An American Brat (18 page)

They found the notebook on the floor beneath her desk.

“There are no signs of a break-in,” said the younger, kinder-looking cop. “Could it be someone you girls know?”

“Nah,” Jo said. She sounded hurt. “Our friends aren't that type.”

“I suggest you think about it some more,” said the older man. “There's nothing to be worried about, but it's always a good idea to keep the doors locked. If you think of something or someone, let us know.” He winked at them both.

After the police left, Jo wept as she looked at the empty spaces that had once been occupied by her computer, her printer, her stereo, and her TV. She missed them horribly and, like Feroza, felt uncomfortable in the apartment; their space had been violated. “I wish we could sleep someplace else. Let's spend the night at a motel.”

Feroza was readily agreeable.

It took Feroza till late next afternoon to air her suspicions.

They had both been delighted by their stay at the Travel Lodge. They watched TV till two
A.M.
, slept late Saturday morning, indulged themselves with a sumptuous breakfast of mushroom omelettes and hash browns at a snack bar, and had left with their small overnight bags stuffed with the motel's towels and toilet paper an hour after checkout time.

Back at their abandoned apartment, they were again overtaken by a sense of bereavement. They flung open all the windows and drew the curtains. Fiercely, Jo set to scrubbing the kitchen tile and vacuuming the floors. Feroza dusted and polished their furniture obsessively, tidied up their rooms, and watered the plants.

A couple of hours later, Feroza switched on all the lights and flung herself on the living room sofa in an exhausted torpor. The vigorous activity was cathartic, as if in dusting and tidying up, she had reclaimed her space in the apartment and made it safe.

As Feroza absently watched Jo, who was on her knees
washing the fridge with a dishrag and a bowl of suds, she felt a great swell of affection and gratitude for her friend. How many girls did she know in Lahore — or anywhere — who could decide, just like that, to move out of their homes to spend a night in a motel? To Feroza it was an unimaginable feat accomplished, a lottery won.

At the same time, she wished she could be of more use to Jo, do something splendid for her, protect her friend better. Ever since she had gone with Jo to Mike's apartment, she had felt driven to safeguard her strangely vulnerable apartment-mate.

Half an hour later, pushing back strands of hair that had come loose from her ponytail and holding a large glass of Coke, Jo sank into the lumpy sofa beside Feroza.

“I've been thinking,” she said, pensively looking into her Coke and stirring the ice with her finger.

“Uh-huh?” Feroza said.

“I think we've been paid back for my sins.”

“What sins?”

“The shopliftin' and stealin' … and stuff.”

Silence.

“I'm gonna stop that shit.”

“That's a good idea,” Feroza said cautiously, reflecting with remorse on her own timorous complicity.

They remained quiet. Feroza, sitting in corner of the sofa with her legs tucked beneath her, stole a glance at her friend. Jo, abstracted by her thoughts, sipped her Coke absently. Then, holding the glass in her lap, she lay her head back wearily and shut her eyes.

“Feeling better?” Feroza asked at length.

“Yeah,” Jo said and then irritably added, “I don't know where Mike is … I've left messages on his answering machine … The asshole hasn't called back.”

“Are you still seeing him?” Feroza asked, trying to keep her tone neutral.

“Only a couple of times since he beat up on me.” Jo turned her head to look at her friend curiously. “Why d'ya ask?”

“He has a key to our apartment.”

“Yeah, I gave it to him. I oughta take it back.”

“You should've taken it away from him. I don't think he's gonna call you,” said Feroza.

The implication in the choice of words, and the tone in which they were spoken, sank in.

“You're telling me Mike stole our stuff?” Jo raised her feet to the sofa and turned to face Feroza. Her incredulity and rage were explosive. She was too much on the defensive.

Her attitude strengthened Feroza. “I don't see who else could have. The place wasn't broken into. The policemen thought it was someone we knew.”

“I can't believe you're saying this!” Jo shouted, shifting jerkily and spilling part of her Coke. “The poor kid's a mess, but he's not a thief! He wouldn't steal from us! He's a good kid, basically.”

Feroza kept quiet.

Jo began to snuffle quietly into her glass. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

Mike showed up a week later. Both girls were in the living room looking at an old black-and-white TV loaned to them by Jo's current boss.

“I got your messages,” Mike said to Jo. “You guys had some stuff stolen?” He was looking paler and thinner and, to Feroza, transparently guilt-ridden.

