When Ammi returned home, she requested her closest friends-a handful of people I had called Uncle and Aunty since childhood-to come over to the house; then she asked them what she should do. My father, who had always been fiercely independent, lay helpless in his bed upstairs. The thought that we were deciding his fate twisted my heart.
At this meeting, there were arguments and raised voices, cursing and tears, and contradictory counsel. But at the end our friends admitted that given my parents’ situation, retiring in India wasn’t a bad option. They didn’t think my mother and I could keep Jalal’s Janitorial going on our own. News of my father’s “arrest” had already caused more customers to cancel their accounts. Abbajan’s medical insurance covered many things, but there were still a lot of expenses that we had to handle. I didn’t have a job-and even when I finished college, it was unlikely that I would get a good one right way. There wasn’t going to be enough money for my parents to keep living here.
“Don’t expect it to be easy,” they warned her. “You enjoyed your visits to India as a rich NRI, with your pockets full of dollars. But living within modest means, with servants who don’t show up in the morning and bribes that have to be paid to the right people in the right manner, is a different matter.”
The uncles and aunties were not sure what I should do. They felt I wouldn’t fit in in India after having been raised here. I had the same doubts. Apart from lifestyle differences, there was another issue: This was my country. I was an American. The thought of being driven from my home filled me with rage. Then again, if I stayed in India, it would be a great support for my parents. Already Ammi looked at me with longing. Farah would like that, too. Conflicting loyalties warred in my head, keeping me awake at night.
UMA THOUGHT SHE HEARD A SOUND ABOVE, AS WHEN SOMEONE turns over in an old, creaky bed. She stiffened and looked around, but the others were engrossed in the story. You’re imagining things, she told herself sternly. She forced her attention away from the ceiling’s mutterings and to the painful inevitability of Tariq’s tale.
WITHIN THE WEEK, THOUGH I WARNED AMMI NOT TO RUSH into decisions, she put our house up for sale and asked Farah’s mother to find her a small ground-floor flat not too far from their house. After the phone call, Ammi spent a long time in the bathroom and emerged with red eyes. Hard as it was for me to see the house I had grown up in on the market for uncaring strangers to walk through and comment on, it was harder for Ammi. The daily chore of taking care of my father-of assisting him into bed and out, placing him in his wheelchair, helping him to the toilet-was taking its toll on her body, too. My father didn’t make it easier. Always a sweet-natured man, he now developed a terrible temper. I was having problems of my own: everywhere I went people seemed to stare at me. Once or twice, I thought a black van followed me off the freeway into our neighborhood.
I e-mailed Farah, and she wrote back with concern, urging me to move. She would make sure I settled into India. But her replies didn’t satisfy me. Living halfway across the world, Farah couldn’t understand my frustration. The only person I could talk to was Ali. Ali listened patiently to my rants. When I broke down and wept, he wasn’t embarrassed. In Eastern culture, he told me, it was okay for men to cry. He told me that to run away to India would be cowardly. I should help my mother with her move, then return to America. Bad things were happening here to our people, and we needed to fight them. He and several other young men rented a house, and they could fit me in, if I didn’t mind sharing a room. He worked part-time at an electronics store. He could talk to his boss and maybe get me a temporary job there. He was more optimistic than the uncles and aunties about finding employment once we graduated. There were important people in the Muslim community, he said. People with pull. People who believed in helping their own.
I liked Ali’s house, though it was in a bad neighborhood. It was an old Victorian with high ceilings and bay windows that looked out on an overgrown garden, very different from the cookie-cutter suburban development I’d lived in all my life. The living room was filled with pamphlets and handmade signs.
TARIQ’S VOICE WAS DROWNED BY A CRACK THAT MADE UMA jump.
“She’s coming down,” Cameron shouted. “To the doorway!”
There was a panicked milling. Uma realized that Cameron hadn’t planned which doorway each of them would go to; that frightened her almost as much as the disintegrating ceiling. His asthma must have become worse; maybe it was impairing his thinking.
She ended up in the bathroom doorway with Malathi and Tariq. The water licked the tops of her calves and was, if possible, even colder than before. There was another crack. The walls shook. They were showered with plaster.
“Cover your heads,” Cameron urged. “Don’t breathe through-” His words disintegrated into a fit of coughing, which he tried to contain.
This was it, Uma guessed. She hoped it would be quick. Malathi was gripping Uma’s good hand with both of hers. Uma gripped back. Tariq was praying, his eyes closed, his face unexpectedly serene. Uma wanted to pray, too, but all she could think was that if she had to die, she was glad she had someone’s hand to hold while it happened.
It was not the end, however. After a few more cracks and a huge crash that made the floor shake, there was an eerie quiet. They stood in their respective doorways, breathing carefully through their teeth. Uma’s tongue tasted of chalk. She was hallucinating. In her hallucination, a ray of light came down from the sky, like in biblical movies, and illuminated the desks where they had been sitting. Any moment, a booming Old Testament voice would bring them tidings of joy.
“Is that sunlight?” Lily whispered, her face full of wonder.
“I think so,” Cameron said from the far doorway. His voice rasped painfully, but he held on to the flashlight. “Water, please-”
Malathi splashed over to the counter with the filled bowls. “They’re full of dirt,” she said. Dismay made her forget to lower her voice. The opening in the ceiling had created echoes. Ert, Ert, they called. Making her way to Malathi, Uma saw that chunks of plaster had crushed most of the bowls they had filled with such care. The few remaining bowls were full of debris. Only the water in the tea and coffee boiling pans, which had lids, might still be clean. Malathi rescued a bowl and took it to the bathroom sink to wash and refill. Her voice was panicky. “No water coming from the tap.”
They crowded in the bathroom doorway. Mangalam shouldered his way in-it was his bathroom, after all-and jiggled the faucet. Nothing. He pushed against the faucet handle as hard as he could. The ancient top broke off in his hand, but no water came. When the ceiling collapsed, the pipe bringing water to the bathroom must have broken. Suddenly, their drinkable water had shrunk to what was in two saucepans, four mostly empty bottles, and the toilet tank.
Uma went back to the counter, cleaned out a bowl the best she could with one hand, dipped it into a pan, and took it to Cameron. She could feel everyone’s eyes on her, trying to gauge how much water she was giving him and thinking, Shouldn’t she have given less? She didn’t care. She would give Cameron her share, if it came to that. When Cameron had drunk the whole bowlful, he stepped gingerly through the water-no telling what had come down with the ceiling and lay in wait under its dark surface-to check the damage on the other side of the room. He found a gaping hole in the ceiling-that’s where the sunlight was coming from. He’d been hoping to find an opening to the world outside. Even if they couldn’t reach it, seeing such an opening would have done them good. But arcing over the hole was a gridlock of broken metal with a gap large enough for only a single ray to make it through. He turned his attention to the ground.