American as Paneer Pie Read online

  “You can do it, Kendall!” I shouted.

  It didn’t seem to help. The Porpoises and Dragons were now ahead of her, and their swimmers dove in before Kendall reached Aidy.

  Kendall finally touched the wall at the same time as the swimmer from the Rockets. Aidy and the Rockets’ butterfly swimmer dove in at the same time. But Aidy was determined. She sped forward, ahead of the Rockets, almost catching up to the Porpoises and Dragons.

  Their swimmers dove in for the freestyle, and a couple of seconds later Aidy tapped the wall and I went in.

  Icy water hit me all around, but I focused and breathed my way forward until my body and the waves felt like one. I had to catch up. I could do this, I thought as I churned my arms forward. I was strong. My arms were strong. My legs were strong. I had no cuts to stop me. Aidy did, and she still swam faster than anyone in the pool. I could do this.

  I tried to see where the other swimmers were in the split second it took to turn my head to take a breath. But I couldn’t see them. I tried to fight through the burning muscles. Push forward. I reminded myself again, my arms were strong. My legs were strong. I had no cuts to stop me. … Just leg hair to slow me down.

  My legs suddenly started to feel like lead. There was that weight again. The sinking feeling I couldn’t shake off when it came to wanting desperately to impress Aidy.

  “Keep going, Lekha!” Harper screamed.

  I tapped the edge and turned. My arms moved like a windmill as I shoved ahead. Fatigue began to fill my muscles, but I kept going. Fighting the feeling that I was dragging an anchor under me, I hit the wall and pulled my goggles off, ready to hear a bunch of cheers.

  I did. But they were coming from the other side of the bench. The Porpoises had won. The Dragons were second. The Rockets, third. I was a second shy of my best time. Kendall was several seconds off her average. I pulled myself out of the water and took the towel from Coach.

  “Good swim, Lekha,” said Harper, patting my shoulder.

  “You did great,” added Kendall.

  Coach nodded. “You did well, guys. The other teams did a little better. We have a couple of months before conference finals. We’ll get there. Dry off and shake hands.”

  I dried my arms and bent down to dry my legs.

  “You’re in America now,” Aidy said softly, her eyes hardening.

  I looked up. Now? Where was I before?

  “Tell your mom eleven is not too young to shave in America.”

  Aidy turned to shake hands with the Dragons next to us.

  I stood up to join the congratulatory line, smiling and shaking hands with the other swimmers. I wasn’t in the water anymore, Aidy’s heavy words weighing me down, but I couldn’t shake the feeling I was drowning.

  chapter TWENTY-ONE

  I spent the rest of the first weekend of Christmas break enjoying what it was a break from. No school, and no swimming. Nothing to stress about. Nothing to lie about. Nothing to worry about. I was back to being a good Desi girl.

  I spent the day reading books and watching TV, and it was at last time for our neighbors’ dinner. I waited impatiently, visions of mattar paneer dancing in my head, as Aai and Dad got ready. I chewed on a soft garlic clove that Aai had soaked in yogurt and then sautéed in toop. It was an ayurvedic tonic. A garlic clove a day keeps the doctor away. It almost tasted like garlic bread, and I loved it. I grabbed the container to get another clove when the house phone rang.

  I reached for it. “Hello?”

  “Merry Christmas!” said a cheery woman on the other end.

  “Merry Christmas,” I replied.

  “My name is Karen, and I’m calling on behalf of Winters for Congress. May I know who I have the pleasure of speaking to?”

  “Lekha Divekar,” I responded, not sure if I should hang up or keep talking.

  “Wow! What a beautiful name.”

  I sighed. “Thanks.” I knew what was coming next.

  “Where are you from?”

  There it was. The question that filled me with the feeling of being less than. Of not belonging. Like the person asking it had every right to decide who was American and who wasn’t. “Michigan,” I replied as Aai and Dad came down the stairs ready to go.

  The woman chuckled. “No, where are you really from?”

  “India,” I said, giving up. I knew this was the answer she wanted the second the awful question left her lips, because to her, there was no way a person with a name like mine could be from here. “And I have to go. Sorry. Bye,” I blurted before hanging up.

