Habitations, page 10
“I look forward to it. I like children.”
Sudha pulled into a gas station and opened her window. A turbaned Sikh man took her credit card. When the window was again rolled up, she said, “Most of the Indians here are not gas station–types. Most are professionals. One of our friends, he is a gastroenterologist, and she is an OB.” She lowered the window and took her credit card, signing her name without glancing up. As they drove away, she said, “They’re industrious, these Punjabis. That much I will tell you. But they are here only to work. Send money to their villages. That’s the mentality.”
“I wish I could be so useful to my village,” Vega said.
Sudha didn’t respond. She navigated the roads instinctively, careening past one turn and taking another identical one. To Vega, there was something disorienting about it all—this woman she had known since childhood, driving through this alien place as though it was the only one where she had ever lived.
“It’s both good and bad,” Sudha said suddenly. “Having these people.”
“Meaning?”
“The girls will hear comments. Anjali is more attuned to it, of course. Maya is so small that it doesn’t quite register. She’s a happier child. Anything negative, she chooses not to notice. But their classmates only see brown faces when they go to buy gas, or to these 7-Eleven stores. It’s hardly their fault, really, that they form certain assumptions.”
* * *
Sudha’s husband, Rakesh, had attended the Doon School, followed by the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins Medical School—facts emblazoned on the bumper of his car, a stack of alumni magazines, and one of the mugs upturned on the drying rack.
“You know Doon?” he asked. He was wearing an apron and slicing tomatoes.
“I’ve heard of it,” Vega said.
“It’s the kind of place that really builds you. Intellectually, in character, sport. Archery. Debate. You name it. But also, the qualities of sportsmanship. What it means to be part of a team.”
“I play soccer,” Maya said. “And gymnastics.” When Vega and Sudha arrived, she had run to the door and hugged them both, then led Vega into her small bedroom where she showed her a purple pin with seven gold stars circling it. “I’m reader of the month,” she said. “Two more books and I get a free pizza.” Now, downstairs, she was drinking a glass of orange juice and arranging the tomatoes in overlapping circles.
“We only eat Indian food once or twice a week,” Sudha said. “I hope you don’t mind. Rakesh loves to experiment. He makes a lot of global food. Vegetarian, of course, although Maya eats chicken. I tell him sometimes he could have been a chef.” She glanced toward the staircase and said in a low voice, “Anjali will come when she’s ready.” Vega would come to know the tone well—a practiced, contrived calm that Sudha often used when she talked about her elder daughter. “She likes to be uninterrupted when she’s studying.”
Rakesh squeezed a lemon into a bowl, then poured in olive oil. “When I arrived at Penn, I found I was far more prepared than half my classmates,” he said. “I found my courses quite easy, in comparison.”
“Well, in terms of math,” Sudha said. “Of course, American schools can’t compete with Indian schools in math instruction. Anyway, I often tell Rakesh how grateful I am that we didn’t have a boy, or he would have packed him up and sent him to Doon. That’s how much he loved it.”
“I’m glad I’m not a boy,” Maya said. “I don’t want to go away. I want to stay here forever and ever and ever.”
Anjali joined them just before dinner, mumbled an introduction, and began setting the plates as Maya followed behind with the utensils. The family ate their rice with a fork, compelling Vega to wipe her hands on a napkin and reach for hers.
“Vega is enrolled at Columbia,” Rakesh said to Anjali.
Anjali raised her eyebrows. “I’m aware.”
“These things matter,” Rakesh said, looking at Vega, as though asking her to confirm his point. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
The food was surprisingly satisfying—a cumin-heavy rice pilaf, skewered chunks of eggplant and tofu, a spicy tomato chutney. But the conversation was too stilted, and the room too quiet, to enjoy the meal. In New York, she and Halima kept their windows propped open, often mistaking the noise from the street for each other’s voices. Here she was aware of every sound—the scraping of the utensils, her own chewing, Maya sipping her juice.
“Anjali is a voracious reader,” Sudha said. “She always has a book in hand.”
