Naming Maya

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Authors: Uma Krishnaswami

BOOK: Naming Maya
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To Rosemary
I'd like to thank Priya Nair, for raising the questions that led me to Maya's story; my mother, Vasantha Krish-naswami, for showing me the streets, hospitals, police stations, cybercafés, and tea stalls of Mylapore; Sumant and Nikhil, who allowed these characters to move in with us indefinitely; my agent, David Hale Smith, for staying power; Audrey Couloumbis, Elisa Carbone, Jeanne White-house, Katherine Hauth, Lucy Hampson, Rukhsana Khan, Stephanie Farrow, Vaunda Nelson, and my almost-namesake, artist Uma Krishnaswamy, for reviewing drafts raw enough to pucker the reading muscles; Dr. Harold Schiffman, for his help with the glossary; Lisa Rowe Fraustino, for giving me the chance to use the short story form as an incubator for some elements of this novel; and, above all, Janine O'Malley, for helping this book come to be.
The day after Mom and I arrive in India from New Jersey, I watch the number 45B bus screech down the road. It clatters to a halt outside my grandfather's old house that we have come here to sell. Passengers tumble out. Another few feet and the bus will have gone crashing into the tea-and-soda stall that sits at a tilt against the tree on the corner. A narrow escape. The traffic hurries on.
Someone squeaks our front gate open. I look out the window again, and I see a tiny figure with gray hair pulled into a little braid so tight the end of it curls up and sticks out at a defiant angle. I grin to myself, and throw the door open for Kamala Mami.
She pretends to be all formal. “I hear you need a
cook,” she says. And then she's whooping with delight to see me, grabbing my face in hands as hard and rough as a coconut shell. She taps her hands against the sides of my head and kisses her fingertips,
smacksmack! “Ayyo,
” she cries.
“Kutti kunju yenna periya rajakumari ayittal!”
Me? A baby bird who has grown into a princess? “Yes, yes!” she insists. She is quick and restless. She does not ask, “Do you remember me?” She assumes—and she is right—that I cannot possibly have forgotten her.
“So, Prema?” she says to my mother. “Why are you so thin? Don't they feed you properly there, in America? Good thing I'm here to cook for you.”
I know well from my last visit two years before, right after my grandfather died, that Mami is just a cook the way the monsoon is just a little drizzle.
We missed my grandfather's funeral, because in the Hindu tradition you cremate dead people very soon after they die. Mom says it's probably because Hinduism is a religion born in a hot place, and the heat doesn't allow anyone the luxury of waiting till relatives arrive from far away. My mom's cousin Lakshmi and her husband took care of everything till we got here, and then we all observed thirteen long days of ceremonies. Priests invoked the blessings of the ancestors, and we kept an oil lamp lit to guide my grandfather's soul to
its new life. During this time relatives I had never heard of arrived to stay and mourn, and gossip. And eat. Mami kept us kids happy with an endless stream of delicious food. Dad didn't come and Mom couldn't forgive him for that.
Now it seems only minutes before Mami takes possession of the kitchen. She scrubs the floor and pours buckets of water everywhere, and looks like she's been doing it forever. She's also moving pretty fast for someone who appears to be about a hundred years old.
“I don't know about this,” says my mother under her breath. But there is no time for discussion. Mom stares at Mami, who is now sloshing at a small flood with a broom that is nothing more than a skinny bunch of reeds tied together.
“Come, come,” Mami says to us. “Come and talk to me.”
Mom says, “Mami, it's such a surprise to see you! I have to ask, how did you know we were here?”
Mami pauses in her mopping. She says simply, “Lakshmi told me.”
Mom looks thoughtful. Mami adds, “I go to see her every now and then. For old times. And to help out when she needs me.”
Mom murmurs, “It's good of you, Mami, but we can manage. You shouldn't go to all this trouble.”
“Nonsense,” says Mami. “I've come to help.”
And you can't stop me,
says her chin. “And to see this old house again,” she adds.
“I have to sell it.”
“You have rented it out for the past two years,” says Mami.
“Yes, and look how much trouble that's been for Lakshmi,” says Mom. “I'm so far away. She's had to come running every time there's been a problem. Anyway, after the last tenants left, no one else wants to rent it. It's too old and too big.”
“It's your house.” Mami shrugs.
“Yes,” says Mom. Suddenly, the tension between them is as brittle and dry as the broken branches of the old lime tree outside the window.
“It isn't my place to give you advice,” says Kamala Mami, “but what would be so wrong with coming back here? To live. What have you got in America now?”
“Mami, we've been through all that. My life is there now. There's no question of coming back.” Their talk is a blend of honey and chili powder fighting for room on the tongue.
“All right,” says Mami, jutting a bony chin in my direction. “All right, then what about this one? You should think about her.”
“Er … I think I'll go out in the garden,” I say. I snatch up my camera and escape.
