by Tania James
“It’s late,” Bird says. “Where were you?”
“Helping Ghafoor clean,” Anju murmurs. Her eyes are fixed to the saltshaker in the center of the table. “We were talking.”
Bird gives a short, false laugh. “And what did Ghafoor say that was so interesting?”
“We talked about my mother. You and my mother.”
Bird nods automatically, her mouth going dry. She walks to the sink for a glass of water but absently opens the silverware drawer instead.
“He hung up the posters from your plays,” Anju says. “There was one with my mother in it.”
A glass, a glass for water.
“He said you were close.”
Bird turns the faucet on and watches water rising in a mug that was here when she moved in, same as the rose-rimmed dishes and the plastic tablecloth and the perpetually empty chairs. She tries to collect Anju’s words, to make sense of what has transpired. Ghafoor’s show card, his stupid pride and joy. The one time she was not there.
“Did you know my mother?” Anju asks. “Gracie Vallara? Or I suppose she was Gracie Kuruvilla at that time.”
Mug in hand, Bird takes a seat across from Anju. So this is the moment that Bird has been waiting for, the pivotal point at which she can lay her secrets open and close the gap between herself and Anju, between herself and Gracie, between this world and the one before. In a single evening, she can tell her version of the story, open the grand velvet curtain on the truth according to Bird.
But Bird looks at the girl across from her whose face is clouded with suspicion and confusion, and suddenly all words are lost to her. They fly from her like wintering crows, and in their wake, the old questions return: What can she possibly say to honor the past? What words can do justice to the truth without chasing Anju away? Gracie chose her life long ago, and here, across from Bird, is the fruit of that choice. Here is a girl with her mother’s calves and puttering snore, who inexplicably dislikes Pop-Tarts, who lunges after what she wants even when wounded. What would Gracie have wanted her to know?
As Bird forms her next words, she feels a crumbling within her, the tiny, extinguished death of a dream. It requires all her strength to conceal the loss, to say calmly:
“Sort of. The name is familiar.”
“Only sort of?”
Bird scratches her throat, then sits up suddenly. “Oh! Did she have thick eyebrows? Shaped like”—she draws an eyebrow in the air—“commas almost? And she was very thin?”
“Yes. In her pictures, she looked thin.”
“Hah!” Bird claps her hands. “Of course I remember! You are her daughter?”
“You did know her, then?”
“Yes, yes, I knew her, I knew everyone in the troupe. That’s how it is when you travel in such a way, eating meals together, brushing teeth together. She seemed like a very sweet young woman, and smart.” Bird nods with wonder. “My, my. Her daughter. Sitting here. How small is this world!”
“Oh. Ghafoor was wrong, then. He thought you knew her well.”
They fall silent. With her hands in her lap, Anju looks despondent, and Bird, for her part, wishes they shared a kind of mother-daughter language, of nourishing hugs and held hands. For such a small world, the space from person to person can span a whole sea.
“It is strange, isn’t it? That you met her … and then you met me …” Anju’s voice trails off. “My father never told me she acted in plays. But my father never told me many things.”
“I knew her before she married your father.”
Anju nods. “Ghafoor said she had only a small part.”
“Sometimes small parts are the ones to remember.”
EVERY TIME Anju picks up any phone, she speaks for as brief a period as possible, imagining that a network of operators can track her location and send it to the INS. She prefers pay phones to Bird’s landline, though most pay phones have been uprooted in favor of cell phones. In Kerala, too, she has seen cell phones in the hands of men and women, bleating strange tunes from their pockets and purses. Even serious-looking businessmen seem to take pleasure in selecting their tune; once, on a bus, she heard a cell phone chuckle maniacally before its owner, a middle-aged man, picked it up without shame. But what pleasure it must be to take someone’s voice with you, what weight it must lift from the word “good-bye.”
