“My father is from India,” she told him the last night they were together. “That makes me an immigrant’s daughter. And if you’re not Native American, you’re descended from immigrants too.” Will never apologized.
Karan asks — finally!— about Ma. First he wants to know what Rita told Uma about him. Then what happened last year to make Rita break her long silence. So she tells how Rita made her promise to look him up. He says he’s glad she keeps her promises.
An hour later, he asks how Ma died and was she buried or cremated. And Uma is trying to explain, describe, tell him how it was. How Rita just decided one day — no more dialysis. And how Uma had to let go, give Rita permission to die. She’s ordered the headstone for Ma’s grave. It’ll be ready when she gets back.
She’s describing a woman performing Uma’s life. Someone without her light-headed sense of unreality, without her anger at unfinished conversations. Someone without the ripples of panic that flow through Uma at the thought of moving on without Ma.
“I am so sorry you had to experience that,” he says.
He’s not real interested in Ma or her final days.
But when he asks, “What are your plans now?” he leans forward, giving her answer his utmost attention. “Back to bartending next Tuesday.”
Suddenly that didn’t sound like fun. Especially without Ma to come home to.
“Have you ever thought of doing something else?”
“I could maybe get a job at the auto plant. Keep bartending on the side.”
That didn’t sound like much fun either. It sounded as if she was heading for the Bermuda Triangle.
“You could — no, never mind,” he says.
“Did you ever think of doing something else?”
“Oh, yes. After my PhD I tried to join the army.”
“The army? Why would they need economists?”
He laughed. “Oh, it wasn’t that they need economists, but the army is, well, sort of a traditional occupation for Sikhs.”
“No kidding? I’m trying to picture my aunts in camouflage helmets.”
“No, no, just traditional for Sikh men. Though there are women in the Indian Armed Forces … Anyway, my uncles kept saying I should join.”
“You mean the army in India?”
“No, the US Army — it would have been a way to get my citizenship.”
“Jeez, you’d be in Iraq right now.”
“True, except that the US services didn’t allow turbans. Not allowed today either.”
“Why not?”
He shrugs. “Ignorance.”
“And you wouldn’t wear a hat? Oh, I get it, it’s like when Grandma wanted you to take it off.”
He gives her a nod and a wry smile. “Their loss, really. Sikhs are either the bravest or the foolhardiest chaps, depending on one’s point of view. “
Chaps, meaning guys.
Could be he doesn’t notice how people talk in America. Or he hangs on to old words the way Ma used to hoard clothes that didn’t fit anymore.
The photos in the box dwindle. Karan turns on a lamp.
He putzes in the kitchen and brings two mugs. “Orange pekoe tea” he says, as if it’s special. And some cookies he calls rusks.
Uma watches TV as she sips and nibbles. He seems so pleased that she likes his tea.
What’s a father supposed to be, anyway? Teacher, coach, older brother, friend and boyfriend all at once? And if she wasn’t the kind of daughter he wanted, then … ?
She’s still hungry. But for details, or food, or for something else this guy can give her?
Karan can’t find the right pots and pans; he says he has to take Uma out to dinner.
“Suits me,” says Uma.
She’d have chosen any place where they serve chips with salsa or where you can get Singapore noodles, but he’s paying so he gets to choose. She doesn’t know restaurants and their prices in this city anyway.
A few miles out of town she follows him into Bistro Balti, a restaurant that could be a transplant from Detroit — it’s just like the one Ma sometimes called for delivery. Takeout menus on a sign behind a counter, only two other couples occupying dinerstyle tables and booths. Incongruously, each table has a white tablecloth.
Karan asks for the owner and he comes over, a slight, dark man with a moustache but no turban, dressed in a tuxedo with a purple cummerbund, like he’s just come from a wedding.
“Sat Sri Akal, Doctor-sahib!”
“Salam Aleikum, Nadir!” Karan rises for a half hug and shakes hands.
“Nadirji is from Karachi,” Karan says. “Excellent squash player. Has to play very hard to work off his wonderful meals.”
