Maybe Mike was right. I know nothing about this man. Maybe Mom was right—maybe these people want to turn me into a rule-following, silent, hair-growing, “good” girl. I take a step back. I want to tell Uncle Sandeep I’ve changed my mind and I’d like to go home now. I think about pulling out my cell phone and calling Mom.
Before I can do anything, Uncle Sandeep takes my arm. He leads me to a very old woman dressed completely in white. Her hair is pulled back into a satiny white bun and covered with a long, translucent white scarf. Uncle Sandeep says something to her in Punjabi. She looks at me and smiles a deeply creased smile, illuminating her skin, which is the exact color of the young gingerroot Mom uses in her noodle dishes. The old woman takes my hand firmly in hers.
“Go with Bibi-ji,” he says.
“Where are you going?” I whisper as loudly as possible without screaming.
“I’ll be directly ahead of you. You’ll see me at all times, I promise. Men and women do not sit together in a gurdwara. You will be fine, trust me.”
The old woman has a grip on my hand stronger than Mike’s, and she leads me up the stairs. I follow, feeling powerless and pissed off and freaked out all at once.
We walk into a huge, brightly lit room. There are framed posters of turbaned, bearded men on the walls, and a canopy at the far end of the room with a big book underneath it—the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book I read about on one of the websites. Sitting behind the book is an old man with a white turban, white clothes, and a white beard and mustache. He waves what looks like the Olympic torch—except instead of the flame, there’s long white hair coming out of it—back and forth over the book. Next to the canopy is an empty, low stage with microphones and drums and other instruments. Strung around each window and the top of the canopy are multicolored Christmas lights.
Uncle Sandeep is ahead of the old woman, who pulls me along. He stops briefly, just after we get into the room, and slips me a five-dollar bill. I stare at it in my hand until the old woman looks at me, smiles encouragingly, and tugs me forward.
Uncle Sandeep walks up the center of the room, drops a bill into a box set up in front of the holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, and kneels down to touch his forehead to the ground. Then he walks clear across the room to sit down.
The old woman does the same and indicates that I should follow. I drop my bill—first, way before the box and then, when I pick it up to try again, way behind it. The old woman shakes her head and motions for me to come to her side. She walks away from where Uncle Sandeep is sitting and sits at the extreme opposite end of the room. She motions for me to sit cross-legged like Uncle Sandeep, though she’s having trouble doing that herself. She finally folds her legs at her side and leans on one hand.
I look at Uncle Sandeep across the room. He’s sitting near a couple of other turbaned guys, one older with a graying beard and mustache, and the other younger like Uncle Sandeep, but a lot thinner and taller. Uncle Sandeep has his eyes closed and looks like he’s muttering to himself.
I look out of the corner of my eye at the old woman next to me. We’re the only two on the “women’s side.” She has a round face with permanent smile lines. Everything about her is round: huge, heaving breasts, a belly like a cloud on her lap, and toes and fingers that are plump and oiled. She smells like the cardamom and clarified butter that Mom sometimes uses in her cooking.
There’s something about this woman that draws me completely into what feels like an invisible hug. Her eyes are closed, and she rocks back and forth to the chanting of the man in the front of the room holding the white-haired torch. Everyone seems to be in their own space. Like when I zone out during lunch period, or during tests. Not a bad idea right now, I suppose. I close my eyes.
Little by little, a kind of quiet seeps into me, like a stain spreading on a paper towel. Uncle Sandeep, the old woman, Molly, Mom, Rick Taylor, Chuck Banfield, Simon Monroe, Mike, Bobbi Lewis, Balvir, tests, school…they all fall away.
I hear the whirr of the ceiling fan above me and the breathing of the old woman next to me. I begin to rock, even before I realize I’m doing it. The man reading the words at the front of the room recites them first in Punjabi, then the same line again in English. He seems to have done this so often that everything flows together, almost into one long sentence. His voice rises and falls in a gentle pulse. I tune into that—the rhythm, zeroing in on the English words.