Rohit’s phone is a miniature computer, able to accomplish the tasks of a whole entertainment center—surf the Internet, check the weather, watch clips from the Godfather trilogy (which he does often). She would not be surprised if he told her that his pocket-machine could compose music as well. And yet for all its tiny functions, the phone often fails in its primary task: to connect Anju to Rohit himself. He could be avoiding her calls, as she has become rather obsessive about the immigration lawyer. But it is April now, and how could there be no progress?
“I’m telling you,” Rohit sighs over the phone, “there is progress.”
“Please explain the progress.” Anju grips the cordless phone and turns away from the salon window, ready for a verbal tussle if this is what is needed. It is 6:45 a.m., well before anyone else will arrive.
“Anju, it’s, like, dawn over here. I know you’re in Queens, but aren’t we in the same time zone?”
She shushes him, wary of the operators knowing her coordinates. “No, not the same. Difference is that your life is very comfy and nice, and my life is going no place.”
Immediately Rohit goes into deferential mode, a mechanical response she knows well. “I understand, you’re right. No, you’re absolutely right. It’s just, it’s early, I’ve got a hangover …”
“You said you would meet a lawyer last week, but did you?”
“Actually I did. A few days ago. His name is Charles Brown, and he’s with one of the top firms in Manhattan dealing with immigration law.”
Anju’s free hand grips the curly cord of the phone. “Already you met?”
“And we’re having a follow-up call today.”
“Why you did not invite me to this meeting?”
“I didn’t want to get your hopes up because I’m not sure about him yet. I’ll know by today. But in the meantime, maybe the guy has a website. Why don’t you look him up?”
Anju fumbles for paper and pen. “What is the web address?”
“I don’t know. Just type his name into a search engine.” He describes the steps, where she should go and how. “It’s like, if you type in ‘Rohit Solanki,’ my entry at the Rolling Oak Film Festival comes up. And also the Louisville Watertower Film Festival, I think …”
“So I type in what?”
“Rohit Solanki. Oh sorry, I mean Charles Brown. C-H-A-R-L-E-S—”
“Brown, yes. Okay, thank you, call you later.” Anju hurriedly hangs up, both due to her operator surveillance theory and so she can fiddle on Ghafoor’s computer before the others arrive. Fumbling with several of Bird’s keys, she finally unlocks the office door. She reminds herself to return the mouse to its position in the lower left corner of the mousepad.
Following Rohit’s directions, she types the names into a blank strip of space: Charles Brown. The Internet lags. She jostles the mouse, trying to shake the sand in the hourglass icon.
A sentence appears on the computer screen: Did you mean Charlie Brown?
Below this, a carpet of text unscrolls from top to bottom, most entries referring to a bald cartoon boy. A “Charles Brown” appears beneath these entries, a musician whose albums include “Snuff Dippin’ Mama,” “The Best of Charles Brown,” and “Charles Brown Sings Christmas Songs.” Clicking on each page, Anju finds that the grand, godly sprawl of Charlie Brown has mostly trampled the existence of all smaller Browns. She gives up.
But the lack of a website has not altered her mood. At long last—a lawyer, one with strategies and plans! Perhaps attached to a firm triad of names! Anju imagines a silvery-templed type with a noble jaw and pictures of grandchildren on his desk, which he will reach across to shake her hand.
; The cursor blinks in the search engine space, after the n in “Brown.” Such a luxury it is to be able to paddle carefreely along the Internet. She begins to type her name. A-N-J … but then stops upon imagining what might surface. Perhaps that Malay ala Manorama article about her scholarship. She prefers not to know what else, if anything.
Who can she search for? The first name that comes to mind, always and now, is Linno. Knowing that she will find nothing, Anju types Linno’s name in the search engine anyway. Linno is an uncommon name. Anju expects the search engine to politely ask her: Did you mean Linda?
