by Rahul Mehta
She couldn’t help it. Every day when Pradeep started the video, she fully intended to pay attention. She knew that her children were counting on her. But within minutes of the start of the video, after the blond hostess had introduced the day’s lesson, smiling with teeth whiter than Ranjan had ever seen on a real human being, Ranjan had drifted elsewhere. Her mind had traveled oceans and decades. She wondered if she had remembered to pay the doodh wallah, if the dhobi had brought back her husband’s shirts. She wondered if the cylinder had enough gas to last until Diwali or would she need to call for a new one. Had Swati remembered all her books for school and had she put her hair in plaits properly? Sometimes Ranjan would catch herself; she would try to focus on the woman with the teeth. But these English words, to Ranjan, were empty.
In the afternoons, Pradeep wanted his grandmother to practice her English. It was one of the requirements of the exam. He asked her to read aloud from the day’s newspaper. Ranjan would stumble through the columns, skipping words and sentences as though the omissions made no difference to the meaning of the reports. Sometimes, when she was really struggling, she would invent whole sections, and the world became a place of creation. Pradeep, of course, instantly knew when his grandmother was improvising, because her voice would become animated and the words elementary. He usually stopped her right away and said, “Nani, read properly what’s on the page.” But sometimes he would let her go on. Secretly he enjoyed it, the fantastic world his grandmother created, in which everyone was fed and all conflicts ended amicably. The world she created was full of happy endings.
At night, Ranjan returned to her room and looked at the posters on the walls, the stiff American presidents with their squared-off jaws and tight collars. In her room in Bombay, Ranjan had hung garlanded pictures of Rama, Sita, and Ganesha.
In fact, her room in Swati’s house could barely be called hers at all. She was in each of her rooms in each of her children’s houses only a fourth of the year, and the other nine months, after she left, the rooms slowly returned to their former functions—bill paying, ironing, storage for items that belonged nowhere else—until it was time for her to return. The room where she slept in Swati’s house was where Pradeep kept his weights and lifting bench when she was gone.
When Ranjan moved to another house, she had nothing to leave behind in her rooms. A lifetime of items purchased and collected and hoarded had been dispersed among living relations or sold off with her succession of shrinking flats. Now, all she owned were two suitcases, one big and one small—filled with plain cotton saris and medications prescribed by her first son or her second son’s wife or Princess Gupta’s handsome son in Atlanta—which followed her from house to house.
Ranjan missed the ring of jangling keys, which, for decades, had hung from her petticoat: keys for every door in every flat, every cupboard, all of which had to be locked against unscrupulous servants; even the drawers holding scrap paper and string had to be secured. When she first came to America, Ranjan would absentmindedly pat her hip and be surprised at the missing key ring. In America, cupboards didn’t have locks. It made Ranjan nervous. She imagined if no one were home, the items might, of their own volition, simply float away.
The day before the exam, Pradeep brought Ranjan a gift. “For you to wear,” he said, and pulled the clothes from the rustling Wal-Mart bag. He handed the dress to Ranjan and she fingered the fabric. “Denim,” Pradeep said. “It’s what all Americans wear. Let’s see it on.”
Ranjan held the dress against her body. She hadn’t worn a dress since she was a small girl, since she had become old enough to wear saris. She even wore saris to bed. The dress reminded her of nothing more than the thin gowns she was asked to wear in the doctors’ offices. It would make her look naked.
“Shabash!” Pradeep shouted, making an effort to use the Hindi word. “It looks great. Just the right size. Put it on.”
“No, no,” Ranjan said. “I am tired now. Let me wear it tomorrow only.”
“OK,” Pradeep said. “There’s a shirt, too.” He handed her a white turtleneck to wear under the dress.
“Sleep well,” he said. “Tomorrow’s a big day.” Then he shut the door and left.
Ranjan folded the white turtleneck and put it carefully on the chair next to her bed. She didn’t know if the dress should be folded or hung, and she fumbled with a hanger before folding the dress, too.
