An American Brat (30 page)

“Very good! Very good!” Zareen was outraged. “You come all the way to Lahore to marry a Parsee girl, and you are advising me to let my daughter marry David? I can't believe it. Thank you very much!” she said and banged the phone down.

Zareen waited for David to appear in the kitchen. It was almost four o'clock, and he was accustomed to forage in the fridge for a snack and make himself a cup of coffee.

When he didn't show up, she was sure he was deliberately avoiding her. She strode to the garage door, and after ascertaining that he was in his room, sounding as if she were unmasking a coward, she sternly said, “David, can you come into the kitchen, please? I want to talk to you.”

David's spirits sank lower as he caught the elusive inflection that had so disconcerted him on the day of her arrival. Shoving his legs into his long pants, David hurried into the kitchen and sat down before Zareen.

Zareen gave him a quick, cool smile and, dispensing with courtesies, said, “I am most concerned about Feroza. Do you intend to marry her, or are you just having fun?”

David felt the blood rush to his head and cloud his vision. At the same time, meekly lying in his lap, his hands turned numb and cold. “Of course,” he stammered. “We want to get married.”

“Please speak for yourself,” Zareen said, “and let my daughter speak for herself.”

David was too stunned to say anything. He looked at Zareen with an expression of surprise and misery.

“Have you thought about the sacrifice you are demanding of my daughter?”

“I'm not demanding anything. Feroza does as she pleases, pretty much.” Then, the slightest edge to his voice, he added, “She's an adult.”

“An adult? I don't think so,” Zareen said. “You are both too immature and selfish to qualify as adults. She doesn't care how much she hurts all of us. I'll tell you something.” Zareen's voice became oracular with foreboding. “I look into Feroza's future and what do I see? Misery!”

David could not credit his faculties. The transition was too sudden. He could not reconcile the hedonistic shopper, the model swirling girlishly in the kitchen, the enthusiastic tourist and giver of gifts with this aggressive sage frightening him with her doom-booming voice and a volley of bizarre accusations.

“Could we talk about this later?” he mumbled, tripping over the chair as he stood up. “I'll be late for an evening class.”

“Then go!” Zareen was imperious with scorn. “But please think about the sacrifice you are asking of my daughter.”

Feroza had just returned and, hearing the loud voices, had cravenly retreated to her room. Nervously bracing herself for a quarrel or, at the very least, a solemn lecture, she was not prepared for the ferocity of Zareen's attack — or its dangerous direction — when Zareen marched into her room saying, “You're both selfish. Thinking of no one but yourselves. And don't think I don't know what you're up to!”

“What am I up to?” Feroza was at once on her guard.

“Ask your conscience that! We have taught you what is wrong and what is right!”

“If you're referring to my virginity, you may relax,” Feroza said, attaching umbrage to her haughty voice. “I'm perhaps the only twenty-year-old virgin in all America.”

Zareen was almost certain she was lying. “You were not in your bed at three o'clock this morning! You expect me to believe you?”

“Believe what you want, since you don't trust me!” Feroza said with scathing dignity and strode out of the room.

Zareen followed her furiously. “Don't you turn your back on
me! Look me in the eye!”

Whirring round, her face darkly flushing, Feroza shouted, “Examine me if you want!”

They had the house to themselves. In the course of the row, mother and daughter stormed in and out of rooms, raking up old quarrels, wrenching open doors and banging them shut. They locked themselves in the bathrooms and splashing their faces with water, refreshed themselves for the fray. At the end of an hour, Zareen, trembling with rage and exhaustion, raised her hand threateningly, “Don't think you're too old to slap!”

Feroza moved close to her parent and snatched her hand in a violent gesture of defiance. She stared at Zareen out of savage lynx eyes, her pupils narrowed. Zareen felt she had provoked something dangerous to them both. Tears springing to her eyes she jerked her arm free. She walked to the flimsy entrance door, swung it open and swept out of the house.

Zareen had barely walked a block up the quiet, deserted street when she heard the angry whir of wheels as Feroza backed the Chevette out of the drive. A moment later the car whizzed past.

Zareen felt drained and defeated. She turned round slowly and went back to the house.

