American as Paneer Pie Read online

  Liam just stood there, speechless.

  She had done it. She didn’t need me to defend her. She had done it herself. I stared at Avantika in awe, and for a second there I wished I did have some food in my hands. A sandwich, poli, bhaji, whatever, even if everyone thought it stank. Because then I could give my mouth something to do other than hang open in total shock.

  chapter SIX

  I tried hard to picture myself standing up to a bully the way Avantika had in the morning as I headed down the ramp to the cafeteria with Noah. I tried, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know how I’d stop my voice from shaking. Or what witty comeback I’d say. Or how loud I’d say it.

  Trying not to get trampled by the eighth graders who towered over me, the seventh graders who towered over me, or my fellow sixth graders, who also towered over me, I sped up, attempting to keep up with the flow. I slid my finger up and down the handle of my midnight-blue lunch bag. I knew right where a little strand of thread stuck out around the bend, from when my handle had gotten snagged on my locker. I’d had the bag since third grade, and aside from the locker mishap, it looked like new. Even better than that, though, it was familiar. I dealt with enough unknowns from Liam and other kids in town. I didn’t need any more surprises. I didn’t do well with change.

  I sat down at our corner table right by the ramp wall, under one of the many posters in our school that said, in huge bright letters, KINDNESS IS KOOL! Noah, who complained about this spelling of “cool” at least once a week, set down his water bottle and headed across the cafeteria. He had to buy his lunch from crabby Mrs. Finch, the lunch lady with the gray bun that was pulled too tight under her hairnet. She always seemed almost as repulsed by the hot lunch as the students were.

  Aai seemed to agree. She never let me buy lunch. She said it was a waste of money, and the vegetarian selection was always gross. And besides, she liked to add, it was full of processed ingredients and chemicals, unlike the organic lunches she packed for me. Dad constantly reminded Aai that no one had dropped dead from eating an unorganic meal before. He told her we ate plenty of nonorganic food like Indian grains and lentils and meals at restaurants, but she still insisted that I never buy lunch at school.

  I unzipped my bag and opened up my stainless-steel lunch box, revealing, surprise surprise, the same meal I had eaten almost every day of school: a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, apple slices, carrots, cucumbers, and homemade yogurt with berries. But the sandwich was raised on one end, like something was stuck underneath it. I lifted it up to peek, and sure enough, there were two little, wrapped chocolate squares. Dad had raided my stash. And the two pieces were probably his not-so-subtle reminder to share.

  I held the squares in my hand as I scanned the cafeteria for Avantika, thinking about how disappointed Dad would have been if he knew I was avoiding her. I squeezed my hand and felt the squares wobble limply. The heat from my fingers was melting them, turning them soft. I opened one up. Brown was smeared across the wrapper. It wasn’t a good look. And it would have been gross to give Avantika some warm, half-melted chocolate that Emma could have used as a model for one of her bird-poop masterpieces. So I quickly tore at the other square’s wrapper and popped both pieces of chocolate into my mouth.

  With dessert done, I dug in, taking a bite of the PBJ. I worked my way around the lunch box clockwise as I watched Noah make his way through the line. Behind him, under a busted cafeteria light that flickered endlessly, sat Emma, at a small table by herself. Several cliques and tables over, Harper sat with a bunch of girls wearing shaded lip tints Aai would never let me wear. They were giggling into their hands about something. At the table behind them, Liam was running from seat to seat, screaming, “Lice!” as he tapped each guy on the head and they jokingly swatted at him. Liam happened to look in my direction during what looked like a choreographed spin before he drummed his fingers on his friend Mikey’s blond buzz cut. But I turned away quickly, checking that my hair was in place, hoping to not give Liam another opportunity to stick his finger to his forehead when he saw me.

  And that’s when I saw Noah walking toward our spot, Avantika by his side. It had been two class periods since I had seen her last. I’d worried about our next encounter throughout math and science. Trying to hide my embarrassment that we would be eating together and be kind instead (because it was “kool”), I smiled at her, scooching over a bit so she would have room to sit.

