Blue Jasmine (7 page)

On the Diwali Day at school I kept thinking about how much fun Uma and Raju must be having, and wished I was there. Then I realized that they must be wishing the same thing, and maybe this Diwali would not be much fun for them either. I wondered about Mukta and her family. Did
they have any fun at Diwali? And what about Mukta's
kaki
? Was her tuberculosis better or worse?”

I hurried home, with one dark cloud following me overhead.

“Can we light a few
diya
lamps?” I asked as soon as I walked through the door.

“We don't have any
diyas
. How about lighting some candles?” Mommy said.

“No, that's okay,” I said, and went up to my room. I stared out the window. The last light of the day was lingering on as if the sun felt guilty about setting. Diwali always fell on a new-moon night, and so I knew the moon wouldn't come up tonight. In India when the night turned dark, we would take out small clay containers and fill them with oil and a long cotton wick. Dipping one end of the wick in the oil and keeping the other end hanging out, we would get one hundred
diyas
ready and place them all around the terrace and balcony ledges. Mommy. Uma, and Pappa would light them, and the lamps would twinkle in the moonless night. Nothing was more beautiful than standing on the terrace admiring the
diyas
twinkling below and the stars twinkling above.

“We have two candles that we can light,” I heard Mommy saying as she walked into my room.

I wiped the tears away before I turned around.

“Yes, let's do that,” I said, with great effort.

As soon as we put the candles outside the wind blew
them out. We lit them again and the same thing happened. “It won't do,” Mommy said.

She came in and collapsed in a chair.

“I have an idea,” I said. “Why don't we light candles for our dinner table?”

“It's not the same, but it would be pretty to eat dinner by candlelight,” she admitted.

“Dadima always had
diyas
. These are not
diyas
,” Mela said, when she saw candles on the table.

“Like
diyas
, candles give us light and that is important, because Diwali is the festival of lights,” Mommy reminded her. “We light
diyas
and pray that we have lights in our homes as well as in our hearts.”

“When we light the candles can we pray?” Mela asked.

“Yes. We will,” Mommy said. I saw a smile on her face and it made me happy.

When Pappa came home we said prayers together and then sat down for dinner. Mommy took out stainless-steel plates and bowls that we had brought from India, and the candlelight reflected from their shiny surfaces onto our faces. The rain began thumping on the window while we ate steaming samosas. I dipped mine in the sweet-and-sour chutney and filled my mouth with crisp crust and spicy filling.

That night we called India. Raju said to me, “I have a Rakshabandhan surprise for you.”

“Can't you mail it to me?”

“Don't think so. It'll be waiting for you when you get here.”

“I may not be back for two years or more,” I said.

“The later you come, the larger it will be.”

“Give me a hint,” I said.

“I just did,” he said.

Two months of school had gone by. On the last Sunday of October all four of us went out to get some milk and yogurt. Mommy picked up three cans of chickpeas and I chose chocolate pudding and a jar of peanut butter. When we got off the bus I asked, “Pappa, are we going to get a car?”

“I'm thinking about getting a car,” Pappa said. “I talked to Dr. Davis and he said we must have a car.”

“We don't need a car. This works. . . .” Before Mommy could finish her sentence, the bottom of her bag tore, and a can of chickpeas hit her foot before rolling away. She fell.
“O bapre!”

I ran to the house and opened the door while Pappa carried Mommy into the house. She cried in pain, and even though we applied ice to her foot, it swelled up. Pappa rushed to Mrs. Milan, and she drove Mommy to the emergency room. Pappa went with them while I stayed home with Mela.

The car was barely out of the driveway when Mela asked, “When will Mommy come back?”

“Soon,” I said.

I was afraid to be alone with Mela in the house and so I kept busy. I put away the groceries while I talked to her. She was getting hungry, so I made her a cheese-and-tomato sandwich. “I don't want cheese-and-tomato sambich,” she said.

“Do you want a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich?”

“I like peanut butter,” she said.

I made her a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. She took one bite and made a fish face. “I don't like it,” she said, pushing her plate away.

