America for Beginners

by Leah Franqui

  “Do you like it?” Rebecca looked up. Satya was now on the last snack. He inhaled food like an anteater. “Do you like running around up there?”

  “I love it.”

  “Do you do it a lot?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Why—”

  Rebecca was happy that the lights were fading so she didn’t have to respond. She was afraid it would be a question she didn’t have the answer to, or worse, one that made her feel even more terrible about herself than she did in this moment, watching a friend onstage and loathing her for it. Her concerns about Satya’s experience were crowded out by her own self-pity. The opening lines of the play rang like a bell and then Stephanie, in a period wig and white gown, stared out into the audience:

  “To go back to Moscow. To sell the house, to make an end of everything here, and off to Moscow.”

  Rebecca had to admit, mollified by wine, that it was really quite a good production. The direction was good, and the cast was strong, including Stephanie, who made Irina seem young but not spoiled, fresh.

  The story was so simple, really, she mused as she sipped the wine, which improved from bad to passable as her taste buds numbed under its onslaught. There were people designed to stay in one place, trapped there, like the three sisters, who repeated over and over again that they wanted to leave, but whose lives never changed, never moved anywhere, never actually made leaving happen. And then there were those always leaving, always moving on, the army with its constant march and parade of new towns and new women to seduce and desert.

  She wondered how Mr. Ghazi was doing, and if the map store was staying clean and if he was remembering to switch to decaffeinated tea in the afternoons for his heart. Seeing people onstage that she cared about made her think about the people she cared about in life. She wished there were more of them.

  When the lights came up after the first act, Satya ran out of his seat to use the facilities, as he had called them, and because of the line there and at the concession stand, did not return more than thirty seconds before the lights dimmed. After the second act it was Rebecca who had to use the restroom, and while she waited in line she looked over the playbill again. She was surprised to learn how many of the cast were local actors. She had known there was theater outside of New York, had heard about select companies making work all over the country, but it had always seemed a little unreal to her. Now, confronted with the actuality of these people and their résumés filled with plays and movies and even television, sadness began to sink in. It followed her back into her seat and left her sobbing at the end of the third act. She didn’t cry because the play was sad, although it was, but because she wished she could be in this production and that this production were in New York. Wished she were inside something, not outside, watching it happen.

  Wiping her eyes as the lights came up for the final intermission, she looked over at Satya, who was looking away from her, uncomfortable with her display of emotion. Well, at least he wasn’t sleeping.

  “What do you think so far?” Rebecca sniffed out, looking through her pockets for a tissue. Suddenly a hand holding a handkerchief popped in front of her face, and she turned to see Satya offering her this piece of cloth that belonged more to the world of the play in front of them than their own. She smiled a watery smile and took the offering, blowing her nose loudly. She looked at the handkerchief and then back at Satya, who was still looking away from her, unwilling to see her cry.

  “I’ll wash this and give it back to you. Okay?” He shrugged. “So, what do you think? Of the play?”

  “Is it done?”

  “No, not yet. One more act to go.”

  “I will decide what I think when it is done.”

  The lights dimmed a final time and the story stuttered to its inevitable conclusion, leaving everyone exactly where they had been when it started. Rebecca did not cry again. Her emotions had been used up in the third act, and she had nothing left for the final moments. Instead of being moved by the ending, as she had been in the past, she was left dissatisfied, angry with all the people who had resigned themselves to things they did not want.

  She clapped loudly, however, to drown out her discomfort. Satya, next to her, clapped as well, hesitantly at first and then vigorously, throwing his hands together the way children do, thrilled at the noise they can make.

  As they walked out of the theater Satya looked at her, frowning again.

  “It was sad, wasn’t it? Why couldn’t they leave and go to Moscow?”

  “I don’t know. They just can’t.” The response struck Rebecca as unsatisfactory, and she wanted to give a different one, but Satya was already nodding.

