Sarala looked down, embarrassed.
At the window of his office, Abhijat and Sarala stood looking out over the prairie, the skyline and lights of Chicago off in the distance. Together, framed by his office window, they watched the sun sinking into the prairie, the horizon gone gold and glowing for just a moment before twilight.
The next morning on the way to the Lab, recalling their conversation, Abhijat thought unexpectedly of the book he’d read in preparation for his own relocation to the United States. At Cambridge, he’d borrowed from the library a well-used copy of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and had pored over it, hopeful and expectant.
Remembering this, and feeling thoughtful and solicitous of his new beautiful wife (as well as having recently noted what was, in his opinion, the less-than-edifying reading material with which she had returned from her first trip to the Nicolet Public Library—a mix of paperback Westerns and romance novels), he planned to stop at a bookstore on his way home that evening.
He presented Sarala with his gift over dinner, explaining that he had found the book invaluable in helping him to understand his new country when he first arrived, and that he thought she would likely find volume two, in which de Tocqueville addressed such topics as “In What Spirit the Americans Cultivate the Arts,” “How Democracy Renders the Social Intercourse of Americans Free and Easy,” and “Some Reflections on American Manners,” most useful.
He had inscribed the dark indigo paper of the flyleaf—
FOR MY BEAUTIFUL AND BELOVED WIFE
AS SHE LEARNS HER WAY IN OUR NEW HOME.
Sarala had done her best to read enthusiastically, and, in fact, she did find the chapter titled “The Young Woman in the Character of the Wife” of interest; but, truth be told, she did not find the book terribly helpful in navigating contemporary suburban Chicago, and so she put de Tocqueville on the shelf in the living room and returned to her own selections, though she was careful now not to leave the books she had borrowed from the library where Abhijat might find them and note her choice of reading material.
CHAPTER 4
Notes on the Discovery of America
1974
MEENA ARRIVED DURING THEIR SECOND YEAR IN NICOLET. During the months when her stomach swelled with the growing baby, Sarala enjoyed the way, with this round, welcoming belly, anyone might stop to talk to her, asking, “When is your baby due?” and “Do you think it’s a girl or boy?” and “What will you name her?” when she confided that she knew, most certainly, that it would be a girl.
Sarala’s childhood home had been a rowdy, busy household in which she might toddle from aunt to grandmother to mother; in which uncles, her father, and grandfather were always coming and going; in which there were always cousins for playmates. She wondered what it would be like for her child to grow up in the quiet and solitude of their new home.
Abhijat and Sarala’s mothers, who had liked each other from the start, congratulated themselves on a successful and fruitful match, and traveled together to be there for the birth and for several weeks afterward. When the mothers arrived, they were surprised not only by the quiet of the large empty house but by how far everything in Nicolet was from everything else. They found it amusing how one rode in a car nearly everywhere one went.
Sarala’s mother began cooking almost as soon as she arrived, filling the house with smells that transported Sarala to her girlhood home. Abhijat’s mother had set about the cleaning, both of them insisting that Sarala take to her bed and rest. Sarala obeyed, but from her bedroom she could hear the mothers talking happily to one another as they worked, and she longed to join them. At dinner, with the mothers chattering away, Sarala felt happier than she had in quite a long time.
The mothers, though, seemed concerned. Had they not met and befriended any other Indian families, Sarala’s mother asked, loading plates into the dishwasher after Abhijat had retired to his study as he did nearly every night.
“It’s complicated,” Sarala said. Most of the other Indians at the Lab were visiting scientists, she explained, there for only a few months at a time. And, given how little time Abhijat had for socializing, she’d found it difficult to connect with them. Sarala noticed a look of concern pass over the mothers’ faces.
When Meena finally arrived, the house bustled in a way that felt familiar, one grandmother tending to the baby and one in the kitchen cooking what seemed to Sarala enough food to feed them until Meena was herself a grandmother.
