The Whole Story of Half a Girl

by Veera Hiranandani

  I start sitting with Kate at lunch. Some days I’d rather sit with Alisha, but it seems weird not to sit with Kate since cheerleading has more or less taken over our lives. At least now all the Jessicas leave me alone. But once in a while I see Alisha stealing a glance at me over her notebook in the cafeteria.

  The night before tryouts, I know that doing one more toe-touch won’t make a difference. My body aches and I’ve never been so tired, but I can’t sleep. I decide to go downstairs and warm some milk in the microwave. Mom says milk has something in it that’s supposed to help. If there’s anything to worry about, I’ll stay up and worry. When I was younger and couldn’t sleep, I’d tiptoe into my parents’ room to watch them sleep. Dad’s a different person when he’s sleeping. His face is so still, as if he isn’t in his body anymore. Sometimes I’d have to check by opening one of his eyes.

  “Dad,” I’d ask into his rolled-up eyeball, “are you in there?” His awake self would snap back into his sleeping body and he’d sit up with a jerk, but he’d never get mad. “I’m always here, even when it seems like I’m not,” he’d say, slow and heavy. Then he’d tell me to go back to bed and wait for sleep to find me. “If you lie still enough, it will.” And it would, but only after I’d hear him say it.

  I think of this now as I creep down the stairs in my T-shirt and bare feet. The door to his study is open a crack and the yellow light of his desk lamp spills out, beckoning me. I push it open, but his desk chair is empty. “Dad?” I whisper. Then I see him on the other side of the room, sleeping on the leather couch in his robe. He breathes deeply and I rest my hand on his stomach. He opens his eyes, but doesn’t seem surprised that I’m standing right there.

  “Dad?” I whisper again. “Can I tell you something?”

  He nods a little.

  “I’m trying out for cheerleading tomorrow and I’m going to do every cheer for you.”

  He stares at me for another second and I wonder if he heard me. Then he smiles and puts his hand on my shoulder before closing his eyes again. I want to ask him why he’s sleeping on the couch. To ask him if he misses his old job like I miss Community. But his face goes still again. I watch his chest going up and down, up and down for a few more moments before I head out to the kitchen.

  chapter twelve

  I eat two bowls of Cheerios to give me extra energy for tryouts. Mom rushes around, making sure she has her phone, her keys, her big black bag stuffed with her laptop, and the right books, and kisses me on the forehead. She whispers in my ear a tight “good luck” and then she’s out the door. My stomach churns as I listen to the back door close and her car tires rolling out on the gravel. When I bolt out the door for the bus, Dad calls after me with Natasha by his side. “Sonia!”

  I stop halfway down the driveway and turn around.

  “I’ll cheer for you today too,” he says, and gives me a thumbs-up. Natasha yells, “Go, Sonia!” and tries to do a toe-touch, but only manages to hit her knees.

  I laugh, give them a thumbs-up back, and run the rest of the way.

  * * *

  At school the morning drags. I can practically hear the clock ticking. Kate throws me a note in the middle of Mrs. Langley’s grammar lesson.

  You’re going to do so awesome today. I just know it!

  xxxooo,

  Kate

  I’m about to fling a note back to her that says So will you!, with only one set of xos because I’m not ready to hug and kiss Kate three times, when Mrs. Langley calls my name.

  “Sonia,” she says, her back still turned as she writes on the board. “Come here, please.”

  I suck in my breath. I’ve never gotten in trouble at school before. Once in a while Jack had to tell me and Sam to stop talking, but that was it. What I know is this—Mrs. Langley gives detentions for passing notes in class. I’m not sure what goes on during a detention, but I’ve seen other kids get them and they don’t look happy about it. I imagine them being sent down into a dusty dungeon where Mrs. Langley forces them to memorize thousands of vocabulary words.

  With all eyes on me, I go up to her desk.

  “May I have the note, please,” she says, thrusting out her hand, wiggling her fingers. I hand it over.

  “This is the only warning I’m giving you. Next time, detention,” she says. Then she rips up my note and throws it into the garbage. I stand there for a second, wondering if people can see my heart pounding through my shirt.

