Looking For Bapu

by Anjali Banerjee

  “Cool—seventy-five percent for me,” he says.

  “Greedy,” Izzy says.

  “Whoa, wait. Have you forgotten what this is all about?” I say. “This isn't about telling fortunes. It's about my grandfather. I have to bring him back.”

  Izzy waves the blank sheets of cardboard. “But you have to be holy, don't you?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Then do good things for people. Make them happy. How many pieces do we need?” She snips away with a pair of pink scissors. I wonder if those are the same scissors she used to cut off her bangs.

  “I have twenty-seven orders for fortunes.” I unfold the paper I scribbled on all day.

  Unger snatches the paper from me. “Even Rolly-Roland asked for a fortune? Tell him he'll die from being too fat.”

  “That's mean,” I say, and a new thought occurs to me.

  I can help kids like Rolly-Roland. I can make him happy, if only for a minute. I write:

  “Are you sure you should be that specific?” Izzy asks. “Stella says good fortune will come our way. That's all. She doesn't say, ‘You will receive one million, five hundred and fifty dollars and ten cents on your seventeenth birthday—'”

  “But he has to make the fortune worth a quarter.” Unger pushes the glasses up on his nose. “So he has to be sort of specific.”

  “Are fortune cookies specific?” Izzy says. “No, they just say, ‘You will have good luck,' or ‘Things are looking up.'”

  “I'm not a fortune cookie,” I say.

  “You agreed to do this,” Unger says. “You're the one becoming a holy man, not me.”

  “Wait, wait. No fighting.” Izzy puts her hands in the air, palms forward.

  Unger takes off his glasses and cleans them vigorously on his shirt, then puts them back on.

  I scratch out Rolly-Roland's first fortune and write:

  Unger frowns. “I think Roland is Presbyterian, and he doesn't have a garden, just a weedy lawn.”

  “Minor points. All lawns are gardens,” Izzy says.

  “You've been to Rolly's house?” My mouth drops open.

  Unger's ears turn red. “We played baseball there once.”

  “It doesn't matter. The fortune's good.” Izzy tosses the shrunken head in the air and catches it. “Anyway, Roland can still be Presbyterian and get his fortune told, can't he? And weeds are new life sprouting from the garden. Let's move on.”

  Unger shakes his head and checks Roland off the list.

  For Matthew, who always gets bad grades, I write:

  “Too specific,” Izzy says.

  Unger takes off his glasses and cleans them again. Unlike Clark Kent, who looks exactly like Superman all the time, Unger looks like a whole different person with his glasses off.

  “Telling him to find a tutor isn't specific,” he says. “Horrorscopes in the newspaper always say specific things, like ‘Stay home and eat a TV dinner tonight. If you go out, the evening will be a flop.'”

  “Horoscope, not horrorscope,” Izzy says.

  “You read the horoscopes?” I stare at Unger.

  “They're right next to the comics.” His face grows redder. “Hard to miss.”

  “Whatever.” Izzy shrugs and shakes the shrunken head at me. “Fine, be specific.”

  I choose somewhere between specific and useless. I'm performing good deeds, small feats of wonder to make others' lives better. I'm on the fast track to holiness.

  For Shari, a girl who doesn't want to go to the dentist:

  've been surfing the Internet to learn more about how to bring back Bapu. I'm opening a channel to the Cosmic Consciousness, to Brahman, pure fuzzy existence. Sadhus know that the normal human mind can't grasp the Cosmic Consciousness. Only mystic holy men know the Cosmic. They strive toward the inner light. They break away from earthly bonds and enter the spirit world. Before the ninth or tenth century AD, the holy men sometimes sat on dead bodies, or sacrificed humans. They ate flesh and blood. The thought gives me the creeps.

  These days, I read, most sadhus are peaceful. They meditate, read scriptures, recite mantras and perform acts of self-sacrifice to open channels to the spirits.

  I must follow their example and leave behind my normal human mind, find where Bapu floats, waiting for me before he disappears forever. But the universe is huge, ten million to the power of ten billion miles deep, Dad might say. Part of me races up, out to catch Bapu, while part of me starts to drift back down to Earth, and I don't know why.

