What You Are

by M G Vassanji

  On their drive back, Mr. Brand cautioned Hussein not to take Liz too seriously; she had a tendency to invite young men to stay with her; the last one was called Saeed. Early the following Tuesday Mr. Brand took him to Newark airport and put him on a shuttle to Boston, insisting that that was the only way to go for his first day at university.

  His introduction to America; it should have ended then, according to the Welcome Agency, but Marie wrote to him, on beautiful letter paper, and he to her, on his yellow notepad, and sometimes he called them collect. They invited him to come over for Christmas, and whenever he wished, and he became in some sense a part of their family.

  Christmas Eve, he took a ride to New Jersey with a girl called Gudrun, who looked rumpled like she’d just woken up and argued all the way with her Indian boyfriend, who sat in the front beside her. With Hussein at the back were two other guys. It had snowed but was clear and bright now, and bitterly cold; the Volvo was ancient and leaky but thankfully the floor at their feet was lined with a doubled-up blanket. The white fields and tree skeletons they passed were mysteriously beautiful, silent creatures from another galaxy. Nothing like he’d seen before, though years later they would remind him of Tolkien’s Ents. The three of them at the back sat jammed together in their winter jackets, and the radio played “A Horse with No Name,” by a group called America, continuously, on station after AM station as they progressed. The words intrigued him though he did not understand them. The others apparently did, for they discussed it. Gudrun dropped his two fellow passengers off at a town outside New York, and him at Newark airport, where Marie picked him up.

  At the house, the next morning, Christmas Day, as he sat with the family on the carpet before a tall glittering Christmas tree in the formal living room, which was rarely used, they regaled him with gifts. He recalls a Shetland wool sweater he would keep almost forever, even when it had grown holes; a portable radio; a silver ballpoint pen, a tape of gospel music, and small personal items including deodorant and a dandruff shampoo; he hadn’t known what dandruff was. He gave a book about Eisenhower to Mr. Brand and a traditional Tanzanian khanga cloth to Marie; for Timmy he had brought a Johnny Cash LP, and for Wally a book on Buddhism. That holiday he visited New York City with Wally, Timmy, and Lucy-Ann, and they went up to the top of the Empire State Building and walked along Fifth Avenue to look at the decorations. He didn’t care much for the city, it took him years later to get hooked by it.

  One evening, they had just returned from an Italian dinner, Marie a little drunk on Chianti. He was on his way up to his attic room when, hearing an exclamation and a chortle behind him, he turned around and to his astonishment saw Mr. Brand supporting a very bald-headed Marie, holding in her hand a blonde wig. “Isn’t this better, Hussein, am I not beautiful like this?” She made a clownish, grotesque face at him, to which he said “Yes” and grinned and Mr. Brand nodded to him. He went to bed shattered, in tears. It felt like someone had given him a resounding slap on the face, leaving a persistent, buzzing echo in his head so he could not even think. But when he came down the next morning, a very normal-looking Marie was sitting at the kitchen table, the local paper in front of her. She offered him a coffee and corn flakes and apologized to him for her display. She had cancer, she explained, and the chemotherapy had removed her hair. Also made her flighty, for which he should excuse her. But she was recovering, she assured him, and yes, her hair would grow back. It wouldn’t be blonde, she laughed, and he laughed with her, saying he quite preferred the blonde. That Sunday he went to church with the couple, as he had done last August. He had gone out of curiosity then, and enjoyed the experience, especially the choir, but this time he also wanted to pray for Marie at her church.

  Gudrun came to pick him up at the house, with the boyfriend, whose name was Alok, and Hussein guessed they had come all the way to Montclair simply to pass judgement on where in the bourgeois homeland he had put up. They were impressed by the neighbourhood but contemptuous of the wealthy Republican suburb that it was. A Nixon for President sticker had appeared on the back window of the Grand Prix. Hussein, like almost everyone on his campus, leaned towards the Democratic candidate McGovern; as did Timmy, but not Wally Junior.