  “It’s just like that.” He seemed so much more content with this idea than she was, so much more comfortable with things just being, with people being stuck somewhere and refusing to make choices that propelled their lives in different directions, instead preferring to stay where they were, locked in time and space.

  “There were things I didn’t understand, but I liked it. I like that they have each other in the end. They are a family. It is sad, but there is that.” Satya spoke thoughtfully. Rebecca was struck dumb. The family of the play seemed so poisonous to her, so destructive in the way they clung to each other. She had always thought any one of them could have survived better on their own than stuck with all the others. But Satya had seen this family as the preservation of hope, a route to happiness. Part of her was tempted to dismiss him. But she couldn’t. Something about the simplicity with which he had analyzed the play struck her as right and true. She had heard a dozen sophisticated academic explanations of Chekhov, but as she watched it, it did seem that simple to her, the people, the way they moved through the world; Satya had seen it.

  Disposing of her empty wine bottle in a nearby recycling container, she saw Satya watching her, curious.

  “My friend was in the play. She was Irina, the young one. Do you want to meet her?”

  Satya’s eyes lit up. “She’s an actress in the play? You know her?”

  “I’m an actress. I know lots of people in lots of plays.” Satya didn’t notice her sarcastic tone, however, so excited was he at the prospect of meeting someone he had just seen pretend to be someone else. Rebecca wished someone would be as excited to meet her, someday.

  “Why are the bins different colors?” Satya was pointing to the blue recycling bins that sat next to the black trash cans in the lobby around them as they waited for Stephanie to finish changing and appear to her loving public.

  “Oh, the blue is for things that can be recycled. So, stuff that you can reuse, like paper, which they grind down into pulp to make more paper, and glass, which they remelt to make new bottles and stuff like that. It’s good, for the environment.”

  “We don’t have separate bins at home.”

  “Oh.”

  “I used to sell bottles from people’s trash. I’m glad they don’t recycle like this at home. Many people sell the glass and metal. It was helpful, when my grandmother was sick. I could help her, this way. Without it, she would have died sooner.” Satya looked self-conscious, but he kept going. “The doctor in the play made me think of her. When he talks about the woman who died.”

  Rebecca didn’t know what else to do, so she nodded and kept her mouth shut, waiting for Stephanie and feeling glad that Bangladesh did not recycle, to give boys like Satya something to do. Weren’t there jobs? Something told her that if someone like Satya, someone whose English was good and whose mind was sharp, had been sorting through other people’s garbage to help his sick grandmother, there were not, in fact, many jobs at all.

  Stephanie emerged a few minutes later, as Rebecca hummed the waltz from the end of the play and Satya ate his third bag of peanut M&M’s, which Rebecca had bought to avoid talking about his grandmother and recycling and all the things that made them different from each other. Stephanie looked luminous, high on the energy of the audience, who had given her a standing ovation as the curtain fell. Stephanie
had never been all that pretty, Rebecca thought sourly, but right now she looked actually beautiful, confident and sparkling and proud. Rebecca started forward, her arms splayed and ready, her smile pasted into place.

  “You. Were. Fantastic!” Stephanie beamed as Rebecca’s arms closed around her. Nearby, Satya stood, hovering shyly. Rebecca pulled back and grinned, a real thousand-watt bulb of a grin, just the right mix of pride and admiration and excitement. She motioned to Satya to come over.

  “This is Satya. He’s, um, the guide, on the trip I was telling you about?”

  “Oh, my god, yes, what is that? That sounds totally, what?” Stephanie laughed merrily. “Come on, come, there’s a place we all drink, come, tell me all about it!”

  “Do you want to come?” Rebecca asked Satya, half praying he wouldn’t. She didn’t know if she could stomach a whole evening of this, of watching Stephanie glow with success while she herself was, what, a paid companion on a ridiculous cross-country trip? Her Bangladeshi colleague in tow like a prop, proving her story was real?

  “Will there be food there?”

