ATLAS of UNKNOWNS

by Tania James

  “Ah,” Ammachi says from the doorway. “You’re home.” She takes up the seat beside him, facing him squarely, and stares. “Where were you today?”

  This is not unlike the time when Melvin tried to make a kite of Ammachi’s shawl, an experiment that led to his very first brush with the tamarind branch. But now he is a grown man simply trying to philosophize in private, on his own front step.

  “Working out some things,” he says.

  “Rappai saw you among the teak trees. You never go there.”

  An image springs to mind of his wife, clad in a sari, moving through the trees. The copper semicircle of her back, her palm thumping a trunk. This was before he took the train back to Bombay, alone, before the troubles began.

  “Enda, Melvin,” Ammachi says gently. “I know you are planning something very stupid.”

  “What would you have me do? Make trips to church? I’ll only pray for people who have no other chance left. Not my child.”

  “You could make one trip. We will go tomorrow. One trip. It will help you.”

  Melvin shakes his head. He does not want the kind of comfort that lasts so long as he is within church walls.

  “Are you selling those trees?” Ammachi asks. “Is that your plan?”

  “Some, not all.”

  “I knew it! For what? Something illegal probably.”

  “Sssh!”

  “My son,” she says mournfully. “Trying to rescue someone in a well by jumping in after them.”

  “What well?” Linno asks.

  Ammachi and Melvin look over their shoulders at Linno, who is standing in the doorway, breathing hard. She wipes the sweat off her nose with her sleeve.

  Unable to prevail upon Melvin, Ammachi turns her frustrations on Linno. “Do you have to work so late all the time? What is this Alice making you do? Not eating, not sleeping. You’re becoming just like this, like a pencil.” Ammachi demonstrates the width of a pencil between thumb and forefinger.

  “She’s helping me,” Linno says, unperturbed. Her eyes are brighter than they’ve been in weeks, touched by a hopeful light. “We’ve made a plan.”

  BEFORE SEEING KUKU, Linno had to remind herself that she was not the type of person to cling to her regrets. There are women who feed off the void of decisions unmade, the men they should have married, the children they meant to have, or if not a child, a chubby stone cherub. It had been several months since that first visit, and the only obvious change seemed to be the pink potted flowers flanking each step. Linno wondered if these arrived by Jincy’s suggestion.

  Kuku received them in his study where he was seated at his desk, prepared for them. The desk was grand, fashioned from teak, and perfectly ordered: pencils in a cup at the upper left corner, pens in a cup at the upper right, a white rotary phone, and a small porcelain Virgin Mary who stood upon a pedestal that read MOTHER, PRAY FOR US. With her arms outstretched, the Virgin faced Kuku, as if he were the deity to whom she was relaying the world’s petitions. And Kuku was a happy god in his padded office chair, his hands holding the armrests, triumph all over his face.

  “I think you should apply for the B-1,” he said. “Temporary visitor for business visa. With this visa, Consulate doesn’t have to know about Anju. They will ask business questions only.” Counting on his fingers, he outlined the intentions of the business visitor—to negotiate contracts, to consult with business associates, to participate in business seminars and conventions …

  “Negotiate and consult with whom?” Alice asked.

  Kuku pulled a magazine from his desk drawer and held it to his chest like a newly earned certificate. “Desi-Club” was written in sprawling letters across the front, over an Indian girl with fat silver headphones and a jewel in her navel. “Does this say ‘Desi-Club’?” he asked quickly. Alice said yes. “Okay, look on page twenty-three. Or twenty-four, I don’t remember. Jincy was the one who read it to me.”

  As Linno seized the magazine and flipped the pages, Kuku added: “Jincy was very sorry, she wanted me to tell you, Linno. She can be a bit territorial with me.”

  But Linno and Alice were scanning page 23, a full-page English article with photos of models seductively bored in their bridal wear like wanton wives-to-be, and another photo of two veiled belly dancers posing hip to hip.

  DUNIYA EXPO: THE ULTIMATE

  BRIDAL SHOW TAKES ON NEW YORK!

