off the tablecloths and the dark wood of the counters, tables, and floor.

  They sat facing each other, holding their menus in front of them. David glanced at Feroza. Her eyes intent on the menu, her face was serene and glowing in the dim light. Their waitress stood, notepad and pen in hand, ready for their order.

  “What would you like?” David asked.

  David had placed his elbows on the table and leaned forward in anticipation of the musical murmur he expected to catch as it issued from the tawny girl’s delectable throat. But, disturbed by his proximity, Feroza slid sideways and back in her seat, and David failed to hear what she said.

  David unobtrusively removed his elbows from the table and cleared his throat. “I think I’ll have the house beer,” he said to the girl who was waiting patiently for their order and, making another attempt, asked Feroza, “How about you?”

  This time both David and the waitress caught her answer when Feroza, as if asking a question, said, “A glass of wine?”

  David launched a nervous monologue about his Chevette and sounded so desperate to impress Feroza with its virtues that she seriously wondered if something was the matter with the car. “She’s been great. Gives me thirty-five miles to the gallon on a clear road, thirty in traffic. No rust on her; spent fifty bucks to have her chassis treated. Not much trouble, except for an oil leak that I fixed myself, and the exhaust that got knocked loose when I jumped a curb. I’ve really looked after her. She’s a bargain at seven hundred, but what the heck, so long’s she finds a good owner. You must think I’m crazy, talking like this, but, you know, I’ve gotten used to her. She’s almost human, like a pet or something.”

  Their beer and wine arrived. David took a long draft from his mug, wiped his mouth with the cuff of his shirt, and continued his monologue.

  Feroza took small sips of the wine from her glass, and David switched from talking about the car to explaining why he was selling it and buying a bicycle instead. The wine coursed through Feroza like a mellow happiness. She realized that David was not so eager to make a sale as he was to impress her. Feroza asked for another glass of wine, and David ordered another beer.

  David told Feroza about the hard time his dad was having keeping him in school, despite the scholarships he had earned. He told her how much store his parents set by his education and how much they expected of him, though he didn’t think he could ever repay them for their love or their unstinting and unmentioned sacrifice.

  As David spoke, it gradually seemed to Feroza as if he were spreading a red carpet to invite her to walk into his life, strewing it with intimate minutiae as if with rose petals. Feroza knew these were his innermost secrets, fragrant with his commitment to his parents and his admirable feelings, and that he had never shared them with anyone before.

  And while he talked, David’s eyes, alight with elation, also spoke. They appeared to say that he couldn’t believe his luck in having drawn this beautiful and exotic creature as if by some extravagant chance — like a winning lottery ticket — through his car. Feroza was awash in David’s desire to show off, to impress her, and she gained in confidence with each passing moment. It did not blind her to look into his eyes anymore. The bridge created by his nervous words, his admiration, his need to bare his sensibilities, had carried her beyond their dazzle into the blue, oceanic depths in which she swam as easily as a fish. And the few t
imes she averted her gaze it was more to conceal the flamboyance of her sensations than because of the knock-out potency of his glance.

  Then David drew her out, asking questions, and Feroza found herself talking freely of her life in Lahore, of her parents and Khutlibai and Manek and her feelings for them. She was amazed at how comfortable she felt with this incandescent being. His sentiments, his aspiration, were so like hers, and those of her family. And yet it was as if she had taken a leap across some cultural barrier and found herself on the other side of it to discover that everything was comfortingly the same, and yet the grass was greener. She never thought she could have felt this complete trust in a stranger to take her across the unchartered terrain of her emotions.

  She did not know when exactly her heart was won. Was it when David had said Pack-iss-tan in that wonderful, shy, deep voice of his, exactly the way that handsome officer had said it in Salem when they were searching for Manek in the maniacally blinking blue-and-white light of the police car? Would she have felt the same had the officer put himself out to win her? Were her feelings as giddy as Jo’s? Was that all it was, then, a condition of her chemistry as a young woman responding to an extraordinarily good-looking man, or was it something special that only David had been able to establish? Were his feelings for her as strong as she felt they were?

