Tanya Tania (14 page)

I still haven't told my mom that I don't want to go to college in America. My dad knows. I mean I didn't even have to tell him. But he says I have to tell my mom, he's not going to tell her for me.

I wish he would but my dad is not brave and it's probably not a good idea anyway. At least I win some of my fights with my mother, my dad doesn't even really try. He always gives up halfway.

I can't leave my life here, Tanya. Today I went to Xavier's with a friend who goes there now. I really liked it. It's beautiful and there are lots of good-looking kids there. I don't want to leave Nusrat and my house and my room and go anywhere. I don't understand why my mom wants me to go so badly. You'd think she'd want to save her money and have at least one kid at home right?

You think that she's maybe thinking that once both Sammy and me are out of the house, she's going to divorce my dad?

I need to tell her that I'm not going to go to college in America. Tell me how to tell her. Do you think your mother could talk to my mother?

Love,

T

April 28, 1992

Karachi

Dear Tania,

Remember how you told me that I ignore your hard letters? Well, I just wanted to say, in the spirit of being factual: you do too. You haven't asked about my mother. You haven't asked if there have been any more kidnapping threats. And you haven't congratulated me about becoming Head Girl.

On that note, let me start by congratulating you on your prizes. Were all of them for sports? I don't think Esprit de Corps sounds like a perfume. Perhaps you should consider taking up French.

I just don't understand why you don't want to go to college in America. Don't you want a better life? And if that was a joke about my mother speaking to your mother, it wasn't funny.

I am thinking through my summer plans. Remember my to-do list from when my leg broke? I've completed most of the items on it except Chhoti Bibi. I had really hoped that she would be further along by now than she is.

I don't know what to do with her. It's not that she's not clever, she is. She gets concepts quickly and I really think she will do well in Science. But I just can't get her to do Math or to study the social sciences. And she is only allowed to fail one subject to pass the whole exam. I don't understand why she won't just sit down and learn History and Geography. It's the easiest because it doesn't require any thinking. How many centimetres of rain does it take for a successful cotton crop? 400cm. Which year was the first battle of Panipat? 1526. It's all in the book. I don't understand why she won't do it.

She has become quite stubborn as well. Earlier all I had to do was ask her to learn a page by heart and she would do it then and there, sitting right in front of me. Now she argues with me about why she needs to know when Babar lost Samarkand and what does that have to do with Pakistan anyway. The other day she argued with me for a full hour until finally I had to bribe her with an episode of 90210—with the AC on—before she agreed to learn by heart the chapter on weather patterns in Punjab. And it's the smallest chapter.

It can't go on like this. I am losing all power and authority. I have to argue with her to spend time studying with me and bribe her to do her homework. The exam is only three months away and she is nowhere near prepared. And if she fails I can't put it in my college applications.

And yet, it is not only that.

It is like she has become a different person. I guess she has become used to my golden hair and light eyes. I am no longer her fairy doll. She no longer wants to hear the story of how my parents met. Had I told you about the time I had asked her to write out a page of English grammar ten times and she wrote it out a hundred times? When I asked her why she did that she said she had wanted to make me happy.

And now she stalks into my room late and doesn't even blink when I ask her why she hasn't done her homework. She has begun to harangue me to go out, to go to parties, to spend time with Ali, to not sit at my desk like a mole allergic to the sun, an expression I strongly suspect she has made up.

I want to blackmail her and say, Chhoti Bibi, it makes me sad when you don't do your homework. Don't you want to make me happy anymore? But I am scared she will look at me with her dead black coal eyes and say: No Baji. No.

And who am I without my light eyes and golden hair? A hiding, crouching kind of person.

Chhoti Bibi strode into the house on her first day here. I'll never forget that. Unlike Bibi in all her sourness and my mother in all her translucence, Chhoti Bibi makes you feel like the world is exactly as it should be.

That's what Nusrat sounds like to me as well. Isn't it funny Tania, how you and I are the ones born into privilege and yet it's these two who know exactly who they are and where they're going?

Except of course I know where I'm going. Harvard. Are you sure you want to stay exactly where you are?

Love,

Tanya

May 5, 1992

Bombay

Dear Tanya,

You don't really think that I'm like you, do you? You're kidding right? I mean, like how could you?

I've decided to have sex with Arjun. I can't make him wait any longer and actually, I'm dying to have sex. We've come really close many times and really, last time…never mind. You won't understand.

Nusrat is really angry with me about this. Ever since I told her I had decided to have sex with Arjun she won't talk to me. She doesn't stay after finishing her work. She just leaves without telling me.

