Looking For Bapu

by Anjali Banerjee

  hy do we have to leave him there?” I ask on the way home in the car. I'm in the backseat. I keep flipping the ashtray lid on the armrest. “I don't want to leave him.”

  Everything is backward. Usually Dad drives when we're all together; today Ma drives and Dad slumps in the passenger seat.

  “Just for now,” Ma says. “Before we … before he—before arrangements are made.”

  “I want Bapu to come home with us,” I say, flipping and flipping and flipping. I don't like that word, arrangements.

  “Where else would you expect me to go?” Bapu says. He's sitting next to me. He's still wearing the poncho.

  “Bapu!” I slide over to hug him, but the seat belt tightens across my chest, and my hands slip right through him.

  “You can't actually touch me,” Bapu says.

  “Why not? Where did you go?”

  “I'm not certain.” Bapu frowns.

  “You don't remember?”

  “Anu, are you all right?” Ma glances in the rearview mirror.

  “Best keep your voice down,” Bapu says. “Or your ma will think you've gone off the deep end.”

  “What are you doing here?” I whisper.

  “I have no idea. One minute I was lying on the bed, the next—it's unclear.” He stares off blankly.

  “That man, Dave, called you Bin Laden.” My eyes are watery again.

  He reaches out but his arm goes through me. He seems as startled as I am. “Shona, not to worry. They're frightened and angry. They don't understand what's happened. Who can understand the evil of terrorists?”

  “But you're not evil! He thought you were a bad man. You wouldn't hurt a fly—”

  “He doesn't know where to send his anger, Shona. If I'd had time, I could have explained—”

  “There was no time to explain. I don't want you to leave.”

  “Anu?” Ma says.

  “I don't want to leave you either,” Bapu says softly. “But—”

  “Then stay.”

  “I'm not sure I can.”

  Ma glances in the mirror again. “What are you saying?”

  “Nothing, Ma!”

  I barely whisper. “We need to find a barred owl. And Dad's crying.”

  “Well, he's sad. I'm his daddy, Shona. I changed his diapers and sang when he had colic.” Bapu breaks into quiet song. “Nini-Baba ni-ni … soja Baba soja …”

  “You sang that to me at bedtime.”

  “Soja means sleep.” Bapu begins to fade as Ma steers up our driveway. Gravel crackles under the tires. Don't go, Bapu. My eyelids grow heavier and heavier. I want to lie down. I want food. I want Bapu.

  wake up to terrible quiet. I slept so long, the sun rose without me. Now I have a sick sense of having missed something important. I rub my eyes, my brain filled with pieces of dreams. Bapu's voice echoes in my ears: Ni-ni-Baba ni-ni … soja Baba soja …

  He isn't singing his prayers next door. No sound comes from his room. Only the distant clink of dishes drifts up from the kitchen. Ma and Dad move around down there. They're pretending life is normal.

  I get up and rush into Bapu's room. A lump rises tight and round in my throat. Ma made the bed. The covers stretch flat and uncaring across the mattress. Bapu's chappals lie forgotten near the door. They sag the way old sandals do, as if they're missing the weight of Bapu's wide feet. On the bureau, the bronze statue of Shiva, great god of destruction, lifts his leg in dance. He's barely eight inches tall, but he holds the power of the universe. Fennel and rice form a circle of offerings at his feet. Bapu died and Shiva keeps dancing. The great god doesn't care either.

  How can the room look the same? Bapu's dressing gown, draped over the chair, should tuck itself away. The sun shouldn't rise. The black-and-white picture of Bapu shouldn't smile on the bureau. Doesn't this day know that he's gone? Doesn't it miss him the way I do?

  I want to believe he's in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet, reading the morning paper for two hours, but no, the bathroom door stands open. Nobody's inside. My heart dips so deep that I can't breathe.

  In the bathroom, I lift the toilet seat, pee and nearly miss the bowl. There! Bapu's metal scissors for trimming his beard. They glint on the toilet tank as always. Has he been here? But my arms went through him. He can't pick up his trimmer. Will his ghost beard grow and grow, the way the sadhus' beards grow until they reach the ground?

  I still smell his scented skin oil, the Mysore shampoo. His sandalwood soap sits in the dish where he always places it so neatly next to the folded facecloth. He tells me I make a mess. “You mustn't leave water in the dish, Shona,” he says. “The soap turns to paste.”

