“Yes!” Bindi answered, excited that he knew it.
“Well, it’s like a miniature porcupine with little spiky things instead of hair.” He turned to Madeline again. She could only think of comparing it to a mole or groundhog, which didn’t seem particularly helpful. She shook her head and shrugged again.
“Does it look like this?” Bindi showed them both the video-game cover.
“No, nothing like that,” Eddie said, then asked Madeline, “Where’s your encyclopedia?”
“I don’t have one,” she said, almost defensively. “You’re the nerd.”
“I love encyclopedias,” Bindi chimed in. “There was a set at my school. In the library. They didn’t allow us to borrow them, but I could look at lunchtime or before school. Sometimes I went during recess if I thought of a question.”
Eddie put his hand out and Bindi stared at it.
“Give me five.”
Bindi tapped Eddie’s hand with his fingers. Madeline laughed.
“Bindi, when your uncle graduated from high school, unlike the other kids, who wanted cars and who knows what else, he asked for—what was it?”
“The World Book Encyclopedia set, of course. I still use it all the time. I used it yesterday, in fact.”
“Ah, yes. The World Book Encyclopedia. That’s what your uncle wanted for his high school graduation!”
“And you got it for me.”
“That I did.”
“When’s your birthday, Bindi?” asked Edward.
“January 29, 1985.”
“Well, then, you might just be in luck.”
Madeline looked around the living room, at the carefully arranged stacks of architecture and design books, the vases, and the small pieces of sculpture that decorated her bookcase. She’d designed it herself, knowing exactly what would go where. She couldn’t imagine an unwieldy encyclopedia set lining one of the shelves. No, it would have to go in Bindi’s room. And for the first time in weeks, since Barcelona, as a matter of fact, the thought of returning to work truly took hold. But she had the catalogs of Spanish tiles to inspire her and the patternwork of the fabrics she’d bought in India. She was already imagining turning select motifs into stencils she would use to decorate some of the walls and the yoga studio by the pool. Bindi pulled a Rubik’s Cube from his stocking. He seemed intrigued, spinning it around in his hand. Work would be waiting for her tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. But so would he. She would figure it out and catch up on both somehow. She wasn’t alone. Everything was about to be different, and different would be good.
1994
XIX
Carrying his brown-bag lunch into the cafeteria, Birendra looked for Eli, the boy he’d been paired with that morning and told to find again at lunchtime. Mama Maddy had prepared his lunch while he was getting ready for school. He was surprised when she handed him the bag, told him what it was, and explained that he would not be eating meals provided by his new school. Now he noticed that the other kids had similar brown bags or colorful boxes with handles, and they sat together at long tables, pulling out the contents of their lunches one item at a time, as if unveiling a great mystery. He was curious now what he’d find in his own brown bag but resisted the urge to stop and look right there in the middle of the room. Eli waved from a table where he was already seated with two other boys.
“That’s Clark,” said Eli, nodding across the table to indicate the biggest of the three. Clark had the lightest blue eyes Birendra had ever seen and a face full of freckles. “And this is Sammy.” Sammy was the smallest of them, and he wore glasses. He said hello to both boys and sat across from Eli, next to Clark. “That’s Bindi,” concluded Eli, unwrapping his sandwich now that he’d made introductions. “Ah, man,” he said, clearly disappointed.
The others also had their lunch items lined up and were busy inspecting them. Then they looked at one another’s food, acknowledging with grumbles and taunts who had the “better” lunch. He listened closely, trying to determine which items might be favored. Meanwhile he emptied his own lunch bag one item at a time. Fruit roll-ups were good, he learned. Fruit was just okay. Celery sticks with no peanut butter were not good at all. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were the best. Sandwiches with meat and lettuce, and especially tomatoes, weren’t good because the bread got mushy, a word he’d never heard before but immediately understood because it sounded like the thing it described. Cookies, unsurprisingly, trumped everything. Sammy and Eli made an audible sound of defeat when Clark unwrapped two chocolate chip cookies. Then Sammy drew everyone’s attention to a boy at the next table who was proudly eating something called a Hostess cupcake. Even Clark, despite his cookies, looked on with envy. The last item from his own bag was a small box, which he cupped in his hand to inspect before revealing it to the others. He wanted to know what he was entering into the competition.
