America for Beginners

by Leah Franqui

  She heard Sarya coming from the kitchen, her light footsteps distinguishing her from Tanvi and the male servants. The maid’s feet tapped out an unhappy rhythm as she carried the tray. Pival felt rather than saw the maid’s gaze when she entered Pival’s room and set down the tray with a thud, but Pival didn’t turn around, keeping her eyes fixed on the street and the people below. It was easier to look out the window than to face her servants. She longed to begin her trip, to find her ending. Every moment before that felt like a waste of time.

  She heard a cough. “Thank you, Sarya, you can go.” Her voice had wavered but held firm, she thought to herself with no small amount of satisfaction. She heard Sarya sob petulantly behind her, and she knew this would be another piece of gossip for the servants’ quarters, the cruelty of madam, her refusal to even look them in the face.

  Once Pival was sure that the girl was gone, she allowed herself to turn back and look at the meal she had been given. She noted that the cook had left her tea and a light repast of digestive biscuits, but no sugar or cream. They must not have thought she deserved those luxuries.

  The quiet of the apartment felt strange. Normally it was a hive of activity, or it had been during Ram’s life. A host of people began to arrive as early as six in the morning, starting with the milkman who brought their milk daily, delivering to them first as the result of a few well-timed extra rupees each year. Then there was her breathing instructor, who arrived at seven; the yoga instructor, at eight; and at least three times a week a priest would arrive at nine to lead them in prayers and bless their shrine. Ram’s departure for work at ten would empty things out a bit but soon a stream of people delivering things would begin again, and then, of course, the visiting hours, the memory of which made her shiver despite the steam rising up from the cup of tea in front of her. The clock struck two, which meant teatime was upon her. Small wonder she felt uneasy, she thought, her mouth twisting. Although she had eliminated teatime the day Ram died, memories of it haunted her still. She looked around her, reassuring herself that she was alone.

  When Ram had been alive tea had not been a beverage. Tea had been an event. Although Ram was rarely home at that hour, the timing of tea was strictly maintained in his absence. From two p.m. to five thirty p.m. a daily stream of visitors poured through the door, a stark contrast to the workers who entered in the mornings. They would include all the cousins, aunts, distant acquaintances, and close friends, implicitly demanding drinks and snacks and, most importantly, conversation. If not quite the cream of Bengali society, it was the richest milk of it, wealthy and well educated, and if not quite Brahmins, trying to make up for it at every turn. Ram, a barrister in Kolkata’s high court, was not expected to be present. In fact, his absence was a point of pride for his many female admirers, who beamed and remarked happily, “So busy he is with his work!” Between the countless cups of weakly brewed, milky tea and the vast amounts of commentary, Pival often felt like she was drowning in a caffeinated sea. She wished Ram would return home at two, at first because she missed him, and later because when he was there she could retreat and be permitted some relief and stillness.

  She took a sip of her tea, savoring the simplicity of the liquid and the pure silence filling the room. She couldn’t help but think of all the teatimes that had felt endless, when she had watched the clock from the corner of her eye and groaned inwardly when the eagle-eyed gaze of disapproving relatives seemed to pin her in place.

  Pival’s parents had raised her with gentle curation, like the caretakers of a small private museum. Her parents’ strict rationality and disdain for superstition had made them disapprove of blind adherence to any custom that could not be explained logically. Pival had grown up trusting herself and her own judgment, and it had come as an unpleasant surprise to find out that her husband and his large and ever-present family did not.

  When they spoke to her, offering what they considered to be deeply helpful ways to improve her life, they did so with the assumption that she would already know their expectations, which left her confused, them disappointed, and Ram derisive. Her husband’s frustration at her inquiries about these rituals and habits, which seemed so natural and self-explanatory to him, submerged Pival further into silence. The quieter she became, the more he chastised her. Seeing how her husband treated her, his family followed suit. After a daily serving of their disdain, swallowed with her own snacks at teatime, Pival’s confidence had faded and died, replaced by a reserved meekness and deep inner pain.

  And then there had been Ram, who had isolated her with his judgments. No one was ever good enough to be their friend, so now she had none. Who could measure up to the Sengupta standards? It had been easier not to argue, easier to just quit. Her brother had died in an accident when he was twenty-seven, so when her parents passed away, her last ties to anyone outside of the Sengupta clan had been effectively severed. Now, she realized, she knew no one else.

  Pival took another sip of her tea, trying to force that pale shadow of herself back into the past. Stop haunting my living room, she told it in her mind. Today she was alone. She no longer had to bend and mold herself into the shapes others had left for her to fill.

  After Ram’s death, many of her former visitors had maintained their teatime arrivals to comfort her in her time of need. At least, that was what they said they were doing, but Pival had been aware that their real goal was to ensure that her grief followed the prescribed paths set out for her by the Senguptas. Carefully they observed her, as if she were an animal at the zoo. Even in mourning there was a host of customs for Pival to neglect and perform incorrectly. That must give them a great deal of happiness, Pival thought, finishing her tea. Pival sometimes found herself speaking to her husband in her mind in a way she never could have in life. At least I’m good for something, Ram.

