by Galaxy Craze
EIGHTEEN
The weather in California grew colder. The skies were still blue in the daytime, but the sun lost its glare and heat.
In the dining hall one night, Molly and Summer and Brad and Dylan told Eden, Jabe, and me what Christmas used to be like on the ashram. A devotee of Parvati’s from Los Angeles worked for the toy company Mattel, and at Christmastime a truckload of brand-new toys would arrive. There were board games, roller skates, Barbie dolls and Dream Houses, toy cars, new bikes with banana seats and streamers—all brand new and still smelling of plastic from the factory. But in the past couple of years, the toys were donated to local hospitals instead. It was the end of December, and Christmas had gone by unmentioned.
In London, the weather would be cold and damp. On our street, the Christmas lights on the trees would sparkle through the windows of the houses. I thought of our father, boiling water at the stove for his morning coffee and drinking at the table by himself.
I wondered where he had spent Christmas day. He had probably slept late, read the paper, then gone round to his friend Rafael’s flat in Notting Hill, where the walls were papered in newsprint.
* * *
I thought of Grandfather walking through his house, turning off the radiators and shutting doors, closing rooms to save the heat, rooms with beds that lay covered in white sheets that would not be seen again until the spring.
I wondered where he had gone for Christmas day. We usually spent Christmas with him and bought a tree from the farmer and put it up by the fire. Maybe he had spent the day alone, waiting for it to pass. He was a reserved man, without many friends.
The fields around his house would be turning pale. The grass would be frozen white at dawn, shining with ice.
The Scottish sky turned dark by three.
The long hours inside the houses.
In between the pages of a book our mother had brought with her to read on the airplane, Eden and I found a paper menu from the carry-out restaurant down the road from our house in London.
In our room at night, we read the menu aloud to each other.
“What would you choose,” Eden asked me as we lay on the bed, “if you could have just one thing?” He read from the list:
Shepherd’s pie
Tweed kettle pie
Welsh rarebit
Bangers, mash, and beans
Fish and chips
I couldn’t decide what to order, Welsh rarebit or fish and chips with lots of vinegar. I imagined the steaming plates of hot food and the plastic red-and-white checkered tablecloths. The crowd of people at lunchtime, on a workday, in the café. Umbrellas by the door, still wet with the rain.
“Fish and chips,” I said suddenly, taking the menu from him. “Okay, Eden, what would you choose? You can only pick one.”
He closed his eyes tightly as I read from the list of puddings. I felt an ache in my stomach, thinking about them.
Apple crumble
Warm spicy ginger cake
Trifle
Treacle pudding
Sticky toffee pudding
—all puddings served with hot custard
“Oh, no,” he moaned, holding his hands over his stomach. “I want them all.”
“Well, you can only choose one.”
“Treacle and custard,” he said. “No, wait!” He pressed his hand to his forehead as though agonized by his decision. “Or sticky toffee pudding…. Please can I choose both?”
I shook my head. “Just one.”
This became our favorite thing to do when we were alone in our room at night. Soon the menu grew thin and worn from being held so often. The restaurant down the road was the place where we would all go at least twice or three times a week. When I read the menu I imagined us there, but that time was gone now and someone else was sitting at our table.
We were doing homework and reading the take-out menu when our mother walked into the room. It was early for her to be back from the kitchen, where she usually worked until ten or eleven. She stood in the doorway, slightly out of breath, and closed the door behind her. She stood, looking at us and the room, with her back to the door.
“What’s the matter, Mum?” I looked up from my book.
She shook her head. “Parvati has asked me to look after Jaya in the nursery.”
“She has?” I said, surprised at the excitement in my voice.
Everyone knew Parvati was looking for people to take care of her daughter; it was considered an honor.
“She wanted someone who had experience with babies, that’s why she asked me.” Mum sat down on the edge of the bed and she pressed her palms to her eyes. “She asked Keshi and Lotus too. I’m doing the evening shift.”
“So you won’t be working in the kitchen anymore?”
She shook her head.
“Do you have to sleep there, Mum?” Eden said. He came and sat beside her and she held him close, pressing him tightly to her, as though she were afraid of him being taken away.
“Some of the night. I don’t know if I should do this.”
“I thought everyone wanted to look after Jaya,” I said.
“They think it’s a way to be closer to Parvati,” she said. “I saw Caroline this afternoon, and she looked terrible. John said she has hardly slept or eaten anything since she had to leave the nursery.”
“Well, Caroline knew this was going to happen eventually,” I said.
My mother sighed, looking at me. “You sound like Sati.”
I touched a line in my book with the tip of my finger, as though I could stop this moment.
“How long are you going to stay in the nursery for?” Eden asked.
“I don’t know, darling.” Our mother turned, looking at the clock on the shelf, and stood up, straightening her skirt. “I have to go,” she said quickly.
She walked over to the closet and pulled her carry-on bag from the shelf. She packed her nightshirt and took her toothbrush from the cup. She packed a sweater and took her small traveling pillow from the bed.
