“And I heard she’s finally marrying him.”
“Her parents approve?”
“Not at first, but now they’re accepting it.”
“Did you heard about Manmohan Singh’s son? He’s got a motorcycle.”
“Really?”
“Rides it everywhere like he’s king of the world. He’ll get into an accident one day, and then he’ll know.”
“Children never listen.”
“That’s true.”
Jini feels like her sister-in-law is talking about her when she says that children never listen. Her mother can hear it too. They are both in the kitchen. Jini has become an expert at making a plump ball of dough out of the wheat flour.
“I should teach you how to roll it out into a flat pancake. You still don’t know,” her mother says. She sprinkles some flour on the countertop, then breaks off a small ball of dough. With the heel of her hand, she flattens it, then smoothens it out with her palm. Jini searches the cupboard for the rolling pin and hands it to her mother.
“This is important,” Mother says. “Are you watching? It’s not as easy as it looks. You roll it out but you have to keep your wrists relaxed and your grip on the handles shouldn’t be so firm.”
Jini takes the rolling pin from her and presses it down on the dough. The dough clings to the pin. She peels it off and tries again. It still clings and this time, she keeps running the pin over it. When she’s finished, what she has on the counter barely resembles a piece of roti. It is not a circle or oval shape and some edges are much thinner than others.
“I can’t do it,” she says simply.
“Then try again,” her mother says, rolling the dough back up into a ball. How easily it is transformed into its original shape again, like it never changed in the first place.
Jini is conscious of the scars on her arms as she rolls the dough over and over again to try to make a successful roti. Luckily, she is wearing long sleeves and there are fewer scars on her hands, which she can pass off as scratches. “Bilu did this to me,” she tells her mother. “He scratched me.” It’s not entirely untrue. Bilu has been very angry lately and he’s been threatening to bite and scratch everybody who comes near him.
“I don’t know what to do with him,” her mother says, shaking her head. “He barely eats any more.”
“I think you should try sugar,” Jini says. “He likes when I add sugar to his food.”
“Sugar is not good,” her mother says. “He has to start eating like other children.” She takes the rolling pin away from Jini. “You’re not doing it properly,” she scolds. “Look at your roti. Flat in the middle, thick on the edges. Do it again.”
Jini knows that she can repeat the motion a hundred times, but she still won’t get it. Ordinarily, she’d find an excuse to leave the kitchen, but she has been practising being good lately and so far, it is working. The scars have faded. Last night, they flared up again, but she decided it was because the weather was so humid and the sweat had aggravated her skin. She finds reasons for everything her skin does now. If the scabs are milder, she prides herself for having done only good things that day and thinking only clean thoughts. If they act up despite her good intentions, she blames the weather or mosquitoes, or searches her mind for any bad thoughts that may be hidden. She always finds something.
Her exasperated mother finally takes the rolling pin away from Jini and tells her to help her sister-in-law with the clothes. “I’ll finish this,” she says. “And then I have to bathe Bilu.” Bilu is outside in the yard, playing in the dirt. Jini has a feeling it won’t be easy for her mother today. He is too content to want to come inside.
She is snapping the clothes pegs onto the line silently on the end of the yard furthest from her sister-in-law when she hears somebody calling her name from one side of the fence.
“Jini. Psst. Jini!” She turns to see the curly-haired boy peeping through the fence, waving at her. She looks behind her. Bhabi-ji is busy talking to the neighbours. She can see her mother through the kitchen window, but she looks preoccupied with the cooking.
“What do you want?” she asks him.
“How come I never see you running any more?”
“I can’t run,” she says.
“You can!”
“No, I mean my mother doesn’t let me.”
“Oh,” the boy says, frowning. He looks as if trying to come up with a solution for this, but after a while he gives up. Jini feels a twinge of sadness. For a moment, she hopes he has something encouraging to say. Then his expression brightens.
“Want to see a magic trick?” he asks her. “I know all kinds.” He takes out a coin from behind her ear but she could see it in his sleeve the whole time. He closes his hands into tight fists and asks her to guess which one is holding the coin. She guesses wrongly both times because neither hand is holding it.
