No One Can Pronounce My Name

by Rakesh Satyal

  If she weren’t so determined to see this delicate dance through to its finish, she would have crumpled and begun crying, eternally grateful that he hadn’t strayed. Rather, she tightened her gaze and slid the hem higher, and Mohan advanced.

  She had been writing herself forward these past few months, trying to guide the narrative of her life toward something exciting and meaningful and frightening and enlightening; she had seen the great benefit in having a firm hand in your own attitude. However, as she felt his alternately tender and ardent touch, she could not have foreseen the cataclysm of real attention paired with real affection. The fluctuations of his mouth were uncharted territory that she had never thought to seek because it wasn’t even part of her imagining. In waves, in an important amassing of energy, her body became more than itself: it left her mouth in a prayer-like moan.

  She had made this happen. She had set out to find this and had succeeded. Feelings of satisfaction, flying, and boiling coursed through her, and as she began yelling, she felt it mixing with something else:

  Laughter.

  She pressed her hands to her face, huffed through them, pleasured and giddy, and Mohan brought himself up to her, fell onto his back, and panted beside her. She turned her head to his and pressed her laughing mouth to his agog one. She kissed the man who had brought her to this country, to this house, who had watched with wonder as she saw that TV hoisted into their living room by two delivery men.

  As if she had passed some illness along to him, he started laughing, too. Ranjana and Mohan laughed together. The Chaudhurys laughed. They laughed and laughed and laughed.

  THE BOOKSTORE WAS ALIVE, with at least a hundred people clustered around half as many chairs. A large posterboard with the cover of the book stood before a lectern. On it was an image of an Indian woman, cunning in a sari, with a man, pique-eyed and pale, leaning over her seductively. Over them, the title: Deranged Marriage. Under them, the author’s name: R. J. Cherish. Miniature slabs of this image filled the room, tucked under people’s arms, held in their laps, or halved by pens that would be used to solicit the author’s inscription. The crowd was varied, with some teenagers giggling in loud pockets, and even a healthy contingent of men, too.

  Harit looked at his copy of Ranjanaji’s book, ran his hand over the smooth cover. He had never read a book during his time in America, but he had read this one three times. The book in Harit’s hands felt as if someone had manifested it there via some black magic. That was what the ink of books was, he guessed—some kind of black magic.

  “They’re going to sell out of copies,” Teddy said. The copy in his hands was dog-eared; this was his reading copy; he kept a pristine copy on display in his apartment. “Can you believe our girl is a bestselling novelist?”

  Harit could believe it. Ranjana had revealed her news to everyone several months ago during a get-together at her house. She had received a sizable contract—for three books—and she was quitting her job to write full-time. (It turned out that there was a big demand for paranormal Indian fiction, after all.) At the party, Mohanji and Prashant beta—the latter on spring break from his sophomore year at school—stood beside her with big grins on their faces. Contrary to what Harit might have expected of Mohanji, he seemed genuinely happy for his wife, not at all threatened by her success. After the announcement, Ranjana was seized upon by Seemaji, who smiled next to her as if she had written the book herself. Prashant told Harit later, as people bit into their barfi, that he was glad for his mother because she was finally “living for herself.” This caused Harit’s body to flutter. He was trying to do the same thing.

  Ranjana appeared next to the lectern, and the crowd clapped loudly. The manager of the store gave her a quick introduction—“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you R. J. Cherish”—and then Ranjana took her place.

  “I’m really just so touched that so many of you have come here today,” she said. Although she was addressing these words to the many strangers in attendance, she was looking at Mohan, who was filming the event from the sidelines. She had her hair pinned back with a clasp in the shape of a butterfly, and her face was painted brightly but simply. “I’d like to thank my husband and son, both of whom are here.” People craned to see: Mohan waved with one hand but kept filming; Prashant turned around from his seat in the front row and nodded his head. Seated next to him was a beautiful young Indian woman—a close friend of his from school. “Many of you who are writers will know that nothing is harder than fighting off all of your self-doubt to finish a story, and I could never have finished this book without the help of my writers’ group—all of whom are here. Fellow classmates, would you stand?”