  But before I could put our phone back on the counter, Dad’s cell phone rang.

  He picked it up and I watched his eyebrows move together. “What happened?” He spotted me staring at him and quickly lowered his voice.

  “Let’s get our shoes on,” said Aai.

  “But what about Dad?”

  “Sounds like some work stuff. We’ll wait for him in the car.”

  * * *

  Dad was barely talking as we drove down to Detroit. He got that way sometimes when he was worrying about a patient, so Aai and I tried to pick out what we would order in addition to mattar paneer. But the menu was not loading on What’s the Mattar?’s website.

  When we entered the restaurant, which was filled with the scent of creamy tomato sauce, Dad told the hostess we were meeting some friends. We spotted Noah’s family sitting in a booth near a giant painting of the old movie star Amitabh Bachchan and headed that way.

  We passed several Indian families enjoying their meal and one large table with a white family. I wondered if the hostess had led the Wades to them when they first arrived at the restaurant, the way it always happened to us at an American restaurant. If Aai was inside getting our table while Dad and I found parking, and then we got there, before we could even open our mouths, the host or hostess would always ask, “Are you meeting a woman here?” And they’d lead us to Aai. They just assumed the brown people were together, and I guess in our case, they were right. But it was still annoying.

  At the restaurant Noah and I exchanged our Christmas gifts. Noah had gotten me a set of watercolor pencils to amp up my cow-drawing game. I watched as Noah opened his present.

  “What a gorgeous frame, Lekha,” said Mrs. Wade, sipping on her mango lassi.

  “It’s to frame your Musings article next month,” I said.

  Noah’s cheeks turned pink. “That’s so cool. Thanks. I haven’t heard back from them yet, but I’m hoping it’s there.”

  “It will be,” I said as the waitress returned with copper vessels full of mattar paneer and samosas with green chutney and my favorite chincha chutney. She made a second trip to get the bhaat, daal, other vegetables, and a bread basket with plain naan, garlic naan, onion kulcha, and aloo paratha, bursting at the seams with its potato stuffing.

  Dad’s cell phone rang loudly just as I was dipping my samosa into the dark-brown chutney and watching the chincha get soaked up into the fried dough. He excused himself and stepped away, by the front doors, to take the call.

  “Work issues,” Aai said, smiling apologetically at the Wades. “I ran into Mary Beth at the grocery store the other day,” she said as they began their usual reminiscing from when Aai still worked with Mr. and Mrs. Wade at the plant. “She said she retired! I thought she’d never retire.”

  Noah’s dad laughed. “She was one tough union president! Always ready to fight for autoworkers’ rights.”

  Aai nodded. “She said the union is split fifty-fifty. People are out of work and looking for someone to blame. I worry for us if Winters wins.”

  Noah’s mom shook her head. “She’s not going to win, hon. Hate cannot win.”

  I thought about the signs sweeping across my neighborhood. About the pamphlet in Mrs. Finch’s pocket. About the magnet on my teammate’s fridge door. And suddenly I started to sweat. I wiped my hands on my napkin and exchanged a glance with Noah.

  His face was shiny, his eyes were large and serious, and his lips were twisted to
the side. “But what if she does win?”

  “We’ll deal with that if the day comes, bud,” said Noah’s dad. He was sweating too, and I couldn’t tell if it was from the food or from the talk about Winters. Mr. Wade wiped his forehead with his napkin and looked at me and my mom, his eyes as wide as Noah’s, as his own lips also twisted to the side. “We all will.”

  chapter TWENTY-TWO

  Aai drove us back to Oakridge. Dad was checking his cell phone every few minutes on the ride, calling other doctor friends to ask them questions about orbital lobes and concussion and words I couldn’t pronounce, let alone remember. Back in the house, he had been taking calls in the Jungle on and off for the past hour, ever since we got back.

  I watched an old black-and-white Christmas movie on the family room TV while eating some spicy and sweet ginger vadi, a treat I got during winter. I was humming along softly to the Christmas music when Dad entered the kitchen.