“One universal creator God…the name is Truth…Creative Being personified…No fear, no hatred…”
Bit by bit, the reverence and the lulling words snake their way through my ears, settling like a mist somewhere deep inside me—in a place where other words have left festering, bubbling wounds. I begin to see what’s behind my eyes so clearly and vividly, I feel I could reach out and touch it.
I see a long line of people, stretching far back into an endless horizon. People from way back in time. Mom’s people and, I guess, my dad’s people. A jolt zings through my body. My people. A sea of faces I don’t recognize.
…the undying, beyond birth…self-sustaining…Truth in the primal beginning, Truth throughout the ages…Truth here and now…”
I see myself as one small point in this long, long chain of people who stretch way out to infinity. And it hits me. I wouldn’t, couldn’t, be here if any one of those people hadn’t survived many of the tragedies we discussed in history class—holocausts, natural disasters, diseases, wars, famines…
The thought of that is so astounding that my eyes fly open and I let out a gasp. The old woman turns to me and kindly motions for me to be quiet. I close my eyes again, eager to get that feeling and image back. But it’s gone. Instead I see all these layers. Like rings on a tree trunk, or the layers of the earth’s crust that Ms. Ortiz showed us in geography last year. “Each layer is stronger when the one beneath it is solid,” she had said.
“Oh Great Creator, how can we become pure and truthful, honest and innocent…and break free of the illusion?”
It dawns on me, clear as a summer sky, how wrapping a turban, speaking the language of your parents’ parents’ parents, and celebrating the same holidays that everyone before you celebrated are all like little thank-yous to those who survived. Those seemingly small things are a long-held memory whispered from the lips of the past into the ear of the future.
Remembering. It’s all about remembering.
Suddenly, what feels like a raging fire begins at the bottom of my spine. Why has Mom kept all this from me? She had no right! I’ve always had what Molly has, and my own mother kept me from it. A tremor from so far inside tears its way through the center of my body, and I feel as if I’ll split in two.
A warm hand lands gently on my forearm. I shudder and my eyes snap open. The old woman gazes into my face. “Bas,” she says, motioning for me to stand. “Chalo.”
I see that Uncle Sandeep is standing too. I rise slowly, blood pumping furiously in my temples, and follow the woman stiffly.
When we get back to the shoe cubbies, Uncle Sandeep smiles, his eyes looking relaxed. “I saw you with the peace,” he says.
I shake my head. My throat is tight, and my voice comes out as a cross between a croak and a squeal. “A piece of what?” I ask, feeling disoriented and aflame all at once.
He shakes his head. “The peace, peace,” he says, exasperated. “The peace in your heart. That’s the whole reason I come here, and why I wanted to bring you here.”
I look sharply into his eyes. “You knew all along we were coming here?”
He shrugs as we head out the door. “No. Not consciously. I knew that I wanted to bring you someday…we just ended up here today.” I give him a long, hard look before we get into the car, but he becomes absorbed in a spot on his shirtsleeve.
He throws the car into reverse. “I wish we could have stayed for the langar—it’s a communal meal that anyone is welcome to after each service. That’s an integral part of Sikhism, you know, the belief that everyone is entitled to food and shelter. That’s wh
y all gurdwaras are open to anyone who needs those things….”
I tune him out as I try to hang on to the feelings and images I had inside the gurdwara. I look out the windshield, and for the first time, I notice the American flag blowing in the wind along with the other flags above the building. As we make our way through the streets on our way to the expressway, I see that all the Indian shops and bodegas in the area have huge American flags draped across their display windows as well. We drive past a taxi stand where several cab drivers sit, waiting for fares. Some wear turbans like Uncle Sandeep. They sip their hot drinks or doze inside their cars. All of them have proud to be an american stickers displayed prominently in their windshields.
I suddenly feel like I’ve entered a bizarre parallel universe where everything is flipped around and makes no sense whatsoever—like all things American and all things Indian were thrown up in the air and landed back in all the wrong places, just to confuse the hell out of me.