“You just said you like peanut butter.”

“I don't like jelly with it and I don't like peanut butter on bread. I like peanut butter on celery.”

“We don't have any celery,” I said. “What do you want?”

“
Rotli
and vegetables.”

Many times I had rolled Indian bread,
rotli
, and a couple of times I even had made the dough, but I'd never cooked it on the stove. “Eat a sandwich now and when Mommy and Pappa come back you can have
rotli
and vegetables.”

“No,” she said and stood there pouting.

“Do you want chocolate pudding?”

“Yes. Pudding! Pudding for dinner.” She clapped.

So Mela had chocolate pudding and I tried her peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. The peanut butter kept getting stuck in my mouth and throat, and I had to take a sip of milk and swoosh it around to gulp the sandwich down. After two bites I threw it away and ate a tomato-and-cheese sandwich. I was glad that I had tried a peanut-butter sandwich at home and not at school. It was always easier to try new things at home when no one was watching.

“When will Mommy and Pappa come home?” Mela asked as she licked the last spoonful of pudding.

“Soon,” I said.

After five minutes she asked the same question, and I gave the same answer. All of a sudden she began to cry. Not a soft cry, but a loud cry, as if someone had slapped her hard. “Mela, please. Don't cry,” I said.

“I want Mommy!”

“She'll come.”

“Now. I want her now.”

The evening was falling slowly. Mommy and Pappa had been gone for three hours. I wondered if Mrs. Milan was back. I called her, but no one answered. Mela and I walked to her house and knocked on the door. There was no answer. We knocked again, still no answer. We walked back to our house. By now everything was dark inside. I turned on all the lights, making the kitchen and the living
room bright. Mela and I snuggled up on the couch and I told her a story about the brave rabbit that went into the abandoned house and lived there by himself. It was Raju's favorite story, and he used to beg Dadima to tell it to us over and over again. How I used to protest that I didn't want to hear that story, I thought! And now, if by magic Dadima and Raju could be here, I would listen to that story a hundred and one times.

Mela was quiet. I looked at her. She was asleep.

What if Mommy and Pappa don't come back? I thought. What would Mela and I do? I wished we were in India with everyone; then I wouldn't mind Mommy and Pappa leaving us, because we wouldn't be alone. I wished we were still a whole snow cone and not a broken-off lump that was melting away fast.

The phone rang. It was Pappa. “Seema . . . Seema, is that you? Where were—where did you go? I tried—I called a few minutes ago. Why didn't you—Are you all right? Is Mela all right?” His words were spilling out like the beads from a broken necklace.

“We went to Mrs. Milan's house.”

“Mrs. who?”

“Mrs. Milan. The one who took you to the emergency room.”

“Mrs. Milan is with us. How's Mela?”

“She's asleep. Where's Mommy?” I asked.

“She's with the doctor. We will be home soon.”

“How soon?”

“As soon as she gets done. I have to go now. Lock the house and stay inside. Don't go out again,” he said, and hung up.

The night had deepened, and I was getting nervous. I thought of turning the TV on, but I was afraid that if the TV was on it would drown out all other sounds. As fearful as I was, I wanted to hear if someone broke in to the house. I sat by Mela on the couch, chewing the end of the pencil that was on the table by the phone. I had to go to the bathroom, but I didn't want to walk down the hallway alone, and the more I sat there thinking about not going to the bathroom, the more I had to go.

I must have fallen asleep, because it was nine o'clock when Pappa woke me up. First I went to the bathroom and then I went to bed.

The next morning Mommy said we were getting a car.

“A shiny new car?” I asked.

“No. A used car.”

“Not an old, rusty car,” I protested.

“It will be old, but it won't be rusty,” Pappa said.

“Promise?”

“You can help select,” she said.

A dreadful thought went through my head. Pappa was used to driving on the left side and here they drove on the
right side. What if he made a mistake and drove on the wrong side and had an accident?

“Pappa, we can't get a car,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Who's going to drive our car?”

“You are,” he said.

“I can't. Not until I'm sixteen.”

“Then you're right. We can't get a car.”

