The Saturday morning that Uncle Sandeep rang our doorbell had one of those endless, frozen blue skies hanging above it; the same kind of frozen blue sky that, just four days earlier, had borne silent witness to a burning Pentagon and two crumbling mighty towers in New York City. And the cause of all those lost lives was linked to another bearded, turbaned man halfway around the world. And my regular, sort of popular, happily assimilated Indian-American butt got rammed real hard into the cold seat of reality.
Chapter 2
In Linton, New Jersey, people have slowly started to get back into their daily routines, but everyone’s still on edge. We’re supposed to not let “them” win, by continuing with our lives like nothing happened. The president and other politicians urge everyone to go on shopping and doing business like normal, while television news, magazines, and newspapers showing images of the attacks over and over make that pretty much impossible.
Ads run every few minutes during my favorite TV shows, depicting smiling faces of every race and ethnicity, saying firmly, “I’m an American.” And even though we’re three hours away from New York City, all the buildings have beefed up security procedures; the announcements at school tell us to report any “suspicious packages” or “unattended backpacks”; and every time a car backfires, tensions rise like simmering water. And now there’s the thing with anthrax. Whenever I walk by the office at school, I see the secretaries opening mail with rubber gloves on.
When I’m home, Mom makes me focus on other things, like schoolwork, or she brings home some comedy and romance DVDs, or she encourages me to hang out with my best friend, Molly, and “go be a teenager.”
Today I’m on my way to Molly’s house. They’re having a huge birthday celebration for Molly’s great-aunt Maggie. I love and hate Molly’s huge family gatherings. Love, because her family is awesome—they’re a blast to be around, and warm and welcoming. Hate, because when I’m in the midst of all that laughter and familyness, I feel more alone than ever.
But since Molly is my best friend, and because she hates huge get-togethers, especially ones that involve her family, I have to be there. It’s one of the clauses in the best-friend handbook.
When I get there, the place is already swarming with family. Someone grabs my hand and yanks me into the living room. Someone else hands me a red plastic cup with something that looks like cranberry juice sloshing over the edges. Mrs. MacFadden, Molly’s mother, scurries over to take the cup from me. “Oh, heavens!” she says to the man who handed me the drink. “Jack, that punch is not for the kiddies!” She ushers me to another table. “Here, darlin’,” she says, ladling something bubble-gum-smelling into a cup decorated in a Clifford the Big Red Dog theme. She pats the top of my head brightly and sashays away. I peer into the watery, powdery mixture, put the cup down, and head back to the other table.
Molly jumps in front of me out of nowhere. “Finally!” she says, grabbing my arm and steering me into the kitchen. “I’ve been waiting forever.” She leans closer and whispers, “I have some ‘fun’ in a thermos over here. Just keep it on the DL—it smells like orange juice, so no one has to know a thing.”
The kitchen is where the rest of the crew is. Everyone has plastic cups with some of Molly’s “fun” juice. A couple of the cousins I’ve met before at MacFadden family events grin and do a mock toast as I walk in. Molly rummages around in the cupboard under the sink, then stealthily pours some of the juice into a bright orange cup. She quickly caps the thermos, shoves the cup into my hand, and slams the cupboard shut as her uncle Jack does a little two-step dance into the room.
“Hey there, young’uns!” he says boisterously. He eyes the opaque plastic cups containing our fun-juice and smirks. “Glad to see a group of youngsters concerned about their daily dose of vitamin C!”
Molly’s cousin Peggy, whom I met a couple of Christmases ago, grins and holds up her cup. “Haven’t you seen the commercials, Uncle Jack? Most teens don’t get enough fruits and vegetables in their diets!” He lets out an explosive laugh and slaps his thigh as he heads back into the family room, where Great-Aunt Maggie sits.
Great-Aunt Maggie is seated in the center of the family room like a giant centerpiece around which a lot of the adult relatives sit, chat, and drink. The other centerpiece, getting a lot more attention than Great-Aunt Maggie—and even she can’t seem to keep her eyes off it—is the giant new flat-screen TV that Molly’s dad bought last week. It literally takes up half the wall in their big family room.