I flip open my cell phone as Uncle Sandeep pulls onto the expressway. Twelve messages and seven missed calls.
Chapter 7
All the lights are on, and the house seems alive from the outside, buzzing with Mom’s frenetic energy. As Uncle Sandeep pulls into the driveway, the front door flies open and Mom comes rushing out in her slippers. “Sammy, my baby! Are you all right, sweetheart?”
Her face is splotchy and her eyes are full of red veins. She has a bunch of tissues in one hand. As soon as I climb out of the car, she envelops me in a crushing hold. After a moment, she pushes me out for an inspection.
“What happened? Are you hurt? Isn’t your cell phone working? I left several messages! Where did you find her, Sandeep?”
God. I should have expected her usual overreaction to me being the teensiest bit late. “I’m fine,” I say, wriggling out of her arms. I walk past her and into the house.
“Sammy, Sandeep…will someone please tell me what is going on?”
Uncle Sandeep takes off his boots, but leaves his coat, scarf, and gloves on. Smart guy. The tension between him and Mom might be temporarily suspended because she’s been frantic about me, but Mom never forgets.
He sits in a chair at the kitchen table and motions for me to sit next to him. Then he turns to Mom. “Sharan, sit down.”
Her face drains of color. “It’s that bad?” she whispers, sinking into a nearby chair. She looks at me. “Why didn’t you come to me, Sammy?”
She reaches for my hand, and I snatch it away. I say nothing. I can’t even look at her.
“Samar, tell me what is going on here,” she demands, her voice rising.
Uncle Sandeep says softly, “Samar is fine. She has not been harmed in any way. Really, Sharan—she’s fine. She called me because she was upset, and we went for a drive. That’s all.”
Mom sighs, her shoulders sagging in relief. But only for a moment. Then she sits up straight, color popping back up into her neck and face. “My God, Sammy, do you know what you put me through? Molly called here looking for you when you didn’t meet her after school like you had agreed….”
Oh my God, Molly! I had completely forgotten I was supposed to meet her at her locker!
“When an hour passed and then another and another, we both became hysterical! After the incident the other day, and you not showing up to meet Molly, I—my imagination ran wild with what might be happening!” She stands up and begins pacing. “Sammy, I raised you better than this. You should know better than to disappear off the face of the earth without so much as a phone call, not even to your best friend!” She puts her hands on her hips. “And a four-hour drive? Where on earth did you two go?”
Uncle Sandeep looks at me.
For the first time all evening, I look directly at Mom. My eyes narrow slightly and my body is rigid, but my voice stays calm. “We were gone only about three hours, and Uncle Sandeep and I went to a gurdwara.”
Mom’s hand flutters to her cheek as if she’s just been slapped. She looks at Uncle Sandeep. “She went where?”
He shifts in his seat. “Sharan, I picked her up after classes—I had no idea she was supposed to meet Molly….”
“And you ended up in a gurdwara, of all places?”
His voice is calm, like a horse-whisperer soothing a wild stallion. “I didn’t drag her there, Sharan. She had a choice.”
“I wanted to go,” I say. My stomach churns the way it does every time I’m about to face off with Mom.
Her face blanches. “You wanted to go?” She turns to Uncle Sandeep. “You shouldn’t have done this, Sandeep…. These are the things that turn daughters against their mothers….” Tears shine in the corners of her eyes. She brushes them away with her shaky fingertips.
My hard shell crumbles like parched earth. Just who is the wounded victim here, anyway? I stand up, my voice choking out. “No, you turned me against you! Uncle Sandeep only tried to help! But you don’t want him around me either, do you? Just like your parents and every other family member—you don’t want anyone around me!” Hot tears gush down my cheeks and neck. My fists clench and unclench at my sides.
“Are you afraid I might like them better than you? ’Cause you’re probably right! The only way you can keep anyone around is to keep them away from everyone else! That’s probably what you did to Dad—suffocated him till he couldn’t stand you anymore, just like you’re suffocating me—”
SMACK!
I reel back and fall into the chair behind me.