Do you think she's jealous? She doesn't have a boyfriend. She's actually kind of not really developed in that way. She's so small and slight and somehow I can't even imagine her with a boy. It makes me feel a bit sick.

Anyway, I've decided to take control of my life. I'm going to have sex with Arjun. I'm going to tell my mother that I'm not going to college in America.

I'll say, Mom, I have something I need to tell you. And then I will explain to her how college in India will be better for the career I want and that I'll work really hard at Xavier's and how lots of famous people went to Xavier's and how I can do internships while going to college so by the time I graduate I will already have so much work experience and will be way ahead of my class.

My dad said the most important thing to tell her is that I'm going to be happier here than there. I don't know. I think my mom is too practical for happiness. Sometimes my dad says stuff and I want to be like, dad do you know anything? He doesn't get real life. He thinks the world is a lot simpler than it is. Sometimes I'm glad he married my mom because she's a lot sharper about things and takes care of things. Then sometimes I'm not because she hurts him with the sharpness.

My parents are so different. Like at parties sometimes I watch him and he doesn't look like he's enjoying the party as much as she is. I think he's fine when there are a few people but not the big parties with lots of people and my mom always in the centre, always beautiful and surrounded, laughing with everyone. That's never my dad. I've seen him look at her when she's like that. And then when he leaves the room and walks outside to go to the balcony for a cigarette, I've seen her look at him.

Maybe if I can solve my parents' marriage, my mom will say I don't have to go to college in America. You think I should ask?

Love,

Tania

May 15, 1992

Karachi

Dear Tania,

No, I don't think you should ask. I don't think you can solve your parents' marriage. Your parents' marriage doesn't need solving.

Thank you for calling. I'm sorry I hadn't written in a while. I've been feeling a little out of it I suppose. Ali left for his summer in London and it's lonely without him. My friends are also all in London. Sometimes I wish my parents had sent me to another school where there were other families who don't spend the summer abroad.

You know, I feel less tense talking to you on the phone than writing to you. In letters, I feel like I have to come up with exciting things to say to keep your attention.

How did Nusrat feel about our conversation? I admit, I felt a little awkward. Could you tell? Did you notice how Chhoti Bibi kept interrupting me?

In your letters, your friendship with Nusrat is anomalous. It stands out from everything else about you. But on the phone it makes sense. It doesn't fit exactly but it doesn't seem as odd.

Although it is odd, of course. We're both odd to be friends with girls who are paid to clean our homes. It's very odd that the only girl my age I spend time with is the girl also scrubbing out my toilet. And that I spend so much time worrying about whether this girl will like my lesson plan for the day.

Forgive me for being a bit of a wet blanket. Summer oppresses me. It is searing hot outside and the sun is cruelly close. I've always hated summer every single year ever since we came back from America. For the first few years, we would go to America, my mother, Navi and I, and stay with my grandparents in Boston. We used to have bicycles at their house that we would ride around and every evening my mother would buy ice cream cones for all of us and we would sit on the porch and eat them. We used to spend the whole day at the community pool where I had lots of friends because everyone looked like me. Sometimes when I go to the pool at the club here, the smell of the chlorine brings back such an intense longing, I turn around and leave.

We haven't gone to America the last two summers. I'm not really sure why not. Somehow the tickets were never bought last year. This year I didn't even expect it.

You're going to think it's strange that I never asked why. Navi didn't either. But Navi has always fit better in Pakistan. Maybe it's because he looks Pakistani. But even if Navi was blonde and blue-eyed in sub Saharan Africa he would be fine. He would find a sport to play and be quite happy doing his own thing. That's what he says when I ask him what he's doing. My own thing.

I don't have a thing that's mine except school. It's worst in summer when it physically hurts to step outside. So here I am inside, in Chhoti Bibi's beloved AC, books open and computer on but somehow even here, the sun intrudes, even through shut windows and drawn curtains and there is nowhere further to retreat except perhaps into this self-pitying missive that I will end and seal into an envelope straight away so as to prevent myself from tearing it up and throwing it away.

Love,

Tanya

P.S. I woke up in the middle of the night and saw my mother outside in the garden. She was crawling around the jasmine plants. She was patting the soil into place and rubbing each leaf with a napkin. When I went down to get her, I saw that she was wet and shivering. She let me put my arm around her and take her back to her room. She was so thin, so small, I could have carried her. I don't want to talk about this, Tanya so please don't mention it in your reply. And please don't tell anyone. Not even Nusrat.