Silence and the Word (14 page)

My daughter said to me last night,

“You aren’t doing a very good job

of bringing me up.” I said I knew,

but it was hard, harder than

it looked, and I was trying.

She said, “Okay, fair enough.”

We took a bath, and then went

for a walk, in a not-so-great

part of town. Bullets were

whizzing past; cars kept crashing

into telephone poles. She held

my hand, and I shielded her

with my body, and we almost

died, several times. Finally

we found the park, where the sun

shone down on roses and jonquils

and bright daffodils. I told her

that some people called them

daffydowndillies, but she wasn’t

listening. She was rolling down

a hill in the tall grass, laughing.

I laughed too, and my chest hurt.

Dear Raji Aunty,

I hope you and Vivek Uncle are well. How is
the painting going? The painting you sent on my birthday—of the
women bathing at the waterfall—hangs over my bed. I think my mother
would be shocked, but my roommates are very impressed that I have
an aunt who paints such things. The women in their bright saris
remind me of home… .

All my letters to my aunt start like that,
and never finish. I have written twenty or thirty of them in the
last week. Words and lines and paragraphs of politeness, all true
and all lies. I cannot write what I am really saying. I cannot
write that I am in terrible trouble, and I don’t know what to do. I
cannot write that I want to leave here, leave school, leave Chicago
and flee to her in Connecticut, that I want to hide in her guest
bed with the covers pulled up over my head until it all goes away.
I cannot write and ask her to fix everything for me. I cannot do
anything but write and write and write these letters that say
nothing and that I crumple up and throw away before starting
again.

Dear Raji Aunty,

I hope you and Vivek Uncle are well. I am
not. How is the painting going? The painting you sent of the
practically naked women, with the water coursing over the bared
necks and pointed breasts and arched backs, makes me think that
maybe you might understand and be able to help me. Didn’t you have
a scandalous youth, once upon a time? The aunts always fell silent
when I entered the room, but I heard bits, fragments, perhaps just
words I wanted to hear. A scandalous youth, and an white man for a
lover—but now you are married to a nice Indian man. You are married
married married. How can I talk to you?

Minal barely notices when her roommates come
back, when they ask her to join them for dinner, when she shakes
her head no, when they leave again. The snow is falling outside
their window, and she takes her unfinished letter to Rose’s bed, to
sit near the window and watch the snow fall on the highway and the
lake, watch the waves crashing up and down, higher each time, the
wind whipping them up until the white ice of them crashes up and
over the thin strip of snow-covered park, reaching to the deserted
highway. It is terrifying. The monsoons had been hard and fierce at
times, had uprooted trees and drowned the fields—but they had never
been so cold.

She has been cold for months.

She had arrived in September, fresh off the
boat from India, with a full scholarship for the sciences and plans
to be a doctor. Her mother had insisted Minal wear the warmest
clothes she had, so she had sweltered in the layers of heavy sari
and warm sweater on the long plane ride, and still, when she
stepped out of the airport and into the brisk wind, she had
instantly been cold, chilled through. Her mother’s sister, Raji,
had flown from Connecticut to Chicago to get her settled, had taken
her shopping for more appropriate clothes, had made sure that she
drank hot tea and soup and even fried samosas for her in the dorm
kitchen—and Minal was still cold, deep inside. The chill had
deepened when her aunt left, leaving her alone with her roommates,
who seemed nice enough but who were so terribly pale and alien.

She wore turtleneck, shirt, heavier shirt,
sweater, stiff new blue jeans, two pairs of socks, and a thick wool
coat. She shivered in the unforgiving stone buildings that wore the
artificial heat like a thin blanket over grave-cold bones. Calculus
class, high on the third floor of a grey gothic building, was the
coldest. The first weeks she spent huddled in on herself at her
desk, only raising her head long enough to copy down the equations
on the board. Minal would practically race back to her dorm
afterwards, to strip off all the clothes, turning the water on with
shaking hands and chattering teeth, waiting until the tiny bathroom
was full of steam before taking off the last layers, stripping to
the skin and climbing into the blessedly warm water.

The water covered her toes, her feet, her
ankles, her calves—and then she sank down into it, so that it
covered her stomach and ribs and small, pointed breasts, lay back
in it, so that her hair was soaked in water, spreading out around
her like a night-black fan, lay back until only her nose and mouth
lay on the surface of the water, disembodied. Steam filled the
room, her bones warmed, she was happy—but eventually, always, the
hot water would run out, and she would have to climb out of the
tub, dry off, wrap her thin body in a robe and step out into the
chilly air that hit her face like a slap.

Sometimes she thinks that if it hadn’t been
for Diego, she would never have warmed at all, just slowly frozen
into a thin icicle of a girl, so cold and hard that even when they
shipped her back home, she would not melt, not even when her
mother’s tears rained down on the ice.

Sometimes she thinks that would have been
better.

Dear Diego,

I need to talk to you. I have something to
tell you. Meet me downstairs at Cobb, tomorrow, at… .

I don’t get further than that. I can write
the words that I know will frighten him, insert the place, the
date—all it needs is the time and my signature before I slip it
under his door, down the hall, just four doors down. He’s waiting
for it. Our notes have become something of a joke on the floor, but
a friendly one. When I first admitted to my roommates how we’d
gotten together, how I’d written him a note and slipped it under
his door, like a schoolgirl, they’d laughed and laughed. But
eventually Rose decided it was just too romantic, and Karly had
agreed, and soon it seemed the entire floor had adopted us as their
very own storybook romance.

Romance, hah! If they had seen how my hands
were shaking all that night, how I tossed and turned, how little I
slept, waiting, expecting him to sadly but firmly shake his head
no, with a little hateful pity in those coriander-green eyes…well.
They probably would think that romantic too. Idiots.

