The garage door rumbled shut. He wasn’t going to turn back now. The air was free and fresh and cold enough for his breath to grow visible as small clouds, like out of a kettle’s spout. There was no one on the road, and even the houses on both sides seemed as though they were unoccupied. Most gardens were square patches of white, with some driveways containing a car or two in hibernation, topped with snow. The middle of the pavement was clear but he stepped carefully, looking at small trickles of water oozing out from under the heaps of snow that had been pushed to either side. Some parts of the pavement looked glassy, so he avoided them. One false move, and he would be done. When would it all melt away – days, weeks, longer? It was funny to deal with an element of the weather one had absolutely no knowledge of. He looked up at the trees. They were dark and bare limbed and of a type he did not recognize. Some branches were lined with snow.
He walked on for a while, his steps becoming more casual as he went along. He kept it slow, though. He could have been the only human on earth, for all he knew. Up ahead, a few hundred metres away, there seemed to be some kind of intersection. He would go as far as that, and then decide whether to turn back or not. At the end of the street was a green sign with white letters that read ‘Cinnamon Drive’. He remembered the name from the address. The pavement continued left. He paused. A car drove up, stopped briefly at the traffic signal, went on. He wasn’t sure but he thought someone in it may have waved at him. He waved anyway, not wanting to appear rude. He probably looked a sight, an old Indian gent with maybe ladies’ shoes on, looking for all the world like Henry VIII in his portraits. Also, no one seemed to use the pavement, so that made it strange in itself.
It appeared to be a main road, with glass-and-metal bus shelters and all that. He stood there on the side and looked around. Several cars went by, there were one or two people actually walking on the street. On the other side, he could see a brick-and-glass building, standing at the corner of two streets. He would cross over and take a look at it. He wondered what the crossing rules were.
As he stood there hesitating, a young woman walked up and pushed a button on the traffic signal post. She did not look at him. After a few seconds, the traffic stopped. He could see the word ‘WALK’ in white light on the traffic signal. The woman began crossing the road, he scurrying behind her as best he could. He made it to the other side out of breath.
Now he had overstepped the limit.
He saw a sign up on the wall of the brick-and-glass building. ‘Riverside Public Library’, it read. Aha! He could go in there. It would be warm, after the street. He could get his breath back at least. They probably wouldn’t throw him out. He would go in and see.
He walked up to the entrance of the building. Someone was ahead of him. He saw the person push down a metal bar and open the door. Sensing someone behind him, the man held the door open with one hand as he pushed the inner door with the other. CLN rushed in, muttered thanks. The man held the other door for him. He said thanks again. He saw the man wipe his boots on the mat just inside, and did the same.
The library was brightly lit, with bars of lights across the entire ceiling running parallel to the racks of books below. A young white man with an ID card hanging from his neck pushed a trolley full of books, replacing them one by one on the shelves. He smiled and waved at CLN. There was a counter with a computer on it, and a large middle-aged black woman behind it, also with an ID card. ‘Check Out’, it said above. He could see a reading room, with a long table surrounded by chairs and a newspaper rack on one side. One or two people his age were there, reading.
He walked up to the counter.
‘Hello, good morning!’ the woman said. She smiled. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I was just wondering if I could use the library,’ he said.
‘Sure you can, sir. Do you live around here?’
‘No, I’m actually visiting my daughter for a couple of months.’
‘Well, does your daughter have a card, do you know? Even if she doesn’t, you are welcome to come in, read or use the internet, if you like. We love readers in this library!’
‘I’ll just look around, if I may.’
The woman waved him on towards the reading room, the racks. ‘Help yourself. Ask me if you need anything.’
He started moving away. ‘Sir,’ she called after him, ‘you could hang up your jacket on that coat stand there near the door, if you like. It may get too hot in here after a while.’
A little embarrassed that he may have breached the etiquette, he raised his hand in acknowledgement. Had he needed to bring regular shoes to replace the snow boots with? He was relieved to see other people in boots of different types.
He went and sat at the reading-room table. He felt lighter without the jacket. The others didn’t look up from their papers. He got up after a few minutes to take a look at the newspapers in the rack. There were several, neatly arranged. But they were mostly American. No chance of The Hindu here. He wondered what was going on at home. He should have listened to Gopi when he offered to teach him how to email and use the internet. He took out the Tribune. It was almost all of it local and US news. There were some stray references to events in Europe. For all they knew, there was no such place as Asia, forget India. Ah, the weather report. Sunny-ish weather was predicted for the next few days. There were details about ‘wind chill’, ‘t-storms’ and ‘white outs’, but all in other places. If all went well, he could probably come here every morning, do some reading, get out of the house. Now he knew the route, how to walk, how to cross. He would ask Kavita about using her library card, if she had one. She was bound to. Maybe he could even look at how maths books were done here. He wondered when Tara would call.