“Yeah,” Jo said and then mournfully listed the missing items.

Mike shook his head. “Too bad. You call the cops?”

“You didn't expect we'd hang around for you, did you? Didn't you get the messages I left on your machine? Why didn't you call?”

“I've been kinda busy,” Mike said, dismissing the charge lightly.

“Oh yeah?” Jo said. “I'm kinda busy too, but I'd go help a friend who'd been robbed!”

“I'm sorry, I wanted to see you, but it's been, like, one thing after another.”

Feroza was distinctly cold and minimally civil. After five minutes of haughty, monosyllabic participation in the conversation, she withdrew to her room. But her attitude had rubbed off on Jo, and some time later she heard Jo and Mike argue loudly. Mike left the apartment before dinner.

Mike again started dropping in at odd hours. Feroza noticed, though, that Jo was more guarded and wary when he was around. She did not believe everything he said anymore, either, and startled him by frequently declaiming, “I don't believe you,” about some trifling assertion.

Mike came over late one night, asking to borrow Jo's car.

“You can't have it,” Jo said flatly.

“Why not?” Mike was surprised.

“ 'Cause I need it tomorrow. I've got a busy day.”

“I'll get it back to you by morning,” Mike said. “Promise.”

“Why don't you use your own car?”

“I've got to go a long way, and it won't hold out.”

“I bet it'll hold out if you fill it with gas.”

“If you don't give me your car keys right this minute, you'll be sorry!” Mike shouted.

Mike was drunk. Jo wondered how he'd managed to conceal it so well. “Get outta here,” she shouted, and Feroza, who had heard most of their conversation, barged into the living room to stand by her friend.

“I know what you want the car for,” Jo yelled, drawing courage from Feroza's presence. “You're gonna deal drugs or fence stuff that's stolen. If you think I'm gonna allow you to use my car for shit like that, you're crazy!”

“Gimme the keys, or I'll kill you,” Mike said, advancing dangerously on Jo. Feroza quickly inserted herself between Jo and Mike. She stuck out her elbows defiantly, but she was shaking. Mike felt his pockets and his waistband as if searching for a knife. He didn't appear to find what he was looking for and, yelling, “You wait here; I'm gonna kill you,” dashed out of the apartment.

Feroza and Jo rushed to lock the door after him. Jo stood trembling against the locked door, and Feroza sat down panting
on a chair. A few moments later they heard Mike's car tires viciously scrape gravel as he wheeled into reverse and, with a wrenching of gears, roar away.

Jo phoned her sister in California with the news of the threat. Janine advised her to get a gun at once.

“Please don't,” Feroza said. “He's only threatening you. If you get a gun, I'm not going to live in the same house with you. You'll shoot me by mistake.”

The next evening, Mike came to the restaurant and created a scene when Jo again refused to let him have the car. In the ensuing brawl, Jo finally accosted him. “I know you stole the stuff from our apartment!”

“Yeah? So what?”

Jo was shocked and dismayed by his admission and the cool and insouciant way in which he said it. “I want my TV back!” she yelled. “I want my computer and my stereo back, you asshole!”

“I've hocked 'em. So what're you going to do?”

Jo's burly boss, a meat-cleaver in hand, rushed Mike out of his restaurant.

After a month Mike again turned up at the apartment to announce, “I'm getting married.” He looked subdued and sober in a clean, striped shirt and washed jeans.

“So, when's she due?” Jo asked.

“Oh, Jo, you think I'd only get married if I got the girl pregnant? She is pregnant, but that's not why we're getting married.”

Jo looked at Mike with pitying contempt. “You poor kid. You don't realize that becoming a father means more than being a dildo with a sperm count!”

Feroza didn't understand what “dildo” meant, but she sensed from Mike's stunned reaction that Jo had said something quite profound. Feroza's already soaring regard for her friend climbed a notch higher.

Just before the end of the term, a little, short-haired, bandy-legged dog trotted up to Jo as she was washing her car and, for no apparent reason, growled and suddenly nipped her ankle.

Observing the rites of the American spring, Jo, like millions of girls all over the country, was wearing shorts.

“I've had it,” Jo announced as Feroza applied the mercurochrome — farsightedly provided by Zareen — to her roommate's tiny, perforated wounds. “I've taken about as much as I can stand! This crummy town is jinxed! I'm getting out! You can stay if you want, but I'm going!”