The grandmothers stayed with them for several weeks, and when they left, Sarala was surprised by how quickly, even with the new baby, the house returned to its imposing silence. In the afternoons when Meena slept, and at night when Sarala woke to nurse her, the house stood large, still, and silent around them.
When the winter finally began to melt away, Sarala loaded Meena into her stroller and ventured out into the neighborhood. Sarala loved the way, with her baby smile and soft cooing, Meena drew the attention of the neighbors as Sarala pushed her along the sidewalks in her stroller. The leaves on the slim trees newly planted along the subdivision’s streets unfurled slowly as bright blades of grass began to stand proudly at attention in every yard. In the driveways, husbands tinkered with lawnmowers in preparation for the summer, wheeling snow blowers into the back of their garages, and in the yards, wives planted rows of bright blooming flowers along walkways.
Sarala’s favorite moments on these walks were when one of the neighbors, seeing Meena and Sarala coming, stopped to admire her daughter, to exchange baby conversation with her, to compliment her thick dark hair—“Who had ever seen such beautiful hair on such a tiny baby?”—further suggesting to Sarala that what she and Abhijat had on their hands was the world’s first and only perfect baby.
In fall, Sarala watched the leaves changing with a kind of wonder, new each day, as she stepped outside to find what colors the trees might have turned overnight, and it was with sadness that she watched them fall from the trees just after the first frost. They gathered on the grass, and in the evenings or on crisp, sunny weekend days, the neighborhood husbands raked the leaves together into piles, bagging them up and hauling the fat, shiny black plastic bags out to the curb.
Sarala and Abhijat’s lawn, however, remained covered in leaves. Sarala knew this was not the sort of thing Abhijat was likely to notice, so she made her first visit to the hardware store, where the clerk, a kindly old man who admired Meena’s perfect, tiny fingers, sold her a rake and bags for the leaves.
Back home, having arranged Meena on a blanket on the grass surrounded by her favorite playthings, Sarala set about tackling the leaves herself, the baby watching her with her wise, deep brown eyes.
It seemed to Sarala that the neighborhood husbands spent nearly the entire weekend outdoors, working on their homes and yards, tinkering in their driveways, screen doors slamming as they came in and out of their houses all day, shading their eyes from the sun, some new tool in hand. But Abhijat was not like these husbands. He spent his weekends, like any other workday, at the Lab, and Sarala did not feel it was her place to ask him to change. These other husbands, she guessed, did not have jobs as demanding as Abhijat’s.
Sarala had been delighted when Meena began to speak. She now had someone to talk with through the long, silent days that had, if she were being truthful with herself, begun to feel a bit lonely.
In the morning, after Abhijat left for work, Sarala poured milk into the last bit of his tea, added a spoonful of sugar, and let Meena finish it, her small hands wrapped around the teacup. Afternoons, she loaded Meena and her stroller into the car and visited the shopping mall, pushing Meena proudly before her to be admired by the older ladies who power-walked there together. In the J.C. Penney, Sarala bought small items to decorate their home—a burgundy ceramic vase full of always-blooming artificial flowers, a toothbrush holder with matching cup and soapdish for the powder room—that was what the realtor had called the small half-bath on the first floor, though Sarala had yet to find a sat
isfactory explanation for why it should be called that.
On rainy days, they visited the library and together selected books to borrow, Sarala lately favoring inspirational biographies of business leaders and the paperback romance novels whose front covers featured images of heroes and heroines in shiny foil, which the librarians kept in a rotating rack near the checkout desk. Meena favored sturdy board books with pictures of farm animals in bright primary colors, and Sarala was taken by how much the farms in Meena’s books resembled the farmhouses and barns left standing on the Lab’s campus.
On sunny days, they made the rounds of Nicolet’s parks, and sometimes, on special days, Sarala took Meena to the place in town she loved most—Heritage Village.