Zareen sat brooding before the TV, searching her soul. She had acted in a way that would push her daughter into the arms of this David. How could she have been so foolish? She was the mother, and yet Feroza had shown more maturity and restraint in her behavior than she had.

Late in the evening, lying on her bed, Zareen heard Laura and Shirley enter the house. A short while later, she heard the garage door click. David had returned. Feroza must be with him. Quickly opening a magazine, she waited breathlessly for Feroza.

The moments dragged by, and she wondered if Feroza would show up at all. She wanted desperately to effect a reconciliation, wipe away the hurt in both their hearts. Feroza did not come. In fact the house was as silent as if it were empty.

Tears sprang to Zareen's eyes, and she put the magazine away. She plucked a tissue from the box by her pillow and bitterly
blew her nose. Three weeks had gone by, and what had she done except go wild and spend all the bribe money? She had only five days left in Denver. She had one of those tickets that was cheaper if you specified the return date at the time of purchase. In any case she had to be in Lahore in time for her nephew's navjote, which Feroza had explained to David was like a bar mitzvah.

Zareen absently heard the phone ring. A little later Shirley knocked on her door and shyly, as was her way, said, “Feroza called. She asked me to tell you she is spending the night with a friend. She'll see you after classes tomorrow.”

Shirley stepped hesitantly into the room. “Are you all right? Can I get you anything?”

“I'm all right, dear,” Zareen said, her voice thick. “Thanks a lot for asking. I'm just a bit tired. I was waiting for Feroza.”

“You sound as if you're heading for a cold,” Shirley said. “Let me get you a glass of warm milk.”

Zareen felt soothed by the attention. She considered Shirley very pretty. Shirley had high cheekbones, a small nose, and long, blond hair. The girls were not a bit like Zareen's preconceived notions of promiscuous American girls, even if Feroza had made that crack about being the only twenty-year-old virgin in America. These pretty girls did not have boys hovering round them.

Zareen stayed home the next day. She sorted out her shopping and packed a suitcase with gifts. It was expected of her, that she return like a female Santa Claus bearing gifts. She did not see David or either of the girls all day.

Feroza came home at about six in the evening, announcing, “I'm so hungry!” She was in high spirits. Zareen turned off the TV and followed her into the kitchen, saying, “I'm hungry too. I'll make us a spicy pora. Would you like that?”

“I'd love it!”

Zareen took out four eggs for the omelette and rinsed a light plastic chopping board with bright vegetable designs on it. She must remember to purchase a couple. No, at least four. Her sisters-in-law and cousins would love them. And knives. A set of those expensive knives that could chop off your fingers if you weren't careful. Potato peelers, cheese slicers. She was temporarily distracted from her worries at the thought of the pleasure the gifts would give.

“Only five days to go. It's Tuesday today, and by next Tuesday I'll be in Lahore,” Zareen announced, expertly chopping onions and jalapeño peppers.

Feroza looked up from the mail she was reading. “Is that all? But you only just got here!” She sounded genuinely dismayed.

David had returned. They could hear him moving around in the garage.

Zareen sighed heavily and turned towards Feroza. Holding the knife, which was plastered with cilantro and onion, she passed the back of her hand across her forehead in a weary gesture. “If you feel you must marry that man, I have only one request.”

The allusion to the subject was sudden, the capitulation unexpected. Feroza widened her eyes, pursed her full mouth in an O,
and affected a visibly theatrical start.

“What?”

This is what she loved about Feroza. Even as a child, after the banging of doors, the red-faced shouting rages and shut-ins, by the time Feroza emerged from her retreat, all was forgotten and forgiven. She rarely sulked. Even after their epic quarrel the day before, she was not above a little clowning.

“Get married properly,” Zareen said. “The judge's bit of paper won't make you feel married. Have a regular wedding. Don't deprive us of everything!”

Feroza remained silent and raised her naturally arched eyebrows quizzically.

“If you and David come to Lahore, we will take care of everything.”

“Mum, rituals and ceremony frighten David, he's too private a person. We were talking about it last night; neither of us care for meaningless formalities. Anyway, don't you think you should talk to David first?”

Zareen shrugged. “Then call him.”