  “Please return to your seat,” she says, turning to face the board again. Mrs. Langley must really have eyes in the back of her head. Walking back to my desk on shaky legs, I wonder if Mrs. Langley’s actually a robot.

  At the end of the day Kate and Jess wait for me by the lockers and we all go into the gym together. Jess smiles at me. A first.

  “You’re so lucky you didn’t get detention. You would’ve missed tryouts,” she says while she chews on the corner of her thumbnail.

  “Yeah,” says Kate. “I would have felt so bad.”

  I give her a small laugh and shrug.

  “It’s no big deal, though,” Jess says.

  “What’s no big deal?” I ask her.

  “Detention. I’ve had two. She just makes you copy words out of the dictionary for a half hour.”

  “Oh, you’re such a juvenile delinquent,” Kate says to Jess, and pokes her in the shoulder. Then they crack up.

  “Just remember I was the one who pretended they were my notes. Basically I did your detentions,” Jess says. Kate smiles a funny lopsided smile and quickly looks down.

  “I know, I owe you,” she says, and pats Jess on the back. Jess beams.

  I sit cross-legged on the gym floor while the eighth-grade cheerleading captain explains the rules. The seventh- and eighth-grade cheerleading captains are judging our tryouts, along with Mr. Totono, the gym teacher. Everyone is supposed to do two cheers, a toe-touch, and a cartwheel split. Kate is asked to go first, since her last name is Anderson. She stands fearlessly tall in front of the judges with her hands on her hips, waiting for the signal to go. They nod to her and she starts, her face glowing, her voice ricocheting off the gym walls. Her moves are sharp and strong.

  I can tell the judges love her, the way they stare hard and smile. When she’s done they clap and I wonder if they’ll clap for everyone. Kate bounds back to her place in between me and Jess and grabs our hands. “You were great,” I say, squeezing her hand. A few more girls go and the judges clap, but not in the same way. Then it’s Jess’s turn. She stands up and starts before she’s told to. She goes through the cheers quickly, without smiling, and doesn’t even touch her toes during her jump. At the end she smiles and sticks out her chest. The judges clap politely. When Jess sits back down Kate gives her a hug. I smile and hope that maybe Jess won’t make the team, but then I remember that Mom always says that if you wish mean things on other people, bad energy will come back to you. My stomach does a flip knowing my turn is coming up. I just try to focus on what Dad said this morning.

  The eighth-grade captain stumbles through my last name. Mr. Totono corrects her. She says it one more time incorrectly, “Nah-da-da-hoomy,” gives me a squinty glance, and gestures for me to begin. Not a good start. But Mr. Totono smiles his electric smile, which helps. I imagine that the judges are my old class at Community. I see Jack, Sam, and Connor cheering, clapping, whistling two-fingered whistles. I get through the cheers well enough, but my voice isn’t as loud and my moves aren’t as sharp as Kate’s. Then it’s time for the toe-touch. I wind up and go for it.

  When I sit down, my hands sting from the jump. The judges look pleased. Kate turns to me and squeezes my arm.

  I squeeze her back and see Jess out of the corner of my eye, looking down at her feet, knocking her toes together over and over.

  chapter thirteen

  I have to wait a whole week to find out who made the team and every day feels twice as long. On Thursday after school, while we’re waiting for our buses, I tell Alisha how nervous I am. “I’m sure you ma
de it,” she says in a distracted way.

  Then she quickly changes the subject. “Have you ever been to India?” she asks me.

  “I went two years ago,” I tell her. “I saw where my father grew up.”

  “What was it like there?” she asks, eyes wide.

  “Hot and colorful. There are flowers everywhere and the scent of spices and incense fills the air. But some people smell bad. Especially on the train. My favorite thing was the Taj Mahal.” I explain what the Taj Mahal is, how a king had twenty thousand people build this huge mausoleum for his wife, who died giving birth to their fourteenth child. It took the builders twenty-two years to finish it. I tell her about the flower designs in the marble tiles made out of millions of little jewels and how I couldn’t stop staring at them, how I couldn’t believe it took forty or fifty jewels just to make a petal on one of the flowers.