  Remember the old days, when parents planned the entire wedding without consulting the children? Remember when young brides had to travel all the way back to India just to print their invitations and buy their wedding saris? With Duniya, Inc., those days are over! We bring South Asia to you!

  Duniya Expo Bridal Show has been rocking New Jersey, D.C., and Maryland for the past Four Years and now we think it’s time to take a bite out of the Big Apple. On June 1, 2003, the Duniya Expo Bridal Show will take over Long Island, featuring hundreds of wedding, food, and fashion vendors across a huge 80,000-square-foot floor. The day will be full to the brim with events, including the trade show, wedding planning seminars, spiritual workshops, demos, and world-class performances by British pop sensation Bombay Bomb Squad! So mark your calendars for this family event. We bring the deals and you make the steals!!

  “We are to go to this expo?” Alice asked.

  “Why not?” Kuku said. “There’s a thousand-dollar fee, but it’s a good investment. I know an immigration lawyer who just got a B-i for two weavers to bring their merchandise direct to American department stores. One week, in and out.”

  “How do we start?” Linno asked.

  “Duniya is an American-based company. You will call them. You will find out what it takes to lead a seminar at this expo. Seminar makes you sound more important. Once you pay the fees, Duniya will give you an invoice and maybe a letter to prove to the Chennai consulate that you need a business visa.”

  Linno tried to read the boisterous text and reply at the same time. Belly dancers, brides, Big Apple. She looked at Kuku. Quietly, she thanked him.

  “It was a joint effort,” said Kuku. “I couldn’t have done it without my wife. Hah! Listen to me. Already calling her my wife.” His chuckle thinned to a contented sigh. Linno barely heard the remark as she was busy calculating the number of weeks between January and June. For the first time that month, she felt a light filling the dark eaves of her mind, and who would have guessed that the one to throw the switch would be Kuku?

  ALICE HAS BEEN WAITING to build an invitation empire, and when finally given a chance, she chooses against remodeling the shop. Her new view holds that profitable investments lie elsewhere—on the Internet.

  To navigate their way into this frontier, Alice enlists the help of her nephew Georgie, a computer science student at IIT, the jewel of the family, a quiet boy who always wanted to be a cartoonist but had neither the permission of his parents nor the sense of humor to pursue it. Over the phone, Alice explains to him what she wants—a website for EastWestInvites.com, a name she chose for its global appeal. Buying the host server and building the site requires a good deal of money, but Alice possesses an almost biblical faith that the money will return to them sevenfold.

  On his first free weekend, Georgie takes the train from Chennai to show Alice and Linno what he has designed. The bashful nephew that Alice remembered is now a subdued adult, fragile as a soft fruit, a young man who has spent the last two years primarily conversing with and confiding in a computer. As if arriving for an interview, he wears a shirt and tie and carries a biscuit-thin computer in its own briefcase. His fingers clatter gently against the keys, and in minutes the phrase “East West Invites” appears against pale paisley wallpaper, while beneath this the words unravel: “Welcome to East West Invites, Exclusive Invitation Boutique.” In the center of the page is a crisp, sharp photo of Linno’s very first card, which fades into an opened version displaying the blue and rust red butterfly.

  Linno has never seen anything like this website, whose colors surpass those produced by the television. The lines
are clean, the writing luxurious, the pictures dissolving from one into the next. Most girls Linno’s age are Internet-savvy, having learned to type and surf in their computer classes, but since leaving school, Linno has always felt herself trapped in the pretechnological Dark Ages. It feels impossible now to catch up with the rest. Better to leave this world to Georgie, who speaks with hurried excitement about the wonders of Flash animation, continually moving his cursor and tapping on various features. A navy menu panel appears to the right, inscribed with phrases like: Our Mission, Contact Us, Our Preferred Associates, and Collection. Each phrase pulses when touched by the cursor and leads to a new page when clicked. Though most of these pages are as yet empty, Linno is astonished by the overall elegance of the design. It is like entering a wealthy, wallpapered mansion that bears little resemblance to the actualities of their shop.

  “I’m paying Georgie to be our webmaster,” Alice says proudly.

