Looking For Bapu

by Anjali Banerjee

  “I don't like the mummies, Dad,” I whisper. “I don't think they want to be on display.”

  “I know, Anu.”

  We pass cases full of real shrunken heads, bigger than Izzy's replica. Their skins are black. There's even a shrunken torso of a Jivaro Indian headhunter. I should drool and gasp like Izzy and Unger, but instead I want the gods to set the shrunken people free. They don't belong here, being stared at like this. Any one of them could have been Bapu.

  Kids are filtering in with their parents, and the room comes alive with the hum of conversation. This doesn't seem like a mystery museum at all anymore.

  We find Karnak's stage in the back corner. I sit between Dad and Izzy in the front row. There's nothing much on the platform, just a podium and a table with a black cloth. Soon the guard steps onstage and turns on the microphone. There's a high-pitched ringing sound before her voice comes through. “Welcome, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen! Are you ready?”

  “Yes!” the kids shout.

  “Are you set?”

  “Yes!” Even Izzy and Unger are shouting. I sit on my hands, but my foot won't stop tapping the floor.

  “Prepare yourselves for the one, the only, the ancient magician who can make anything happen! Karnak!”

  The audience roars. I try to sit still, but my heel keeps kicking the chair leg. I put my hands in my lap. Suddenly, I can hear every breath in the room, every movement, every sniff.

  A man steps from behind the curtain. He's bald! He's carrying a black top hat and wearing a white shirt, black pants and a black cape tied at the neck. He carries a black wand. He's stooped, as if he's tired, the cape hanging like a bad Halloween costume from his shoulders. He's not wearing a golden jacket or a turban with a diamond. No third eye. He doesn't have a mustache or shiny shoes that curl up in the front. There's no halo around him.

  You're not Karnak! I want to shout. The Karnak of my dreams can wave his wand and leave a trail of sparkling light. My Karnak commands attention. He's like a walking rainbow.

  Karnak adjusts the microphone. “Good day, boys and girls,” he says in a high, nasal voice. He clears his throat. “I apologize— I'm a little under the weather. Cold, sore throat, the works.”

  The kids shift in their seats.

  He clears his throat again. “How many of you want to see me pull a rabbit from a hat?”

  The kids let up a roar, and he puts the hat on the table, waves the wand over it, and produces a floppy-eared white rabbit. The kids clap. Most of them are young. I feel old. The guard rushes onstage and takes the rabbit.

  Karnak performs other silly tricks, and the more he does, the sillier he seems. He's just a man with a runny nose, and I want to cry. How will I bring Bapu back? How?

  When Karnak's done, he tells kids to come up to the microphone that is set up in the audience and ask him to do a trick. A little boy steps forward holding his mother's hand. “Can you give me a pony?” he asks. “For my farm?”

  Karnak winks, waves his wand over the hat and produces a plastic horse. He comes to the edge of the stage, kneels and gives the kid the pony.

  “That was a setup,” Unger whispers, nudging me with his elbow.

  I know this already.

  Then Izzy and Unger drag me to my feet to line up.

  “Can you make me pass the state exams?” Izzy asks eagerly at the microphone.

  “You have to study hard, young lady,” Karnak says. He hands her a plastic statue of himself. “Put this in front of you while you study, at least two hours a night. You'll pass.”

  “Wow!” She leaves the stage staring at the plastic doll.

  Then Unger steps up. “Can you give me, um, a lot of money? A million dollars?”

  Karnak shakes his head. “You have to work to earn your money, but if you put this in front of your mirror while you're working”—he hands Unger a plastic doll of himself—“you'll have a better chance, young man.”

  The doll is exactly the same as the one he gave Izzy. I take my turn at the microphone.

  “I want my grandfather to come back,” I say.

  “Where has your dear grandpa gone?” Karnak booms. He comes to the edge of the stage and bends toward me. That's when I see the caked-on, powdery makeup on his cheeks. He's just a person underneath. A person with a stuffy red nose.

  I don't want to tell Karnak where Bapu has gone. A true magician would know the answer.

  He straightens, and strides across the stage. “Okay, little man.” He hands me the statue. “Here's hoping your grandpa comes trotting on home.”