  “Talk about romantic,” Alisha says. “I should put something about the Taj Mahal in my book. The farthest I’ve ever been is Disney World. We drove all the way to Florida once. Have you been anywhere else?”

  I tell her I’ve been to see my cousins in Israel too.

  “I can’t believe you’ve been to France, India, and Israel already. You’re so lucky,” she says. I’ve never thought about the fact that traveling is lucky. I just thought some people did and some people didn’t. But I guess it’s a pretty expensive thing to do.

  “What’s it like being Jewish?” she asks.

  “I’m not really the best person to ask,” I say. I think of Sam and how she could tell Alisha all about her temple and Shabbat and the meaning of every holiday.

  “Why not?”

  “We’re not that religious.”

  “Oh,” Alisha says, then starts playing with a small hole on the thigh of her jeans. She seems disappointed that I don’t have more to say. But the most Jewish thing that happens in my house is lighting the menorah on Hanukkah. My dad is technically Hindu, but isn’t religious at all and just sort of goes along with the Jewish holidays. He’ll put a yarmulke on at my grandparents’ Passover seder, but the way he sits at the table, arms crossed, an empty look on his face, is part of what makes me feel only half Jewish. The same way that my grandparents bickering in Yiddish the way they do, or how light my mom’s skin is, how green her eyes are, makes me feel half Indian. For everything that reminds me of who I am, there’s always something reminding me of who I’m not.

  “Do you feel more Indian or Jewish?” Alisha asks with her usual serious voice and piercing stare, like she can read my mind. Alisha sure likes to ask questions. Maybe she should be a journalist. I look down and see my brown toes poking through my sandals. They look just like Dad’s toes, the second one a little longer than my big toe, and they’re almost as brown. My toes look Indian. So does the rest of me. My name sounds Indian. There really isn’t anything about me that’s Jewish—at least, not anything anyone could see.

  “If you had to choose,” she says.

  I just stand there with my mouth partly open.

  Alisha’s bus pulls up. “Tell me tomorrow,” she says. “Hey, do you want to come over after school? You can ride home with me on the bus. It’s really not that far away. The bus just takes a while.”

  “Oh,” I say, surprised. It sort of seemed easier to have our friendship right here waiting for the bus, separate from class, separate from our houses, separate from Kate. “Let me check with my parents.” Her face changes from happy to serious. “I just need to make sure someone can pick me up.” She smiles again and I notice my heart’s beating a little faster. I wipe my sweaty hands on my jeans.

  “Okay, call me tonight,” she says, and runs up the steps of her blue and white bus.

  Maybe it would be easier to just be Indian and not have to explain the Jewish part. Mom doesn’t seem to think being Jewish is that important, otherwise she would have done all the things Sadie does—belong to a temple, have Shabbat dinner every Friday night, and send me to Hebrew school. Why didn’t she do those things for me? Why couldn’t she have raised me really Jewish like Sam, so I wouldn’t have to think so much about it? Now it’s too late.

  When I get home I skip watching SpongeBob with Natasha and go to the phone in the kitchen. I hold the receiver until my hand gets stiff. I finally dial and Sam answers. We haven’t talked in two weeks, the longest we’ve ever gone since we’ve known each other.

  “I knew you’d call me today,” she says.

  I want to ask why she hasn’t called me, but I don’t. “Tell me everything I’ve missed,” I say.

  She sighs. “I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to remember.”

  “You can remember one thing, can’t you?”

  “One thing. One thing,” she repeats, thinking. “Okay, how about this: Jack picked me to be the lead in the play this year.”

  “Wow, that’s so great,” I say, feeling hurt. “How come you didn’t tell me?”

  There’s silence on the other end for a second. She clears her throat.

  “I just found out,” she finally says, but that doesn’t answer my question, or at least answer it in the way I want it answered. “So what’s going on with you? Have you made lots of new friends?” Her voice sounds squeaky.