  “See, the simplicity sets you apart from the rest,” Georgie says. “Nice and clean, not too much text.”

  He summons up the Mission Statement, a letter signed by Alice about her commitment to quality, innovation, and style, no matter the budget: The invitation is the gateway to a blessed event. If you want to personalize your event even more, you can work with our in-house designer, Linno Vallara, who has the vision and talent to imagine a new dimension in paper artistry.

  “You wrote this about me?” Linno asks.

  “Prince and I wrote it together. We stole some of it from an American website.” Alice points at the screen. “But the collection is what you need to work on. We need at least ten new designs. I’ll send them to Georgie, and he will take pictures and … what is it?”

  “Upload them,” Georgie says.

  “Upload them. Will you do this, Linno? Design ten more?”

  But Linno does not answer, her mind already drifting to the shelves of rainbowed color, a spectra of combinations, a frontier far less foreign.

  THAT EVENING, Ammachi begs Linno to watch an English film with her, one that she saw on television a month ago. She insists that Linno needs a break from her anxieties, which have etched unwelcome lines across her forehead. Linno refuses, noting how most of these outdated films have dismal titles and infantile storylines—Home Alone 3, for example, or Demolition Man—films that have been rejected by the very country that made them and funneled, like refuse, into third-world television sets. But Ammachi defends this particular movie, about “a Madhamma teacher who goes to a Chinese kingdom to make the Chinas speak better English.” That Ammachi, who has little good to say about colonial Britannia, is giving the film a glowing review makes Linno take note.

  And how lucky that she does. As it turns out, the film is neither Chinese nor British but American, filled with pagodas and gongs and bonsai trees. The King and I takes place in old Siam, in the court of a king played by an American actor whose painted complexion is an odd golden brown, a color too metallic for any race; his eyes are also outlined to seem aslant. Similarly, the pretty white actresses are fashioned into mincing Siamese wives who approximate an accent by speaking slowly and squeakily, whinnying behind tiny hands. And then there is the white woman teacher taking her long, confident strides within her bossy hoop skirts, her grammar as flawless as her coif, come to civilize the court. And though Linno has never seen a picture of Mrs. Lambert, she imagines her in a hoop skirt, absorbing the many marvels of this misty land.

  So Linno designs a scarlet and gold-leafed card that opens up from the bottom edge. Modeled on the silhouetted set pieces of The King and I, a flat-roofed pagoda lifts from the back page, complete with two thin columns and two tiny steps that lead into a shallow inner chamber bearing the gold symbol for harmony. The party details are printed on the lower half of the card, in a computer font called Chopsticks.

  After sending Mrs. Lambert the dummy card for approval, Linno receives a phone call a week later. “You’re a genius,” Mrs. Lambert says. “You’ve captured the essence of Asian flair. It’s like you climbed inside my head! How did you do it?”

  “Research,” Linno says.

  3.

  HERE ARE THOSE in Jackson Heights, Queens, who well know the name “Action Jackson,” a neighborhood group that demanded a list of “aesthetic guidelines” for storefronts in the Jackson Heights area, as proposed by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1995. Store facades would be restricted to a mature palette of colors—“black, brown (not bronze), dark gray, tan, dark green and dark red.” The proposal eliminated most if not all of the signs hung by Indian and Pakistani shopkeepers along Thirty-seventh Avenue, like John Muqbel’s ten-by-twelve-foot candy pink awning, which disagreed with the proposal. “This is purely motivated by prejudice,” Muqbel complained to The New York Times. “They have no right to impose this on me. I don’t live in their house.” But the fed-up district manager of Community Board 3 denounced the signs as “absolutely atrocious.”

  Along came the Apsara Salon with a sign that made every atrocity look quaint, with its crenelated edges and black-on-orange design that unintentionally evoked Halloween. If this Muqbel could get into The New York Times, Ghafoor reasoned, so could he. Ghafoor proudly boasted of the competitive mentality that he shared with his fellow Indians, the very reason that Indians were # 1 in the Guinness Book of World Records in subjects as varied as “longest fingernail” and “tiniest handmade chess piece.”

