An American Brat

by Bapsi Sidhwa

  Yet it did not mean that the condition of the poor in America was trifling, or the injustice there less rampant. Feroza tried to clarify her thoughts. Poverty, she realized, groping for expression, was relative.

  A friend who was now at Kinnaird College described a house she had visited in one of the poorest ghettos in Harlem the summer before. The family had electricity, running water, a fridge, and a car. The concept of refrigerators and cars stood at the very limit of extravagance and, in comparison to the people who dwelt in the rag-and-tin lean-tos and in infested, stinking jhuggees without bathrooms or electricity, undeserving of sympathy.

  Did that mean they should care less for people’s suffering elsewhere if their degree of deprivation appeared to be less? Were compassion and caring rationed commodities that could not bridge national boundaries? A car in America did not signify riches, she explained. It was like an extension of the body; to be without one was like missing an arm or a leg. She spoke from experience, she said. She didn’t have a car, and she felt crippled.

  Feroza, who had been scathingly critical of America, of its bullying foreign policy and ruthless meddling in the affairs of vulnerable countries, in her discussions with her roommates and the new friends she had met through Shashi, found herself defending it in unexpected ways. Which other country opened its arms to the destitute and discarded of the world the way America did? Of course it had its faults — terrifying shortcomings — but it had God’s blessings, too.

  Feroza was disconcerted to discover that she was a misfit in a country in which she had once fitted so well. Although Zareen had not mentioned the slighting remarks, having dismissed them as too cranky and trivial to countenance, Feroza’s subconscious had registered subtle changes in her mother’s behavior. She could not have put her finger on them, but they were there in the wariness that sometimes flickered across Zareen’s face and in a barely noticeable hesitation in her choice of words. Feroza, absorbing the undercurrent at some hidden level of her consciousness, found her sense of dislocation deepen.

  And there was the question of marriage. Zareen hinted at it casually and then broached the subject unequivocally. There were some wonderful boys she had in mind.

  “How can I give up my studies at this point, Mum?” Feroza protested. “There’re only two years left. Let me graduate at least.”

  “What’s this new graduate-shaduate nonsense? We send you to America for a few months, and you end up spending almost three years! Your father and I offered you our finger and you grabbed our whole arm! Enough is enough! You have to listen to us. It’s time you settled down.”

  “I’m not settling anywhere without a career,” Feroza said. “I don’t want to be at the mercy of my husband. If I have a career, I can earn a living, and he will respect me more.”

  “Respect you? Nobody’ll marry you if you’re too educated. I’m not educated and I don’t have a career, but I’d like to see your father disrespect me! Or your uncles disrespect your aunts!”

  “You’ve never worked, Mum. You don’t know how thrilling it is to earn your own money. And spend it.”

  Zareen looked at her daughter, surprised at what she had said. It occurred to Zareen that in her many more years on earth, she had missed out on some things. Feroza had said “thrilling,” but she understood that she had meant more. The money Feroza earned and spent must give her a sense of control over her life, a sense of accomplishment that Zareen had very little experience with.

  “Okay, baba, finish your studies,” Zareen said. “I know how obstinate you are.”

  Khutlibai and Soonamai, each in turn, and together, stroked Feroza’s arm and expressed the wish dearest to their hearts. They wanted to see Feroza married and settled before they passed away. Couldn’t she give it a thought for their sakes?

  “Of course I will,” Feroza said, trying to stifle her smiles at their earnestness. “I refuse to die an old maid! It’s only a matter of a few months; a year at most. When I’m back I’ll have a good look at all the boys, and I’ll marry the handsomest!”

  “Hand-som is as hand-som does,” Khutlibai said in her inimitable English. Her eyes twinkled in triumph at having hauled up the proverb so appropriately.

  “Now where on earth did you learn that from?” Feroza asked and, delighting in Khutlibai’s pleasure, hugged her grandmother.

  Shortly before she left, Feroza realized with a sense of shock that she had outgrown her family’s expectations for her.

