Blue Jasmine (4 page)

The long window of my room faced the backyard where a circle of yellow marigolds surrounded a clump of red zinnias. The lawn was green and so were the trees. I wondered what the large tree with the white bark was called. Its leaves shimmered and made the same rippling sound as the
pipul
tree did in our schoolyard, but it wasn't a
pipul
. The
pipul
had heart-shaped leaves with pointy ends, and this tree had oblong leaves with rounded edges.

At night as I lay in bed, I didn't like my room as much as I'd liked it during the day. I was lonely. Even though it wasn't cold, I snuggled up to the extra pillow and pulled my blanket all the way up to my chin. I don't know when I fell asleep, but the next thing I heard was Mommy saying, “Seema, Seema, wake up.”

I woke up shivering. Mommy held me in her arms, and I told her about my dream.

“Mommy, I was flying and the sky was dark and below me was the dark ocean. The thundering waves of the ocean were trying to catch me. They almost did catch me. There were sharks. Big ones with jaws of shining steel.”

“You were screaming.”

“Was I?”

“Yes. That's why I came In. You were shaking like a dry
pipul
leaf. Go back to sleep.”

I held on to her.

“Do you want me to sing a
shloka
?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She sat on my bed and sang the same
shloka
that Dadima used to sing.

My heart was full of fear, and yet it had never felt emptier. So, I just listened to Mommy's singing and held tightly to her arm.

The next day as I unpacked my suitcases, I spotted the handkerchief that Mukta had given me. I sat there thinking about Mukta, her mother, her house, and her family. My room was bright and cheerful, and yet I could picture her dark and gloomy home vividly. Dadaji used to say that the real eyes are the mind's eyes. I knew I was seeing with my mind's eyes.

I took the handkerchief and laid it gently in the drawer and put my clothes on top of it. Maybe burying the handkerchief would help me forget about Mukta, but I was wrong. It was impossible to bury her memory.

Every morning when I got up I looked out the window, hoping to find an oblong bed of white
parijat
flowers with orange stems. I didn't see them, but there were so many other trees and plants that were nameless to me. Who can tell me about the plants and flowers that grow in this garden?
I wondered. Sometimes I saw a neighbor lady working in her garden. It was hard to see her face, for she was always bent over, but maybe someday I could meet her. Someday when I could speak better English I could ask her about the flowers.

The first two weeks passed in a blur. Everything we did was new and different. Instead of washing clothes by hand, we washed and dried them in a machine; instead of sweeping floors with a broom, we cleaned them with a vacuum cleaner; instead of listening to news in Gujarati, we listened to the news in English; and instead of seeing so many people on the street, we only saw a few when we went for a walk.

Of all the new things that we did, shopping for groceries was the most interesting. In the supermarket there were frozen dinners, soup in a can, seven different types of milk, more than ten flavors of yogurt, and twenty flavors of ice cream. There was cereal with nuts and cereal with fruit and there was cereal with lots of sugar. There were packages and bottles and containers and cartons all over the store lined up neatly as if they were ready for inspection. It was good to have so many choices, but it was hard to decide what to get.

When we were out shopping, Mommy would try to speak to me in English the whole time, so that I would become more comfortable with the language by the time
school started. Mommy had studied English at university, and she sounded first-class to me. She laughed when I told her. “Well, maybe second-class, now, but we will both be speaking English fluently in a few months, wait and see.”

In the supermarket checkout line no one brought cotton bags from home because they all got as many sturdy brown bags or plastic bags as they wanted. “Dadima would love this store,” I said to Mommy one day. The day was hot, but the bus we were riding in was air-conditioned.

“She would. So many things to choose from!”

“More than that, think how happy she would be to get all these crisp paper bags. She always uses flimsy paper bags over and over again until they fall apart.”

“She might buy more groceries just so she could get more bags,” Mommy said.

“I think she might.”

We reached our stop, and while we walked to our house I said to Mommy, “Do you think someday we'll get a car too? Then we won't have to carry all the heavy stuff on the bus.”

