Looking For Bapu

by Anjali Banerjee

  Bernie rings up the wig, puts it in a box. My lungs tighten and twist. I'll give the wig as an offering to Shiva.

  'm out in the backyard with Izzy. Unger couldn't come over. He's too busy counting cash from selling baseball cards.

  Ma monitors us through the kitchen window. She probably thinks Izzy is a bad influence.

  I'm practicing rolling. It's not as easy as it looks, doing somersault after somersault. I could roll on my side, but all the famous holy men do somersaults. Izzy brings a stopwatch, recommended on www.become-a-holy-roller.com. People around the world try to copy Ludkan Baba. He's a fast holy roller, clocked in at fifteen miles per hour. See, Bapu? I can become like the holy men.

  But my speed still sucks, and my head hurts. I need a helmet.

  “You have to use your arms,” Izzy says. “Like this.” She pushes off with her hands and does three perfect somersaults. She's a better holy roller than I am.

  I copy her, but I'm still slow.

  Izzy walks ahead of me, picking up sticks and clearing the way. Lawn cuttings stick to my pants, my shirt and my woolen hat. My clothes are wet and stained, but I keep rolling from one side of the yard to the other.

  “Not bad,” Izzy says.

  “Is my time any better?”

  “A bit, but rolling here isn't the same as rolling to school. You'll need help, and I can't go with you.”

  I stand and brush the dirt and grass from my jeans. I hadn't thought of that. “Tell your mom you want to see what a real school is like.”

  Izzy screws up her nose, where the freckles gather in a clump. “My home is a real school. Ma says I learn a lot more at home than I would in an institutional setting.”

  “Don't you want to make friends?”

  “I have friends, the other homeschooled kids. We meet twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays.”

  “Don't you want to know about recess?”

  But her mom says no, so I go inside to call Unger.

  I carry the cordless phone into my room.

  “You have to what?” Unger's voice gets all high when he's surprised. I can hear the crash and beep of the video game he's playing.

  “Come on, Unger. I need your help.” I explain to him about the sadhu. The same sadhu who has spoken to ghosts, brought back dead loved ones and healed even the sickest people. I expect Unger to say no, to tell me he won't pick up garbage off the street, but instead he says, “Cool! Are you going to perform miracles?”

  I hold the phone away from my ear. Unger's right. I have to do something miraculous. But what?

  After Ma and Dad go to sleep, I'm lying backward on the bed, my feet on the pillow. The holy men turn upside down and backward, so why can't I? Then I get up and stand in my pajamas in a sliver of moonlight and hold my right arm straight up in the air. Sadhus always hold up their right arms, which makes life way more difficult. They can only use the “dirty” left hand, the hand used to wipe their butts. I wonder about left-handed people—how do they feel knowing their left hand is considered dirty?

  I wonder if my sticking-up arm will shrivel like the sadhu arms in the Guinness Book of World Records. The sadhus never cut their fingernails. The nails keep growing and growing, like Pinocchio's nose, and then they curl under.

  I keep an eye on the window for a glimpse of Bapu. The fingers of my right hand tingle and my eyelids droop. What does a sadhu do about gravity pulling the blood downward? Now my whole hand tingles. Now my arm. And my muscles are tired. I should have lifted weights. Then I would have been able to keep my arm in the air longer. I crumple to my knees, and just as I think I see Bapu's outline shimmering against the window, I fall asleep.

  I wake up on the carpet in a patch of sunlight.

  My arm hurts. I must have held it up for an hour last night. I run to the bathroom to look in the mirror for a sign of holiness. The carpet made a pattern of dents on the side of my face, and a hint of fuzz grows on my head. I'm an inch closer to holy today. I feel the sacred power trickling into me.

  Ma and Dad bustle around, pouring themselves milk and cereal and gathering their papers for work. Ma puts the wig on my head and adjusts it. “Maybe he should wear the bicycle helmet to keep it on,” she says to Dad.

  “I'm not wearing any helmet!” I shout.

  “We could get him a hard hat, for now,” Dad says.

  “Well, wigs don't usually fall off. This should do,” Ma says. “Promise you'll wear it for the pictures.”

  What about what I want?

  “Promise,” she says.

  “I promise.”