“What kind is it?” Eli asked.
“Oh, it’s Hi-C,” he said, hoping it was pronounced as it was written.
“Yeah, what flavor?”
“It’s fruit punch,” he said. He turned it so Eli could see.
“Ah, man. I got grape,” Eli said, disappointed again. The others laughed, confirming Birendra had the better juice.
“Do you want to trade?” he asked Eli.
“You’d trade fruit punch for grape?”
Eli sounded suspicious, and Birendra was concerned there might be something he didn’t know, but he also wanted the boys to like him, and he’d tried grape juice before and liked it just fine. It didn’t seem like a big deal to trade.
“Sure. Here.”
“All right,” Eli said, sliding his juice to the middle of the table. As soon as he let go, Eli snatched the fruit punch quickly, as though he’d stolen it. “Sucker,” he said, and the three of them laughed again.
He thought for a moment that sucker meant they would race to finish their juices, but Eli made no indication he was hurrying, so Birendra smiled and shrugged. He didn’t think he was being teased. They all seemed to be having fun.
“Where are you from, Bindi?” asked Clark.
“From Kerala,” he said, distracted still by the juice box and straw in his hands. Then he remembered that people didn’t know where Kerala is. “India,” he added.
“Cool,” Sammy said.
“Are there really elephants there? Like, not in the zoo?” Eli asked.
He tried to remember if he’d ever seen an elephant outside the Trivandrum zoo. He was sure that someone had brought one through Varkala at some point when he was younger, that he’d touched its rough skin—he remembered the feel and look, like dry, cracked earth—but he couldn’t place the memory in a particular time or place. That wouldn’t make a very good story, he thought, considering the expectant faces around him.
“Yes, there are elephants,” he said. “And an hour away from where I lived, there are lions, too.”
“Lions?” Eli was skeptical again, squeezing the last of the juice from his Hi-C box.
But he could see they all wanted to be convinced. He felt a little like he had at the orphanage in Trivandrum, telling stories to the other kids waiting to be adopted; he had to tell a good story, so he told the one he’d always loved, the one he wrote down to accompany Mama Maddy’s drawing. He’d first heard it from Mrs. Nair when he was younger, and he had made his mother repeat the story in Hindi and then in English over the years. As he began to tell it now, it once again felt as if she were guiding him, his voice an echo.
“There are two lions, and they live on an island in a mountain lake. Every morning they…” He searched for the English word. “They growl very loudly at the water around the island, and the sound echoes all through the mountains. Men and women from the village wake up and take turns throwing meat and fish to the lions from their boats. They have to be careful not to get too close, but they also have to throw the food far enough away from them so the lions won’t come after them.”
“No way! Those lions would eat them
,” said Eli.
“The lions never ate anyone, but a crocodile in the same lake once ate a tourist.” This addition to the story he’d learned more recently from Rani at the orphanage.
“Whoa!” Sammy said. “India’s crazy. I’m never going there.”
Then Clark was telling them about all the things in Australia that might kill you: there were sharks, stingrays, spiders, crocodiles—even the kangaroos sometimes kicked people to death. It sounded like an awful place. Birendra thought of the story he told about the kangaroo named Joey who kept a little boy in his pouch. He wondered if Clark and his family had come to California to escape all the dangers of home. Eli crushed his Hi-C box flat with his fist. The straw went flying, and they all laughed. When Birendra finished, he did the same, but the box wasn’t empty, so a stream of purple juice splashed to the floor as well, which made them laugh even harder. Then Sammy and Eli watched with envy as Clark finished his second cookie. Birendra wondered where the other boys came from. He asked Eli first.