  Sitting at the table with Satya crammed in on one side of her and the rest of the cast of Three Sisters on the other, Rebecca didn’t know when she had ever been more miserable. Against one arm lay actors basking in postshow hysteria and spilled drinks. Against the other pressed Satya, who was eating his chicken wings with the kind of relish she had seen packs of wild dogs employ when tearing apart a deer on the Discovery Channel.

  Stephanie had been holding court for over an hour, describing her process and her preshow rituals with the solemnity of a rabbi explaining the mysteries of Kabbalah. Rebecca hated Stephanie. Everything she said sounded stupid and Rebecca wanted to be the one who was saying it, describing her mystical acting procedures and enjoying the nods and admiring looks passed around the table with the pitcher of beer. As soon as Rebecca saw Satya lick clean the final chicken wing of his third order, she stood, smiling her performance smile again, and announced that they had to go, given their early morning the next day. Stephanie pouted and sighed, whining that they had barely gotten to catch up, but Rebecca smiled some more and extricated herself with promises to call soon.

  Out on the street, Rebecca made sure Satya had followed her through the crowd. They were back at the hotel within fifteen minutes, and it wasn’t until she was paying for the cab that she realized that neither of them had spoken the whole time. She looked at Satya and smiled weakly, a genuine smile now.

  “Thank you for coming with me.”

  Satya seemed about to say something in response, but instead, he turned and vomited up the chicken wings into a nearby bush that could have been real or plastic; Rebecca wasn’t sure. Straightening, he looked rueful.

  “I guess I shouldn’t have let you have that beer, right?”

  Satya shrugged and wiped his mouth. “The cab, and I eat too quickly when there is so much food.”

  “Like a stray cat.” Rebecca wondered if she should apologize—it was hardly a flattering comparison—but Satya laughed.

  “My grandmother used to say that. Thank you for taking me. It was interesting. I think I like plays.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “People dressed better in those times. Women wore more, which was better.”

  “Well, that is certainly an opinion.”

  “Your friend is not really your friend.”

  Rebecca smiled at this. “How did you know?”

  “You look at her like you want to hit her.”

  Rebecca laughed. “Yeah. She was good, though. She has that thing, that brightness, that makes you want to look at her.”

  “Do you have that, as well?”

  “If you have to ask—”

  “You do, I think.”

  Rebecca blushed. “Thank you. Thank you for coming. I’m glad I could take you to your first play.”

  Satya nodded, which could have meant anything, and turned, walking inside and leaving Rebecca alone.

  The rest of their time in Philadelphia was less eventful. Satya returned to his more formal guiding the next day, and Mrs. Sengupta seemed recovered, smiling and eating well and asking about their evening. Some unspoken agreement had both of them declaring it was fine, with no further volunteered details, and then off they went to visit the historical sights, from the Benjamin Franklin Museum to Independence Hall, a plethora of America’s brief history on display for tourists to enjoy.

  Mrs. Sengupta asked why this was all so clean and well maintained, and when Rebecca explained about public works, she was amazed.

  “How do things stay clean in India?”

  “They don’t.”

  Rebecca couldn’t believe that an entire country was simply dirty. But Mrs. Sengupta seemed so very sure.

  Women in mobcaps and men in short britches greeted them formally as they stood in line for hours to see the Liberty Bell, which they looked at for approximately five minutes before collectively declaring the need for lunch. Rebecca felt at this point that she had ordered every possible combination of foods on a standard Indian menu, and she wondered how she would survive the rest of the trip if everything was going to taste the same. She’d gotten a thank-you text from Stephanie with a plea to hang out again just as they had started their tour of Independence Hall, and it had taken her until the visit to Benjamin Franklin’s grave to respond. Her reply had been effusive but she declined politely, and Stephanie’s own text back, a sad face, seemed appropriate.

  Their second night in Philadelphia was nothing like their first. Rebecca went directly to her room after her second chicken tikka of the day and lay on her bed, closing her eyes and wondering what she would do if she were onstage right now, acting Irina. She began mouthing the words with her eyes closed, picturing herself in Stephanie’s costume and wig. The image lulled her to sleep early, and she was ready for the six a.m. departure to Washington, DC.

