The Whole Story of Half a Girl

by Veera Hiranandani

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2012 by Veera Hiranandani

  Jacket photograph copyright © 2012 by Jupiter Images

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at randomhouse.com/teachers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hiranandani, Veera.

  The whole story of half a girl / Veera Hiranandani. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: When Sonia’s father loses his job and she must move from her small, supportive private school to a public middle school, the half-Jewish half-Indian sixth-grader experiences culture shock as she tries to navigate the school’s unfamiliar social scene, and after her father is diagnosed with clinical depression, she finds herself becoming even more confused about herself and her family.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-98441-9

  [1. Coming of age—Fiction. 2. Racially mixed people—Fiction. 3. Depression—Fiction. 4. Middle schools—Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction. 6. East Indian Americans—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.H5977325Wh 2012

  [Fic]—dc23

  2011026178

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  For David, Hannah, and Eli—my biggest fans

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  chapter one

  I’m in school, sitting with my hair hanging long down the back of my chair, my arm around my best friend, Sam. We’re planning our next sleepover. Sam’s parents have the tent and sleeping bags; her mom even bought us cool spy pen-flashlights just for the occasion. To top it off, it’s Friday and summer’s only two weeks away.

  Jack, my teacher, passes out recipes from the next and last country our fifth-grade class will be studying—India. I look down and see the makings of biryani, which is a special kind of rice dish. Jack always teaches us about the country’s food first, then gives us the lay of the land and the history. Getting to know the food, Jack says, is the best way to really understand a country, just like sharing a meal with someone helps you get to know them. You can tell a lot from what a person eats. I agree. Jack always brings huge, delicious, sloppy sandwiches for his lunch, like meatball subs and Philly cheesesteaks, and that’s sort of how he is—a big, friendly, messy man.

  Jack takes everyone into the school kitchen and we’re all assigned jobs. I have to measure the rice. Sam has to measure the spices. Other kids shell peas. Jack does all the chopping with the sharp knives. Before you know it, the rice is cooking and people are helping Jack sauté the onions, garlic, and spices. He tells everybody to stand back and holds the pan up, tossing all the ingredients like some super-famous chef, except Jack isn’t a super-famous chef and half of it lands on the floor. The delicious smells swirl around my nose and make my stomach growl. I love biryani. Life’s pretty good.

  Then I get home. Mom’s face is all droopy—the way it looks when she’s upset. But she doesn’t say much. She just stirs and stirs something in a pot on the stove. I look in and see a mess of purple mush. Eggplant skins and empty tofu packages sit on the counter. Tofu makes my eyes hurt. It makes my head hurt. It makes my throat hurt. My younger sister, Natasha, appears on the stairs with her drumsticks. She starts drumming on the railing and Mom tells her to practice in her room. I go off to get my homework over with. I have an essay to write on what it’s like to live in India, but I don’t need to do any research. I just have to ask my dad. He was born there.

  Finally, at dinner, while I’m trying to figure out why the tofu is so purple, Mom says, “Kids—”

  And Dad says, “Wait, I’ll—”

  And Mom says, “You should—”

  And Natasha says, “Ha!” because she’s five years younger than I am and doesn’t know what to do with herself half the time.

  And Dad says, “I have some bad news,” which explains why Mom’s acting strange and probably why the tofu’s so purple. His face looks red and a little puffy, like he’s going to cry. I’ve actually never seen my father cry. Two years ago my uncle died, Dad’s brother, and Dad didn’t cry at the funeral. Not that he wasn’t sad, because he looked sadder than I’ve ever seen him.

  “I lost my job. I was fired,” he says. His eyes are wide.

  Dad is, or was, head of sales for a company that publishes math and science textbooks. Sometimes he brings the books home. They’re really heavy, with very thin pages, and are meant for college kids. They have crazy titles like Fundamentals of Human Biology and An Introduction to Differential Geometry. It makes me dizzy just looking at the covers, which are always filled with graphs, numbers, and outlines or silhouettes of someone’s big smart head. Dad can understand them, though. He used to be a math professor at the same college where Mom teaches English literature. That’s where they fell in love.

  The reason he was fired, Dad explains, is because he had a bad quarter.

  “What’s a quarter?” I ask. He looks at me and tries to smile, but the corners of his mouth don’t quite make it. He takes a deep breath and rubs his chin.

  “It’s a period of three months, a quarter of a year. Sales were down last quarter. Way down.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  A lot more questions zip through my head. Like why were the last three months so bad? Did he make someone really mad? Will he get another job? My heart speeds up, but I keep quiet. Natasha presses her fork into her purple tofu casserole, mashes it flat with the prongs.