  After all, I'm performing great acts of kindness, sharing my lunch with Andy, Unger and Tyler. If they hand me pieces of sandwich or a couple of bites of banana, I accept. “I can only take offerings and water,” I say.

  The kids love my fortunes. I meditate at the Shiva shrine in the woods (sometimes with Izzy there, singing and playing with her beads), and I hold my arm up in the air every night.

  But it's hard to stay holy with kids like Curtis around. I bet that even the fastest sadhus sometimes fall off the track. When Curtis knocks me over and calls me bald Bin Laden, I trip him and he hits his mouth on the ground.

  The recess monitor stomps over to yell at both of us. We get detention. I've never tripped Curtis before. I am sick and tired of being called names, but I'm not being very holy.

  And I should have remembered the fall rains in the Pacific Northwest. I get soaked rolling to school, and one day I roll right over dog poop.

  I jump to my feet. “It's all over your back!” Roland says. “Ew!”

  “Unger, you weren't paying attention!” I try not to hurl at the smell.

  “I was looking!” Unger shouts, the rain running down his face. “It's hard to see everything, you know. The poop blended in!”

  “Was it wearing camouflage gear?” I shout.

  “Why is it always up to me?” Unger shouts.

  “I saw it.” Skinny Matt points. “I saw the poop before you rolled over it.”

  “Then why didn't you say anything?” I run to a yard and lie on my back, rubbing my jacket in the grass.

  Matt shrugs. Roland is laughing so hard, after all I've done to give him hope in a cruel world.

  Unger's shaking his head. “There's poop on your pants too. On the back.”

  I stand up and try not to cry. Wouldn't do to have a kid my age blubbering at school. But we're so far from home, I can't turn back now. I'm stuck between poop and school, and I don't know what to do. Bapu, this is all for you.

  “I have to go home,” I say.

  “You'll get in trouble,” Unger says. “Go to the nurse.”

  “Does she keep extra jeans?”

  “She might,” Matt says. “When I got a paper cut, she helped me a lot. They almost had to airlift me to Harbor hospital—”

  “For a paper cut?” Unger pushes the glasses up on his nose. They're fogged over and covered with droplets, and the rain makes his nose slippery.

  “The cut was deep,” Matt says.

  I don't know what scares me more—getting in trouble for going home, or going to the nurse for help.

  I'm already here. The nurse.

  Right near the school, the rain turns to hail and the kids all run inside. I hope the hail blasted the poop off my clothes.

  Under the overhang near the main doors, I take off the jacket. The back is still stained and stinks. I try to see around to the back of my soaked jeans. I can't see but I can smell it. I rush inside to the nurse.

  A few kids screw up their noses as I go by. “Who farted?” someone asks. “Did you cut the cheese?” Word will get around fast.

  “Anu Ganguli, what brings you here?” Nurse Edmonds asks. She's square, like a Rubik's Cube. Her office smells like a hospital, and I think of Bapu in his hospital bed. I think of Ma at work. I hate hospitals with the doctors in white coats and the smells of alcohol and sickness. Hospitals swallow mothers and grandfathers and don't give them back. Nurse Edmonds ushers me inside. She says nothing, even though I know she smells the poop on my clothes.

  She c
loses the door behind me. “How can I help you, Anu?” She remembers my name, maybe from vaccination days.

  “I rolled over dog poop.”

  “Rolled? Let's see what we can do for you.” She rummages in the drawer and comes out with a big plastic bag. “Here, put your jacket inside.” I can tell she's breathing through her mouth.

  I drop the jacket.

  She ties the top of the bag and takes it into the bathroom, then comes out and closes the door. “I think your jacket is history, but we can try to use bleach. The material is breathable and washable, but the color might fade.”

  “You'll wash it here? You have a washing machine?”

  She nods. “But you'll have to stay inside until it's done.”

  “Thanks.” I'm so grateful.

  “Did you get any on any other part of you? In your hair? Oh—” She sees I don't have much hair.

