The Whole Story of Half a Girl

by Veera Hiranandani

  Now she’s crying and I’m crying. Then she gathers me to her and we sit on the stairs for a few minutes. And while Grandma holds me and we cry, I thank God. I’ve never really talked to God or prayed before, but now that’s what I do. I’m not even sure if it’s a Jewish God, or a Hindu God, or a Christian God, but it doesn’t matter. I’m just thanking the one that saved Dad.

  Dad had been staying in a motel near the inn on Cape Cod. He finally used his ATM card to get more cash and the detectives found him. They took him to a hospital for people dealing with problems like depression. He’ll be there until he heals. We can’t see him before then. I wonder if depression works like that, like a broken leg. When he heals, will he be fixed forever? Did he not heal the first time he got depressed?

  When Mom gets home that night, she says the reason Dad left was that he felt too bad to be around us. He didn’t want us to see him like that anymore, so he thought he was doing a good thing, and she says we shouldn’t be mad at him. And I’m not, except I keep having to tell myself I’m not so that I won’t be. I know I’m supposed to feel lucky, but I can’t help feeling sad and mad.

  * * *

  The next morning at school there’s a pink-and-green-striped bag tied to my locker with a pink ribbon. I wonder if someone left me a gift because Dad’s not missing anymore. Mom called the principal this morning before school and told her we’d found Dad, but I didn’t think everyone would know by now. I untie the bag and look inside. It’s the picture of me and Kate sleeping that Greg took of us. With it is a note on purple stationery in Kate’s neat, fat writing.

  I know you’re going through a really hard time and I feel so bad about what’s happened between us. I’ve talked to Jess, and she’s going to be better. I know she’s been awful, but I still want to be friends and the team isn’t the same without you. Please talk to me at lunch or call me. Please, please, please!

  XXXOOO

  Kate

  My heart sinks as I read the letter. It would almost be easier if Kate would be like Jess, mean. I don’t look at her in the morning and I don’t go near her at lunch. I just sit with Alisha and hope Kate’s not staring at me.

  While I’m unwrapping a piece of Indian candy, a girl at the table asks me if I’m black. I open my mouth and close it, not knowing what to say.

  “What does it matter?” Alisha says back at her suddenly. “Why does everyone here care so much about who’s who and what’s what? I just don’t get it,” she says, waving her hands. I feel a ripple of excitement run through me. It’s been a while since I felt someone was truly in my corner.

  The girl shrinks in her chair. I’m starting to understand that I’m going to need to answer these questions for other people, maybe before I completely know the answers myself. The more I do, the more people will understand and the less they’ll have to ask me.

  “It’s okay, Alisha,” I say. And this is what I tell the girl: “I’m half Indian and I’m Jewish. Oh, and I’m part Polish because my grandfather’s from Poland. And my grandmother’s mother was from Russia, so I guess I’m part Russian too.”

  “Cool,” the girl says, and goes back to eating her lunch.

  That night I pace around the phone in the den. I pick it up. I put it down. I pick it up again and hold it to my ear, listening to the dial tone turn into a busy signal. I put it down again. I pick it up one last time and dial Kate’s number. Jackie says hello, and I hang up. So stupid. They have caller ID.

  Of course we don’t, but a few seconds later when the phone rings I’m pretty sure I know who it is, so I just let it ring until I hear Mom pick up downstairs. I run to the top of the stairs and listen.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe Sonia was calling. Hold on.”

  I hear Mom coming toward the stairs, so I dash into my room and land at my desk. I grab my math textbook and open it as if I’m just hanging out reading about math.

  “Sonia, did you just call Kate?” Mom asks, standing in my doorway.

  “Uh, no.”

  “Well, she said her mom just saw our number and then got disconnected.” Mom cocks her head to the side. “You sure?”

  “Yeah,” I say, and make a little snorty laugh.

  “Well, here’s Kate,” she says, handing me the cordless.