“We don't need a car. In India we bought fresh fruits and vegetables every day and we didn't need a car. Here we shop once a week so we don't need a car at all.”

Mommy was right. We didn't need a car, but I wanted one like everyone else.

*
*
*

After our first four weeks in Iowa City, all the new things that I had found so fascinating in the beginning were not fascinating anymore. The machines did the work, but they couldn't talk to us. The only person I could talk to all day was Mommy. Pappa was busy with his work, and at night Mela wanted to play with him; by the time Mela went to sleep, Pappa was tired and went to bed.

I noticed that the days that had stretched out like a sari when we first arrived were getting shorter, as if someone were clipping a little off bit by bit. I wondered how short the days would become before they became long again. School had already started in India. Here school was starting in two weeks, but it was hard to wait that long with nothing to do. Sometimes in the middle of the afternoon I lay on the couch, staring at the ceiling and walls. They were smooth and clean, as if someone had just finished painting them, and there was never anything interesting to spot.

In India there were cracks on the ceilings and paint peeling on the walls, making rivers, puddles, and whatever else you could imagine. Raju and I used to play a game called Find What I See. If I saw a patch of wall where paint had peeled off in the shape of a bird, I'd say, “I see a bird,” and then he had to find it. Sometimes a row of ants marched along the wall and sometimes a stubborn lizard hung on the ceiling. I didn't like lizards, with their glassy eyes.

The tiles in our house in India were beige with lots of
brown flecks and a few gold ones, which sparkled in the sunlight. On hot summer afternoons Raju and I loved to search for all the gold flecks, pretending they were made out of real gold. The more each of us found, the richer we were. Here the floors were covered in a plain tan carpet, and there were no gold flecks to count.

“Mommy, are you happy here? Do you wish we were in India?” I asked her one evening while she was kneading dough. She paused.

“Why do you ask?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“It's different, but I like it. Do you like it?” she said.

“I don't know.”

“It's a big change for you, but give it a chance. Once school starts and you make friends, it will be better,” she said, returning to her work.

I looked outside and saw that the sun was still bright. “Is it okay if Mela and I walk to the park? We'll be back in an hour,” I said.

The park was only three streets down, and around the corner. When we'd walked one block a ball suddenly rolled toward us. Mela picked it up and threw it to the girl who had missed the basket.

“Thank you,” she said.

“No mention,” I said. When she replied with a puzzled expression, I remembered Pappa had once told me that in
America people say
You are welcome
instead of
No mention
. “You are welcome,” I said.

She smiled and nodded and her blue eyes brightened as her confusion cleared away.

“Can we play with her?” Mela asked in Gujarati.

Before I could answer, the girl threw the ball toward Mela, and Mela picked it up.

“I'm Jennifer. What's your name?” she asked.

“My name is Mela Trivedi.” Mela knew three sentences in English. Her name, her age, and our address. Mommy had taught her those so if she ever got lost, she could ask for help.

Jennifer looked at me. “My name . . . I'm Seema,” I said. “You live here this house?”

“No. This is my uncle's house. My house is six blocks away on the other side.”

Mela was holding Jennifer's ball, and I told her in Gujarati that she should give it back to Jennifer.

“She gave it to me. Why can't I throw it in the basket?” Mela asked.

“What is she asking? Does she want to play?” Jennifer asked.

I hid my embarrassment by keeping my gaze down on Mela's face.

Mela caught the word
play
and nodded her head. “Play. My play.”

“You can shoot the ball in the basket,” Jennifer said, motioning with her hand.

When Mela held the ball above her head to shoot it, it dropped behind her and rolled away. A tall girl who was crossing the street picked it up. She began bouncing the ball, and her touch seem to turn it into her dance partner.

“Ria, throw it to Mali,” Jennifer said to the girl.

“I am not Mali,” Mela said to me, stomping her foot. She wouldn't catch the ball either.

“Her name Mela.
Mali
‘gardener' in my language.” I said.