Karachi — where has she heard of Karachi?
Nadirji laughs and pokes Karan in the stomach. “I say, eat much and you’ll keep playing as well as you do!”
Karan is smiling and talking in Indian. Obviously explaining who she is. Nadirji’s eyebrows jerk up and down and he glances at her uncertainly a few times.
Daniel Pearl, the journalist, was beheaded in Karachi. Karachi is in Pakistan, not India. And there’s going to be a movie about it.
And what does any of that have to do with this man? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Nadirji says, “Dr. Karanbir has told you how we met? At the courthouse — we were being fingerprinted together. All day we sat there waiting, waiting. So we started talking. Do you know, we found out both our grandfathers are from Gurdaspur. Only mine fled to Karachi, his to Delhi. At least they chose the capital cities of the time.”
He laughs and slaps Karan on the back. “Dr. Karanbir said Partition was all because of economics. I said, Rubbish! All because of religion. So we started arguing and arguing. So then this Homeland Security guy, he comes up, says, Hey, are you fighting? So Dr. Karanbir says, No, no, sir! This is my friend.”
Nadirji beams.
Karan asks about Nadirji’s younger brother — is he back in Karachi?
“Oh no,” says Nadirji. “Still he’s sitting in the Detention Center in New Jersey. But they’re saying they will send him back to Karachi any day.”
“And his wife?”
“She’s here only, in San Diego. Still calling me every day — do something, call his lawyer. Call Homeland Security. Don’t we know anyone with a relative working there? Talk to them in English. I tell her I have called, but they don’t even take messages on their voice mail. So every week I’m sending the lawyer more money — what I can. And every week I’m giving her advice how to run my brother’s appliance shop. But I too have a family.”
Jeez! Does he ever, and Karan’s like a doctor, asking about the health of each one. Didn’t he say he met Nadirji for squash last week? Brothers, parents, uncles — it’s a friggin’ assembly line.
“… and your cousin-brother? The one with the PhD in architecture?”
“Subhanallah! He found a job. Temporary, and he’s only drafting, not designing, but it’s a job.” For Uma’s benefit, Nadir explains. “He was laid off after 9/11 — his boss told him he was scaring the clients. But he’s tip-top in drawing with the computer. He has a wife and child to feed. So. Very difficult.”
Everyone has it difficult.
“My Ma did CAD,” says Uma. “She worked from home, designing car parts on her computer.”
“Your mother?” says Nadirji. He glances at Karan for confirmation. Karan is studying the menu.
“Yeah, my mother was an engineer.”
“Vah! A woooman engineer,” says Nadirji. Like it’s a strange species of baboon. “But this is good, good. Working at home. She must be a good woman.”
“She was.” Uma’s eyes are filling; she tries to bring the menu into focus.
Now Nadirji is all business, bringing water, recommending the raan of lamb, the turkey keema in case she doesn’t eat beef, the cucumber yogurt in case the spices are too hot for her palate.
Uma orders a combination platter — butter chicken, daal ma-khni and naan. Karan orders the same but poin
ts to a different bread. Nadir writes it all down, tears off the bottom and gives Karan a number. He hands the order to another black-moustached man behind the counter.
Karan launches into an explanation of how butter chicken is made. Uma holds up her hand.
“Butter chicken was Ma’s specialty. She learned to make it in Madison.”
Look, Ma — I brag about you all the time.
But hey, who taught you to make butter chicken?
Karan goes to the counter when their ticket number is called.
Turmeric and ginger aromas rise from the compartmented Styrofoam before Uma.
Lentils scald her tongue. She takes a gulp of water and bites into the thick naan. Everything she has to tell Karan, show him, is stored up someplace.
Karan unfolds a soft thin bread on his plate. “Listen, Uma. There’s no need to tell anyone about this green-card marriage thing. It was a long time ago. I don’t want any trouble. They deport people for less, you know. India’s not a bad place to be deported to nowadays, but a year or two in a Detention Center is worse. And the legal expense. Not to mention the indignity.”