“Both girls do,” Rakesh said.
Because Maya seemed happily occupied, spearing a tomato, Vega turned to Anjali. “What sort of books are you reading in school?”
Anjali shrugged. “The usual. Dead white men, and then in February, they assign Black Boy.” She took two bites in quick succession.
“Kanna,” Sudha said. “Slow down.”
Anjali reached across the table for more pilaf.
“I’m reading Misty of Chincoteague,” Maya said.
“Everything is racismsexism,” Rakesh said, blending them into a single word. “That is the theme of our lives these days.”
Sudha put her hand on his wrist. “Vega is a sociologist,” she said to Anjali. “She would be a good person to speak with about your interests.”
Anjali looked briefly interested, then caught her mother’s eye and looked down. “Maybe.”
“Anjali bought me The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” Maya said. “But I’m not going to read it until next year.” The conversation moved from books to tennis lessons, to a chocolate pudding recipe Maya wanted to try, but Vega was stuck on the reference to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Ashwini had discovered C. S. Lewis during their year in Cleveland. In the past, she had mostly read books that Vega passed down to her—R.K. Narayan and Jane Austen—less because she was interested in them, Vega realized now, and more to please her older sister. In Cleveland, she zipped through C. S. Lewis, then Tolkien and Richard Adams. She carted the books back to India and kept them in a stack by her bed. She had been rereading Tales from Watership Down when she died, a bookmark at its center, and Vega wondered if this had been a premonition. If Ashwini had been afraid of starting a story that she knew she would never finish.
After dinner, Vega packed the leftovers while Sudha loaded the dishwasher and Rakesh left the room to review the girls’ homework. “She was a pleasant child when she was little. An easy child. I used to think it was jealousy, but really, she loves Maya. She’s a wonderful sister.” She closed the dishwasher and filled a kettle. “It’s nice to have company. Rakesh goes to bed by nine. He likes to run in the morning and has to be at the office by seven o’clock.”
The tea was herbal, served without milk or sugar, in a mug that read JHU Medical. Again, Vega missed Halima—her thick chai and platter of biscuits. The blare of The X-Files.
“Did you go to college in the States?” Vega asked. “I don’t recall exactly when you left.”
Sudha wrinkled her nose. “SUNY Oneonta,” she said.
“Not a good experience?”
“It was fine, really. Coming from Madras, I didn’t know better. They gave me a scholarship and I accepted it. Doon, being so prestigious, of course, Rakesh had people guiding him in the process. I didn’t even know what an Ivy League university was. A vague sense, maybe, but I never would have applied.” She blew on her tea. “Anjali has her eye on Smith. Rakesh, of course, is hoping for Penn. You know the college programs here are really geared towards making the children very competitive.”
“Is it numerically possible for all the children to be competitive?” Vega asked. “Surely, if they’re all competing with each other, some will make it and some won’t.”
Sudha opened a cabinet and began looking for something—sugar, Vega hoped—though it turned out to be a jar of multivitamins. “Well, the top ones work hard for their acceptances. I can say that for certain. Anjali’s bedroom light is usually on long after we’ve gone to sleep.” The phone rang, and she took the call in the sitting room next to the kitchen, mouthing sorry to Vega and holding up a finger to excuse herself.
Vega carried her mug into the living room where Maya was sprawled on the floor, eating apple slices and reading. “I’m stuck on a word,” she said, sliding her book towards Vega.
“ ‘Ephemeral.’ It means ‘temporary.’ ”
Maya gave her a wide smile that Vega realized, over the months, was easily won—in exchange for extracting a splinter, scrambling an egg, or reviewing rows of multiplication tables. “You’re a really good teacher,” she said.
