The Gurkha's Daughter (22 page)

“He learn in Kathmandu.”

“What do you do on the computer?”

“I watched YouTube videos in computer.”

“Can you send e-mails?”

“Yes.”

“From now on, you will send me e-mails.”

“Yes.”

“One paragraph on what you did that day. Every day.”

“Yes.”

“Do you like your work?”

“I earn better than friends.”

“What's your ambition?”

“Sorry.”

“Am-bi-tion?”

She shook her head. “Sorry?”

“Am-bee-shun—what do you want to become in life? A teacher, a doctor, a pilot?”

“Don't know. Make a lots of money.”

“How?”

“Own store one day.”

“What kind of a store?”

“Clothes store.”

“Cool,” I said.

We developed a pattern.

Tuesdays, we'd ride the subway uptown together from my workplace. She started cooking right away while I changed in the bedroom and shouted conversation with her. We spoke only in English. While something marinated in the kitchen, we went through printouts of her e-mails; I pointed out mistakes or praised her for an error-free sentence. She was a fast learner and seldom repeated errors. When she did, she rebuked herself by hitting her forehead a couple of times. As she garnished or ladled out food in the kitchen, I pulled a chair close by and engaged her in a translation game in which she had to come up with an English word for every Nepali noun I mentioned. The tight space was disconcerting at first, and I still placed the chair as far away from her as I could, but it was a tiny kitchen. She needed to move a lot, and her ponytail occasionally brushed against my shoulders when she energetically turned her head to translate a word I threw at her.

Saturdays, she came in early in the morning. I had discovered the beauty and freshness of farmers' markets when I was in school back in Pennsylvania, but I hadn't been to one in New York. With Sabitri's arrival early in the morning and my awaking well before the usual time as a result, a farmers' market was the best place to go. Every Saturday, long before eight, we stood in line for the freshest produce in Manhattan and returned
home with enough food to feed an orphanage. I helped Sabitri put away the groceries, after which she cooked while I did laundry or cleaned—she had convinced me to get rid of my German maid. The slow, labored conversation continued throughout the day. I had asked her to begin thinking in English. In the beginning, she said it was impossible to stop thinking in a language spoken since birth. She'd soon begin dreaming in English if I repeated myself often enough, I reasoned.

Back issues of
New York
and
The
New Yorker
littered my bathroom floor, and one day she asked me what the magazines were doing there.

“I read in the bathroom,” I said.

“I don't believed you,” she remarked.

“Yes, I do. It's the most productive thing to do.”

“But I don't knows anyone who does that.” She was incredulous.

“I do, and a lot of people I know do that.”

“
Chee
,” she offered by way of disapproval.

“You just used a Nepali word.” I gave her a stern look.

“But only one, and it's not word even.”

“You could use the English word for it. It's ‘eww.'”

“Ewwww?”

“Yes.”

“Anne grandchildrens says that when I show them how to eat a chicken with hands.”

“Did they?” This was funny. “So now you know
chee
is ‘eww.'”

“Yes, ewwww.” She repeated it a few times and laughed. Soon, she was in convulsions. “Eww, eww.”

“What's so funny?”

“I think, I thinks . . .” she struggled to find the right words and laughed again.

“Yes, tell me.”

“Can I say in Nepali? Too hard—tough, really hard.”

“No, English, English.” I was stubborn.

She began saying a word, shook her head vigorously, tried reconstructing the sentence, lost track midway and started all over again. I was sympathetic, and yet I began to lose patience. “Okay, one last chance in Nepali.”

It was nothing. When she demonstrated to Anne's grandchildren the art of picking shreds of chicken from the bones, the way her family in Nepal did toward the end of their meals, she misunderstood their disgust for enthusiasm. It was only now that she realized they weren't encouraging her to continue slurping and sucking on her chicken bones but to stop it. The memory of it prompted her to slap my thigh as she shook with laughter.

