Authors: Nell Freudenberger
George laughed. “Well, you’re not going to believe it. I almost thought I should wait until you got home, but then the job happened and I had to call you.”
“What is it?”
“I hope you’re not going to mind that I opened your mail, but I saw it was from Starbucks.”
“Do I still have my job?”
“Better,” George said. “You’re the grand prize winner.”
“Winner of what?”
“
You
know what,” George said. “I thought you said you were too busy to write another essay.”
“ ‘Reach for the Stars’?”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
Her father turned to her mother, whispering loudly, “What did they win?”
“Ten thousand dollars’ tuition,” George said. “That’s more than a year of MCC.”
“But I didn’t—”
“You don’t have to be modest anymore—you won! I’m so proud of you.”
She looked around at the empty, bright room, the bed and chairs islanded on the gleaming marble floor. Of course there was only one person who might have written five hundred words about Amina’s life and entered it for a prize. She remembered the pointed way Kim had inquired about the contest that awful rainy night at Cathy’s house.
“The letter said it was going to be published on the website,” George said. “I’m not surprised—it’s really great.”
“You read it?”
“They included it. You have to sign something before they publish it. The stuff about the ICR’s right on—even if it’s not exactly true. You almost made
me
believe we had the wedding there.” Amina was still processing the idea that Kim had sent in an essay about her. She must’ve done it right after they’d seen each other last, just before she went to India. It was shocking to think that Kim had won, out of all the people who must have entered—what on earth could she have written?
“It made me glad we’re going to do it,” George continued. “I even told my mom I was planning to convert.”
“What did she say?”
“She’s says it’s okay with her—if that’s what makes me happy. Cathy’s going to be another story, though.”
Amina found she was hardly listening. Ten thousand dollars was really very little money in Rochester, when you counted up the years it would take her to finish her education: she would be at least thirty-five by the time she got her teaching certificate. She couldn’t picture herself teaching American children in a classroom, and she no longer cared about the diploma for its own sake. She looked at her father, watching her hopefully from the bed, his hands frail and inert on the red coverlet. What good was ten thousand dollars now? She wanted to throw the phone across the room.
“My father bought you a fancy kurta,” she said instead. “To wear for our wedding pictures.”
“Oh, God,” George said. “Can he return it? Can’t you tell him I’ll just wear a coat and tie or something?”
Amina’s mother was sitting on one of her aunt’s new upholstered chairs, watching Amina and holding the Yankees cap protectively in her lap. She wished she could go back to the moment, almost five
years ago now, when they’d first agreed she would write to George, to remember who had said what. Had it been her mother encouraging her, or the other way around? Even if her parents had wanted this, had they known enough to decide? And now that she knew, wasn’t she the one responsible for their happiness—for making the right choice for them as well as for her?
“Amina?” George said.
“Yes.”
“That essay—it made me think of those e-mails we used to write. It sounds like you—like the way you talk.” He hesitated. “I miss you.”
“My parents are right here.”
“You can’t even say you miss your husband in front of them?”
“No.”
“That’s good for me to know. Cultural differences—” He laughed. “Hey, do you realize it’s only four more days?”
Amina found that she couldn’t speak.
“I’m having trouble hearing you,” George said. “If you can hear me, I’ll see you at the gate on Tuesday.”
He waited a moment and then gave up. “Bye, honey.”
“What?” her mother said, when Amina hung up. “George got a job?”
Amina nodded. “A good one—even better than he expected.” She had the strange feeling she was lying, even as she told her parents the truth.
“Thanks be to God,” her mother said. But Amina was thinking of how her parents wouldn’t be able to drive themselves to the grocery store. How unhappy her mother would be to depend on her or George every time she ran out of something in the kitchen.
“You see,” her father said happily, “things are working out.”
“Here, look—you forgot these.” Her mother had found the box of tin birds, empty except for the wood thrush, the sparrow, and the cardinal, and was squatting on the floor in the village style, examining them. “We can drop one off for Nasir before we leave—maybe this red one. His wife will like it, when he marries.”
Amina had left the other two in the box because of their dull, brown coloring, but she’d been pleased not to have to give up the cardinal. At one time she’d been annoyed at the real bird; now she felt
nostalgic for his crazy determination—his stubborn belief that there was something through that window for him.