  Noah and I always sat together. It was always just the two of us, even when we were in elementary school and sat at a table with our class. Noah and I sat on the end, and despite the twenty other kids sitting near us, it felt like it was just the two of us talking about our favorite dogs in second grade, our favorite books in third grade, our favorite dragons in fourth grade, and plans to start a class newspaper in fifth grade, back when I was as interested in having others read my writing as Noah was. But until Avantika made friends of her own, of course she would be sitting with us.

  I watched her open up a brown paper bag. The top had been wrinkled limp, like someone had twisted it too hard all day. Avantika caught my eye.

  “I got a little nervous when I saw all these kids I didn’t know and couldn’t find you guys,” she said. “Guess I took it out on the bag. So much for reusing it. I hope my mom doesn’t make me bring my next meal in an old yogurt container.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. It was almost Indian tradition to reuse yogurt containers to send food home from parties with the guests. Aai used to do it too on the rare occasion someone from Detroit was in town, stopping by on their way to another city. But then she saw some news story about plastics leaching chemicals into food, and that was the end of that little custom in our house.

  Avantika’s mom must not have gotten the “Plastics Will Poison Us All” memo. I watched as she opened an old plastic take-out container, revealing two small methi parathas, round flatbread made with bitter fenugreek and spiced with cumin and cayenne. Methi parathas were my favorite weekend lunch, but I would never have brought them to school. Why ask for that kind of attention? Did she want someone to loudly ask what the stink was? Or people to exchange disgusted looks as she ate it?

  Before I could even think about a nice way to warn Avantika about the hazards of bringing Indian food to school, she pulled a little plastic container of tamarind chutney out of her bag. I shoved a cucumber slice in my mouth and pretended not to be eyeing her food, but I had to know what she was eating chincha chutney with. Was it bhel? My absolute favorite? Samosas, my second favorite? Or was she just going to down the chutney, my unorthodox, third favorite way to eat chincha chutney? She grabbed a misshapen lump of aluminum foil out of her bag, and I had my answer. Samosas.

  The smell from the little pyramids of fried dough filled with potatoes and peas hit me. And it smelled good. Not too spicy. Just the right amount of ova. Just like when we ate at What’s the Mattar?, the Indian restaurant forty-five minutes from our house. It was the only time other than parties and Diwali when Aai would let me eat as much fried food as I wanted.

  Avantika dipped the triangular point of the samosa into the chutney and bit into the crunchy, flaky crust as I chewed on the last bite of neglected PBJ crust. I would have given anything to swap places with Avantika right then.

  “What’s your friend eating, Dot?” asked Liam as he and Mikey walked by us to throw their trash out.

  I fiddled with my lunch-box latch, trying to ignore the question, hoping there wouldn’t be more.

  “Yeah, it reeks,” added Mikey with a gag, putting a finger in his mouth. “And where’s her dot?”

  Liam strummed his fingers on Mikey’s head, fluttering them down until just his index finger remained. He dramatically pointed at the center of Mikey’s forehead.

  Noah’s ears turned red. He looked down at his food uncomfortably like he always did when Liam made fun of me. I stared at my reflection in my lunch box and chewed extra slowly on that last bite of crust, even though most of it was already down my throat. But Avantika j
ust looked straight at the boys and shrugged.

  “Why’re you bugging her? Just ask me. It’s a samosa. You’d like it if you tried it,” she added, waving the half-eaten samosa near them so fast a pea flew out of it, bopping Liam in the head.

  Mikey tapped on Liam’s head as they headed back to their table. “Looks like you’re the one with lice now, bro!”

  Avantika rolled her eyes and continued to eat, unbothered. “Are they always like that?”

  I squeezed the handle of my lunch bag hard, realizing I had an answer, just not to Avantika’s question. I had an answer to my question from the beginning of lunch. I knew exactly how loud my voice would be when facing a bully.

  It would be totally silent.

  chapter SEVEN

  After lunch Avantika and I turned the corner from the cafeteria toward the gym. I ignored the looks from the other kids, gawking at the only two Desis in school walking together. Black hair, brown skin, one with an accent and one without. Did they think we were a perfect match? Related? The exact same?

