Same Sun Here (8 page)

When the parakeets see the pigeons, they get reallllly mad. They scream and flap around their cages. I think it upsets them to see birds that are free. Parakeets are also very jealous animals. They don’t like for Mrs. Lau to love anyone but them. They pull on poor Cuba’s tail with their beaks if he stands too close to their cages. He wants so badly to be friends. He wags politely and tilts his head and cups his ears forward when they squawk. But only Xie-Xie will be his friend. She is a white parakeet with a yellow crest, and when she is out of her cage, she sits on Cuba’s rump and cleans herself. Sometimes she even lets Cuba lick her. She looks a little bit sick about it but also like she knows he does that because he is a dog. When Cuba comes back from a walk, she flaps prettily to show him she is glad, and she makes a crackling sound in the back of her throat. She doesn’t make that sound for anybody but Cuba. Mrs. Lau says if a dog and a parakeet can love each other, then so can anybody. I think she is right.

October 22, 2008

I don’t know if it is OK to tell you this since you are a boy. Mum and Dad and Kiku would say it is not OK. But I would like to tell you since we agreed to be our real true selves with each other. Well, here goes. Yesterday it was very hot, as if it were the middle of summer. I had on a pair of culottes that came up to my knees. A boy in my maths class said my legs were nasty and hairy and asked me if they had razors in India. Everybody laughed, and I pretended I didn’t care and kept on working. Reepa, an Indian girl who was born in New York, was sitting near me in class and she laughed, too. Later I saw her in the bathroom, and while I was washing my hands she stood next to me and said that her cousins in Bengal also didn’t shave their legs, but no one noticed because they kept them covered. I didn’t say anything. It made me mad that she laughed at me in front of everyone but tried to be nice in private.

When I got home, I was upset and told Kiku what had happened, and I asked if I could borrow his razor. At first he said no, but all of a sudden he changed his mind. We only have a shower, not a bathtub, so he filled the bucket we use to catch leaks with warm water, put the lid down on the toilet, and told me to sit there with my legs in the bucket. He showed me how to apply the shaving cream and how to shake the razor in the water to get the hairs off. Then he left and shut the bathroom door, but he stayed just outside and talked to me about a fight he’d had with Ana Maria. It really helped me to hear his voice. . . . Oh, my gosh, River. Shaving was kind of scary. I thought I would cut myself and bleed to death. I know boys have to shave their faces, but faces are small and legs are long. It took forever to do one leg, and then I still had the other to go! When I was finished, Kiku came in and checked my work. He said, “You missed some hairs on your knees. Girls always do that.” So I shaved them off and wondered if he has seen Ana Maria’s knees up close. I think he has.

My legs felt so weird. The air stung my skin and I felt like a different person somehow.

When Mum came home, we showed her my legs and she said that was the last time she’d leave Kiku in charge. She said I was too young and that Daddy would be mad at her. Then she gave me some cocoa lotion that burned, and said the hair will grow back thick and coarse and I will have to shave my legs for the rest of my life. But I don’t care. I like how it looks and no one can laugh at me now, and when I am very old, I will let it go hairy and wild again.

Right now I am sitting on the floor, wrapped up in a red-and-purple blanket Dadi knit. It was hot yesterday but today it is freezing. I can see out the window onto Orchard Street. The crispness of the air changes the streetlights. They look brighter and sharper than they do in the summer. I love when it gets cold. Do you? It makes me want to curl up with a book and a hot cup of tea.

I have been saving the best for last. Daddy was home this past weekend. He took the bus in and we met him at the Port Authority and went bowling. There is a bowling alley right at the bus station. Isn’t that funny? Their fountain soda tastes great. Better than soda from a can. Anyway, Kiku won, like he always does, and I got one lucky strike and a lot of gutter balls. It makes us all laugh how Mum kneels at the end of the lane and pushes the bowling ball with both hands. She got three strikes doing that, and we laughed till we cried. Bowling is something we never did in India. Kiku tried it one night with his friends here, then showed us.

