Save Me a Seat

by Gita Varadarajan

  I shake my head no. Why should I be his friend, after what he did to me?

  “This morning in class he tripped me on purpose with his foot and nearly broke my glasses,” I say.

  “That doesn’t sound like the Joe I know,” says Miss Frost.

  “Dillon saw him do it,” I tell her. “He told me.”

  Miss Frost bites her lip, then says, “I wasn’t there, but if he tripped you, he owes you an apology. And you owe him an apology as well, for implying that he might not be as smart as you are. Just because Joe needs help doesn’t mean he isn’t bright. You shouldn’t assume things about a person before you know who they really are.”

  “People are making assumptions about me too,” I point out. “They think I can’t speak English or do math. But that’s not true.”

  Miss Frost nods her head.

  “You see,” she says. “Assumptions are often wrong.”

  She tells me to remember that.

  When Miss Frost comes back to the resource room, she’s carrying a tray with three hamburgers on it. One for her and two for me.

  “Did anything happen in class this morning that I should know about, Joe?” she asks, tearing open a package of ketchup with her teeth and carefully squeezing a squiggly red line onto the top half of her bun. I’m already done with my first hamburger and about to start in on the second. I should have asked for three.

  “I spazzed out a little when Mrs. Beam asked me to read,” I say. “Did you tell her about my APD?”

  Miss Frost nods.

  I reach for a carton of chocolate milk and try to open the spout, but the paper keeps ripping. Miss Frost takes it from me and uses her fingernail to pull open the milk, then she hands it back.

  “I was wondering if anything happened with RAH-vee in class this morning,” she says.

  “It’s rah-VEE,” I say. “And Dillon tripped him right after he did some crazy-looking math problem on the board. Is that what you mean?”

  “He seems to think that you were the one who tripped him.”

  I shake my head.

  “I guess maybe he’s not as smart as he thinks he is,” I say.

  * * *

  AFTER SCHOOL GETS out, my mom is sitting in the car waiting for me. We go through the same routine as the day before. She tries to convince me to let her give me a ride home and I tell her I’d rather walk. I walked to school in the morning too. I don’t get mad that often, but when I do, I always stay mad for a while.

  I have a couple of bucks in my pocket, so I stop at the mini-mart on the corner to buy a snack. I had been planning to get a bagel and cream cheese, but instead I decide to buy a king-size bag of peanut M&M’s.

  Ever since I saw Ravi take that double blue one out of the bowl, it’s been bugging me that I didn’t find it first.

  I pay for the M&M’s and rip open the pack. Out of twenty-two, there are five blues, but no doubles. I eat them slowly, sucking off the layers, trying to make them last the whole way home. When I finally walk in the door, Mimi comes running. She rolls over on her back, and I give her a good belly scratch. Mom’s out in the kitchen, and from the smell of things, I’m pretty sure she’s making pork roast and scalloped potatoes. It’s going to be hard to stay mad at her if she keeps this up.

  “Joey,” Mom calls. “Is that you?”

  “Yeah,” I call back.

  She comes out of the kitchen, drying her hands on a dish towel.

  “Hungry?” she asks.

  My head tells me to go upstairs, but my stomach tells me where there’s pork roast and scalloped potatoes, there might be apple crisp too.

  “I’m starving,” I say.

  “Dinner won’t be ready for another hour, but I just took a crisp out of the oven. You want some?”

  Boy, do I. But between last night with the meat loaf and now this, I don’t want her to think I’m a pushover.

  “I’m still mad at you,” I tell her.

  “I know,” she says.

  I follow her out into the kitchen, where she dishes up a big bowl of warm apple crisp.

  “Ice cream?” she asks.

  I nod, and she puts a scoop of vanilla on top of the crisp. Perfect.

  I take a bite and close my eyes, letting the taste explode in my mouth like fireworks.

  “Are you ever going to forgive me?” she asks.

  “Eventually,” I tell her.

  She gets busy washing lettuce. I’m glad she doesn’t ask me about my day. I keep thinking about what Ravi said, and the way he pointed his finger at me. Even apple crisp can’t take the edge off that.