When she presses ENTER, several entries appear. The first three belong to a site called East West Invites. Anju presumes this must be a mistake, after reading the snippet of information below the first entry: “… with the spectacular creations of head designer Linno Vallara whose invitations were featured in Me & You magazine …”
An alternate Linno Vallara. Probably born here, an NRI, a nonresident Indian, or, as Powder likes to say, a “Not Really Indian.” Or perhaps a Bombay socialite like the Solankis, one with connections and wealth to hoist her to these entrepreneurial heights. But something about the phrase “beautiful creations” makes Anju linger over this entry. And as if this Linno can tell her something about her Linno, Anju clicks the mouse.
The computer brings her to a picture of a woman who, as Anju suspected, is not Linno at all. She is older, with a bun and a stiff schoolmarm smile. Above her are the words “Meet Us.” Next to her is a small block of print that begins, “Alice Varghese, president of East West Invites, is a leading visionary in the invitation industry …”
Anju scrolls down to the picture below that of Alice Varghese. Unlike the latter photo, this photo was taken by a window, by someone who understands the subtle pleasures of natural light. The colors are rich, the phosphorescent sunlight sifting through the window, illuminating the side of the woman’s face. The woman is surrounded by a flock of open, intricate invitations, as if she herself is a goddess sprung from the heart of a small shrine.
By some strange, mental mitosis, Anju feels herself dividing into the part of her that is looking and the part of her that is falling, a vertiginous sensation that increases the longer she looks at this Linno, who, unlike every other Linno Anju thought she saw in the streets, is the only one that does not look away. Here are her shoulders that used to hunch over a sketch, now held back with a degree of modesty. Here are her moon-pale fingernails; here is her knotted sleeve laid plainly on her lap.
Anju forces herself to stop looking at the picture so that she can read further. Slowly, she gleans that Linno has become the head designer for an invitation company called East West Invites. That she has been featured in major magazines. That people come to her, specially, for invitations like the ones featured in these other photographs, a resplendent bouquet, a blossoming peacock, whole cities built of folds and holes, and many more such miracles made by her hand.
Again, there comes that flying, falling feeling. Disbelief replaced by a restless churning in her stomach. The questions pelt her from every direction, ones with answers that she cannot even begin to guess, so spellbound by this photo of her sister who is not frozen in time, as Anju assumed she would be. If home belongs to those who are there to watch it change, then what of sisters who change even faster? All Anju can do is put her elbows on the desk and her head between her hands, staring until Linno’s face begins to shift and blur. Anju wipes her eyes. She has never wanted for something or someone so despairingly. These are the feelings she has kept so long at bay, but the tide of them now pulls her under, gutting her of every tear she has not yet wept.
BIRD IS THE FIRST TO ARRIVE, just as Anju is buttoning up her coat. “I brought you a pastry,” Bird says to Anju’s back. The pastry looks like a limp mattress laid on a napkin along with a tiny plastic pillow of icing. “I didn’t squeeze the icing yet.”
Anju turns around, her coat buttoned up, aware that her skin is sallow, her eyes swollen and red. No matter how many times she rinsed herself at the bathroom sink, the face that stared back in the mirror was tear-streaked and impossibly tired. “I feel sick. I think I’ll go home.”
“Do you have a temperature?” Bird puts her hand to Anju’s forehead but Anju moves away. “Why don’t I come with you?”
“No. I just need sleep.”
“But should I walk you home at least?”
She must summon up some effort to say it, but Anju has no reserves of courtesy left. “I would like to be alone.”
Bird pauses, slightly wounded, then folds the pastry into the napkin. “Okay. If you like.”
Anju moves past her into the pure blue day, the kind that arrives like a reward after last night’s rains. She pulls her coat closed and continues down the sidewalk.
AT BIRD’S APARTMENT, Anju sits in front of the television watching a Kairali news report on the Indian Parliamentary elections. She pictures Ammachi nodding along to the current talking head, a political expert who pounds a fist into his open palm, revving his rhetorical engines. “… and this social unrest we cannot ignore. Unemployment among the poor. Malls built on top of slums. The current BJP government cannot respond to the seven hundred million poor who have been abandoned by the high-tech boom.” The next clip shows a BJP rally crowding the street in front of a Tamil temple selling incense sticks that bear the BJP slogan, India Shining! Another clip shows a clay-tinted elephant on its elbows and knees, a voting machine awkwardly mounted on its back.
