My stomach flips as I realize one of them is Phil Taylor, older brother of Rick Taylor. The same Rick Taylor who threw garbage at Uncle Sandeep’s car this afternoon. We’re pointed toward two seats that were saved for us and I shrink into mine.
As I look around the table, I notice something I’ve never noticed before: I’m the only brown face there. There are no other, what Melville’s principal refers to as, “minorities.” In fact, as I look around the restaurant, I realize that there are only a handful of us in the entire place. You could fit in and cloak your differences….
Throughout dinner, I hardly say a word. Mike and his buddies laugh and joke, over and around me, but I don’t hear a word. I hear thuds against a car, words shot like bullets.
In this setting, I barely recognize Mike. He’s so far away from the Mike I started dating last year. Suddenly I wonder if this part of Mike was always there and I just never saw it, never bothered to dig a little deeper, like with Mom and her family.
As we finish dinner, Mike jabs me in the ribs. “What’s up?” he asks.
I shrug. “Nothing.”
Outside, he gives his friends one-armed guy-hugs and we walk a block to the car. He starts it up, turns on the heat, and rubs his hands together. I huddle in the passenger seat, pulling my coat up around my neck.
“You sure nothing’s up?” he says, blowing on his hands.
I hesitate for a moment, then look at him. “I wish you had told me we were coming to Joe Junior’s.”
He turns on the radio. “It was a last-minute thing, and I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
“Yeah, but…I thought we were going to have a nice, quiet evening. That’s what you said you wanted.”
He gives me an apologetic look. “The guys asked me and it sounded like fun.” He puts his hand on the back of my neck and pulls me toward him. “We could still have that quiet evening.”
He threads his fingers through my hair, kissing me long and soft on the mouth. His hands are warm, and I feel his body heat through our coats. My head starts swimming. Everything that happened today dissipates. He moves to my ear, then kisses my neck—his lips are soft and gentle, like fingertips on a floor, searching for shards of broken glass. I feel drugged. I open my eyes a little and the bright, neon green Joe Junior’s sign in the distance comes into focus.
I pull back. “No.”
He massages the base of my neck. “Right. Let’s go somewhere else.”
I pull away from his hand. “No, Mike.”
He sits back in his seat. “What’s the matter?”
“I had a really bad day,” I say, leaning against the passenger door. He raises his eyebrows but says nothing. “I had a fight with Molly, and Uncle Sandeep—”
He looks out the window and mumbles, “Sounds like he’s been a royal pain in the ass since he came around.”
My voice goes up an octave. “I never said that! And no, he’s not a pain in the anything. He’s my uncle. Part of my family. What if one of your mom’s brothers came back after fifteen years? Wouldn’t you want to know something about him?”
“Wouldn’t happen to my mom. All her loser brothers live five minutes away.” He fiddles with the heat knobs. “Your family is your mom, Sammy. This guy doesn’t know you from a hole in the wall. What does he want? Why’d he come around now, anyway?”
“Because he’s family and because me and my mom are important to him!”
“What—he just figured that out?”
Okay, birthday or not, I’ve had enough. “Didn’t you say that what happened on September eleventh made you see how important your mom is to you?”
He drops his head to one side and looks out the window.
I lean forward so that I can see his eyes. “Mike? A bunch of guys threw cans and garbage at Uncle Sandeep’s car today.”
He turns back to examine the steering wheel. “Did he tell you that?”
“Molly and I were in the car with him!”
He jerks his head around, eyes full of concern. “Did anything happen to you?”
I shake my head. “I’m not hurt, if that’s what you mean.”
He reaches out to stroke my earlobe.
“Mike, they said horrible things, and one of the guys was Rick Taylor.”
I wait for him to say something, to express shock, or horror. But several moments pass and he stays quiet. “Mike?” I say, leaning forward to look at his face.
“Look, I’m not saying what they did was right, Sam.” He turns to face me. “But maybe if you didn’t hang out with your uncle so much, you wouldn’t have to deal with that kind of crap.”