“Not that one,” she said, replacing it. “I think the clock and cap are enough.” Her parents exchanged glances but didn’t argue, and her mother purposely changed the subject:
“But what did you win? You didn’t tell us.”
A part of her wanted to conceal it, but she’d never been good at lying to her mother. “A scholarship,” she said. “Ten thousand dollars toward my tuition at MCC.”
Her parents gasped, and for a moment she thought they were struck, as she had been, by the irony of that particular sum.
“Ten thousand dollars for university,” her father said. “My daughter!”
“It’s just a community college,” Amina said.
“American scholarship,” her mother said in English. “For real this time.” Her mother’s eyes, listless and dull before the phone call, had taken on a familiar sparkle, and both her parents were looking at Amina in a way that made it impossible to contradict anything they had said.
18
The day before the flight, Fariq drove Amina back to Nasir’s to deliver the gifts. She was afraid she might run into Sakina, whom her mother informed her was back from Comilla, but that Monday afternoon Amina was lucky. It was Nasir’s younger sister, Shilpa, who called her name on the stairs as she blinked in the sudden darkness of the stairwell. It was the hottest part of the day, and most people who weren’t at work would be either eating or napping indoors. Shilpa met them on the stairs and insisted on serving Amina a cold drink in her apartment while Fariq loitered uneasily inside the door. She seemed eager for the company; she said she’d been sitting on her balcony hoping for a breeze when she’d seen Amina get out of the car. Shilpa’s two boys were in school, and the apartment was calm and relatively cool, with the fans going and all the curtains closed.
“How is your father?”
“
Alhamdulillah
, he is recovering,” Amina said. “We’ve been staying indoors, of course.”
“Of course. My brother told us as soon as we got back—we’re praying for you.” Shilpa put a hand on her enormous belly, stretched taut. Now, so near the end of her third pregnancy, Amina thought that bearing children must seem like the most normal thing in the world to Nasir’s sister, hardly to be remarked upon, requiring no special luck or skill.
“We didn’t know you were back,” Amina said.
“Thank God we are,” Shilpa said. “You think it’s hot here? It’s like an oven down there, and those people are so used to it, they don’t even notice. I could hardly remember everyone’s name—my brain was cooking the whole time.”
“Is it a large family?” Amina asked casually.
“Enormous,” Shilpa said. “The girl is the youngest of nine, everyone’s pet. I thought she might be spoiled, but my sister was right. She’s very quiet and sweet—the kind who’s embarrassed about being so pretty. She made all the food herself. You could see her fingers were still stained with turmeric. We were all impressed.”
“Wonderful,” Amina said.
“Their children will be frighteningly beautiful,” Shilpa went on slyly. “My poor Shabu and Lallu won’t be able to compete.” Then a recent scrapbook was pressed upon Amina, who was forced to disagree. She admired pictures of Shabu and Lallu in their school uniforms; at a mathematics competition (Shabu had failed to distinguish himself, but Lallu had placed third in his age group); and in front of the tiger cage at the Mirpur Zoo.
“Do you have pictures from the trip?” Amina asked, but Shilpa shook her head. “They sent a portrait of the girl, but I think my sister’s given it to Nasir already.”
“So it’s all settled?” Amina asked, as casually as she could manage.
Shilpa gave her a candid smile. “Well, now they’ll have to meet. But I think the families agree. You won’t get any argument from the girl—she’s very obedient. She’ll be lonely here without her family, though.”
“Your brother will be kind to her.”
Shilpa shrugged. “If he agrees to meet her. Who knows with him? He called Sakina the other night—it was so late, but I sometimes sit up with her, watching TV. She said he sounded crazy, talking about
how he couldn’t marry—how we shouldn’t make the trip. But when my sister asked for his reasons, he wouldn’t tell her.”
“When was that?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Shilpa said. “A few days before we left. My sister ignored him, of course—the trip was all planned. And my brother gets worked up so easily.”
