by Tania James
“I can’t ask him.”
“Why?”
Anju hesitates. What little money her father possesses, he would use to buy her return ticket home. And hearing his voice over the phone, she would not be able to refuse him.
“My family is too deep in debt,” Anju says firmly. “We have nothing left.”
“But what if there is no other way?”
“I will have to make a way.”
Anju utters her words with a flat, implacable calm. Her face is frozen, all signs of life held far within. It is clear to Bird that in this instant, the girl thinks herself a woman, and Bird knows well that life can do harm to girls like that.
“Okay, okay.” Bird takes a bite of her muffin and speaks between chews. “Enough melodramatics. This isn’t Days of Our Lives. This is my day off. So let’s go shopping.”
ON BIRD’S SUGGESTION, they go to a department store so that Anju can at least look presentable when it comes time to meet with lawyers and officials and other hazy, important figures. In English, Bird says: “You know what presentable means? It means like a present, a gift. You must gift people with your appearance.”
They browse racks of slacks that cling to the rear and flare at the ankle, tweed blazers that defiantly halt mid-rib. “Look at this thing.” Bird holds up a semi-blazer. “If they’re going to cut it in half, they should also cut the price in half, allay?”
Anju enjoys shopping with Bird, as it is less of a purchasing expedition and more of a Conference on the Calamities of Western Dress, a conference of two. Every garment falls into one of three categories: (1) wretchedly sluttish, and hence symbolic of the downward spiral of American civilization; or (2) a sequined knock-off of Indian styles; or (3) either of the above, but cheaply stitched by children in India with eyes the size of buttons on a winter coat. For a while, the conference involves simply fingering the collars of tops and showing the fellow attendee, “See? Made in India.” Bangladesh and Pakistan also count.
They stand in a long dismal line outside the dressing rooms, their arms piled high with clothes on hangers, behind women who wear the jaded faces of prisoners doing time. When finally they enter the dressing rooms, the conference takes a sharp turn for the worse.
It is not several rooms but one large, sad chamber with mirrors on every wall. Before the mirrors, women are peeling off their limp hosiery, sizing up their reflections, forcing their button flies to close over bellies that simply refuse. To Anju, it is a horrifying sight. She is reminded of a Holocaust film that included a scene of women in a gas chamber. Is she the only one aware of the panorama of flesh, of graying bra straps, of dappled thighs, of cotton and nylon stretched far too thin by bending over to put on a sock?
“Stop staring,” she hears Bird say.
She follows Bird to a patch of wall that seems relatively empty, if not for the women to her immediate right and left and reflected all around. Anju paces her small circle of space like a restless cat. Bird thrusts a pair of pinstriped slacks into her hands. “This won’t try itself on.”
“Can I try it on over my pants?” Anju asks.
Bird is as appalled as she would be had Anju suggested trying the pants on her head. “We are not buying something unless we know what we are buying. And anyway what is the big deal? Powder saw you in that paper knicker.”
Anju turns her back on the woman beside her wearing lacy lingerie and argyle socks. Tiny hairs, like magnet filings, cover her shins. “I don’t know these people.”
“So what? If they see, they see. You’ll never see them again.”
But it is exactly this fact that worries Anju most, that their first and only impression of her will be a half-naked one. And yet, she has no choice. Keeping her eyes mostly fixed to her feet, she tries on piece after piece while Bird returns each to its hanger. There is something warmly maternal about the way that Bird evaluates each outfit with brutal criticism and care, as if Anju’s appearance is more important than her own. Bird grimaces openly at the rejects, smiles proudly at the successes, never interested in selecting anything for herself.
While Anju changes, Bird turns to the side to allow her privacy, thereby eliminating the privacy of another woman who is sliding a magenta tunic onto a hanger.
“That is made in India,” Bird says to the woman.
“Is it?” The woman looks at the label on the collar. “Oh no, it says here Malaysia.”
Bird nods knowingly. “Same thing.”