The chicken glows red on its bed of saffron-flecked rice. Uma takes a sip of water.
Karan, her dad Karan, only invited her to visit so he could keep her quiet. She should get up and walk out right now. Except that she doesn’t have enough money for a fucking hotel.
How can he think she’s going to tell anyone that her ma took money for a green card and sex?
Don’t worry, Ma.
She gets that Karan is afraid of her. He totally should be. One word from her …
Maybe you took the money from him because you needed it. Maybe you didn’t want him to feel he had to stay with you. How come you didn’t tell me more of your reasons, Ma? All our years together?
Like it or not, she’s related to Karan. By blood and secrets.
She gestures at the salt cellar, he passes it across the table. “Who’s gonna ask me?” she says, shaking a fine mist across her food.
Back home, around midnight, conversation fizzles. Karan opens the futon in the spare bedroom, fetches clean sheets, helps Uma make her bed.
Later, when he goes to check on her, she is in pyjamas, with headphones over her ears. She puts her CD player next to her pillow and waves goodnight.
He reads a bit of Galbraith’s Getting and Spending. Then he returns to her room, turns off the bedside light, turns off her CD player to save the batteries. Her face, nude of expression as she sleeps, carries little imprint of time. What did she look like at five, ten, fourteen?
His fears of entrapment, of Homeland Security, of extortion all disgrace him now. She’s right — who is ever going to ask her?
People in novels have reams of thoughts; why is his mind blank? If only he had something other than economics, some profound life lesson to share with Uma. But at this moment anything he’s ever learned eludes him. Like an echo, she reminds him of the courage he once had, the optimism that drove him to candlelight studying, the desperation that made him look around in the late seventies and cry, “Not this!”
Her shoulder feels warm beneath his palm. How did a chance and loveless combination like his with Rita have produced such a beautiful being? Think of it! Rita raising this child all by herself. No — not so. Thank every babysitter, teacher and friend who also raised his daughter for him.
He tiptoes out. In his room, he switches off the bedside lamp, closes his eyes.
The men. In suits, with look-alike FBI masks, pale as though bred in Washington — worse than the clones in Matrix. One looks like Prince Harry, complete with swastika armband.
A blade, sharp and cold against his jugular.
Questions prickle under his skin — he’s being asked to explain the twenty-five hundred dollars. Uma appears. They ask her.
Then they cut up his alien registration card.
Rita, grown huge, stands in a corner of the room. A sea-green silk sari swirls around her. She seems to be wearing a spiky crown. She raises her right hand high above his head — she is holding a massive cone with a flaming diya at the top. The flame flickers and sputters as the men feed it the shreds of his card.
Rita begins to weep, and Karan is surprised by an urge to console her, but he cannot move.
And then he is flying without a plane, without a net, without a swing to grab overhead. Over the bomb-ravaged mountains of Afghanistan. A Stinger missile rises toward him.
Impact!
It has shot right through him without a sound.
He is falling, falling.
Then suddenly he is being torn limb from limb at the centre of a huge riot. Desperate, angry men. All dressed like Dadaji.
Chanting, “Amrika murdabad.”
America, may you die.
An electric rush of fear. Uma — his little Uma — she’s a born American. She’s in danger.
His eyes spring open.
The word “father” has taken root somewhere at the base of his spine.
On a normal Sunday morning Karan would be at the gurdwara in Ventura. After listening to shabads and prayers till noon, he’d sit cross-legged on the floor with everyone else and be served langar: rice, lentils, gobi allu. Maybe even super-sweet kheer.
But he can’t take Uma there. She might light a cigarette. She may not want to remove her shoes. She may balk at wearing a chunni or even a scarf to cover her head, or refuse to bow her head to the ground before the Guru Granth Sahib. She might laugh. Some might think she’s his girlfriend. Next time he’ll be able to prepare people in the community. If she visits again.