She’d taken to talking to George W. Bush the way she occasionally talked to the picture of Rama in her Bombay flat. He told her not to worry about the exam, she’d do just fine. The other presidents, from their small photos and in their small voices, concurred.
The day of the exam they had to drive all the way down to Charleston, the state capital, and they were running late. First Ranjan was embarrassed to come out of her bedroom in her denim dress. Swati finally coaxed her out and everyone had to ooh and ah over how smart she looked, how very American. Ranjan didn’t know how to move in such a garment; all her motions were slowed and she kept looking at the dress and smoothing down the front.
Then, in the car, Ranjan fiddled and fussed with her seatbelt, and Swati had to count to ten slowly, like the television commercial instructed you to do to keep you from hitting your child. Ten minutes on the road, Ranjan remembered that she had forgotten her glasses, and they had to turn around. Swati told Pradeep, “I think you better take your grandmother on your own. I don’t think I can handle it.”
By the time they reached Charleston, there was no time to eat the teplas and drink the tea Swati had packed. Pradeep had wanted to eat them down by the river, the gold dome of the capitol building reflected in the water. He thought the scene might instill in Ranjan a sense of pride.
They stumbled through a maze of government buildings before finally finding the right office. Though they were a few minutes late, they were asked to wait almost forty-five minutes before being directed into a small room by a thin man with thick, black-framed glasses. He introduced himself as Mr. Parker. He asked them to sit in the chairs on one side of his desk, and then he sat on the other and opened a brown file and began sorting through papers.
“Well, ma’am, all your paperwork is complete,” he said.
Ranjan looked questioningly at her grandson. The man followed her cue.
“Your grandmother?” Mr. Parker asked. Pradeep nodded. “All her paperwork’s in order,” he said again. “All she needs to do is pass the exam, which I will administer orally. She needs to answer ten questions correctly. You’ll have to leave the room while I give the exam.”
Ranjan had trouble understanding the man and his thick Appalachian accent. She could only catch a few words here and there. His voice was nasal. His vowels were big and unwieldy, so that Ranjan found she couldn’t grab on. He sounded unlike anyone she had encountered in any of her children’s houses, or anyone on TV for that matter. She longed for the blond woman with the sparkling teeth from the videos. At the time, Ranjan hadn’t liked her, but at least she could somewhat understand her.
Pradeep patted his grandmother’s hand and got up to leave. When he was halfway out the door, Ranjan began to whimper. “No, babu, no.” She reached a bangled hand toward him.
“She’s afraid,” Pradeep said. “She’s old. Can’t I just sit with her?”
Mr. Parker considered it for a moment. The rules were clear: no other parties allowed. Still, he was not a heartless man. People liked to think of government employees as bureaucrats, insensitive and unthinking. Mr. Parker made a point to be neither. He could bend the rules when necessary.
“Fine,” he said. “You can stay. But you must not say anything during the exam. She has to answer the questions by herself, without help or translation. If you try to help, I will ask you to leave or fail her.”
“OK,” Pradeep said.
Mr. Parker turned to Ranjan. “Before I ask you questions, I need to test your English with dictation.” He handed her a blank piece of paper and a pencil. “Please write down the following sentence. I�
��ll dictate it slowly: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, comma . . .’ ” Mr. Parker paused to allow Ranjan to write the first phrase, but her pencil wasn’t moving. She was looking pleadingly at her grandson. Though she had written nothing, Mr. Parker continued, “ ‘ . . . that all men are created equal, comma, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, comma.’ ” Mr. Parker paused again, and Ranjan still wasn’t writing. “ ‘ . . . that among these are life, comma, liberty, comma, and the pursuit of happiness, period.’ ” As Mr. Parker was finishing reading the last phrase, Pradeep whispered to his grandmother in Hindi, “Likho.” Write.
“I’ll repeat the sentence once more,” Mr. Parker said. This time, when he started reading, Ranjan began scribbling. When he was finished, Mr. Parker took the paper from Ranjan, squinted at it, and showed it to Pradeep.
Ranjan had written in Hindi.
Pradeep had never fully learned the Devanagari script, but he recognized enough of the characters to realize his grandmother had written the first couple lines of the Vishnu mantra she chanted to herself morning and night.
