“It’s a bag of shit.”
“What?”
“Kitten shit.” Curled black feces rested at the bottom of a paper bag. “I presume we can use it for the garden.” George walked past his stunned new wife and into the garden, where a light summer rain had begun. His father’s roses winked and blushed from the corner of the lot. Here he scattered the droppings beside each bush, crumpled the bag into a tight ball, and headed back inside before the rain could soak through his shirt.
CHAPTER NINE
The doorbell rang. Kamla’s eyes, perched above a teacup, darted to meet Viji’s. Both women trembled on the verge of laughter.
On the front porch stood two young men, rosycheeked, in black suits. They wore name tags.
“Hello”’ Kamla cooed.
“Yes?” said Viji. “Can I help you?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, we want to know if we can help you! We’re from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints. This is Elder, and I’m Jonathan.”
“Are you lost? Do you need directions?”
“Actually, ma’am, we’re not. Far from it, in fact. We were wondering if you had a minute for a chat.” His cheeks were so red, Viji wondered who had slapped him. She wanted to reach out and pinch one. How Kamla would have hooted.
“Come in, then,” Viji said. She knew what these people wanted, but she didn’t feel like turning them away; she’d been having a good day. Having Kamla there made her brave.
“I’ve heard of this church,” Viji offered. These ladderday saints, Jesus Christ and the Ladder-Day Saints. She envisioned a rock ‘n’ roll group, Jesus Christ on vocals, the ladder-day saints behind on drums, guitar, tambourine… and ladders. They sponsored soft-focus commercials that played between Saturday morning cartoons—this was where she knew them from. Always some boy turning down a cigarette or visiting his grandmother, or helping a blind man to cross the street. “I should tell you, I have my own religion and I don’t intend to switch. Would you like some tea?”
“Oh, well, we’re not trying to convert you,” said the one named Elder. “We’re just spreading our message of faith.”
“Mm-hmm. Did you want some tea, then, or some water?”
“Water, please. It’s a warm one today. Can I ask— sorry, I haven’t asked your name—”
“Viji.”
“Viji?”
“Viji.”
“Can I ask,” he hesitated, “Viji, what your current faith is?”
“I am a Hindu.” She resented his word: “current”.“And so is Kamla.” The two boys looked up and smiled at her. This felt suddenly like a blind double date, a pickup scene in that diner on Happy Days.
“And do you believe your faith will lead you to an afterlife of salvation?”
“Are you talking about heaven?”
He grinned. “So you’ve heard of it then!”
“Really, we care more about reincarnation. You see, if we live in this life well, if we do our duty, then we are reborn in a good life next time, a better life maybe, unless we are very naughty, in which case we come back as a rat.”
Kamla spit her tea back into its cup.
The one called Elder looked nervously at his companion. “Well, have you considered, maybe, another approach to the afterlife?”
“I thought you didn’t want to convert me,” Viji said.
She liked these boys; she didn’t want them to leave. “Well, no, we don’t really—”
“I know that book you’re holding. I know it’s no Yellow Pages.”
Elder won back his grin. “Well, in a way, Viji, it’s a Yellow Pages of the blessed!”
“Let me ask, do you know about the Hindu religion?”
“Well, we do make a point of learning about all the world’s religions.”
“So that you can know why they are wrong, is it?”
“Maybe if you gave us a chance, Viji—”
“Let me tell you, Elder, I know about this Christianity.
I went to a convent school.”
“Actually, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—Mormonism?—we’re a unique branch of Christianity. Perhaps you’d like to—”
“Oh ho, I see, so you’re very different from Christians, are you? Do you have a monkey god?”
The two boys gazed at each other.
“Because we have a monkey god. In fact, he’s a flying monkey god. He helped Lord Rama to rescue Sita. That was his wife, who was kidnapped by the demon king Ravana. In fact, Sita was born from a seed in the ground. And do you know Garuda? He is an eagle. Who else, Kamla?
