Born Confused (18 page)

My father had moved out of the living room, no doubt with my mother’s sure hand guiding his somnolent steps back to the bedroom, where he probably now lay snoring his deep hoarse birdsong into her feathery sleep. I moved quietly past and on towards the study to switch off the light. But a slight movement, a muted sound, made me soften my step still more. I hung back at the doorway and peered inside.

In the burning halo of the single bulb was my mother, kneeling in her brown-peacocked nightdress before one of the buckling blue
trunks. It was open, the weak-hinged lid angling back against the bookshelves for support, and she was staring deep into it, her hands moving over something and body gently swaying. She was singing softly under her breath, a muffled melody, the words turning husky on the high notes, gravelly on the low. She had a sad happy look gazing into the big blue box and with the hum and the sway and the hour it was as if there might be a baby there, a child having trouble sleeping, who she was whispering into the rocking arms of a lullaby.

I slipped deeper into the passage shadows and waited. She seemed so alone, like that time in Central Park; I felt afraid to disturb her. It was almost as if she were having a vision and a word from our ordinary world might break the concentration required to hold it.

My mother’s voice was as sweet and faint as a memory of a song. The melody seemed familiar even to me, and I waited till finally her breath ran out on a note and did not begin again, till I heard the creak of the trunk lidding down. I turned into the bathroom. Till the click of the lights off and the fading footsteps. When she was upstairs and the tooth-brush face-wash water sounds had subsided and I was sure her ear was to my father’s nighttime warble, I shifted into the study and switched the light back on.

My heart pounded in my throat as I lifted the lid of the trunk, going slowly so it wouldn’t squeal. When I looked inside, I saw fabric, a blue-violet sea swaddling high of it, and when I ran my hands through it, they caught in bells and jingly things. A blood-orange top, which seemed a sari garment for a svelte person, lay unhooked under the indigo furl, and then a piece that creased softly open like a fan; almost everything carried a rich gold brocade, save for a pair of leggings. I lifted the silken sheets and the bells shimmered fairy rain in my ear. A scent of must and tea rose and, with a soft clang: bangles, armlets, a pouch of rings; heavily jutting choker and longly
tangled gold chain; a headpiece made of precious metal and stone, and two open pendants, one a circle, the other a crescent; swung amulet earrings with thin chains ending in hairpins, and what looked like a massive medieval belt that sank silver into the folds in the trunk still.

Digging deeper I came across what seemed to be the primary source of the enchanted broken-ballerina music: Two short thick stretches of dark brown fabric lay flat on the bottom of all that treasure, every inch stitched up with thumbelina gold bells.

I had never seen these before, any of it, in fact, even when I was little and would spend hours playing with my mother’s jewelry box, hiding in the special part of her closet among the salvars and saris and satin skirts. The jewelry here was almost like that of the dancing girl statue in the living room, carved in painstaking detail on her bare rosewood body. And when I made this connection I made another one and realized what it was, what it had to be: the costume my mother must have worn as a young woman in India, when she and Radha were sole-stomping, prizewinning Bharat Natyam dancing girls. When her belly was still flat and she had never dreamed of leaving. When it wasn’t too late and the music was just beginning.

I was nearly unhemming out my skin wanting to talk to Gwyn about my close brush with geekdom (AKA Karsh). She’d left me a message instructing me to meet her at the Astor Place Starbucks (a few blocks from Dylan’s new pad) at 10
A.M.
sharp. She had a day off—I suppose from Dylan as much as her own coffee shop gig—and inspired by the rakhis, which had received two thumbs up from the critics (“kamasutronic,” per Julian; “puts the In in Indian,” according to Dylan), wanted to drag me along to shop for more “exotic” goods. Normally this wouldn’t have been my cup of chai, if you will, but getting Gwyn to myself was such a rarity, and I had so much to tell her, that I nearly had the butterflies waiting. However, my hopes were swatted down as ten o’clock came and went, and then eleven, and then even half past.

Her cell was going directly into voice mail, too. I was contemplating how to find Dylan’s apartment; I had no idea where it was, and even if I did, wasn’t sure I was up for the possible reunion with Julian going there might entail.