  “Just on my jeans.” I'm standing there, dripping water and who knows what else on the floor.

  “Take them off too and I'll wash them.”

  I'm not taking off even poopy jeans in front of a square Rubik's Cube nurse. “I need an extra pair.”

  “I don't have any.” Her brows furrow. I can see the cubes moving in her mind. “Maybe we can call your mother—”

  “No, don't call my ma. She doesn't know—”

  “Doesn't know what?” She looks at me as if she already knows the answer.

  “That I was rolling.”

  “Is it against the law to roll?” She glances at my Chia Pet head.

  “I guess it's not.”

  “Word is out about your business venture with Unger. He's quite the young entrepreneur.”

  I swallow, wondering if she plans to tell my parents.

  “Do you have any other clothes at school? Gym clothes, maybe?” she asks.

  Gym clothes! “I have shorts. I don't want to wear shorts around school.”

  She goes to the phone. “Then I'll call your mother. I have a work number for her. She can bring you jeans.”

  “No, she can't. You don't understand. My mom is a doctor. She can't ever leave work.”

  Nurse Edmonds gives me a funny look. “Ever? You mean she sleeps there? Perhaps she can leave work when her son has a problem.”

  “I don't have a problem. I don't need my mom.”

  An image flashes before me—Ma striding through the halls, waving a pair of jeans, confronting me about the poop and how dirty it is and how a grown-up needs to watch me at all times.

  “Well, okay.” Nurse Edmonds's brows furrow. “Then what—”

  “I'll wear my shorts.” I take my locker key out of my backpack.

  She takes the key. “I'll get them for you.”

  I have to thank the gods for small blessings.

  But I still have to walk around school in my gym clothes with goose bumps rising on my skin. Curtis opens his mouth to call me a name, but says nothing. Maybe he knows I might trip him again. He's losing steam.

  By recess, my pants are dry. Thank the gods. And the nurse. I get my math textbooks from my locker and hang out in Ms. Lumpenberger's classroom.

  Sylvie comes in, her features pulling into the center of her face. “You know the fortune you gave me, that good things would come my way if I only wait? And that my lucky numbers are three and fifty-seven?” She slides into the seat beside me.

  “Yeah?” That was the most general prophecy I've made so far. I chose three because she's one of three kids in her family, and her parents have three poodles. I chose fifty-seven because it's the number on her house.

  “It didn't work. My dad played the numbers in a bunch of scratch-off tickets last night, and he lost.”

  “I'm sorry, Sylvie. The fortunes, they're just a game.”

  She sticks out her bottom lip. “My mom didn't get a raise at work.”

  “I didn't say she would—”

  “You said good things would come our way.”

  “They still will, I'm sure, you know.” I'm tripping over my words. “I mean, good and bad. Good and bad things happen to everyone.”

  “I don't want any more fortunes. Tell Unger I want my quarter back.” She strides out, brushing past Andy.

  He comes in and slides into the seat beside me. He bites his lip as if he wants to ask me something. I want to ask him questions too, like whether he's afraid he's going to die like Bapu died, but I just stare at the pages in my old textbook.

  Close up, I can see the thin blue veins under the skin of his jaw. He hasn't worn his wig since class pictures.

  “Thanks for what you did, Anu.” He glances at the fuzz on my head. He touches his own head, still smooth and hairless.

  “I didn't do anything.”

  He waves the piece of paper I put in his locker, the list of bald people. “Thanks for this too. I showed it to my mom. I didn't tell her that I had my picture taken bald. I don't know what she's going to say when the prints come back.”

  “I don't know what my mom will say either, but it doesn't matter. Bald is cool.”

  “Bald is cool.” Andy and I slap our hands together.

  “Could you do my future?” he asks. “You know—a prophecy.” His eyes shine, and he leans toward me and holds out a quarter.

  I don't take the quarter. I keep staring at him and blinking. I can't tell Andy's future. I don't know his future. His future is life or death. He has to know that.

  “I can't.” I lean back, and the desk squeaks.

  “Why not? You gave everybody else one, like fortune cookies!” He grins with excitement.