  “They’re probably wondering who cloned me,” I muttered as we entered the gym.

  “Who are?” asked Avantika.

  “Nothing.” I scowled at the yellow lights reflecting off the maple floor. I was strong from swimming, but I still hated PE. I hated having to smack a volleyball with my tender hands, hands that were used to being cradled by pool water. I despised having to kick a soccer ball with tired feet that were better suited for propelling me forward like a shark in the ocean. And most of all, I dreaded dancing.

  I was one of those rare Indian girls who was not coordinated enough for Bharat Natyam, Kathak, or folk dance. My parents had me try all of them in our long, weekend drives down to Detroit in elementary school. But I got sick of trying to keep up with the other kids and even sicker of apologizing every time I bumped into them. After a couple of months Aai realized it was a wonder I could even manage doing raas. She took pity on me and let me quit. It gave me more time to work on my Bollywood dance moves in my room. That way no one would watch as I shook my hips while accidentally shaking my bookshelves and spun in circles, sending my swimming trophies spinning to the ground in their own Bollywood twirls.

  Unfortunately for me, today in PE, Mr. Jennings was all about line dancing. “Footloose” was already blaring. A couple of kids practiced while I showed Avantika the locker room. We headed for the cluster of green lockers surrounded by rows of black lockers, our school’s colors.

  “Did you bring a lock?”

  Avantika nodded, pulling a blue lock out of her backpack pocket.

  I pointed to the locker next to mine. “This one is empty.”

  Avantika took her gym clothes out. “You mean, you just change here? In front of everyone?”

  It was the first time I had seen Avantika look so nervous, and imagined this is what her poor paper bag saw before she crumpled it up.

  I nodded, holding up my blue shirt. It wasn’t fun, but that’s just how it was. “Turn your back to everyone else, and tuck your arms into your shirt. Then put your hands into your new shirt and quickly change,” I said, showing Avantika the fastest method to change without everyone looking at your body.

  She took out her gym clothes, which strangely enough also consisted of a blue shirt and black shorts, and followed my lead.

  “Now pull your shirt down over your butt and change out of your pants.”

  I pulled my jeans down and rapidly moved into my pair of black shorts, my arm brushing against the fine hairs on my leg. Just then, Harper walked by us with Aidy, a sixth grader from the other elementary school in town, who I had just met at the beginning of the school year.

  “Hey, Lekha.” Harper smiled as she walked to her locker, pulling her sweater over her head and slipping into her gym shorts.

  Avantika bit her lip as she made a disapproving clicking noise with her tongue that made me feel like Aai were here. “Maybe you should teach her your way,” she said, staring at Harper.

  I pulled Avantika out of the locker room, thinking maybe I should have taught her about whispering.

  The singer on Mr. Jennings’s phone could have learned a thing or two about using an indoor voice too. He was wailing about being footloose while Mr. Jennings was showing the class the rest of the line dance we had been practicing last week.

  “Ah!” Mr. Jennings danced over to us. “Lekha and Aven … Ah-vin … ka?”

  “Avantika,” we both said.

  Avantika gave me a small smile.

  “Right. What you said. It will take me a while, but I’ll get it.”

  I doubted that. Mr. Jennings still couldn’t say my name right after all these weeks of school, and he definitely didn’t bother trying to learn the right way, either. It just wasn’t important enough. So I had to go through years of everyone at school butchering my name because it was easier that way. And every time someone said my name in attendance, or in the hall, or during a group assignment, it was the perfect reminder of how different I was.

  “Welcome to PE,” Mr. Jennings continued. “Let’s start dancing.” He shimmied back to the front of the class, probably grateful he didn’t have to take a test on pronouncing Avantika’s name.

  I took a deep breath and joined the back line, Avantika by my side, as Harper and the rest of the girls emerged from the locker room to take their places next to us. We crisscrossed, shuffled, jumped from heel to toe, slid, and clapped. I was always a split second off, and my crisscross was sometimes more of a step-on-Avantika’s-toes-and-say-sorry. But I started to get the hang of it. Avantika had no issues.