  I take it and clear my throat. Mom’s still standing there. I wave at her and she finally leaves.

  “Hi,” I say way too cheerfully.

  “Did you just call me?” Kate says.

  “No.”

  “Well, my mom said she saw your number. Are you lying?” she asks.

  “No.” There’s silence. “Kate, are you still there?” I say after a few seconds that feel like hours.

  “I’m really happy to hear that your dad’s back. You’re lucky.”

  Suddenly confessing seems a lot easier than talking about my dad, who’s supposed to be back and yet is not here at all. “Okay, I am lying.”

  “I knew it! Why?”

  “Because, I just … I don’t know.”

  “Whatever. I don’t care, just please come back to the team.”

  Now I remember what I want to say to Kate, what I’ve wanted to say to her all along. “I don’t understand why you want me on the team,” I start. “I don’t even know why you like me. And how can you like Jess and me at the same time? She’s so …” I want to say awful, scared, idiotic, but I stop myself.

  “I told you she’s just jealous.”

  “But Kate, you still haven’t answered me. Why do you want to be friends with me?”

  More silence. I wait. “Because we have so much fun together,” Kate says in a tiny voice. “You’re just likable.”

  I smile.

  She keeps going. “You could be so cool, you know.”

  I feel hot. Suddenly my cheeks are on fire. “What do you mean? Like as cool as you?”

  “I didn’t mean it that way, I—”

  “Kate, I don’t want to be like you,” I tell her. I might not know exactly who I want to be, but it’s definitely not Kate.

  “I just meant—”

  “I don’t care what you meant. And I don’t want to be on the team anymore.”

  “Please, Sonia, I’m really sorry.”

  “Me too,” I say, and hang up.

  I feel sort of light-headed and giggly. “Happy,” I think is the word. Happy that Kate finally answered the question I’ve had about her all along.

  chapter twenty-nine

  My feet don’t feel the ground as I walk up the brick lane toward a large stone building with a black front door. My hands sweat and I have to keep wiping them on my new purple corduroy skirt. When I enter the lobby what first grabs my attention is a big vase bursting with fresh flowers in every size and color. It sits on a round wooden table and is so big and beautiful that it almost seems to give off a sound—a hum. Mom holds my hand and Natasha’s as we continue down the shiny marble hallway to see Dad.

  Last night on the phone I told Sam I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to speak, that my dad seemed like a different person now, that I didn’t really know him anymore. Sam said I’d know what to say when I saw him, that just seeing his face would help. Sam always has a good answer for everything.

  Dad has been sending me and Natasha postcards every day since he’s been here. He always writes that he loves and misses us. He also tells us little things about the place where he’s staying. That he has a nice doctor named Roger who’s helping him. That he doesn’t like the food. That they have a beautiful rose garden he likes to sit in that reminds him of the rose garden his parents had in India. It’s the first peaceful memory he’s ever told me about India.

  I’ve only written him back once. I taped a picture of the Taj Mahal to a card and wrote,

  Thought you might like this.

  Love,

  Sonia

  That’s all I could think of saying.

  Natasha writes him letters about school and her friends and the songs she’s learned since he’s been gone. She also decided to
paint a picture of roses for him. She painted them like Chagall, all swirling reds, greens, and blues.

  Mom said the reason Natasha and I weren’t able to talk to him the last three weeks was that he had to concentrate on getting well. I guess I believe that, but a part of me doesn’t. A part of me has no idea what to believe anymore.

  Mom signs in at a desk and then we go sit on a leather couch in the lobby to wait. Natasha starts climbing all over it and tries to touch the big woven basket thing hanging on the wall, and Mom has to pull on the skirt of her dress to get her down. I’ve never seen Natasha so hyper. She’s been that way for days, since Mom told us about visiting day. Mom says it’s because she’s too little to know how to talk about all her feelings, so she has to act them out.

  A man with the reddest hair I’ve ever seen comes down the hallway. It hangs down past his ears and he pushes a wavy piece out of his eyes. When Mom sees him she pops up from the couch like something bit her and grabs my hand.