  Chapter 23

  Feroza was a week late for school. The days in Lahore had simply flown and everyone had told her it was absurd to travel all the way to Pakistan for such a short visit. Behram and Jeroo had come with their children over the long Christmas weekend — which was a holiday because it coincided with the anniversary of Jinnah’s birth — and Aban flew in from Karachi at Khutlibai’s behest.

  Aban was barely three years older than Feroza, her niece through marriage, and the two of them at once forged a strong bond. From her very short experience of married life, Aban already felt the need of a potential ally. Feroza looked forward to having family in the United States, and a lasting and pleasurable alliance was formed between them.

  Her relatives were reluctant to let Feroza go. Between them, her friends and relatives gave an endless chain of welcome-home lunches, teas, and dinners that merged seamlessly with the farewell lunches, dinners, and even breakfast parties, without anyone being very surprised.

  Feroza was touched. All the attention warmed, gratified, and flattered her; yet she was also anxious to get back to Denver.

  Once she was airborne, Feroza opened the envelopes, anointed with the red paste and with grains of rice still adhering to them, and counted the loot. Her family had given her a little over seven hundred dollars, painstakingly procured in dribs and drabs from savvy Americans who knew they would get a better deal from acquaintances than from the banks.

  Feroza was jubilant. She gave a small involuntary cry of pleasure, and the old woman who had been quietly watching the activity going on in the seat next to hers adjusted the shawl covering her head as a preliminary signal to opening a conversation and said, “Khush ho — Happy?”

  Feroza laughed and nodded. She would at last be able to buy a decent secondhand car. Her hints to the family had yielded a sizable harvest. She thought of all the things she could do and places she would go and debts she could repay by running errands for her friends. And, as at the onset of her journey to Pakistan, her accommodating mind transported Feroza to her destination before she actually got there.

  Feroza arrived in Denver late in the evening. At the apartment, Gwen and Rhonda greeted their exhausted and overloaded roommate with menagerie-like cries of welcome. Their small apartment rang with sounds of delight. “We missed you … We thought you weren’t coming back!” they exclaimed.

  “Me too. Oh, God … I can’t believe I’m back!” Feroza cried, her exhaustion banished. Dropping her hand luggage she hugged them happily and, sitting cross-legged on the matted living room rug, began at once to unpack the presents she had brought for them. Onyx pencil holders, ashtrays, plates with mother-of-pearl inlay, carved wooden bowls and bookends with brass inlay, black shawls and cushion covers with shocking-pink embroidery, and white kurtas with pastel shadow-work. She showed them the shalwar-and-shirt outfit she had brought for Shashi. Sitting on the floor, delving into the suitcases and hand luggage, they chatted until Feroza suddenly fell forward, asleep.

  Holding her firmly by her arms, Gwen and Rhonda escorted a hyped and feebly protesting Feroza to her bed. They brought her luggage to her room. As Gwen was leaving, she told Feroza that Shashi had dropped in almost daily to find out if she’d arrived.

  Shashi spotted Feroza the next day on campus. Waving an arm and shouting, “Feroza!” he ran across the paved paths and the grassy patches that separated them and flung his arms about her neck. “Oh, I missed you,” he said, affectionately rubbing his forehead against hers. “I thought they’d got you married or something a
nd we’d never see you again.”

  “They almost did,” Feroza said, laughing as she recalled her grandmother’s pleading. She accepted his prescience without surprise because he was from her part of the world and knew what could happen.

  Feroza was on her way to a cooking class but promised to meet him at the cafeteria afterwards.

  Shashi was full of news. His brother and sister-in-law had arrived while she was away. She must visit Deepak and Mala this very evening. He’d told them so much about her, and they were looking forward to meeting her.

  Mala was going to have a baby. She was due in a month or so, and she expected to have her baby in Denver. Deepak had specially arranged it this way because it would get their child the coveted United States citizenship. It was the least they could do for their firstborn: provide options.