ANJU RETURNS TO WORK in various combinations of her new clothing: pinstriped slacks, a blue sweater, a white blouse, and khakis. At first, the clothes seem to imbue her with their newness. She is the latest style, exclusive, and not for sale. But as the days wear on, her contentment turns temporary, a quick-flash trend gone by. All that remains is guilt, the prickly reminder of what Linno might say to all this new and useless finery.
At least Anju is improving at her job. She is now accustomed to the mild form of schadenfreude experienced by the first-time clients who enter the back room, the site of future torture. With earnest hope, they try to befriend Anju, seeking words of comfort with their eyes fastened to the medieval-looking pot of wax. Held hostage in the chair, the clients giggle nervously at the placement of the mirror, nailed to the wall opposite their splayed legs. Anju agrees that this is a terrible place for a mirror, as there are few women, no matter how shapely or waxed, who are flattered by that angle. But Anju has learned from Powder how to maintain a professional distance from the giggles and smiles, for the less she smiles, the more they respect and tip her. It is an illogical but working science.
She has also learned how to exact the least pain from a strip, and if, by accident, the client winces or scowls, Anju clucks like an old mother hen. “I see you did the shaving down there …” She really has no idea if someone has or has not been using a razor, but this intimate accusation usually works half the time, making the client take responsibility for what might be Anju’s own shoddy work. “Terrible,” Anju says. “Might as well use a vegetable peeler.”
They like this persona she plays, this expert little grouch with the thick accent and occasional joke on hand. The mannerisms give her the appearance that she has been doing this for years.
Day after day, Anju waxes the thickets of arms and legs, the overgrowth in between, smoothing and prettying her clients so that they walk with chins higher than when they first entered. At day’s end, she shrinks into her coat and slips into the flow of the sidewalk, hoping to disappear. Ridiculous to think that anyone from her old life would follow her here, not Fish, not Miss Schimpf, certainly not Mrs. Solanki. They seem to her like characters from a movie she watched long ago, many times over, the kind of movie wherein a strong wind rips the pages from a daily calendar so as to suggest the frantic passage of time. It seems to Anju that she has been living in Jackson Heights for much longer than three months, pulling the cord to reveal the storefront to the morning, eating dinner across from Bird every night. Have the days and hours gone fast or slow? She hardly knows, which seems a dangerous thing, this sense of time both jelling and jetting by.
And yet, there remains an underlying constant, a famished sort of feeling ever feeding on her insides, a feeling that could be quelled by calling home. But after the first call, guilt would be replaced by more guilt, longing replaced with despair. She convinces herself that in the end, her family will understand. The end will find them all renewed. So as time goes by, she grows used to the hunger, like a changeless climate, like an endless string of windy days.
7.
T NIGHT, Anju always falls asleep first. Her position, which begins supine and straight, gradually rotates into a belly-flopped sprawl, while Bird withdraws to a sliver of space on the opposite side of the bed. She does not mind allowing for Anju’s sprawl, and in fact, Gracie had warned of it. Making room is the first act of motherhood, in the most literal sense, as when the body creates space within itself for someone else. Bird runs through all the possible permutations of happiness. Someday,
Anju could take Gwen’s room or move into the apartment next door. She could cycle back and forth between New York and Kumarakom, according to the plan she once explained to Bird, and gradually, she might come to see Bird as a true aunt, or even a kind of mother.
These are slippery thoughts, difficult to hold for very long. Anju is hardly closer to a green card than when she first arrived on Bird’s doorstep, due to her utter unwillingness to ask Melvin for help. Bird wonders if she should find his address and ask him herself. That Anju continues to hold fast to her dream is admirable in one so young, but she is too young to understand that the greatest obstacle to any dream is, quite simply, time.
WHEN BIRD FIRST ARRIVED in New York, she found the days unbearable in their lengthy stillness. But being alone, she felt, was the necessary solution to the feelings she wanted to leave behind. She was unused to her band of merry, trash-talking cousins who pleasured in their disgust of American women, their vulgar attire, their mediocre meals. They perceived Bird as a kind of harmless oddity—quiet, mannered, a terrible cook, uninterested in marriage, and not as gorgeous as the rumors that preceded her. But so long as Bird kept herself available to babysit their growing warren of children, the cousins were happy to host her.