David came into the kitchen looking unkempt, unshaven, and grim. Feroza noted the gold chain hanging from his neck, the star of David prominent on his chest. She appreciated at once that her mother, by constantly flaunting their religion, had provoked his reaction.

The top buttons on his plaid shirt were open and part of the shirt hung out of his pants. David pulled out a chair, turned it around, and, straddling it, faced Zareen, surly and mildly defiant. His glasses caught the light in a particular way, and Zareen noticed for the first time his resemblance to the image in the photograph Feroza had sent; something sinister in the definition of his obdurately set jaw and, with his hair grown somewhat, the cold, actorish symmetry of his profile. Zareen was taken aback by his behavior and appearance. His breath smelled of beer.

“Since you two are so sure you want to get married,” she said, concealing her nervousness and striving also to keep her tone
light, “I want you to grant me a little wish.”

David looked wary. “Feroza said you want me to come to Lahore to get married?”

“Oh, not only you. Your parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts. They'll all be our guests. I want you and Feroza to have a grand wedding!”

David remained silent and grimly unenthusiastic.

But marriages were the high point in Zareen's community life, and she was talking about her daughter's wedding. “We'll have the madasara ceremony first. You'll plant a mango tree. It's to ensure fertility. May you have as many children as the tree bears mangoes. In all ceremonies we mark your foreheads with vermilion, give you envelopes with money, hang garlands round your necks, and give you sugar and coconuts. They're symbols of blessings and good luck.”

David, if anything, looked more wary, and the light glinting off his glasses more sinister. Zareen had expected him to at least smile, but his sense of humor had vanished with his courtesy and sensibility. She felt she was seeing him in his true colors. “After that is done, we break a coconut on your head,” she said with acid relish.

Feroza laughed. David blinked his bewildered eyes and looked profoundly hurt. “She's only kidding,” Feroza said.

“Then we have the adarnee and engagement. Your family will fill Feroza's lap with five sari sets, sari, petticoat, blouse, underwear. Whatever jewelry they plan to give her must be given then. We give our daughters-in-law at least one diamond set. I will give her the diamond-and-emerald necklace my mother gave me at my wedding.

“Now, don't look so worried,” Zareen said, noting David's ghastly pallor and tightly compressed lips. “And tell your mother not to worry either. We'll be like sisters. I'll help her choose the saris. We get beautiful saris in Lahore, Tanchoi, Banarasi silks.”

The more defensive, startled, and confused David appeared, the more Zareen felt compelled to talk. Feroza signaled her with her eyes and, when that did not deter her, with gestures of her
hands and small amusing protests, “Mum, you'll scare him witless!” And to David, “It's a lot of fun, really!”

“Of course it's fun. We'll give your family clothes — suit-lengths and shirts for the men, sari sets for the women. A gold chain for your mother, a pocket watch for your father. Look here, if your parents don't want to do the same, we'll understand. But we'll fulfill our traditional obligations.”

David was angry. He sat there, exuding stubbornness. Not mulish balking but the resistance of an instinct that grasped the significance of the attack. He realized Zareen's offensive was not personal but communal. He knew that a Jewish wedding would be an equally elaborate affair, and though he didn't want to go through that either, he felt compelled to defend his position.

“My parents aren't happy about the marriage, either. It's lucky they're Reform Jews, otherwise they'd go into mourning and pretend I was dead. We have Jewish customs, you know. My family will miss my getting married under a canopy by our rabbi. We have a great dinner and there's a table with twenty or thirty different kinds of desserts, cake, and fruit. Then there's dancing until late at night.” David stopped to catch his breath and looked angrily at Zareen. “I belong to an old tradition, too.”

“All the better,” Zareen said promptly. “We'll honor your traditions.”

Zareen felt an exhilarating strength within her, as if someone very subtle was directing her brain, a power she could trust but not control.

His nostrils pinched and quivering, David felt the subtle force in Zareen undermining everything he stood for — his entire worth as a person. He wasn't sure what it was — perhaps a craftiness older people achieved. His mother would be a better match for Zareen. He had seen her perform the cultivated rituals of a closed society, fending for itself in covert and subliminal ways that were just as effective and difficult to pinpoint.