  “God knows what things will be like in India by the time he grows up, and it’s getting harder and harder to get American citizenship,” Shashi said, unaccustomedly frowning, burdened by future responsibilities. “Once the child is eighteen he can sponsor his parents, too. It’s good to have some family in America anyway, ’specially for businessmen.”

  “It looks like you have a farsighted brother.” Feroza raised an eyebrow and gave him an ironic look from the corners of her sunlit eyes.

  “Businessmen have to be. We’re a farsighted family,” Shashi said, responding to the sarcasm with a mischievous and wry smile.

  “You kept saying ‘he.’ Are you sure it’ll be a boy?”

  “They want a son. But it’s okay even if it’s a girl. They don’t have any children yet.”

  Shashi came to fetch Feroza, and they visited Deepak and Mala’s apartment in the evening. They had rented a one-bedroom apartment on the ground floor, near Shashi’s.

  Deepak had the same dark, heavy-lidded eyes and aquiline features as his brother, but the resemblance ended there. Deepak was heavier, taller, and though he was as alert, his movements were slow. He lacked the airy, inquisitive, easy-going quality that was so charming in Shashi. There was something earthbound about Deepak, his expression wary, less open, calculating, as he sized up Feroza. He probably made friends for reasons other than Shashi’s, Feroza thought. She was uneasy in his more worldly presence.

  Mala had a soft, passive, melting beauty. She had a waist-length fall of shining hair softened by hints of brown and a complexion several shades lighter than her husband’s. Feroza thought she was exactly the kind of wife, docile and simple, she would expect Deepak to have.

  Since it was her first child, Mala’s stomach was still quite small, and the airline had not objected to her traveling. Of course they had not told the airline she was nearly into her eighth month.

  Mala looked tired. An unhealthy pallor accentuated the darker patches of dry skin on her cheeks. Feroza glanced covertly at the protrusion beneath the pleats in her sari; it was larger than she had expected. The skin beneath her short blouse glistened where it stretched taut over the drum of her swelling flesh. She appeared to be in acute discomfort, changing her position and getting up on some pretext or other. Feroza thought they should leave, give Mala a chance to rest. She felt she might space out herself at any moment. She needed to catch up on her sleep also.

  A week later, Mala delivered her baby daughter prematurely.

  Feroza bought a small arrangement of flowers and visited Mala two days later. Shashi drove her to the hospital. Mala looked much better. Her skin was moist, the dark patches very faint, and now that the strain had left her face, she was radiant with the glow of motherhood.

  Deepak was not in the room, and in his absence Mala was winning and talkative. Feroza warmed to her. She felt a surge of gratitude and affection for Shashi. Here was yet another promising friendship to which he had linked her.

  “The poor little thing weighs only three and a quarter pounds,” Mala said. “The doctor has put her in an incubator. But he says she is well formed, ‘complete in all respects.’ He says we’ll be able to take her home in a month.”

  Wrapping a Kashmiri shawl over her hospital gown, Mala walked down the gleaming corridor to show Feroza her baby.

  Feroza was horrified. The mite lay behind fortifications of glass with her transparent fingers spread, lizardlike, a tube attached to her nose and an IV to her leg.

  She glanced at Mala, but Mala was beaming placidly. “Isn’t she cute?” she asked, and Feroza said, “Yes, but she’s too tiny …”

  “That’s because she’s premature. She’ll be normal-sized in a month. She’ll grow as if she’s in my stomach.”

  Feroza renewed her driver’s license. She scanned the classified ads, consulted her friends, and on Rhonda and Gwen’s advice made an appointment and went to inspect a two-year-old Chevette stick shift. The feature that struck them as most desirable was that it had been owned and driven by only one person.

  That person was David Press.

  Feroza got off the bus at the corner of Vine and Cherry at about four in the afternoon. She walked two blocks up East Edison before she located the house. She went to the entrance and was about to ring the bell when she noticed the sheet stuck between the grill and wire netting of the flimsy outer door. The thick red lettering on it, in a fine, sloping hand, read, “If you have come about the car, please knock on the garage door.”