Among the tangled bushes and weedy flower beds outside, I make little piles of rocks and think about my parents. The anger feels familiar. It has simmered so long it has become a friend. I knock the rocks over and lay them end to end in a long line that bends and curves about like a river. I get my camera ready to take photos of my river of rocks.
There is a picture I hold inside me, as close as I hold my resentment. It is a picture of us, back when us meant “three.” Mom and Dad, and me. The timer on the camera has triggered flash, image, and smiles, all in one quick click. My parents' heads are turned toward each other, but they're looking at me. I'm holding both their hands tightly, like a magnet gripping steel. On my face is an openmouthed, gap-toothed six-yearold laugh.
That was before Mom packed up and left our house in New Jersey, and took me with her. Before she and Dad sold the house. Before Dad moved to Texas, to a new job and what he said was a glittering hi-tech future.
The father in that picture has planted himself in my head. He talks to me often. Sometimes it's practically a conversation. It's been happening ever since he went away to Texas and didn't come back. Oh, he came back for the divorce settlement. Then he went away again. I kept thinking that at some point he'd come back for
me, but he didn't. At first he called often, and his parents, my grandparents, called too. The calls upset my mother. Over time, they became less frequent.
Here in this wild garden, I step back and take a look through the lens at my river of rocks. My camera feels comfortable, like an extension of my hand. The silver brand name on it is still bright, but the smaller red and white letters on the left-hand side are faded from use. Only the slashing red X of the model name, Radical X, remains. My stomach feels tight as I look at the rocks, and the years of sadness in my family come washing over me.
A mother and daughter should be a team. It isn't that way with us. We don't understand each other. Sometimes I think Mom wishes she could have had a different kind of daughter. She doesn't exactly say so, but I can tell by the way she looks at me that I make her nervous. When I was younger I used to wish I had some magic spell that could change things in my family. Fix them. Make them simpler. The Dad voice in my head says,
A mom and a dad should be a team too, right?
My oldest memory is of climbing on the arm of a great wide sofa in our house in New Jersey, and gripping the soft fabric with my fingers and toes. I was standing on tiptoe to look up at a framed print that
hung on the wall above the couch. It was a scene from the Ramayana. In it the prince Rama and his beautiful wife, Sita, have been exiled to the forest by Rama's jealous stepmother. A row of smooth round rocks curves about like a river, winding through the grounds. Rama's heart is so good and Sita's is so gentle that all the animals of the forest gather around them in peace. Lions and deer, tigers and sheep and peacocks, play and rest together in that picture. “See,” they say to Rama and Sita, “while you are here, we can't fight with one another.”
Dad came up behind me, and lifted me high so I could look right at the print. The red and yellow and black shapes in the picture blurred into pure color as I got closer. I didn't have to turn around to know Mom was there too. I could hear her laughing.
But I am not a strong enough glue to hold them together. Looking at the river of rocks I have made in this warm, bright garden, I know that what I want, more than anything, is for that image of my family to be whole again.
It takes Kamala Mami only one more day to put the house in order, and then she announces she needs to go shopping. Mom, she says, has bought barely enough to feed a couple of birds. How would two eggplants and a handful of rice possibly be enough for a growing child like me? Mom counts out rupee notes for her, and gives her a list. Mami promptly tucks the money away, and says she knows exactly what to get, not to worry.
She winks at me. She is a swift mover, this Mami. I am not used to her style. The adults in my life have generally belonged to one of two categories: slow and deliberate or quick and angry. I have always been quick and unthinking. I was always the clumsy kid who ran first and thought later.
Quick and deliberate is new to me.
Mom seems relieved when I tell her I'll go shopping with Mami. She's probably been wondering what to do with me while she goes about the business of selling Thatha's house. She has pulled her hair back into a ponytail for the heat, only to have wisps of it escape about her head like smoke, black tinged with gray. She looks beautiful and distant. She stuffs papers into an old brown briefcase, getting ready to go out.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“To the real estate office. I have to sign a contract.”
I follow her out to the street to call an auto rickshaw. The little cabs cobbled onto small motorbike engines are everywhere, their drivers scouting the sidewalks for possible customers.
One of the cabs pulls up alongside, and waits expectantly, his engine sputtering. “Luz Church Road,” says my mother. He nods, and they bargain briefly over the fare.
“Mom,” I say, “why doesn't Mami want you to sell the house?”
She purses her lips as she gets into the rickshaw, as if she's looking for words that have gotten mislaid. “Mami and I go back a long way,” she says at last. “She doesn't understand that this is something I have to do.”
Gas fumes plume out of the auto rickshaw exhaust.
The revving engine drowns out her goodbye. Dust scatters, and my mother is gone.
 