  There was music playing, a few couples dancing in a small dark square of floor-space. David looked at Feroza seriously and formally asked her, “Wanna dance?” He seemed to know instinctively how to talk to her, behave with her, and how she would respond. Feroza was grateful to Shashi for teaching her to dance.

  On the dance floor, Feroza felt as if she could not sustain herself without David’s support. She felt David’s heartbeat against hers, sounding loudly in her ears, and she wanted that sturdy heart to beat and beat forever like that, close to her. Its throb and pulse were her natural element, just as the oceanic depths of his eyes were when she had found herself swimming in them like a fish.

  When David held Feroza a little away from him to look down at her, Feroza slowly raised her eyes to meet his, and her face was bathed in a shy, yielding amber radiance that reflected his own tumultuous feelings.

  ~

  One evening in February, Shashi called Feroza and told her to come to his brother’s apartment immediately. He was uncharacteristically abrupt. “I’ll tell you everything when you get here,” he said cryptically and hung up.

  Feroza found Mala weeping hysterically. Her hair hung in long strands about her face, as if she or someone had savagely pulled it. Her silk sari was crumpled and disorderly, it’s richly woven palu trailing the floor unheeded as she wailed, “Hai Bhagvan,” and swayed on the edge of the long sofa.

  Deepak, the quintessence of despairing gloom, sat in a chair, head in hands.

  “The baby?” Feroza asked in a whisper, not daring to articulate her fear, and Shashi quietly said, “The baby’s all right … It’s just that Deepak’s given it away.”

  “What?” Feroza was incredulous.

  “Yes,” wailed Mala. “He gave her away because she’s a girl! I bet he’d have gotten the money if she was a boy.”

  “That’s not true,” Deepak said, dispirited and woebegone.

  Shashi took a confounded Feroza outside, and as they walked up and down the length of the building, he told her what had happened.

  They were supposed to bring the baby home that afternoon. Deepak had seen the bill and turned the color of ashes. “Fifteen thousand dollars?” he croaked, his voice a hollow husk. “I’ve never seen fifteen thousand dollars in my whole life!”

  “Please, can’t you talk to the doctor?” Mala begged. “We’re foreigners … We don’t have so many dollars. If he wants rupees, we can give him fifteen thousand rupees.”

  “Let me see what I can do,” the perplexed receptionist said, turning pale herself, and departed in search of the doctor.

  She resumed her seat, her pretty young face beaming with smiles. “Dr. Walden has reduced his bill. You need to pay thirteen thousand.”

  “Thirteen thousand dollars?” Deepak gasped. “Where do I get thirteen thousand from? I don’t even have five thousand.”

  Deepak began to bargain, starting with five hundred dollars. Mala was horrified by what was taking place. She desperately whispered, “But, Deepak, you could ask your papa to arrange —”

  “Thirteen thousand dollars? Do you know how much money that is? You can deliver thirty premature babies for that kind of money in India!”

  Each time the receptionist started a sentence with “I’m sorry —,” she sounded less and less sorry. Eventually she said, “We’re not in the bargain basement at Filene’s. I’m sorry. I have other people waiting. If you don’t pay the bill, you’ll have our collection agency after you. You could end up in jail.”

  Deepak looked shocked and defeated. “All right,” he said with indescribable gloom, “you can keep the baby.”

  “Then?” Feroza asked.

  “Then he walked away.”

  “But you can’t leave it at that, for God’s sake!”

  Shashi rolled up his eyes piously and spread his hands. “We’ve left it in Bhagvan’s hands.”

  “Come on, you Bhagvan-walla,” Feroza said, grabbing his arm and pulling him towards her car. “Gwen and Rhonda will know what to do.”

  David was waiting for Feroza at the apartment, talking to her roommates. He was beginning to relax in their company, and although he was still shy and reserved, he sometimes surprised the girls with a nutty streak of humor and his own particular brand of kidding. Both liked him.