Oh yes, Brahma. Brahma has many heads. Seven, I think, or maybe nine. I don’t know—I always lose track. And Ganesha? He’s an elephant—well, actually, he’s a man with an elephant’s head. That’s a long story. He rides a rat. And who else? Kamla?”
Kamla only gaped at her.
“And you know? We get to eat sweets after praying. Do you get sweets? Also, with Siva, we bathe him in milk, though I’m not sure why. Siva can burn you with his third eye. Burn a hole right through you! Can your God start a fire with his third eye?”
The Mormon did not falter. “Our God is a righteous God, Viji. Do you know the story of Noah?”
“With his animal twins? Oh, yes. And speaking of floods, ours can make floods, too—no big deal. Ours can send heaven to hell and hell to heaven. Can yours send heaven to hell and hell to heaven?”
“Viji, I am not going to debate whose Almighty can do what.” He spoke slowly and clearly, like a harassed airline employee. “Here’s some reading material for you. I’ll just leave it on the table, and we’ll be on our way.”
“Would you like to see my puja room?”
His eyes widened. Gingerly, he set some pamphlets down and, holding his briefcase over his groin, backed out of the kitchen. The other one, crimson-cheeked, followed.
“Okay, now, you have a nice day.”
“Thank you!” Viji called, waving to them from the door, waiting for them to run. Instead, they crossed the street and walked toward the Fromm house. “Goodbye!” She closed the door.
“Lady,” Kamla sighed. “You are cukoo.”
Kamla’s wide eyes made Viji laugh. The kitchen filled with laughter—the house swelled with it—and it stopped only when she hurt too much to go on.
CHAPTER TEN
An earring, blue crystal with a burnished-silver backing: to Babygirl, it was a beautiful thing, to be held up to a window and gazed at, an offering to the sunlight. An earring didn’t belong in a box, in the dirt, underground. A man gave earrings to a woman to show that he loved her—or, if he was a very rich man, to show that he liked her. In return for the gift, the woman kissed the man or hugged him, but usually kissed him. Then he swept her into his arms, and at this point, the bedroom door always closed, or the scene, like magic, faded to black. This much she knew.
She also knew that, inevitably, a man would give her earrings. And when he did, she would be tall, wearing jeans and red high heels, with a mane of hair that flew high off her head like Christie Brinkley’s. She had little idea of what he’d be like. She sensed there would be large dark eyes, a soft nose, and warmth. Like the Bauers’ golden retriever.
Anisha Mehta, on the other hand, knew for sure. “Blond” she’d said. “The blonder the better. Like Almonzo from Little House.” But rich. Rich enough to buy her diamonds, not just costume jewelry. “I won’t accept costume jewelry,” she’d said.
“Why not?”
“My mom said to never let a man give me costume jewelry.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, it’s just a rule.”
Costume jewelry was anything big and ugly, Babygirl guessed, something you would wear to a costume party. Anisha Mehta had turned her nose up at the blue crystal earring.
“Definitely costume jewelry,” she’d said. “There’s no such thing as a blue diamond, anyway.”
“So what?” Babygirl replied. “It’s better than a diamond.” Her ears bur
ned. She wished she hadn’t shown Anisha Mehta the treasure chest. She should have left it buried.
But this earring was too lovely to be buried, too small to be costume jewelry, too precious to be kept where she’d first found it, in the back of her father’s dresser drawer, hidden under a pair of balled-up athletic socks. Her mother’s, then. But why were they hidden away? They were a surprise for someone, no doubt.
George had been startled to see her in his room. Rough hands, hardly her father’s, had snatched the earrings from her. A voice, a slightly shaky voice that didn’t sound like his, explained that yes, yes of course they were asurprise; she mustn’t tell her mother, or she’d ruin it for everyone. And a silence that she’d never heard before had descended as her father watched her leave the room. Standing in the hallway, she heard the dresser drawer open, and after some shuffling, she heard it close again.
