Habitations, page 23
She had a three-hour layover in Newark. As the plane descended and Asha stirred from sleep, Vega considered calling Shoba. They had last seen each other towards the end of the semester, an uneventful Thursday night, when Vega picked Asha up from the house. Vega didn’t have the courage to tell her in person about the separation, or about her move to Louisiana. Instead, she wrote her a long letter thanking her for everything, assuring her that they would see each other often, and that she would always be a second mother to Asha. They spoke on the phone later, but it was Shoba—in tears—who sounded hesitant to get together. Vega had nearly called her so many times since that conversation, hoping they could meet for a walk, or a tea, or take the girls to the park, but it always seemed too complicated. Mohan would insist on driving her. Rupa might choose to come. They would stand awkwardly, all the sadness of saying goodbye and none of the closure.
Once in the airport, Asha’s needs wiped away any traces of Vega’s guilt. Strapped into the stroller, she arched her back and screamed. Vega pried open the tin of chapatis Rukmini had packed, and Asha tore one apart and tossed it onto the floor. She had used the toilet on the plane, but now her underwear and dress were soaked with urine. When she finally quieted, Vega stared at the damage surrounding them. The two pieces of carry-on luggage, the rickety stroller, the carpet strewn with crumbs. A shoe Asha had kicked off lay on the floor, next to the towerlike ashtray.
She managed to drag the stroller and bags into the bathroom and change Asha on a large, gray table that, had Rukmini been with her, Vega would have felt compelled to disinfect. As it was, she gave Asha a packet of saltines left over from the flight, plunked her down, then pulled off her wet clothes and shoved them into the side compartment of her carry-on. Back in the cavernous hallway of the airport, she stared at the rush of families all around them. A mother fussing with her daughter’s hair. Siblings walking wordlessly beside each other, their parents trailing behind. Spouses sharing the load of bags and small children. Holding Asha in one arm and everything else in the other, she felt shrunken by the enormity of these strangers’ presence. In a country of three hundred million people, she knew maybe twenty. And she had given them all up, but one.
Part 5
23
Ameya was a distant niece of Rakesh. The connection had felt so tenuous months ago, when Sudha called to make the introduction, that Vega had written the number down, folded the paper in her wallet, and promptly forgotten about it.
“She’s a doctoral candidate at LSU,” Sudha had said. “An environmental scientist. You can always stay with her. We don’t want you to be alone with a child and untethered.”
Vega assured Sudha she would be fine. The department had arranged temporary housing, a one-bedroom apartment tucked into a suburban street that was tranquil enough on the evening Vega and Asha arrived. The secretary had emailed her weeks back to let her know they would also stock her fridge and cabinets. The gesture seemed wonderfully generous at the time but was quickly revealed to be the work of an undergraduate intern. There were bottles of ketchup and mustard, Domino sugar, and a tin of instant coffee on the counter. Inside the fridge was a loaf of white bread and a tub of margarine. She found, also, two boxes of macaroni and cheese and a six-pack of applesauce.
It was just past nine o’clock at night, and Asha was rubbing her eyes and squealing, on the thin border between sleepiness and rage. Vega held her in one arm, and with the other hand she assembled the best meal she could manage—macaroni, lubricated by margarine—then watched, disgusted, as Asha devoured the entire thing along with two cups of applesauce. She bathed her quickly. Then, unable to find any bedsheets, upended her suitcase and pulled out the two towels buried at the bottom. Asha finally fell asleep, lying on a towel on the unmade bed, Vega’s nipple in her mouth, her arms splayed out on the bare mattress.
If Vega hadn’t been so hungry, she might have fallen asleep next to Asha. Instead, she stood up and pushed the suitcase into the corner to be sorted through later. In the kitchen, she washed the pot and leafed through a stack of delivery menus. One looked passable: Mexicali Grill: South of the Border in Central Louisiana. She scanned their offerings of quesadillas and burritos, then came to the list of “hard sell tacos,” a misprint that made her laugh so hard she was afraid she would wake Asha. She had always delighted in this sort of thing: muddled metaphors, the wrong words blurted out. But now, her laughter was excessive, amplified by the bare walls.