On the way home, in one of the houses abutting the road, he could see a dog leaping up against the window and barking soundlessly at him. He remembered Govindachari, his neighbour, trapped inside his son’s house in Portland, afraid of the dog that had charged him one morning on his walk. His son had explained to him about the electric fence, how the dog couldn’t get past it, but Govindachari chose not to test it for three whole months. Spineless fellow. When the garage door opened, he saw Kavita’s car parked there. She seemed to be home early. He took off the boots and walked into the house.
His daughter was on the phone. She swung around when she heard the door. ‘…he’s here now, I’ll talk to you later!’ Hanging up, she said, ‘Where on earth have you been, Appa? I’ve been worried sick. Are you insane? You didn’t even leave a note or inform me or Rangi. What’s the matter with you! How irresponsible can you get?’
‘I’m fine, dear,’ he said, taking off the coat and hanging it up in the closet.
She opened the door into the garage, saw his wet shoes on one side. ‘Where did you get those shoes? Do you know they are women’s shoes? You must have looked a sight!’
‘No one seemed to mind, dear. They were in the closet.’
‘Well, why couldn’t you inform us that you were going out before we left this morning?’
‘I just went for a walk. Needed some fresh air, is all. I didn’t think you’d be home till your usual time so I didn’t leave a note.’
‘For your information, I had a doctor’s appointment, so I took the day off!’
‘How was I to know that? Did you tell me?’ he said.
‘And then I come home and find you gone! Do you know how dangerous the melting snow is? And you’ve never been out in it. What’s the matter with you? What if you had taken a fall? How would we have known even? You don’t even have proper insurance! My BP must be through the roof!’
‘I had your numbers. Someone would have turned up. Anyway, I’m back. No bones broken. No need to get so het up. I would have gone back home,’ he said.
She stalked out of the room, flopped on the couch in front of the television. He went up to the door of the living room. ‘As long as the weather is okay, I’m going to walk up to the library every day.’
She stared at him, shook her head and turned the TV on.
‘By the way,’ he said, above the rising volume, ‘I got the garage code from Sunny. You didn’t ask.’
When Rangi got home, he heard Kavita say, ‘I don’t know what’s got into my father, he’s become so stubborn. He’s like a stranger to me. I can barely have a conversation with him!’
He couldn’t hear Rangi’s reply, but later that evening, his son-in-law came to his room, did a thumbs up. ‘Good for you,’ he said, grinning. ‘Here, you can use this library card. No one else does. Maybe this weekend we’ll get you proper shoes. Those belong to my cousin – Anita. She won’t mind. They look fine to me!’
Despite his daughter’s silent displeasure, he got into a pattern of going to the library every morning the weather was good. The librarian, Mrs Jennings, showed him how to pull up the online editions of newspapers at home, and immediately he stopped feeling as if his life had been put on hold. Almost a month had gone by, one to go. Gopi had called him up once or twice, told him Madras was suffocating, it was a good thing he had got away. He wasn’t so sure. He was glad to spend time with Rangi and Sunny in the evenings. Kavita seemed to have ziplocked her disapproval for the present. Maybe she was waiting it out, like him. Tara had called, and he had sort of agreed to start working out a rough syllabus.
He was looking through the newspaper rack one morning when an American woman came up to him. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ she said, ‘may I speak with you for a moment?’
‘Certainly,’ he said, surprised, taking off his glasses to see her better. She seemed to be in her late fifties, brown hair streaked with grey.
‘Hi, my name is Anne – Anne Eliot – I’m a researcher,’ she said, shaking his hand.
‘C.L. Narayan,’ he said. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
‘Hi, Mr Na-ra-yaan? Did I get that right?’ she said, laughing.
‘Call me CLN, everyone does.’
‘Oh, that’s easy, thanks. So – CLN, I’m doing a survey about immigrant family patterns in the Riverside area for a professor at the local university. I’m wondering if you’d mind answering a few questions?’
‘Go ahead,’ he said.
She pulled out her laptop, and waved him to a table close by. ‘Let’s sit here, shall we?’ she said, drawing out a couple of chairs. ‘Okay, how long have you lived in Riverside?’
‘I’m from India, I’ve just been here a month. I’m visiting my daughter and her family till the end of May,’ he said.
‘Oh, that’s nice. Have they taken you to Chicago yet, up the Sears Tower and so on? That’s part of our grand tour for visitors!’
‘Not yet. Maybe this weekend. They get really busy.’
‘How long have your daughter and her family lived here?’
‘Hmmm, let’s see, they came in 1993, from India, I mean. First, they were in the Chicago area. They came to Riverside, I would say, in the year 2000.’
‘So basically about five years here. How many people in the family, their ages, what do they do, where did they train?’ she said, tapping away at her laptop very fast with just her index fingers.