Three, in total: the number of conversations George had had with Stan since his arrival in California. Three more than he’d had the year before, or the time Stan had visited for Christmas. Probably three more than he’d had in a very long time. Then came number four.
“Fancy one?” Stan asked, as George shifted his weight on the deck chair. A cigar, unlit, already odoriferous. George smiled.
“Is it Cuban?”
“So it matters to you, then? If it’s Cuban or not? Got it down at Blom’s shop before I left. Does that meet your exacting standards?”
“Sure, Dad.” George took the cigar and stuck it between his lips. He leaned to reach the flame that sprung up between Stan’s fingertips.
“Is it Cuban,” Stan muttered, shaking his head and shaking out the match, “Bloody hell.”
The cigar was wrapped in a Stark’s Finest label, which George peeled off. He sucked gently at the tip, coaxing out the first striated fumes. The stink of it rushed through his nostrils, filled him with the Turk’s Head pub, its fakewood paneling and green paisley carpet, the Saracen’s sword that hung above the bar, the incongruous giant fish mounted and hung next to the dart board, its frame scarred by decades of lager-addled aim. The silt of the place used to hang on his father when he’d come home in the evenings, teetering in the doorway of George’s bedroom, asking, every night, if he’d done his studies. Every night the same question, as if he’d spent hours at the pub pondering George’s study habits, as if this were his only real concern—not the lager or the drawling, directionless talk, or the lady behind the bar who bent straight down from the waist when someone ordered a bottle from the small refrigerator. Where’s your mother? was always the second question, though Stan had to know where she was—in her studio, door closed, as always.
But now, watching Stan work the cigar so diligently, George could only smile. Stan swept him a sideways glance but said nothing.
“How do you like it here, then?” George asked.
“Not bad, actually. Those kids of yours are all right.”
“Yeah, that’ll be Viji’s influence.”
“You reckon so?”
“I would say most definitely so.”
The sheen of summer had worn away, and the moon cast its pallor more completely, drawing the deck chairs into shadows, yielding to the dance and fade of smoke trails. It was only October, but already the cold had brought the hearths back to life. Woodsmoke, the smell of idle evenings, wafted in from a neighbor’s yard.
“What do you think of this earring, then?” Stan asked, assuming, as always, that George knew what he was talking about.
“What earring?”
“It looked familiar to me, is all. And I’m not one to remember earrings.”
“What earring?”
“The kids have this box, don’t they? Buried over yonder by the side there; they showed it me a few days ago.”
A cigar flake caught in George’s throat and made him cough. “And what’s in it?”
“They haven’t shown you, then?” Stan snickered.
“Well, there’s not much to it, really. Some old rubbish, like what you’d imagine a kid wanting to keep, and then this earring. The girl kept it there. She was dead serious about it and all. You’d think if anyone found it she’d have a catastrophe on her hands.”
George’s heart began to drill against its case, a rabbit’s thump of warning. “What does it look like?”
“Blue, and like a diamond. Small.”
“Well, I don’t know, Dad, you can’t tell half the time where kids come across these things.”
“But I’d swear on your mother’s grave that I’ve seen it before. And you know me, I’m not one to think about earrings and the like, not to mention remembering it this long. I forget about it, but then it keeps coming back. That means something, that does.
“And it wasn’t your mother’s, that’s for sure. Too small. Not that I know much about that sort of thing, but you know what I mean. She liked those big hoop things, didn’t she? The bigger, the better with her. Like a bloody fortune teller.”
“Dad.”
“Don’t get me wrong, son. She was a cracker, the crème de la bloody crème. I just couldn’t fathom her taste sometimes.”
“Uh-huh.” There was a long pause. George feared his father was thinking too much about the earring. “Hear anything about the football?”
“It’s the color of them, you see. It was, it was…one of a kind.”