* * *
At two o’clock the following afternoon, Vega stood on Ameya’s porch, clutching a Grand Sweets bag filled with cashews and ribbon pakora that Rukmini had shoved into her suitcase the day before she left Madras. “You didn’t have to bring anything!” Ameya said, waving them in. “You’re coming direct from India, no? You must be jet-lagged. The baby, too.”
Ameya led them into the kitchen, a small and tidy room that was brightly lit from the windows along the back wall. “I’m sorry I don’t have any proper toys for her to play with.” She rummaged through her cabinet and pulled out a colander and wooden spoon. “Does she like banging things around?”
“If you don’t mind the noise.”
“Not in the least.” She filled a pitcher of water and they settled at the kitchen table. “Sudha said you’re from Adyar. Where did you go to school?”
“Rhodes for secondary. Then Sri Vidya for undergraduate.”
“I’m from Nungambakkam,” Ameya said. “I studied at St. Agnes. I did my undergrad in Kolkata, though.”
Her manner of speaking made Vega nostalgic. Later, she knew, the conversation would slip into a search for common acquaintances—people who had receded into Vega’s distant memories. The thought of it soothed something in her that she hadn’t realized was hurting.
“So, you’re staying on Lakeshore for the time being?”
“It’s just a temporary thing. The department arranged it. I’ll find something permanent in the next week or so.”
“That’s the fraternity row. It’ll be madness when the semester starts. You’ll want to get out of there as soon as you can. Before the students arrive.”
“I gathered,” Vega said. Already, there had been unsettling signs. She had woken in the middle of the night to a thud and a series of shrieks mixed with laughter. Standing on the porch that morning, the air smelled of piss. A container of Chinese food had been tossed by the garbage can on the sidewalk, noodles strewn on the cement. She hadn’t really intended to call Ameya at all, certainly not on her first day in Baton Rouge, but she found the number in her wallet and was relieved when Ameya answered on the second ring.
“She really is sweet, your daughter. How old?”
“She just turned two.” They looked over at Asha, still fully occupied by her spoon and colander. The gestures had been so simple. A bit of space on the floor. Some things to bang together. But Asha seemed happy for the first time since they left New Jersey. Vega’s throat tightened. She turned away and wiped her eyes on her sleeve.
To her relief, Ameya ignored the tears. “I’m not sure if Sudha mentioned, but I leave at the end of next summer for a research position in Minneapolis. If you’re comfortable squeezing in for a year, we can manage. Then you and the baby could each have your own room.”
When she first accepted the position at LSU, the quiet and anonymity of a new place had appealed to her. Now, she didn’t want to live alone. She would have followed Ameya to Minneapolis if that were possible. It seemed reckless to form a new friendship, to bring someone into Asha’s life who would be gone in a year. The tears came faster, and Ameya couldn’t pretend not to notice.
“Listen,” Ameya said quietly. “Take your time with the decision. It’s no pressure.” She walked into the bathroom and returned carrying a stream of toilet paper.
“I’ll have to arrange things with her father. He plans to come one weekend a month. And one weekend a month I’ll be in New Jersey.”
“That’s fine, of course.”
“I’m separated,” Vega said. “Getting divorced.” She blew her nose so loudly she should have been embarrassed. Instead, she felt enormous relief. She had never said the words so directly before.
“I can always leave for the weekend when your ex comes. We can make arrangements. Don’t worry about any of that.”
“I’m not worried, now that I say it. It’s just a lot of small things.” She had developed an elaborate task list, even typed and formatted it with bullet points so it looked, at a glance, like a meeting agenda. But now, when she ran through it in her mind, she realized how much minutiae was buried inside each item. Securing day care. Finalizing her syllabus and course reader. Buying a car. In New Jersey, she and Suresh had gone to the dealership and DMV together. How did one buy a car without a car? And in the middle of this, Asha would need to eat. She would outgrow her clothes. She would need other people in her life besides Vega. She wished she could tuck Asha back inside her body and deliver her when things were settled. When she had a car.