  A crash and then the sound of angry protests floated up to her window. She returned to the balcony and looked down below. A car had collided into a cart full of supplies to decorate the goddess, and now brightly colored paper and paints and flowers filled the narrow road. The owner of the cart screamed at the driver, demanding compensation for his damaged goods. The driver, on the other hand, was furious at the injury to the car, which seemed to have suffered no ill effects that Pival could see, other than a few splatters of paint and a shower of flower petals. Certainly his vehicle would face more such damage during the festival itself, which flooded the city with people and left cars covered in its decorations for days.

  Inside the car, the passenger was rapping loudly at the window, and the screaming driver’s face shifted instantly from angry to servile. He bowed to the car’s occupant, who had rolled down the window an inch or two and was slipping a slim handful of rupees rolled into a neat cylinder into the cart owner’s hand. The man accepted the compensation happily as the driver grumbled and spat a large stream of paan right at the cart owner’s feet. The driver resumed his position within the car, and the cart owner dragged his cart, now with a cracked wheel, in the other direction. The small street was silent once more, with only the spattered remains of the decorations as evidence that anything had happened. A flicker of movement caught her eye. There was a child crouched in the gutter, begging. She hadn’t even noticed.

  When she was young, Pival had loved Durga Puja, but as an adult all the joy of the holiday had died for her the day that Rahi left. Without him in the house, her celebrations felt hollow. Rahi had always loved to take his lantern and dance in front of the goddess, thanking her for her triumph over the evil demon and imploring her for her grace. Ram would watch, disapproving of his son’s dancing but unable to say anything because it was traditional. Once Rahi was gone they didn’t decorate their house or their shrine; instead they visited with others during the holiest days of the event, leaving their own house empty and allowing the servants time off.

  She had thought she had nothing to thank the goddess for this year, but as she watched the empty street she realized Durga Puja was giving her the opportunity to
escape. It would be like the child in the road. People would be so distracted by the festival that they would never see her slip away. She watched the child scratch at his scabs and made a mental note to send down some food from the kitchen if there was extra. The cook had yet to learn how to prepare meals for Pival alone, and they always had too much. The child would have something to eat that night, at least.

  Why had Mr. Munshi not returned her calls? Was there some problem with the guide, or worse, the companion? Mr. Munshi, whom Pival would not want to insult but who sounded vaguely Bangladeshi to her, had assured her, “All is possible, probably, prepared, madam!” Now she feared that this was not the case. Her tickets had been booked. She left in a week, at the height of the festival. What would she do if there were no tour guide and companion waiting? She hated to admit it but Tanvi’s dire warning echoed in her brain.

  She wished she had kept more of herself whole throughout her long marriage. She could have used her youthful boldness now, but it was gone. In its place was fear, and what could that help her now? She thought about Rahi. Why had he left her all alone? What had he found in America?

  4

  Jacob Schwartz fell in love for the first time sitting in a traffic jam on the way back from the airport and it was only because of the horrible congestion of the Los Angeles freeway that he realized it. If he had lived in another kind of place, who knows what might have been possible? But he looked over at the face next to him, the strong jaw, the straight nose, the smooth tanned skin, and the mouth stretched wide as Bhim belted out a power ballad from the early nineties, and there it was. Love. They were two miles from their exit and in the half an hour it took to travel that distance Jake had convinced Bhim to kiss him back, and by the time they reached Jake’s apartment their inhibitions were long gone, as were their shirts.

  For as long as he could remember, Jake’s life had been dictated by traffic. He had grown up in Los Angeles, so commuting had been a way of life. His mother, a divorcée and part-time yoga teacher living in Venice Beach, had carted him from school to guitar lessons to soccer practice to the mall to movies and finally, three nights a week, to his father’s condo in East Hollywood for awkward meals from nearby Chinese food takeout joints. Together he and his father would eat moo shu chicken in silence, with his father’s tentative overtures met with surly rebuffs. What they talked about, because they couldn’t talk about anything else, was traffic. How to get where, what route they had taken that day, what its potential benefits and downsides were. Traffic was the language of neutrality in Los Angeles and Jake learned it young.

  The early years after his parents’ separation, which occurred just after his tenth birthday, had been filled to the brim with activities, as if his life could be made too full for him to notice the difference. Jake, as he had been called by everyone in his life but Bhim, had observed his parents carefully after they split up, like a scientist monitoring a long-term experiment, noting changes and constants, variations and radical outliers. He kept a diary with carefully maintained charts, as he was, according to all his teachers, a visual learner. His ultimate conclusion, after several years, was that in fact the best situation for them all was this, for his parents to live in two separate bubbles, with Jake as the only connection between them. This hadn’t stopped Jake from craving a partner, however, though it did make him wary about finding one.