“I was born in Beirut.” He gave his flattened box a spin.
“Anything that’ll kill you in Beirut?” asked Sammy.
“Nah, I don’t think so,” he said, gathering his garbage and placing it in his bag. “I don’t really remember it.”
Though he hadn’t finished all his food, Birendra did the same.
“Time for le français,” Clark said in an exaggerated accent, and the other boys thought this was hilarious.
Birendra had been nervous about French class all morning. He wouldn’t know what anyone was saying, and he preferred, in any case, to focus on American English, which was already very different from what he was used to. In French class, what could he possibly understand?
He had been classified as a non-French-speaking second grader. He would be older than the students in his classes, but if he did well, the headmaster had said, he could catch up before long. He was so happy to be back in school that he didn’t even mind the grade change. And he liked the boys he’d met so far. Sammy and Clark were in French class with him, but Eli spoke French already, so he was in a different class. But there was something strange about looking at a teacher who spoke a stream of words he couldn’t understand no matter how hard he tried. The other students in the class responded to her on occasion, with short phrases in the same language, or repeated things she said. Soon he could distinguish between a time to repeat, which he could at least pretend to do, and a time to respond, which he could not do. The teacher seemed to accept this and refrained from calling on him, but she did not stop speaking to him or watching to see if he was repeating the phrases. He was happier when they moved on to copying phrases down in their notebooks, even though the words themselves meant nothing to him. Finally the class was over, but his teacher called his name. The way she pronounced it was something like “Bean-D.” She said something else he took to mean she wanted to talk to him. He thought of his teacher Mr. Mon, but he was certain that this woman had no intention of praising him, since he spoke not a word of French.
As he walked up to her desk, his notebook tucked in the fold of his right arm, he hoped she could speak English, too. He was struck as he came closer by a longing for home—not Mama Maddy’s home but India, home to Mr. Mon and his mother, where things had been going so well at school. He read the sign on her desk. MADAME LAPIERRE. She had introduced herself, too, as Madame Lapierre when he first entered the classroom. Mama Maddy had told him repeatedly not to call people sir and madam in America. Maybe it was different in France. He just wished it wasn’t all so confusing. He couldn’t understand why he had come to America just to learn French. Thankfully, his teacher spoke to him in English. She just wanted to ask him questions about where he was from. He spoke excitedly about Varkala and his old school. She nodded along as he spoke, then stood to erase the chalkboard. When she turned, dusting the chalk from her hands, he admired her smile again. Her brown hair was shiny and looked soft. She was pretty.
“It sounds like a wonderful place, Bindi,” she said. She sat against the edge of her desk. “Am I right that you have never studied French before?”
“Yes, never, madam.”
“Madame,” she said, correcting him. “Madame Lapierre.” She used the same tone she’d used in class to indicate that he should repeat her, which he did without hesitation. “And your parents?” She looked back at a paper on her desk before continuing. “Does your mother speak French?”
He was now used to the fact that people at school meant Mama Maddy when they asked about his mother, but he didn’t know if she spoke French and said so.
“You will be fine, Bindi. I know this. And we are here to help you. The other students in your class also came to le lycée without French, so don’t worry. You will work hard and learn, n’est-ce pas?” She was waiting for a response. “Oui?”
“Oui, Madame Lapierre.”
“Très bien, Bindi.”
He remained for a moment at her desk, though he knew their conversation had come to a close. She was smiling down at him, but not in a way that intimidated him. That his teachers took the time to speak to him after class was a good sign, he thought. It meant they cared about their students, that this was a good school. And this motivated him to prove he would eventually be worthy of their praise as well.
“Good-bye, Madame Lapierre.”
“À demain, Bindi.”