Sarala’s favorite exhibit was America’s Frontier. She loved the pioneer home, a simple one-room log cabin where a woman in a long dress and a white cap leaned over the hearth stirring a cast-iron pot, tended the fire, or churned butter in the yard near the barn. Sarala loved peeking inside the Conestoga wagon next to the log cabin and imagining what from her home she might bring with her were she to set off for such a new, unknown world.
Meena loved the blacksmith shop—the rough wood rafters of the shed hung with horseshoes and lanterns, carriage wheels lined up against the stone walls, the warm building noisy with clanging as a man in a leather apron hammered away at the red-hot piece of metal he’d pulled from the fire, the banging of his hammer carrying out over the day’s bright blue sky. She squealed in delight at the noise, clapping her tiny hands each time a blast of air from the bellows caused the fire in the hearth to leap up. Next to the bellows sat a barrel of water, and when the blacksmith pulled the metal from the fire, its tip glowing yellow-orange and cooling, as he hammered, back to a black-grey, he finished by dipping the tip into the water, the metal cooling with a fitz sound, smoke snaking up into the rafters.
Occasionally they encountered school-aged children on field trips. Often they crossed paths with other mothers and their children, most of them older than Meena. But Sarala loved Heritage Village best on quiet days when, aside from the costumed villagers, she and Meena were the only ones there. Then, it was easy to feel part of the illusion, part of this imagined past.
The first time she had come, not realizing that she could simply wander the grounds as she liked, Sarala had signed up for the Time Traveler Tour. She and Meena, paired with a group of mothers and children, were led through the grounds by a costumed tour guide who, after explaining that they were to imagine they had been transported back in time to colonial America, asked, “Before we begin our exploration, does anyone have any questions?”
One little boy’s hand shot into the air immediately, as though he had been waiting for just this moment.
“Jacob, what is your question?” his mother hissed at him.
He looked back at her and whispered, “Where are the chickens?”
The mother looked exasperated. “If I hear about chickens one more time. This is not a farm, Jacob.”
But another child had beaten him to it. “Do you have any live animals from the time period here?” a little girl called out.
The guide smiled at her, looking, Sarala thought, as though this was a question she answered frequently. “I’m afraid not. No animals. But if you’ll all follow me, we’ll begin our tour at the schoolhouse.”
The group followed her down the pathway toward the white clapboard building, Sarala holding Meena’s small hand as they walked.
Inside the one-room schoolhouse, they passed a row of benches and coat hooks in the entryway and came into a square room filled with desks arranged around a large grey metal stove, the teacher’s long desk at the front of the room under a wall-length chalkboard. “Schoolhouses of the period were not like schools today,” the guide began, encouraging them all to take seats in the wrought iron and wood desks arranged in neat rows.
Sarala sat down sideways in one of the child-sized desks, Meena resting on her knees. The tour guide took on a schoolmarm’s imperious tone and began to read out a list of the school rules, which had been chalked out on the blackboard:
Children should be seen and not heard.
Speak only when spoken to.
Idleness is sinful.
A fine hand indicates a fine mind.
Busy hands maketh a quiet mouth.
The children in the tour group snuck looks at the adults in the room, wondering how far they were willing to play along with this game of pretend. Along the wall, Sarala noticed wooden signs that read:
Idle girl
Idle boy
Tongue Wagger
Bite-Finger Baby
These, the guide explained, had been hung by the teacher around the necks of disobedient students.
Sarala looked down at Meena on her lap and wondered what her child’s education here in the States would be like. Surely quite different from her own, from Abhijat’s.
Later, Sarala would learn that she and Meena could wander the grounds on their own, peeking into the buildings that interested them, interacting with the villagers stationed in the tall, red-brick mansion at the top of the hill, in the post office, or in the sawmill. Wandering the grounds this way, Sarala could imagine what Nicolet must have looked like in the years before the arrival of the Lab, though here and there the illusion was broken by the power lines strung along the streets that bordered the grounds or the sound of the football team practicing off in the distance where Heritage Village abutted the high school.