  As soon as Shashi and Feroza came in, Gwen and Rhonda knew something was wrong. David stood up with his coffee mug in his hand. He had on brown corduroy pants and a tan velour shirt. Feroza’s eyes sought his and lit up with the radiance of their growing communion. He looked incredibly handsome to Feroza, like a golden, languishing god.

  Shashi noticed the look that passed between them. He wondered that he had not heard about their relationship. He was hurt, but debonair enough to hide it.

  Feroza and Shashi told them what had happened at the hospital.

  “Deepak said what?” Rhonda exclaimed.

  Feroza was solemn. “You can keep the baby.”

  “I don’t believe it!” Rhonda squealed and exploded in a fit of laughter. Gwen doubled over, shaking, body consumed by mirth. David tried to look solemn, but a huge grin broke on his face, and he burst into guffaws.

  Breathless and flushed, the girls wiped the tears from their eyes. After the initial shock, Feroza and Shashi saw the humor in the situation and uneasily joined in the hilarity.

  “Oh God,” Gwen finally managed to say, “that’s the only thing to do if you don’t carry insurance. You can’t throw yourself on their mercy!” She was convulsed again by laughter. Shaking her head she managed to say, “Your brother’s smart!”

  “What should we do?” Shashi asked, a bit irritated by the frivolity. After all, he had witnessed his sister-in-law and brother’s suffering.

  “Heavens! What’ll the hospital do with the baby?” Gwen flung her arms out. “They don’t want it!”

  “My uncle’s a surgeon at Denver General,” Rhonda said, sobering up all at once and empathizing with Shashi’s anxiety and aggravation. “Maybe he can talk to Dr. Walden. Let me see if I can get hold of him.”

  Rhonda went into her bedroom to call her uncle. She phoned several places before she was able to locate him and get him on the line.

  The next day Mala and Deepak went to the hospital and brought their little daughter home. Deepak’s bill was for a thousand dollars. It pained him. It would have cost a fraction of that at home. He blinked and surreptitiously wiped his eyes. The receptionist and the doctor supposed he was brushing away tears of gratitude and joy, and they were deeply moved by the salutary effect of their benevolence.

  ~

  Feroza learned the rudimentary mechanism of her car, washed and polished it herself, and whizzed
about Denver with one hand on the wheel and an elbow stuck out the window, surveying the world through her windshield with the air of a winged creature flying.

  Feroza visited Jo and Bill, who were living together but not married yet, at the air force base, and Mr. and Mrs. Miller in Boulder. She ran errands for Gwen and Rhonda and repaid the debts she owed her other friends by offering to pick them up when they needed to go someplace together.

  Ever since Feroza had met David and bought his car, every atom of her being seemed weightless, and the very air she moved in was buoyant, and with every breath she inhaled happiness.

  It was one thing to love. But to be loved back by a man who embodied every physical attribute of her wildest fantasies, with whom she could communicate even without speech, who understood the sensitive nuances of her emotions that were so like his own insecurities, was akin to a transcendental, fairy-tale experience.

  Sometimes when Feroza lay on the sofa and David sat gazing into her eyes till the blue and yellow of their irises merged, and each glimpsed the mystery of the other, it seemed incredible to them that anyone else could feel as they did or be as lucky as they were to find each other.

  And after this, it was natural for them to be physically close, to tenderly touch each other, to abandon themselves to the ardent intoxication of their youthful hormones. Feroza was as “swept off her feet” as she could wish, as David wished her to be. And the instinct that had guarded her before, now let her go as David released her from the baffling sexual limbo in which Shashi’s cooler rhythm and the restraints of their common culture had set her adrift.

  Yet each appreciated the reserve in the other; a certain sexual reticence. David, who might have wandered naked in his room before an American girl, didn’t. Feroza dressed and undressed behind doors and beneath bed sheets. David never saw her, except for brief moments, naked, and then her voluptuous warm nakedness, her swelling breasts, were imprinted in his mind as the essence of desirability. Both were intrigued by the otherness of the other — the trepidation, the reticence imposed on them by their differing cultures.