Faerie (4 page)

“Turn over there,” I said, relieved to see the blinking Dairy Queen sign with its familiar frosty white cone welcoming me home. As he pulled up to my doorstep, he turned to me and smiled vaguely, wishing me a fine weekend. Before I shut the door, he added, “Apologize to your parents for me for having made you miss your bus.”

I nodded, then watched him pull away. He seemed so dull and perfunctory, but it occurred to me that he was trying to restore the official bonds that fell within the lines of the law. He was harnessing his desire and nudging his pupil back behind her desk.

In my bedroom, I saw my calorie diary tucked on the shelf and my heart sank. I opened it and resolutely put pen to paper, as if to restrain my unwieldy imagination and desire.

       
Ham sandwich = 230 calories (As I watched him in the school yard.)

       
Bag of potato chips = 250 calories (When he caught me staring at him.)

       
Chocolate brownie = 430 calories (The embarrassment his look brought on.)

I put the calorie diary back on the shelf and lay on the bed, head under my pillow.

Within weeks we had a drama club set up in an empty classroom. Mr Black assigned me the role of Juanita, a jaded Spanish mistress, probably because she and I shared the same tawny racial shade and full figure. The scrawny white girls in the club would play fair maidens who, unlike the temptress, were fated to happy endings.

In rehearsal, Mr Black and I had our first real argument. According to the script, when Juanita, a poor farm girl, is dumped by her married lover, she goes mad and spends the rest of her days in an asylum. When I argued that losing her marbles over a man who did not love her would not be true to her character, Mr Black pointed out that this was not up for negotiation and that, “the director's job is to carry out the vision of the writer, and the actor's job is to carry out the vision of the director. Is that clear?” I had been chastened and put in my place. Now when we rehearsed, Mr Black remained cool and cordial, always curt. The tender and warm timbre of his voice seemed to have vanished.
How had I become hideous to him so suddenly? Because I had stood up for myself as a grownup woman?

And I had literally grown—to an appalling 130 pounds. I was heavier than any girl in the class and possibly the school. I wanted to be loved more than I cared to be right. I wanted to run into his arms and submit so that he would speak sweetly to me again.

On the eve of the performance, I tried to rehearse my lines before the bathroom mirror, but my mind went blank. I began jumbling up my dialogue, reconfiguring it into utter nonsense. In sheer panic, I crept into the kitchen at midnight and sought comfort from a box of stale Girl Guide cookies that I had hidden in the shady underbelly of the pantry. In the freezer I discovered a hibernating carton of ice cream. I gorged myself in the dimly lit kitchen, with the steady hum of the refrigerator for company, seeking the anaesthetic bliss that food brings. In those precious minutes I existed in a private parenthesis of absence, a limitless curve splintered from real time and any semblance of bodily existence. Before long, I had consumed half of the box of cookies and left the ice cream container with just a few guilty spoonfuls of Rocky Road. Within moments, I felt a rush of panic and anxiety, and I began to feel sick. I ran to the bathroom and curled over the toilet, nudging my fingers down my throat, but I couldn't purge and undo the moment of weakness. I drank half a litre of water instead, lumbered back to my bedroom, and fell asleep.

The next day, we excitedly collected backstage and wrangled into our costumes. Mine was an azure skirt and embroidered shawl. At the tables where we put on our makeup, the big bright light-bulbs framed us, making everyone appear larger than life and gorgeously famous. My heart fluttered with pride at the magical illusion that transformed us scruffy, sweaty high school kids into stars. In my mirror, I accentuated my features with a smear of lipstick and stroke of eyeliner. How grownup I looked, my baby face chiselled with blush along an imaginary cheekbone. The woman in the mirror looked back at the young girl. Was she seeing my future?

A cheery voice brought me out of my reverie. “This is your day!” said Mr Black as he swam into the room in his sea-green shirt with hair combed back in a silky wave. “You all look splendid.” I was swept away in his undertow, all my self-possession gone. Mr Black's spectacularly handsome image multiplied madly in the mirrors lining the walls of the room, making me dizzy. The rogue wave took me far from shore. I fumbled with makeup, a hairbrush, seaweed and sandy pebbles.

“Are you alright, Lila?” His eyes met mine in the mirror and I froze.

“I know I've been hard on you, but it doesn't mean that I don't care. I know that you'll be absolutely brilliant tonight.”

I looked back at him with a trembling smile.

The play unfolded perfectly. Once the spotlight fell on my face and the warmth from the audience blanketed the stage, I slipped into character. The school year ended with roaring applause, and in sad, ecstatic silence, I whispered to myself, “Encore, encore.”

09
. Homecoming

During the lonesome summer that followed, dullness hung over me like a wet wool blanket. The thought of not seeing Mr Black for the entire summer only made matters worse. Not even my camera could tempt me out of my depression; it sat on the shelf like a relic, collecting dust.

“Go play outside!” Mother would yell when she caught me wandering through the dim hallways during the dull afternoons.

One day, as my thoughts drifted aimlessly as I hit a tennis ball against the side of the house, I heard a familiar, honeyed voice.

“Well? Aren't you going to say hello?”

I dropped my racket to my thigh. It was Monika. I hadn't seen her for so long, and now she seemed so different. Firm, sure-footed.

She walked up and embraced me. “Look at you! You're so grown up now, Lila.”

The door burst open and Mother emerged, wiping her hands with a dishtowel, trailing a gust of acrid garlic from her Saturday cooking. She squinted at us, then gasped when she recognized Monika.