  I had never seen him take this many phone calls for work from home. And his face looked different from normal, like his cheeks were drained of color. I watched as he plugged his phone in near a panoramic picture from India. On its left was a Zoroastrian fire temple in a neighborhood lined by crowded shops, and a synagogue by a cluster of trees. In the middle were rows of bungalows, a mosque, schools, a temple, and towering apartment buildings with the silhouette of a kid flying a kite on one of the terraces. On a hill in the background was a Buddha statue, and just a little bit away, under a flock of birds, was a church. Every bit of the city was drenched in the pink and peach glow of the sunset. Dad almost knocked the peaceful picture over as he set his phone down distractedly and opened the microwave to nuke his tea.

  It was a habit of his that always annoyed Aai. He would make the most amazing tea with homegrown lemongrass and ginger, but he said the milk cooled the boiled tea down too much. So he would insist on microwaving it, even though it was already hot.

  Aai moved away from the range of the microwave and touched Dad’s phone. “It’s so hot. Is everything okay at work?”

  Lost in thought, Dad took his tea out of the microwave and sipped at it.

  “Hello?” Aai asked, annoyed.

  Dad glanced at me and went into the living room. Aai followed. I could barely catch a word Dad was saying, so I tiptoed into the kitchen to hear better. But then Aai started crying.

  “What? When? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  My stomach sank. I knew what this was. Dad had gotten a call from India. A relative had died, thousands of miles away. I started to cry, thinking of Aaji, as I ran to the living room.

  “Who died? You can’t keep it a secret forever!” I said, my nose running.

  My parents turned to me, shocked.

  “Don’t cry, beta,” said Dad, wiping my tears with his sleeve. “Nobody died.”

  “Then why is Aai crying? What happened?”

  Aai sniffled as she looked at Dad.

  “I’m not a baby anymore. Just tell me!”

  “It’s Ajay Mama.”

  “What about him?” I asked, thinking of my uncle in California.

  Dad squeezed my shoulder. “This evening Veena Mami called to tell me Mama is in the hospital. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to upset Aai until I knew more. He and his friend Joginder Uncle, remember him? With the two girls you used to play with when we would go to Berkeley?”

  I nodded. They sent me their hand-me-down Indian clothes with Ajay Mama the last time he visited. I wore their salwar-kurta to Diwali.

  “Well, Uncle and Ajay Mama went out to a movie, and as they were nearing the theater, some men forced them off the road and beat them. Badly.”

  “Did they rob them?”

  Dad shook his head. “The police are calling it a hate crime. The men broke one of Ajay Mama’s ribs and his eye was hurt badly, but Veena Mami just called to say the doctors were able to save it. Joginder Uncle’s turban was pulled off and he has a concussion, but he will be okay too.”

  I couldn’t believe it. Joginder Uncle wore a turban to signify equality and to remember the teachings of his Sikh faith. How could someone forcibly remove it? And how could someone hurt Uncle and Ajay Mama like this?

  “Ajay Mama just got out of surgery and he’s resting. But we will call him tomorrow to check on him, okay?”

  “What will my mother think?” asked Aai over the sound of the TV. “She’s going to be so worried. We have to find her a flight.”

  “Veena asked us not to say anything to her,” said Dad, heading to the family room to turn down the volume on the TV, Aai and me behind him. “We don’t want to make her sick.”

  We weren’t going to tell my grandmother what had happened to her own son? We were all just going to keep quiet when Aaji called from India, and change the subject to things like the weather and what we were eating?

  I frowned as I watched Aai sob into her hands, defeated, remembering what Mrs. Wade had said at dinner just a few hours earlier. She was wrong. We all were wrong.

  Hate had won.

  chapter TWENTY-THREE

  My night-light always made the pleats in my purple curtains cast a strange shadow on my wall. When I was younger, it used to creep me out, because the shadow looked like a monster with horns and sharp teeth. Somewhere around fourth grade, I realized it was all in my head. There were no monsters in real life. But tonight, as I tried to sleep, all I could think about was the monster who attacked my poor mama and Joginder Uncle. Could that monster come to my town too and hurt my parents or me? I tossed and turned all night over that question, feeling hot, feeling cold, but most of all, feeling scared.