  She says she'll call the principal to explain my situation.

  Ma and Dad are in such a rush, they don't notice that I don't eat my cereal. Sadhus meditate in caves for twelve years and fast for days, accepting only offerings, water and cigarettes. Since I don't smoke, I'll have to settle for offerings and water.

  After Ma and Dad leave, I take off the wig and put on my hat. It's a cold day anyway. Nobody will notice. I stuff the wig in my backpack.

  Unger meets me at the bottom of the driveway. It takes quite a while to roll down over the gravel. I didn't factor in my backpack, which gets in the way. My lunch will be squished, especially the banana, but who cares, since I'm fasting? I nearly roll over Unger's boots.

  “Are you training for the Olympics, or what?” he asks.

  “I'm copying Ludkan Baba. Can you carry my backpack?” I unstrap it and hand it to him. He puts his pack over his left shoulder, mine over his right. Unger is pretty strong.

  “I wish I could see Lucky Baba,” he says, walking in front of me as I roll. Good thing we left early. This is going to take forever. I stick to the grass by the side of the road.

  “Ludkan Baba,” I say. “You'd have to go to India.”

  “Do you have to roll all the way? We might be late. Like, we won't get there until recess.”

  At the end of the block, I realize he's right. I might have to cheat. But for now, I stick to the plan.

  A fat kid and a skinny kid, like Laurel and Hardy, fall into step beside us. The fat kid is Roland; the skinny kid, Matt. “What's he doing?” Roland asks. “Is he, like, weird or something?”

  “He's becoming a holy man to perform great wonders,” Unger says.

  “Whoa—how do you do that?” skinny Matt says. “Will I be a wonder boy if I roll too?”

  “He's retarded,” Roland says.

  “I am not retarded,” I shout. “I'm studying to be a sadhu.”

  “What's a sadhu?” Roland digs in his nose. He's wearing a Big Dog T-shirt that pulls tight around his middle.

  “You know, those amazing men who can stick hooks in their backs and hang from them? They can stop their heartbeats and hypnotize cobras. They walk across hot coals and their feet don't even burn.” I don't know why I'm saying these things. The sadhu in cousin Prem's video was just a boy sitting on a mat.

  A crowd of kids tags along behind us now. Unger walks proudly ahead of me, kicking rocks out of the way as I roll. My arms are getting tired, but I'm getting better. Soon I'll have a direct holy phone line to Bapu.

  “So, can you turn my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches into egg sandwiches?” Matt asks hopefully.

  “I don't do magic,” I say, rolling. “But I stopped traffic by sticking up my hand and making a force field. But it only works sometimes.”

  “Like X-Men?” Matt hops along, sucking on a lollipop.

  “I'm my very own X-man.” I'm so full of it. “But mostly I tell fortunes.” Where did that come from?

  “Like reading crystal balls?” Matt's eyes go wide.

  I think of what Izzy told me about the amazing Stella, who spits out fortunes at the Mystery Museum. “For a quarter, I'll write your fortune on a piece of cardboard.” What am I saying? To be holy, I have to perform great wonders.

  “That's pretty cheap,” Roland says. “I have a whole roll of quarters.”

  “Only one prophecy per kid,” I say. “Per day.”

  For the next five bl
ocks, I gather followers like a rolling stone gathering moss. I'm getting better at rolling, and another kid rolls behind me. Everyone cheers us on to see which of us can roll faster. I win. But when we get near the school, we both stand up and brush off our clothes. I've rolled enough for now. My stomach grumbles and my head feels light, but I am much closer to being holy.

  e have class pictures first thing. My teacher, Ms. Lumpenberger, stares at my wig. It looks so close to my real hair, you wouldn't notice it if you didn't know I was bald underneath. The principal must have told her.

  Word is getting around about my rolling. The kids whisper and pass notes.

  “Class pictures in five minutes,” Ms. Lumpenberger says in her clipped voice, as if she cuts out her words with scissors. “Let's comb our hair and straighten our clothes.” She stares right at my head, which is neat and tidy already. If I try to use a comb, the wig might fall off.

  She comes up to me, kneels next to my desk and lowers her voice. “How are you feeling, Anu?”