  But the Apsara Salon arrived after the commission proved unable to control the colors that rudely bloomed along the street. And when Pay-less Shoes arrived with its bubbly mango-colored letters, it became clear that the street would have little recourse against crimes of design.

  INSIDE THE APSARA SALON, the decor is blandly inoffensive. The rectangular main room narrows into a hallway, leading to a bathroom that wears an out of order sign. Favored customers know the secret—that the bathroom has always been in working order, but this is Ghafoor’s way of curbing cleaning costs and the occasional sabotage of a sanitary napkin. These privileged few slip in and out of the bathroom without sullying the floor or saying a word.

  But now with Anju, Ghafoor’s new hire, he can remove the out of order sign. The new girl is from the old country, which he considers a plus, as she is ingrained to take on the most menial of tasks. She squats like only a third-worlder can, froglike for minutes on end, brushing tumbleweeds of black and hennaed hair into a dustpan. For months, the floor seemed perpetually veiled with scum, but since her arrival last week, every surface has been shiny and slippery and spotless, not a stray hair in sight.

  The new girl says very little, which is understandable, seeing as how all the beauticians are either Punjabi or Gujarati and this Anju is Malayali. Ghafoor once tried to instate a Hindi-only policy to prevent sectarian conflict (and to make sure no one was talking behind his back), but implementing such a rule is like trying to cut a hole in water. The words flow around him whether he approves or not.

  The only person that Anju speaks to is Bird, who brought her the week before and practically begged Ghafoor to hire them both. Luckily for them, he had recently come across the funds to do so. A rival salon called Surekha Designs had declared bankruptcy, allowing the Apsara to open its arms to Surekha’s huddled, hairy masses. Still, to maintain some sense of power, Ghafoor felt the need to hold an official interview in his office, a tiny room postered over with the avatars of ruling Bollywood starlet Aishwarya Rai. Bird and Anju sat across from Ghafoor and Aishwarya the woeful bride, her marine blue contact lenses welling with unspilled tears.

  “I heard about your Rajiv Tandon,” Ghafoor said, setting his elbows on his desk. “Terrible, just terrible.”

  Bird nodded.

  “Are you sure you can work at my salon after coming from a place like that? Do you remember everything about the beauty industry?”

  “I do.”

  Ghafoor jutted his chin at the girl. “And what of this one?”

  “Anju. My niece.”

  All this time, the girl had been
staring dreamily at her shoes, and at the mention of her name, she looked up.

  “I can’t take a girl with no papers,” Ghafoor said. “It’s not like before in this country. People are watching.”

  Bird considered her words before speaking. “She has some problems back home. She needs the money.”

  “What kind of problems?” Ghafoor waved away all unuttered problems. “No, no, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

  Back and forth they argued, Bird pleading and Ghafoor no-no-ing. “What about Rajini?” Bird said. “Remember her? She didn’t have papers.”

  “I did that as a favor. But that was before. I bet you my phone is tapped so that if even I say ‘Salaam aleikum,’ the police make a note of it.”

  “Her name is not Salaam aleikum.”

  He cut his eyes at Anju, who sat with shoulders hunched and fingers laced. “How do you know each other?”

  “I told you, she is my niece.”

  Ghafoor nodded. “And I am your sister.”

  “All these years I asked you for nothing,” Bird said. “This one time. Please.”

  In the end, out of pity, Ghafoor agreed to take the two of them, though he and Bird haggled over Anju’s wage, finally settling on $5 per hour, cash only.

  “Part-time,” Ghafoor said. “I will help her, so long as she is helpful.”

  “Thank you, sir.” These were Anju’s first words of the meeting.

  Looking at Anju, Ghafoor hesitated. The girl was frightened, he could tell, but not in the sudden way inflicted by horror movies and tarantulas. Worry had been following her for some time, had drawn a faint line, small as a stitch, in the space between her eyebrows. If he could do nothing about the line, he could do something about the eyebrows.

  “Come,” he said. “Let’s have someone clean up your face.”