Blue Jasmine (11 page)

One day I took cauliflower and potatoes rolled up in
rotli
for lunch. I was getting tired of sandwiches, and besides, Asha and Priya told me they took Indian food for lunch all the time. That day Jennifer was sick and only Ria and I were sitting together. When I'd eaten more than half of my roll-up Carrie walked over from the bench across
from me and said, “I wish you wouldn't bring such smelly lunches. It ruins my appetite.”

“I will bring whatever I want to eat. If you don't like it, wear a mask,” I said.

“You come to my country and you act like a lord. If you want to live here, eat what we eat and speak the language we speak.”

“Except for American Indians, all of us were immigrants once,” Ria said.

“Yes, but we were here first,” Carrie said.

“Are you saying whoever came first rules?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Well, I came to this school before you did, so I rule.”

“That's right.” Ria said.

“You seem to think your friend Seema is great, but I disagree. Seema's a strange name and she's a strange creature.”

“You know what you are to me, Carrie Schuler?”

“What?” she said.

“
Schuler
means ‘pain' in my language, and you are a big pain to me,” I said.

“
Schuler
means ‘pain'?” Danny asked. He was sitting behind me.

I turned to him and whispered, “Sort of.”

When I turned back Carrie was gone.

The next day I told Jennifer all about it. “I'm glad you told her off,” she said.

“Now I hope she leaves me alone. I don't want to turn nasty like her.” I said.

A few days after the outburst, we had spring break and I enjoyed a week free of Carrie.

When March was almost over the days became longer, the sun shone brighter, and the southerly winds blew warmer. The snow was disappearing fast. In India I had not known the difference between the length of summer and winter days, which only changed by an hour at the most. On a sunny afternoon I saw many people outdoors like columns of ants descending on crystals of spilled sugar. Where had they been all winter long?

Flowers with unfamiliar names were blooming in the garden. Before Mrs. Milan left to visit relatives in Georgia, she came over to tell us all about the flowers. The first ones to bloom were crocuses. The yellow and the white ones were narcissus. In a few days she said that the tulips would begin to bloom.

One day I noticed that the fragrance of jasmine perfumed the air. I looked for a white or yellow bloom of jasmine, but couldn't find any. Instead, I spotted a stalk with a cluster of blue blossoms that filled the garden with its delicate scent. “Mom, what is this flower called?” I asked.

“I don't know. It's so sweet smelling,” she said,
closing her eyes and breathing in the fragrance.

“Maybe it's jasmine. Blue jasmine,” I said.

“I've never heard of blue jasmine.”

“You'd never heard of crocuses and narcissus before either.”

“That's true,” she said.

“I'm going to call it blue jasmine,” I said.

When Mrs. Milan came back she told me that the blue jasmine was not jasmine but hyacinth. “Hyacinth is a flower of the lily family and jasmine is a flower of the olive family.” she said.

“Are they quite different?”

“Yes, they are.”

“They have similar scents.”

“I never thought of that, but they do,” she agreed.

More and more flowers bloomed, and the names of those flowers were so hard to remember that I made Mrs. Milan write them down. Next to their names she drew pictures of them. I liked all of them, but my favorite was the blue hyacinth, because of its special color and familiar fragrance. In India, I had only seen a poster of a blue flower called the Himalayan poppy, but no blue flower bloomed in our garden. And yet the blue hyacinths were fragrant like jasmine, so I took a picture of them and mailed it to Raju.

I thought of Mukta and the basketful of flowers. I
wondered what she would think of my garden full of flowers.

On my way to school, I noticed that the gray house on the corner had a
SOLD
sign on it, and I wondered who might be moving. As I turned the corner I saw that the park was blanketed with yellow flowers, as if someone had sprinkled turmeric on the lawn. I admired the flowers fluttering in the breeze before I realized that I was late. I picked two of the flowers, put them in my hair, and hurried toward school.

As soon as I got to school the first bell rang and I rushed to my classroom without seeing Jennifer or Ria. If only I had seen them! When I sat down I heard Carrie's whisper followed by a wave of laughter. The entire class was snickering and suppressing giggles. I turned around. Carrie winked at me and said, “Nice flowers.”

“Thank you,” I said. I didn't understand what was so funny about putting flowers in my hair. In the social studies classroom there were picture of Hawaiian girls wearing hibiscus and plumeria in their hair.

At lunch Ria and Jennifer were already sitting down to eat when I got there. “Seema, why have you stuck dandelions in your hair?” Ria said, pointing at the flowers.

“These were blooming in the park, and they looked so
pretty. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of them, and I picked two. Maybe I shouldn't have done that. Is it against the law to pick—”

“Don't worry about the law. These are weeds. Do you know what weeds are? People yank them out and throw them away. Nobody wants them in their yard, let alone in their hair,” Ria said.

Jennifer couldn't wait any longer. She plucked the flowers from my hair and slid them in her empty brown bag. To me they still looked pretty. I fought back my tears. Now I knew why Carrie had complimented me. Now I understood why all the students were smirking and giggling. Just when I thought I knew English well, just when I was starting to feel more at home, I did something stupid and messed it all up. For the first time in a long time I felt like running away from school, from Iowa City, back to my old school, back to Raju and Vishanagar.

I couldn't remember what we learned that afternoon. When I came home Mommy asked, “Don't you want a snack?”

“I'm not hungry. Can I go over to Mrs. Milan's?” I asked, and was almost out the door before Mommy said, “Can you take Mela, please? I want to start cooking dinner.”

I swung back, grabbed Mela's hand, and took off.
When Mrs. Milan opened the door she said, “My, my, we are in a big hurry today!”

She saw the distraught look on my face.

“Sweet pea, didn't I see you walking home from school only two minutes ago? You must have dropped off your backpack, grabbed your sister, and rushed right over here.”

“I did,” I confessed. “I have a question to ask you. Why does everyone hate dandelions? I think they're such pretty flowers. They don't smell sweet, but they are so cheerful. I can't understand why people hate them. And why don't girls and women ever wear flowers in their hair? In India we used to put flowers in our hair often. It looked . . . I can't explain . . . so pretty.”

“Oh, my. You certainly have lot on your mind. Shall we sit down and have cookies and milk and discuss dandelions, Mela?”

“Cookies.” Mela clapped her hands.

“You must have seen the park full of dandelions on your way to school.”

I nodded, taking a bite out of my butterscotch-oatmeal cookie.

“Aren't they beautiful? Not everyone hates them. I, for one, love dandelion greens in salad.”

“You can eat them?”

“Yes. They are a perennial herb. They grow in temperate regions and that's why, like tulips and crocuses, you
haven't seen them before. Those pretty yellow flowers are used in making dandelion wine.”

“You're pulling my leg.” I said.

“No, no. It's the truth. And when I was little my parents couldn't afford real coffee, so they used dandelion roots to make coffee.”

“Then why do people hate them?”

“Dandelions are too successful.” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“In a few days the pretty yellow flower will turn into white globes of down, and with the wind they will ride far and wide. That's how they spread, and if people don't control them, they take over the lawns.”

“I see,” I said, wiping Mela's face with a napkin. And that's when I looked out and realized that Mrs. Milan didn't have any lawn in her front yard. She had trees and flowers and meandering brick paths, but no grass. “How come you don't have any lawn?”

“Because I love gardens and hate fighting with dandelions. I don't have an answer to your second question as to why women and girls don't wear flowers in their hair. Maybe it's a cultural thing. Maybe you can tell me why you wear flowers in your hair,” she said.

“I . . . I don't know why. We just do . . . did. Maybe because we have so many flowers growing all the time and it looks pretty.”

“Did you wear dandelions in your hair today?”

“Yes.”

“You left the barn door open with that one,” she said.

“I did what?” I asked.

“It's a Southern saying. I grew up in Georgia, and there it means that you made a mistake.”

“Then I did leave the barn door wide open with that one,” I said.