I had just returned from the pay phones when the Gwynster herself catapulted into the room, landing in a fell swoop in the seat across from me, all aflutter. Her cheeks were pink as in a little kid’s drawing and her hair was turbaned in white fabric. It was a Bad Hair Day trick—in fact inspired by Jimmy (Trilok) Singh—that made it look to all observers as if she were having a Cutting Edge one. From underneath the frayed edge I could see her goldilocks frizzing frenetically; she’d had no time to smooth in her special serum from roots to ends. She’d clearly been in a rush, though probably only I
could tell: Her lips were glossed instead of lined and painted; a dash of glitter winked on her brow bone, but not a stroke of mascara to her lashes. She was in a pair of slightly too big jeans that she’d rolled up to just above her plastic-flower-fronted flip flops, and a slightly too loose I Love New York T-shirt that she’d pulled through the neck hole to turn into a kind of urban-Western halter.

—Sorry I’m late, Boopster, she panted cloyingly. The rakhis flashed upon one wrist as she pointed out the other on which her Swatch boldly and erroneously declared 8:15
A.M.
—My watch stopped.

So I could sue Swatch instead. I tried to quell my annoyance.

—Well, let’s not lose any more time, I said, standing. She saluted me.

—On to Exotica Central! she proclaimed.

Outside, Gwyn took my arm when I turned towards the train.

—What are you doing, honey? We can walk to SoHo from here.

—SoHo? I said.—That’s not where the stuff is.

My bedroom drawer was where it was, or had been at least. West of Houston. Way West. Woe-Ho. But there were other branches open. Gwyn was watching me quizzically.

—Jackson Heights, I said.—That’s where my mom goes.

—Well, mother knows best, Gwyn said with a grin, pulling out her Metrocard.—At least, yours does.

As the train pulled up to the platform Gwyn took off her watch (which now read, interestingly, 8:24 A.M.) and matched it to the clock behind the ticket vendor’s head.

—Your watch stopped? I said suspiciously as we boarded.

—Well, I stopped watching
it,
she said, commencing a wink
then thinking better of it. She’d pulled her tube of waterproof sweatproof mascara out and was applying away—easier said than done since we were hurtling into the gaping mouth of the subway tunnel.—I can’t believe Dyl had this T-shirt. I nearly died when I saw it! But my other duds were just way too skanky.

Frock, was that all she ever thought about? She nodded, but she was staring at herself in her compact mirror, at the results of her fault-free makeup job. She hadn’t even bothered to ask me about the suitable boy meeting.

—Where is he anyways? I snuffled.—I figured you two were joined at the hip by now.

—Oh, he had to rush off to school; he’s auditioning some actresses for his movie.

—I thought you were going to star in it.

—Of course I am! said Gwyn.—But he has to have a supporting cast, right? Anyways, this project means everything to him, and I’ve got to be there for him. That’s what relationships are all about, Dimple. You’ll see.

Secrets played upon her now lined and lipsticked lips. Suddenly my Karsh story seemed pretty lame next to her own private theater.

We bumped along. Relationship. What did that mean, anyways? When she’d started up with Dylan, she’d said she was “seeing him”—as if she were having visions or something. And now they were “in a relationship.” That seemed pretty vague to me. I mean, you have a relationship with everyone and anything, don’t you? From the ottoman to the person in front of you on the subway. They are in
front
of you; that is their
relationship
to you. “Boyfriend” seemed a lot more uncomplicated a word, but she never used that with Dylan after he graduated.

Maybe I was just jealous; after all, “relationship” sounded so grown-up, so complicated and exciting, insinuating all sorts of lascivious behavior, whereas “boyfriend” was so legit, so PG-13. In any case, I didn’t seem to be even remotely in the radii of either.

—Listen, Dimple, I know I spend a lot of time with Dyl. But things are getting really serious. They’re. We’re. Well, Dylan is really, you know—he’s got a lot of experience, and I have to play my cards right. I mean, he’s a college boy. A
man.
I’ve got to hold on to him.

—Well, just use a condom.

She tilted her compact and studied me in it.

—That’s
your reaction?

—Isn’t that what we’re talking about?

—You think that’s where all my value is? she said, snapping the pressed powder shut. My reflection slapped closed with it.—In whether I’m sleeping with him or not? You don’t think I can, like, have an intellectual conversation with him or…or…entertain him otherwise?

—That’s not what I meant, I said. It really wasn’t, but my foot seemed to have quite a penchant for rubbing up against my larynx lately.

—Well, you should listen to yourself sometimes, said Gwyn.—‘Cause that’s sure what it sounded like.

The rest of the subway ride was spent in silence. Gwyn was right next to me but I felt something rise up between us, a partition, transparent and thin, but impermeable.