‘My daughter is a software engineer, she studied in Madras – Chennai – where we’re from, she’s thirty-seven. My son-in-law is an accountant, works with a law firm, he’s about forty. He also studied in Chennai. They have a son, eight years old, he goes to Riverside Elementary.’
‘Oh, nice, you have a grandson. He must be delighted to have you here. So, was he born here?’
‘Yes, in Chicago.’
‘Okay,’ she said, tapping some more, ‘now tell me a little bit about yourself and the rest of your family. Anyone else who lives here?’
‘No, my son and his wife live at home in Madras. I moved in with them after my wife died, about a year ago now.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Thank you. I was a high-school maths teacher for forty years. Retired now.’
‘Forty years! You must be fantastic. Indians are so brainy!’
He smiled.
‘I don’t want to bore you any more today. Will you be here tomorrow?’
‘I’m here most days, if the weather is sunny.’
‘So can we continue tomorrow?’ she said.
‘Sure. I look forward to it,’ he said, getting up as she did.
She was there, talking to someone else, when he got to the library the next time. She waved and smiled at him, indicated she would join him in a little while. He waved back, went and sat in his customary place at the table in the reading room.
‘Today, I’d like to ask you a few questions about family relationships, if I may,’ she said. ‘This is really the meat of my research, because we’re trying to track the shifting patterns of the American family, given that many immigrants come from traditional societies, with strong ideas about family, and so on. In India, family is considered very important, is it not? I know many Americans admire Indians for their family values.’
‘Yes, I suppose family is considered important in India.’
‘I mean, look at you, for example. Isn’t it common for older people to move in with their children in your country?’
‘A lot of times, yes. But sometimes children move away. Here, for instance. I know many people far older than me who prefer staying by themselves at home rather than coming here.’
‘Why is that? Do they stay in retirement homes, like here?’
‘No, they stay in their own houses. Some do stay in retirement homes, and that trend is growing too. So what does that tell us about family values in India? I don’t know.’
‘So, you’re saying that family dynamics are shifting in India too?’ she said, tapping away.
‘Yes, I would say so. I notice that people are happier being independent at home and feeling connected to the larger community rather than being here, where they tend to feel somewhat isolated, I suppose. I never really thought about it till I got here.’
She tapped at her keyboard. ‘So – this is your first visit to the States after your daughter moved here … what, twelve years ago?’
‘Yes.’
‘How often do you get to see her?’
‘Well, I saw her last when she visited home, that was some years ago.’
‘Does she call home every week, like I know they do in some Indian families?’
‘No, there’s no fixed pattern. It’s more random.’
‘How do you think these long separations affect family relationships?’
‘Not well, to be honest. Everyone starts leading their own life – which is sort of the opposite of family, isn’t it?’ He laughed. ‘I heard my daughter calling me a “stranger” to someone!’
She stopped tapping, looked up. ‘CLN, I hope all of this isn’t making you uncomfortable?’
He shook his head. After a moment, he said, ‘Do you have children?’
‘Three. The younger two, David and Joanne, are at universities in Chicago and Seattle. My eldest, Sarah, teaches elementary school, married, with two kids. They live not far from here.’
‘How often are you in touch with them?’
‘Oh, they’re all in touch all the time, in and out of Riverside, call, mail all the time – you know,’ she said.
‘And their father?’
‘Dead,’ she said, matter of fact, playing with the ring on her finger. She looked at his face. ‘Don’t feel bad, it was many years ago. I’ve been a single parent all these years. But, you know, I grew up here, my family is from around here. So parents, siblings, friends, they’ve all been part of my journey.’
‘I’ll be honest,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking about it the last few days, since I met you really. I think you Americans have a far better sense of family than we do. You know why? You seem to treat each other as people, you don’t play roles. Roles tend to lapse.’
She nodded slowly, playing with her ring in a gesture he now recognized as characteristic.
DANISHA
JOURNAL ON LANGSTON HUGHES, ‘HARLEM’
What does happen to a dream deferred?
My being in school was a dream. Mrs Whitney, my high-school teacher, said I was smart enough to go, not to give up.
I don’t know sometimes.
Prof. Kumar seems to like me. Likes what I say in class. Always wants my opinion. Was puzzled by my reading journal. Didn’t say anything.
She will ask me about it soon, I know.
Hughes was black, like me. Writes about black people, I guess. See the name of the poem. Harlem – an important place for black folks. Vague memory of a play called ‘Raisin in the Sun’.
Poet talks about what happens to postponed dreams. They could dry up or fester or stink or crust over. Very harsh, hard images. You can see the raisin dry up, the pus in the boil, smell the rotten meat. Even something like a sweet is made gross, almost painful.
Is this what happens to everyone who lives in Harlem?
Or to everyone like me? Are they our dreams, black people’s dreams? If you suppress all our dreams, maybe we could explode. Like, riot? Like after Rodney King?
Poem a series of questions.