  “A few, I guess. I tried out for cheerleading.”

  “Cheerleading?” she says, and laughs.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I just can’t picture you as a cheerleader.”

  “Why?” I ask. “I’m pretty good at it.”

  “Do you have to wear some silly uniform?”

  “I don’t know if I’ve even made the team.” I hadn’t thought much about the uniform and whether it would be silly. “I’d better go, I’ve got a lot of homework,” I lie. But Sam lied too. She said it wouldn’t happen to us.

  All through dinner, the conversation with Sam sits like a rock in my stomach, along with the half-burned meat loaf Dad made. I eat the salad and rice and push the slice of brown mush around my plate. Dad is talking about the news.

  “This country’s in trouble,” he says. “Big trouble.” I want to ask him why, but I don’t. It scares me the way he says it, like he knows all these important secrets about the world that nobody else knows. Then he starts talking fast about gas prices, and terrorism, and the downturn in the economy.

  Many times Mom and Dad will debate what they heard on the news like a game of Ping-Pong. It’s fun to listen to them even if I don’t understand what they’re talking about. But now it’s like he’s talking to the air. Mom nods at him, but she doesn’t try to argue with what he’s saying. Her eyes squint like something’s hurting her. Natasha takes a big bite of her meat loaf, chews it up, and shows it to me.

  “Ick!” I shriek. Dad stops talking and jumps as if someone just slapped him. Normally Mom would tell Natasha to stop it, but instead she says quickly, “Sonia, how are you feeling about cheerleading? You’ll see the tryout results tomorrow, right?”

  “I feel good,” I say, and put my fork down. I didn’t think she had any idea that I would find out tomorrow.

  “Well, all that matters is that you tried,” she says, looking off into the distance.

  “Whatever,” I say.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Mom says, and suddenly looks sad. Her eyes are watery, like she might cry. I feel bad for her. Nobody’s been very nice to her lately, but then again, she hasn’t been that nice either.

  “I want to make it. I’m really good, believe it or not, and it does matter to me.”

  “That’s not what I meant, I just meant it’s good that you tried even if you don’t make it.”

  “No, it’s not good! It’ll suck.”

  I said it. I said the word that Mom and Dad hate more than anything. In my house it’s even worse than the other S-word and maybe even the F-word, even though I never dare to say them.

  Mom opens her mouth to say something, but Dad gets up fast, takes my dinner into the kitchen, and throws the whole thing, plate and all, into the garbage. He point
s upstairs and says through gritted teeth, “You can eat when you decide to show your mom some respect. I don’t want to see you again tonight.” I get up on shaky legs, feeling the rest of my family’s eyes on my back, watching me. I go up to my room and curl up into a ball on my bed.

  Later that night, I can hear Mom getting Natasha ready for bed and the soft sounds of her reading Where the Wild Things Are through my closed door.

  After a little while there’s a knock at my door. She comes in with Natasha, which is kind of weird.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” I say, tears flooding my eyes. I am sorry, yet I meant what I said, even the “suck” part.

  “Me too,” she says. “We haven’t been connecting well lately. It’s my fault.” She sits in my desk chair, takes off her glasses, and starts cleaning them. Natasha plops down on the floor. “Things have been hard for all of us, and we should talk about it.” Her voice cracks slightly. I know what I’m about to hear is bad. I know it the way you can see a thunderstorm coming, in the darkening sky, in the whoosh of wind rustling the trees.

  She clears her throat. “Remember when I said Dad was going through a difficult time?” she continues.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Is he sick?” asks Natasha.

  “Well, there are different kinds of sick,” Mom says. Then she goes on to explain what’s wrong with Dad, how it’s sort of like having a flu in your mind, that he’s been feeling down for a while, and when bad moods last too long it’s called a depression.

  “Your father is depressed, girls.”

  “When will he feel better?” Natasha asks.

  “Soon. He’s seeing a doctor who will help him. A therapist,” Mom says, and rubs her face the way she does when she’s tired, like her whole face itches all over. Then she stops rubbing. “I promise it’s going to be okay. And you can ask me anything you want.”