More and more people file in through the front door: women in dresses carrying casserole dishes covered with aluminum foil, huge Crock-Pots with stew, or boxes of desserts; men with shirts straining to make the full journey around their midriffs; drooling babies; screaming toddlers; bored-looking thirteen-year-olds; grandparents pinching cheeks and calling everyone by the wrong name…
For someone like me, who’s used to cozy, two-person-and-maybe-a-couple-of-friends celebrations, Molly’s family “events” are always a bit dizzying. Because this is Great-Aunt Maggie’s ninety-second birthday, today is more like a family reunion than a birthday party. I can’t believe how many people are able to squeeze into the MacFadden house.
“Let’s go up to my room,” Molly says, again grabbing my arm, this time steering me upstairs. “It’s the only place we might be able to get some privacy.”
On the way up to her room, we pass an eight-year-old drawing on the wall with what looks like a block of cheese. Molly shrugs and takes another sip from her cup.
Once in her room, Molly puts her drink on the dresser and flops onto her bed. “Aaarrghh! Help, this place is insane!” she says, laughing.
I feel a familiar pang slice through me, the same one I get every time I’m surrounded by Molly’s enormous and loud family. I shove the feeling aside. “Looks like everyone’s having fun,” I say, shrugging.
If I had to describe it, I would say Molly’s family is a painting in bright, vibrant colors, while my family—meaning me and Mom—is bland neutrals and beiges in a taupe frame. Molly’s family is 100 percent, no question, without a doubt, Irish. They all know it, celebrate it whenever possible, and broadcast it with great pride.
She rolls onto her back and closes her eyes. For a few minutes we listen to the sounds from downstairs: shrieks and squeals of delight, sudden thunderclaps of laughter, people yelling over one another to be heard, clinking of glasses, cheers, and whistles.
“Anyway,” she says, eyes flying open again, “have you figured out what you’re going to get Mike for his birthday?”
I shake my head to clear the lonely feeling that had begun to roll in. “He said he wants a quiet night in, so I thought I’d spice it up a bit,” I say, dipping a hand into my bag. I pull out the one-piece I bought—a royal blue, satin, Western-cowgirl type, with fringes over the underwire part of the bra and a thong back.
Two years ago, when we turned fifteen, Molly and I began collecting lacy, elegantly slutty undergear. We decided that was the year we would both lose our virginity, and lingerie seemed to be a good first step. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that Bobbi Lewis and her minions were talking in gym class about how you can’t explain what it’s like to have sex—you just have to do it. Or with her casually glancing around the room, and saying with her nose in the air, “It makes you a real woman, not like most of the little girls running around at this school.”
Since then we’ve been steadily building our arsenal of slinky underthings in preparation for the Real Deal—our first time. I’m pretty sure my Real Deal will be with Mike, but the time hasn’t been right yet. Molly’s main concern is finding the right guy. She’s bored with Melville’s offerings and is considering branching out to some of the neighboring schools.
The lingerie was Molly’s idea, and going to the Center for Young People for a workshop on birth control was mine. My mom’s pretty cool, but if I ever came home pregnant—first-born only daughter or not—she would kill me.
There’s a faint knock
on the door. “What d’you want?” Molly asks, without getting up.
A little girl’s voice says, “Molly, do you want to have a tea party with me?”
“Not right now, Shannon, I’ll come down in a little bit, okay?”
“Are you doing big-girl stuff?” Shannon asks, clearly not wanting to break the contact.
Molly heaves herself off the bed and opens the door as I stuff my one-piece back into my bag. Molly bends down to talk to Shannon, while the little girl peers eagerly into the bedroom. “Shanny, I’ll be down in a little bit, okay? Why don’t you have tea with your teddy bear and maybe share some with Luke until I come down?”
That seems to work, or maybe it’s that she sees we’re not doing anything exciting. Either way, little Shannon skips happily back down the stairs.
“Wow,” says Molly, closing the door firmly behind her and pointing to my flea-market find. “That does not look comfortable.”
“It’s not supposed to be comfortable,” I say, pulling the teddy back out of my bag. I am thoroughly annoyed with her know-it-all attitude—not one of her best traits. “It’s just for show.”