  “Just great.” Does she think the wig will interfere with my brain or something? I smile at her, a holy smile. My body vibrates from head to toe. I have a few dents and bruises, all part of becoming a sadhu.

  She hands back my “Home and Family” essay with a big “A+” on the front. “Imaginative,” she wrote.

  I'm happy about the essay, but I hate class pictures. Lining up reminds me of lining up to get shots. A yucky sludge sits in the bottom of my stomach, below the fluttering butterflies.

  Then I notice Andy standing a few kids behind me in line. What possessed his mother to choose fluffy blond hair? Everybody knows he doesn't really have any hair. The wig looks like an egg experiment gone horribly wrong.

  Nobody's talking to him. Kids glance at him, but they don't make fun of him. Curtis is too busy fixing his hair at the end of the line. The kids move forward, one at a time. Ms. Lumpenberger stands near the front, helping kids adjust their clothes. She wipes snot from a few noses.

  Unger's behind me, and we make faces at each other. He's standing with another friend, Tyler, talking about the latest episode of The Simpsons.

  The photographer runs back and forth, from tripod to kid, adjusting a chin, adjusting the light, turning knees sideways as if we're puppets.

  I keep glancing back at Andy. He looks miserable.

  My wig itches. The weight suffocates my holiness. I became bald on purpose, and my mom made me cover it. I wish I could show Andy the sadhus of India. I wish he could have seen the vision of my Bapu the way I saw him, feel the gods passing through me and into the bugs and the water dripping from the leaves.

  When it's my turn, Ms. Lumpenberger smiles. “You know, the hair looks fine,” she says, then leans down to whisper, “Your parents could teach Andy's mom about choosing the right wig!”

  That's when I know what I have to do. I promised Ma, but some things are more important. Just as the photographer is setting up for my shot, and Ms. Lumpenberger walks back to help a girl adjust her barrette, I pull off the wig. Everyone gasps. I don't know what my head looks like. I don't care. Cool air rushes over my skin. Bapu, my dear Bapu, this is for you.

  I throw the wig onto the floor and step forward to have my picture taken. A couple of kids giggle, but others stare, and I know Andy is staring too.

  “Hey, kid, creative haircut!” the photographer says, and laughs. He's chewing gum and smells as if yesterday's cigarettes accidentally exploded in his pocket. “You sure you want to do this?”

  “I'm sure,” I say. “Haven't you seen Michael Jordan or Captain Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek?”

  “Yeah!” Unger says behind me, and punches his fist in the air. So do I, and a few other kids punch too.

  Ms. Lumpenberger grabs the wig and runs to me as if I'm on fire and the wig is a hose.

  “I don't want it.” I step up onto the platform beneath the warm spotlights.

  The photographer looks at me and cocks his head to the side. “We can do something with this.” He adjusts the lights, and Ms. Lumpenberger stands there holding the wig toward me. What's the big deal about hair, anyway? We're all people underneath.

  It's over in a few seconds and I walk away. When Andy goes up to have his picture taken, he pulls his wig off. He looks toward me and grins. I grin back and punch the air, and something sacred passes between us as he steps up onto the platform.

  I fold the note, then stuff it in the slot in Andy's locker as I pass.

  I can't really say I'm like those famous bald people. First, I'm not famous (yet), and my hair is already growing back. I'm destined to grow sadhu dreadlocks to show my true worship of Shiva.

  After school, I roll home, but I'm much slower, since I've accepted only offerings today—which amounted to half a peanut butter sandwich and a piece of apple. By now, Bapu should be much closer. I should have a direct channel to him in the spirit world, but he's fallen quiet. I ignore the queasy feeling this gives me—Bapu might be sleeping. Do the spirits sleep halfway from here to the ozone layer? Why doesn't Bapu come back? I have to be patient.

  I gave my lunch away to about five different people. A few followers straggle along, and Unger becomes my assistant. He takes orders for fortunes and drops the quarters in a plastic Bartel's drugstore bag.

  “You should charge a dollar a fortune,” he says. “Then we'd be rich.”

  “I don't want to be rich.” I roll to the edge of the schoolyard. “I have to give up all material things to become holy and open a line to my grandfather.”

  “Does that mean you're giving away your computer?” Unger's eyes light up.

