Naming Maya (6 page)

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Authors: Uma Krishnaswami

BOOK: Naming Maya
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“Why didn't you tell Amma?” I ask Mami the first moment I get alone with her the following day. “Why didn't you tell her that I went to the movie with Sumati? You said you would.”
She is cleaning the dining table. Not that it needs to be any cleaner. You can practically see your face in it now. She pauses in mid-swipe, glancing at me, and then her hand goes back to work.
“Why?” I ask her.
Another look. This one holds secrets, as if she finds something about me funny but isn't about to tell me what. Not yet, anyway.
“I forgot,” she says, and begins singing in her usual way, paying no more attention to me than if I'd been
one of the crumbs of food she's sweeping up in the cleaning cloth. In between stanzas she mutters, “I forgot. What about it? I forgot.” The words are mixed like spurts of laughter into her singing. Her eyes focus on a place somewhere on the wall behind me, so she looks as if she is looking right through me to someone else.
Outside, the crows begin their daily racket.
“How could you, Mami?” I should have the sense to quit, but I am too upset at the unfairness of it. “You didn't tell her, and she got angry at me, and all you can say is you forgot?”
She turns on me a look so strange and scary it makes me take a step back in sudden panic. Her dark eyes are distant. “I forgot,” she says with a shrug. “I had other things to remember.”
She goes to trim the wick on the lamp she keeps burning all day long. She has set up a small shrine in the alcove in the wall of the dining room. It holds bright pictures of the gods. Mami lights that lamp every morning as soon as she gets off the bus and into the house. She keeps it filled with oil all day so it is still glimmering when she leaves in the evening. By the time she returns the next morning the little flame has died out and she lights it all over again. She recites a long string of Sanskrit verses at the top of her lungs as she does this. Wave upon wave of them roll off her
tongue. She begins always with hymns to Devi in her various forms.
 
The doorbell rings. It is Sumati, waving an American flag. “What are you doing with that?” I ask, letting her in.
“It's the Fourth of July,” she says, all excited. “Aren't you supposed to do something? Here, I got the Nuisance to make you a card. He's playing at a friend's house, so I thought I'd come over. I wanted to bake a cake. Don't know how, though, and Amma's gone to work, so I couldn't ask her to help.”
I'm so surprised I don't know what to say. The card shows a tall building that looks more like the Eiffel Tower than anything in America. In Ashwin's wobbly handwriting it says, “Happy July Forth.” What a lot of trouble they've gone to! “Thanks,” I say at last. “Where did you get that flag from?”
“Oh, my photographer uncle brought it back from America for me years ago. I used to collect flags. Here, you want it?”
I dissolve into tears. “What?” she cries in concern. “What did I do? I thought you'd be pleased.”
“I—am.” I hiccup. “It's just … you're so nice. Thank you.”
“You always cry when people are nice to you?”
She gives me an awkward little hug. “Stop, silly,” she says, which of course makes me even more of a wreck. “Something you need to talk about?”
And that's when my worry about Mami comes out. I tell it poorly, all in a rush, like a bottle of fizzy Limca uncapped too soon after being shaken up.
When I finish, Sumati is silent. “Maybe she just forgot,” she suggests at last. “I mean, she's getting old, you know. Old people forget things.” She is so filled with cheerful common sense that I feel foolish. Perhaps my imagination is just working overtime. And when Mami comes to see who is here, she seems so much her normal self that Sumati shrugs her shoulders at me as if to say,
See? I told you there's nothing to
worry about.
At first Mami is confused when Sumati tells her it's Independence Day. “No, no,” she corrects Sumati. “That is not till August fifteenth. Don't they teach you anything in these schools these days?”
Sumati clarifies. “No, Mami, in America it's Independence Day today.”
Mami says, “Oh, why didn't you say so? It's the
vellaikkara
independence!” In celebration of the white people's holiday, she insists on boiling a pot of milk to make
payasam.
She cooks a handful of fine noodles in the milk. She tosses in sugar, and pinches of saffron
and cardamom. When she is done, all three of us sit on the
oonjal.
We swing back and forth gently, and sip the hot sweet liquid from little stainless steel cups. Mami wants to know what I would be doing if I were back in America now. She nods enthusiastically when I tell her about fireworks and parades. “People are the same everywhere,” she says. “Everyone celebrates special days with fireworks and parades.”
After Sumati has said goodbye and gone home, I think,
Lighten up, Maya. Nothing's
wrong.
 