“It looks too…I dunno,” she says, eyeing it with one finger on her chin. “Western, cowgirl, yee-haw…or something.”
“What’s wrong with that?” I ask. “A lot of guys go for that.”
“Mike’s not a lot of guys. He goes for you, and that is just not you,” she says with certainty.
I spread the teddy out on the bed. “Then what would be ‘me,’ oh Wise Underwear Guru? Please enlighten.”
She stands with one hand on her hip, throwing her head back to study her ceiling fan. “You need something classy, yet sleazy. Sophisticated, yet raunchy…That thing,” she says, pointing a long French-tipped finger, “is all raunch. Which has its purposes, but not for his birthday.”
“Then what?” I say, exasperated. I have completely run out of ideas, and Molly is my only hope.
“Something exciting, something different…something uniquely Samar Ahluwahlia.”
“Okay, when you come up with it, I’ll be right here,” I say, lying back on her bed.
She taps her lips with the tip of her finger. “We need something out of the ordinary…maybe with an Eastern flavor.”
“Excuse me—‘Eastern flavor’? Like Cape Cod or Nantucket?”
“Hardy-har…no, you know—Kama Sutra, mantras, exotica…I bet that would be a huge hit with Mike.” Molly’s way more into my “Eastern” heritage than I am. It’s not as if I’m not into it…it’s just that it was never really into me.
My mom spent a whole lot of time, when I was growing up, smudging the hard lines that made us different from everyone around us. She dressed me like everyone else, packed my lunch with all the same snacks as the other kids, and stressed the fact that we’re all more the same than different. “You’re American,” she’d say, “and that’s all that matters. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
Molly digs through her closet and throws what looks like a bunch of lacy, silky rags on her bed. “Now that your uncle’s coming around, you should mine that connection for nuggets we can use.”
I groan. “First of all, Mike would rather I wear nothing. The frilly stuff is just a perk, as far as he’s concerned. So, Western cowgirl, or ‘Eastern flavor’ is irrelevant. Secondly—yeah, I’ll ask my uncle what I could use to turn my boyfriend on. Ew! You have a sick mind, Moll. Not to mention, my uncle blushes like a freakin’ tomato when a Wonderbra commercial comes on.”
She laughs. “Well, then, ask your mom,” she says offhandedly. “If I had a hookup like that, I’d work it for all it’s worth. Your culture gave you belly dancing, henna, body jewelry, and an entire bible of sexual positions, for Chrissake! What do I get? Four-leaf clovers and leprechauns.”
“Even if my mom knew anything about any of that stuff, she would sure as hell not share it with me—not that I would want her to. She talks to me about sex, but sex in general…as in ‘do whatever, but be safe.’”
Molly absently fingers the lace on a red bra. “That sucks,” she says, flopping down next to me.
“Oh!” She jumps up and runs to her closet. She reaches into her secret compartment. “I almost forgot! The new Victoria’s Secret catalogue came in the mail.” She waves it in the air. “Ta-da! They’re giving away a free tote bag when you buy a Body by Victoria bra—we have to go next Saturday!” She flips through the pages as we huddle together on her bed to pore over the catalogue.
“If I could have a body like Gisele, I’d never wear underwear,” she says. “I’d just parade around town buck nekkit.”
“You do have a body like Gisele’s,” I say, flipping the page. Molly’s not as tall as Giselle, maybe, but she’s fat in all the right places, and skinny in all the other right places. She’s the very definition of cute, with freckles like raindrops across her cheekbones, and tight, apricot-colored corkscrew curls that spring up and down whenever she moves or shakes her head—which is a lot of the time. She does her own fashion thing, and most of her clothes are from thrift shops, or boutiques in New York City. The only thing she doesn’t skimp on is sexy underwear.
“It’s me who could use some of what she’s got,” I say.
“What are you talking about?” she says, looking me over and rolling her eyes in sheer disgust.
Even though we’d both love to be six-foot-tall Tyra-or Gisele-type runway material, we do okay. I’m five foot four, petite, with waist-length, loose curls that go ballistic when it’s raining or humid out. I’ve had hairstyles that Buddhists could point to and say, “See? That’s why we shave our heads.”