  A group of people in the first row stood and faced the audience, who acknowledged them in even louder clapping. A couple of them looked uncomfortable; one of them, the youngest, smiled earnestly with her eyes; one of them, a man, saluted the crowd; and one of them, with very bright orange hair and a large pile of pages in her hands, curtsied.

  Once they were seated, Ranjana continued. “I’d also like to thank a very wonderful friend who has come into my life, the person who spurred me to finish this thing and transform it from a pile of thoughts into a pile of pages. And that’s my dear friend Harit Sinha. Haritji, would you stand?”

  Harit would have been embarrassed if he hadn’t been so touched. He stood, Teddy patting his lower back, and bent slightly to acknowledge the crowd, who clapped less loudly but looked at him appreciatively. Ranjanaji had her hands fully outstretched and beating against each other, her bangles jingling. Mohan swung his camera at Harit, then moved it slowly back to Ranjana. Seemaji, close to the front, had something between a smile and a frown on her face. It had become quite clear that she didn’t like Harit, that she felt threatened by his friendship with Ranjana. Ah, well.

  Harit still thrilled to see his name in the dedication at the front; the fact that Ranjana had thought to thank him publicly like this when it was already in there seemed like an unnecessary, if welcome, treasure. She had told him that she was going to dedicate the book to him as soon as he had finally, after many months into their friendship, told her about what had happened with his mother, how she had once been confined silently to her chair. Harit still had not told Ranjana—or Teddy—about the sari. It was still a secret that he wanted to keep to himself, something that he now cherished instead of regretted. And somehow his mother had understood this, never bringing it up when Ranjana had finally started visiting their house. They would all have a cup of chai while playing Parcheesi or watching Jeopardy! or listening as Teddy recited poetry by Arthur Rimbaud.

  The crowd in the bookstore followed along as Ranjana began to read from her book. They giggled at her clever turns of phrases and hummed appreciatively at the flourishes of menace that moved the plot along. The book was already number five on the New York Times bestseller list. Ranjana’s agent had told her that she should not define the monsters in the book as vampires because she worried that vampires had already had their cultural moment, so Ranjana had treated them as undefined yet undead beings that still bore the staple characteristics of vampires. This seemed to delight and engage her readers, appealing to their established sensibilities while still seeming fresh and unexpected. The Indian people in the crowd—about a third of the people—appeared to glow with the knowledge that the movie version starring Priyanka Chopra and Jake Gyllenhaal was to begin filming soon.

  When Ranjana was finished, the crowd ignored the manager’s directions to form a straight line to have their books signed and rushed toward the signing table like prisoners after a hunger strike. Cheryl acted as an intermediary, sculpting people into an orderly row by yelling at them and pointing.

  The signing went on for almost two hours. People snapped photos, some of them even getting Ranjana to strike the pose that the woman was striking on the cover. (Teddy was among this camp.)

  “You must be so proud of her,” Achyut said as he neared Harit. His boyfriend, Luis, shook Harit’s hand. Luis was close to H
arit’s own age, handsome and broad-chested with two straight rows of off-white teeth and carefully brushed black hair with evenly spaced streaks of white through it. Harit couldn’t help but be jealous. They made a beautiful couple, and everyone in the crowd gave them low-lidded looks as they passed.

  Harit had met Achyut at FB, when Teddy and Ranjana had taken him many months ago. Achyut had hugged him, Harit marveling at the smoothness of his skin, brightened by the jukebox—alight, screeching in a corner—and the mace-like fixture on the ceiling that cast rainbow colors all over the bar. Harit felt the beginnings of a depressive spiral, but as Teddy had taught him, he scrunched up his body and thought of what he had gained: Teddy’s friendship, and with it the introduction to the alternately painful and wonderful world of sex.