  “Who wants dessert?” Mom asks, even though we’ve all barely touched our dinner. She usually makes sure we’ve eaten enough of every weird thing she puts on the table, but I guess Mom doesn’t really want to eat her tofu casserole any more than we do. I get up and help her clean off the table. She takes mint chocolate chip frozen yogurt out of the freezer and starts to heap it in big white bowls lined up on the counter. I take a bite of mine, and for a moment, the cool minty sweetness is all I can think about.

  chapter two

  Later that night, I find Dad in his study, hunched over the newspaper. The door’s open and I poke my head in.

  “I need to
ask you about India,” I say, hoping he’s not too upset to talk to me.

  He lowers the paper. “Why’s that?”

  “It’s my final report for school. I have to find out what it’s like to live there.”

  “Well, it’s been a while since I lived in India,” he says, and smiles.

  I step into the room, holding my pad and pencil. “But what was it like?”

  “Hot.”

  “I need more than that,” I say, and plop myself on the chair in front of his desk.

  “We slept on the roof at night because it was so hot.”

  “What did you sleep on?”

  “Mats.”

  “What kind of food did you eat?”

  “You know the kind of food we ate. Curries, pakoras, dal, rice, naan. All the stuff you’ve eaten.” He puts the paper down, leans back, and closes his eyes.

  “What did you do for fun?” I ask.

  “Fun?” he says, and opens his eyes again. “My brother and I were troublemakers, so we’d make trouble for fun, I guess.”

  “Like how?”

  “Oh, nothing that dramatic. We used to steal mangos from our neighbors’ yard. They had many more mango trees than we did. And then we’d get caught and have to work in their kitchen for a few weeks.”

  “That’s a big punishment for some mangos. Did your parents say anything to the neighbors?”

  “I don’t remember, but they probably agreed with the punishment. And I bet they were glad to have us out of the way,” Dad says in his quiet, clipped way.

  When Dad tells us about India, he always lowers his voice like he’s letting us in on a secret. He doesn’t really talk about his life there much. His parents both died the same year: my grandfather of a heart attack, my grandmother of cancer. Dad was only eleven, the same age I am now. His older brother, my uncle, died four years ago of a heart attack. He also has two younger sisters, my aunties. After their parents’ deaths, they all lived with different relatives until they finally came here to America. I guess they just wanted to leave it all behind. I wonder if he misses it, though.

  We went to India last year, to Bombay, where my dad was born, and to Agra, to see the Taj Mahal. Bombay is called Mumbai now, but Dad still calls it Bombay. On the way to the Taj Mahal we passed fields where dyed silk saris lay flat on the ground drying, the billowing colors bright and new against the dusty grass. Dad was like the colors of those saris when we were there. He showed us everything he could, smiling tons, chatting in Sindhi with people he knew from many years ago. I’ve never seen him so happy.

  “Tell me more about the trouble you got into,” I say to him.

  Dad rubs his face with both hands. “I want to help you, I do. When’s your report due?” he says, looking up, blinking.

  “In a couple of days,” I tell him, but it’s actually due tomorrow.

  “Is it all right if we talk more tomorrow, then?”

  “Sure.” I know I’ll just end up Googling what I need for the rest. “Dad, is everything going to be okay?”

  “It’ll be fine,” he says, leaning over to kiss my forehead. “Now get some sleep.”

  * * *

  A week later, when Natasha and I are in the bathroom getting ready for bed, Mom knocks on the door even though it’s halfway open. Natasha’s sitting on the toilet and I’m brushing my teeth. Natasha always sings in the bathroom, and she’s pretty bad, but I find myself brushing to the beat anyway as she belts out “When the Saints Go Marching In” at the top of her lungs.

  “Girls,” Mom says. She only calls us “girls” when she’s mad or has bad news. Natasha stops singing. I stop brushing. “I’m afraid that next week will be your last at Community. You’ll both be starting public school in September.”

  I look at Natasha and she starts crying. She gets up and flushes the toilet, still in tears. Mom hugs her and smooths her hair back. I don’t cry. I don’t believe what Mom has just said. I spit and rinse.

  “I know you might feel sad now,” she says, “but it’ll be an exciting new experience. I promise.”

  Natasha and I have always gone to Community. It’s different from other schools. All the classes are really small. Everyone sits around a big table instead of desks, and we call our teachers by their first names. We don’t have to raise our hands for permission to speak or go to the bathroom. This doesn’t mean everyone just does whatever they want. We have rules, and most of the time everybody listens. I’ve been in class with the same ten kids since kindergarten, and Jack’s been our teacher for the last two years. I don’t know how to be in another kind of school—the kind I’ve read about where thirty kids have to walk in line and call their teachers Mr. This and Ms. That. I stop looking at Natasha and look at Mom. She has tears in her eyes too.

  “Does this have to do with Dad being fired?” I ask. Asking a lot of questions normally makes me feel better. Dad says it’s good that I like to ask questions, because it will make me a better journalist, which is what I want to be someday. Since this whole thing happened, I’ve been afraid to ask questions. This question, though, just flies right out of me.