  At Feroza’s timid knock on the garage door, David Press revealed himself, wearing only his ragged shorts and a pair of square, metal-framed glasses. The longish gold-streaked hair that swept his forehead and framed his handsome face appeared, if anything, to enhance the wild effect of his gleaming nudity.

  Feroza looked into his vivid blue eyes to avoid looking at the rest of him. Her heart pounding, she blushed and stammered something inaudible.

  David leaned closer to catch the mumbling. He guessed that this must be the girl who had made an appointment to see him in response to his ad in the college newspaper. He also imagined that the sensitive creature was embarrassed by the spectacle of his mediocre musculature that refused to bulge satisfactorily despite his efforts, and his offensive near-nudity.

  David turned crimson and, saying, “Hold on a sec,” gently closed the door of the converted garage in her face.

  He reappeared a few seconds later buttoning a long-sleeved blue flannel shirt with a high collar. He stuck out his hand. “I’m David Press.”

  Feroza raised her hand hesitantly, giving the impression of a timid animal trusting its paw to a stranger.

  “How did you get here?” David asked, noticing there was no car except his Chevette parked on the road.

  “I took a bus,” Feroza all but whispered as David stooped to catch her words. “Then I walked.”

  “Come, have a look at the car,” David said. His eyes had turned the color of sapphires in the sun, luminous and smiling behind his glasses.

  David strode toward the small car parked alongside the curb. Feroza followed the broad shoulders, the compact muscular body, the sun-drenched hair.

  David opened the hood and stuck the prop into its groove. He stepped back, placed his hands cockily on his hips, a gesture he had acquired to disguise his phenomenal lack of confidence, and said, “Have a look at the engine.”

  Feroza peered at the intricate mechanism of steel and tubes as intelligently as she could. “What about the carburetor?” she asked, remembering that Jo had once needed to replace it in her car.

  “She’s only gone forty thousand miles. I don’t think the carburetor should give you any trouble.”

  David had rolled up his cuffs. The sun gilded the hair on his forearms and set off minute sparks against the darker hue of his tanned skin.

  David pulled out the oil stick to examine the viscous substance coating it, showed it to Feroza, “Oil’s okay,” and closed the hood.

  His movements had a controlled, graceful fluidity. He reminded Feroza of the Khazak dancer she and Jo had seen leaping about in a televised performance of the Bolshi Ballet. Feroza liked the way his head sat upon his shoulders, the wi
dth and strength of his neck which was like a reined-in stallion’s.

  David held the car door open for Feroza. “Like to try her out?”

  He couldn’t be more than twenty-two or twenty-three, Feroza guessed. He was obviously very proud and fond of his car. But why did he refer to it as “her”? Feroza experienced an irrational twinge of jealousy, as if the Chevette posed a threat.

  She settled in front of the steering wheel and placed her large string-bag on the gear box.

  David strutted round the car with the self-conscious gait of a person who wishes to appear taller and settled into the bucket seat next to hers. He picked up the bag and laid it carefully on the floor, moving his feet to one side.

  “Ever driven a stick shift before?” he inquired hesitantly, fearful of giving offense.

  Feroza nodded and glanced at him. Whereas her eyes had clung to his before, she now found looking into them unendurably disturbing. It was like viewing a solar eclipse without protection. She lowered her eyes to the shift stick in confusion.

  “Put your foot down on the clutch,” David said, and as Feroza pressed the clutch, he shifted the gears, saying, “This is first. Straight down, second. Back to neutral and up, third. Down again, fourth.”

  Feroza watched his hand. It was a tough, square hand and, like the rest of him, well formed and compact. The nails were wide and clean. The sun, attracted to him, poured through the window, igniting the hairs on his knuckles, forming a nimbus round his head, refracting off the metal frame of his glasses.

  Feroza’s eyes were smarting, her face on fire. He was altogether too dazzling to look upon. She hoped, with whatever remaining faculties she could muster, that the transaction would be completed before she made a complete ass of herself.