“Oooooh, this is nice,” Molly says, pointing to a picture of lace garters and thigh-high nylons. “I have something like this if you want to borrow it!” She rummages through her secret compartment—which is really a decorated shoe box from a second-grade school project—and comes back out with a similar outfit.
“I am not wearing that,” I say, pointing to the garter belt, “but I will take the seam-up-the-back thigh-highs, thank you very much.”
She hands them graciously to me. “Wear them out. And I expect a full and complete report, especially if my nylons have anything to do with you and Mike doing the Real Deal,” she says, grinning.
“Mo-lly!” Her mom’s voice coming up the stairs sends us scrambling for the lingerie pieces we’ve displayed all over the bed.
“Oh, crap,” Molly mutters under her breath, shoving all the lace and satin back into its hiding spot. I yank out one of her textbooks. By the time Mrs. Mac knocks on the door, gone are Gisele and Tyra, and we’re poring over one of Molly’s three-inch-thick design books.
“Come in!” says Molly, in her sweetest singsong voice. Mrs. Mac opens the door and looks around the room.
She looks at the book in our hands and gives us a penetrating stare. “What are you girls doing?” she asks suspiciously. “There’s a whole party going on downstairs…. Why are you two holed up in here?”
“Just needed a breather, Mom,” Molly says innocently.
Her mother lingers in the doorway, looking around like some evidence of what we were really up to will make itself known. “Well, hurry up, then,” she says finally. “We’re about to cut the cake. You won’t want to miss that!”
“We’ll be right down, Mom!” Molly says as Mrs. Mac turns to go back down the stairs.
“Come on, Moll, let’s go before she decides to come back.”
She downs the rest of her drink. “Fine, but you have to fill me in on every single detail of birthday night.”
“Deal,” I say, draping an arm around her shoulders.
Mrs. Mac greets us with a wide smile as we reach the bottom of the stairs. “Sammy, will you be joining us for church next Sunday?”
Molly lets out an exasperated sigh as I fidget with the strap of my bag. “Um…uh…” Normally I make something up—I have a paper to write, or somewhere to go with my mom. But today I try a different tactic, one I never would ha
ve thought to use before.
“Thanks, Mrs. Mac, but I’ve decided to learn more about what it means to be Sikh.” Molly raises her eyebrows and opens her mouth as if to speak, but closes it again without saying anything.
“Oh!” Mrs. Mac says in surprise. “Yes, well…the church is open to all….”
“Thank you,” I say, smiling brightly. I went to church once with Molly and her family, and Mom had a serious hissy fit.
If I’d gotten my nipple pierced like Andrea Bernstein’s older sister did, Mom would have told me about hygienic needles and not dulling the sensitivity of the breasts—which is the talk I got anyway when I told her about Andrea’s sister’s nipple. If I’d gone to a bar and got trashed, she would have sat down to have a serious chat with me about responsible drinking and not walking home alone. But church? That’s a whole different story. Mom’s face flushed deep purple as she said, “Religion is for the mindless and ignorant. It’s the opiate of the masses!”
Whatever. Either way, I wasn’t crazy about sitting on a hard bench for what seemed like ages, and listening to a sermon on the sanctity of marriage. I kept thinking of all the things I would rather have been doing, like watching Mike do chin-ups in his boxers, or going shopping with Molly.
Molly giggles next to me and leans into my ear. “So, you’ve decided to ‘learn more about being Sikh’?”
“Yeah,” I say, a little more forcefully than intended. I bring my voice down a notch. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Excuse me,” Molly says, holding up her hands, “it’s just that this is the first I’ve heard about it.”
“So? Do you have to know every single thought that pops into my head?” I have no idea why I’m snapping at her, but I can’t stop myself. Her know-it-all-ness is getting to me.
She looks hurt and I immediately want to apologize, but before I can say anything, Molly’s aunt Aileen comes out of the kitchen carrying an enormous cake lit up like a July Fourth celebration. Everyone begins to sing “Happy Birthday” to Great-Aunt Maggie.
Shine, Coconut Moon Page 2