“My mother will like this,” I said. “But don't add another figure, it's better this way, not cluttered.”
“You think?” my aunt said, erasing and drawing a new figure farther back on the horizon line, then another even farther back, barely visible.
“So,” I said after a few moments of quiet, my aunt making marks on her sketchpad, my uncle's head hidden behind the newspaper, the lights and the oil lamp flickering. “I was thinking I would go with Madhu to Goa when she goes.”
My aunt and uncle looked up at me, at each other.
“Do you know anything about Goa? Why do you want to go?” my aunt said.
I said, “I like beaches, I want to go swimming.”
“You can't go swimming there this time of year,” my uncle said. “The water's too turbulent.”
“Then I'll hang out on the beach. And meet Madhu's friends from England. I'm sure we'll find things to do.”
“That's what I'm afraid of,” my uncle said. “I don't think it's a good idea.” My uncle looked back at his newspaper.
“Why not?” I said. My aunt looked at my uncle, and he looked up from his newspaper again to find her looking at him, waiting for him to rejoin us. He folded up the newspaper noisily.
“Why don't you tell her why not, Sanjay?” my aunt said.
“Well, it's not somewhere for you to be, that's all. There aren't any families there, it's not for family holidays anymore. It's these. Europeans, young peopleânot even young, just foolishâthey come to Goa and stay for weeks and weeks, doing nothing meaningful.”
“No one does anything meaningful on vacation, right?” I focused on being agreeable, though it was starting to seem like I wasn't going to get what I wanted. “I'll be with Madhu the whole time. And I'm not even asking to go on the trek or anything.”
My aunt said, “Don't you have summer assignments from your school? Those book reports and everything, you have a lot of work.”
“But I have the whole summer. I can get it done, I'm not worried about it.” I kept the edginess out of my voice and stayed polite; they weren't my parents, after all.
“Maya, this is also a good chance to spend some time with your grandmother. You were fully occupied by Brindha when she was here, and then you've been meeting our friends, we had those two dinner parties, and took you to teas and things, and now Madhu's visit,” she said.
Sanjay uncle nodded in agreement. “Your grandmother's hardly seen you because of all that. Your mother was hoping you'd keep your Ammamma company and talk with her and maybe even improve your Malayalam with her this summer. I know she wants to teach you.”
I was getting impatient. They were trying to get me to lose sight of what I wanted. “I can do those things later, all summer. I'm talking about one week with Madhu. Isn't it good to be close with my cousin, too? She'll go back to England and it could be years and years before I see her.” I tried to sound forlorn at losing Madhu for years and years.
“It's nice that you and Madhu are close. But your uncle and I would like you to stay here, especially because we are leaving to go to a wedding in Bombay the same day Madhu leaves. And we'd like to stay in Bombay for some weeks and visit with my relatives. Ammamma isn't up to a trip like that right now, so we were hoping you'd help her look after the house and manage the servants and everything.”
Not only would 1 miss out on Goa, I would miss out on Bombay, too, because of my grandmother. 1 wanted to appeal to a higher court, but I wasn't sure who that would beâmy mother had made it clear before I left that while I stayed with my aunt and uncle, they were in charge.
I decided not to pursue it now, maybe I'd come up with a new line of reasoning in the morning. I reshelved the jumble of books I'd pulled down from the bookcase. I said good-night and walked down the hall to my bedroom, and then realized I'd left my glasses on the coffee table. As I walked back toward the drawing room, I could hear my aunt and uncle talking. I stayed just outside the room and listened.
“My brother told me about Madhu's schoolmates, they're a wild crowd,” my aunt said. “Madhu's boyfriend might be there, and they're probably drinking all weekend. And smoking bhang. What else do Europeans come to Goa for?”
I stayed to listen for my uncle's response.
“Madhu's too old to controlâI don't pretend I understand how your brother and his wife have raised her,” my uncle said. “I'm just glad Brindha wasn't here when she came, because I wouldn't want her being influenced.”
“I don't know what to say to Maya,” my aunt said. “She really seems to look up to Madhu.”