  He visited again in June. This time his ride, a French graduate student, dropped him off in Spanish Harlem, where he was unnerved to find that hardly anyone understood him when he asked for directions; he made his way to the Port Authority terminal by bus, not certain about going underground to use the subway, as directed by someone in halting English. By this time his hair was long and he had joined peaceful demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. The Brands were unfazed. The war would soon be over, said Mr. Brand. The boys were not around; Wally would be joining a college in Vermont, and Timmy would transfer to the local high school. Marie looked a little subdued and came down late in the mornings, and he worried. When he asked her if she was feeling all right, she said yes and smiled her gratitude and gave him a tight hug. Back in Boston later that summer he watched the Democratic Party convention on campus, staying up the night. In August he again visited Upper Montclair. This time he made good on a boast and cooked ground beef curry for the family that they ate outside in the back of the house; he thought it was a failure, and Mr. Smith dubbed it the gut-rumbler, but Marie assured him that it was good.

  In November, soon after the presidential election, in which Richard Nixon took all the states except Massachusetts—an outcome hard to forget—Mr. Brand called him to say that Marie had passed away. The death had been painless and she had been her usual self, cheerful till the end. The family was with her, and according to her wishes she had been cremated after a small, private ceremony. He was crushed. A precious part of his new life had fallen away, and he wished he could have been at her side in her last moments.

  He spent Christmas on campus, with all those who had nowhere to go, including three Ethiopians, a Greek, and a Cameroonian. Later that summer he received a letter from Mr. Brand, in reply to his, informing him that he had remarried. His new wife’s name was Marilyn and he had moved into her house in Montclair proper, where she lived with her four kids. Hussein was welcome to visit them, he would always be a part of the Brand family. He visited in October. The leaves had turned, and it was wet. The new home was large and chaotic; the youngest of the four kids was a girl of six, who took a liking to him but asked a lot of questions, and there was an irrepressible little dog. The three older kids were in and out and loud. Two boys and a girl, Hussein had been given one of the boys’ rooms. The Grand Prix was gone, in its place was a rather messy Buick. Mr. Brand told him that Marilyn was a client, and he had met her in church. It had been Marie’s wish that he remarry. It was apparent that the relationship was still raw, Mr. Brand was trying too hard. He no longer went jogging and it was hard to get a private moment with him. Marilyn always looked harried. Hussein realized that he was simply in the way. The Smiths had left town.

  Mr. Brand, assuring him that he was welcome to visit him any time, dropped him off in Eastside New York, where lived a new acquaintance of his whom he’d met in Boston earlier in the year. There was now a small community of young Asians from back home who had come to New York as tourists and stayed on to get their green cards. This was a new phase in Hussein’s life and he was beginning to enjoy visiting the city.

  It was two years later when Hussein found the will to call up Mr. Brand. The thought had played on his mind all along, but he had balked. While Mr. Brand had invited him to visit any time, Marilyn had pointedly not reiterated. And who could blame her. But he was now in graduate school in Philadelphia and Montclair was not far. He could easily make a day trip there. Mr. Brand would have settled into his new life now, and Marilyn might be calmer and even welcoming this time.

  It was eight in the evening when he called; Marilyn picked up the phone. He identified himself as Hussein, the foreign student from East Africa who had come to visit from Boston; how were she and the kids? And Mr. Brand?
There followed a moment of silence on the line, before she replied sharply, “We’re fine. What do you want?” And then, before he could say another word: “Mr. Brand is not here. Your friend lost all my money and has gone back to Baltimore!” She slammed down the phone.

  And now, decades later, the death notices on the internet. That picture of the happy, generous family of Upper Montclair has not tarnished, just faded. His world is more complex now. He’s lived in Canada for many years and his daughter is at a law firm in New York, not far from the offices of Bear Stearns, which eventually went bankrupt. It might not be the cool Canadian thing to say, he muses, but America still has a heart in it somewhere. He had found it. Every Christmas he sends a small check to the university that opened the world to him.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  My thanks to my editor Martha Kanya Forstner for her comments and observations and saving me from a howler concerning Malcolm X, and Melanie Little for her sensitive copy-editing, as before. And Nurjehan, for always being there, and Mwalimu Justus Makokha for his company during an exciting bus journey we both remember fondly. And finally, Firoz Manji, raconteur par excellence, for his generosity.