by Amrit Chima
The three of them entered the lower left-hand unit that had become the Howard Street base of operations and set their tools down in the front bedroom. Darshan quickly stepped away, pretending not to notice as Elizabeth again tried to take his hand, and led them down the long, dim hall toward the living room where Jai and the girls were finishing their morning tea and his father was reading the San Francisco Chronicle.
Glancing up, Manmohan opened his mouth to speak, then slowly closed it when he saw Elizabeth, fixing her with a look of icy inquiry.
Darshan was acutely conscious of how close she was standing to him; of her warm shoulder touching his arm; her cold, nervous fingers brushing against his; of her delight when he had finally agreed to bring her here; of her hope for their future; of the sincerity in her voice when she had said she loved him; of everything good in her that his father would not see. She looked at him now, waiting, awkward and ill at ease, but full of optimism.
“Bapu,” he said.
She smiled encouragingly at him.
“Bapu,” he said again, then faltered when Manmohan shifted in his chair. An apology flickered across his face as he reached around her and affably patted Stewart on the shoulder. “This is Stewart’s friend, Elizabeth. They have come to help for the day.”
Elizabeth blushed.
“You good,” Jai asked. “Tik?”
“Yes, thank you,” she mumbled. “Nice to meet you.” She extended a hand, which Manmohan took with skepticism.
“You don’t need me, then,” Navpreet said, gathering up her coat and book bag. She nodded at Elizabeth. “Nice to meet you.”
“Sit down,” Manmohan told his daughter.
“Elizabeth,” Darshan said, forcing a breezy tone, picking up a plastic spatula, and pointing to a container. “The plaster is there if you want to start with that.”
“I know what to do,” she replied, retreating to the corner with Stewart, who was clearly displeased.
Livleen collected the empty tea mugs and went to fill buckets with soap and water.
Navpreet put on her coat. “Bapu, you have enough help.”
“Sit,” he said flatly.
“This is ridiculous,” she said, lifting her book bag onto her shoulder. “I have an exam.”
“He told you to stay,” Darshan said.
“It looks like she wants to go,” Elizabeth told him, the bucket of plaster hanging at her side. She set it down, her face pink with anger. “You can’t force her. She’s not a slave.”
Darshan shook his head. “That’s not what we were saying.”
“I may not be able to understand the words, but it’s clear you are forcing her to stay.”
Darshan appealed to Stewart. “She doesn’t know the whole situation.”
His friend lowered his eyes.
Navpreet raised her chin defiantly. “You see? It isn’t fair.”
“I never know the situation,” Elizabeth told Darshan. “You never tell me.” She dropped her spatula with a clatter on the wood floor, walking briskly away down the hallway. Stewart went after her.
“Wait,” Darshan said, running outside to stop them.
“Leave me alone,” Elizabeth said as Stewart opened the truck for her.
“I will explain,” he told her, grabbing her by the arm, spinning her around. “I’ll tell you everything.”
“Why don’t you ever put me on the same level as your family?” she asked, her face hot with misery. “Why do I always come second after everything? You aren’t even happy with them.” She pulled her arm away and climbed into the truck.
Darshan watched the Chevy drive away and make the turn onto the highway entrance, disappearing into the congested traffic. When he returned to the living room, Manmohan was alone. He could hear Navpreet blowing her nose in the bathroom, complaining about her exam. Livleen was with her, softly murmuring something.
“They are different,” his father said. “They will never be like us.”
“Her mother doesn’t think like that,” Darshan mumbled.
Manmohan reached for his cane and slowly rose from his chair. He removed his turban, revealing the shiny pate of his bald head. He shoved his son’s chest with a hard buck of his fist now padded in the six yards of cloth. Holding the turban against Darshan, he glowered for several moments before covering his head, sitting, and again opening his newspaper.