“Where to?” Feroza asked, suddenly very frightened, wondering how long their bad luck would continue.

“Somewhere, anywhere, so long's it's not Twin Falls. Even the dogs here are nasty. The jealous little mutt bit me 'cause his legs're short and mine are long!”

Both girls laughed. After all, it was spring, and even Jo had to admit that Twin Falls looked spruce and green. Above all else, vacation loomed, and Feroza was going to spend the summer with Jo and her family in Boulder.

The dog bite was the last problem bequeathed by the Panchang.

Meanwhile Manek was returning to Pakistan after an absence of four years.

A phalanx of perspiring relatives awaited Manek's arrival at the Lahore airport. Jeroo and Behram, who required only an excuse to visit Lahore, had driven down from Rawalpindi for the occasion. Their fourteen-year-old son Dara and his younger sister Bunny were charged with protecting the rose and jasmine garlands hanging from sticks.

Anxious for news of Feroza, Cyrus and Zareen flanked Khutlibai behind the iron paling that separated the crowd of receivers from the arrival lounge. Khutlibai stood entrenched at the central position she had fought through to occupy earlier, grimly hanging on to the handrail.

The arrival lounge was also the baggage claim area, and the aluminum-framed French windows and glass doors that formed one wall — about twenty feet away from them — were guarded by two armed security police.

Khutlibai had insisted on coming well before the plane was due, so in deference to her wishes the family had hauled itself to the airport an hour earlier. Other families — predominantly Muslim and a few Christian — milled behind the railing, their children propped up in their arms like wilting bouquets. The ceiling fans hanging from the vaulted roof were remote and ineffective.

The arrival of the 747 from Karachi was announced, and a few moments later the passengers started trickling into the baggage claim area. The congenitally short-sighted Parsee adults squinted in an effort to peer through the glass doors and urged the few lucky youngsters with normal sight to put their 20/20 vision to salutary use. The glare from outside made it still more difficult to look in.

“Can you see Manek? Can you see him?” Khutlibai asked frequently,
and the moment the youngsters' attentions wandered she alerted them with a sharp “What're you doing? Look in front!” If they were within striking distance, she thumped or pinched them to encourage their attention.

The other adults also kept a check on the brood, but the children's eyes, smarting from staring at the dazzling windows, kept wandering to less tedious vistas.

Khutlibai and company were able to make out only a thickening blob of shirts and shalwars as the passengers poured into the arrival lounge. Occasionally one of them clearly saw a figure in the foreground or spotted a porter in a khaki uniform, but there was no sign of Manek.

In a country of paradoxes, where bold women of a certain class often wield as much clout as pistol-toting thugs, Freny could be relied upon to use the advantage. “Here,” she said and gave her bright red patent-leather handbag to her husband to hold. “I'm going to find out what's happening.”

“Old mare, red bridle!” quipped Khutlibai, offering up the sly adage with a fresh twist.

A mischievous bubble of merriment burst about her. Not used to such levity, Rohinton pursed his mouth and averted austere eyes. He had discovered a few days back that the youngsters had nicknamed his wife “Allah-ditta,” or “God-bequeathed,” in an obvious allusion to his spouse's bountiful endowment of bosom. He added a thunderous frown to his astringent mouth, and the giggles at once subsided. Rohinton folded his thick arms across his chest and the handbag swung from his wrist defiantly.

Meanwhile, holding up and displaying hands innocent of bombs, guns or knives — and an equally innocent pair of out-thrust breasts that could not possibly conceal a weapon behind the tight fit of her sari-blouse — Freny barreled forward like a squat and unstoppable tank. Before the surprised guards could intervene she had plastered her chest and glued her nose to the glass. Using her empty hands as blinders, she peered into the arrival lounge.

Two minutes later, offendedly muttering, “Okay baba, okay.
I'm going,” Freny charged past the agitated security police to the waiting relatives. “I've had a good look,” she told them. “Manek isn't there.”

“Maybe you didn't recognize him,” Zareen ventured. “He must have changed.”