  His white punjabi, the Indian shirt he wears to bed, hangs over the towel rack. I slam the toilet seat, splash water on my hands, splatter it all over the bathroom. Bapu! You can't leave everything behind. You didn't tell me what would happen to your shampoo and scissors and soap after you left us. I don't know what to do. I hope you can hear me.

  I go down to the kitchen. Ma and Dad are in the dining room seated at the table, not standing at the counter eating on the run the way they usually do. They pushed Bapu's chair back into the corner, as if he's being punished. Dad piled his textbooks on the seat. My parents aren't going to work. They're both still in rumpled pajamas with their hair sticking out everywhere. Dad picks at his food. He looks like a ghost of my dad.

  I slide into my chair. Ma made tea and tried to cook eggs, but they're soggy and running around on my plate.

  I glance at the countertop and my heart leaps. Bapu's pipe and tobacco, next to the telephone book! His reading glasses are in the case next to the pipe. What if he needs to read? What will he do? Then my heart dives into my shoes. He can't be gone.

  Dad sighs through his nose and takes a gulp of his tea. His eyes are red-rimmed, and he seems smaller, wrinkled, like a dried-up grape turning into a raisin. Our whole house feels parched without Bapu.

  “What will we do with his things?” Ma asks, looking at Dad.

  “Isn't it a bit early to worry about that?” Dad says. “He's been gone all of fourteen hours and ten minutes.” He always speaks in numbers.

  “Keep his things here,” I say. He has to come for them.

  “We need to pick up his clothes from the hospital,” Ma says. She's always practical, a word I learned in school, which means “no-nonsense” and “matter-of-fact.”

  Dad takes a sip of tea and stares off into the backyard at Bapu's bird feeders, the chickadees pecking at the suet. Bapu must be there, hiding in the huckleberry bushes, watching.

  “What about the family?” Ma asks.

  Dad glances bleary-eyed at his watch. “In twelve hours or so, I'll try calling. They're all in bed now.”

  It's nighttime in India. When it's daytime there, it's nighttime here. The rest of Bapu's family still lives in India. He came here three years ago to be closer to us.

  Ma places her hand over Dad's. “What about the memorial?”

  “He was devout,” Dad says.

  “But we can't perform all the rituals,” Ma says.

  I stare at my plate, play with my food. My parents don't pray to the gods. Bapu's singing woke Ma too early on weekends, but she never complained.

  “Auntie Biku will come,” Dad says. “You'll see.”

  Auntie Biku! Bapu's younger sister. Coming here from India? I've seen pictures of her. She's a girl version of Bapu, only shorter and with long white hair.

  “What about the cremation?” Ma says.

  My heart drops. Dad's quiet, his face pale. I know what cremation is. They'll burn Bapu's body, scatter the ashes in a sacred place and perform many boring rituals to help his soul rise to the gods. His soul can't leave.

  “You can't cremate Bapu!” I say.

  “Your Bapu wanted to be cremated,” Ma says. “It's tradition.”

  “He wanted his ashes thrown into the Twin Rivers,” Dad says in a thin voice. “It's a wild place with many birds.”

  “Bapu doesn't want to leave
me!” I shout.

  Dad and Ma glance at each other.

  “He told me after …” My voice trails off. How can I say, after he died?

  Ma puts a hand over mine. “Anu, Bapu doesn't want anything anymore. He's … sleeping. A very long sleep. A sleep that lasts forever—”

  “I'm not stupid.” I pull my hand back. “So, what about the boring rituals? You'll send him away!”

  “We're not going to perform boring rituals. Cremation doesn't hurt him. He's already gone.”

  “How do you know it doesn't hurt? How can he come back if, if …”

  “Oh, sweetie. I wish—I know you were very close to Bapu.” Ma hardly ever calls me sweetie. “This is hardest on you—”

  “It's not hard on me. It's not! Bapu's here.”

  “Of course he is.” But I can tell by the sadness in her eyes that she doesn't believe me.

  After breakfast, Ma drives us to the hospital. She and I wait in the car while Dad goes in. I wait and wait, sliding back and forth, kicking the driver's seat until Ma tells me to stop. “You'll knock my teeth out.”

  I hold my breath, let it out, but Bapu doesn't show up.

  Dad comes back carrying Bapu's poncho and boots and clothes. My mouth dries up.

