by Leah Franqui
Pival boarded the plane at eight in the morning and left India as the sun shone bright over the country and spread its rays over her city like a blanket. It would take her almost a full day to reach the United States, but that couldn’t have felt longer than the lifetime it had taken her to reach the airport that morning. As she boarded, she felt like the stale air of the plane was a benediction, sweeping away her old world and bringing her somewhere new.
She had never been on a plane before, never traveled anywhere. Now the plush seats of first class held her body comfortably as a kind woman brought her a glass of water. Behind her the rows and rows of seats for the other classes of tickets belied Mr. Munshi’s information, but she didn’t mind. The plane was exactly like she thought it would be from the movies, and nothing like it at all. She held on to her purse as they prepared to take off. She thought of screaming, telling them this had all been a big mistake, getting off the plane, going home, living her life the way it had always been lived. She did nothing.
All the servants must be up by now, Pival thought as she watched the plane’s wheels lift off the tarmac. Her stomach lurched and she was grateful she had only had some tea. Trying to take her mind off her protesting body, which was disturbed by the motion of the flight, Pival forced herself to wonder what the maids had done upon finding their mistress missing. She felt a wave of affection for Tanvi, who had always seemed to her like a watchdog of Ram’s desires, but now appeared as a sad and lonely figure in Pival’s mind. Tanvi had never married, never had children of her own. She had viewed the Senguptas as her family, as both her owners and her possessions. Now she had been abandoned by both of them. The other servants were mostly young. Pival was convinced they would easily find other positions, marry, have their own lives. Tanvi would not.
But Pival couldn’t feel any guilt, though it would have been appropriate; all she felt was relief. It was a strange feeling, a slight loosening she could sense around her body, a creeping suspicion that she could stop feeling that she was choosing the wrong thing. She could still hear Ram’s voice in her head, scolding and scowling and demanding things of her. But it was growing fainter.
Looking out the window of the plane as it sailed smoothly through the sky, she wondered about the companion that Mr. Munshi had secured for her. It was, perhaps, a waste of money to have a companion, but then again what did she care? What kind of girl would take this job? she wondered. What would she be like? Would she be Indian? Would she like her? Would it matter?
These questions buzzing around in her head, her body exhausted as the plane jolted through the sky, Pival finally slept, and dreamed at last, of nothing at all.
Pival’s first night in New York City was like discovering, too late, that she was inside a fireworks display.
She had arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport a full twenty hours after she had departed from Kolkata. When she had booked the flight she hadn’t been sure what seat to reserve, but people in movies always seemed to want the window, and so that’s what she had chosen. She had thought she would be terrified of flying, having never done it before, but it was simple: all she had to do was sit there and watch the sky.
The plane landed with a jolt against the runway, and everyone clapped, so Pival did, too. The airport was a blurred maze of customs and baggage claims and fluorescent lights in sterile bathrooms. Pival was pleased to find them so clean. It was true, what people said. Everything was so clean in America.
The taxi service—specially arranged, madam, all part of the fees but tip is required, strange custom but when you are being in Rome, as it were, you pay Roman fees. Have you been to Rome? Very nice place, my wife says. Do leave tip! warned Ronnie Munshi—had dropped her off at the Courtyard Manhattan Times Square, a hotel that was, she had been assured, right in the heart of New York City.
The lights around her were blinding as she stepped out of the cab, and the crush of people moving quickly in every direction baffled her. She came from a busy city herself, it wasn’t as though Kolkata was some dusty village, but the sheer variety of people was overwhelming. They moved around in all colors and clothing styles, jeans and sweatshirts, yes, which she had expected, but also head scarves and dupattas, women in full saris layered with denim jackets herding their children in T-shirts and shorts, tall African women with brightly printed dresses and hair piled up into what looked to Pival something like Sikh turbans, Chinese tourists and women in abayas. She was blinded by all the movement and she swayed gently against the taxi as the driver unloaded her two large bags.