In this way, eight years went by without a word between Bird and Gracie until Bird’s cousin casually dropped some news at dinner one evening. “My friend Lally—you remember Lally from church? Yohannan’s father’s brother’s niece by marriage? Lally.” The cousin repeated the name as if the syllables would awaken some recognition in Bird, who finally responded with Ah yes, Lally, just to get on with the story. “Lally ran into your old friend Gracie in Bombay. Said she looks much thinner. Had two children and lost all her youth.” The cousin shook her head with no real pity.
Gracie’s name was a note that kept strumming in the hollow of Bird’s ear. Enough time had passed, she decided. She had grown beyond the contours of her former life, and there was no rupture that the intervening years of silence had not mended. So from Lally, via the cousin, Bird procured Gracie’s address in Bombay and sat down to write a letter.
And yet she found herself so full of words that her hand did not know which ones to transcribe. Had eight years really passed since last they spoke? To practice, she wrote a rough, disjointed assortment of things on the back of an old electric bill.
She wrote: You want to know how tall are the buildings? So tall, a man’s hat falls off just looking up at them.
She wrote: I heard you married and had two children. What are their names? Do they look like you?
She wrote: I work at the cash register in a drugstore. For lunch, my cousin sends me off with a plastic container of chapathi and chicken, but my coworkers don’t like the look or smell of it. So I have started rolling up my chicken in the chapathi and folding up the ends, like a packet. The Mexicans call this fajeetha. I don’t know what to do about the smell so I try to eat in the bathroom.
And: Are you happy?
She had wanted to compose something fluid and musical, a missive deserving of quill and ink. But her letter seemed to convey one overarching thought—that in their years apart, Gracie had become an adult and Bird had regressed into childhood. Try as she might to write a more mature version of the letter, the maturity felt bland and cold, so she sent the scattered, childish version.
A month later, she received a response nearly bursting with questions but scant of answers. Had Bird seen the Kennedy son with the lustrous hair and the beautiful mouth? Did she have a garden? Did snow feel like talcum powder, and if not, what was so special about it?
My husband’s name is Melvin Vallara, she wrote.
We live in Bombay. He works in a fancy hotel called the Oasis, where many sahibs stay. Linno, my older daughter, she is learning Hindi very fast. I wanted to name my younger one Anjali but Linno could pronounce only half the name. So she is Anju.
The guts of this city spill right into the sidewalk. I am sure that New York is the cleanest city in the world. My husband’s sister lives in U.S., in a place called Texas. How far is that from New York? Do you remember how I wanted to come with you?
Bird did not ask why Gracie hadn’t married the man named Abraham, to whom she had been betrothed so long ago. Instead she seized upon the words that leaped from the page: “Do you remember …”
Yes, she remembered. She also remembered how, when she first arrived in New York, she felt as though her mind had receded into a state of waking sleep. Sometimes her cousins would clap in front of her distracted gaze and ask, “Anyone there?” while searching her eyes in jest. No, she wanted to tell them. No one was there. She was still thousands of miles away, years apart, in a dressing room in Kottayam.
Why don’t you come? Bird wrote. Melvin could apply through his sister and bring the rest of you a bit later. It wouldn’t take more than a year, most likely …
FOR A TIME, letters flew between them, saddled with questions and answers. Here they were again, building a fantasy that this time bore the possibility of realization. Every other week, Bird folded and sealed her growing hope and dropped it in the blue mailbox, hovering there a moment before she walked away.
Dearest Gracie,
I moved yesterday, out of my cousins’ apartment. There is only so much room where children are involved, so my new roommate is well past that age. Her name is Mrs. Spandorfer and she wears her hair in a white fluff atop her head. Mrs. Spandorfer is Jewish and tells me she remembers when this neighborhood was full of Jewish, like her, and people from Ireland and Italy. She said: We took the gays when nobody else would! She was talking about theater people in the 1920s and 1930s, who took the train from here to a place called Times Square. She said that this neighborhood will never stand still.