  “I told the nurse that my father wore double socks,” Dad says in the car. His voice is tight. “But they returned only one pair. Two plus two equals four, I tried to tell her. Four socks. She wouldn't listen.”

  I tap my fingernail on the window. Two plus two equals four. Dad thinks in equations. What does it matter how many socks Bapu wore? He's wearing ghost socks now.

  “They must've lost the other pair,” Ma says. She pats Dad's shoulder. “It's okay.”

  “It's not okay,” Dad mutters, but he's silent the rest of the way.

  At home, he puts everything in Bapu's room and shuts the door.

  Bapu doesn't come back. I check his e-mail on my computer. Only spam. I check my e-mail in case he sent a ghost message through cyberspace. Nothing except for five e-mails from Unger, saying he's sorry about my grandfather and asking how I'm doing. I nearly forgot my best friend.

  lie awake in bed. I pray to Garuda and count to one hundred, two hundred, three hundred and seventy-three. I keep a flashlight switched on under the covers and read aloud from The Ramayana, in which Rama, the boy who could shoot arrows with perfect aim, discovers he's the reincarnation of the great god Vishnu the Preserver.

  I hope Vishnu will preserve my Bapu, keep him whole and real and close, even if my parents cremate him. I want to steal the statue of Shiva from Bapu's room, but I'm afraid to go back in there. Dad doesn't want anything disturbed. He and Ma argue about Bapu's trunkful of belongings, the shrine, the Shiva statue.

  I stay awake in case Bapu comes back, but I fall asleep at the last minute, the way I do right before Santa squeezes down the chimney. I want to see Santa just once, but he's sneaky. One minute, the empty pillowcase lies flat at the end of my bed, the next minute it's full of gifts.

  I try to stay up for Bapu, but sleep comes inky black. I wake up to Ma and Dad shouting on the telephone in the middle of the night. They're telling the Indian relatives about Bapu— Dad's uncles, cousins and second cousins. We have a million relatives.

  In the morning, my flashlight and books sit neatly on the nightstand, and the covers are pulled up and tucked in. Bapu must have come while I slept.

  I don't go to school for a few days. American friends file in and out of the house, bringing flowers and cookies. Big white sympathy cards with shiny patterns clutter the mantelpiece. The flowers wilt on the tables and give off sweet, rotting scents. Dad's buddies from the university, the staff at Ma's office, all bring food and say how sorry they are. A few Indian friends come, people we haven't seen in months. Cards arrive from the principal and Ms. Lumpenberger, my teacher.

  Andy Howe and his parents bring a purple hydrangea in a pot. He's in my grade, but I don't hang out with him. He's always off reading by himself. A fluffy yellow wig flops on his head like a giant omelet. Everyone at school knows it's a wig. Andy has cancer.

  “I'm sorry about your grandpa, Anu,” he says in a squeaky voice.

  “Thanks for coming, Andy. How are you doing?” I'm trying to be polite, trying not to stare at his fake hair.

  “My grandpa died too. He crossed over to the other side three years ago.” Andy shakes my hand with cool, frail fingers.

  I pull my hand away and tuck it into my pocket. I never shake hands with friends! We slap each other on the back, punch each other in the arm. And I want to tell Andy that Bapu didn't cross over anywhere. He's hovering nearby, watching the parade of friends. He's probably drooling for all the food.

  Andy doesn't stay long. He gets tired easily.

  I thank the gods for bringing over Unger with his mom, for taking my mind off Andy's hair and Bapu for a minute.

  Unger's wearing a T-shirt with an American flag printed on the front, and his thick glasses are fogged up as usual. The specs have huge black rims and take up half his face. He's carrying a stack of comics.

  In my room, he drops the comics on my bed. “Did you go to India or something? How come you're not at school? I sent you a million e-mails.”

  “Sorry. I've been way busy.” Busy looking for Bapu, watching for a sign.

  Unger removes his glasses and wipes them on his T-shirt. “We have a lot of catching up to do.”

  We trade comics. I loan Unger The Ramayana and borrow Spider-Man and X-Men; then he pulls a wad of dollar bills from his pocket. “I'm selling my old baseball cards. I made seventeen more dollars this week. I can open my own bank account.”

  “Cool, Unger,” I say, but I can't muster much interest. He's always coming up with a new business idea. His dad is an insurance salesman. Unger says he wants to be richer than his dad, live in a mansion in Malibu and drive a convertible.