* * *
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Sudha dropped Vega at the train station before driving to her speech and hearing clinic in Tarrytown. “Rakesh and I just hate the thought of you wandering around the city for the full day without a place to go. It’s not a safe area. If it were NYU, it would be one thing. But Columbia…”
It puzzled Vega, Rakesh and Sudha’s fear of the city. Sudha had grown up in Madras, and Rakesh in the chaos of Delhi—a city Vega had only visited once on a family trip, Rukmini gripping her daughters’ hands as they wove through Khan Market, Chandni Chowk, Humayun’s Tomb. Her mother had refused to carry a purse, instead clipping a fold of rupees to the inside of her sari blouse. Years later, when Vega proposed applying for college in Delhi, Rukmini had shuddered. “Northerners are lawless,” she had said.
“I’m in classes for most of the day,” Vega said to Sudha. “And I have the library. Really, it’s fine.”
She had initially planned to spend those nights in the city, but Halima’s roommate arrangement—a Japanese medical student—had fallen through. She was living with an architecture student named Caitlin who was sensitive to noise, allergic to dust, and explicitly requested that Halima not have overnight guests.
“I miss you,” Halima said. “This idiot writes her name on her yogurt cups. As though I would eat flavored yogurt. We have designated refrigerator shelves.”
She saw Erick once, while leaving the Low Library, and was relieved when he didn’t suggest they get together. Instead, he updated her on his PhD applications. Acceptance letters were coming in. He had heard from three programs but, ironically, was still waiting on Columbia. “Political science is so cutthroat,” he said. “There’s really no point unless you attend a top program.”
* * *
By winter, she was spending less time in the city. She had come to appreciate the ease of Sudha and Rakesh’s home. There were fluffy hand towels and citrusy soaps in the bathroom. Bowls of fruit seemed to magically refill themselves, as did the fridge—with gallons of the 2 percent milk that Sudha favored, tubs of Stonyfield Farm yogurt, and packets of pre-sliced cheese. A woman named Rosario came in the mornings to wash and fold the laundry. Every evening, Vega’s clothes were tightly stacked on her bed.
“We pay her very well,” Sudha said. “This isn’t like India, in that respect. And we never asked questions about papers or anything. My belief? Anyone who is willing to work deserves to make a living.”
“She makes the best hot cocoa,” Maya said. “She puts cinnamon in it.”
“She’s very good with Maya,” Sudha said. “Very maternal and warm.”
But it was this warmth that made Vega uncomfortable. In India, she was used to Vasanti’s distant, scowling presence, her habit of working around Vega to avoid extended interactions. Rosario had her own set of keys and a pair of pink house slippers that she kept inside the closet. Maya hugged her when she came in, and Sudha always asked about her children.
“They’re fine, Mrs. Ramkrishnan,” Rosario always said. “Very good, very good.”
“Rosario has the nicest boys,” Sudha said. “Really, such polite children.”
When bowls were chipped or clothes outgrown, Sudha set them aside to be given to Rosario so she could donate them to her church. “I always say, one man’s trash is another’s treasure.”
“Unless it’s broken, and it’s actually trash,” Anjali said. “Like, objectively trash.”
10
The family planned to spend the first two weeks of June in Prague, an invitation from one of Rakesh’s former classmates from Doon, who worked for the State Department. “Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have said, let’s go see Eastern Europe,” Rakesh said. “You see, the world is really changing.” He bought a Lonely Planet travel guide and tasked Anjali with developing a map, marking all the cathedrals they should visit. Afterwards, they would all travel to Denmark, where he would be attending a Bioethics Conference and the girls would continue sightseeing. Maya, in preparation, was reading Number the Stars.
“I so wish you could come,” Sudha said. “The visa thing is just such a pain.”
“I don’t mind,” Vega said. She had been relieved by the family’s plans and was looking forward to a few quiet weeks, split between White Plains and Manhattan. Her graduate program ended in August, and she was due to fly back to Madras. She still hadn’t accepted the finality of the move home, so she tried not to think about it. Instead, she focused on enjoying her summer. She was enrolled in one independent study course at Columbia and was also volunteering two mornings a week in Brooklyn, assisting with summer ESL classes. It was minimal work, overall, but enough to give her a sense of purpose. Halima’s roommate would be away for most of June, and Vega imagined staying in the 123rd Street apartment until she had her fill, then returning to the tranquility of an empty house, studying here and there, then going back to the city when she was bored.