The good news is this—there is a space in the apartment across the hall opening up. A Gujarati man lives there with his wife, and they will be looking for a new roommate. Should I tell them to keep the space open for Melvin? They are good people, but they don’t allow meat in the fridge.
Chachy, it will take some time to convince Melvin. His own sister is in U.S., but he thinks that his life is tied to his parents, who are still in Kumarakom. I let my parents go a long time ago. Sometimes I think life is easier with hateful parents. They make it easy to tell your happiness from theirs. You and I share the same mind, but Melvin still thinks like everyone else here. Slowly. Patience, patience, he says, but I feel as if I have been waiting my whole life.
Gracie, you will not believe it, but I saw Ghafoor in the window of a bakery, eating a pastry and reading the paper, as if he has lived here forever. Remember him? He said Rani Chandrasekhar died, and all the actors and technicians went looking for jobs in film—better money there. He says that he will go back home as soon as he raises enough money to put up another production. He is very sure of himself. Still I feel sorry for him. He has taken a job as the assistant manager of a grocery store. When you come, we can visit him.
Chachy, with all these adventures who will take care of the children? Anju is eating everything. Yesterday I forced her mouth open and found a cockroach on her tongue. She wants and wants. I think she takes after me.
After a month, the letters from Gracie suddenly dried up, a dearth that Bird initially blamed on the post office. Still, her hopes continued to snow one upon the next. She thought how lovely it would be to take Gracie to the Cloisters, far north on the island, and listen to that particular strain of cathedral quiet. They would walk the stone paths around the herb gardens and mispronounce the Latin names on the tiny labels. Theirs was a sisterhood that could overcome what nearly undid them years ago, so profound, so pure was their friendship. Bird had transgressed, she understood it now. She had mistaken one feeling for another, but she would not need to apologize, not to her dearest friend who already knew her words before she spoke them. They would return to that friendship like swans returned to water with the ancient knowledge of how to swim embedded in their limbs.
So for the time being, she trie
d to grow accustomed to Mrs. Spandorfer’s apartment. Bird’s was a strange and stuffy room that Mrs. Spandorfer had preserved for untold decades under the title “Morrie and Samuel’s room.” The walls were blue and decorated with sailboats and potbellied bears in sailor hats. There were two narrow beds where Morrie and Samuel must have slept, but Mrs. Spandorfer refused to shift the beds from their position, flanking the portrait that hung on the wall. The boys’ cheeks and chubby knees were tinted pink in the way of old pictures, one boy smiling, the other serious and self-contained. Bird did not ask Mrs. Spandorfer why her sons never visited, a filial negligence she simply assigned to the American way, but the Gujarati woman across the hall informed her that the boys, twins, had died at seven years old, in a car accident. “One died, then other followed,” the woman said with admiration. “They left this world just as they came into it. Together.”
A MONTH AFTER Bird sent her last letter to Gracie, there came a message that conveyed how completely Bird had misinterpreted the silence. The post office had been slow to forward the Malayala Manorama to Bird’s new address, and when finally she sat down to thumb through the first of several old issues, she found Gracie’s message in the obituary section.
KUMARAKOM: Gracie Vallara (27), wife of Melvin Vallara of Kumarakom, passed away on August 3, 1989. Mourned by her husband, her parents, Thomachen and Claramma Kuruvilla, and her daughters, Linno (7) and Anju (3).
Bird stood in the center of her bedroom with the newspaper in her hands. The nerves in her fingertips seemed to go numb. She read the obituary countless times before she fell to her knees, before the words became as distant as the beautiful roar of the sea in a conch shell.
8.
N JACKSON HEIGHTS, there is no smell so pleasant as that of a sari store, for reasons that Anju cannot quantify. Packed into boxes and shipped across the sea, the saris are flung onto hangers and mannequins with the aging odor of their origins still clinging to the thread. She slides her hand across hanger after hanger of slick satins, chiffons, and silks with no interest in taking anything home. It is a minor fetish, maybe a bit odd, but she draws some faint, wordless pleasure from a faceful of custard-colored georgette when no one is looking.