Ameya put on the kettle for tea. “Will she eat fruit?” she asked. “I have bananas. And oranges in the fridge.” She sliced a banana onto a plate. They watched as Asha pulled up the pieces and smashed them in the general area of her mouth.
“The rent is four hundred a month.” Ameya walked to the fridge for an orange and split it in two, then gave half to Vega. “You can take your time and think it over. But I can tell you it would be good to have you both. It would make this place feel like a home.”
* * *
Suresh visited in August, carrying a stack of parathas, a suitcase full of Asha’s clothes, and a check for the value of Vega’s old car. He was staying in some distant suburb, with a friend of a college classmate. The man had dropped him off at Vega and Ameya’s house, offered a perfunctory invitation for Vega to visit his house anytime, and warned her about the crime in East Baton Rouge. “Very unsafe area,” he said. “Even during the day, it’s all the time drug problems.” Even Suresh looked relieved when the man drove away.
The first hour was rocky. Asha was disoriented and she cried when Suresh held her. Ameya, with whom they overlapped in the kitchen, mistakenly addressed Suresh as Sampath, then overcompensated by asking him repeated questions about the world of software engineering.
“Would you say your work is very coding oriented?”
“Well, no,” Suresh said. “That is a different thing.”
Ameya eventually left for the library and Asha amused herself with a puzzle—one of the items Suresh had brought in the suitcase, made new in the months since Asha had seen her toys. Vega poured tea and she and Suresh settled into the familiar terrain of logistics. “You were able to sell the car so quickly?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“They paid cash?”
“Not quite. But that’s the value of it.” He sipped his tea and chewed a piece of paratha. This was what it looked like when he was hiding something. With Suresh, a lover of details, who could expound on the difference between Agassi’s and Sampras’s backhand, or the value of premium versus regular gasoline, vagueness was a telltale sign.
“But you sold it?”
“Hmm.”
There was no point in probing further. She was grateful for the money. Given that he had purchased the car for her in the first place, it was more than she expected.
“Your classes are going well?”
She nodded. “Two introductory sections, all large lecture formats, plus one seminar. I haven’t had as much time for research, but I’m sure I will. The teaching is enjoyable.”
They made dinner together, the familiar choreography of cooking suddenly clumsy in the dimensions of this alien kitchen to which Vega herself hadn’t fully adjusted. Bathing Asha, too, was like this. The old routines made new. Suresh bent over the tub, talking in a voice that was both sad and too animated, sounding like an estranged uncle. Afterwards, he tried to read Harold and the Purple Crayon, but Asha squirmed and pulled the book from his hands.
“She’s been more restless in the evenings,” Vega said, when they had managed to settle Asha into her crib. “She won’t even let me read to her, sometimes.”
This was partially true. Asha, at two years, was difficult to predict. Blueberries, once her favorite snack, she now chewed and spit on the floor.
“It’s okay,” Suresh said. “She was tired, I think.”
“We can show you the lake tomorrow. And there’s the zoo. We can pack a picnic.” They hadn’t yet discussed the arrangement of the weekend—whether Suresh wanted to be alone with Asha, or whether he wanted Vega to go along with them, either for the purpose of helping or maintaining the illusion of a family. But she kept talking anyway, listing more activities than they could possibly fit during Suresh’s forty-eight hours on the ground. The university campus. The Arts and Science Museum. “And, of course, we’ll come to New Jersey in two weeks. We can fly in on Thursday night, itself. We’ll have three days.”
“Vega,” he said, cutting her off gently, in the way she had done to him so many times. “Long-term, I wonder if it is easier for me to come here than for you to come to New Jersey.”