  “Yes and no,” Mom answers.

  I wait for her to say more. Natasha waits too, sticking her finger in her ear and scratching it good.

  “This change was inevitable, honey,” Mom goes on.

  “What’s iniv-table?” Natasha asks. Mom always uses big words. That’s her thing, being an English professor.

  “It means it had to happen sooner or later. Community only goes up to eighth grade, you know that. We didn’t plan on making such an abrupt change, but Dad and I have been worried that you’re not getting enough at Community. Enough of the basics.”

  I’m not sure what she could possibly mean. I have my best friend, Sam, and the greatest teacher, who takes us camping and teaches us about the world. I know how to make sushi and take sap from a tree. I know where Saudi Arabia is. Next year we’re going to learn how to write an entire play and perform it. Isn’t that enough?

  “So that’s the no part,” I say. “What’s the yes part?”

  “The yes part is …” Mom clears her throat as she takes her pinkie nail and drags it back and forth across her lips. It’s what Mom does when she’s thinking. “That Community is expensive. We already pay taxes for the public schools, and they’re good schools.”

  “And then we can go back,” Natasha says, her voice as bright as the sun. “After you guys get more money?”

  Mom doesn’t look off into the distance anymore, but right at Natasha, as if it’s the first time she’s really noticing we’re both there. Her face softens. “Don’t worry about money, hon. That’s for me and Dad to think about, and we’re fine, but I don’t think you’ll go back.”

  Of course I have more questions. What’s going to happen to me and Sam? How could any other teacher be as cool as Jack? I want to ask Mom, if the public schools are so good, why did she send us to Community in the first place? But I don’t ask anything else. Because I’m going to Community next year, somehow.

  Mom makes sure we’re dressed for bed and heads to Natasha’s room to read her a book. I go to my room and sit at my big dark wooden desk. It used to be Dad’s until he got a bigger one for the study. The top is covered in glass and Dad let me have his ink blotter, his stapler, and his old leather organizer, where I keep all my pens, pencils, and markers. I even have an old-fashioned fountain pen that you fill with ink. I always feel important when I sit there, like I’m the president of my room.

  Right in the middle of the desk is my summer reading list, which Jack handed out today. It looks like any ordinary printout we’d get from school. But now it’s the saddest piece of paper I’ve ever seen. I start reading the titles from the top: The Black Pearl, From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, The Giver, True Believer, A Wrinkle in Time …

  My throat catches on A Wrinkle in Time, one of my favorite books. Just like that, I tear the list into tiny pieces and throw them into the air. The pieces twirl and float
and finally come to rest on my beige carpet.

  I climb into bed. My bed is under a big window, and if I keep the curtains open I can look up and see the whole sky. On a clear night, the blinking of all those stars against the blue-black makes me feel small in a good way. My problems could never be as big as the night sky.

  chapter three

  Saturday comes just like it always does, but it’s not just any Saturday. It’s a Sleepover-at-Sam’s Saturday. Normally I’d be bouncing off the walls with excitement, but instead I feel like a pile of wet newspaper. In the afternoon, Mom drops me off at Sam’s house, waves to Sam’s mom, Sadie, and drives away. When I see Mom’s red Honda turn out of their driveway and disappear, I have to stop myself from running after her.

  Sadie slices off huge hunks of her homemade raisin challah bread, slathers them with butter, makes me and Sam two plates with cold glasses of milk, and then goes off to work in her studio in the attic.

  Sadie’s like a second mom to me. She’s a tiny lady with short spiky red hair the same color as Sam’s, and she wears long skirts and big chunky silver necklaces and bracelets that she makes herself. She sells her jewelry to stores, even really fancy ones in New York City, which then sell her stuff for like a million dollars. She gives me and my mom jewelry all the time as presents. My favorite is a little silver cat pin with emerald-green eyes that she made last year for my birthday.

  Sam and I take the challah and milk to her room. It’s quiet since Asher, Sam’s little brother, is at a friend’s house. And Sam’s dad, Ben, is at the café he owns. He’s there a lot. Sometimes on weekends Sam and I get to help behind the counter and do stuff like make people smoothies or fill up their water.

  We sit cross-legged on Sam’s pink shaggy rug eating the thick, buttery bread, and of course it’s amazing. Sadie makes it every Friday for Shabbat dinner. Going to Sam’s for Shabbat dinner is one of my favorite things to do. The smell of just-baked bread goes so nicely with our singing, prayers, and lighting of the candles. Mom only makes Shabbat dinner if my grandparents are visiting. We don’t do a lot of what other Jewish families do. I guess that’s because Mom’s Jewish and Dad’s not. I don’t even know if we count as a real Jewish family any more than we count as an Indian one.