“That’s quite good,” she says. Then she sees her mother coming out into the yard. “I have to go,” she says suddenly. She runs back into the kitchen and begins to clean her hands in the sink, scrubbing between her fingers. This is a ritual she has created for every time she might be caught doing something her mother, Pra-ji or God might not approve of. Her mother comes back into the kitchen. “Jini,” she says sternly, turning off the tap. “Who were you talking to?”
“He’s from my school. Just a classmate. He was asking me something about maths.”
“He’s not somebody you should be speaking to,” her mother says. Jini realises that her mother is too tired to be angry. She lowers herself onto a chair.
“Why? What did he do?” Jini asks.
“He didn’t do anything but his family…they are different from ours. They are lower caste. They have darker skin and they’re not very religious,” her mother says. So that’s why she’s never seen him at the temple. “We’re Jat. They are not. When Pra-ji was looking for girls for Sarjit to marry, he considered a pretty girl from their caste but I said no. I’d rather have a fat girl from the right caste than a pretty one from their side.”
Her mother reads her expression. “I know you think it’s silly,” she says quietly. “But we have little, Jini. We came here with almost nothing and twenty years later, we have even less. Who we are is all we have.” She trudges out into the backyard to pick up Bilu, whose face and limbs are caked with dirt. He begins to squirm and opens his mouth to scream. Jini has never felt so strongly that her mother is wrong. She may be from a higher caste but surely that’s not all she is. She turns on the tap and begins to wash her hands again.
• • •
They are in the temple courtyard and people are crowding around Pra-ji with their questions. Jini recognises the father of the boy who has bought the motorcycle, the one her sister-in-law was gossiping about. “Can you speak to Guru-ji and ask him to make my son stop?” the man pleads. Pra-ji nods and says yes, he can. He can do anything, and this is why people don’t want to leave. Even when their questions have been answered, they remain in the courtyard until food is served inside. Jini and her mother are standing among them, waiting to get his attention. Around her, Jini hears the women talk about their success with Pra-ji.
“My son was having an asthma attack. He was wheezing all night and I was so worried. I asked for Pra-ji’s help and he spoke to Guru-ji. Now look at my son—healthy as can be!”
“I was worried about money the other day because our roof was leaking and we didn’t have enough to pay the man to fix it. I told Pra-ji, and within days, my husband was given a small raise at work, just enough to get the leak patched up.”
Jini’s mother always waits for the others to leave so she is the last one waiting to speak to Pra-ji. He smiles and nods at her, greeting the two of them with his hands clasped tightly. “Hello, Jini,” he says, pressing down on her head. She notices him looking at her up and down again, probably looking to see if she has scars. “How are you?”
“Fine, thank you,” she says.
“Pra-ji, my son is not eating.”
/> “Sarjit? Or Bilu?”
“Oh no, Sarjit is eating fine. Bilu. He refuses to eat temple food and we have to cook everything at home for him and put sugar in it. Now he’s even refusing that. What should I do?”
“Let me speak to Guru-ji and I will come back to you,” he says in his calm voice. “I am sure he can give us some guidance.”
Jini’s mind drifts away. She looks at the dome of the temple building, illuminated in the shimmering sunlight. It looks almost regal. There are shoes scattered everywhere on the ground and children are playing “What’s the time, Mr Wolf?” on the sun-dried grass. Another group of children huddle around a small bush that sprouts tiny red flowers in the shape of stars. The stems of these flowers have a tiny drop of nectar on their ends and the children are roughly picking them off. The scratchy fabric of their Punjabi suits flare and trail behind them as they spin, run and flail afterwards, screaming wildly at each other. Sometimes she wishes she could hurry up and grow older because she’s caught in an age where games like Mr Wolf are too childish, but cooking is something she still cannot grasp, and she is still too young to speak to boys. Her mother and Pra-ji are speaking in hushed tones now.