  “More?” asks Mom.

  “No, thanks,” I say, handing her the empty bowl. “I’m good.”

  When Amma comes in to wake me, she has red chiles and salt in her hands.

  “Sit still, Ravi,” she says. “I’m going to take away the kan drishti, the curse of the evil eye.”

  Even though I haven’t said a word to her about how badly things have been going for me at Albert Einstein Elementary School, somehow my mother has figured it out.

  “The kan drishti is what’s causing your problems, raja. I’m sure of it,” she tells me.

  I tried to hide my feelings yesterday when I returned home from school. Amma and Perimma picked me up at the bus stop, bombarding me with a million questions as usual.

  “Did you show your Vedic math?”

  “Was Mrs. Beam impressed?”

  “Did she comment on how nice your notebooks look?”

  “Did you enjoy the vegetable biriyani?”

  “Leave me alone!” I begged them.

  That was my mistake. For the rest of the afternoon, Amma and Perimma chased me around the house, offering me food and drink, hoping to pry some information out of me.

  “What’s wrong, Ravi?” Amma kept asking. “Has something happened?”

  Perimma even threatened to email Mrs. Beam if I didn’t tell her what was bothering me. There was no way I could tell them that I had been laughed at, disrespected, tripped, ridiculed, and forced to eat my lunch in the resource room with the very person who had tripped me. Amma would have been heartbroken. So I faked a stomachache and went to bed early.

  Amma clutches the salt and chiles tightly with both her palms and slowly circles them around me three times clockwise, then runs downstairs and throws the potion on a hot skillet. There is a loud crackling sound and the smell of burnt chiles fills the air.

  “I knew it!” I hear Perimma cry. “See how they crackle? Ay-yi-yo! Didn’t I tell you things would be difficult for us in America? People are jealous. That’s what it is. Jealous of our Ravi and his superior intelligence.”

  If only she knew what they really think of me at school.

  I get dressed and go downstairs, where Amma has made two soft iddlies for my breakfast.

  “Wait! First take this,” says Perimma, shoving a spoonful of pink medicine into my mouth. It tastes horrible, but it is my own fault for having faked a stomachache.

  “Everything is going to be okay, Ravi,” Amma says. “I’ve baked some naan khatais.”

  My favorite cookies!

  “The flavor is off,” sniffs Perimma, tasting a crumb and wrinkling her nose. “You put in too much rosewater, Roshni.”

  Amma sighs. I can tell she is biting her tongue.

  “You’ll see, Ravi,” she says as she carefully places the last crumbly round cookie in the box. “Mrs. Beam will be impressed.”

  “The naan khatais are for Mrs. Beam?” I ask, surprised.

  “I know just how to win teachers over,” Amma says confidently. “Offer the cookies to her first thing this morning. You’ll see how things improve after that.”

  Appa comes in carrying his briefcase.

  “Listen to your amma,” he tells me. “Remember she has the black tongue.”

  Amma has a birthmark on her tongue. In India, a black spot on the tongue means you have magical powers. This may sound like a silly superstition, but believe me, when Amma says something is going to
happen, it always does.

  It’s 6:58. The bus will be arriving in two minutes. Amma puts on her favorite blue sweater, picks up her saree pleats, hoists them just above her ankles, and tucks them in at her waist. Slipping her bare feet into a pair of rubber sandals, she rushes towards the door, but Appa stops her.

  “Let him go by himself, Roshni,” he says. “He’s ten years old.”

  Perippa is sitting on the sofa dipping his biscuit in his morning tea. Perimma hands me my tiffin box and my jacket.

  “Don’t forget to tell Mrs. Beam the naan khatais are homemade!” my mother calls after me. “And remember to eat your lunch! I made a nice curry with okra and chickpeas, raita, and a flask of buttermilk too. Good for your digestion!”

  * * *

  TWO BOYS FROM my class are sitting in the front row of seats on the bus. One of them is Keith Campbell and the other is named Tim or Jim, I’m not sure which. They nod to me, and I nod back. I wish that Dillon Samreen rode on my bus. Pramod and I used to ride together and crack jokes the whole way to school.