“She’s written exactly what you told her,” Pradeep said to Mr. Parker, “only in Hindi. She’s translated it. Actually, that’s higher-level thinking than simply copying dictation, don’t you think, to write ‘We hold these truths’ in Hindi?”
“You’re not supposed to talk,” Mr. Parker said. Pradeep mimed a zipper across his mouth.
“Let’s move on. Mrs. Shah,” he said, making an effort to speak slowly and enunciate clearly, “how many branches of government are there and what are they called?”
Ranjan looked at him blankly. She understood “branches.” She thought of a banyan tree and its knotted limbs.
“Shall I repeat the question?”
Ranjan looked to her grandson.
“OK,” Mr. Parker said, “let’s try something a bit easier. What are the colors of the American flag?”
Ranjan heard “flag” and perked up. This one she knew. She remembered the flag on the bedroom wall. “Vite?” she said. “Red?” she said. “Good,” Mr. Parker said. “One more.” Ranjan was confused. She only remembered the stripes.
Such an easy question, Mr. Parker thought. Poor woman. He thought of his own mother, how, toward the end of her life, she suffered with Alzheimer’s at a time when very little was known about the disease. Mr. Parker looked in the other direction as he pointed emphatically at his periwinkle necktie.
“Blue,” Ranjan said, and smiled such a big smile Pradeep had to break his silence with applause. Mr. Parker smiled, too.
Ranjan understood that she had to give a total of ten correct answers. She hoped this would count as three.
“I’ll give you another easy one,” Mr. Parker said. “What city is the capital of the United States?”
Ranjan knew she knew the answer. So many times Pradeep had asked her. So clearly Ranjan could remember the asking of the question; she could even see his lips forming the words. But somehow she couldn’t remember the answer.
“London?” she said. Mr. Parker looked at Pradeep and Pradeep shrugged.
“Hmmm . . .” Mr. Parker said. “Let’s try it this way: From which country did America win its independence in 1776?”
Ranjan was silent.
“What did you say before?” Mr. Parker asked. “Say it again.”
“London?” Ranjan asked.
“Close enough,” Mr. Parker said.
Pradeep clapped again. Mr. Parker laughed, and Ranjan laughed, too.
“Do you know the first line of the national anthem?” Mr. Parker asked. “Do you know the words to the song?”
Ranjan remembered the skinny black woman with her vocal flourishes. She liked Mr. Parker. She wanted to show him what proper singing sounded like. In a soft, even voice, doing her best Lata Mangeshwar, she began the first few bars of “Mujhe Kuchh Kahaa Hai” from the film Bobby.
Pradeep recognized the song instantly. Bobby was the hit movie in India around the time when Pradeep was a baby and his parents had first immigrated to America. Alone in a new country, they had played the soundtrack constantly, using an old tape deck with big reels. Pradeep didn’t bother risking the no talking rule to try to convince Mr. Parker that his grandmother had translated the “Star-Spangled Banner” into Hindi. The melody sounded nothing like it.
Ranjan and Pradeep sat across from the capitol building, eating their teplas, Ranjan sprinkling masala on hers and Pradeep dipping his in honey, and drinking tea. The legislature wasn’t in session. The buildings were deserted. Fall was on its way. Ranjan could feel its beginnings in her fingers.
Swati, Ranjan’s daughter, had become a citizen only eight years before. She had kept her Indian citizenship for a long time in case the family decided to go back, and even after they’d decided definitively to stay, she kept finding reasons to put off the exam. Pradeep remembered when she passed the exam, he and his father had bought her a big cake with the American flag drawn in icing, and candles that were like Fourth of July sparklers. There had been no doubt she’d pass, so they’d ordered the cake days before.
This time no one had ordered a cake for his grandmother.
Ranjan remembered what her daughter had said when she first brought up citizenship. She said if Ranjan was a citizen, no matter what, no one could make her leave.