“Pappal”

“Why are you worried? You know that Pappa and I both know how to drive,” Mommy said.

“Look at your foot. How are you going to drive?”

“Soon, I hope.” she said.

“But you both drive on the wrong side. What if you make a mistake?”

“We'll be very careful,” Pappa promised.

With Mommy's foot all wrapped up in a big bundle, Pappa and I did most of the cooking and cleaning, and Mela tried folding clothes.

We did get a two-year-old car, which looked very new. Pappa drove as if he had been driving in the United States for a long time. Later he told me that when he came here the first time he had driven a lot. As soon as we got the car we went to the mall and bought heavy jackets and boots for the winter. Now we were ready for cold and wind.

Finally it was Halloween. Jennifer gave me her last year's bear costume, which fit snugly. It was drizzling while Mela, Jennifer, and I went around the neighborhood shouting, “Trick or treat!” At first I was scared, especially at one house. When we rang the bell, the door opened slowly with a screechy sound, and a hand with long, sharp nails dangled out from behind it. I grabbed Mela's hand, jumped back, and screamed. Jennifer laughed and said, “Mr. Tobias, you can't scare us.” Then a face with fangs peeked around the door. He held out three big candy bars. I looked over my shoulder as I went down the steps of his house. His laughter echoed in the sky.

I came home with more candy than I had ever seen in my life, and it was all mine. I divided it in two piles: in the first pile were the candies I'd tasted before, and in the second were candies I'd never eaten. The second pile was five times as big as the first one. That night as I took out my nightdress, Mukta's handkerchief and letter fell out. I wished I could mail her some candies. Maybe I'll write her a letter, I thought.
Soon, do it soon, my
heart urged.

I
n school Ms. Wilson taught the class the history of Thanksgiving. During dinner I asked Mommy and Pappa. “Did you know that the first Thanksgiving dinner was served at Plymouth in 1621?”

“No, we didn't.” Mommy said.

“I did,” Mela said. I ignored her.

“The Pilgrims were thankful for a good harvest and celebrated the day with a big feast.”

“A big feast.” Mela said, with her arms wide apart.

“Why do you keep interrupting?” I said.

“Seema, she's as excited as you are. Let her say a few things,” Mommy said.

“Say something. Now!” I told Mela. She was quiet.

“See, she has nothing to say except when I talk, then she starts jabbering.”

“How did our Thanksgiving holiday turn into a Complaingiving holiday?” Pappa asked jokingly in English. I noticed that more and more often, we were sprinkling our conversations in Gujarati with English words and phrases.

“I don't know. Pappa, Jennifer is going to her grandparents' house in Wisconsin, and Ria is going to her aunt and uncle's house in Chicago. Where can we go?”

“India,” Mela said.

“It's too far,” I said.

“Dr. and Mrs. Davis have invited us for Thanksgiving dinner,” Mommy said.

“Really?”

“We're going for a feast! We're going for a feast!” Mela sang and clapped.

On Thanksgiving day I wore a mango-colored silk dress. Mommy French-braided my hair and tied the end with matching silk ribbons. Mela wore a green-and-white velvet dress that had once belonged to me. I combed Mela's hair into a ponytail and tied it with green-and-white candy-striped ribbons.

“Mela, you look so festive, and with that ribbon, someone might mistake you for a candy and gobble you up,” I said.

“No, they won't.”

“They might, you never know,” I said, as I buckled her shoes.

“Daddy, Seema says someone will
obble
me up,” Mela said. It was amazing how quickly even Mela was picking up English, from watching
Sesame Street
and from her preschool.

“And why would they do such a terrible thing?” he said, suppressing his laughter.

“Because I look like a candy,” she said. Her round cheeks were so puffed up that she looked like a hen to me, and I was about to tease her more when Pappa said, “Seema, go help Mommy or else I'll obble
you
up.” He could barely finish his sentence, he was trying so hard not to laugh.

“Yes, Dad, right away, sir,” I said, and marched upstairs. Then I peeked through the banister and said. “Excuse me, but I forgot to tell you, you look very nice, sir.”