Anju was hoping to watch some sort of home or human makeover show, something dull enough to prevent her from thinking and lying in bed, curled as she was for an hour, unable to sleep. She could hardly focus on the television. Her mind was shrouded by a thick fog, so that all she heard and felt was the sad, plodding thump of her heart. At some point, her heartbeat stopped. And then she realized that the sound came from the padded footsteps of the person upstairs.
She turns off the television when the phone rings, presuming the call to come from Bird, but it is Rohit, fresh from his meeting with Mr. Brown.
“Now look who’s avoiding who,” he says playfully. “They said you took a sick day? Good for you.”
“What did the lawyer say?”
“A lot of things. Are you sitting down? I have something to tell you. Something that really came as a surprise to me, so I hope you don’t think I misled you. I mean, this is the first time I’m learning this too, but just remember, it’s all good news….”
AT THEIR FIRST MEETING, Rohit was discouraged to find that Mr. Brown was a rather unintimidating presence, shrunken within his oversized tweed suit, afflicted by a lisp not unlike the whistle of a kettle. While Rohit poured out Anju’s history, Mr. Brown did not interrupt but simply removed his glasses and wiped the lenses with a pocket handkerchief. After putting the glasses back on his nose, he asked: “But how do you know she’s illegal?”
“It said so on a website,” Rohit said. Mr. Brown raised his eyebrows. “An official website. The Department of Homeland Security website. It was in the rules. It said that if you default on your school attendance then you’re immediately illegal.”
“I see,” Mr. Brown said, in a tone that meant Rohit had not seen enough.
Mr. Brown went on to describe the American immigration system as “a broken-legged beast.” Outdated, unwieldy, unable to enforce its own rules. “It could be that this girl’s school reported her to the police, but they never reported her to the INS. Schools fail to do that sometimes. In which case, she’d be legal until the departure date on her Arrival/ Departure form.”
“What would happen then?”
“Well, if she wants to continue her education, she could enroll at a college of some sort. I had one client who enrolled at the York School of Medical and Dental Assistants. She extended her visa for two years. When she finished, she got a job offer, which got the ball rolling on her permanent residency application. It all comes down to time, luck, and money.”
The meeting ended with Mr. Br
own offering to look up Anju’s status himself as he rarely, but discreetly, did for other clients. Several days later, Mr. Brown called Rohit with the same information that Rohit is passing to Anju now:
“So as it turns out, the school never reported you. You’re not illegal.”
It takes her a moment to decipher the content of his words.
“Anju? You there? You’re legal is what I’m saying.”
ROHIT HAS BEEN TALKING for so long that Anju’s ear has grown hot from the receiver; still she does not move. “Illegal,” “legal” … the two words float around her head while Rohit continues his stream of giddy talk. She waits for some kind of thrill or relief to surge through her body.
“Now what?” she manages to ask.
“Now we find a college, some kind of two-year program. Maybe that medical-dental school? We’ll have to do some research about financial packages and stuff. I mean overall, it’s probably like a seven-year process. These days it could take up to nine. But Mr. Brown is optimistic—”
“Nine years?” Anju unfolds her legs and sits up. “It will take nine years?”
“Well, I don’t know. It might. I mean, that’s probably more like an upper limit, so it could take a lot less.”
“How much less?”
Sensing the stiffness in her voice, Rohit hesitates. “It’s hard to say. But Mr. Brown said … I mean it would definitely take, like, seven to nine years for everything to fall into place.”
Today, it seems, Anju will never stop falling. The ground will never rise to meet her feet. “I thought you said …” Her voice loses strength. Rohit has always been contagiously optimistic, but he never once explained a time line. “I thought, because my visa took only short time—”
“We’re talking green card here, Anju. Citizenship. I know seven to nine sounds like a long time …”