This was true, George remembered. It was one of a kind.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
George had insisted on sending all three of them to private school, no matter how expensive. So the triplets went to the Whitman School. “We educate the whole child,” its brochure proclaimed. To promote intergenerational understanding, the school invited parents to attend and take part in classes, especially if they were experts in certain fields. Viji had studied art and home economics in college, but had little experience with French, math, biology, or Greek mythology, so she was invited to attend Avi’s Holistic Movement class.
To the class Viji wore a sari, though most other mothers dressed in clinging things that looked more like bathing suits, some stretching from their shoulders to their ankles. The teacher played tapes of drums, animal sounds, and the familiar cawings of village bulbuls that Viji remembered from her uncle’s house. Interpretive dance, it was called. Viji wasn’t sure what they were interpreting, but she liked the idea of taking a class with her son. The sixth graders stood next to their mothers. Blond mothers brought blond children; the woman with ginger hair stood next to a thin ginger boy. Only Avi’s hair stayed stubbornly singular, amber brown with a few light streaks, an ambivalent mixture of Viji’s black and George’s mousy blond.
“Dance!” the teacher shouted. “Close your eyes and move with your senses! Commune with your physicality!” Viji shut her eyes and forgot to watch her son. “Feel your arms! Are they heavy like rocks or limp as willows?” The thin yards of her sari brushed easily around her body as she waved her arms, letting the music move her elbows and knees. The sound flowed from her joints and limbs and into her hips. She raised her arms and felt her pelvis gyrate to the round yowls of killer whales. She thought of Elvis. The insistent clang of a metal drum jerked one buttock, then the other, and her chest twitched to the rhythm. With her eyes closed, Viji never saw how the other mothers danced. Nor could she see Avi skitter away from her to hide himself behind other bodies. “You move so well in your dress,” an astonished blond mother told her. Her clavicles pushed up against her skin, her body taut as a rubber band. “I’d be a wreck if I had to dance in that!” Viji only smiled back, and tried not to look at the fabric that pulled so tightly between the woman’s thighs.
She began looking forward to these classes. Even when she wasn’t there, she could close her eyes and feel the spinning, round and round. In her head, behind her eyes, there were no walls to crash into or half-naked ladies or children tripping against her legs. There was only the rush of wind against her lashes, the smile that crept across her face, and the split second of panic when dizziness threatened to toppl
e her.
“Avi, do you enjoy the dance class?” she asked during a sullen drive to school one morning. Avi shrugged.
“How come you don’t come to my classes?” Kieran asked.
“They haven’t asked me, chellum.” She turned back to Avi. “You don’t like to dance?”
“I dunno.”
“Do you want to take a different elective?”
“No.”
“Ceramics, maybe? I was good at art.”
“No. That’s okay.”
Viji was glad. She was communing with her physicality.
After a few weeks, Avi asked her to stop coming. She could still remember the morning, dropping him off in the parking lot. His brother and sister had already launched themselves into the schoolyard. “I’d like you to stop coming to my classes.” He said it quietly as he lowered himself out of the car. The sun shot through the window and set his profile ablaze.
“Why?”Viji asked. She cupped his elbow with her fingers and wiggled it playfully, but he yanked his arm away.
“I would just prefer it if you didn’t come.” He spoke like an adult, a courteous stranger, and kept his eyes on the cement lot before him.
“Are you embarrassed?” she asked. Avi didn’t answer. He turned toward a shriek from the playground. “Okay. Fine.”
She said it lightly, as if it didn’t matter to her. She waited for him to walk away, backpack swinging from his shoulders, before she started the car’s engine. Humming something tuneless, she began to pat the steering wheel to calm herself, a steady tapping that grew faster, lost its rhythm and crescendoed into an outright beating. She couldn’t stop herself, no matter how she tried. At a stop sign, a cyclist slowed down to stare into her window. But she went on whacking the steering wheel, relishing the sting of it on her palm. It was only at home, in the cool cave of her garage, that she could be still. There, she halted her hands and switched off the engine. She placed the keys on the passenger seat and sat for several minutes, until she felt like going in.
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