“Is everything like this?”
The driver looked at her, surprised. Pival had been silent throughout the trip. He did not respond. Pival frowned; her English was excellent, she knew, she had always been complimented on it, and Ram had preferred it to her Bengali, which he had never felt sounded good enough, classical enough, for his ears.
“Excuse me. I have asked you a question. Please respond. Is everything like this? Is everything like this here?”
The driver shrugged.
“Surely you must know. You live here.”
“I don’t live here. I live in Queens. And Queens is not like this,” said the driver, his accent pouring thickly out of his mouth, through his brilliantly white teeth.
“Where do you come from?” asked Pival, curious now. She had been afraid to speak to him at first. She had never met a black person before. She had clutched her purse the entire time and closed her eyes, breathing deeply in the cab, reminding herself over and over again that Ronnie Munshi would not have hired this man had he not trusted him not to rape and kill his clients. Now, having safely arrived, standing under the bright lights of this strange place, she wondered what all that fear had been for.
“I am from Nigeria. You are from India.”
“How did you know?”
The driver smiled.
“Indian women are always like you. You are alone here?”
Pival nodded. It was embarrassing that he knew she had been afraid. She was not, she knew, as fearful as so many of the people she had known at home. She had always hated the way Ram talked about skin color, about the shades of people’s bodies as corresponding to the worthiness of their hearts, and of their lives. She knew if she had been even a touch darker, Ram would not have married her. Her parents had not raised her to view skin tone so zealously. Her brother Arjun had been several shades darker than either of her parents, and they had laughed and teased and wondered if he had been touched by some deity, or if he blushed so much in the womb he came out browner. Arjun’s darkness had embarrassed Ram, though, and Ram had limited Pival’s contact with her brother when she was pregnant, worried that he might contaminate their baby somehow, darkening its skin by touching Pival’s own. Pival had pointed out to Ram that this was quite the opposite of his own insistence on science and logic supplanting the superstitious Indian nonsense that has arrested us in a state of backwater mentality for so many years, but he had told her she knew nothing about anything, and when Rahi had been born so pale and fair, Ram insisted that he had been correct.
“Good for you. Good to be alone.”
Pival nodded again. She tipped him generously, because it would have made Ram mad, and gave him a smile. He smiled back broadly and drove away. Pival entered the hotel, received her room key, and was directed to her tiny suite by one of the cleaners, Pival supposed, as the woman had a cartful of cleaning supplies and an apron. She asked the girl if she would be her maid throughout her stay, but she didn’t seem to understand, so Pival let herself in, with difficulty, wondering why the key was like a credit card and not a key at all, and surveyed her room. It was a simple place, and clean. It felt a little claustrophobic, and she fought the panic that rose in her throat and threatened to strangle her. She breathed deeply.
She sat on the bed, staring out the lone window onto the large streets below, where the people looked like ants struggling to build something together and failing. The lights were so bright and blinding, bouncing
off every surface. They hurt her eyes, but she couldn’t look away.
It was strange to be with all strangers, although it was what she had wanted. It was like being in costume, and no one knew who she was. For the first time in months, years, really, no one was pitying her, no one was sorry for her loss.
The first wave of pity had come with Rahi. Ram had never shared Rahi’s excommunication from their family with the outside world, preferring to maintain the fiction of their happy family with their smart son working away in the United States who was doing so well and would be coming back to make a match with a pretty Bengali girl next year, always next year. Then suddenly Ram had announced that Rahi was dead, after a brief phone call from someone in America that Ram would not acknowledge. She hadn’t even heard the news herself, and she didn’t know if it was true or another way for Ram to punish her. He told her that Rahi had died of a heart attack in California, and Pival knew, just knew, that if it was true it was because his heart had broken when they would not let him come home.