  When we leave the Mystery Museum, my legs turn to stone and all the thoughts sink to the bottom of my brain. I don't care about anything anymore. Nothing at all.

  he ferry ride is a blur. I don't remember anything before we got home and I ran to my room and slammed the door. I don't feel Bapu in here. I don't feel him anywhere, and I don't know what to do. Ma's not home. She left a note saying she went clothes shopping. It's her way of unwinding when we're not around to bother her. I'm glad she's not here. I don't want to be close to anybody. I don't want anyone to come into my room, but Dad's knocking on my door.

  “Go away!” I shout.

  “Anu, we need to talk about Bapu.”

  “There's nothing to say.”

  “Yes, there is.”

  “Karnak was a fake. A total fake! He can't do anything! Just stupid tricks.”

  “Anu, I'm coming in.” Dad opens the door. He sits beside me and puts his arms around me, and his spicy aftershave smell fills my nose. He feels solid and warm.

  “All he did was give me that stupid statue. It's plastic! He gives everyone a statue. Why does he do that? How can he do that?”

  “I know, I know.” Dad's still got his arms around me and I lean my cheek against his chest. “I miss Bapu too. It wasn't your fault that he died.”

  My body goes stiff. “Ma told me.”

  “I know. But you still feel responsible, don't you?”

  Tears sting my eyes.

  “Bapu would've died no matter what.” He lets out a long breath. “He had a massive stroke. It wouldn't have made any difference if the paramedics had arrived earlier. You did everything right. The result would've been the same. Do you understand, Anu? There was nothing you could've done. If you're keeping Bapu here because you want to be forgiven, you can let him go. Bapu doesn't need to forgive you. He knows it wasn't your fault.”

  A funny hiccupping sound comes from my throat. “How do you know he knows?” I whisper.

  “Because I saw him too.” I don't know if Dad's telling the truth. “But now he might need to leave and go to the gods.”

  I never thought of it that way. I never thought that Bapu might need to leave, that I might be keeping him here.

  “I miss him so much,” I say.

  “So do I,” Dad says. He is silent for a moment. “He read to me when I was a baby. He held me and took me bird-watching too.”

  “He did? When?” I pull away just a little, because I don't want to be far from Dad. I don't want him to disappear the way Bapu did.

  “In India, a long time ago. We did many things together. I'd forgotten. He was a help to me as a grown-up too. Aren't we lucky he came to live with us? We have to help each other now, Anu. We have to get through this together.”

  “But he doesn't even have a grave! I can't go and plant flowers.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  Dad takes me outside to Bapu's garden. “We can plant the winter vegetables. Look—some of the fall vegetables are still ripening.”

  A few small pumpkins hide beneath leafy vines. This is the first time I've noticed!

  “We have to tend Bapu's garden now.” Dad wipes his eyes. “Okay? It's up to us to remember him together.”

  he Hindu god Ganesh is the Lord of New Beginnings. He granted a new beginning for Ma and me. She didn't get angry when she saw the school pictures of me bald. I don't know how the photographer did it, but he made me look handsome. I told her about
Andy taking off his wig too, and she smiled.

  Izzy got in trouble for going to the Mystery Museum, and now she's grounded for a month, which doesn't matter anyway since she's homeschooled. But I get to talk to her on the phone, and she's happy because she bought a bigger shrunken head at the Mystery Museum.

  Unger got in trouble too. He has to help his dad figure out the taxes and do special housecleaning chores for two months.

  I guess I got the best deal.

  Dad and I hike through the woods again to search for barred owls. He wore his parka the first few times; then he bought a poncho like mine. I step into his giant footprints in the dirt. We follow the path far into the forest, until we can't see the mossy roof of our house. Dad's humming a Bengali tune. He keeps going around the bend and up the hill and finally stops in a clearing. We sit side by side on a log, and I'm so still, I could be a tree trunk. I barely breathe. In my days as a sadhu in training, I learned a few things.

  Dad's leg is warm against mine, and the scent of his aftershave rises in the air.

  “Soon, Shona, soon,” he says.

  I slip my hand in his. I like it that he uses my nickname. He's alive and warm. I'm tired of death, tired of trying so hard. The sigh of the damp wind, the rustle of fir needles, the faint disturbance of birds in the trees—it's all a part of this real, green world, where I can feel the raindrops cool on my skin, where I can hear Dad breathing and feel his heartbeat.