  She realized as their car, now driven by a friendly Turkish man named Orhan, rolled out of Philadelphia and onto the highway that she hadn’t mentioned to her parents that she would be in Washington for two days. Perhaps it’s for the best, she thought. If seeing Stephanie has made me feel insignificant, seeing my parents would make me feel completely worthless. The car drove on, and Rebecca, in the backseat, murmured Irina’s lines to herself once again, this time with her face smushed against the window, watching the road speed by.

  24

  Washington, DC, reminded Pival of the South Park Street Cemetery in Kolkata, a place she had passed many times and never gone into. Kolkata had many Christian cemeteries, and she had never entered one of them, scared to be close to so many dead bodies. Now she was stuck in one.

  As they drove into DC the white marble of the buildings around them looked solid and heavy, just like giant tombstones. Pival wondered why people thought bodies should be buried under the ground, to rot with the worms. It seemed barbaric to prefer decay to the clean purification of cremation. Pival wondered if that’s how ghosts were made, angry spirits whose bodies had been destroyed by time rather than by fire.

  American cities looked nothing like Indian ones, and she viewed them with a mixture of suspicion and delight. She couldn’t get over how clean everything was. It excited her, but it also felt strange. All the things she had taken for granted living in Kolkata, the garbage, the beggars, the traffic, it was like another world now. Where did they keep the poor people here? Even the very few homeless people she saw had so many possessions, carried with them in bags or shopping carts.

  Their hotel was much the same as the others had been, and Pival was beginning to grow accustomed, or at least resigned, to weak tea and thick white towels. She could not, however, resign herself to the uncomfortable bedding. All the sheets in each bed had felt strange and starchy on her skin, and she had developed a small trail of red bumps along any exposed skin that was left for the bedsheets to rub against. She had taken to sleeping in more and more clothing to avoid this. It left her sweating and feeling like a
mummy, wrapped up in layers and layers of cloth. Every night felt like a fever, like when she was a little girl and went through wave after wave of malarial fevers, each one keeping her in bed for weeks. She dreamed strange dreams of drowning herself in the Pacific so that she could wash away in the ocean and some part of her would reach the Ganges.

  When she woke up, she considered drowning again. It would be fitting, to drown in tribute to Rahi. He had always loved the sea. When he had left for college in America it had been to study engineering at Stanford, but each time he returned for vacation his stories had been full of biology classes and marine explorations. Ram had been furious when Rahi had suggested he might switch from engineering to another subject, and Rahi had conceded, promising not to. Looking back, Pival wondered if he’d done so. They had only ever had his word on anything and Pival understood now that this had not been a reliable source. Had Rahi visited DC, and liked it? Or had it made him, too, think of death? Had he gone on to study the sea? Would he know, if she died in the Pacific, how long it would take her body to reach India? It was like one of the word problems she had helped him with in school.

  Every day, waking up was a mixture of dread and anticipation. Sometimes she woke up gasping with fear, sometimes ablaze with anticipation. Each day she was one step closer to California, and each one of those steps beat the mixture of hope and fear inside her like eggs. With a sudden sharp sense of clarity she missed her cook’s omelets, the way she would finely chop green chilies and garlic into them, the spicy bite of them on her tongue. Rahi had loved them, too. She would learn to make him one, if he was there.

  “There’s the Washington Monument, madam, very tall thing, see?”

  Satya was pointing underneath her nose, gesturing out of the side of the large sightseeing bus toward a huge white column reflected on a long rectangular expanse of water. The image in the water shimmered and shook but the one on land held fast, which was good, Pival thought, because otherwise she would never have been able to tell them apart. Everything looked the same here, she thought. All the buildings and monuments were different but they were also, in some essential way, completely the same thing. It looked like nothing she had ever seen before, but exactly what she thought it would be.