Oleander Girl (17 page)

Seema was thrilled and relieved. She’d been afraid he was only slumming with her, that one day he’d move on. She was delighted, too, at the prospect of living in America, of having the chance to walk the magical streets that had popped up so many times on her screen in the call center.

At first all had gone well: a grand opening at the Mumtaz, positive write-ups in the papers, several exciting sales. They rented a charming apartment on the edge of the Upper West Side, in a building with a doorman, like in the movies. They worked well together, she handling the accounts and reception, and he taking care of marketing and customers. When work was done, they plunged into the heady life of New York—restaurants, plays, museums, shopping. Even walking in Central Park or people-watching around Times Square was an adventure. They began to make friends, though generally they avoided the Indian set. They hadn’t come to America, Mr. Mitra reminded her, to stay closeted with their own kind. Seema agreed, though sometimes she missed having friends who would have understood her pangs of homesickness, who could have taught her easy American substitutions for Indian dishes she hankered for, who could have explained how to navigate through the dangers of America she was always hearing about. But in the early days, neither she nor Mr. Mitra considered America dangerous. They often exclaimed how much safer it was than India—no pocket-maars snatching your wallet,
no burglars breaking into your apartment, no corrupt police who showed up at your store for monthly “tea money.”

Then the Twin Towers fell, and everything changed.

When Seema mentions the Towers, her face caves in like an old woman’s; her mouth moves as though the words she needs have suddenly gone missing. The abrupt change startles me. Though I want to hear what happened, I take her hand and tell her she doesn’t have to talk about it if it upsets her.

“I’ll tell you tomorrow,” she finally says. “If I start on it now, I won’t be able to sleep, and that would be bad for the baby.”

We wait up late for Mr. Mitra, but he doesn’t return, and finally, exhausted, we go to bed. Seema sighs and tells me this has been happening lately. Since the vandalism, he works too hard, trying to make up for the losses they encountered. She shows me to a tiny room with a mattress on the floor. Cardboard boxes are stacked along one wall. Some are filled with Indian groceries, stockpiled against a future the Mitras no longer trust; some hold unexpected, elegant decorations: crystal candlesticks heavy enough to be real; a hand-painted Japanese plate wrapped in damask napkins. The room is bitter cold; the window doesn’t close all the way. Seema stuffs a blanket into the opening, but I don’t think it will help much. When she leaves, I take out my mother’s letter and her photo from my suitcase and huddle with them under a surprisingly beautiful satin quilt. What a contradiction this apartment is! Noise from the karaoke bar below hits me in sudden blasts as guests enter and exit. Bollywood songs, nostalgic old favorites, the immigrant’s longing to capture home. In India, I never cared for this kind of music, but now as I hear it, homesickness twists my insides. Before bed, I called Kolkata collect and talked to Grandmother, but only for a minute because it was dreadfully expensive. She sounded sad and worried. I called Rajat’s mobile, too, but no one picked up. I lie on the lumpy mattress, clutching the letter and the photo as though they were talismans that might lead me to my father. I am as far from my loved ones as it is possible to be while still remaining on this planet. Loneliness falls on me like snow over an empty field.

A cockroach scuttles from one box to another, startling me. I hadn’t
thought there would be such creatures in affluent America! The roach rubs its serrated legs together and watches me from the edge of its cardboard fort. It’s a fitting emblem to end my first disconcerting day. I pull the quilt over my head, tucking it in carefully to prevent unwanted night visitors, and stifle a wild laugh against my knuckles. I’m afraid if I get started, I may not be able to stop.

It is a beautiful afternoon, with a crisp, cool breeze unusual for Kolkata in April, but Asif is sweating. His ironed shirt is limp and dark at the armpits as he waits outside the closed gate of Miss Sonia’s mansion. He’s angry with the young woman for making him wait, but also with himself because after seeing the palatial mansion in which she lives—you could fit the Boses’ flat into this compound eight times over—his brain started calling her Miss Sonia.

The gate is made of solid, black iron, embossed with some kind of family crest. It has a small window cut into it at eye level, which the guard on duty opened to question Asif, rudely, on his business. When Asif told him that Miss Sonia had asked him to come here, the man lifted a disbelieving eyebrow and said he would check. Asif took great pleasure in telling him not to bother, he had Miss Sonia’s mobile number and had called her already. But that was fifteen minutes ago, and his pleasure had faded, especially as the guard had just opened the window again and said, “You still here?”

Bitch, he thinks. Forcing him to wait like a beggar outside her gate when she was the one who needed him. Because of her he’s wasted his off-duty afternoon, the only one he got all week. He could have been at the zoo, his favorite spot. Right now, he could have been sitting on a bench outside the aviary, munching on crisp, hot bhajias from the vendor, watching the bright birds flit from branch to branch inside cages so large that they probably didn’t know they weren’t free. They reminded him of his sister and of Pia-missy, the way they cocked their heads to look at him curiously. Often he found himself smiling back at them. From there he would go to the elephant compound, where he fed peanuts to the big,
lumbering beasts, enjoying the feel of their raspy, inquiring trunks in his palm. It always put him in a good mood when the elephants trumpeted and salaamed him after the peanuts were gone. Animals were superior to most humans. Men would have turned away once you had nothing more to give them. If Asif hadn’t dropped out of school in sixth class, he would have written a shayari on the subject.

Asif decides he isn’t going to waste any more time on Sonia. Let her go to hell. He strides down the street, shouldering roughly past other pedestrians. He’s almost at the bus stop when he hears the horn and knows it to be hers, slicing powerfully through the other street sounds, tempting him like a siren’s song. Against his will, he looks.