She had briefly considered staying in New York. Earlier that spring, she had been offered an unpaid research fellowship at CUNY Graduate Center, studying immigrant student enrollment in higher education. But sitting in the program information session, reading over the project abstract and timeline, it became clear that the fellowship simply didn’t excite her. It sounded too easy—a bit of administrative work, some editing of grant applications, transcription of student interviews. She had loved the intensity of her two years at Columbia—how fatigued and dry-throated she was after a day of teaching ESL, how bleary eyed and triumphant after each paper she submitted. Recently, she came upon an essay she had written during her first fall semester, on the subject of government school-nutrition programs in India, and she was shocked to realize how imprecise her language was then, how lax and long-winded her sentences. She did not fully realize, until that moment, how much sharper she was now than when she first arrived.
But something else was tugging at her. She was homesick. She missed her parents, the smell of her childhood house. She wanted to walk to the beach. Sleep in the bedroom she used to share with Ashwini.
The day after she declined the offer, the professor in charge of the program, Margo Fink, called and asked Vega to coffee. They met at an Au Bon Pain next to the CUNY campus. Margo paid for the drinks, and they settled into a cramped, corner table. “I’m not here to convince you to accept the fellowship,” Margo said. “I understand if it’s a bit beneath your pay grade.” She paused. “That was a joke, given that it is beneath anyone’s pay grade.”
Vega laughed. “International students don’t have pay grades. We have visa considerations.”
“Well, given your background, I think you probably made the right decision. But I was reading your writing sample, and I wanted you to know that you have real precision with your language and your thoughts. I hope that you consider further graduate work.”
“I intend to,” Vega said. She had been thinking about doctoral work in some loose, far-off way, but now she imagined it with more clarity. She described her work teaching ESL, her growing interest in researching the lives of migrant children. “I need more field experience in India before beginning a PhD,” she told Margo. “I think there is value to working in one’s home country for some time.” Even as she said it, she wondered if she was just making an excuse, justifying her childish need to see her parents. As they parted ways, Margo said to Vega, “It sounds like you have a really solid plan.” The phrase was comforting. Vega reminded herself over and over, as her final summer approached, that she would get a visa again, this time to return to the States and begin her doctorate. For now, she had a solid plan.
* * *
Sudha had made her a tray of lasagna before leaving, a gesture that Vega found slightly infantilizing. But she finished the entire thing within days, along with a carton of pistachio ice cream and two bottles of Merlot that Sudha had told her she should help herself to. She scoured the TV Guide in the late afternoons and curled up with movies she would have been too self-conscious to watch in anyone else’s company—A League of Their Own, Waiting to Exhale—falling asleep on the couch and waking to the sound of Anjali’s alarm, which Anjali had forgotten to turn off and Vega could not figure out how to permanently silence.
Without the family around, Vega quickly realized that the suburbs were unnavigable without a car. There was reportedly a town bus, but its route was elusive, and Sudha had cautioned Vega against it, saying the people who relied on it were “really, the most desperate, to the point where it’s unsafe,” adding, “Even Rosario doesn’t ride it.”
Partly for this reason, it was a relief to return to New York. Her timing was also good; Halima’s roommate was packing when she arrived at the apartment.
“So, are you staying for like, the whole summer?” Caitlin asked. She was folding bedding and stuffing it into a duffel bag.
“I’m staying with a family in White Plains. I’ll be here one night a week. Maybe two, maximum.”
Caitlin looked up and stared at her. Then she picked up a bag and she shoved it on the top shelf of the bedroom closet. “Listen. I was thinking of subletting my room. But then, out of consideration for Halima, I figured I would just keep paying rent.”
“Well, I’m glad you worked this out.”
“What I mean is, if you’re staying here, it wouldn’t kill you to kick in some rent. To offset my costs for the time I’m not even here.”
