Chloe in India (4 page)

“Dechen,” I whispered. And the world went black.

When I woke up, I was in bed.

Mom was sitting in a chair beside me. Her laptop was balanced on the foot of my bed and she was leaning forward, typing at an awkward angle. She was concentrating hard, her eyebrows knitted together. She chewed on her bottom lip as the computer keys went clickety-clack.

“Mom?” I whispered. My throat felt dry. I licked my lips.

She looked up. “Hey there, pumpkin.” She put her laptop on the floor and scooted her chair up toward the head of the bed, leaning over to place a cool hand on my hot forehead. “How you feeling?”

“Water,” I whispered. She nodded and handed me a glass from the night table. When I took a sip, pain shot through the left side of my face.

“What happened?” I asked.

“You got hit with a cricket ball,” she said. “Got you on the left cheek. Luckily, Dechen saw it all from the balcony. And there was a girl from your school there….”

“Lakshmi,” I said. I glanced around the room, as though expecting to find her there. “Where is she?”

Mom shrugged. “I don't know, sweetie. I wasn't home when it happened, but Dechen said she wouldn't come in.” Mom was silent for a moment; then she took my hand. “I'm so sorry, Chloe. I should have been home. I was at an interview. I…”

“It's okay, Mom,” I said. “I'm okay.”

Mom leaned back in her chair. “Daddy's on his way home from the airport. When he gets here, we'll take you to the hospital. You blacked out and you might have fractured your cheekbone. We'll need some X-rays.”

“No,” I said. I pulled myself slowly to a seated position. “See? I'm fine.”

The door inched open and Dechen's big, round face poked into the room, Lucy's little one glued right next to hers. When Dechen saw me sitting up in bed, she rushed over and hugged me tight to her chest, rocking me back and forth, Lucy squished between us.

“Ouch!” I protested, but I squeezed her back anyway.

“Thanks God!” Dechen said. She pinched my good cheek between her fingers. “Thanks God you alive, or else who eat all the
momos
I cook today?”

“Momo!”
Lucy echoed in her little baby voice.
“Momo!”

And then, even though it hurt my face, Mom and Dechen and I all began laughing at the same time.

That night, Mom broke open a new pack of tea lights, Dad got two bottles of beer and one carton of apple juice from the bottom shelf of the fridge, and we threw ourselves a
momo
party. It hurt a little when I chewed, but I still managed to break my personal record: twenty-three
momos.
When I dribbled soy sauce down my T-shirt, Mom didn't say anything, she just handed me a paper napkin and pointed.

There was vanilla ice cream for dessert. It was the local brand, Mother Dairy. Usually Anna complains—it's too full of artificial flavors and emulsifiers; she likes to keep her body clean and pristine, outside
and
inside—but even she must have been feeling the family glow, because I saw her sneak seconds.

Once we had all finished, a satisfied lull settled over the table. Dad leaned back in his chair and rubbed his hands on his full belly in his relaxed, Friday-night pose.

“So who's this savior of yours, this Lakshmi?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Don't really know. She showed up at school today,” I said. “She's new.” I scraped the bottom of my ice cream bowl with my spoon. “She's a little strange.”

“What do you mean ‘strange'?” Mom said.

My mom is always doing that: repeating what I say and then asking me what I meant. I guess it's the journalist in her. I find it pretty annoying. Can't I just say what I want and not have to explain it all the time?

“I just mean strange,” I said.

“Elaborate, please,” Mom said.

I rolled my eyes. “You wouldn't understand.”

“Try me.”

“Well, no one really talks to her. No one tries to be friends with her. And she looks kinda different.” I hesitated, searching for more specific evidence. “Anvi says she smells.”

“She's EWS,” Anna said quietly.

I turned to Anna, surprised. “What?”

“She's EWS: economically weaker section.” Anna looked at me. “It means she's poor.”

“Oh,” I said.

Mom and Dad exchanged a glance over the table.

“What do you know about this, Anna?” Dad said.

Anna started folding her napkin, matching the corners up, then running her index finger slowly along the crease.

“You know how I'm a uniform monitor?” We all nodded.

“We had a meeting today. There are some EWS kids who don't…um…who
can't
comply with all the uniform regulations. So we had a meeting to decide what to do about it. Lakshmi's name came up.”

Mom tilted her head to the right—her investigative reporter pose. “These EWS kids, they don't have the money to buy uniforms?”

“Mostly,” Anna said. “So we're offering them uniforms from the lost and found. But I guess some parents won't take them. They're too proud or something. Others do, but then the kids end up with uniforms that might be, like, faded or re-hemmed or have missing buttons or whatever.” Anna gave a little shudder at the thought. “They don't always look…proper.”

“Lakshmi's skirt is too short and there's a rip on her sleeve,” I volunteered.

“And that's why she's quote-unquote strange? And that's why the other kids are refusing to befriend her?” There was an angry bite to Mom's voice.

Let me take a minute to explain: my mom's parents (my nana and grandpa—the ones on Cape Cod) used to be hippies, which means that they had really long hair and walked around barefoot and believed that everybody is equal and should love everybody else. They taught my Mom to care about Issues of Social Justice, which is, like, how people treat each other. She gets really worked up about stuff like that.

“She does have a friend,” I protested. “There's this girl Meher—”

“She's EWS, too,” Anna said.

Mom's face was turning red.

“Helen…,” Dad said.

“No, David,” Mom said. “I will not have such talk at my dinner table—”

“Take it easy. Chloe had an accident today. She doesn't know any better.”