~ ~ ~
Elizabeth’s clothes were damp from the night drizzle. She stood with Jai, lost and afraid in the center of the 24th Street living room, shivering beneath her coat, thick strands of her hair pasted to her face. They did not see Darshan as he observed them from the hallway. Jai took the girl’s hands and pressed them between hers for warmth, then reached up and touched Elizabeth’s face to gently wipe away the cold and wet. He knew the feel of those weathered hands against his own cheeks, knew how much affection was contained within them.
Elizabeth noticed him first. Embarrassed, she stepped back.
“She came for you,” Jai told her son. “She is wet and tired. She needs tea.”
“Bapu—”
“Sleeping,” she said, leaving the room.
Elizabeth removed her coat, gesturing around. “It’s different than I remember.”
“Did you come across town on the bus?” Darshan asked.
She nodded. “My mother told me I should see you.”
“I was wrong yesterday,” he said. “I should not have done that.”
“It wasn’t your fault. I pushed too hard.”
He sighed. “My father is angry.”
“I should go,” she said. “I don’t want to make it worse.”
“Elizabeth,” he stepped toward her. “You are important. They are important. All of it is important.”
“I know. You’re right.”
“Is Stewart angry?”
“He never stays angry long.”
“Maybe,” Darshan said tiredly. He grabbed his keys. “I’ll drive you.”
“No, I’m not going far. Stewart and I are seeing a movie.”
“Will I see you later?”
“My mother wants me to invite you for lunch. Colleen will be there.”
“Okay,” he said.
She slipped her coat back on. “They know now,” she told him. “It wasn’t easy, but we’re fine now, I think.”
“Yes,” he murmured. But when she was gone, he dumped the mug of her untouched tea and surveyed the room, clearing away any evidence that she had been there so there would be no questions, no hard stares when his father woke.
~ ~ ~
Manmohan ran his cane along the hallway wall, the fresh, white paint reflecting the light. He rapped his knuckles on the back of the new furnace, listening for the hiss of the pilot light. In the kitchen he tested the gas-lit stove, igniting the burners, then opened the refrigerator to sniff for any rancid odors, satisfied by the smell of antiseptic cleaner. Outside he squinted up at the building, now Easter-yellow with olive trim, pointing at the rental sign. “Change it,” he told Darshan. “We can get more.”
“We want good people, Bapu. Clean people. We want them to stay.”
“Good people in America can afford it.”
“We are asking market price. People are calling. We cannot ask for more.”
“You used to be the only one who listened to me.”
“I have only ever tried to help you, Bapu.”
“This is not mine,” Manmohan told Darshan. “It is yours. I do not want it.”
Darshan pursed his lips in frustration, smoothing down his cropped beard, knowing what his father was thinking.
“Indirjit told me about a space in Berkeley,” the old man said. “I want to see it.”
“Bapu, the timing is bad. He did not even know what he was saying.”
Indirjit Attwal spoke energetically about most subjects, drawing people into the vortex of his enthusiasm. But he became bored with his ideas as quickly as he uttered them. One afternoon, in his excitement after service in the Sto
ckton gurdwara, he had convinced Manmohan to open an Indian restaurant in the East Bay where there was a demand but no one as yet to fill it. But the next day, when Manmohan had phoned him to discuss the matter in further detail, he had absolutely no memory of the proposal and a rather emphatic aversion to joining the venture. Manmohan, however, had resolved to move forward.
“I am still your father,” the old man said.
Darshan nodded. “Yes, Bapu. I know.”
~ ~ ~
Fiji had been a manageable place. A man could rule it in his way. If set upon such a course he could draw the whole of it under his thumb to mold and shape to his will. For Manmohan it had only taken a great storm—which had happened often enough—tenacity, friends for support and encouragement, perhaps a number of favors, and endurance to operate a profitable business. He had been lord and master over those islands, sovereign of lumber, of wife and children.
Berkeley—and in particular Telegraph Avenue just near the university—was like a Fiji of sorts, a confined island of Indians seeking and cooperating to rebuild the communities they had left behind in their native countries. To Manmohan, it must have seemed such a familiar endeavor to open his restaurant, to invest the little money he had brought with him on a project that would excel without fail within the societal parameters he believed to be enduring and reliable as long as there were enough Indians to uphold them. The name he gave the restaurant reflected this belief, made clear what it meant to be a Sikh, and also what it meant to be the family monarch. The Lion of India he called it, and Darshan understood that his father meant them to know that this was precisely what he was.