After bowling, we stayed up late. I read to Daddy from my journal so he would know what we’ve been doing and wouldn’t feel left out. Mum gave him the muffler she has been knitting. It is blue and the stitches run in long tight chains. I love the way it looks. I have never seen people knit here the way we knit in Mussoorie. Up at Landour Bazaar, the women walk, or sit in a circle, and make sweaters and gossip about whoever is not there that day. Their fingers move faster than their tongues, and they never look down at their work and they never make a mistake. Well, Mum gave Daddy the muffler and said she had thought of him with every stitch. It was not cold that night but Daddy wrapped the muffler around his neck anyway. It went around twice, and he said, “I am a lucky man.” It was sweet.

Have I told you before that Daddy works at a catering hall? I can’t remember. It is a good job that Sushil-Uncle got him. If you work in a restaurant, some nights are slow and you get bad tips. But if you work in a catering hall, you are always guaranteed to make $150 a night, and whatever else you make in tips. Daddy eats for free at the catering place five days a week, and he shares a room in a hotel with three of the busboys, who are all from South America.

Daddy loves to watch people and tell stories. At the catering hall, he sees lots of weddings and sweet sixteens and anniversaries and corporate meetings and confirmations and bar and bat mitzvahs. He has told us about all of these things. It is crazy how much money people will spend on a party that lasts only one night.

Here are the two best stories Daddy told about his work:

#1 One night a sweet sixteen happened at Old Miller Ridge (that is the name of the catering hall). The birthday girl wore a pink dress and a diamond crown. There was a DJ at the party and everybody ate lobster, even the children. The teenagers at the party were rude to the waiters and waitresses, and the girl’s father kept talking about how much money he had. (Daddy said the man never even talked to his daughter. He was too busy showing off.) At one point, the man stood on a table and ripped a $100 bill in half! Daddy said he did that to show he had so much money he could afford to waste it. And all of the teenagers applauded. Well, right when the party ended, someone got sick from drinking beer and threw up in the hallway. Daddy was very irritated and went to get a mop, and when he opened the cleaning closet, he saw the girl’s father in there. The man was kneeling on the floor in the dark, and guess what he was doing . . . he was putting that ripped $100 bill back together with Scotch tape!

Oh, we laughed so hard at that story! Daddy acted out all the parts. You should have seen him leaping on the table.

Here is the other work story he told:

#2 It was a nice wedding with yellow flowers and salsa music. The bride was a pretty girl with a lot of energy. She danced for hours and talked to everyone. She was from Mexico, and only her mommy and daddy had come to the wedding. The rest of her family was still in Mexico. Her husband was American, and Daddy said you could see he loved the girl, and so did his family, because they all kept hugging her. In the middle of the party, the girl came bursting through the kitchen doors. Her dress was white and full and made lots of swishing sounds. She came into the kitchen to tell everyone how good the food was and to say thank you, and then she started talking a mile a minute in Spanish to the cooks, and it turned out her cousin was from a village close to Javier’s (Javier is the head chef at the Miller Ridge). She sat down on a grapefruit crate, with her dress spread all around her. Next to her was a big bucket of potatoes and a peeler, and all of a sudden the girl picked up the peeler and started to work. She sat there for fifteen minutes in her beautiful white wedding dress and peeled potatoes and swapped jokes with the young dishwashing boys, who had all fallen in love with her. She would have kept on working and talking, except that her mother came looking for her, so she had to go. At the very end of the night, the bride and groom came into the kitchen with the leftover wedding cake and champagne and told everyone to enjoy it. Daddy said the cake tasted like butterscotch and the champagne gave him a headache and he couldn’t stop laughing because the dishwashing boys kept fighting over which of them the bride had liked best.

I asked Daddy why the girl had peeled potatoes, and he said he thought the boys in the kitchen reminded her of her family in Mexico, so she wanted to be with them for a little while.

It seems like there are so many homesick people in the world. It seems like so many of us live far away from where we were born. Is it like that in Black Banks, too?

On Sunday Daddy had to go back to New Jersey. I am sorry to have written so much in this letter. I have been trying to tell stories to make you feel better. I hope it has worked. You can talk to me anytime, about anything.

I am still sitting on the bedroom floor, but now the moon is shining bright through the window. It is just two days past full, with a little chip off the top. It is hard to see the page, so I think I am writing crooked, but I don’t want to turn on the lamp and wake Mum. I hope you can read this. Write to me soon.

Your friend,

Meena

P.S. I translated this for you so you could meet Dadi: