by Tania James
“Do you have enough money to get a lawyer?” he asks.
“I think so,” she says.
“Maybe my mom can help you out. Or me.”
“You have money? From how?”
“Different ventures.”
“Why you would give it to me?”
“I look at it as another venture. Immigration is a really big deal right now.”
She watches him as he watches her through the camera. To him, she must be of no more significance than a fish in a bowl. He raps on the glass only to see which way she will swim.
“No thank you,” she says.
At that moment, Mr. Tandon emerges from his office. Rohit turns and extends his hand, but Mr. Tandon keeps his distance, as though his proximity to the camera might cause him an allergic reaction. He politely asks Rohit to turn it off. Holding the camera away from his eye, Rohit rattles off a number of practiced pleas and excuses. “It’s for a home video, she’s a close family friend, no one will see it, I just want to document her arrival.”
To Anju’s delight, none of this works. “We have too many people coming in here with sensitive issues,” Mr. Tandon says. “So, if you would be so kind.”
Mr. Tandon utters these words with a courtesy that belies the authority of his posture. He keeps his hands in the pockets of his well-pressed pants, refusing to move until his request is met.
With a weary sigh, Rohit turns off the camera, and Mr. Tandon, invigorated, extends his hand in welcome.
ANJU FEELS SAFE here in the vault of books, with Mr. Tandon’s hands clasped atop her file, as if her life is now his territory. While he speaks, she tallies all the signs of his achievement—his cuff links, his gold nameplate, his tall globe that can spin and spin on its axis.
He asks Anju a few questions about her documents, whether she is registered with the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System. She answers yes with all the hope of a child wishing to please. “And you want to attain permanent status?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“First let me say this is not unusual. I see cases like yours all the time. Since nine-one-one, the bureaucracy surrounding U.S. immigration has been staggering but not, in my experience, insurmountable.”
Anju wishes she could write down all the vocabulary words that fall so effortlessly from this man’s mouth. Rohit, slumped in the seat next to her, seems less impressed.
“What are these steps I should take?” she asks.
“First we need to make sure that we keep renewing your F-i visa, which requires a nonimmigrant visa processing fee to the Department of State. Then we can apply for permanent status by next year.”
“Is there a faster way?”
“I’ve known clients to achieve permanent status in half the usual time. A year or even less.” He offers a small, apologetic smile. “But extra speed comes with extra fees.”
“I can pay,” Anju says, just as Rohit asks: “What about your fees?”
“Roughly?” Mr. Tandon looks up at the ceiling, calculating. “That’s four hundred for the F-i renewal processing, then five hundred for the permanent residency application, plus the expediting fees. With half my fees, taken together … about two thousand.”
Rupees? Anju wants to ask. Rubles? Pesos? Surely not dollars. The number settles deep in her stomach, a dense and dismal sediment.
“Jeez, that’s a lot of money.” Rohit’s tone is weirdly loud and impassioned. “Anju, what are you going to do?”
“Can I pay in pieces?” she asks.
Mr. Tandon seems to weigh her disappointment. “I’m sure we can work something out. It seems that my assistant is very invested in your future, and I trust her judgment.”
Over her shoulder, Anju looks at Bird, who is speaking into the phone and jotting notes with her pen. Bird is vital to this place, at the core of its functions, and it is luck that won Anju a place in Bird’s favor. Against her own doubt, Anju hears herself speaking in a steady voice:
“I can give you five hundred cash now. The rest I can send by the end of the week.”
AFTER THE MEETING, Anju and Rohit part, as she is to have tea with Bird and he has a party to attend in TriBeCa. It is a relief to watch him dismantle his camera and pack the parts into a carrying case. “Great job today,” he tells her by way of good-bye. It seems a strange statement, as if complimenting her performance, an accidental admission that his camera was on all along.
For a moment that takes her by surprise, she admires him.
BIRD LIVES FOUR BLOCKS from Mr. Tandon’s office, in an apartment that smells faintly of Vicks VapoRub and old sweaters in a trunk. Anju sits on a plastic-covered couch, a difficult thing on which to sit gracefully without emitting an impolite noise.
Bird brings Anju a mug of chai, a box of Entenmann’s chocolate-chip cookies, and two napkins impressed with McDonald’s arches. “How long have you been here?” Anju asks.
“In this country? Twenty-two years, something like that.”
“Do you go back?”
Bird shrugs. “There is no one to go back to anymore. Everything is changed. If I went back now, I’d just be a tourist.”
Between sips of tea, Bird asks tentative questions, giving Anju little chance to ask any more of her own. Anju explains how she came on scholarship, how her family is awaiting her return.
“Your father must be proud of you,” Bird says.
“I think so. I don’t know.”
Without looking up, Bird carefully lays two cookies on a napkin. “And your mother too.”
“Oh no. She died when I was a baby.”
Bird nods, seemingly unsurprised. Usually, people respond differently to this news, with sympathy or sadness, however contrived. But Bird is expressionless.
“You are here alone, then?” Bird asks. “No relatives, no nothing?”
“I have no one here.”
Bird stares at Anju, then pushes the cookie box closer to her. “Not anymore.”
14.
IKE AN HOUR-OLD PIECE of gum, romance has lost all its sweetness. What Anju assumed was the smolder of gathering emotion turned out to be a dull, gray, tiring wad of nothing. With her mind mostly cleared away of pointless passions, she looks upon Fish with an acute sense of betrayal. But also a painful splinter of hope.
Against that hope, she throws herself into her studies, the only field in which she exercises some measure of control. In class, she forgoes her Ace bandage to take limitless notes, reassuring her teachers that the arthritis has temporarily lifted, though she still makes a point of conspicuously massaging her joints once in a while. Her rising grades put her at the head of the class, even above Fish, who struggles to maintain his class performance in tandem with his participation in Outdoors Club, Amnesty International, Physics Club, Glee Club, Multicultural Club, and golf. She and Fish are like two converts to different denominations, he fully devoted to his mother’s dream of an Ivy League school, she devoted to her books, both unwilling to see the similarity in their pursuits. Anju wonders if her success has contributed to his avoidance of her, a thought that leads her to study doubly hard. Surpassing him is the only way to wound him, to remind him that she exists.
She also finds time to visit Mr. Tandon’s office again, where she hands over all the money she has left, $900, which includes the rest of the George de Brigard award plus $400 she drew from her scholarship stipend. This leaves her with $25 in spending money for the next two months, but having no one with whom to socialize, she barely notices the loss. Bird promises that she will persuade Mr. Tandon to waive the rest of his fee. “Think of it as an investment,” Bird tells her. “We will file the application this week itself.”
In the meantime, Anju bends over her textbooks until her lower back aches, until her head swims with Civil War battle names and algebraic equations. She binds each fact to her memory and plows forward into future pages. Studying, too, is a kind of war, and each chapter a territory to be conquered. While so engaged, she hardly lets herself think about th
e doubt that needles her, that Fish might not be the person, or the poet, she thought he was.
WITH HER RISING GRADES, Anju is unsurprised to arrive at school and find a note from Miss Schimpf wedged into the slats of her locker. “Please see me in my office.” At least Anju’s work ethic is finally being noticed by someone, if not Fish.
She trudges down the hall, around clumps of students and boulderlike backpacks and exclusive conversations. The door to Principal Mitchell’s office is open in welcome to students who do their best to ignore it, lest they be dragged into a chat. For her part, Anju looks forward to a chat now and then, even if Principal Mitchell simply asks about her homework. Anju glances in, disheartened by the empty desk chair.
She arrives at Miss Schimpf’s office to find Fish already there, seated by the wall. Her reaction is one of pure elation, a smile that she cannot supress. She hardly notices, at first, that he is staring intently at his sneakers, his hands cupped together as though to trap something between them. The next person she notices is Principal Mitchell, who stands beside Miss Schimpf’s desk, his arms crossed over his chest. Miss Schimpf looks up with an expression of profound sadness.