Later, as I set the table for dinner, I said, “Mom, I feel strange calling Mrs. Milan, Mrs. Milan. It seems so . . . so distant. It reminds me of our gym class in India, when they used to make us stand at attention. Our eyes straight ahead, chin up, chest out, stomach in; we didn't look like kids, we looked like faceless wooden dolls.”

“What would you like to call her? Aunt Milan?”

“No, that's not right either. Besides, all the Indian women in this country are my aunts. I have no shortage of them.”

Mommy stopped chopping cilantro and touched my cheek with her moist fingers and laughed. “I see. Since we aunts are oversupplied, we're of no value to you. But let me remind you that we don't have a shortage of nieces and nephews, either.”

“Mom! I didn't mean it that way. I'm glad to have all the aunts, but Mrs. Milan is older, like Dadima or Nanima. Do you think I can call her Grandma?” I said.

“I suppose so.”

“Maybe I should ask her.”

“Yes, ask her,” Mommy said.

“I will.”

S
pring started like a soft hum and turned into a beautiful song.
I'm glad my birthday comes in spring
, I wrote in my notebook. In India, I envied Mela, because her birthday came in December. At that time the garden was lush, the sky was azure, and the warm days were twinned with cool nights. My birthday came in May. At that time the garden was dry, the sky was scorching, and the hot days were twinned with muggy nights. Every year on my birthday we prayed for the monsoon to come and bring some relief. Here the month of May had already given me the gift of warm, long days and blooming gardens.

Carrie was sick with chicken pox and had missed two weeks of school. In class, no one teased me, and no one
snickered when I mispronounced a word. It was very pleasant without her, and I wished she'd stay away from school permanently.

One day our class made a giant card to send to Carrie. Everyone signed it with a little message. When it was my turn I thought of not signing at all. With the entire class writing, I knew no one would notice that I had skipped it, but I thought that Carrie would probably notice. She would fume and that would delight me. Then I remembered what Dadima used to say to us when Raju, Uma, and I were mean to anyone. She told us, “Show
daya
, compassion, and you will be showered with love.” I knew well that Carrie had not a speck of love for me. She was sick, though, and I should do as much as I could to make her feel better. So I wrote, “Carrie. I hope you are getting better every day.” Then I drew a blue jasmine and signed my name. That day when I walked home I was glad I'd written and signed the card, because if I hadn't I knew I would have fought with myself. This way it was done and I had nothing to fret about.

The next day Ria told me she'd seen Carrie at the grocery store. “She's coming back on Monday.”

“This Monday?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“It won't be so bad,” Jennifer offered.

I didn't know what to say.

“I hope you're right, Jennifer. Carrie was surprisingly friendly, and she even asked about Seema,” Ria said.

“She asked about me? What did she say?”

“They've moved into the gray house and she was wondering if you lived nearby,” Ria said.

“Are you sure?” Jennifer asked.

“I hope you're wrong, Ria,” I said, shaking my head.

What if Carrie used her time at home to plot against me? She is determined to make me miserablel That sickening thought hung in my mind like a stubborn lizard hanging on the ceiling.

On Saturday Mela begged me to take her to the park. When we reached the park I glanced at the gray house across the street, it looked peaceful, as if no one were home. Mela went up and down the slide ten times and then she climbed up the monkey bars. “Let's swing side by side, Seema,” she said, pulling my hand. While Mela and I were swinging I saw Carrie strolling toward us. I wished we weren't on the swings; then we could have marched away, i noticed that Carrie was missing the bounce in her walk, and without it, she seemed different. As I slowed down I saw that she was holding something in her hands.

By the time she reached us I had stopped swinging.

“I picked these flowers for you,” she said.

I didn't look at them, but from the corner of my eyes I could see a little yellow and I was certain they were dandelions.
“No, thanks,” I snapped. “You picked them. You keep them.”

“I want them,” Mela said as she got off the swing. Carrie gave her the flowers. They were not dandelions. “They are pretty,” said Mela. “Thank you.”