Saturday evenings, we went to Central Park, where I encouraged her to speak to everyone. She asked for directions, talked to children, and behaved like a clueless tourist. When someone understood her on the first go, she gave me a jubilant look and skipped happily. Sometimes children, especially, didn't understand her even after she repeated herself. She then hit herself on the forehead a few times, cursed her stupidity in Nepali, and asked me what was wrong with the question she framed. Often, it was just the diction and the tone, but she was convinced of a bigger problem.

With my German maid gone, Sabitri did the dishes, the mopping, and dusting and also helped with the laundry. I wouldn't allow her to clean the bathroom, and I think she was thankful for that. To her, it meant I respected her, that I thought the job wasn't dignified enough for her although it wasn't beneath me. She had a key to the apartment and when nothing happened at Anne's, which was often, she let herself into my place and spruced it up or cooked an unexpected meal, which greeted me with a Post-it note—in English—mentioning what it was. Smiley faces abounded.

May brought with it a problem in an envelope. My office received a returned letter containing the check it sent to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. When I called a Pakistani acquaintance from college, he told me his check had been returned, too. We were among the people whose H-1B visa applications had been turned down. Because the number of applicants that year had far exceeded the number of visas allotted, the USCIS had adopted a lottery system, just like the year before. It made no sense at all. I was a homeowner in Manhattan with a six-figure salary, and I was rejected. It was a cruel joke, a nasty game played by fate. I talked about it with my colleagues and tried crying in the bathroom. I even considered calling my parents in Darjeeling. My boss and the human resources director asked me if they might be able to help, but I knew they could do nothing. Just an hour ago, the Pakistani friend let me know that the petition of one of his friends who graduated from Yale had been rejected. There was nothing he—or I—could do.

My flawlessly laid plans had been derailed. I was aware of what went on in those IT offices in Jersey. Of fake résumés, doctored degrees, and H-1B commissions. I was aware of at least two companies that applied for H-1Bs for people who weren't even going to be employed there. I heard and read about the semi-legal industry this H-1B craze had given birth to. Were the USCIS to probe into it all, America would realize how easily it has been taken for a ride. Salaries had been concocted, positions recreated, and numbers reinvented. It was a mutually beneficial relationship between conglomerates desperate for labor at subsidized rates and South Asians anxious for a shot at a green card and the American dream. Because everyone is too busy worrying about illegal immigrants, the issue never made its way into newspaper
headlines. The people who lost out were people like me, people who had played by the book and actually deserved an H-1B.

I talked to my boss about continuing the job until the end of December, when my OPT, which facilitated my current year-long employment, would expire. I could then either go to graduate school or leave the country. I couldn't possibly keep up with my mortgage payments if I went back to college. I had used all the money I had saved since my freshman year to buy the apartment. Leaving the country meant returning home without having accomplished a thing. I thought of calling Sabitri, but the idea of having to explain everything to her as if she were a child while my mind raced at an unfathomable speed dissuaded me from it.

The next Tuesday, on our ride uptown, Sabitri asked me what the matter was.

“Nothing,” I said.

“It is something.”

“Can I speak to you in Nepali?”

“No,” she said in shock. She was perhaps offended at the idea that I thought she wouldn't understand me.

“Okay. I'll tell you.”

“Yes, I am listening.”

“My H-1B visa got turned down.”

She was quiet.

“My work visa got rejected.” I hoped she wouldn't catch the ballooning lump in my throat. The last time I cried was eleven years ago.

“What's the problem?”

“I can only legally work until the end of December.”

“What will you do after that?”

“I'll probably have to leave the country, go back home.”

“You mean Nepal?” She still hadn't made peace with the fact that I was from India.

“Yes, India.”

“Any more options you have?”

“Graduate school.”

“That's better.”

“But I need to pay my mortgage.”

“You can do that. You can get job in school.”

“That may not happen. I need to get into a school in New York if I want to continue living in my apartment.”