“Don't be silly.” Freny was irritated. “I'd recognize him even if he'd turned into a monkey!” Pointedly looking away she addressed the others. “I don't think all the passengers have come into the lounge yet. We'll just have to wait and see. There's a whole bunch of Sikh pilgrims, it's a wonder the airplane wasn't hijacked.” Freny was referring to the two Indian Airline aircraft that had been hijacked by Sikh Separatists in the past few months. The planes had circled the Lahore airport for hours and had been permitted to land only when the fuel ran out. “One of the Sikh pilgrims had his face all covered up like a bandit,” Freny continued. “I couldn't tell if it was a turban and beard-wrap, or bandages.”

Deep frowns appeared on the faces of the reception committee. Furtive glances were cast at Khutlibai. There was a bit of subdued khoos-poossing.

Pale as mountain mist beneath her discreet dusting of powder, Khutlibai looked from concerned face to concerned face and slowly raised a shaking hand to her heaving heart. Appealingly helpless and bewildered, she whispered: “O baap ray! Oh dear Father! What's happened? Why hasn't he come?” And, summarily dismissing everybody's hasty assurances that Manek would turn up at any moment, devoutly enlisted Ahura Mazda's help and the angel Behram Ejud's protection.

A clutch of businessmen — overnight travelers carrying hand luggage — came out of the glass doors and vanished into the waiting throng. An elegant woman, trailed by three children and a porter trundling a loaded cart, was followed by a sedate trickle of other first-class passengers. Then came the disorderly procession of a hundred squeaking carts piled with mountains of suitcases, bedding rolls, and crates, and the accompanying flood of economy-class passengers with bawling infants. The passengers' eyes searched the receiving throng like orphans hoping to
be claimed.

The hairy Sikh pilgrims came out next, looking perplexed and anxious, and were immediately greeted with shouts of “Taxi! Taxi!” Their colorful turbans and beard wraps could be seen bobbing as they were dragged away by the rapacious taxi-wallas.

“It's Manek!” A keen-eyed youngster squealed excitedly. “He's all bandaged up!”

Everybody craned their necks. All but hidden behind the crushing line of emerging passengers, his head and most of his face swaddled in white bandages, they recognized him.

“O mahara baap! Oh my Father!” Khutlibai gasped, thumping her chest, and Zareen simultaneously screamed, “Oh God, it's Manek! Oh God!”

They had failed to recognize him earlier because he wasn't wearing his glasses and only a tiny portion of his brown face showed through the white cocoon of his bandages.

There was no holding them back. The family broke through the cordon. The security men were as ineffectual as cotton-wool-stuffed gunny-sacks deployed to plug a breached canal. Manek's startling appearance and the stampede of his anxious relatives, yielded him a passage; sympathetic passengers stood back to let him pass.

Manek was instantly absorbed into the family fold and steered to stand before Khutlibai. He bent forward accommodatingly. Khutlibai placed a heavy rose garland round his neck, a touching mix of concern and happiness shining in her brimming eyes. She circled the air round his head with her hands, at the same time sprinkling him with rice, and energetically cracked her knuckles on her temples. Having prudently warded off stray evil and envious eyes, Khutlibai hugged Manek tenderly. She kissed those portions of his face spared by the bandages and, with an audible sigh, briefly lay her head upon her youngest son's chest.

As soon as Khutlibai released him, the men thumped Manek heartily on his sweat-soaked back and said, “What's the matter, yaar? You look quite fit … Why the bandages?” But the women, eyeing the unfeeling men with reproach, placed fragrant garlands
round Manek's shoulders and solemnly held him to their copious bosoms. Making indulgent noises, they asked affectionate questions and stroked his arms.

A pair of solicitous hands grabbed Manek's heaped cart. Other hands divested him of his duty-free packages, hand luggage, and overcoat. In a protective throng, with Manek conspicuous in its center with his garlands and his alarming bandages, they crossed the road to the parking lot. Car trunks flew open to swallow the luggage.

All four doors of the Toyota were hospitably open. The old Pathan driver with the vivid blue eyes salaamed, made anxious inquiries, and gingerly embraced his pitifully bandaged employer. Manek was ushered into the front seat, and the long-legged Cyrus crushed into the narrow slot between Khutlibai and Zareen; he sat hunched up, his handsome chin almost touching his knees.

By this time, even Khutlibai had realized there was nothing seriously the matter with her son. However, maintaining a sympathetic pretense of concern, she lovingly kneaded his shoulders and was pleased by the feel of his strong new muscles. As the caravan of air-conditioned cars honked their way out of the airport, she leaned forward to ask, “What happened to you, my son? May I die for you; tell me how did this happen?”