Mom is Official Mom this afternoon because the real estate agent, Prasad, brings new people to see the house. He takes off his shoes at the door, where people coming into the house are expected to. You can tell who has company in any house up and down the road by the rows of shoes and sandals at the door. He is dressed like one of the billboards that advertise men's clothing, pants ironed to a sharp crease, tie held in place with a little fussy pin.
“How do you like India?” Prasad asks me. He sets his briefcase down and wipes his forehead with a white handkerchief. “You are here in mango season. You like mangoes?”
“Yes,” I say. “Yes. I like mangoes.”
He and Mom chat about mangoes. They debate politely
over the best variety (Alphonso or Banganapalli). On one point Mom agrees with Prasad—you can't get a decent mango in the United States.
The prospective buyers are a husband and wife. They are small and quiet, both of them, matched in size and volume. They talk back and forth to each other, quickly, in undertones, refusing to join in the mango conversation. The wife jots columns of numbers on a floppy notepad and wriggles her toes so her silver toe rings click on the floor.
Mami brings coffee around. It is milky and sweet and steaming hot, with a lovely bitterness that fills the air. I don't like the taste of it much but I love that smell. She looks them all up and down. She urges, “Drink before it gets cold. Best blend of peaberry and robusta.” Steam rises from the stainless steel tumblers of coffee, promising they will not cool anytime soon.
“Very good,” says Prasad. He takes an obedient sip of the scalding stuff.
“From Narasu's. I ground it myself.” Mami beams. I stifle a grin, having been with her on a couple of those coffee-grinding trips. Mami's method is to commandeer the coffee grinder after bullying the owner into admitting he doesn't know the first thing about truly fine coffee. When she's got him to the point where he is
begging her to teach him how best to use his own equipment, she then holds up all the other customers till she's got the stuff done to exactly the right consistency. She passes out samples of it to everyone in the store, admires the texture and scent, declares the price outrageous, and only then counts out the rupees.
Prasad finishes his coffee, clears his throat, and says, “Hrmm, shall we?” And Mom says, “Please. Go through the house. I'll be here if you have any questions.” Mami takes off reluctantly with the empty tumblers.
Reciting a list of the selling points of the house, Prasad leads the couple into the hallway and up the stairs. “Excellent condition. It has been in the same family for three generations. And of course this is a prime location.”
I think perhaps I'll tell Mom about my concerns about Mami, but before I can say anything, she mumbles about going to see if Mami has enough milk money. So I don't get a chance to talk to her. I tell myself that it's all Mom's fault. If she'd wanted to hear me even a little, I'd have shared my worries about Mami with her in the first place. Even if they were needless worries.
That's right,
chimes in the Dad voice in my head.
Why didn't she listen to you? Why didn't she tell you
there was nothing to worry about?
What did Sumati say when we were playing hangman? To be left in the lurch. I say it to myself a couple of times. In the lurch.
I am still lurching along and feeling aggrieved the next day, but Mom does not seem to notice. She has other things on her mind. The buyers have decided they are not. Not buyers, that is. Not for this house. “They say it is too old,” reports Prasad. “Not enough conveniences. No built-in cupboards, no modern kitchen. Too old and sprawling.”
After Prasad has delivered the bad news and gone, my mother sighs and says, “We just have to wait till he finds someone else to see the house. Is there something you'd like to do, Maya? Shall we go look at the shops on Mount Road?”
“I don't care,” I say.
“Well, what do you want to do?” Now she asks.
I set my chin. “I don't care,” I repeat.
“Does that mean yes or no?” She sounds exasperated.
I shrug. “Yes, I guess.” I'll go, but I can't pretend I'm going to enjoy it.
We take an auto rickshaw to Mount Road, which has been renamed something else but everybody still calls it Mount Road. The auto man refuses to make the U-turn it would take to get us to the side of the road we want. He is headed the other way, he says, but we can cross, right here. He points to a little break in the median, and then blasts off with a cheery toot of his horn.
Crossing Mount Road is a little like running an obstacle course in which all the obstacles move with great noise and speed in unpredictable directions. This is because, among other things, drivers don't stop for pedestrians. Some stop for the lone traffic light on the far end of the divided road, but we can't bank on that either. If we want to cross, we have to scope out the oncoming vehicles quickly, then make a mad dash across the road. We keep a swift eye all around so we can dodge cars and buses and motorbikes. They all keep coming. They honk and beep at us for daring to get in their way. We manage to make it safely to the other side, in spite of one blue bus that obviously has us in its sights for target practice.