“Next, we come to the wedding. If there is a wedding,” Zareen said solemnly. “You'll sit on thrones like royalty, under a canopy of white jasmine, and the priests will chant prayers for an hour, and
shower you with rice and coconut slivers.”

“I thought you said the priests refused to perform such marriages.” David was sarcastic, a canny prosecutor out to nail a slippery opponent.

“I know of cases where such marriages have been performed,” Zareen said, as if confessing to knowledge better left concealed. “Feroza's grandmother has ways of getting around things — she's president of the Anjuman. The ceremony won't make you a Parsee, or solve Feroza's problems with the community, but we'll feel better for it; so will Feroza.”

“Feroza's grandmother is what?” David turned to Feroza for enlightenment.

Using the closest example she could think of, Feroza explained, “Grandmother's like a tribal chief.”

Zareen was taken aback. As far as she was aware, tribesmen inhabited jungles and mountain wildernesses, observed primitive codes of honor, and carried out vendettas. A far cry from the Westernized and urban behavior of her sophisticated community. But noticing David's flattering interest in what Feroza was saying, she didn't dispute it.

“You'll have a wonderful time,” continued Zareen compulsively. “Every day we'll sing wedding songs, smother you in garlands, stuff your pockets with money and your mouth with sweets.” She talked on and on. “I can just imagine Feroza in a white Chantilly lace sari embroidered with gold and sequins.”

David folded his arms on the back of the chair and let his chin rest resignedly on them. He imagined his mother talking the same way. She'd want him to get married under the wedding canopy in the synagogue in which he'd had his bar mitzvah and with the same rabbi performing the marriage.

David's blue eyes glazed over. Feroza glanced at him and felt bewildered and mortified by her mother's conduct.

Laura came into the kitchen in a boyish night shirt, apologized for interrupting Zareen's animated monologue, and withdrew with her cup of coffee.

Zareen said, “Such decent girls. They don't have boyfriends to
distract them from studies. They seem to know there is a time and place for everything.”

“They don't need boyfriends,” Feroza said complacently. “They're lesbians.”

Zareen did not immediately register what she heard. She had read the word once or twice in magazines but never heard it pronounced. She became acutely uncomfortable.

“Lovers,” Feroza added helpfully. “But why? They're pretty enough. They can get droves of boyfriends.”

“Some women just prefer women. Others are fed up. American boys change girlfriends every few months. All boys are not like my David. The girls can't stand the heartache. It takes them months to get over it. Laura says, ‘If Shirley gets my juices flowing, why should I mess around with boys?' Either way, they get on with their lives.”

Zareen wanted to throw up. She couldn't tell if Feroza was trying to impress her with her newly acquired worldly wisdom, or deliberately insulting her. Feroza had been properly brought up to be respectful, sexually innocent, and modest. That she could mention such things in her presence shocked Zareen.

Above all, Zareen was dismayed at her own innocence. In all the time she had stayed with them, she hadn't suspected the truth. What goings-on! Feroza was living with a boy and a couple of lesbians. She wouldn't dare mention it to Cyrus, or anyone. How could she face the disgrace of nurturing a brat who looked her in the eye and brazenly talked about women's juices? She tried not to show how hurt she was.

But Feroza gauged the measure of her pain. Not able to do anything about her mother's attitude, for the past two days Feroza had helplessly watched David's slowly mounting perplexity, disillusion, and fury. And suspecting that Zareen had just destroyed their happiness by her talk about diamonds and saris and superior Parsee ways, Feroza had instinctively hit back.

The assaults were too vicious, the hurt too deeply felt, for either to acknowledge her wounds.

Zareen continued talking, but she was distracted. A little later she said, “I've kept you long enough, David. You're almost asleep.” She stood up. “Well, good night.”

David nodded without looking at her or attempting to sit up. Feroza glanced at him, surprised and reproachful.

When Zareen left, David swung himself off the chair and, avoiding Feroza's anxious and wistful eyes, stretching his back and rubbing his neck, went into his room and shut the door.

Feroza's heart pounded and her body felt dull and heavy. She sat at the kitchen table for a long time, her face red and frozen. The tears came slowly.