There was a dramatic pause occasioned by Manek's deliberate silence.

Khutlibai inserted an arm between the front seats and, her elbow jabbing the driver's ribs, placed her palm flat on Manek's chest. This gesture transmitted many messages. Besides expressing a readiness to sooth her son and imbue him with the courage to bear his pain, it also conveyed an understanding of his mute ordeal. But, most importantly, it reestablished the web of ties that traditionally bind son to mother, the sacrificial and protective nature of maternal love and its claim to Manek's everlasting devotion and sense of duty.

With her usual adroit sense of timing, and in a choked voice, Khutlibai heightened the dramatic potential of the moment: “God
knows how much pain my quietly enduring child is suffering. But then he was never one to make a fuss! Does it hurt a lot?”

Manek started to undo his bandage. Khutlibai and Zareen immediately began to help and squashed Cyrus further. Cyrus pressed back against the seat and raised his knees to protect himself from their heedless arms and elbows.

Relieved of the bandages, Manek broke his silence. “I've hurt my jaw.” Choosing to express his feelings in the colorful Gujrati idiom used by older Parsees, he continued, “Speaking this wretched English all the time has worn away my jaws. Don't anyone dare talk to me in English!”

“Get away from me!” Khutlibai said, laughing with relief and giving his shoulder a shove. “Now I know why you haven't picked up an American wife! Say what you like, but ours are ours! Didn't I tell you — in the end one is comfortable only with ones own kind!”

“Sala badmash! Scoundrel!” Zareen swore, messing his sweat-drenched and flattened curls, “You had us all worried for nothing. And we thought your stay in America had improved you!”

“Still the same old actor, yaar,” commented Cyrus, shaking his long face from side to side with disbelief and amusement, and at the same time giggling with a hiss that sprayed his brother-in-law with a fine mist of spit.

Partaking of the general feeling of relief, and belatedly reacting to the jab of Khutlibai's elbow to his ribs, the driver applied his brakes behind a cyclist and, with inches to spare, blared his horn into the unfortunate man's ears. As the startled cyclist wobbled and turned to glare back, the driver shouted, “If you want to die, you black man, go and die beneath some other car!”

The sun had set, and in the lingering afterglow made opaque by the dust and sooty emissions from the buses and mini-buses, it was impossible to tell the cyclist's color. But, then, had Snow White been the cyclist she would have been called “black man” also. The comment was not pertinent to color or sex. In the hierarchy of Pakistani traffic, truck and car are king; the cyclist, as possessor of an inferior vehicle, is treated with contempt. By the
same token the pedestrian, whose only means of locomotion are his shoes, is more lowly. The lowest are the shoeless beggars who skip nimbly from the path of the Toyotas driven by snobbish drivers. The racist overtones were provided by the legacy of the Khan's service in the British army during the days of the Raj.

The family sat up late that night in Khutlibai's air-conditioned drawing room. Manek looked comfortable in a starched white shalwar and kurta-shirt that Khutlibai had kept ready for him. His shampooed curls sprung in a fakirlike halo, Manek regaled his audience with boasts of the wonders of America. “You think we eat well because we're rich? You should see how the poor in America eat! Everyday chicken! Everyday baked-beans, ham, and sardines! What the Americans throw away in one day can fill the stomachs of all the hungry people in Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan for two days.”

Manek quoted staggering statistics about the inexhaustible supply of gas, water, and electricity. “You can drink water straight from the tap without worrying how many cholera and jaundice germs you're swallowing. You can have tub-baths ten times a day if you want to: there's no shortage of water. The landlord usually pays for it, and for the electricity. Everybody keeps their lights and air conditioners on all the time. Huge football stadiums and offices and shopping complexes are air-conditioned all summer. You have to wear a cardigan indoors, one forgets what summer is: it's as if you are always at a Hill Station. The same thing in winter; everything is centrally heated and you can walk about in shirt-sleeves.”

They had heard some of this from their America-returned uncles and cousins, but they had heard otherwise also.

“What about their shameless morals?” demanded Freny, and though she sat back in the crowded sofa she sounded as if she had mentally placed her hands on her substantial hips. “But you must have enjoyed all that part of it!”

There was a raucous burst of laughter, followed by suggestive hoots and lewd smiles. Manek managed to look like a smug cat
who has swallowed nine mice but does not wish to advertise the fact.