  I'm sorry, Bapu, that I tried to keep you here in the rocks and the worms and the red bark of cedar trees, in the towering Douglas fir. Go to the gods, to the heavens. I can't go with you.

  I'm beginning to understand the inner light, the light of being alive, new friends, seeing shrunken heads and a silly magician, bird-watching with Dad. This is my life, always moving with me and past me, shifting and changing color.

  How long have we been sitting here? Through the mist, I see it now. The owl. It's been there all the time, pressing into the trunk of the giant Douglas fir. A feather flutters in the wet breeze, betraying the owl's presence. Then the rest of the bird, its fluffy outline, comes into view, slowly growing clearer, as if a spirit hand just wiped a foggy window.

  “There,” I whisper to Dad.

  “I see it too!” he whispers back.

  We both hold our breaths, watching the mottled feathers fluffing as the owl readies for flight. Huge wings unfurl in silence, and the owl sails high through the trees and flies straight over our heads and away.

  The rain comes down harder now. Dad snaps open a huge umbrella to cover us both, and I think of Bapu's story about the umbrella. The umbrella kept Jamadagni's arrows from wounding the sun. I can't help feeling protected under Dad's umbrella. Now I know what Bapu meant when he told me that story. I'm the sun injured by arrows. I was meant to sit under this umbrella with Dad, to keep the arrows from piercing my heart. And that's when I know, deep inside, that Bapu is gone. He will never come back. I turn to Dad and I start to cry. I can't stop. I've been immersed in a lake of sadness, and now invisible hands are lifting me out and wringing me dry.

  n a drizzly November afternoon, Izzy, Unger, Andy and I traipse back into the woods to pick up the Shiva statue. I can't leave him to drown in the winter rains. Izzy just graduated from being grounded—she keeps sniffing the air as if she's never been outside before.

  Shiva still dances under the fir tree, but the soggy pillowcase is covered in leaves and pine needles.

  “What's all that food around his feet?” Andy asks, pulling up his hood.

  “Offerings,” Izzy says. “Stale cookies and rice.”

  “I'm hungry.” Unger wipes the mist from his glasses. “The cookies look good.”

  “Not for you!” Izzy sits cross-legged on the wet ground and presses the palms of her hands together in prayer. “Thank you, Shiva, for helping me pass my exams.”

  Andy flops down beside her. “Thank you for helping my real hair grow back.”

  I kneel, Unger next to me. A warm fuzziness grows inside me. “And thank you for bringing together four best friends.”

  Andy grins at me.

  Unger bows his head. “Thank you for making me help Dad clean the house. I found cash in my running shoe.” He pulls a folded five-dollar bill from his pocket and places it at Shiva's feet.

  Izzy snatches up the money and throws it back at Unger. “Gods are not materialistic!”

  “I'll take the money,” Andy offers.

  “Okay, give it back, then,” Unger says. “I have a new business plan anyway. We buy more shrunken heads and charge kids to come and see them.”

  “At whose house?” Izzy says. “I don't want a million kids in my room.”

  “They can't come to my house,” Unger says. “My mom hates dirt. She'll make everyone take off their shoes at the door!”

  While Izzy and Unger argue, Andy and I gather up the stale offerings. The rain has stopped and sunshine squeezes through the trees. If you hang around in the woods long enough, the sun will come out.

  I tuck Shiva into my coat pocket. I bet he got lonely out here. It's time to tell Ma and Dad where he's been.

  Later, when the sun's dipping in the sky, after we've had supper and Dad's working in his office and Ma's reading, I go to my room. Ma raised an eyebrow when I told her about Shiva, but she let me keep him. “Didn't he get cold out there all this time?” she asked, and her lip twitched as if she was trying not to smile.

  Dad put on an extra-serious face. “You'd better warm him up.” Now I keep Shiva on my bureau surrounded by offerings of fennel and rice.

  I take Bapu's stamp album from my desk and leaf through the pages. The stamps are so strange and foreign, some old and yellowed, others touched with silver and gold. Lions, tigers, the map of India and rare flowers splash across the pages.

  I bring the album to Dad's office.