“I’ll be back in the early morning; maybe I’ll get some sleep then,” she said. “Eden, please brush your teeth and wash your face before bed. Will you make sure he brushes his teeth properly, May?”
I nodded.
“Mum,” Eden said. “I don’t want you to go.”
She looked at him, and I thought she would cry.
“You’ll be with May,” she said, touching the side of his face. “And if you need anything, I’ll be in Parvati’s house. I’ll ask the Women to get me, for any reason. Okay, darling?”
She kissed us good-bye. She put her bag over her shoulder and let herself out of the room, closing the door behind her.
When she was gone, Eden sat without moving, looking toward the door.
On the weekend, Eden and I were allowed to visit our mother in the nursery. Sati said she wanted to come with us, so we left the dining hall after breakfast and walked together to Parvati’s house.
We could hear the baby crying as we walked down the hallway to the nursery room. Inside, our mother walked the baby around the room, trying to calm her.
“She’s been crying like this for hours, and she won’t take anything from the bottle. I’ve had to spoon-feed her, and she spits most of it up.”
“I’m sure she’ll eat when she gets hungry enough,” Sati said.
My mother gave her an impatient look. “Babies can get dehydrated very easily, and clearly she’s miserable.” She turned away from Sati with the crying baby in her arms, stopping herself from saying something more.
I looked away from them, to the window. Outside it was a cool day, but the sun shone brightly inside Parvati’s garden. From the window, I could see the swimming pool and the rows of flowers planted along the stone path.
Eden walked around the room looking at the baby things and touching them: the wooden train set, the stuffed animals on the shelf. Above the crib he spun the colorful mobile.
“Look at that.” He turned it again, so it twisted o
n its string. “Mum, did I have a mobile when I was a baby?”
“Yes, you did. Sati,” my mother said, “why don’t you try to comfort her?”
Sati held her arms out to take her sister and my mother carefully passed her the baby, holding her hand beneath the baby’s neck. When her arms were empty, she let them drop heavily to her sides, relieved not to be holding her anymore.
“Jaya, shush,” Sati whispered to her as she walked. “Why are you crying?”
My mother sat down on the bed watching her. She had been up for the last two nights, she said, with the crying baby. Her shoulders fell forward and her back hunched as she rested her head in her hands.
“Sati,” our mother said. “How is your mother doing?”
“I think she’s feeling better. My father took her to the doctor and he prescribed some pills.”
In the past few weeks, I had only seen Caroline a few times. I saw her walking hand in hand with her husband around the pond, slowly, like an elderly couple. I had seen her in the dining room, sitting with Sati and John, touching the food on her plate with a fork.
Sati held a stuffed duck to Jaya’s nose. “Quack, quack!” she said, and for a moment Jaya stopped crying, looking at the duck in amazement.
My mother picked the bottle up from the bedside table and took it over to Sati. “Maybe you should try to feed her.”
Sati sat down in the rocking chair with the baby on her lap. She touched the rubber nipple of the bottle to her lips, but the baby turned her head away.
“I’m sure she’ll get used to the bottle eventually,” Sati said. She held her sister’s tiny hand, telling her she would come back soon. “May and I have to go to chores now, but I’ll come and see you soon,” she said, as she kissed the back of her hand. The baby’s eyes followed Sati, and when she saw that she was walking away, she began to cry again.
Sati and I walked to the stables. The weather was cooler now; there had been an overnight frost that turned the grass the color of straw.
“Poor horses,” I said. “The grass is all dry and pale.”
“There hasn’t been enough rain this year,” Sati said.
“There’s always enough rain in England.”
“There may be rain, but there isn’t enough sun and everyone knows that the sun is more important than the rain.” Sati said as she stared out at the horses in the field.
I saw Eden and Jabe running past us in a group of boys.
“What are you doing?”
Eden turned, looking back at me as he ran. “We’re going to our fort!” His voice trailed behind him in the air. In the months we had been here, he had grown taller and thinner. He had outgrown the clothes he came with and now his shirts were too short in the arms and stomach. His tan skin gave him a sinewy, taut look he had not had before.
Inside, I filled the buckets with fresh water while Sati spread clean hay on the floor. I watched her as she went out in the field to brush the horses. Now that her mother had moved out of the nursery, I knew Sati would not be spending the night there, so when we were finished with the chores, she would not rush away. There was a small broken mirror over the sink and I looked at myself, combing my hair to the side with my fingers. Maybe today we would walk to the grapefruit grove together and sit by the stream.
I took another brush down from the shelf and walked out to the pasture.
“Sati,” I said. “When we’re finished do you want to go for a walk in the grapefruit grove?”
“It’s a little cold today,” she said, as she continued to brush the horse’s mane.
The sky was gray and white with clouds, and a breeze blew in from the direction of the woods.
“Maybe it will rain,” I said.
“Maybe.”
“Do you miss staying in the nursery with your sister?” I asked. My voice sounded unsure, wavering.
“Maybe, a little bit. But Parvati said she would turn one of the extra rooms into a room for me. When Jaya’s a little older, she said I would be allowed to take care of her.”