  “I'll be loaded when I turn eighteen.” He boots up my computer and surfs the Internet for personal finance.

  “I saw him,” I say.

  “Saw who?” He doesn't look up.

  “My grandfather, after he died. But now I'm forgetting what he looked like.”

  Unger pushes the glasses up on his nose. “I forget what my grandma looked like. She was in a retirement home. I only saw her, like, once a month.”

  “Ma and Dad would never have let Bapu live in a retirement home.”

  Unger shrugs, clicking through to www.make-a-zillion.com. I can't imagine not seeing Bapu for a whole month. Now I might not see him for even longer. The thought carves a hollow pit inside me; the word forever lurks at the bottom. I won't go there. I can't go down that far.

  he following afternoon, our weird next-door neighbors, Ms. Mumu and her daughter, Izzy, bring a huge Tupperware container of homemade, oversized chocolate chip cookies. Each cookie takes up a whole plate. Ms. Mumu wears flowing skirts and crystals around her neck. Although Izzy is my age, she's giraffe-tall, skinny and pale. Who wouldn't be with a name like Izzy Mumu? Izzy is homeschooled. She wears beaded necklaces, bracelets, earrings. She probably stuffs beads up her nose.

  We all sit in the living room eating cookies.

  “Anu will need a place to stay after school,” Dad says. “Just until Priti and I get home from work.”

  Ms. Mumu, breathless and heavy in her flowing dress, smiles. “We'd love to have Anu stay with us. He and Izzy can get acquainted.”

  Get acquainted? A lump of cookie turns to glue in my throat.

  The phone rings, and the kettle whistles at the same time. The grown-ups get up and drift into the kitchen, and I'm left staring at Izzy. She stares back at me through silvery cat eyes. I don't know if she wants to play with me, kill me or turn me into a bead on her necklace.

  “Where's your TV?” she asks with a lisp, as if she has something caught between her teeth.

  “My parents put it away for a while,” I say. “I had nightmares about the planes hitting the towers.”

  “Me too, and I cry. My mom wa
tches the news all the time. She's totally hypnotized. She bawls her eyes out.”

  I sigh. “I miss The Simpsons.”

  “Look at what I've got—way better than TV anyway.” Izzy pulls something from her pocket and puts it on the table. I nearly jump out of my skin. It's a miniature gray head with tangled black hair. The nose is big and wide, the eyes sewn shut. “Shrunken head from Ecuador,” Izzy says. “I bought it on the Internet.”

  “You mean it's real?” I lean forward, but I'm afraid to touch it. “It's too small to be a real head.”

  “Not the real one, silly. It's rubber, looks exactly like the real one. I think she was a woman. It takes years to shrink the real heads.”

  I glance toward the kitchen. Nobody's coming. Ma and Ms. Mumu are laughing. How could Ms. Mumu make Ma laugh? Dad's talking on the phone.

  I lean forward and whisper, “You mean they actually chopped off—”

  “Wild headhunters of the Amazon river.” Izzy's brows rise. Her hair is so blond, her eyelashes shine silvery white. “First they take out the bones and fill the head with pebbles and sand, and then they heat the head in, um, sulfur, and other things….”

  “No way.”

  “Way. Then they shake all that stuff in the head for seven weeks and press on the skin to keep the features.”

  I lean back and suddenly my head feels fuzzy and I put my hands to my neck. I wonder if Izzy wants to cut off my head. I wonder if she secretly chops off heads in her room and presses them into beads around her neck. “How do you know all this?”

  “I read.” She leans over to whisper. “They have the real shrunken heads at the Mystery Museum on Divine Island.”

  “Mystery Museum? They have real heads?” A shiver runs up my spine.

  “A whole bunch of other stuff too. I collect curiosities over the Internet. Www.mystery-museum.com.” She gives me a toothy smile.

  I never knew you could collect curiosity. I guess that since Bapu died, my family has been collecting sadness.

  he gods send rain after rain after rain. Finally the flooding lets up. Clouds still clutter the sky, and a damp wind blows, rattling leaves off the trees. Ma's gone back to work, and Dad is sleeping. He sleeps a lot these days. He brought home Bapu's ashes in an urn, but I'm not allowed to look inside. Dad keeps the urn in his room. Bapu's not in the urn, anyway. He's floating somewhere on the edge of the forest.