  I find a seat near the back of the bus and sit down, carefully balancing the box of cookies on my lap. All the way to school, I stare out of the window, wondering if my mother can be right. Will the kan drishti healing and the homemade naan khatais help to turn things around for me?

  When we arrive at Albert Einstein Elementary School, I look up at the American flag flying on top of the silver pole. I think about my own flag with its blue spinning wheel at the center. Each of the twenty-four spokes represents a virtue. Mrs. Arun had a list of them written on her wall, and she made us memorize them in order. I think about number two on the list (courage), number thirteen (righteousness), and number fourteen (justice). Be proud of who you are, I hear Perimma’s voice say in my head. Remember where you come from.

  I take a deep breath, straighten my back, and step off the bus.

  * * *

  BIG FOOT IS standing near the door when I reach room 506. As I walk past him, I keep my eyes on his giant shoes. I will not allow him the pleasure of tripping me again.

  When I present Mrs. Beam with the cookies, she smiles. In fact, she beams. Ha!

  “How sweet!” she tells me.

  Amma’s black tongue was right. Thanks to the naan khatais, I have won over Mrs. Beam. Even her eyebrows seem friendlier today.

  “We’ll begin our morning with silent reading,” she tells the class. “Following that, you’ll go to gym.”

  Things are looking brighter for me already.

  When I was a little kid, if I fell down and skinned my knee, my mom would kiss it to make it better. I thought it was magic. But I’m not a little kid and I don’t believe in magic anymore.

  I decide to let my mom drive me to school, but we don’t talk. At least I don’t.

  “Dad won’t be getting in until late tonight,” she tells me. “You won’t see him till tomorrow morning.”

  I’m not in any hurry. Not that I don’t miss my dad when he’s on the road. I do. Sometimes we watch sports together and act like guys—burping and scratching and stuff. But it’s been a while since we did that. Mom still hasn’t said anything, but I’m positive I’m right about the reason he’s coming home early. I know the drill. She’s going to make us have a family meeting. I’ll sit there saying nothing, my dad will tell me to “man up,” and when it’s finally over, nothing will have changed. Mom will still be the lunch monitor, Dillon Samreen will still be giving me a hard time about it, and fifth grade will still suck as much as it did before.

  “Hey, Pud, Not Puddy,” Dillon says as I walk into room 506. He’s standing by the door, like he’s been waiting for me. Lucy Mulligan giggles, which pretty much guarantees that the dumb joke will be following me around for a while.

  The funny thing about Lucy is that she and I used to be friends. We went to the same nursery school when we were little, and sometimes after school we’d play together. She even had a sleepover at my house once when her mom and dad had to go out of town for a funeral. She wet the bed and cried. My mother put the dirty sheets in the washing machine, and Lucy made me promise that I wouldn’t tell anybody at school about it. I never did.

  Dillon is about to say something else, but then his dark eyes slide to the left and there’s that evil sparkle I know so well. I turn around to see what he’s looking at. Ravi has just arrived with his green backpack and ironed blue jeans. For some reason, he’s looking especially shrimpy today. His shoulders only come up to my belly button, which means I can actually look down and see the top of his head. He is wearing the whitest sneakers I’ve ever seen in my life, and he’s holding a square metal box with flowers painted on it.

  “What’s in the box?” Dillon asks him.

  “Cookies,” he says. “For Mrs. Beam.”

  I look at Ravi in his weird flat clothes, holding his flowery little box of cookies, and wonder if he realizes he’s a zebra.

  “Boys and girls, please take your seats,” Mrs. Beam calls from the front of the classroom.

  Ravi walks up to her and hands her the box.

  “My mother has asked me to bring these to you,” he says. “They’re Indian cookies.”

  “How sweet! Indian cookies?”

  Ravi nods.

  “Homemade,” he says.

  When Ravi isn’t looking, Dillon puts his finger down his throat and makes a gagging sound. Lucy Mulligan giggles. Sometimes I wish they’d just run off together and get married and put us all out of our misery.

  “Please tell your mother thank you for the cookies, RAH-vee,” says Mrs. Beam. “I’ll be sure to enjoy one tonight at home after dinner.”