“Well, we have the rest of the summer with Mayaâshe'll figure out what's right, she has time to learn.”
I turned away quietly and walked back down the hall. They'd been trying to make me feel guilty about leaving my grandmother, when it had nothing to do with her. I felt hurt for Madhu, and for me. Did they think I hadn't been around people drinking and smoking pot before? Did they know what an American high school was like? Madhu or I could be so much worse if we wanted, everything was there for the asking.
I felt outraged. I went to Madhu's room, wanting to talk. She was sleeping, and I shook her shoulder. She turned over, away from me, and fell still again. She looked younger sleeping, her fingers curled up, no makeup on, her hair liberated from clips and styling spray, pillowing her face. “Madhu. MA-dhu. “ No response. She breathed softly, evenly. I gave up and went to bed.
Madhu was unsurprised by everything I told her in the morning. I wanted more of a reaction, but she was calm, not particularly mobilized by my indignation. We were walking in the bright morning sun in the garden, trying to stay out of the way of the gardeners, who, in turn, were trying to stay out of our way. They were pouring big buckets of water at the base of the parched plants, the puddles vanishing, as if sucked into quicksand, within seconds.
“This is what I meant, this isn't the real world for us,” Madhu said. “They don't respect us.”
“But there's nothing wrong with us,” I said. It was unpleasant to be under suspicion. At home, 1 was a model to my friends' parents. They would say to their own kids while I was in their kitchens, staring at my shoes, “Why can't you be like Maya, and do well in school and swim at the state finals, and dress nicely and have only one earring in each ear?”
“You're still young, but you'll get the picture soon. Last time I came to India, my grandmother, the one on my mother's side, she sat me down and told me the whole Sita story to warn me to be a good girl. Your Ammamma seems nice, but watch out for what you tell her. Grandmothers are the worst. They don't understand that things change.”
I wished Madhu wouldn't keep thinking of me as so young. But I hadn't understood what she was saying about Sita. Sita was the goddess who was the wife of the god Rama. There were many stories about their courtship and their marriage, and the epic battle against the evil demon-king who abducted Sita and held her prisoner, Rama, his brother, and a whole army of celestial monkeys rescued Sita and brought her back home to their kingdom. Everyone knew these stories, they were constantly retold as bedtime stories, television serials, dance dramas, comic strips. When Madhu didn't elaborate on her own, 1 finally asked, “What does the Sita story have to do with being a good girl?”
Madhu settled herself on one of the stone benches at the far end of the garden, and I sat down next to her. She said, “Do you know what happens after Sita is rescued from the demon world?”
I thought that was the ending. Sita and Rama went home to rule their kingdom happily ever after.
“That's what all kids think,” Madhu said. Her grandmother had told Madhu that after Sita's long imprisonment, Sita had to prove she was still pure. She was not fit to be Rama's wife again if she had been with any other man, even against her will. Sita gave her word of honor that she was pure, but they made her take a test of purity, she had to walk unscathed through fire. She passed the test, but there were still rumors spreading in their kingdom that she had sinned. She lost the trust of her people, and, eventually, of her husband. Sita was heartbroken and she asked Mother Earth to swallow her up. Mother Earth took her in. Rama went on to have a long and prosperous reign by himself.
“Your grandmother told you that?” I had never heard this ending before. It wasn't enough that Sita was good. Everyone had to believe she was good, and they didn't.
“I'm sure your grandmother will soon too. Mine wanted me to know that's how much purity matters in India. She warned me about preserving my morals in that underworld of England. After that, I wouldn't exactly come back here with my boyfriend on my arm, would I?”
I couldn't remotely imagine bringing Steve here either. His hair was never clean, and it was too long, and he was always wearing a baseball cap. And he was not Indian, not Hindu, not Malayali, not high-caste.
“Is your boyfriend Indian?” I said in a casual voice, like it was just another quality like any other quality, like having red hair, or being tall.
“No, his name's Perry.” Madhu laughed, 1 could tell she was thinking about him, about some happy memory. “Definitely not Indian.”