And now the significance of this meeting settles over Anju in a gentle gust. Slightly dazed, she hovers in the doorway and wonders, absently, whether she could go get her Ace bandage from her locker.
Principal Mitchell tells her to come in and have a seat. Usually he calls every student by last name, preceded by Miss or Mr., but now he calls her Anju, a foreboding intimacy. The door falls shut, gentle as a pat on the back.
“Anju, we called you in here because we have some serious things to discuss, in particular about your artwork.” Principal Mitchell pauses, as if waiting for her to begin the discussion herself. “I have to ask you: Did you do those paintings yourself?”
From her throat comes a voice that she does not recognize as her own. “Paintings?”
“Yup. Did you paint them?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you have help?” Miss Schimpf asks.
“No, miss.”
“Oh, no need for ‘miss’ and ‘sir,’” Principal Mitchell says. “We’re just here to have a chat.”
A chat. Again, that cozy, fireside language. There is nothing cozy about the way Fish refuses to release his hands and look at her.
Noting her glance, Principal Mitchell calls on Fish, as if they are discussing a poem or a play and little else. “Mr. Fischer? Would you like to say something?”
The noise that comes from Fish’s mouth is barely a croak. He clears his throat. “She told me her sister did them.”
Anju sits very still, while inside her heart falls and falls.
Principal Mitchell leans against Miss Schimpf’s desk. “Anju, is this true?”
She does not answer.
When Miss Schimpf addresses Anju, her voice is dulcet, deceptively so. “Anju, what’s your sister’s name?”
It is cruel, the way they know things that they are pretending not to know. Anju does not answer, not out of obstinacy, but because she simply has no voice.
Miss Schimpf rises and holds up the tailor’s painting, which, unbeknownst to Anju, has been spread on the desk all this time. With her finger, without touching the paper, Miss Schimpf traces a looping vine in the corner of the painting. A single gold bell hangs from her bangle, tinkling childishly. When she removes her hand, the word lifts, like a scent, from the page.
Linno.
There is a rarefied silence, of a stillness and weight that occur before an avalanche.
Anju’s hand goes to her mouth, and with that singular motion she surrenders. How did she never notice? From far away, she hears Principal Mitchell beginning to talk about consequences, about the Honor Code, about violation, words that for now do little more than draw a thick, distinct line that separates her from them. Her mind reels forward through the oncoming days, when she will be asked to return the money, now in official, unknown hands. She feels herself growing light, dissolving, or perhaps it is the world that is dissolving all around her.
15.
UTSIDE, the sounds of dawn: the swish-gargle-spit of Amma-chi’s saltwater ablutions, the clunk of a heavy pail set on stone. Melvin lies in bed, listening. He should be up already. He should be brushing his teeth and taming the sharp, disheveled fin of his hair, but he feels weighted to the bed, his nightmares pinning his stomach to the mattress. And again, that sense of impending wrongness, which he will not mention to his mother for fear of her antidotes.
He has this dream every so often. In it, Linno is seven years old, the age that she was when he left her behind in Kumarakom. She is wearing red ribbons at the ends of her plaited braids. He is following her down strange, labyrinthian corridors, imploring her to wait for him. Around every corner, she gathers speed, until she is running, then racing, her head a comet, her braids flaming behind her and blizzarding sparks that make him recoil with the knowledge that he is being left behind, always, by everyone. He feels childish, furious, his fatherly words turned desperate and ugly, calling her an idiot, a useless, stupid girl. Go then, if you want to go. Go and don’t come back. She turns and, with the rippling nature of dreams, becomes a woman he knows, then one he doesn’t, then one that may be his wife. She is crying.
Dreams are not the best place from which to draw messages, and the significance of this one, so heavy in the morning, will lighten with every passing hour. The regret that now throbs at the thought of Linno will disappear when he sees her at breakfast, picking her teeth. The day will grow harmless, and by afternoon he will forget everything. But there is only minor comfort in forgetfulness because nothing is completely forgotten, only tucked away in some other part of the brain to later betray him at synaptic speed.