Then Jini sees her, a girl wearing a plain blue Punjabi suit, with a salwaar that may be too small for her because she can see her ankles jutting out. There is something strange about her that Jini can’t figure out at first, then she realises it’s the way the girl is walking. She is limping, dragging one foot behind her as she makes her way across the courtyard to the road. Wrapped around her wrists are the handles of plastic bags of food. A woman nearby comments to another that the girl has some nerve, coming to the temple and eating their food. “After what she did with that Malay boy.” Jini realises that this is the girl Pra-ji had spoken to her about. Thoughts begin to flood her mind about what the girl must have done to deserve her lame foot. She pictures her climbing out of her window, running to the boy who was a mere shadow in the darkness of her yard, kissing him passionately.
Immediately, Jini remembers her rashes and begins to scratch at one on her shin. It burns angrily with her thoughts and she tries to soothe it, but the more she scratches, the more it itches. She tears her eyes away from the girl who is hobbling up the road now, the plastic bags bumping against her thighs. She looks back at her mother in time to see her pulling out her purse and putting two fresh ten-dollar notes in Pra-ji’s hands.
“I really appreciate your help,” she says to him. He nods and quietly puts the money in his pocket. “Come, Jini. Let’s go and eat,” she says. Jini turns to follow her mother, thinking about the money. She knows that Pra-ji takes fees from people sometimes, especially now that so many people ask him for help, but he always promises to donate most of the money to the temple. Twenty dollars is too much money to give away at one go; even Jini knows that.
As she walks away, Pra-ji taps her lightly on the elbow. “How is your skin?” he asks.
“Okay,” she lies. His eyes trail down to her shin. He must have seen her scratching while he was speaking to her mother.
“I can help you,” he says. She would accept his help if she had the money, but she can’t afford it, so she says, “No, thank you.”
“Okay. But you come to me if you change your mind.”
“I don’t want everybody to know,” Jini says, thinking about how the women were gossiping about that girl just now.
“They won’t know. I won’t say a thing, Jini. You’re like a daughter to me. We can speak in my house. I can talk to Guru-ji while you’re right there and we can cure you.”
Jini nods, looking down at her feet. She sees her mother wiping her feet on the mat and entering the langar hall slowly, and she feels a pang of sadness. “Okay,” she tells Pra-ji. “I’ll come to see you one of these days.”
A smile spreads across his lips. He pats her head. “Good girl,” he says softly. She lets him touch her hair, press his palm down on her head, then she goes to the hall to join her mother. As she eats, she can barely taste the food. Perhaps she is too used to the sugar she’s been sprinkling in everything at home. Or maybe she is too excited about the idea of being cured once and for all. But as she continues to eat, she realises what is numbing her taste buds, making her unable to enjoy God’s food. She is thinking about the limping girl, imagining how long the journey back from the temple must be with the weight of that foot slowly dragging behind her.
PART III
9
1991
ON THE FIRST day of school in January, we met our new teacher, Mrs Parasuram. She was older than Miss Yoon and wore a sari. Her grey-streaked hair was tied up in a tight bun and she wore deep pink nail polish that was chipped on nearly every toe.
“Today’s Chapel service is entitled ‘A New Year, A Renewed Faith’,” Mrs D’Cruz announced at assembly. She paused to give some time to the Muslim girls to trail out of the hall. I was supposed to join them, but I didn’t have Ma’s note with me. Miss Yoon had kept it. I glanced at Mrs Parasuram. She had thin, unforgiving lips, and she looked like the type of teacher who would scold me if I just got up and left with Farizah and the other girls.
We were late getting back to our classrooms because it was a long service with new hymns to learn. When Mrs Parasuram arranged us according to her seating plan, it was clear that she had gotten some suggestions from Miss Yoon over the holidays. All of the girls who were friends were spaced out across the classroom on different corners. Farizah was in the front row on the far left side of the room near the windows while I was two rows from the back. It would be difficult to pass notes without getting caught. I looked around as Mrs Parasuram assigned each girl to her seat. The spaces around me were soon filled with unhappy faces, everyone grumbling under their breath.