  Now, Achyut and Luis showed Harit and Teddy their signed copies, all of them feeling Ranjana’s influence, as if her success were their own incredible story.

  * * *

  After the signing, Teddy drove Harit back to his house, the two of them silent in the way that had become common in their romance. Harit sighed as they passed the sign for Paradise Island, which was still not completed, though there were rumors that a Chinese entrepreneur had bought it and was going to turn it into a hotel.

  They were not a couple, per se. Everything at work remained mostly the same. They still did the occasional evening at TGI Friday’s, but they relented somewhat, stopping after a couple of drinks and making sure that Teddy wasn’t tipsy before getting behind the wheel. Then, depending on how vocal they were about wanting to have sex, they would spend the night at Harit’s house or Teddy’s apartment. They weren’t sure where their relationship was going or if they even wanted it to go anywhere. Instead of being tormented by this fact, they felt comforted by it. There didn’t seem to be any great rush, not even after all of these months, not even after the passing of Harit’s mother three months ago.

  She had passed happily, her and Harit’s secrets unfurled fully and no palpable resentment left in the wake of this. A few days after that moment in the sitting room, with Teddy and Gital Didi standing there, everything between Harit and his mother had opened up. His mother had even joked to him about how lovely a figure he had made in their home during his sari era. At this comment, she presented him with a brand-new golden dupatta, and they laughed, gleeful but unsure that this was even really happening. Almost a year later, his mother took to her bed downstairs and repeated to him for a final time the details of her life before her children were born, her time at Allahabad University, the long blackness of his father’s hair and the things that she had willingly surrendered for Harit and Swati. She was up front about her love of Swati, how she had originally favored her firstborn, but Harit believed her when she looked at him, the webs in her eyes now decoration instead of a barrier, and said that she had grown to love him more than she had ever loved anyone. She loved him especially, she said, because he made her certain that moving here had been the right decision, even in light of what had happened to their family.

  “You used to come to me all of the time and say, ‘It is Swati,’” she whispered. “And the truth, beta, is that you are Swati. You are everything good about her, everything sweet and good and loving. You get to carry the best parts of Swati through this world.”

  A few days later, she shut her eyes—two pearls in brown pouches—and took her leave.

  “I’ll have to get gas in the morning, so I’ll probably be here closer to eight,” Teddy said as they pulled in front of the house.

  “Sounds good,” Harit said. He leaned forward, as did Teddy, and they touched lips as friends might do, then harder, as nonfriends might do. “See you then,” Harit said.

  He let himself into the house. Gital Didi had tidied up, as she did every Sunday. She said that she needed to do it to keep her sanity; she still wanted to make sure that Harit had a truly “Hindustani home.” Harit took no issue with this. He, more than anyone, could understand such coping mechanisms.

  He made a cup of tea and put three butter cookies on a plate. He did all of this in the dark, not bothering to turn on the light. He enjoyed it like this now, not having to worry about darkness and what level of sanity or insanity it indicated.

  He went to the living room and set the food on his TV tray, then nestled into the armchair. He lifted the neatly folded sari from where it lay slightly hidden behind the chair and draped it over his shoulders. He had Ranjana’s book in his lap. The sun descended as if the world outside were rising up against a gleaming curtain. As the light grew fainter, Harit bit into his cookies and savored them, how they married the sweetness of the tea’s sugar and the thick milk. Soon, the sun was replaced by the bright lights of the baseball diamond.

  Harit picked up his cell phone and called Ranjana. He had to try twice, since his fingers were still not used to this type of phone, particularly its round, make-believe buttons.

  “I’m so glad you rang,” Ranjana said. Somewhere near her, Mohanji and Prashant were having some kind of excited conversation.

  “How many books did you end up signing?”

  “Over five hundred. So many people bought more than one copy.”

  “I think Teddy has five now.”

  “Don’t tell him, but Cheryl bought ten.”

  “Yes, but how many of them do you think she’s read?” Harit asked.