“What if you get roommate?”

“You've seen how small my apartment is. Who would want to live there? Even a full-sized bed barely fits in my bedroom.”

“You can put advertisement for it.”

“It won't work.”

“You're being—” she stuttered—“pessi-pessimitic now.”

Despite what I felt like, I had to smile. This was a heroic effort, a decent word for someone who barely knew English.

“Pessimistic,” I corrected.

“Oh, yes,” she said, hitting her forehead.

“But it's a great word. And you used it correctly.”

“But pronounce it wrongly.”

“I still think it's great you used it.”

“Okay, now be optimistic.” She smiled. She was full of surprises today.

“I am trying to. It's just that my plans went out the window.”

“I thought I will go to Ratna Rajya College for my BBA. I am servant now.”

“This is different.”

“How different? It's the same.”

She used an article, goddamnit. “You moved to better things. I am moving to worse.”

“Better things? I am wiping shit of Madam's grandchildren. This is not better things.”

“I don't want to go to grad school.”

“Grad school is better things.”

“How will I afford it?”

“By savings.”

“Like that's possible.”

“It is. If you start now.”

“Ugh, I need to find a roommate. I will have to sleep on the couch now.”

“I think I know of roommate for you.” Wow, she
was
full of surprises today.

“Who?”

“Is it problem if it is girl?”

“No, not at all.”

“Me.” She corrected herself. “I mean I, myself.”

Sabitri moved in two days later. She repeatedly told me that she chose to live with me not so she could help me with the mortgage payments but because her male roommates were drunk every night, making her and her female friends uncomfortable. This was like it was meant to happen, she added. A suitcase, half of it filled with English textbooks, was the lone item she brought. She took the closet by the kitchen despite my repeatedly telling her that her clothes would reek with kitchen smells. I insisted that she take my bed and that I would sleep on the couch, but she wouldn't have any of that. If she was unyielding, so was I, and I slept on the bare hardwood floor. When I peeped into the living room, I saw her sleeping on the floor, too. The couch and the bed lay empty.

I heard her turning—the floor creaked—and asked her if she was asleep.

“I fell asleep if I sleep in something comfortable,” came the answer.

“Then take the bed.”

“No.”

“Fine, then sleep on the couch.”

Silence.

“We both know we will not fall asleep on the floor.”

“Okay, I will sleep on couch, but you sleep on bed.”

“All right, I will do that.”

She climbed on the couch.

“It folds out,” I said.

She didn't reply. It was our first argument.

The next morning, she brought me tea while I was still in bed.

“You don't have to do all this,” I said in Nepali. It sounded awkward even to me.

“I made tea for myself,” she said, a smile acknowledging my slipping into Nepali. “No extra work make it for you.”

“But even then. I am not paying you for it.”

“But look how much my English improved. From now, you teach me all English, and I do all housework. Groceries and rent fifty-fifty.”

I didn't know if it was the finality with which she said the last sentence or the sight of her bare legs that unsettled me. Until then, I had only seen her in pants or skirts, but this morning, she still wore the shorts she slept in. The discomfort likely showed, for she avoided my gaze and quickly left the bedroom.

We developed a new routine. She brought me coffee in bed, I headed to the shower, we ate breakfast, left home together, I got off at Midtown, she went to Gramercy, she was usually home before I was, and we ate dinner together. We talked about our days, and I'd study for the GRE while she read. I was successful in getting a friend from Darjeeling to courier us some of my old Enid Blyton
Noddy
books. She went through them cover to cover, read and reread them. When I was bored of studying and lingered in front of the TV too long, she switched it off, placed
her hands on the back of my shoulders, as if she were pushing an immobile car, and steered me into the bedroom. She had found a job for Saturdays and Tuesdays, taking one of Anne's elderly friends on long walks. She didn't mind sacrificing her days off. To her, it was easy money and a chance to work on her English, which showed decent progress.