I admit, I had grown fond of the notes, these
last four months.

Minal, meet me for breakfast?

Diego, I’ll see you at 8:00.

Minal, do you have time to visit the Museum
on Saturday?

Diego, I’m skipping calculus this
morning—join me?

We never wrote anything that seemed of
importance in those notes—and yet I kept every one. I knew what
they didn’t say, what they didn’t need to say. They didn’t say,
‘I’ll give you a dozen kisses if you get up early to eat with me.’
They didn’t say, ‘Let’s skip the electricity exhibit and go neck in
the statue garden.’ They didn’t say, ‘Rose and Karly are going to
their
classes, so we have an hour—join me in bed?’ They
didn’t need to say any of that—we knew.

And if I send him this note, if I finish it
with a time and sign it and slip it under his door, he will think
he knows what it means. He will think it means that this is the
end, that I have grown tired of him, or that I have decided this
was a mistake after all. And he will be wrong, but he will also be
right.

This is the end of something.

October. Minal sits in the lounge past
midnight, struggling with equations. Tea water is heating on the
stove, heating, boiling, boiling over, hissing, and she swears as
she jumps up, grabs the pot handle and lets go again, grabs up some
of her skirt to help her hold the handle as she lifts the pot off
the range and clunks it down in the sink, spilling boiling water
everywhere and just missing scalding herself again—”Goddammit!”

“I’ve never heard you swear before.”

“What?” Minal swings around, her long black
hair swinging with her, straight and smooth like a waterfall, and
he bites his lip.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you swear. Do
you need help?” He is leaning in the doorway to the small kitchen,
taking up space—taking up so much space. Minal loses his name for a
moment, then finds it again—yes, Diego. A second-year from four
doors down. She has a little trouble understanding him; he has an
accent. And his eyes are very green.

“Why would you know, or care, whether I
swear?” She turns back to the sink, lifts the pot, pours the hot
water into the mug with the tea bag waiting. She puts the pot back
on the stove and turns off the flame.

“I’ve been watching you.”

She is startled, but will not look at him.
The words could have sounded menacing, in another mouth, but from
him they sound sweet, and slightly sheepish. She takes down sugar,
and pulls out a spoon, and milk, before answering.

“Really.” She does not know how she means
that—challenging, inviting? But it must have come out wrong,
because he is pulling away, stepping back out of the doorway so the
light comes spilling back in, walking away.

“Sorry. I should really get to bed. Good
night.”

And he’s gone. Damn.

She writes him the first note that night, and
slips it under his door, and doesn’t sleep until almost dawn.

Diego,

I’m sorry if I snapped at you earlier. Would
you like to study together tomorrow night?

When tomorrow night comes, they share a
table, and she helps him with his calculus. His hand brushes hers.
Her hair falls across his leg as she leans in over his papers. His
breath quickens. She feels it on her cheek. She turns, or he does.
He leans, or she does. Their lips meet, and hold. Their tongues,
tentatively, dance.

October 18

Amma,

Yes, my studies are going well. I am working
hard, and getting all A’s. Do not worry. You asked what my days are
like, here in America. I get up in the mornings and have
breakfast—a bagel, which is a kind of bread, and cream cheese. I go
to classes all day. I have lunch and dinner in the dining hall. If
you could send some of your curry powder, then I could cook curries
sometimes. The food here is very bland. There are Indian
restaurants, but I do not have a car, so it is difficult to get to
them, and besides, they are too expensive. The food is filling
enough. After dinner, I study until bedtime. I spend many hours in
the dorm lounge, working. If I am not in my room when you call, it
is probably because I am in the lounge or the library,
studying.

And kissing.

November. She recites poetry to Diego. In
India, she had escaped the endless rounds of family gossip, the
sisters tearing into each other and the aunts nagging, by reading
her books. English books too, of course, but also the ancient
Indian poets. She tells him the Ramayana, in pieces, in between
calculus problems. It is a reward, when he solves a particularly
difficult one. Minal recites translated poems until he knows them
too, and can recite them back to her. Vidyapati, 15th century:

First Love

The new moon stirs pangs of love.

Scratches mar her proud young breasts.

Often hidden, sometimes they lie revealed

like treasure in the hands of the poor.

Now she has known first love,

desires flood her mind,

she trembles with delight.

Safe from the eyes of gossipy friends,

she studies her reflection in a jewel,

knits her brow, and oh

so tenderly

touches the blossoming

love-bite on her lip.

I cannot count the classes I have missed, for
kissing Diego.

He is from Puerto Rico. Well, his family is.
He whispers Spanish words to me while he kisses me. He starts at my
toes,
mi dedos de los pies
, and works his way up, kissing
and whispering, so soft I can barely hear it, barely feel it.
Te
quiero; tus pies. Tus rodillas. Tus caderas
. Then he stops, and
moves to the top of my head, and starts working down.
Tu pelo,
tu nariz, tus orejas
. The first time he licked my ear, I felt a
shock run through me, not so different from the time I stuck my
finger in an unshielded outlet as a little girl. But now I am
greedy. I do not want him to stop at my ears. My hands are on his
hips, on his back, on his shoulders, pushing him gently, urging him
down.

Te quiero; tu garganta, tus brazos, tus
muñecas. Tus uñas, tu estómago, tu cintura.
He would linger at
my waist if I would let him, would play with my belly button, but I
do not allow it. I urge him onwards—quickly, hurry hurry! We have
only twenty minutes left, fifteen, ten before Rose and Karly
return. And they are lovely roommates, such nice girls, and if they
come back before you finish, I will kill them, and then you. So
hurry, hurry,
por favor
, my darling.

December. They have settled down a little.
They have started going to classes again, and her professors are
relieved. The leaves have all fallen off the trees—Indian summer is
long gone—but Minal is no longer cold.