And so, together, Sarala and Meena discovered America, Abhijat in his office surrounded by chalkboard walls on which he had scratched out equations that might predict the existence of some heretofore unknown part of the universe so tiny that Sarala had to ask him again and again for some way to conceive of it, to hold this smallness in her mind.
“The proton,” he explained, “is to a mosquito as a mosquito is to Mercury’s orbit around the sun.” And then she reminded herself that the particles he worked on were even smaller than a proton.
What Sarala understood was that what Abhijat and the other theoretical physicists worked with was possibility, and beneath it, nothing concrete. She imagined his workdays, his head cradled in his hand, looking up, out the window, perhaps, out over the prairie, imagining the physical world into being.
She wondered if thinking about such tiny particles all day caused him to see the world they lived in as ungainly, inelegant.
Sarala felt it was her job to make their home life, herself, and Meena as unobtrusive to Abhijat as possible so that he might occupy his mind with greater matters. She was proud of his work, read carefully through each article he published, understanding here and there only a bit of it. The fact that she—herself a smart woman, she knew—could understand so little of it was the source of a strange sort of pride for Sarala.
In letters home to the grandmothers, Sarala recorded Meena’s latest accomplishments: toddling across the living room unassisted, successful recitation from beginning to end of the alphabet, each new word she acquired—as well as Abhijat’s: a paper in the latest issue of a journal she understood from Abhijat’s enthusiasm to be important, a presentation at a prestigious conference. And in this careful recording, it escaped Sarala’s attention that she never once included news of her own.
And when might you and Abhijat begin thinking about another child? her mother had written. I don’t know, Sarala replied, leaving out any mention of the series of charts, graphs, and spreadsheets Abhijat had presented to her, as though to an audience at a conference, shortly after Meena was born, each one outlining the benefits of one rather than a houseful of children.
Together they’d thought long and hard about their decision. For Sarala, it had been difficult to argue with such persuasive data, and it pleased her to know that their decision meant they could devote themselves to Meena. She had a sense that it would be best to evade questions on the subject for as long as possible, but she had also begun to think about how she might explain their decision to the g
randmothers, who would, she suspected, certainly be disappointed. She had been working on the following for when she could avoid the question no longer: that blessed with a beautiful child, healthy and of an easy temperament, Sarala and Abhijat had decided that one was enough. That one child, rather than many, meant they would be able to dedicate themselves and their resources to her, ensuring that what would march out before her would be a fine future, full of opportunity and possibility.
One afternoon, Abhijat invited Sarala and Meena to have lunch with him in the Lab’s cafeteria. It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm, so Sarala loaded Meena into her stroller and walked through the neighborhood, across the busy Burlington Road, waiting first at the light, then making their way over the crosswalk and along the paths of the Lab grounds. Beside the pathways, the mowed lawn sprung up suddenly into wild prairie grasses, which blew in the warm wind like a soft brown ocean. When the trees rose up around them, they walked under the shady canopy of leaves until they emerged at the reflecting pond, the Research Tower rising up over the water and prairie grasses.
They made their way up to the entrance, Sarala negotiating the stroller and the glass doors. Inside the atrium she looked up, blinking against the sun coming in through the skylight to peer into the offices that looked out over the atrium. She found an empty table in the cafeteria, where Meena had begged to be taken out of her stroller. Sarala lifted her small body up and out and set her down in one of the plastic chairs, where Meena sat up on her knees and reached across the table for the salt and pepper shakers.
“Where’s Daddy?” she asked.
“He’ll be down soon,” Sarala answered, removing the salt and pepper shakers from Meena’s hands and placing them out of her reach.
As she waited for Abhijat to join them, Sarala looked around the cafeteria, where clusters of physicists, engineers, and technicians in golf shirts and glasses sat together. Here and there she caught bits of their conversations.
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