I am not sure how much help Kamala Mami actually needs. But I go to the kitchen and tell her I'm ready whenever she is. “Wait two minutes,” she says, and I wait, tugging at my cotton
salwar kameez
. Its long tunic feels dressy over loose cuffed pants. I've grumbled about this, but Mom has paid me no mind. “This is India” is all she'll say when I complain. “You just can't go around in shorts, and that's that.”
Mami tidies up, gives the kitchen counter a final swipe. She tucks into her mouth a roll of the betel leaf she likes to chew. It causes her to interrupt conversations in order to dash outside and shoot a dark red stream of juice into a handy flower bed or drain. Now she gathers up an armload of shopping bags, from faded burlap sacks to a plastic affair with handles. I get my camera, and we set out.
Mami walks at a brisk clip. I do my best to keep up. On and off the sidewalk we go, weaving through pedestrians, cyclists, occasional cars, and auto rickshaws. Here and there we detour to avoid a cow, or a couple of goats. And I stop to take pictures.
We pass a huge tree, its umbrella of leaves reaching halfway across the road. “Just a minute,” I tell Mami.
“I have to get this one.” The tree is so big its trunk has chewed into a low brick wall, splitting it in two right at the corner. In the alcove formed by the split, someone has placed a little statue of Ganesha. People walking by have left flowers and coins in this roadside shrine to the plump, cheery elephant-headed god. With a nod and a
namaskaram
, palms joined, to Ganesha (or Vinayagar, Ganapathi, Pillaiyyar—pick any one of his 108 names!), Mami settles on her haunches to wait for me, right there on the sidewalk. She chews comfortably on her betel leaf. I begin to click.
I am working my way down from the tree's feathery leaves, along its massive trunk, and to the top of the wall, when a stick goes clunk on the pavement, so close to my feet I jump. I look up into a pair of stern eyes in a mustachioed face. A policeman in a crisp khaki uniform stands before me like a pillar.
“Ey, paapa,”
says a voice like stone. “No photos.”
I've done something wrong.
Mami swoops to my rescue. She stands as tall as her four feet ten inches will allow, and meets the policeman's eyes unflinching. “She's from foreign places,” she says to him. “She's never seen a tree like this before.”
The policeman isn't budging. “This is a police station, do you know that?” He jerks a hand, palm up, toward
a sign. It reads, in large red Tamil and English letters, MYLAPORE TRAFFIC POLICE SUBSTATION, NO. 2 A.
Mami shifts into high gear. “I know how to read,” she tells him. “And I also know there are thugs and bandits breaking the law all over this city, and you are here, harassing a small child.” She pauses for effect, and raises her voice a notch, bringing a couple of cops out from the station to see what's going on.
“Kali-yugam,
says Mami.”It's the age of sinners, when a child can't take a picture of a tree. This tree, where Pillaiyyar himself has chosen to live in its shade.“She knocks her fists on the side of her head, a gesture to Ganesha, the thing you do when you visit his shrine at the temple. Even I know that. The Hindu Association Culture Camp was big on Ganesha. All the summers I attended, we read stories about him and made the sweet dumplings,
modakas
, that he's supposed to like. But in New Jersey, Ganesha can't be found on street corners.
Mami sets her chin at mustachio-face. His move next. He backs off, mumbling something about police security.
“Yes, yes,” says Mami, “everyone can see how dangerous is my Maya.” She turns and spits a stream of red betel juice expertly, so that it arcs over my foot and lands in the gutter. It's all I can do not to jump again.
We proceed on our way. Mami is triumphant. I am a little shaky from all this excitement. “What did I do?” I ask her. “I didn't know I wasn't supposed to take pictures there.”
“Tchah!
You did nothing wrong. When real problems are too big to solve,” says Mami, “some people make up little ones, just so they can feel better.” She grins at me, and I feel suddenly protected.
 
We finish our shopping. I am damp with sweat by the time we get home. A woman stands next door on the porch of the Rama Rao house. She bangs on the door, and then she yells across to us,
“Ey akka,
you know where these people went?”
Akka, thangachi, mama, mami.
Total strangers call each other big sister, little sister, uncle, auntie, as if they're the closest of relatives.
Mami yells back over the wall, “What do I know, sister?”
The woman grumbles, packing a betel leaf into her mouth and chewing it deliberately as she gives up on the door and strolls over to the wall.
“Ayyo,”
she says, “they're a pain to work for. Make you scrub the floor five times over, and the coffee's terrible!”
“Enough,” warns Mami. “Watch your tongue.”
“Okay, okay, so she tells me to go, it's all right. But
I want my pay. You got an extra two rupees? Bus fare?”
Mami slips her a folded two-rupee note. “All right,” she says. “Off with you.” A final grumble and the woman makes a run for the bus.
The bird calls are so loud they beat into my brain. “That bird,” Mami says, pointing up into a tree where something unseen is shouting out its song, “is called the brain-fever bird.” I can understand why. This heat and brightness and bustle would be enough to give anyone's brain a fever.

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