  “Good to see you again,” he says to Mom, and gives her a hug.

  “You too, Roger,” she says. She looks like she’s going to cry. Then we all follow Roger toward an elevator.

  When I go into Dad’s room, I’m surprised to see he’s wearing jeans and an old T-shirt. I hadn’t expected him to be wearing a suit, but that’s how I always picture him, just off the train from work. He looks so relaxed, sitting on the end of his bed, like he just got up from a really good nap.

  “Daddy!” Natasha yells as soon as Mom opens the door, and crawls right into his lap. My heart speeds up as I see his arms circle her and hold her tight. He closes his eyes and presses his face into her hair. When he opens them they glisten, and it shocks me—his tears send me walking backward. I stand straight against the cool, hard wall.

  “Hi, Sonia,” Dad says. The words in my brain pile up into a big mess. Mom looks at me, puts out her hand for me, but I stay against the wall. Natasha keeps cuddling in Dad’s lap, telling him about her friends at school, her latest art project, what she had for dinner last night, blah, blah, blah. Mom sits in a chair and watches.

  After several minutes Dad says to Mom, “How about now?”

  She looks at me. “As good a time as any.” She tries to hoist Natasha out of Dad’s lap but Natasha hangs on for dear life, knocking off his glasses, messing up his hair.

  “You’ll see him in a few minutes,” Mom says, and Natasha’s wails drown out the rest of Mom’s words. Dad kneels down, puts his hands on Natasha’s arms, and talks to her so softly I can’t hear him. Natasha stops crying, turns toward Mom, and buries her face in her tweedy skirt. Mom leads her out of the room.

  “I wanted some time alone with you,” he tells me.

  I nod and swallow, trying to stop myself from running out the door after Mom and Natasha.

  “I know this is hard. Roger’s going to set up a time where we all meet and talk more about what’s happened. He’ll help us sort it out. We don’t have to do it all now. I’m coming home next week.”

  I wiggle my toes and rock back and forth, ball to heel.

  “You must be angry with me,” he says.

  I nod again.

  “You must wonder what kind of person I am,” he says. “If I’m still the same father.”

  More nodding.

  “I’ll always be your dad,” he says. “I’ll always love you like I do.”

  “How?” I say under my breath, and wonder if the thought in my head actually made it through my mouth and out into the room.

  “How what?” he asks as he smooths the front of his hair.

  “How do you love me?”

  He takes off his glasses and wipes them on his shirt. Then he holds them up to the light and puts them on again. “Do you know that I chose your name?” he asks.

  “I thought Mom found it in an Indian children’s book.”

  “She found the book and asked me to read it. When I read it I told her that if we had a daughter, I wanted to name her after Sonia in the book. It was the most special name I could think of.”

  I nod again and my eyes scan the room. It looks like a hotel room, with a little table and chair in the corner, a big bed in the middle, and a dresser to the side. A picture of sunflowers in a vase hangs on the wall. Next to the bed, I see Dad’s old pair of brown leather slippers. He’s had them as long as I can remember and I’ve tried them on many times, always amazed at how big his feet are.

  “Listen to me,” he says, and I look up. He sounds stern, but his eyes are soft. “In the story, Princess Sonia can do all these magical things. She can fly. She can spin gold. She’s the smartest, kindest, most beautiful girl anybody has ever known, and to me she doesn’t even compare to you.”

  “Is that what you really think?” I ask.

  “I thought it on the day you were born and I only think it more every day.”

  “You should have told me that before,” I say, and walk over to the side of the bed where the slippers are.

  “You’re right. I should have.”

  And then without thinking about it, I walk over to the slippers. I take off my uncomfortable black loafers and put the slippers on. I sit down on the bed and swing my feet back and forth. The slippers are still warm inside and feel exactly the way I remember them.

  “Why don’t you ever want to go back to India?”