  “This is kind of like the dances in those nineties movies,” she huffed as she spun with ease. “You know, the ones with Govinda?”

  I shook my head as hard as I was shaking my shoulders, and caught Harper’s eye. I desperately wished Avantika would stop talking about Indian things in front of everyone.

  “You haven’t seen them? The songs had Govinda and whoever the heroine was dancing side by side, sometimes in front of European stores with hundreds of white people staring into the camera in the background as they watched. So just channel your inner Govinda,” said Avantika as she clapped and whooped right when she was supposed to, tipping her imaginary hat.

  I almost fell forward while reaching for my imaginary hat, which must have been flung halfway across the gym by this point from my ungraceful moves.

  “Nice work, Lekha!” shouted Mr. Jennings.

  What was nice about my tripping? But then I realized he was looking at Avantika.

  “I think he thinks you’re me,” I panted, trying to keep up with her.

  “No,” Avantika replied as we turned to dance in the opposite direction. “You’re doing a great job. He’s just complimenting you—”

  Mr. Jennings began to wave his hands at Avantika. “Come to the front, Lekha! Looks like you kicked off your Sunday shoes! You’ve got this!”

  Avantika gasped. “You’re right! It’s like Seeta Aur Geeta!” She paused. “Sorry. You probably don’t get that reference either.”

  But I did get it. It was a funny old Hindi movie where twins got separated at birth and then switched places as adults and got even with people who were mean to them. In fact, it was one of many twins-separated-at-birth movies with the same plot, and I had seen them all with Dad. They were our favorites.

  “Or like Ram Aur Shyam,” I said with a small smile.

  “Or Kishen Kanhaiya,” laughed Avantika, almost testing me.

  “Or ChaalBaaz with Anju and Manju.” I grinned. “That’s my favorite.”

  “Mine too!” whispered Avantika.

  “Let’s go, Lekha! To the front!” called Mr. Jennings.

  “You’d better go, Anju,” I said to Avantika.

  She winked as she ran up to the front. “Bye, Manju.”

  I fumbled to the music, watching “Lekha’s” gold seashell clip bop along to the beat at the front of the class. I bent my knee up, supposing we really did all look the same to some peo
ple, and swung my heel from side to side, accidentally knocking into Harper.

  Before I could apologize, Aidy bent down giggling, staring at my leg.

  “Did the broom get you?” she whispered loudly to Harper.

  I looked down at my leg. At the little black hairs on it.

  Broom. A new nickname. As if Dot weren’t bad enough. I blinked quickly, wishing I hadn’t heard that question. Was nothing about me acceptable to people like Aidy?

  “Just dance, Aidy,” muttered Harper, turning away from her. “Sorry, Lekha,” she added softly as she clapped her hands and daintily spun her hand like she was holding a lasso.

  But I just stared straight ahead in silence, my ears burning. I was tired of people mispronouncing my name, and even more tired of people calling me names. I wished that just in this moment, these girls called me the wrong name. I knew it was wrong, but I’d rather they were making fun of “Avantika” than “Lekha.”

  chapter EIGHT

  That evening I got a break from my twindian, thanks to swim practice. It was my first practice as a full-fledged member of the Dolphins, so I made sure we got there earlier than normal. Harper seemed to have had the same thought, because by the time I got changed and to the poolside, she was already in the water, practicing her butterfly.

  “Hey, Lekha!” She waved, emerging from the ribbons of foam she had formed in the water.

  “Hey.” I smiled, hopping into the icy water in the shallow end, which felt as soothing to me as a warm bath. It seemed saying “Hey” was as deep as our friendship was going to get, though, when Aidy and a tall girl with wavy brown hair pushed their way through the rest of the team. They leapt into the pool, their squeals echoing in the humid room as they hugged Harper.

  “I knew you would make it!” said the tall girl, wrapping her hair into a bun on the top of her head and tying it in place with the thin hair tie around her wrist, a hair tie that would have snapped had it been holding my heavy hair in a ponytail.