I’m stunned. Words slip through my teeth like smoke. I can’t look at him. If I do, I might burst into tears.
“You could pass for anything. When I first met you, I thought you were Mexican.”
My voice comes out as a gravelly whisper. “But I’m not. I’m Indian-American just like my mom…and Sikh, like my uncle.”
He turns the music up, and the lyrics of Get Rich or Die Tryin’ fill the little black Civic. “Who has to know?” he says.
I look out the window on my side.
Me. I know.
Although he enfolds my hand in his, the drive home is quiet and stiff. When he stops, I give him a halfhearted kiss and scramble out. The night did not go as smoothly as I had hoped. Not even close. But then, lately, nothing has been going very smoothly.
Chapter 6
First-period calculus drones on with Mr. Lim’s back to the class. His entire body jiggles as he makes endless tables and symbols on the board. Lim’s class offers a bit of relief from the constant barrage of September eleventh hyperawareness. It’s the only class where we don’t have to talk about the attacks. In here it’s just numbers and formulas; things that make sense and have answers you can prove.
Lim and my mom seem to be the only people trying to avoid all the mass media coverage of what happened. When I leave my house, it’s everywhere, all the time. Not that Mom doesn’t talk about it or think about it. I know she does. It’s in the little comments she makes about “our world these days,” and the looks she darts out the window whenever there’s a loud noise. She’s taking the whole “don’t let them win” thing to heart. Only it’s a lot harder to do when things like what happened yesterday happen.
I haven’t seen Molly yet, but she left three messages for me last night on my cell:
—“Hi, Sammy. That was something this afternoon—I’m still reeling! Call me back.”
—“Sam, I know you’re out with Mike, but I just wanted to see how you’re doing. I can’t get it all out of my head! We’ve known those guys forever, why would they do something like that? Call me!”
—“Me again. Last call, I promise. I’m still shook up, but I just remembered you’re out for birthday fun. If you do anything interesting, I want a detailed report. Meet me at my locker before class starts?”
I never called her back and didn’t meet her this morning.
Somehow, without my okay, everything has changed—overnight. I can’t pinpoint what the change is, or exactly when it happened, but nothing is the same.
A movement in the hallway catches my eye. I turn to see Molly waving frantically, just behind the door. I look at Lim, who still has his back turned. I clear my throat loudly and scrape my chair against the floor.
Lim turns around. “Yes, Ms. All-oo-ali?”
“Can I use the bathroom, please?”
“I’m sure you can, but yes, you may. Next time, please go before class.”
I catch up with Molly down the hall.
“Didn’t you get my messages?” she asks, as soon as we’re away from any open classroom doors.
I nod. “I got home late.”
“Why didn’t you meet me at my locker?”
“Got in late today.” Not entirely untrue. I was definitely later than early.
She grabs my elbow. “Sammy, I can’t get what happened yesterday out of my head!”
You can’t get it
out of your head?
“You must be totally freaking. What about Uncle Sandeep? Is he okay?”
“I haven’t talked to him yet. Went out with Mike last night, remember?”
She throws her head back. “Oh crud, yeah.” She looks at me, eyes widening. “Did you…”
“After the afternoon we had?”
She shrugs. “Comfort…?”
“Hardly. Let’s just say it didn’t go very well.”
Her mouth drops open. “Why not?”
I grip a lock on a locker and give it a tug. “We had dinner with Rick Taylor’s brother.”
Her eyes grow twice their usual size. “Who? Why?”
I shake my head slowly. “He and Mike were in the same year, and they had the same classes together.”
Her saucer eyes narrow into buttonholes. “Did you tell Mike what Rick did?”
I nod.
She leans forward. “Aaaand?”
I shrug. “And nothing.” I take a breath before my voice cracks.
She strokes my arm. “Don’t worry, Sam. Between me and your uncle, we’ll make sure you never walk home alone.”