It wasn’t until months later when Ram died that Pival wondered at the speed and ease with which everything had happened. For Rahi there had been no paperwork, nothing to sign; Ram hadn’t visited any government agencies or registered Rahi’s death, at least not to Pival’s knowledge. She hadn’t seen a death certificate. For Ram there had been so much work, so much to do; how could there have been nothing for Rahi? It just didn’t add up to her. She began to feel the most dangerous of feelings, hope, and she couldn’t help but be grateful to Ram for dying. If he hadn’t passed away so quickly after Rahi’s death, she might never have wondered if Rahi was dead at all.
The Senguptas had explained away the lack of ashes with a vague story about a car crash, and the implied messiness of the fictional incident scared off all but the most persistent questioner. To those pernicious people who wanted to discuss, at length, the terrible pain they must have felt at not being able to spread their own son’s ashes in the Ganges, they nodded and frowned, until a more polite and sympathetic witness changed the subject delicately. Pival appreciated the concern, but the loss of her son so far outweighed the absence of his ashes that she couldn’t understand why that wasn’t obvious to everyone, why that wasn’t all they could focus on as well.
When Ram had died the process had begun all over again, although many comforted her with the fact that this time all the demands of their religion could be met. Pival had carefully anointed his feet with ghee and sandalwood, tender and loving in her ministrations, the very picture of a Hindu widow, serene but profoundly sad. For once, in the matter of Ram’s funeral, she had been approved of by all. They did not know that the only way she had been able to stomach any part of the event was to pretend that Ram’s body was Rahi’s, that she was helping her beloved son move on to the next life and not her husband, who had caused her so much pain.
Now, here in New York, no one knew about Ram and Rahi. No one had looked askance at her as she had walked alone through the lobby, or as she had picked up her key to her room for one. No one looked at her at all. It felt wonderful, and it felt strange. She had always been someone’s something, someone’s daughter, someone’s wife, and then someone’s widow. At the front desk, all the clerk had wanted to know was her name. She regretted telling Ronnie that she was a widow. She should have lied.
Later that night, bathed and in fresh pajamas, she picked over a meal from room service. She had been informed this meal was not included in her tour package and found that she did not care. The lights of the city still invaded her window, while the sounds of the world below seemed to be directed straight at her ears. Blazing neon stretched out in every direction, blasting into her eyes so strongly that even when she closed them she felt dazed, the violent colors raging on the inside of her eyelids. The hotel wasn’t well soundproofed, she realized, for she could hear the hawkers on the street below, imploring people to come to events or trying to sell them something, she couldn’t tell what; the sounds were loud but the words were blurred together, indistinct.
Peering out of her window, she watched as a large figure in an extremely fluffy red suit, which covered his entire body, complete with a giant fuzzy head, attempted to hug a passerby. She couldn’t be sure, but he looked like the children’s character of Elmo. She remembered the creature, who had featured in a movie Rahi had loved. Ram had allowed it, despite its not being based in an Indian myth, as all Rahi’s other childhood entertainment had been, because it was in American English and could be useful in the development of his language skills.
But Rahi had loved the characters who had spoken English the worst, that is, this Elmo fellow and a sweets-obsessed monster with a lazy eye. Pival had always thought it was strange that the animal, Elmo, spoke in the third person, but she found herself smiling at it now. She felt like Elmo as she watched the giant version of him try to find people to hug in the busy light-flooded square, which was really a triangle, she saw. Pival is watching, she thought, Pival has escaped life and Pival is walking in another world. And now, Pival is tired.
This would be her only night alone in the hotel, as after this the woman, Rebecca, and the guide, Satya, would be joining her in adjacent rooms. Rebecca would be between Pival and Satya, as a kind of barrier to her virtue, Pival supposed, although that didn’t exactly leave Rebecca in a safe position, but perhaps Ronnie Munshi had thought that as an American girl she could take care of herself. Or that she was more disposable, virtue-wise.
Pival smiled at the thought. Would she be a loose girl, this Rebecca, the way American girls always were in the movies? Pival knew she should disapprove, and she did, in a way, having never been with anyone but Ram, but part of her hoped that if indeed this companion was a little on the dirtier side of the laundry pile she might tell Pival something about it.