  His eyes water when he sees it. “Where did you get this?” he whispers, taking the album.

  “Auntie Biku gave it to me.”

  “This—I had this when I was just a boy. Bapu gave it to me. I thought I'd lost it. But Auntie Biku had it.”

  “I thought it belonged to Bapu.”

  “It did. Then he gave it to me. You know, he kept extra stamps and things inside the cover.” He lifts the cover and I see the stamps and other papers stuffed inside a pocket. “It's all yours now.”

  I take the album to my room. I pull the extra stamps from the hidden pocket. A thick piece of paper tumbles out—a faded photograph in black-and-white.

  It's me.

  I don't remember this picture. I don't remember wearing that weird white uniform, and my hair is shiny and straight and parted on the wrong side. But it's me. How did the picture get into Bapu's old stamp album? A shiver runs down my spine. I turn over the photograph. Written in a spidery hand on the back are the words Siddhartha Ganguli, Darjeeling, January 1941.

  The blood pounds in my head, and my fingers shake holding the picture. My Bapu, at my age. He looked exactly like me. Why didn't anyone tell me? Auntie Biku! She held my face in her hands and cried, the tears pouring down her cheeks, and then she gave me this stamp album and told me something in Bengali. Was she telling me about the picture, and I didn't understand?

  I touch my cheeks, feeling Bapu there, in the heat rushing beneath my skin. My throat goes tight, and I take the picture, run to the bathroom mirror. Could it be true? Could it really be? My eyebrows, my nose, my chin. My eyes. The same. The only differences are the hair and the uniform. I'm looking back to a time when I wasn't a glimmer in my father's eye, when my father wasn't a glimmer in Bapu's eye.

  Bapu's smiling, the dimple in his cheek. He has one crooked tooth in front. Oh, Bapu, why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you say that I am you and you are me?

  I dare to smile, hoping, wishing, wondering. It's there. How could it not be there? The dimple appears on my right cheek. Bapu's dimple. My Bapu's familiar smile.

  Although the Mystery Museum is not a real place, my inspiration came from
the famous Ye Olde Curiosity Shop on Alaskan Way in Seattle, Washington, where you'll find most of the curiosities mentioned in this book, including a fortune teller, shrunken heads, the X-rated video from the 1920s, plastic snot, an old gas pump in the shape of a cowboy, the real desert mummies and many other novelties and collectibles.

  However, there's no Karnak the Magician at Ye Olde Curiosity Shop. I made him up!

  My deepest thanks to my editor, Wendy Lamb; her assistant, Ruth Homberg; Erin Black; Marci Senders and all the amazing, hardworking people at Random House. As always, I'm grateful to my wonderful agent, Winifred Golden.

  Heartfelt thanks to my critiquers: Kate Breslin, Lois Faye Dyer, Rose Marie Harris, Pj Jough-Haan, Richard Penner, Susan Plunkett, Sheila Rabe, Krysteen Seelen, Suzanne Selfors, Elsa Watson and Susan Wiggs.

  Many thanks to astute readers who critiqued a later draft: Uma Krishnaswami, Marian Blue and Janine Donoho. Thanks to my cousin, Kamalini Mukerjee, for tidbits of advice, and my husband, Joseph, for listening to the whole book read aloud!

  Love and appreciation to my parents, Denise Kiser and Sanjoy Banerjee, for their thoughtful comments.

  I'm indebted to Leigh Holleschau of High Castle Books, for helping me with research and sending me Stamps of India.

  Thanks to Ye Olde Curiosity Shop.

  For Bapu's Bengali folktales, I consulted Folktales from India: A Selection of Oral Tales from Twenty-two Languages, selected and edited by A. K. Ramanujan (Pantheon Books, 1991). For information about sadhus, I referred to Sadhus: India's Mystic Holy Men by Dolf Hartsuiker (Inner Traditions International, 1993).

  Anjali Banerjee is the author of Maya Running, a novel for young adults, and Imaginary Men, a novel for adults. She was born in India, grew up in Canada and California, and received degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. At the age of seven, she wrote her first story, about an abandoned puppy she found on a beach in Bengal. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, three crazy cats, and a black rabbit named Friday. Learn more about Anjali on her Web site: www.anjalibanerjee.com.