“I’m not worried.” I look at the floor. “What about Bobbi?”
She stops stroking and leans against the wall of lockers. “Bobbi’s not as bad as we thought she was, Sam.”
“Come on, Moll. She drives a pink Lexus to school.”
She giggles. “I know, but once you get past that, and the clothes, shoes, parties, and oodles of money…she’s not so bad.”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah.”
We start walking. “Meet me at my locker after school?” she whispers as she rounds the bend to her class. I feel pinpricks behind my eyes. My world is still spinning away, but at least Molly’s back.
I nod and slip quietly back into calculus. The clock shows twenty minutes since I left, but Lim has had his back turned the whole time, and most of the back row is asleep. I pray that my osmosis method of learning kicks into overdrive for this class.
The rest of the day is like a movie montage. I catch Balvir in the smokers’ corner with a couple of other Indian girls in similar dress. I wonder why I’ve never focused in on them before? I would always walk by and register a brown mini-mob, but never stopped to look at any faces. Sometimes I think I just walked by and didn’t even notice they were there at all. Funny what makes it onto your radar and what blips off the screen.
Rick Taylor, Chuck Banfield, and Simon Monroe lurk in a nearby corner. I’ve spent the last ten years avoiding those guys, and now they’re everywhere. My stomach lurches at the very thought of them. When I see them, I have to lean against a wall for a moment to calm my stomach.
Bobbi Lewis floats by occasionally, all caramel and gold and bronze and pink. People I know wave and greet me in the halls. I wave and nod, feeling like a satellite, floating above it all.
In Ms. Lesiak’s English class, we put the healthy discussion of the Trade Center attacks on hold while she gives us a lesson on the proper uses of a comma. Thank God for small favors. I still don’t know what I’m going to write about.
Since my lunch is fourth period and Molly’s is third, I usually try to get homework done during that time. Today I stare at a blank page for fifty minutes while snippets from yesterday’s ride home play an endless loop in my brain. Thud! Crash! Go back home, Osama!
I pull out my cell phone and dial Uncle Sandeep. He did say I could call him anytime.
He answers halfway through the first ring. “Samar?”
“Hi, Uncle Sandeep.”
“What is it? Are you all right?”
I stifle a sob. “I feel…I don’t know…”
“Shall I come to get you? Are you finished at school?”
I almost come apart at the sound of genuine concern and caring in his voice. One…two…three, breathe. “No. I still have a couple of classes left.”
“Shall I pick you up after school?”
“Yes,” I say, barely above a whisper.
The rest of the afternoon passes in exactly the same way as the morning. After my last class, I rush outside.
Uncle Sandeep’s car is out front and waiting. “Shall we drive and see where we end up?”
I nod and buckle my seatbelt. He drives out onto the main street, taking the ramp to the highway.
“Um, as long as we don’t go out of state,” I say.
He laughs. “I’m glad you still have your sense of humor!”
“Hasn’t been easy.”
His smile fades. “I’m sorry you had to go through that with me, Samar.”
“It sort of brought me back in time, you know?”
He shakes his head. “No, tell me.”
“I went through stuff like that—not as bad as that, but sort of the same kind of thing—when I was a kid.”
He nods. “Of course.”
I turn to him. “See? You say, ‘of course,’ but it’s never been something I could talk easily with Mom about.”
He knits his brow. “Why not? Sharan would understand.”
“I don’t know. She always drove home the point that I’m no different from anyone else…and that I should ‘excel and surpass’ everyone around me…like that would be my protection.”
He makes a tsk sound with his teeth and tongue like Mom does. “She didn’t want you to grow up feeling different, Samar—like she did.”
“And I didn’t, really…other than those few incidents, which I basically put out of my mind until…until the other day. But now,” I continue, “I couldn’t feel more different. I feel like the epitome of different—from everyone. I feel like there’s no one else like me on this whole planet.”