“Take it easy? I will
not
take it easy!” Mom banged her fist on the table, making the chopsticks—and all the rest of us—jump. “And she
should
know better. Isn't it bad enough that the girls are surrounded by daily displays of ostentatious wealth? The ‘New India,' ” Mom said, and snorted. “How much of that money is made off the backs of the poor? I will not have them engaging in discriminatory behavior toward the economically disadvantaged!”

“Lord, please,” Anna muttered. “Not the ‘I Have a Dream' speech again.”

Dad held his hands up in T-formation in front of his chest—his time-out pose when we all start to bicker.

Mom paused and took a deep breath.

“How about we try to explain this to the kids,” Dad said.

“I'd like to hear you try,” Mom muttered. She took a swig from her beer bottle.

“So, girls,” Dad began. He had turned on his lecture voice, the one he uses for colloquiums, which is his fancy word for meetings. (My dad's an economist. His meetings are about money and banks and stuff.)

“A few years ago, the government of India instituted a new law—the Right to Education Act—which said that education is a fundamental right of every child. Every Indian child
must
go to a local school—and it's the government's responsibility to see that they do.”

Mom couldn't help herself: “But the government schools are deplorable. It would be a crime to force children—”

Dad held up his time-out signal again and—surprisingly—Mom stopped.

“In Delhi,” Dad continued, “the government told private schools, including yours, that they had to start admitting a certain percentage of children who fall under the ‘economically weaker section.' ”

“Poor kids,” I said, trying to be helpful. “They had to take in poor kids.”

“Yes, Chloe,” Dad said. “Something like twenty-five percent of every incoming class in every private school must be reserved for EWS students.”

“Like Lakshmi,” I said.

“Like Lakshmi,” Dad said.

Mom's eyes were shining. “Can you imagine?” she said. “This could be the beginning of a social revolution in India. New doors of opportunity opening for children whose parents had none!”

“But Lakshmi's not a little kid,” I said. “I mean, she's not starting in kindergarten.”

“Her dad's the new
mali
at school,” Anna chimed in. “They sometimes give places to children of staff.”

“That's what I mean!” Mom clapped her hands. “It's simply extraordinary. The daughter of a school gardener sitting next to the daughter of a tycoon!”

“Anvi Saxena's dad is a tycoon,” I volunteered. “She brought in a magazine once. It had a picture of him at a party. He was wearing a lavender turban. And it said ‘Delhi Tycoon' under the photo.” I nodded, pleased with myself.

Dad gave Mom a quizzical look.

“Deepak Saxena,” Mom said. “CEO of Saxena Enterprises—the ones building that massive commercial complex out in Noida. You know, with the tallest residential tower in the world…”

“Hmm,” Dad said, raising his eyebrows. Then he turned to me. “That's a good example, Chloe. Because of this new legislation, you now have a girl worth several billion dollars next to a girl whose dad makes, let's say, a hundred bucks a month.”

There was a pause as everyone let this information sink in.

“How much do you guys make?” I asked.

Dad smiled. “That's not something you have to worry about, sweetie,” he said. “Let's just say that we're in the middle. We're…” He paused, then winked at Mom. “We're comfortably middle class.”

“Money…” Mom sighed. “What you'll learn, pumpkin, is that money is not so important—”

Dad interrupted her: “Well, as long as you have enough to feed your children and put a roof over their heads and provide them with a decent education…”

“What actually matters,” Mom continued, “is the way we treat one another.” She placed one beer-bottle-chilled hand over mine. “And that's why you need to be nice to Lakshmi.”

Huh?

“She's new, right? And it sounds like maybe she's having a little trouble fitting in. Can you do that? Can you help her?”

Suddenly everyone was looking at me: my mom, my dad, my perfect big sister, Anna. And before I knew what I was doing, I was nodding. I was promising to help Lakshmi—the skinny new kid with the little-girl braids and the ripped shirt—to fit in. I knew that was the right thing to do. I mean, I know from recent personal experience how hard it is to be new, and Lakshmi
had
just helped me out in the park….But the truth is, I didn't know
how
to help Lakshmi. I mean, I was still pretty new myself. And I felt like an outsider too. So what was
I
supposed to do?

Even though I'm getting too big for it, Mom and Dad tucked me into bed that night.

“We're so proud of you, sweetie,” Mom whispered as she kissed my good cheek.

I knew what she was talking about. She was talking about Lakshmi, about my promise to help her fit in.

Tears welled up in my eyes, but Mom couldn't see them because the light was already out. She moved toward the door.

“Don't be proud!” I wanted to yell after her. “I don't want to help! I can't! I don't know how! All I want is to go back to Boston, where I'm like everyone else and I have real friends and there are no Lakshmis to worry about.”

Instead, I turned on my side and pretended to fall asleep.

An hour later, I was still wide awake.

I checked the alarm clock: 10:07. Mom had given me some Tylenol before bed, but my cheek was still throbbing. I touched it and winced. At least she had agreed to hold off on the hospital visit.

I closed my eyes, trying to sleep, but scenes from the day kept whirling through my mind: the scissors slicing my hair off; the little girl in the pink skirt, crossing the road by the slum; Anvi laughing; drippy-nosed Dhruv's balled-up picture soaring through the air; Lakshmi's big black eyes, looming above me as I knelt in the dirt, my hands at my cheek. Then I was back at the dinner table with everyone staring at me and I was nodding my head again, making a promise I had no idea how to keep.