The breeze from the open window has tousled her hair just the right amount. Or maybe there are things—shampoos, gels, he’s seen them on TV—that make her look this way. He has to admit that she’s attractive. The mocking expression in her eyes says she knows it, too.
Look but don’t touch. I’m not for your kind.

“Impatient, aren’t you?” she says casually. She gestures for him to climb into the passenger seat.

He’d love to turn his back on her and keep walking, but he does as she says. He’s curious about what she’s planning—and about the Porsche. He’ll never get another chance to sit in a car like this. Owners of foreign-model two-seaters liked to show them off by driving themselves around. The leather is silken, the skin of a princess. She’s dressed for tennis in a tight blue top and a short, white, pleated skirt that exposes unseemly amounts of thigh and sends evil thoughts careening through his mind. The outfit is what he expected, but the perfume she’s wearing startles him, floating its light, flowery innocence through the cool air of the car. It seems like something Pia-missy might have chosen.

Sonia weaves deftly through the unruly Kolkata traffic, one hand on the wheel. When she needs to honk, she uses her elbow, a fluid jab that Asif vows to try for himself as soon as he has a chance. Not that Memsaab would allow it. He can just hear her:
Asif, what kind of crazy bug has got into your head? You want to land us in the hospital?

With her other hand Sonia takes a sealed envelope out of her purse. “Give this to Rajat-saab. Today. Make sure he’s alone when he gets it.”

She drops the letter in his lap and digs in the purse again. This time she takes out some rupee notes and holds them out for him to take. The three notes are each for a thousand rupees. His heart gives a jolt, as if the car had just hit un unexpected pothole. It’s almost a month’s salary. Does so much money mean nothing to people such as Sonia? How much more did she have in that purse of hers? A fantasy unspools with dizzying velocity through his brain. A lonely stretch of road—maybe near the river. He leans over and flings open her door. Grabs the purse and pushes her from the car. Maneuvers himself into the driver’s seat. Ah, the feel of that hard, gleaming steering wheel under his fingers. The acceleration smooth as butter. It was a big country. He could go far away, sell the car, start a new life. There were people who bought things like that. He was confident he could find them. Meanwhile he’d use the money in the purse, change his name, dye his hair, lie low like a wild animal. He’d never work for another rich bastard again.

“What’s wrong with you?” Her voice, raspy with too many late nights in too many immoral places, jerks him back to the present like a fishhook. “Take the money!”

The fantasy hangs around him like hashish smoke, which he tried when the other drivers prodded him, but only once because of how disgusted it made him feel later. He cannot quite reach past the haze to formulate an objection. So he takes the notes, though a warning jangles through his system.

What could be in that letter?

She gives a small, satisfied smile. Her teeth are white and straight. She pulls over smoothly to the curb, motions to him to get out.

“Make sure you give it to him as soon as you can. Believe me, I’ll find out if you don’t. And don’t even think of double-crossing me.”

“Oh, no, madam, never-never.” His voice is obsequious yet steady, a loyal, trustable voice. He has already resolved to steam open the letter and read its contents, then decide what to do.

Late afternoon of my second day. I lie on the couch after lunch, gripped by the tentacles of jet-lag sleep. When I awoke around noon, to my dismay Mitra was nowhere to be seen. Seema told me he left for work, but I’m suspicious. Perhaps he never came home last night. She told me also that Rajat had called, but I was sleeping so soundly, he told her to let me be. I was furious with her for not waking me. I was starved for the sound of Rajat’s voice, for a word of love. But now it was too late at night there for me to call him.

I’m dreaming of the Towers, which Seema talked about a little while ago. When I’d seen the disaster on Indian TV, sitting beside Grandfather in our living room in Kolkata, I’d felt only a mild sorrow. They had been icons of another world, tiny and distant and beheaded already. But in New York their absence saturates the air I breathe. In my dream they loom, bigger and bigger still, unharmed and shining in the midst of a perfect autumn day. The jaunty silver clouds are reflected on their thousand glass windows. I know I’m about to witness their destruction. I try to wake up, but though I thrash and moan, I can’t.

The first plane is slender and graceful, arrow straight. It enters the building smoothly, pauselessly. Only a Medusa smoke, curling thickly everywhere, gives away that this wasn’t meant to happen. By the time the second plane hits, the screams are so loud that I can’t hear the crash. Floors crumble, one collapsing onto the other, a vertical domino set. Chunks of buildings fly at me, malignant comets. They set other buildings afire.

Then the people start jumping. Aghast, I try to turn away, but I can’t climb out of my dream. Around me, white ash drifts like bitter snow. It coats my mouth, it makes me blind. I taste on my tongue hatred for those who could have done such a terrible thing.

Afterward, Seema said, many South Asian businesses were boycotted, especially those with Muslim names. Others were attacked. The Mitras had arrived at the Mumtaz one morning to find the plate glass cracked, paintings slashed, the floor filthy with urine and feces, threats scrawled over the walls in terrifying red letters. The shock had almost caused Seema to have a miscarriage. And worse: when Mitra went to the
police to complain, not only were they unhelpful, but they detained him for two days for questioning. Seema had been in the apartment alone all that time, crazy with worry. No, she didn’t know where they’d taken him, or what exactly they did. When he returned, haggard-eyed, Mitra refused to talk about it. Those two days had changed him, made him bitter and silent the way he’d never been. That was when she developed her fear of strangers. When they had to move out of their Upper West Side apartment because they could no longer afford it, she insisted on living here, among her own kind.