  I shake my head. “No way—I need the Internet.”

  “Drat.” He kicks an empty Coke can out of the way. “We need to start picking up the garbage, and the cans for recycling.”

  A few girls come up with coins jingling in their pockets.

  “I don't want any bad omens,” a girl named Sylvie says. All her features squish together as if pinched by a clothespin.

  “Your fortune is your fortune.” Unger takes the coins and scribbles on his notepad. “Bad or good, you take what you get.”

  “What a rip-off.” She drops another quarter in the bag. “If the first fortune is bad, I want another one.”

  Unger writes the second girl's name on his notepad. “I'm guessing you want only a good fortune too?”

  She sticks out her chin. “Whatever my fortune is, is what it is.” She throws me a defiant look and marches off with her friends.

  “Listen to the quarters,” Unger says, shaking the bag. “You have to do about five hundred fortunes.”

  “There aren't even five hundred kids in the school,” I say.

  “Okay, twenty-seven, and not all from our grade. You hooked some little kids.”

  Unger keeps taking off his glasses to wipe them on his shirt, the way his father does. Unger's getting pretty good at being a salesman, but I don't know how I'm going to get good at writing fortunes before tomorrow.

  By the time we reach Izzy's house, I'm so hungry, my stomach is turning inside out. Bapu's voice comes back to me. You must remember to have supper. I wonder if he knew I would become a sadhu. I stand up and wipe the dust and bits of grass off my clothes.

  “Do we have to go inside?” Unger asks on the doorstep.

  “Izzy's cool. You'll see.”

  The door swings open, and the scent of potpourri drifts out. “Ah, you've brought a new friend!” Ms. Mumu lets us in. She's breathless, as usual. Unger stares at her as if she's Godzilla.

  “His name is Unger. He's my accountant.” I lead him to the kitchen. We have to suffer through homework first, but I figure it's part of my sadhu training. Unger looks all around and pets the cats and chomps on the cookies. Izzy plays with her bead necklaces and stares at him.

  A Holstein cat jumps onto the table and sniffs my head, then rubs against me and purrs.

  “You must've rolled over catnip,” Unger says. The cat jumps to the floor.

  “Rolled?” Ms.
Mumu asks, sitting heavily on the chair across from us.

  “We were playing a game at school.” I glare at Unger. Ms. Mumu looks as if she just ate a sour grape, but says nothing.

  Unger's quiet after that. I gobble three of the oversized cookies before I even notice, and Ms. Mumu says, “You didn't eat today? Didn't your mom send you to school with lunch?”

  I stop, a huge lump of cookie stuffed in my cheeks. “I did a lot of rolling and got hungry,” I say, a few crumbs falling on the plate. She looks worried. I've been made. It's not so easy becoming holy.

  Unger and I glance at each other, and Izzy stares at both of us.

  Ms. Mumu's brows furrow. “Look, at least eat something healthy.”

  She makes egg salad sandwiches, and I can't refuse to eat or she'll tell my parents, who will hold a family conference and who knows what else. So I eat. I'll return to my fasting tomorrow. One can't become holy overnight.

  In Izzy's room, she and Unger help me cut out squares of cardboard from her mom's old manila file folders. Unger keeps saying “Whoa, cool” and touching the curiosities. Izzy is being so patient. Unger picks up the shrunken head and dangles it by its hair. “Is this real?”

  Izzy frowns at me, as if to say, Why did you bring me this dork? “Of course it's not real, silly. It's made of rubber. The real heads are at the Mystery Museum.”

  “I want to go there,” Unger says.

  “You have to take two expensive buses and the ferry,” Izzy reminds us.

  “We'll have enough money soon.” Unger keeps sticking the fake plastic snot up his nose. “This is really cool.”

  “Could you wash it when you're done, please?” Izzy says in an irritated, grown-up voice. “And I expect a cut of your earnings.”

  Unger puts the snot down. “No way. We got the fortunes.”

  “But I'm working for you. I don't work for free.”

  “Ten percent,” Unger says.

  “Slave wages,” replies Izzy. “Thirty.”

  “Twenty.”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “Deal,” says Unger. “Anu and I split the rest.”

  “I don't take money,” I remind him. “I'm becoming holy.”