She felt the first hints of relief. She had put off thinking about the New Jersey trip until she and Suresh survived this weekend in Baton Rouge. But when it crossed her mind, even briefly, she was gripped by anxiety. All the pretense of connection, of normalcy. She and Shoba spoke at least once a week—Vega put it in her calendar to call on Friday mornings, and Shoba sometimes called during a lull in her afternoons—and it was always a comfort to hear her voice, to talk about food and children, and for Vega to know that she had, for the most part, been forgiven. But it was one thing to speak with someone, and another to see them. And she couldn’t bear the thought of Asha settling into the New Jersey apartment, letting her reacquaint herself with the habits of her old life, then prying her away.
“For one thing,” Suresh said. “It will cost more for you to go there than for me to come to Baton Rouge. Partly, it’s just a matter of cost.”
“That’s a lot of travel for you,” Vega said.
“I don’t mind.” He looked away, pretending to be interested in something on the bookshelf.
“Suresh. Tell me one thing. You didn’t sell the car, did you?”
“There was no need, really. We would need the second one.”
“You and Rupa.”
He fidgeted with the edge of a placemat. “She wants to learn how to drive. It was easier this way. Fewer transaction costs.”
Vega imagined Rupa in her old car, pushing Carnatic music tapes into the stereo, fidgeting with the heat in the winter. She pictured her in the apartment, using the pots and pans, adjusting the settings on the toaster. Most of those items Suresh had bought before Vega arrived, so it made sense that Rupa would use them. Sentiment aside, there was no reason for them to buy anything new.
“Ameya leaves in the spring?” Suresh asked.
“In July.”
“You’ll be alright when she’s gone?”
Vega felt the same prickling of tears she had felt when she first stood in Ameya’s hallway. “I have Asha,” she said. “We’ll be fine.”
24
Summer in Louisiana was disorienting, stretching well into October. Nowhere else, outside of India, had Vega felt the salty sting of sweat in her eyes or slapped so constantly and feebly at mosquitoes. She covered Asha in citronella repellent every morning, but by afternoon, the child was covered in red welts. And then there were the sweeter reminders of home. The occasional smell of jasmine. The okra and eggplant she and Ameya bought at the farmers’ market. Despite Vega’s conversion to the use of sunscreen (“It’s a myth that only white people need it,” her pediatrician had said), Asha’s arms and legs had turned a beautiful rust color. One morning, Vega noticed her sitting on the stoop, mesmerized by the sight of a lizard fanning its red throat. Vega had never seen one outside of India.
“Palli,” Vega said. “Adha oru palli. Do you remember when we saw them at paati and thatha’s house?” She rarely spoke to Asha in Tamil—something even Ameya had noted—but now the words tumbled out, easy and unplanned.
In the evenings, she and Ameya took Asha to the lake near campus. It was Vega’s favorite place in Baton Rouge, a grassy area surrounded by sprawling live oaks that reminded her of the banyan trees in Chennai. Sometimes they were joined by two of Ameya’s friends—Priya and Vishal, who brought along their three-year-old son and newborn daughter. They were Indian American, both coastal engineers, and had met while serving in the Peace Corps in Bolivia. They spoke to their children in Spanish, which Vega found, depending on her mood, either puzzling or impressive.
“Our priority at the moment is river diversion,” Vishal explained to Vega. “Priya and I are involved in a large-scale project to redirect the Mississippi River so it can spread the sediment we need for marsh creation.” Their son, Amin, toddled over to show them a rock he had found. “Que bella,” Vishal said. “Enseñale a mami. Anyway, the project is really just to keep the problem at bay. It’s no task for what we’re up against.”
“Not with the rising sea levels,” Priya said, examining the rock. “We can only fight it for so long.”
Though Amin was only a year older than Asha, Priya and Vishal were already in the process of researching kindergarten programs. “I mean, Priya is,” Vishal said. “She’s the queen of the spreadsheets.”
“Hardly,” Priya said. “Anyway. We’re looking into the Waldorf School. I have mixed feelings because Vishal and I were products of public schools. But we’re scientists, and the data on small class size is hard to argue against.”
Vishal rolled his eyes. “Not that the data makes a difference. Generally, I believe in data, of course. But my feeling is, kids don’t need much.”