He nods, still saying nothing. His silence is a fill-in-the-blank, and my mouth suddenly feels like a leaky, overflowing pen. “It’s like when I was a kid—I’d be happily joining in the fun on the playground, and then one of the girls would say something to me like, ‘There are no dark people in Cinderella, so you can’t play.’”
He turns into the parking lot of a large white building and brings the car to a stop. “I’m sorry, Samar. In some ways, I feel responsible for bringing this into you and your mother’s lives again.”
“But you also brought important information…information that Mom never gave me.”
He lets out a sigh. “Whether or not that’s positive is up for debate, if you ask your mother.”
“It’s positive for me,” I say vehemently. “I had no idea how much I don’t know! I get straight As at school, but if you ask me anything about who I am and where I come from, I might as well tattoo the word ‘clueless’ on my forehead.” I look at my lap. “And you know what? It never mattered as much before…before you came around.”
He leans across to squeeze me in a one-armed hug, our cheeks smushing together. Then he pauses before looking out the window. “I had no idea we would end up here,” he says softly. “But now that we are, it seems the perfect place to be. Would you like to come inside with me?”
“Where are we?” I say, suddenly noticing our surroundings. I peer out the windshield. But before he says a single word, I have a funny feeling I already know.
The squiggly character above the double doors is the same one on the website that crashed my computer. The words above the character read ek onkar, and the line above that, one universal creator.
“This is the gurdwara, the temple, I attend. I come here because they do the service in English as well as Punjabi. I like to know how to translate the scriptures so that I can share them with others who perhaps don’t speak or understand the language.” He looks at me. “It’s a Friday afternoon, so it’ll be nearly empty….”
I stay glued to my seat, staring uncertainly at the building. It looks a bit cold, uninviting. Or is that how Mom described temples she went to as a child?
“If you don’t want to, it’s fine…we can keep driving,” he says gently.
I imagine the scene when Mom finds out. I’m accustomed to doing things behind her back, but dr
inking a beer, experimenting with smoking, and making out with Mike are not the same as this. This is religion—Mom’s blastoff point. This, and her parents. Here I am with her brother, who she just fought with, about to go into a Sikh temple. But I know it’s something I need to do. I take a deep breath and nod.
Uncle Sandeep gives me an “are you sure?” look, then climbs out. I open the door with trembly fingers and follow him into the building.
The first thing I notice is the smell. Onions, incense, butter, old carpeting. Then I notice the space. Lots and lots of space. The ceilings are high, and it feels much bigger than it looks from the outside.
There are rows and rows of small, square cubbyholes to the right along the length of the wall, like the cubbies I had in kindergarten. Some of them have pairs of shoes in them. Uncle Sandeep takes his boots off and places them in one of the little cubbyholes. He tells me to do the same.
At first I panic, because I’m wearing lumpy socks, one with a hole where my big toe pokes out and the other where my pinky toe pokes out. I wonder if I should tell him, in case that’s offensive. Maybe I should go sit in the car until he’s done….
But he ushers me on. He explains quietly that no one is allowed into the prayer area with their shoes on because it’s a sign of disrespect to traipse into sacred space with dirty shoes and that in some temples in India, you’re required to wash your feet before going in. All of a sudden, it makes sense why Mom makes everyone take their shoes off when they come into our house. Who knew that coming to a place she detests would give me an insight into my own mother?
Next to the stairs, leading into the main prayer room, is a large cardboard box with brightly colored scarves and pieces of cloth. Uncle Sandeep pulls out an eggplant-colored one and ties it around my head.
“You must cover your head, Samar. It’s another way to show respect and humility in the Gurus’ house.”
I’m not sure I should have agreed to come in. I feel more out of place in here than I did in church with Molly. At least there, I knew I didn’t belong. I knew, and everyone else knew, that I was just passing through, a visitor. Here, I feel like I should know all this stuff. Besides which, Uncle Sandeep seems to have transformed into a somber and very serious man who gives instructions on how to be respectful and humble.
Shine, Coconut Moon Page 6