As he left the building, he checked the time on his watch. His book bag felt light on his shoulders. He hoped he would still be able to fill it up with books from the library, which he’d learned had more than fifteen thousand books in total. Maybe he could read them all by the time he graduated. There was a honk, and he could see Mama Maddy’s assistant, Paige, in a taxi, just where Mama Maddy promised him she would be that morning. She was on her phone, the kind that Mama Maddy also carried with her everywhere. Mama Maddy was in Los Feliz, working. Paige was still on the phone when the taxi pulled into the driveway.
The inside phone was ringing when they entered the house. Paige got off the one phone so she could answer the other. She called for Birendra as he was climbing the stairs to drop his bag in his room. He left it at the top of the stairs and hurried back to the kitchen.
“We just got home,” he said into the receiver, assuming he was speaking to Mama Maddy.
But it wasn’t Mama Maddy. It was Uncle Eddie. At first he was sorry not to be able to tell Mama Maddy about his day, but then he realized he had two people to talk to about it, and this thrilled him.
“I thought this might be a good time. So? How was it? Did you have fun?”
He told his uncle about his new friends and about his teachers. And all the library books and his plan to read them. Uncle Eddie seemed to think that was a worthy ambition. “Did you have a nice day, Uncle Eddie?”
“Hey, thanks for asking. Let’s see. I was at home this morning, then I had to go check out a pound as a possible location for work.”
“What’s a pound?”
“It’s a place where dogs go to get rescued.”
Uncle Eddie was a scout—like a Boy Scout, except that he looked for places where people could make movies. And there was a movie out now starring a dog with a funny name that he’d worked on. He promised to take Birendra.
“Maybe we could visit the dogs one day. Who knows? We might be able to persuade my sister to get you a puppy.”
It was strange to think of Mama Maddy as Uncle Eddie’s sister. They didn’t really look alike, and Mama Maddy told him she was nine years older than Uncle Eddie. His mother was only thirteen minutes younger than Aunt Nayana. Paige removed the apple he hadn’t eaten from his lunch bag and handed it to him.
“My mother has a sister, too,” he said.
“Sorry—what did you say?”
He took a bite of the apple and realized his mistake. Now he had to say it again, which he did quietly through a mouthful of apple.
“I didn’t know that. Where is she?”
“West London.”
Birendra knew now how far away he was from West London. Even farther than he’d been when he was in India. He’d looked at Uncle Eddie’s atlas. California and India were on different pages, and England was close to the middle but on the India page. They both felt very far away from Los Angeles.
“You have an aunt in London?” He sounded upset, so Birendra didn’t tell him he also had an uncle. “I had no idea. Is my—is Mama Maddy aware of this?”
“I don’t know,” he said. He tried to recall her conversation with Mr. Channar, but he could only think of what Mr. Channar had told him on the day he left; he’d said not to talk about his family after coming to America. Birendra needed to remember, but it had just slipped out.
“I see. I’m sorry. Are you with my sister now?”
He didn’t understand why Uncle Eddie apologized, and he wished they could change the subject. He told him that only Paige was there, that she had picked him up from school in a taxi.
“Well, I bet you have a lot of homework.”
“Not really. I get to write an introduction for my homeroom.”
“Then I’d better let you get to it. But it was nice chatting with you. I’ll see you soon, okay?”
“Okay. Bye, Uncle Eddie.”
He didn’t sound upset anymore, but Birendra hoped Uncle Eddie wouldn’t say anything to Mama Maddy. He’d been careless, not following Mr. Channar’s warning. He would try harder to remember from now on.
XX
The new year had wrapped London in a blanket of freezing Scandinavian fog that had kept Nayana indoors for weeks with the radiators cranked up to combat the unusual cold. She boiled water at regular intervals to keep the air inside from getting too dry, and she used it to make herbal tea to address the persistent low-level nausea she felt. The new year had also put an end to Nayana’s procrastinating. She would have nothing but time now that she would not be returning to teach. She no longer had an excuse and resolved to get back to work, to writing the book.
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