Sister Mischief (20 page)

“Too much birthday hoopla?” she asks. “It was Marcy’s idea. Was I wrong to tip Mom off? She, like, loves you.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head fervently, “just enough hoopla. Thanks.” I go to kiss her on the cheek and she makes a face, flinching, but lets me.

“So what’s everybody going to be for Halloween?” Priya Rudra asks as she sets out fresh fruit and silverware next to the samosas, roti, curries, and cake.

Marcy raises her hand. “Missy Misdemeanor Elliott.”

I cackle nostalgically. “That’s hardly a costume. Do you remember the firestorm you set off at Plainview Middle School when you started dressing like a honky baby Missy at age, like, twelve?”

“Whatever, that warm-up suit was fierce, and it still is.” Marcy looks satisfied. Dr. Rudra looks confused.

“Remember when we didn’t get what Halloween was?” Rowie asks her mother, diving into the buffet.

“Oh, my gosh, I remember.” Tess laughs, close behind. “You showed up at my house in this super fancy sari, and I was all ‘Who are you supposed to be, your mom?’ I guess you sort of were.”

“There’s, like, a cultural gap between Indians and Halloween,” Rowie explains, a little embarrassed. “The closest thing we have is Diwali, which is sort of like Halloween on steroids with fireworks instead of costumes, but you get presents.”

“I thought I could just dress her up nicely.” Dr. Rudra shrugs matter-of-factly. “I used the clothes we had around the house.”

“Wow,” I say. “That’s kind of — fraught.”

Rowie dips a samosa in ketchup and pops it into her mouth, shrugging. “Just another Midwestern desi girl with identity issues.”

“So, Miss Esme.” Dr. Rudra claps her hands. “Tell us all about your seventeenth year. What are your dreams for the next three hundred sixty-five days?”

“Well,” I say, thinking, “hmm. I have a dream that . . . Sister Mischief gets to play a live concert in Holyhill.”

“Holla back,” Marcy says, pumping a fist in the air.

“And I want to write more rhymes with my girls.”

“Check, check,” Rowie says, chewing. “On that.”

“Worthy dreams.” Dr. Rudra nods thoughtfully, and I notice that she and Rowie have that same speaking tick, the one-bullet modifier:
vague,
worthy.
She pauses. “Is there anyone special in your life?”

I freeze, and Rowie looks like she’s going to choke on her paneer. I wonder, for a flash, if there’s any chance that Dr. Rudra has any idea what’s been going on between me and her daughter. She can’t. Or could she? Could she know and let it go on? I wonder if she could be offering an opportunity, a litmus test for how everyone might react. Then I look over and see the black panic in Rowie’s eyes, begging me not to do it, and I remember that she isn’t my opportunity.

I smile calmly. “My homies are super special. They threw me a birthday party.”

“Yes! And it’s better that way.” Dr. Rudra pats me on the elbow. “You girls have enough to worry about, between making excellent grades and working on your music. Rohini never lets me hear any of it, of course, even though I’d like to.” She looks meaningfully at her daughter, who doesn’t respond.

“I’ll rap for you, Dr. R.,” I say shyly. Rowie’s head jolts up like she’s been electroshocked. “Don’t worry, Ro, I’ll keep it PG. Mostly. Marce, can you drop me a beat?”

“Oh, good!” Rowie’s mom claps again, looking delighted. “I’m so curious, and Rohini won’t indulge me.”

“Unbelievable.” Rowie hides her head in her hands.

“I know just how you feel. Okay, be warned that this is, like, a super rough draft. SheStorm?”

Marcy beatboxes a mid-tempo backbeat. I take out my notebook and open it to the new lyrics I’ve been toying around with.
Go,
I will myself.

There’s more, but I’m so keyed up and out of breath that I have to stop.

Dr. Rudra is looking at me with a strange expression on her face. She reaches out and takes my hand. The girls are silent.

“I think that sometimes you don’t think that anyone is listening,” she says very slowly, “but you must believe that we are listening. You have something to say, and we are listening.”

“Girl, is that some new flow?” Rowie asks, her intoning all the same shades as her mother’s. “I don’t think I’ve heard it before.”

This is all getting kind of heavy now. It’s so much easier being a smartass.

“Yeah, it’s just some shit — oh, fuck, sorry — some stuff I’ve been dicking around with.” I wish everyone would go back to their lunch.

Rowie smiles a little mournfully; there’s something faraway in her voice. “I didn’t know you could do that shit without me.”

Dr. Rudra says something rapid and snappish to Rowie in Bengali. Rowie mutters a word or two back and shuffles in her chair, crossing her arms. She cracks a grin at us.

“She told me to watch my mouth.”

We laugh. “Rowie’s got some bad influences on her,” I say. “
Dangerous
American hussies.”

“Yo, Ezbones, we should lay down some beats to what you were just spitting,” Marcy throws in. “It was — that was real.”

“Couldn’t help but notice you hadn’t gotten to a chorus by the time you stopped,” Rowie says with a smirk.