We end up in a huge dusty cavern of a store filled with carved wooden figures—elephants, camels, birds, masked dolls with spring-mounted heads that dance when you touch them. And little brass bells on strings, and statues sized from tiny to larger than life. I hover around the trays of miniature objects. I've always liked small things. They are comfortable. You can tuck them in your pocket and only you know they're there.
“Want to get something for Joanie?” Mom asks. While I am debating whether to reply, she says, “It's okay, pick something you like. A Two-Gift?”
I stare at her. That's a Dad line.
One gift to keep and one to give away, me to Joanie, Joanie to me. It was a rule we made years ago when we were both much younger. Every time we go anywhere with our families, we bring back two gifts. Looking at our twin collections, you can trace the places we've been the years we've been friends. We each have a replica Capitol (Joanie's visit to Washington, D.C.); a bear bookmark from Arizona (my trip to the Grand Canyon); coral from Florida (Joanie's trip to see her grandma Beth); and Mickey Mouse buttons from Disney World (my sixth-birthday trip).
Dad loved the term
Two-Gift
. Whenever we went anywhere on vacation, he was the one to remind me. “Nothing for Joanie?” he'd ask. “A Two-Gift?”
No Dad to remind me. No Dad to make funny faces, to make me laugh so hard the tears would run down my cheeks and I'd beg for mercy. “Stop, stop. Oh, I'm getting a stick in my side.”
Mom would say, “Stitch, sweetheart, stitch.” But Dad would pretend he had a stick in his side that wouldn't come loose, and stagger around trying to get it out, and drive us both into a weakness of laughter.
I steal a sideways look at my mother. The only thing that makes her laugh close to that hard these days is chatting with Lakshmi Auntie about old times. Suddenly, despite my determination to stay mad, I want her to laugh with me about something now. But there's no funny memory handy.
From among the baby elephants, I finally pick two. They are carved in a dark wood, each one no bigger than my thumb. Their trunks are raised high. Their ears have a friendly flap to them.
We pay and wait while the cashier wraps the little carvings in great wads of paper and sticks them in a box for us.
Dad,
I say to him in my head,
do you like them?
And he answers,
Like them? Of course I like them
.
Thank you
, Dad, I say. He doesn't reply so I say it again.
Thank you.
“You're welcome,” says my mother, and I jump. I've spoken out loud without realizing it.
“Hope Joanie likes her elephant,” says Mom.
“Huh? Oh, yeah, I hope so too.”
We manage to get an auto rickshaw going in the right direction and head for our next stop, the bookstore at the other end of Mount Road. Every once in a while, as the auto rickshaw swerves through traffic or loops around a cow chewing cud in the middle of the road, I can feel Mom looking at me. I stare straight ahead at the smiling movie stars who dance in flimsy neon robes on giant billboards, in between looming ads for cheese and chocolate, cell phones and CD players.
The bookstore turns out to be much more eventful than I have expected. Mom picks up a newspaper and a book for Joanie's mother,
Fabric Arts of India.
Susan is an artist. Her prints and silkscreens sell in galleries and on the Internet.
I pick out some postcards. I think perhaps I will send Joanie one, since, like the Two-Gifts, postcards are a vacation tradition.
We pay, and a doorman ushers us out of Bookmarks, Etc.: The Place for Books and More. “May I see your receipt, madam? Thank you. Please come again.” The bookstore is a polite world.
All of a sudden pandemonium erupts on the landing outside. A woman has gotten the hem of her sari caught between two of the metal plates on the down escalator, the ones that mesh together to make a step when the thing rolls you along. She falls heavily, as if falling has made her dense, so that she lands with the crash you'd expect from someone twice her size. The escalator keeps carrying her down, chewing up her sari as it goes. She screams. People scramble, run, jump off, as if the escalator were the sinking
Titanic.
A little crowd gathers.
The woman shrieks,
“Ayyo, ayyo, yen podavvai, yen
podavvai.”
Well, we can all see it's her sari, her sari!
People shout instructions to no one, or at least it doesn't look like anyone is listening. “Be still!” “Shut it off!” “Jump off!” “Call security!” And this one: “No panic, please!”
Someone gets the escalator to choke to a halt. The woman yanks herself loose from the folds of her sari, all six yards of its bright pink length. She stands there shaking in her underskirt and blouse, her bright red
pottu
running sweatily down her forehead.
A huddle of people watch as one of the doormen from the bookstore pulls out half-digested bits of pink sari, oil-stained from the escalator's innards. As if the machine is spitting it out because it doesn't taste good.
The woman's face is tight with anger and embarrassment. I stare at her.
A policewoman appears from nowhere, all shinybright in stiffly starched khaki pants and tight leather belt and braided hair. She escorts the sariless woman and the rescued remains of her clothing off behind a door marked “Authorized Personnel Only.”
We take the stairs down to the street level. Mom waves a passing auto rickshaw to a stop, and we ride home. I wonder what it is like to have an escalator rip your clothes off in public, so you have to pretend dozens of people aren't staring at you.

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