  Like many children of divorce, Jake was so good at telling the story of his family that by the time he was an adult he could gauge which detail would amuse his listener the most and play to it. When he had first met Bhim through mutual friends at a bar outside of San Francisco called Bangers and Mash, which served neither, their conversation had eventually shifted from hours of discussion on the nature of monotheism, marine life, and architecture to Jake’s family. When Jake had cheerfully described the divorce, wringing it for the kind of humor he thought this quiet Indian graduate student might enjoy, Bhim had turned pale and quite seriously apologized to Jake for his “broken home.” Jake, having never heard that phrase outside of Lifetime original movies, laughed hysterically. His home was far from broken, he gently explained to Bhim. The other man looked at him with such compassion in his eyes, and Jake had to admit, he couldn’t help but lean into it, hoping it might turn into something more.

  There was something about Bhim that was completely hidden from Jake, and although it should have driven him insane, he loved it. Right off the bat, Jake could tell that Bhim had the gift of real empathy, something Jake always worried he lacked. Bhim could put himself in the shoes of any person; he could get complete strangers to speak to him about their lives, their fears, what lived in their hearts, all without sharing anything of himself. He had perfected the art of imitating a deep conversation, all without the other participant’s ever realizing that it was entirely one-sided.

  To Jake, right from that first conversation, Bhim seemed so apart from things, his own island. He was unexplored territory, and Jake wanted to be the explorer.

  Bhim had never dated a man before. In fact, he had never dated anyone before. Although men were what he wanted, or rather, what his heart desired, as he told Jake in his serious way, it felt wrong to him, because he knew, as he had been taught, that it was unnatural to feel this way. As the bar lights flickered around them and the once-roars of the crowd turned to the murmurs of a handful of other patrons, Bhim told him that while he wanted Jake, he knew that this was because he had lost his morality under the influence of America, and he didn’t want to become corrupt for his whole life, the way Jake was. He put his hand on Jake’s knee and Jake felt the warmth of his palm radiate through his body as Bhim asked him if he would be with him for one night only, so that Bhim would know what it was like before he agreed to marry a woman.

  The scent and feel of this man so close was intoxicating to Jake. He had been with others before, but something about Bhim resonated with him in ways no one else ever had. Perhaps it was the fact that this was the first crack in Bhim’s reserve, the first spark of emotion he had displayed. Or perhaps it was the way Bhim said such horrible things in such beautiful ways, the smooth tenor of his voice and slurring affect of his accent making bigotry sexy. He could almost forget what was being said and concentrate solely on the mouth that was saying it.

  Jake had been more than a little afraid to come out to his parents. It wasn’t that Jake’s parents had ever expressed the opinion that homosexuality was in any way negative. They had gay friends, knew gay couples, described gay people in their lives with the same adjectives and nouns they would have used for anyone else. Nevertheless, Jake had no idea what their reactions would be when they heard it from their own child. He had never dared displease his parents in any respect during his entire young life. He had had a Bar Mitzvah for his father, and spent vacations in spas devoted to raw foods and meditation with his mother. He was the poster child for a happy product of an unhappy union. What would they think of him now?

  But it turned out what they thought of him was exactly the same as it always had been. And from the day he came out, life was fairly simple. Jake was what he was, and anyone who didn’t like it could go to hell, including those who remained closeted themselves.

  The first time he had ever even questioned that was when he met Bhim, the boy in the bar in Berkeley. Jake wanted to give Bhim what he wanted. He wanted to do it for his younger self, the child of wealthy liberals who nevertheless was petrified of being an outcast. He knew what it was to wish you were something different even when it was the thing that made you yourself.

  But he also knew even in those first moments that one night wouldn’t be enough. He wanted possession, to have Bhim totally, and that could never happen if it was just an experiment, a way for a closeted man to tell himself he was over his youthful folly.

  So when Bhim, drowsy and bold, with the scent of a mojito on his breath, asked him if he would be with him for that night and that night alone, Jake removed Bhim’s warm hand on his thigh and shook his head. He walked away
from the handsome young Indian man with the soul of a guru and the eyes of a supplicant, and forced himself not to look back.

  After he had returned to Los Angeles, Jake thought about Bhim often. He saw Bhim’s face in his daily runs and during his drive each day to work, as he sketched blueprints and researched indigenous plant varieties. He could not rid himself of Bhim’s eyes; they floated in Jake’s mind as he tried to sleep, dark and enticing. They blinked at him, big, widely set, lushly fringed cow’s eyes, and he thought he could see tears in their corners and woke up crying himself for no reason. When he checked his email several weeks after his trip to San Francisco and saw a message from a Bhim Sengupta he was thrilled, and terrified. Bhim was sorry; he had begged for Jake’s email from the friend who had introduced them (who, when Jake interrogated him later, admitted that he had always thought Bhim, closeted though he was, would be a good fit for Jake) and just wanted to apologize. No, more than that, he wanted to be friends. Jake felt sick. He responded anyway, thinking himself an idiot and not caring.

  They began by emailing, once or twice a week, then daily. In writing, Bhim was freer than he had been in person, giving little glimpses into his thoughts, displaying new things in each message: a wicked yet silly sense of humor, a love of nature, a fear of snakes. The communication came in waves, inundating Jake with information, with questions, with thrills up and down his spine. Soon came texts and phone calls, and before long they were wishing each other good night and sending each other photos in increasing states of undress. Jake had started it, being the bolder one of the pair, but Bhim surprised him with his own images, his responses, and his tentative innovation.