Behind me, Abigail Goh whispered to her seating partner, “I don’t like this teacher. I could smell her oily hair when I walked past her. She doesn’t shower, or what? That’s why she’s so black.” The girl next to her giggled into her hands. I felt the hard jab of her words even though she wasn’t talking about me.
The seat next to mine remained empty. Mrs Parasuram’s mouth was set in a grimace so when she started talking to me, I thought I was in trouble for not having a partner. “A new girl will be joining the class. She can sit next to you,” she said.
A murmur went through the room. From which class was this mysterious new girl transferring? And why did Pin get to sit next to her? The only reason a student went from one class to another in primary school was that she had either done very well or very poorly for her exams. In either case, having a new classmate was exciting.
Mrs Parasuram tapped her attendance book and began to read out names. She pronounced the Chinese names wrongly. The x’s were shhhs and the q’s were chhhs. “Chew Shia?” she called out. Qiu Xia blushed and everybody giggled. Some girls tried to correct Mrs Parasuram but she went on pronouncing the names the way she saw fit.
Abigail said, “Do you know her first name? It’s a Hindu name.”
“What is it?” the girl next to her asked.
“Ayo-yoooo!” Abigail said in a high-pitched voice before the two of them broke into fits of laughter. I spun around, furious.
“You think you’re so great, Abigail Goh?” I taunted. “You think you’re better than everyone and can make fun of Indians? You want to know what I think of you?” I dared her. My face was warm and my voice was shaking. There were many ugly words that I had learnt from the neighbourhood boys: yellow-skinned; slanty eyes; pig eater. My mind raced to think of an original insult but my thoughts were interrupted by the sharp sound of a ruler rapping against my desk.
“What on earth is going on here?” Mrs Parasuram demanded to know.
Abigail didn’t say anything. The entire class was looking at us. I shrugged.
“Please do not interrupt my lessons to cause a disturbance. I want to see you during recess,” Mrs Parasuram said.
I turned back to face the blackboard, humiliated. I didn’t listen to Mrs P
arasuram for the rest of the lesson. How could I when she had allowed Abigail to get away scot-free? Abigail had told Farizah last year that Muslims didn’t eat pork because they were descendants of pigs themselves. “If you don’t believe me, you can ask my father,” she had said proudly. I waited for Farizah to retort, but Farizah just shrugged and said, “Your father doesn’t know anything.” She told me later that her religion taught forgiveness. I didn’t know how anybody could forgive someone like Abigail Goh with her smugness and her cutting insults. Now it was the first day of school and Mrs Parasuram probably thought that I was a troublemaker. I noticed her looking at her seating chart a few times before she wrote out our timetable on the board. She was probably considering giving the honour of sitting next to the new girl to somebody else who didn’t cause a scene on the first day.
As Mrs Parasuram continued to explain to the class what she expected from us in Primary Five, a woman knocked on the door and called, “Excuse me!” Her voice was so certain that it was like she was commanding the entire room. She wore high heels and a pair of sunglasses on her head, which pushed back a high pile of permed curls.
Nobody noticed the girl next to her until Mrs Parasuram said, “Ah, yes. You must be Kristen! The new girl.” Kristen’s pinafore skirt was a bit too long for her and her ponytail was tied too high and tight. She kept her arms stiffly at her sides and didn’t protest when Mrs Parasuram walked her away from her mother to the empty seat next to mine. “This is Parveen,” Mrs Parasuram said. “She will be your seating partner. She will help you settle in.”
Kristen nodded and gave me a quivering smile. Everybody was staring. Mrs Parasuram picked up where she had left off and had to stop a few times to tell the class to pay attention. “Girls, keep your eyes on me,” she insisted. But nobody could. At every chance they got, the class craned their necks and tipped their heads to get a better view of the new girl. Even I looked at her a few times out of the corner of my eye. From her bag, she unloaded a pink pencil box, the kind that had secret compartments and mirrors. She pushed it to the far edge of her desk and let her crossed arms rest on the desk.
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