She sat, listening to the people around her through the walls of the hotel room, wondering if any of them were having sex right now. Growing up, she had heard women moaning in what seemed like a combination of pain and pleasure. She had lived in a small apartment building where the paper-thin walls left little of their neighbor’s sexual relations to the imagination. She herself had never uttered more than a squeak or two of pain when Ram had visited her room on those rare occasions. Sometimes she wondered how she ever had gotten pregnant, he came to her so infrequently.
Unable to sleep or even rest, with the lights outside and the buzzing in her own head, Pival turned once again to her itinerary, as though it were some kind of holy text. She had practiced saying each city on the map she had been given, rolling the letters of each name in her mouth like fennel seeds, splitting them with her teeth and swallowing them down to try to absorb them, to be prepared. What would they be like, these American cities? What would she find in them that Rahi had left behind? She wasn’t sure where he had visited or what he had seen during his time in America. Perhaps she would be walking the streets he had walked, or perhaps she was searching in vain. Perhaps he really was dead or perhaps he would be there in the end, waiting for her, and he would leave the strange man who had enslaved him with desire and run away with her.
Her son would be thirty now. She had been thirty the year that she had had him, so late, so many people thought she would never have a baby, had wondered what curse the Senguptas had taken on that the greatness of Ram Sengupta wouldn’t be passed along to the next generation, and then, there he was. Rahi. Their gift.
Pival put away her itinerary and turned off her lamp. The curtains tried their best, but light still poured through the edges of them, spilling around the cracks. She lay in the blinking low colorful room and waited for the morning to come.
18
After Bhim came out to his parents, Jake had assumed that his rules about public behavior would shift a bit, but if anything they grew worse. This confused Jake, but when he asked Bhim about it, he would simply say it was how he had been raised, that it would have been the same with a woman. Jake did not believe this, but as he had no evidence to the contrary he ha
d to take it as truth. Privately he thought that Bhim was determined to live in a way his parents would approve of, despite the fact that they would never know it.
For Bhim, this was his only connection to his family, but for Jake, it was a new rejection every day. Indoors, in his comfortable apartment or Bhim’s tiny rooms in Berkeley, Bhim would cling to him with desperation, but out on the street they were friends, nothing more. Bhim would try, clumsily, laughing at himself, telling jokes, attempting to make it funny, and Jake would laugh, when he could, but most of Bhim’s attempts just made him sad. Bhim called himself “the ice queen,” which he thought was unbearably clever. He performed exaggerated flinches when Jake tried to touch him and pounced on Jake when they came home, desperately trying to make up for his public deficits with private affection.
Jake wanted to respect Bhim’s needs, but he hated that the person he loved, the person who loved him, refused to touch him in front of other people. It made Jake feel cold, and he found himself smiling brightly at passersby and waiters, craving the public display of affection that Bhim refused to give him.
Bhim sensed his hurt once as they sat together in a darkened movie theater, and he carefully put his hand on Jake’s knee when the lights went down, after looking around to make sure no one could see. Jake was disgusted. Bhim was placating him with a half-hearted grope in a darkened theater as if they were teenagers. He shook off Bhim’s hand and angrily stormed out of the theater, not caring about the scene he was making, wanting to be far away. He looked back once. Bhim was still staring at the screen, trying to look normal. Jake wanted to scream.
Jake did not smoke. He knew it was bad for him, and besides it was criminally expensive and he hated the smell that clung to his hands and his hair. He would proudly tell anyone he met that he was a nonsmoker. But when he felt anything so deeply that it hurt, the only cure for him would be a cigarette. The numbing feeling of the nicotine and the slight lightheadedness it caused calmed him and made him feel balanced. He had tried to break this rare habit many times, but he could not. Instead he would, when very upset, buy a pack of cigarettes and allow himself a single one, and then leave the packet and matches out for a homeless person to find.