  Ravi turns and starts walking back to his desk. He looks happy, but I notice he’s staring at my feet. He probably thinks I’m going to try to trip him. I wonder if he thinks I’m the one who swiped his mechanical pencils too.

  After she finishes taking the roll call, Mrs. Beam tells us to do silent reading until it’s time to go to gym. I pull out my book and turn to the place where I left off reading last night. I’ve only got a few more chapters to go, and I want to know how the story turns out. Dillon asks if he can go get a drink of water … and I can tell he’s up to something. Sure enough, on the way back he tosses a folded-up piece of paper on my desk. I open it up and there’s a drawing of a bunch of people. Almost everyone is wearing a T-shirt that says I’M WITH STUPID on it, and under that an arrow pointing to the left. There are only two exceptions. One is a really tall boy wearing giant shoes that look like boats.

  I’M STUPID, it says on his shirt.

  Next to him is a woman in a striped apron holding a dirty diaper with a bunch of flies buzzing around it.

  Her shirt says, I’M STUPID’S MOMMY.

  Another day off to another sucky start.

  My day is getting better by the minute. First Mrs. Beam had liked the naan khatais, then she was impressed when she noticed how far I had read ahead in Bud, Not Buddy. Now it is time for gym class. I was Junior School Sports Captain at Vidya Mandir last year, even though I was only in fourth grade. If American gym is anything like PE in India, then my troubles will soon be over.

  I look down at my clean white shoes. Das Sir, my PE teacher at Vidya Mandir, would be pleased. Every day before class, he lined us up and first checked our shoes.

  “They must be pure white,” he insisted.

  Thanks to Amma and her polishing skills, mine were always as white as snow.

  Das Sir would sit in the shade of his favorite neem tree and tell us to start with some drills: stretching exercises, jumping jacks, and one round of running. I always finished first, Pramod a close second, and Ramaswami, the poor sod, came dead last every time. He was slow not only in reading, but at everything else as well, including running. Das Sir had no patience for him. Ramaswami had such a big belly that when he tried to touch his toes, he would bend his knees and Das Sir would give him a whack with a neem twig. We all laughed our heads off when he howled. After the drills before we played cricket, Das
Sir would send Ramaswami off with the girls to play throw ball or tennikoit or kho kho.

  The gym teacher at Albert Einstein Elementary School is called Coach Victorine. He has a funny nose, and no mustache, but he dresses exactly like Mr. Das—white shirt and black tracksuit bottoms. I am looking forward to impressing him—and everyone else—with my skills.

  Coach Victorine leads us out onto a large grass field behind the school. He has a canvas bag containing several metal bats and some large yellow balls. I’ve never played American baseball, but I imagine it’s a lot like cricket. I feel a bit nervous, but how hard can it be?

  I expect we will begin with some drills and running, but instead Coach Victorine chooses Dillon and a girl named Jaslene to be captains and tells them to pick their teams.

  “Do the girls play too?” I ask the boy standing next to me. He’s the one who rides my bus, whose name is Tim or Jim.

  “Yep,” he says.

  Playing against girls is going to be easy peasy!

  Jaslene picks first. She chooses a girl called Amy.

  I wave at Dillon to get his attention, then point to myself.

  “I was first batsman at Vidya Mandir!” I call out. I want him to know I won’t let him down if he picks me.

  He chooses the boy named Robert instead. I was sure he would pick me first. But I remind myself that Dillon doesn’t know anything about my athletic abilities or that I was a champion cricketer.

  It’s Jaslene’s turn to pick again.

  “I’ll take you,” she says.

  At first I think she is pointing at the girl standing in front of me, but instead she has picked me. I can’t believe I am going to play my first game of American baseball on a team made of girls. This is all Miss Frost’s fault. If she hadn’t made me go to the resource room yesterday, Dillon and I would have had lunch together. I would have told him about the gold cup I won last year for scoring two centuries in our final cricket game. He would have picked me first for his team today, and together we would have beaten the other team hollow.

  Jaslene chooses a few other boys for her team as well, so at least I am not alone.