  He thinks for a minute. “Did I say that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t mean it.” He thinks some more. “I went through some sad things there. We lived through the partition. We had to leave our home. My parents died there. But I don’t mean to make it a sad place for you. India will always be where I became the person I am, and a part of who you are too. It’s funny. I’ve lived in this country for twenty years, and people still look at me as a foreigner. I don’t even have an accent anymore. Sometimes it can be, well, tiring, to always feel different.” He takes a deep breath like he’s tired just saying it.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “You do know, don’t you,” he says, and squeezes my arm.

  “Sometimes it feels like I’m the only one like me.”

  “We all feel like that for one reason or another. But I’ll tell you one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There is only one Sonia. And the rarer the thing, the more special it is.”

  “Like the Taj Mahal.”

  “Exactly,” he says.

  I think of the Taj and its mind-boggling wholeness. I think about all the parts needed to make it the way it is, the slabs of marble and stone, the thousands of jewels, the mortar, the dirt underneath. The image spins around and around in my head, all those pieces coming together to make one thing—one beautiful whole thing.

  Dad sits next to me and we both stay quiet for a while until Mom, Natasha, and Roger come back in. Roger talks about the meetings we’ll have once a week as a family once Dad comes home. Dad says his company is giving him a few months off, and after that, he’ll see if he’s ready to go back. He’ll continue to see Roger once a week by himself. I ask him if he’s ever going to leave us again. He says he might have times when he feels sad during his life, but he understands himself a lot more now. If he ever feels that low again, he’ll spend some time at the hospital instead of leaving. It’s scary to think he could feel that way again. But there are no hard secrets anymore. Nothing is too scary to talk about, Mom says to me and Natasha.

  After a while I’m not really listening, though. I’m just thinking about the slippers on my feet and how, when I leave here today, I’m going to ask Dad if I can take them with me.

  And how I know he’ll let me without even asking why.

  Then we go home, Mom, Natasha, and I. It’s hard to say goodbye to Dad, but I wear the slippers in the car and I wear them to bed. That night I dream about being a princess. I can fly in this dream. I fly over Dad at the hospital and he sees me and waves. I fly over school and see Alisha and Kate. I fly back home. Except home isn’t my house. It’s the Taj Mahal, and my e
ntire family is waiting for me. Mom, Natasha, and Dad. They’re having a picnic. I come and sit down and suddenly we’re all back home, at my real home. When I wake up this is what I think: We need to go somewhere, my family and I, when Dad gets home, somewhere really nice like the ocean. We’ll have a picnic. It won’t matter if it’s cold. We’ll just bundle up and stay close. If we do that, I think we’ll be okay.

  acknowledgments

  It takes a village to raise a child and to publish a book. I would like to send out my grateful appreciation to the village that helped make this book possible. To my very wise editor, Françoise Bui, who believed in Sonia’s voice and helped me give her an even bigger one, and to everyone at Delacorte Press who supported this book. To my agent, the ever-encouraging Sara Crowe, who plucked me out of the pile and put me on the map. To my friends Alexandra Cooper and Gwendolyn Gross, for their early reads and great editorial advice. To my supportive family, who always believed in me—my parents, Anita and Hiro Hiranandani; my sister, Shana Hiranandani; my sister in-law, Netania Shapiro; my in-laws, Phyllis and Hank Beinstein; my sister- and brother-in-law, Debra and David Stein; my niece, Sophie Stein; and my nephews, Zev and Leo Hiranandani and Fred and Julius Stein. Most of all, I’d like to thank my children, Hannah and Eli, and my best reader and best friend, my husband, David Beinstein. I couldn’t have done this without you.

  about the author

  Veera Hiranandani started writing stories pretty much as soon as she started reading them. She received her MFA in fiction writing from Sarah Lawrence College and has written fiction for children and adults. Besides being a writer, she is also a Montessori teacher. Veera lives in New York with her husband, daughter, and son. This is her first novel for young readers. Visit her website at veerahiranandani.com.