Amina felt her face flushing in a way she thought Shilpa couldn’t help but notice. If she’d made a mistake about that phone call, and he’d really been talking to Sakina, what did it mean? Had he seriously considered breaking off the negotiations with the family in Comilla? If he had preferred her, even briefly—and then she’d gone across the street and tried to interfere in his life? After all that, he couldn’t help but be disgusted with her.
The apartment felt hot and close, and Amina was dizzy. She sat down on a chair, expecting to have to make excuses to Shilpa—it was embarrassing, given the other woman’s condition. But Shilpa’s attention had wandered to the plastic Home Depot shopping bag Amina was holding, which she’d used for packing. She’d forgotten the exotic cachet such things had here.
“I just brought something from my parents for your brother. I’ll leave it in the apartment, with the key.”
“I can take it up,” Shilpa said.
“I wouldn’t make you climb all those flights,” Amina said, and then, before Shilpa could protest: “I’m afraid my mother left something behind in his apartment—a tonic for her eyes. She’s obsessed with these herbs from the village.”
“Our mother was the same way,” Shilpa said. “That’s the way we Deshis are—we complain and complain in the villages, and then take us out and it’s all we can talk about.”
“Aren’t people that way everywhere?” Amina said. “I mean, when they lose something?”
“Are they?” Shilpa laughed in a self-deprecating way. “I wouldn’t know.”
Nasir’s apartment was hot, although he’d left the windows in the bedrooms open. Fariq followed her inside and watched as she set the gifts
on the table; clearly he didn’t think much of them. He looked at his phone in a way that implied he would be glad when her troublesome family was no longer his responsibility. Amina had to remind herself she owed her uncle’s servant no explanation. Still, she went into the bathroom as if she were looking for her mother’s medicine. Water dripped from the tap onto an overturned plastic bucket, and through the vent in the wall she could hear children calling to one another outside.
Nasir
, she thought, only the thought was like speech: she seemed to hear her own voice as if it were coming from the other side of the wall. She went into Nasir’s bedroom—he still hadn’t moved back to the larger room—with the vague idea that she was searching for the photograph of the girl in Comilla, but of course it wasn’t lying out on any obvious surface. There was a thick cotton spread on the bed, a green-and-gray pattern, and a dresser with a photograph of his parents in a gold frame. The only other piece of furniture was a nightstand with an empty eyeglass case sitting on it, a five-taka coin, and a book—a Tagore novel,
The Home and the World
, which she’d neglected to read in Bengali Literature at Maple Leaf. The room was very still, and she had the strange thought that she could be visiting the bedroom of someone who had died, preserved by the bereaved relatives as a memorial.
She stepped out onto the balcony, where several of Nasir’s shirts were drying. One of his sisters must’ve washed them for him after he went to work this morning, and they were hanging against the iron grille, making a wet curtain between herself and the street. She touched the sleeve of a white shirt and then pushed it carefully to the side, as if she wanted to look out. In fact her mind was so full that she found herself simply staring at the wall of the building opposite, adjacent to the one where the Rahmans lived. She thought she must have stood there for a long time, and gradually she became aware of the people passing in the lane below, on foot and in rickshaws. The apartment was so similar to the one she’d left three years ago that she could almost imagine she was back there, waiting eagerly for the first glimpse of her husband-to-be. But instead of George it was a girl she saw, wearing her uniform shalwar kameez and carrying a heavy bag of schoolbooks on her back. She paused in front of the gate, searching
through her bag for her key, and then let herself into the courtyard of the blue building. Her hair was loose around her face, but Amina knew very well who it was.
She peered through the grille, stifling a peculiar urge to call out. Once she had thought there was a girl who’d stayed back to hold her place for her, but that was just another one of the illusions that came with distance. The balcony was small, the view obscured, and Amina was alone.
19
They arrived too early to go through security, and so they were forced to wait near the baggage claim, on orange plastic chairs that her mother insisted on wiping with a napkin before they sat down. No flights were coming in, and several of the ceiling lights had burned out; they sat in the gloom while other, larger families coalesced and dispersed around them, flush with the busy self-importance of air travel. It was afternoon when they entered the airport, but it seemed like dusk inside. Her parents continued peering through the tinted glass to the parking lot, and Amina wondered if they weren’t already regretting how little time they’d spent saying good-bye.