“I'm sorry, Mela. You have a very, pretty name,” Jennifer said, kneeling down so she was eye to eye with Mela and handing her the ball.

Mela gave her a smile as big as the basketball.

Then she tried to throw the ball, but it didn't even touch the bottom of the basket. Ria picked her up and gave her a piggyback to the net. Mela threw the ball and made a basket. Jennifer began clapping, and so I did too. Mela looked very pleased with herself.

“Where do you live?” Ria asked.

“Next street,” I said, pointing toward our house.

“Ria, this is Seema,” Jennifer said.

“My name is Mela and I am four,” Mela said.

“Hi, Seema. Hi, four-year-old Mela. Do you want to play with us?” Ria said.

“I play not basketball,” I said.

“It's easy.”

“I play basketball,” Mela said.

While playing, I noticed that Ria's short hair was tightly curled. If those curls were opened up like a fan, they would reach her shoulders. Her skin was not as white as Jennifer's but the color of saffron-and-nutmeg rice pudding, and her large eyes were twinkling with naughtiness. Jennifer's hair was the color of sweet papaya and hung straight down her back, and her eyes were clear water-mirrors that reflected the sky.

Ria asked me, “Do you know Priya Ray or Asha Mehta?”

“No.” I said.

“They go to our school and their parents are from India,” Jennifer said. “Do you know any other kids?”

“I not know anyone,” I said.

“You know us,” Ria said, pointing at Jennifer and herself.

“Yes,” I said, and smiled.

question after question bubbled in my mind. I wished I could speak English fluently. I strung one more sentence together. “How big the classes?”

“About twenty-four, twenty-five,” Ria said.

“In India, we fifty in one class.”

“That's big.”

“You get how much homework?”

“A lot,” Jennifer said.

“I work hard. I fear school very difficult here. My English not good,” I said.

Ria and Jennifer looked at each other. “Your English is fine,” Jennifer said.

“I hope the three of us are in the same class,” Ria said.

“Yes, same class, very nice,” I said.

An hour went by so fast that Mela and I didn't have time to go to the park. When we got home I had so much to tell Pappa and Mommy that I couldn't finish a bowl of rice and dal. “Ria said our principal dresses up in strange costumes like a cow or a pig for one of the holidays.”

“Good thing he doesn't do that every day,” Pappa said.

“No, for Hallo-een or Hollo-ween or something like that. It comes on the thirty-first of October. Everyone dresses up that day.”

“I want to be a princess,” Mela said.

“Fine,” I said. “Ria is going to be a pumpkin. Jennifer doesn't know what she wants to be.”

“How can Ria be a pumpkin?” Mommy said.

“Why not?” I said.

“Because a pumpkin is round and short and you told us that she's very tall,” Mommy said.

“Then it's a challenge,” Pappa said.

“I want to be a princess,” Mela said.

“I told you, you can be a princess,” I said. “What can I be?”

“Not a princess. I'm going to be a princess,” Mela said.

“
O bhaisab!
Will you let me talk? If I can't dress up, then who will take you out and how will you get peppermints and chocolate?” I said.

“I want peppermint. Jennifar will give me peppermint.”

“It's not Jenni
far
, it's Jenni
fer
.” I said.

Mela didn't answer me. Instead, she said. “Pappa, I want chocolate, now.”

“Let's finish eating,” Mommy said. And then in Hindi she said to me, “We'll talk about this holiday after the little one goes to bed.” Mela didn't understand Hindi, but she had not forgotten about the candy, and after dinner Pappa gave us each a piece of chocolate.

That night I asked, “Mommy, can you make me a costume?”

“I don't know how to sew,” Mommy said.

“Can't you sew me anything?”

“Have you ever seen me make a single stitch?”

“No. I wish Kaki were here. She would've made me anything I wanted. Why didn't you learn from her?” I asked.

Mommy didn't reply. I felt miserable hurting her feelings and sat there thinking about what I could say to make
her feel better. After a while I said, “It's fine if you can't sew. October thirty-first is still far away and I'm sure we can think of something.”