Having reasserted himself, the old man set about issuing directives. Darshan was to make arrangements with a local Indian-run spice shop for discounts on large orders of rice, flour, turmeric, cumin, mustard seed, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, and various other spices and sundries Jai would need for cooking, as she was now commanded to be the head chef. Livleen and Navpreet were to furnish the restaurant, to buy tables and chairs, dining ware, silverware, glassware, ladles, cloth napkins, tins for spice storage, an industrial-size gas-lit stove, huge pots and a step stool so that Jai could reach the pots to stir the contents that would soon bubble within them. Manmohan supervised, conducting his business with the tight rein of one who had no intention of being twice usurped of his authority.
It meant little to him that Darshan worked full time, managed the Howard Street apartments, and drove him to temple and hospital, or that Navpreet had exams. It was irrelevant that Livleen was too young and beautiful for such a dictatorship, that she was living in a country in which her peers went to school and met for ice cream and movies on the weekends. He put a stop to her paper route so she would be available to him, unconcerned that it was her only means to save for the braces she had been wanting since arriving in America. And he chose not to concern himself with the alarming condition of his wife, who was clearly unwell and in no state to cook for a torrent of customers.
Soldiers aligned and marching, it did not take Manmohan long to ready the restaurant, tyrannically directing the family to gather and organize all the supplies, polish the nine lacquered ship hatches Livleen had found to use as four-top tables, hang framed paintings of the ten gurus around the dining hall, scrub down the kitchen, paint and draw up signs that read Coffee, 5 cents a cup with any order, and craft a large chalkboard menu to hang next to the swinging kitchen door opposite the main entrance: chicken curry, rice, and vegetable subzee $2.00 a plate, saag paneer and roti $1.50 a plate, and rice pudding $0.50. Soon the scent of Jai’s cooking—onions, garlic, spices, and turmeric—drifted down Telegraph Avenue, attracting a strong customer base of UC Berkeley professors, Indian exchange students, and hippies wandering in search of the unconventional, wishing to rid themselves of the usual deli sandwiches and pie. Unaccustomed to the seasonings, patrons welcomed the intensity of something different, and in only a few months the Lion of India built a steady clientele of regulars.
It was seven days a week of grueling toil. The kitchen was a hot pit, a cavity of steaming, oily residues rising from the huge metal pots on the stove, clinging to everything: the jars of pickles and ghee near the stove, the extra salt and pepper shakers on a shelf behind the sink, their clothes, their hands, and their faces. Jai ascended and descended her ladder in a frantic race to stir the curries, make dough for rotis, roll them out, and flip them on the hot plate. Often working twelve hours a day, she began to lose some of her color. Once, she became dangerously faint, and as she teetered on her stool toward the boiling food, Darshan snatched her salwaar, startling her so badly that, without thinking, she grasped the rim of a hot pot for support, slightly burning her hands before releasing it and falling into her son.
There was a constant backlog of dirty dishes by the dishwasher; clean dishes sat in the plastic rack because there was hardly enough time to put them away after running them through the machine. Livleen and Darshan managed to shelve them when they could, but more often they were running back and forth through the swinging kitchen door: out with orders and a water pitcher, in with busboy tubs of more dirty plates and glasses. Navpreet, her lips glossy, hair bouncy and styled, earrings dangling from her lobes, often stopped by in the middle of the dinner rush as Darshan, sweaty and exhausted, was on his way out for his night shift at Kaiser. Famished after work, she would grab a plate, spoon rice and ladle curry onto it and eat in the dining room, consuming her food slowly, taking her last bite just as the rush was over, and only then did she rise to halfheartedly assist with the clean-up.