“I took care of Eden when he was a baby,” I said.
“By yourself?” Sati asked, turning to me.
I shook my head. “No, my mother was there.”
“That’s not the same,” she said.
The other night, when we were alone in our room, my mother had said she didn’t know how Caroline could go through with giving her baby to Parvati. It would be even harder, now that she had held her and nursed her and slept in the bed with her.
I remembered walking home from the hospital after Eden was born and the way Mum held him so carefully, so close to her. Looking over her shoulder, fearful of every passing car, of a group of schoolchildren running down the street.
At home we sat with him on the sofa, watching him sleep while Hannah brought my mother cups of tea and cooked soups and stews in the kitchen.
“I feel sorry for her,” I said.
“Who?”
“Both of them, I guess, but Jaya misses her mother and she won’t understand why she left or where she’s gone.” I remembered the way Eden had cried and Mum was the only person who could comfort him.
“Jaya’s the luckiest baby in the world,” Sati said. “Everyone wishes Parvati was their mother.”
I looked away from her, touching the bristles on the brush with my fingers. “I don’t.”
Sati turned to me. There was an expression in her eyes, a squint, as though she were looking at me from far away. I knew I had said the wrong thing, the one thing that would chip away at our friendship.
I stared down at the pale grass, kicking it with my toes. I felt a stinging in my eyes and wondered if Sati could see I was fighting back tears.
We stood out in the horse pasture without speaking. The horses slowly walked away, eating the grass, their bodies moving past us.
Sati rubbed her arms with her hands. “It’s getting cold.”
“Yeah,” I said.
I looked up at the sky; the clouds were still, not white and not gray. I held out my hand, but there was no rain.
“Do you want to go to dinner?”
“I think I’m just going to go home. I’m not very hungry,” Sati said.
We carried the brushes back to the stables and put them on the shelf. We turned off the light and closed the gates.
“We have a quiz in math tomorrow,” Sati said.
“I know. Have you studied for it yet?”
Sati shook her head. “Have you?”
“No.”
The wind blew stronger. As we walked across the field, I crossed my fingers. This feeling, like a tightrope between us will end soon, I thought. It will be gone by the time we reach the path.
NINETEEN
In class, Kelly passed out photocopied sheets of paper called the ERBs. Kelly said she didn’t approve or believe in standardized tests, but we had to study for them anyway. It had to do with being a legal school in the state of California and the “success” of the students.
Whenever the word “success” was used on the ashram it was said with quotation marks around it. Kelly thought the tests were classist and racist. “For example,” she said, as she looked over the list of vocabulary words. “Cutlery. If you aren’t living in a middle-or upper-class home, when would you ever hear this word used?”
I had never heard the word cutlery used in my house, but I nodded in agreement with Sati, Summer, and Molly, as we looked up at her from around the table.
In the afternoon, there was a knock on the classroom door. It was Keshi.
“Hello, girls,” Keshi said. She was dressed festively, in a short floral skirt and a white blouse with a string of Rudraksha beads around her neck. She had tucked flowers into the bun on top of her head, so that it looked like a small hat.
“I have an announcement to make today,” she said excitedly.
Sati, Summer, Molly, and I looked up at her. Kelly sat beside us; from the knowing smile on her face, it was clear that she knew what Keshi was going to say.
“As most of you know, or maybe some of the newer ones do not yet know”—Keshi stopped to smile—“once a year, Parvati has a slumber party for all the children.”
I felt Sati squeeze my arm. She jumped up excitedly.
“So,” Keshi said, holding her hands together, “tonight is kids’ night with Parvati! Chores are canceled! Go back to your rooms and bring your sleeping bags and pajamas and meet outside Parvati’s rooms at—” Before she could finish, Summer, Molly, and Sati were jumping up and down screaming with excitement.
“Calm down, please.” Keshi said, pressing the air with her palms.
“Girls, girls!” Kelly said, stepping in. “I understand how excited you are, but before we leave for the day we have to quiet down and put our papers and books away.”
Summer, Molly, Sati, and I stood talking outside about what to wear to Parvati’s that evening.
“I’m going to wear my red denim skirt,” Summer said.
“Do we have to dress up?” I asked.
“We have to look nice, like we do for darshan.”
“Oh.” I was thinking of what to wear. The few nice things I had were dirty.
“You can borrow something of mine if you want,” Sati said. “My dad brought me back some new jeans when he went to Denver.”
“Thanks,” I said, looking at her. It was a clear day and the sunlight shone down, as though it were shining through glass.
Sati and I walked to her house. As we walked across the deck we could see her mother and my mother, through the screen door. They were sitting next to each other on the sofa, talking quietly.
* * *
Sati opened the door and her mother looked up at her, her hand on her chest, as though she’d been frightened.
“Sati?” her mother held the baby, Jaya, in her arms. Her shirt was unbuttoned, as though she had just been nursing her. The baby lay quietly in her arms, asleep, her head flung back in relief.