“All we have to do is pull a hook and some vocals into it,” Tess adds. “Those lyrics’ve got a heartbeat if we can give them a skeleton. That was really beautiful, Ez. I’ve never heard you write about your mom before.”

“Okay!” I cry brightly. “Would you look at that, it’s subject change o’clock again! Getting a little hot in hurr.”

“No, dude, it’s time to make this track happen,” Marcy insists. “This is the next song in our arsenal. If we can get it together, that means we’ll have, like, a good three or four songs down hard for our concert.”

“Our
huh
?” Rowie stops her. “Since when are we having a concert?”

“Well, after 4H’s celebrity turn on the six o’clock news tonight, people might be more curious about what we have to say, don’t you think?” Tess reminds us.

“Are we talking about Sister Mischief or 4H here?” I ask.

“Does it matter? At a concert, we could charge for admission and make some money for real equipment,” adds Marcy, getting excited.

“We could bring back the telegenic goats,” Tess says.

“Would someone care to fill me in here?” Dr. Rudra asks. “I still haven’t heard the details of today’s disaster.”

“It was so ridiculous. Basically some hockey morons got together and decided to cover the school in soap and Crisco and let a whole bunch of goats loose so we could all get out of school early on Halloween,” Rowie explains.

“Goats?”
Dr. Rudra drops her fork in disbelief.

“We saved them. And then KIND-11 News showed up and Esme told them that the administration had no right to prohibit hip-hop on campus when they couldn’t control cruel antics like that.”

“Point well taken.” Dr. Rudra nods. “This is America, isn’t it? Isn’t freedom supposedly why we all came here in the first place?”

“
Damn
straight,” I say, pounding the table. “Pardon my Bengali.”

“So,” Rowie continues hesitantly, “we’re starting a student group to listen to and discuss music and, um, culture and sexuality. Because shouldn’t we be able to study what interests us? What’s relevant to us?”

“So,”
Marcy interjects, “this is the perfect moment to make our Holyhill debut. Then they really won’t be able to ignore us anymore. We have to put on a concert.”

“Sometimes I think you have no idea how much you are like me.” Dr. Rudra looks lovingly at Rowie. “Always curious. Always stirring up trouble.” She smiles. “It is good to question. To demand to know.” She gets up and begins to clear the table. “Go work on your new song.”

“We can help you clean up!” I say. “You made such a nice birthday lunch.”

“No, you have important things to attend to. And it’s Halloween. Go enjoy yourselves. Write big songs. Go.” She shoos us out of the kitchen and we trot downstairs to Rowie’s room. Rowie’s mom is the best mom I’ve ever had.

I brush my fingers along the tapestries hanging above the stairs as we thunder down to Rowie’s room and they leave a fine mist of dust on my fingertips. I’m getting too tangled up in Rowie’s house; it’s getting too tangled up in me. Going downstairs and seeing the treehouse out the window is like walking into a church where people are talking too loud.

Tess ambles over to Rowie’s piano, sitting at the bench with purpose for her warm-up. When she lifts the cover off the keys and opens her mouth to sing, I understand anew what it is about her voice that makes church ladies twist in their seats. The voice — hers — is gritty, mettlesome, riven with glittering edges. She sings her favorite hymn, and it chills me; when Tessie sings, I
believe
her:

Marcy whips her laptop out of her backpack and makes a few hasty clicks, then softly introduces a backbeat into the hymning. A wide smile spreads over Tess’s face, but she doesn’t miss a beat. I notice something strange happening: Rowie is singing, faintly, along with Tess. For all of us, the singing territory has always been firmly ceded to Tess. But the way Rowie’s singing right now, it’s like she doesn’t even realize anyone can hear her. Her face is like a chick’s first peck out of the eggshell, as raw, as vulnerable. In the vector of her closed eye I see the subtle birth of a tear, a tiny groundswell from dry brown earth. Her face is like she’s singing because she doesn’t have a choice.

My throat closes; the breath catches. Carefully, so gingerly, I reach out and place my hand on hers, not asking for a reciprocal grasp, just touching. Her eyes spring open, stung, caught, but she stills her hand and holds my gaze for a moment, toeing the border of a smile. Not knowing what else to do, I smile back, willing the song not to end. With her hand in mine, I look at Marcy and Tess and wonder what would happen if they knew. Tess’s eyes are closed, and Marcy hunches over the computer, pulsing with the beat; neither of them seems to feel me watching. If they really love me, I think, if I trust them enough to tell them all about my mom and something that might be faith, what could possibly happen if they just knew?

The song does end. I knew it would. Tess gives a layered-arpeggio flourish at the end, working hand over hand up the keyboard, and Marcy seamlessly concludes the percussion. Collectively, we take a breath; a beat passes. Marcy puts on Jay-Z’s “Roc Boys” and grins. Tess claps the cover back onto the piano.

“Birthday dance party!” Marcy hollers, grinding up behind me.