If this were any other Sunday, Karan would drive back to North Hall after langar and let himself into his office like a yogi or a monk performing his rituals — Sundays, not being a Guru-prescribed Sabbath, do not feel very different from weekdays. Self-imprisoned in his book-lined cubbyhole, he’d be scrolling web sites for statistics, typing, thinking.
Instead, Karan’s just-washed hair lies like a limb upon his spine, dampening and cooling his back through his T-shirt. He has found and unpacked a frying pan. Bacon sizzles in its fat. He adds a jalapeño to egg bhurji while Uma showers.
He has never thought about eggs. Or chromosomes. Or genes. All he knows is every human being has anywhere from forty to sixty thousand and more are derived from the woman. And as for sperm, his sperm — he has given no thought to the whereabouts of his sperm. He’s probably thought more deeply about the ratio of US Foreign Aid to its Gross Domestic Product.
Water rolls and chugs in the kettle. He pours it over an orange pekoe teabag for himself, Folgers instant for Uma. It’s ready just as she appears.
She’s wearing a bathing suit, shorts and the sunflower sandals; he is grateful he didn’t plan on going to the gurdwara today. He puts the bacon and eggs before her and serves himself.
Uma toys with the bacon and looks confused. “I thought — Ma said she couldn’t remember whether …”
“Whether I eat pork? Of course. It’s Muslims who don’t.”
“Oh. I didn’t know.”
“Well, how could you? I eat beef too. Of course, we have our share of vegetarians, but I’m quite omnivorous. And you?” “
I’m allergic to eggs.”
“Oh, dear — I didn’t know.”
Her expression, as he removes her plate, says there’s a lot he doesn’t know that a father should. There’s no autobiography he can read to bring himself up to date.
Let the egg bhurji twirl down the vortex of the garbage disposal or keep it? Spices preserve; he shoves it in the fridge.
Achcha! He pulls out a box of raisin bran for her. Is proud of himself for having fresh milk.
Today, he shouts from the bathroom, as he ties a fresh white turban over his topknot and underturban, they’ll cycle to the beach. He’ll ride his old bike, she can use his new one.
“And afterwards, we can come back here, change and drive to the Faculty Club for lunch. If we run into the dean, I’ll introduce you. It will be
a treat to see Bradnock inspecting us to see if we look alike!”
He laughs and Uma joins him.
Yes, he will say, Dean Bradnock, this is my daughter. Like Thayne Grey showing those photos.
Then to Stearns Wharf to see the sailboats, do some shopping. He’ll find out what she likes, buy her whatever she likes.
Dinner someplace.
“You decide,” he says, showing her a visitor guide.
In the garage, Karan hands Uma a bicycle helmet left by the former owner.
“Don’t you wear one?” she snaps the clip beneath her chin.
“My turban is protection enough.”
Tires sing on asphalt. Karan floats down lanes of carob and palm trees. He breathes in the scent of grass and sea mist. His bicycle bell pings, pure as the end note on a jal tarang. He looks back. Uma waves.
Gold light. Time slows.
Sunwarmth glides over Uma’s shoulders, back and legs. Sweat trickles between her breasts. A few feet away, Karan’s white turban lies beside him on a beach towel. He rests his bearded chin on his forearms. A dull silver bangle shines on one of them. His hair is swept up into a knot and covered with a black kerchief. She’s never seen anything like it.
He’s real brown-faced, but his back and stomach are lighter.
Seagulls squawk their conversations. Seahorse waves stumble and leap over black rocks. A motorboat zips the seam between water and sky. Sail triangles lean into the wind.
Right about now Uma’s got good attitude. This minute she could die with no regrets, just like Ma. The hospice, obits, funeral and farewells, the details of closing down a life are behind her. Ashley is left behind in LA. Strange — she can’t remember the last time she didn’t have someone, anyone, to worry about.
She called Ashley last night. Told her Karan was a bit old-fashioned.
Ashley said, “You were going to take a picture with your cell and send it, remember? I want to see if you look like him.” Uma was going to but she hasn’t. She’s not ashamed or anything, just not used to him.