“So he'll be there in Goa with your friends?” I said.
“No, 1 told you this is a hen party, all girls before Marg/s wedding.”
“So maybe Reema auntie won't mind, since it's all girls,” I said. It was my first glimmer of hope.
“God, they see everything in this narrow way,” Madhu said scornfully. “I know I can only come back here a few more times before my life will be too incomprehensible to them.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Like when I'm thirty, what if I'm not married? I won't come here and let everyone feel sorry for me. They'll say my parents neglected me by not arranging a marriage for me. Or, worse, what if 1 marry someone Pakistani or poor or both?”
“Your mother's family's poor, so maybe that's okay?” I said. As soon as I said it, I realized maybe I wasn't supposed to know that, but I'd heard it from one of Reema auntie's sisters. And Madhu had mentioned how they had no shoes or anything in that village.
Madhu paused, looked at me, and decided not to feel insulted. “Well, they weren't poor when she married my dadâher parents lost their family business later, otherwise I'm sure his family wouldn't have let the marriage happen. Listen to Reema auntie's friends talk about marriages for their daughters. They talk about a marriage between equals. That doesn't mean education, or equal rights for women. That means money.”
“But arranged marriages aren't so bad.” Sometimes Madhu seemed ready to get rid of everything, and I wasn't sure what would be left to hold on to, to be proud of. “I mean, look at my parents or yours. They're happy,” I said. Thinking of my parents, I said, “Or at least as happy as my friends' parents are in their nonarranged marriages. “
“I'm not saying it never works, Maya. I'm just saying it leaves a lot of people out. In England, we're all the same, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi. We're more the same than we are like anyone else in England. But here, if I married a Paki, some of our relatives would never talk to me again.”
“Paki is for Pakistanis?” I said.
“You've never heard that before? It's not a very nice word for Pakistanis. I mean, there's nothing wrong with the word, but people say it in England as an insult. Not just to Pakistanis, to me, anyone dark.”
I didn't know any Bangladeshis. I knew some Pakistanis, but I'd never thought about whether that was important, to my parents or anyone else. Sumeer at school was Pakistani and Muslim, but I didn't find out until we were all at a baseball game and we had to ask around for kosher hot dogs.
“What do Americans say? What do they call you?” Madhu asked, curious.
They didn't call me anything. Or not usually. There weren't enough Indians around for us to be noticed. When I was in the first grade, I remembered making headbands out of construction paper to stick paper feathers in for recreating the First Thanksgiving. Some kids asked me if I could bring in a real headdress from home, since I was Indian. Now, there were more Indians, people knew who we were, that we were from somewhere else. I wasn't sure that was a good thing.
“I've heard them say âDothead' to other kids at school,” I offered. “And when I was walking home from school one day last year, a kid yelled âHindu' at me, from the window of aschoolbus.”
“Hindu?” Madhu thought that was funny. “That's just like Paki. It's not intrinsically demeaningâin your case, it's actually true. But people use it in this hateful way. Imagine if I started yelling âItalian' on a tube platform in London! They'd think I was another crazy homeless person. “
I remembered when that kid had yelled “Hindu,” I didn't feel like it was true about me, it seemed like a curse-word. In my head, it looked like âHindoo,' the way it looked in old racist history books and Walt Whitman poems.
After Madhu went inside, I made one last attempt with my aunt. She was at the other end of the garden, instructing the gardener on how to space newly whittled wooden stakes among the chili pepper plants. Reema auntie was using cloth rags as mitts to pluck the chilis, they were so hot they would burn her skin. She was wearing sunglasses that were large and round on her face, like Jackie O. She showed me the chilis nestled in the rag in her hand, two gnarled green ones, and one firm-skinned, shiny red one.
“If you even look at these for too long, your eyes will start to water,” my aunt said. “Sanjay likes pakora made from these peppers. 1 was thinking I would tell Matthew to serve that tonight before dinner.”
“Reema auntie, I was talking to Madhu about Goa. And she says her boyfriend isn't even coming. It's all girls, so won't it be okay if I go?”