AFTER ANOTHER BEDRIDDEN MINUTE, he hears the phone ring, an unlikely sound for so early in the morning. It must be Anju, a thought that brings him comfort. She has not called in twelve days, nor did she return Melvin’s last call. Ammachi wanted to phone her again, but Melvin insisted that Anju was probably busy with schoolwork and the green card application. They would wait until tomorrow.
He hurries out of bed and into the sitting room, trying to smooth his hair on the way. Picking up the phone, he greets a vaguely familiar voice: “Hello? Mr. Vallara?”
After a moment’s delay, he cries out, “Oh! Hallome! Miss Shiv!”
Miss Schimpf has called twice before, and each time, Melvin has regressed into his teenage self by uttering this same overly enthusiastic exclamation. Not because he finds her attractive, but because he finds her to be a person of considerable power, possessing a confident, feminine tone that fills him with well-being. Once a month, she calls with an “update,” which seems like a waste of a phone card, though he feels privileged that she thinks him important enough to receive her call. Usually, she stretches each syllable so that he can understand her messages of progress—that Anju is excelling in all her classes, that Anju is making friends. This time, however, he can barely follow her rapid-fire English. He understands that something has happened, but that something remains on a lingual shelf too high for him to reach.
Linno appears in the doorway just as Melvin catches the words “remain calm.” He sees his own expression, the opposite of calm, reflected in the way Linno is watching him. When she takes the phone, the last word he hears clearly is “missing.”
“It’s that Miss Shiv from Anju’s school,” Melvin whispers.
Linno wastes no time on introductions. “Hello, yes?”
Melvin stands aside, thinking that there must be a word after “missing” that he did not grasp. Anju has missed a class. Anju is missing home. “Missing” is a chameleonic word, its darker possibilities easily reversed with the right, benign context. So by the time Linno says aloud, “Anju is missing?” it is enough for Melvin to ask frantically, “What? Missing what?” while knowing the answer. It is enough to have the wind knocked out of his chest, enough to tumble him back into his nightmare, to wonder if he
mistook the girl with the fiery braids. His voice barely a whisper, he calls his daughter’s name.
III.
WEST WINDS
1.
HRISTMAS ARRIVES in a torrent of holiday cards. Teeming with them, the post office delivers the Jesus-centric cards to Christians and the more secular greetings to Hindus and Muslims, images of rosy white ice skaters and doily snowflakes, mailed in a region that possesses neither. The week before, Anthony Achen had eulogized the sweet but dead simplicity of the Christmas holiday, before the advent of store-bought trees and expensive cards. “Do you remember,” he asked the congregation, while the Kapyar nodded along, already remembering, “when we would simply break a branch from a tree to bring home and decorate, and this was our tree? Do you remember when we would craft our own Christmas stars from bamboo and colored papers instead of buying them ready-made from stores? How did we arrive here in this ready-made age?”
In spite of the sermon, Ammachi demands that Melvin go to the Fancy Shoppe and buy the ready-made star that most resembles a flamboyant meteor. It is the first Christmas without Anju, but Ammachi insists, with a resolve somewhere between piety and superstition, that the ready-made star will guide her home.
Melvin returns with an extra-large star painted pink and orange, poked with holes to radiate the lightbulb within. He hangs it from the corner of the roof, just as humbler stars hover in the porches of other Christian-owned shops and homes. As children, Linno and Anju loved that first moment of illumination, as wondrous and celestial as their own private sun.
But this time, Linno and Ammachi do not stay on the porch for long, drifting off into the house toward their separate corners, their similar worries. Melvin faces the dusk alone, listening to the faint warring of firecrackers that can be heard but not seen, detonated by boys too impatient to wait until nightfall. From where Melvin stands, the trees are a chorus of protest, trembling, flailing, wringing their limbs.