From his chair in the dining room’s rear corner by the kitchen, Manmohan watched as customers flooded into his domain. He thoughtfully assessed their empty plates and the over-stuffed satisfaction on their faces, until one evening, after closing and locking the doors for the night, he went into the kitchen and returned to the dining hall with a wet rag to wipe out the prices on the chalkboard menu. He scribbled in new, higher prices, then turned to Darshan and said, “We can go home now.”
Darshan pulled the keys from his pocket. “I do not think that is a good idea, Bapu. People will be angry.”
“Why should they be angry?”
“Because it is not what they expect. They trust you.”
“How do you know what they expect?”
“They will stop coming,” Darshan said. “I would.”
Manmohan hung the wet rag over the back of a chair. He called to the kitchen. “Livleen, get your mother. We are leaving.”
Darshan shook his head. “Bapu, we need our customers. Bebe is not well. Without them we will never be able to afford to hire someone to help her.”
Manmohan shut off the lights. “Your mother is fine.”
“You do not even know where you are,” Darshan mumbled. “You are still living on the island.”
~ ~ ~
Elizabeth cautiously swung her apartment door open, her face puffy with sleep, her voice hoarse. Darshan pulled her toward him by the belt of her robe and put his arms around her, squeezing her into him, rubbing her back and smelling her hair. She allowed herself to be held, and he hugged her more tightly. “I’m tired,” he whispered to her, looking longingly into the darkness of her flat.
She pushed him away then, suddenly angry. “You can’t stay,” she said.
“It’s okay. I dropped my parents off. I called in sick.”
“I don’t want you to stay.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“You only ever come when you need something. You never even came for lunch with my mother. You don’t think about me. It’s always you’re tired, you’re confused, you’re struggling, your parents, your culture, your schedule. It’s three in the morning.”
He checked his watch. “I didn’t realize.”
“That’s the only time that’s ever good for you. But I was sleeping.”
Taking a deep breath, he nodded. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Yes, you did.”
“I d
idn’t realize,” he repeated, numb now.
“But you did,” she said, getting angrier.
He stepped back. “I won’t come again.”
Her eyes widened as he rushed down the stairs. “No, wait,” she called out. “That isn’t what I meant.”
He began to run, turning onto Terra Vista, his momentum down the hill burning his feet as they slapped hard on the pavement, shooting him past his parked station wagon. Stopping, he turned around, panting. As he made his way back to the car, he heard her still calling to him, but he allowed the rushing of blood and the hammering of his heart to drown her out. Climbing into his car, he started the engine and drove home to his family.
~ ~ ~
Darshan quietly climbed the stairs of the 24th Street apartment, took off his shoes, and lay down on the couch without removing his coat, his legs curled over the armrest, his feet dangling. The room was dark except for the lights from an occasional car reflecting across the ceiling and far wall, glimmers of life beyond the Toor home. He could hear Manmohan snoring down the hallway.
He closed his eyes and remembered the night long ago in Fiji when no one had saved him while the flames of a fire had licked the other side of his bedroom wall. The heat woke him, and the smoke. Coughing, he ran to the washroom to scoop out a bucketful of leftover soapy water from the aluminum bathtub, darted to the kitchen, and pitched the water in, ran back to the bathroom for more water, and back again until the tub was empty. It had not occurred to him until he went outside and saw his whole family safe, that they had not accounted for him, that while he had tried to save them, they had already saved themselves.
The jaws of the invisible creature reshaped now in Darshan’s mind. It solidified into something more real and tangible than it had ever been, a profound dark thing. It yawned over him, swallowing not just him, but all that surrounded him: the couch, the sound of his father’s snoring, his mother and sisters in the other rooms, the apartment, his friends, the whole city of San Francisco and the Pacific Ocean beyond. It swallowed light itself, the whole world and universe, crushing even his shack in the jungle. Someone familiar and very far away whispered something unintelligible to him. He groped, his hands extended, reaching for an anchor in the darkness. It might not have seemed like much, but when his fingertips brushed against the rough bark of his tree, he reached further and clung to it.