When the train lurched to a halt at our stop, I couldn’t take it any longer.

—Come on, I’m sorry, Gwyn, I said.—Let’s not mess up the whole day—we’re together at last. That’s what counts, right?

—You’re right, you’re right, she sighed.—No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I guess I’ve just been a little edgy lately. Can we make a deal, though?

—Whatever you want.

We were standing below the tracks. An American flag waved languidly on the corner. Every time a train rattled by a trill of birds rushed out from the rails where they’d been roosting, retreating to invisibility in the quiet moments between.

—Let’s just not talk about guys, period, for a while, okay?

—Okay, I said. My story had waited; it could wait a little longer. Now I could show Gwyn my part of town.

But after a good hour wandering around the Greek neighborhood where everyone assumed I was Greek and then the Dominican one where everyone thought I was Puerto Rican, I still couldn’t find it.

—It seemed so easy that time with my mother, I lamented.

—Should we call her? said Gwyn, handing me a minuscule cell phone.—I upgraded. And look—I even programmed you in.

—You did? I said, pleased.

—See? You just push five and send.

Who were one through four? I wondered.

—So your mom’s one and then?

—Well, actually, one is messages, two is Dyl’s cell, three’s his apartment, and then four’s his parents’ place in Jersey, then you, then work, then the Lillian.

If I had a cell, Gwyn would be my number one button. Well, okay, maybe my parents would be first, but she’d be two at the latest. I tried to imagine feeling about someone the way she evidently did
about Dylan—enough to program in a Secret Service roster’s worth of coordinates for him—but came up blank. Meanwhile Gwyn had gone telephonic with my mother.

—Hi, Mrs. Lala—guess where I brought your daughter! Queens! Yeah, to check out the Indian neighborhood! I’ve been thinking lately she should get a little more into her Indian self. Only prob is we can’t find it. Look to her heart? No—no, I mean the Indian hood. We can’t find the Indian hood.

She passed me the phone.

—Hi, Ma, I said.

—Go inside a deli or store, my mother was saying sagely, like it was all coming to her in a telepathic flash; she spoke as if she were leaving a message and was shouting as if the answering machine were in India. I held the phone an inch off my ear.—And find out from a Greek or Puerto Rican how to get there. But
inside
the store only. Don’t ask any altoo faltoo people hanging around on the street in the middle of the day—they are obviously not aware of how to go anywhere fast. I love you and am very excited you are in Jackson Heights.

—I love you, too, Ma, I said.

—Whatever you do, do not pay the full price, she said, sounding like a cookie fortune.—And stress your Marathi side—we have more star appeal. And please don’t be too late tonight; your father is trying to switch his call if Dr. Stuttgarden will get off the toilet so we can all eat together like a real family.

We clicked off.

—You’re all having dinner tonight? said Gwyn, tucking her phone away.

—Yeah, you heard her. Like a real family.

—Yeah, well, the Lillian and I have a family thing tonight, too.

—You do?

—I told her about you and your family things and said I wanted us to do that, too.

—That’s excellent, Gwyn! I said. I was surprised—not only that Mrs. Sexton would oblige, but that Gwyn would even want her to in the first place—but this was great news.

We set out to follow through with my mother’s instructions and, true enough, after we quizzed an Athenian diner owner we got a set of directions that landed us smack in the middle of the Indian neighborhood, no passport required.

The area was like a blast of Bombay parachute-dropped and landed not only miraculously intact but burgeoning, undulating in the heat like a street-to-sky mirage. We began to weave as if drunk in and out doorways and on and off curbs as we shifted into full-on exploring mode, Gwyn turning heads all the way.

As in India, there were people, people everywhere: women in brilliant saris and yellow gold with thin knit cardigans and sometimes socks stuffed into toe-looped chappals, shuffling flashily like deposed queens through the supermarket aisles, half-bag lady half-genie, plucking up half-price jars of ghee and even frozen food (I was amazed at all of the idlee and dosa TV dinners you could find here). Men and boys blended, “hanging around” in loudmouthed clusters; young girls with demure faces and platform shoes whooshed and stomped gigglingly by them. Indians everywhere—save for a few hip-hoppy boys with turned-round baseball caps who must have been Dominican. They cruised occasionally through in beat-up cars with the windows rolled down, pumping thumping beats that mingled nearly seamlessly with the shrill Hindi film music thrusting open the doorways of the numerous bootleg video and tape sellers on the sidewalk.