“I was in town, so I thought I'd drop by,” Monika offered.

Mother lowered her face into her garlicky towel and sobbed with happiness.

In the living room, Mother served tea from a tray using our best china cups and a plate of Peak Freans, the kind with a red glob of jelly in the centre that made them look like Christmas tree decorations. This formality only seemed to make the reunion more tense. Small talk skipped between the unusually humid weather, the latest episodes of
Oprah
, and Indian celebrity gossip. Mother safely dodged the topic uppermost on our minds, but she hadn't stopped grinning. I observed her glow as she spoke to Monika, alternating between Punjabi and English, engaging in the hybrid tongue she usually only shared with Dad. Now she spoke to Monika as one adult
janani
to another. The room got hotter and the tea darkened as the afternoon wore on. Dad would soon walk through the door. Would his eyes fill with anger? Sadness? Or just restrained surprise?

It was a sweltering summer day when I had last seen Monika. I watched from my bedroom window as Dad paced back and forth on the front lawn, screaming at her. I had never witnessed Dad in such a rage. Within half an hour, Monika had packed and was swallowed into a cab and driven away from our home. Monika, the straight-A student, studious and hard-working, helpful at home, the perfect babysitter to her young cousins. A good girl. What had she done that had been so terrible? What shameful, hideous thing? She did what many children do to their parents: she deviated from his expectations of her. Six months before that front yard drama, Monika had announced to my dumbstruck parents that she was going to marry her lover.

“Who is this? Who is he—this, this ‘lover' of yours?” my father demanded. Monika had told them that she was dating
a man more than twice her age, a divorced truck driver from Shawinigan.

“How did you meet this man?” was his next question. She admitted that he'd given her a lift as she was hitchhiking alone one weekend night after a party. He wasn't just a truck driver, she insisted; he was an engineer.

Dad stared at her as though she was a stranger who had hijacked his niece. “Have you forgotten your heritage, your honour, and your duty to your family?” He reminded her that he and Mother had planned a different future for her: she was to get a university degree in pharmacology, then marry a professional—and a Punjabi boy. There was no other way.

Monika said she would not leave Jacques. The argument volleyed back and forth, but Monika reminded him that in a few days, when she turned eighteen, Dad would have no authority over her. So he gave her an ultimatum. If she left with this “Mr Lorry Driver,” she would not be welcomed back. Despite her adult call to arms, Monika broke down in tears and agreed to break off the engagement. Everything seemed to return to almost “normal” for a few weeks.

We had just finished our usual Sunday lunch and Monika had gone outside to water the lawn when the phone rang. Mother answered and raised the receiver for Dad. He became unusually silent after taking the phone, and I turned to look at him. His expression went from a perplexed frown to fury.

“Attend what? I'm sorry, I am not following … What are you talking about? … Are you sure? No, she is not. This is impossible. There must be a mistake.”

Without a goodbye, he hung up the phone and stared in shock. He said something quietly to Mother and headed down the hallway toward Monika's room, pushed open her door, and walked in. But Monika wasn't there.

She was in the garden hosing the rose bush. She wore a buttercup yellow T-shirt and denim shorts, and the misty water cast her in shimmering stardust. Dad stormed outside. “
Ki kitta tune? Sharam nahee andhi!
” he roared as he marched toward her and snatched the hose from her hand. A flurry of vexed Punjabi obscenities tumbled from his tongue. Monika tried to plead with him, but my educated, progressive, westernized father channelled the old-world convictions of past generations. Monika was his flesh and blood. He was, in his rage, immune to the influence of higher education, western ways, and modern life with its liberal leanings. Monika carried a responsibility, unique to the children of immigrants, to uphold the traditions and values of the land which had birthed her parents' generation while excelling with competitive rigour in the traditions of the host country. It was a delicate cultural balancing act, and Monika had failed.

Mr Lorry Driver's parents had phoned to invite us to celebrate the good news and were sorry we were out of the country and could not attend the wedding.

Once she left, we obeyed an unspoken rule that her name was not to be uttered. Dad transformed Monika's room into a library. The reconstruction of this room took up most of his time outside his academic and domestic duties. I helped him classify books, paint hard-to-reach corners, and accompanied him to furniture stores. I was ever the obedient little child. Never did I
want to trigger in him the anger he felt for Monika. I would not dare to grow up on him now.

“
Aunty ji
…” Monika lowered her voice. “He treats me well. He is a good husband.” Then her manicured hand fell on her belly. “We're expecting …” Mother brought her hand to her mouth as though covering her lips would hold back her tears. “I'm happy,
Aunty ji
. I want nothing but your blessing.”

Monika walked over to my mother and, crouching down, folded her arms about Mother's broad ample figure.

We then heard the low rumble of Dad's Chrysler, the slam of the car door. Monika gave me a winking smile, as if to say that all would be okay. Mother stood up stiffly and walked into the kitchen. We heard whispers, then Dad appeared in the doorway. He looked first at me, then at Monika, who had risen to her feet.

“Hello, uncle.”

He stared at her for a moment and, without a word, turned and disappeared down the hallway. We heard the library door shut with a resolute click.

Monika's shoulders slumped in resignation.

Mother let out a sigh. “He'll come around. Don't worry.”

Monika gave me a feeble hug before leaving again, without my father's blessing.

By the end of that summer, I weighed 135 pounds.