  They both giggled.

  “Did you ever suspect,” she asked, “all that time ago, when we met for dinner with Teddy, that you and I would be talking like schoolgirls on the phone all the time?”

  “Never,” Harit said. “But then again, did you think that your name would be in The New York Times?”

  “That’s not really my name, ji.”

  “Perhaps not, but it is you.”

  She sighed sweetly, her breath like the movement of a brush through long hair. “Thank you, ji.”

  After their call, Harit shut off his phone and turned on the stereo. Asha Bhosle’s trilling chirp enlarged the room. He remembered his sister, her beautiful smile, how she would sing along to these songs while moving her feet in a made-up dance. He remembered his mother, watching them from the crook of the kitchen doorway, all the while with her hands clasped calmly against her stomach. Harit smiled as tears slipped out of his eyes and onto the sari. At nine, the lights of the baseball diamond shut off, leaving him to enjoy the music in the dark.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First, I must thank my wonderful editor Anna deVries for her incredibly perceptive work, which made this book stronger and richer. She has been a tireless champion of this story and its characters; I wish that every writer had the opportunity to work with her.

  Thanks to the entire team at Picador: Stephen Morrison, Jonathan Galassi, Steve Rubin, Elizabeth Bruce, Kolt Beringer, Jeremy Pink, Lisa Goris, Shelly Perron, Steven Seighman, Darin Keesler, James Meader, Declan Taintor, Shannon Donnelly, and Molly Fessenden. Thank you, Henry Sene Yee, for the gorgeous cover.

  Thanks to my agent, Maria Massie, for finding this book a perfect home.

  Thank you, Owen Pallett, for your music and for the permission to use your lyrics as an epigraph.

  I must thank the New York Foundation for the Arts, for its generous support of this project. I must also thank the Norman Mailer Writers’ Colony and my fellow residents, for their input as the novel originally took shape; thank you, Colum McCann, for leading those discussions.

  Christine Pride acted as a personal and professional mentor throughout this process. The only thing that I value more than her editorial opinion is our friendship (and mutual worship of Shonda Rhimes).

  Special thanks to Mala Bhattacharjee and Devi Pillai, for letting me interview them specifically about the character of Ranjana.

  Thanks to other readers who gave me fantastic feedback along the way: Karyn Marcus, Ursula Cary, Jenny Jackson, Sarah Jenks-Daly, Adam Rathe, Karen Kosztolnyik, Kendra Harpster, Lea Beresford, and Helen Atsma. Thank you, Marissa Conrad, for letting me use your former Long
Island City studio apartment as an occasional staycation writing retreat.

  Thanks, as always, to the creative writing program at Princeton—the best damn place of all.

  Thank you to all of my friends, for your support—especially Chris Henry and Ashwini Ramaswamy, for your endless passion and enthusiasm.

  Thank you to my family: my mom, Lalita (who offered very useful comments on the penultimate draft); my father, Vinay; my brother Rajiv and his wife, Harsha; and my brother Vikas.

  Most of all, much gratitude to John Maas, who has changed my life altogether. This book started in a sad place and ended in a hopeful one, and it is due to your kindness, humor, and generosity that such a thing was possible. I love you so much.

  ALSO BY RAKESH SATYAL

  Blue Boy

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  RAKESH SATYAL is the author of the novel Blue Boy, which won the 2010 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Debut Fiction and the 2010 Prose/Poetry Award from the Association of Asian American Studies and which was a finalist for the Publishing Triangle’s Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction. Satyal was a recipient of a 2010 Fellowship in Fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts and two fellowships from the Norman Mailer Writers Colony. His writing has appeared in New York magazine, Vulture, Out magazine, and The Awl. A graduate of Princeton University, he has taught in the publishing program at New York University and has been on the advisory committee for the annual PEN World Voices Festival. He also sings a popular cabaret show that has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, the New York Observer, and Page Six. He lives in Brooklyn. You can sign up for email updates here.

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