Now, sitting on the bank of the river, Ranjan thought about how it would happen. She pictured men in suits coming to the door one afternoon when no one else was home. She wouldn’t be able to remember any of her children’s office phone numbers, and she wouldn’t know how to ask the men to wait until evening. Or perhaps there’d be an official letter, maybe even a telegram, which would tell her—in curt, urgent, uncompromising language—that it was time to leave, and her children would shrug and say there was nothing anyone could do.
As she finished her tepla and took her last sips of tea, Ranjan thought about Princess Gupta in her flat on Marine Drive. She’d be happy to see Ranjan again. Perhaps she’d ask her to move in with her: two old women, sitting on the balcony in the evenings overlooking Chowpatty Beach and the Arabian Sea, the teenagers below them with their Western tastes: eating pizza, and, over the loudspeakers, listening to singers like the skinny black woman who had sung the national anthem.
Years ago, circumstances had forced Princess Gupta to sell off all her royal jewelry. Before she sold them, she had costume copies made of all her favorite pieces. Ranjan imagined the two of them wearing them, the costume copies—the earrings, the crowns, the diamonds and rubies and sapphires—around the house, in the kitchen, on the balcony, even in the bathroom. It would remind them both of better times. Princess Gupta would start calling Ranjan “princess,” too, just for fun.
Their children would telephone, now and then. The princesses would answer the phone, if they were home, but often they wouldn’t be. In which case, their servant would say, “They’re out, painting the town red, as always,” in such rapid-fire, colloquial Hindi that the servant would have to repeat it several times before the children could understand, and even then the servant couldn’t be sure that they did. The children would just grunt, grudgingly, and hang up.
Yes, Princess Gupta would be happy that Ranjan had returned.
Ranjan felt the coolness of the approaching autumn on her face, and she looked at the oak trees across the river with their strong, straight branches.
Her grandson, who had finished packing up the picnic items in the car, stood next to her now. He took her hand, and his hand was warm. The two watched the river for a moment, the gold dome of the capitol reflected in the water.
“Chalo, Nani,” he said. “It’s time to go home.”
Four
The Better Person
Frank is on the phone with my brother’s wife, Ellison. They talk often, which surprises me because they are nothing alike. Ellison has decorated her and my brother’s house with gold-framed posters of Impressionist paintings and plastic flowers in white urns
from their wedding. Frank, on the other hand, pisses out the bedroom window when he’s drunk. I don’t worry about him hitting people on the street, because the window faces an alley. But on summer nights, when everyone’s windows are open, I wonder if some of it sprinkles into the apartments below. I once asked him this, but he shrugged. In New York, he said, worse things come through your window than piss.
That makes Frank sound like a loser, but he’s not. He loves me, though he wouldn’t admit it. Not in those words. I wouldn’t either. I don’t think I’ve ever said “I love you,” except maybe in an ironic baby voice.
But I know Frank loves me. That’s why he talks to Ellison on the phone. They compare notes about me and my brother.
Ellison must have asked about me now because Frank says, “Deepu’s been sulking all afternoon.” He smiles at me, and I scowl back. “He always mopes on Sundays.” I don’t need to hear my boyfriend talking about me like I’m not there, so I take my coffee mug and pack of cigarettes and go into the living room so I can do what I do best: chain-smoke and play scratch-’n’-sniff with my body parts, while obsessing about how much I don’t want to go to work tomorrow.
Though Frank and I have been going out for three years, we had no intention of moving in together. It just happened. I lost the lease on my sublet and planned to stay with him a couple of weeks until I could find a new place. Then, without warning, his roommates Jack and Carly moved out. That was three months ago. So we were stuck.
Jack and Carly took everything: the stereo, the TV, all the furniture. Frank doesn’t own anything. My sublet was furnished, so I don’t own much either. We look like squatters, sleeping on a filthy futon, both of us sharing one nubby gray towel. Neither of us has lifted a finger in three months. What few dishes we have—mismatched and chipped—are perpetually dirty in the sink, and we only wash them one at a time when we need them. There are spaghetti sauce stains on the linoleum floor. Dirty clothes everywhere. Soap scum in the sink and tub. I have to close my eyes when I lift the toilet bowl lid, it’s so disgusting.