  In the morning Aai served me a bowl of hot oatmeal with raisins. The raisins were plump from the milk. But something else was swollen too. Aai had bags under her eyes, like she had slept even less than me. Like she had been crying a lot.

  Dad, who had been up late talking to Mami and the surgeons in California, walked up to us with a phone and a smile on his face. “It’s Ajay.”

  “Put it on FaceTime,” I said. I needed to see that my uncle was okay.

  I saw Aai and Dad exchange a glance. “Not right now. He’s recovering from eye surgery,” Aai whispered, before putting the cell on speakerphone.

  I spoke to my uncle, who promised us he was not in a lot of pain. Dad used to complain about how loud Ajay Mama was. He had this booming, friendly voice, and would strike up a conversation with strangers everywhere we went. When we went to the Redwood National Park, his voice echoed, bouncing off the trees as he asked every hiker we passed how their day was going and what was the coolest thing they had seen. His voice filled the restaurants we would go to as he would lean over to make jokes with strangers at the tables next to us. But today his voice sounded different as he told us he and Joginder Uncle were okay. And I don’t think it was because it was so early in California compared to Michigan. He was quieter, his voice shaking, the way I knew I sounded after a puking bug had made me exhausted. It was weird hearing someone so vivacious suddenly have his voice weakened.

  I sniffled loudly. As Aai said she wanted us to fly out to California to help with Ajay Mama’s rehab, and Veena Mami insisted they would manage, my throat hurt a little, like I was about to cry. It was as if that monster from my wall had come to life, and no amount of daylight would make it disappear.

  Dad patted my head softly. “Why don’t you go over to Noah’s? They’re expecting you. We’re just going to make sure Ajay Mama is all set to leave the hospital in a few days.”

  I nodded, feeling grateful for the chance to temporarily escape the monster, and headed next door.

  I was greeted with a huge hug from Mrs. Wade, who was sniffling even louder than I had been. “Oh, Lekha. I’m so sorry. How are they?”

  “They’re okay.” I shrugged, bending down to pet Cookie.

  Noah walked out of the kitchen with two steaming mugs. He sat on the stairs and I plopped down next to him, grateful for the hot cocoa.

  “No marshmallows in yours,”
Noah said softly. “It’s gelatin-free.”

  I gave him a small smile, wishing there were more people like Noah in this world and fewer people like whoever attacked Ajay Mama and Joginder Uncle.

  “How’s your grandma, hon?” Mrs. Wade asked, leaning on the banister.

  I shrugged again. “They’re not telling her.”

  “They’re not?” Noah looked appalled. He was always a stickler for the truth. I was lucky he didn’t know what I had done to Avantika with the sleepover a few days ago.

  “She’s old, Noah,” said Mrs. Wade. “And she’s far away in another country. Sometimes … sometimes we withhold information for the sake of someone’s health.”

  “Oh.” Noah stared into his mug. “I guess that makes sense. I wouldn’t want her to have a heart attack or get sick from worrying about your uncle.”

  I nodded, drinking the piping-hot cocoa despite how it burned my throat. “I think sometimes there’s a good reason for not saying stuff.”

  Noah’s brow furrowed, like he was struggling to make sense of it all. “I was wrong.”

  I looked at Noah. I wasn’t sure what he was about to say, but I wasn’t in the mood to dissect what had happened to Joginder Uncle and Ajay Mama like an unbiased journalist observing it all from a distance. This wasn’t like a story Noah wrote for the paper. This was my story. And I didn’t want to keep reliving it.

  “You’re right. It’s not always safe to speak up. Maybe sometimes you need someone else to speak up who wouldn’t be in danger because of it.”

  I watched the steam rise from my mug and fade away like a whisper. “I don’t want to talk about the op-ed. And I don’t want to talk about my uncle anymore.” I stopped, looking at Mrs. Wade. “If that’s okay.”

  “Of course, hon,” she said, rubbing my shoulder.

  I sat next to Noah, a hand on Cookie’s head, and just stared at the frosty world outside the front door without saying a word. It wasn’t a comfortable silence. It wasn’t a heavy silence. It wasn’t a silence that spoke volumes. It was just silence. And it was what I needed.