“Sharan!” Uncle Sandeep is at my side in an instant.
Mom staggers back into a chair, looking at her hand with a “what have you done?” expression, as if it just grew a separate brain. I stare at her through a curtain of wavy hair and reach up to touch my cheek. My mother has never before laid a hand on me.
She leans forward, reaching for my face. “Sammy, I…”
Something slow and ugly—something I never knew was there—rumbles up from deep inside. I sharpen my words like daggers and throw them with noxious precision. “I wish…that you were the one who left…instead of Dad.”
Then I run upstairs to my bedroom, before drowning in another flood of tears.
Saturday morning I sleep late. When I finally roll out of bed, it’s almost eleven. I throw the covers back and quickly get dressed. I’ve got to get out of the house before Mom’s done with her Saturday morning clients. Staying here all day in the same house with her is not an option. I call Molly to let her know I’m coming, stuff my homework and some clothes into my backpack, and run out the door.
The sound of Mom’s hand connecting with my face resonates in my head the whole five blocks to Molly’s house. I reach up to stroke my cheek. Mom doesn’t give a damn about me! It’s all about her and how much she doesn’t want to see her parents, and how my father’s family was mean to her. What about me?
Mom always said, “Let your own truth be your guiding light, even if it’s not the same as anyone else’s.” It never occurred to me that that might include her. Why didn’t I think to find my own truth, even if it’s not the same as Mom’s?
“I’ve decided I’m moving out,” I say when Molly answers the door. She steps aside and yanks me in.
“Good morning, Sammy!” her mother calls from the kitchen as Molly drags me up the stairs.
“Morning, Mrs. Mac!” I yell back.
“What’s going on?” Molly asks as she shuts the bedroom door firmly behind her. “Why weren’t you answering your cell? Your mom called me a million times looking for you last night! I was freaking out—you were supposed to meet me at my locker!”
I drop my backpack on her floor and fall back onto her bed. “Sorry, Moll. I just didn’t want to deal with anyone last night.” I cover my eyes with my forearm.
She looks a little hurt, but recovers quickly. “So what happened? I tried to call Mike’s cell phone, but it kept going straight through to voice mail…. I didn’t know if I should cover for you, or call the cops! Thank God your mom finally called and said that you were home saf
e. But she didn’t sound too happy about it.”
“She smacked me.” I sit up as if it had just happened.
She gasps and lands hard on the bed next to me. “Your mom? Smacked you how? Like a little pat, or a flick? ’Cause I get that all the time….”
“Like a smack on the face. Like in the movies when someone’s delirious.”
“Were you delirious?”
I lie back again and stare at the ceiling fan. “I’ve never been more clear in my life. I hate her, Moll. She ran my dad off, then my grandparents, and now she wants to run Uncle Sandeep off too. She wants me to have nobody but her.”
Molly shakes her head, her hand covering her mouth. “You don’t hate her, you’re just mad. But God, I can’t believe she smacked you…. I just can’t picture her doing that! Was it like a hard slap?”
“It was a hard slap.”
“What was she so mad about?” Then she jerks her head around. “Wait, did you say she ran your dad off?”
I nod.
“Since when do you use that word for that guy?”
“He was probably great, Moll! My mom’s delusional. She said Uncle Sandeep was a slimeball too.”
She gives me a look. “She did not say that, Sam.”
“She might as well have! Whenever she talked about her parents, she said they were controlling and critical and miserable, and ‘oppressive.’ They’re probably the nicest people in the world! I just can’t believe I never tried to find out what they’re like for myself, instead of believing her lies.”
“’Cause they might not be lies,” she says, cocking her head to one side. She slowly traces a pattern on the mattress between us. “It’s never too late, you know…to find out for yourself, that is.”
I sit up again. “I already thought about that. I thought maybe Uncle Sandeep and I could work on Mom…you know, maybe get her to agree to letting me see my grandparents.” I hunch my shoulders and cross my arms. “But after yesterday, I can see that’s impossible.”
Shine, Coconut Moon Page 7