  “Only the gods know our futures. They know everything, and I'm not a god.” Someone else is talking, a boy who knows that hidden forces make the world turn, that gravity holds us to the ground, that I can't change any of that.

  “What about the fortunes?” Andy asks. “My friend Nina wants one—”

  “I'm not doing prophecies anymore. They were for fun, not for real. Unger wanted to make money. Now he's rich and he can invest those quarters in a retirement account.”

  Andy's face falls, and he tucks the quarter back in his pocket. “I think you need a thousand dollars to open a retirement account. That's four thousand quarters.”

  “Then Unger will have to start a new business.”

  “You think I'm going to die, don't you?” Andy's eyes are calm, matter-of-fact.

  My throat tightens. “Andy—I don't think you're going to die, okay?” I lean over and do something I've never done. Usually I would think it was yucky. I put my hand over Andy's. His fingers are so warm, they're on fire. I wonder if he has a fever. “You–are–not-going–to–die.”

  “I know.”

  I take my hand away. “You know?”

  “Yeah—my mom took me to the Mystery Museum, and Karnak told me. He waved his wand, and then a few weeks later, my tumor started to shrink.”

  “You got to see him?” Izzy told me about Karnak.

  “You have to drive way out to Port West and take the ferry all the way to Divine Island. Karnak is awesome.”

  “What does he look like? What does he do?”

  “He's a cool magician. He does all kinds of tricks. He says he comes from the planet Karnakian, where everyone has special powers.”

  “No kidding—did you have to pay to see him?”

  “My mom paid.” Andy's face sobers. “You have to walk through a scary part of the museum to the theater in the back. I kept my eyes shut the whole time and my mom led me.”

  “How could you keep your eyes shut?” I'm leaning toward him, nearly falling out of my seat.

  “I opened them for a second and this huge shrunken head bounced around and almost bit me.”

  “It was actually moving?”

  He nods and nods. “And there were two mummies—they were actually alive.”

  “Alive? What do you mean, alive? Izzy didn't tell me that.”

  He leans in close and lowers his voice. “They move. I saw. One moved its arm and the other one moved its mouth. Tota
lly freaked me out.”

  “Moving mummies? Did anyone else see?”

  “I don't know—I didn't tell. I squeezed my eyes shut and my mom led me back to see Karnak. He does two shows per day, only on weekends. He's awesome.”

  “Whoa—and your tumor shrank? Did you ask him to take it away?”

  “I asked him to make me well.” Andy sits back in his seat. “The other kids were asking for silly things. Like, they wanted him to pull a rabbit out of a hat or make the silk scarf change color from green to red. Oh, and he pulled a quarter from behind one kid's ear.”

  “And what did he say when you asked him to … make you well?”

  Andy sticks out his lower lip and glances out the window. “He said he could do anything, anything at all, and that he would grant my wish, of course, because he's Karnak, and Karnak has great power. He gave me a magic statue of himself. I keep it by the bed.”

  “That's amazing.” I sit back, hit in the brain by a meteorite. “Congratulations, Andy.”

  “Yeah, thanks.” He gets up and slings his backpack over his shoulder. “But I wasn't asking you about that, anyway. I just wanted to know what my mom would say about the class pictures.”

  He walks toward the door, light on his feet. Karnak the Magician must be like one of the gods.

  The bell rings. I gather up my books as Unger comes in wiping his glasses on his American flag T-shirt. “I've been looking all over for you. I heard Nurse Edmonds made you wear your gym clothes. You poor kid.” He sits beside me and jingles the bag of coins. “Three more! But you're on your own today.”

  “I'm not doing prophecies anymore. Give back the quarters.”

  “But—”

  “I can't really see the future, and you know it.”

  “So what? Stella tells fortunes at the Mystery Museum, and she can't really see the future either.”

  “How do you know about Stella?”

  “Izzy told me.”

  I narrow my gaze. “When did she tell you?”

  “I called her last night. I'm going over to talk business today. We might have new customers, maybe the homeschooled kids.”

  “Did she tell you about Karnak the Magician?”