In the Key of Nira Ghani Read online

  “Nira! The smell—”

  “Three candles aren’t going to do anything with the smell of curry in the house. We have to talk.” I shut off the music and sit next to Grandma. Since Mom’s attention is on the stove, I slip my grandmother a chocolate bar. Milk chocolate, her favorite.

  She gives me a warm smile as she slides it in the folds of her sari and goes back to shelling peas.

  “Something happened at school?” Mom grasps the half-baked roti between her fingers and flips the dough to its uncooked side. “Is it your grades?”

  “No.” Not true. Something seismic happened at school. I decided to try out for jazz band. It happened when I was clinging to the rope, wishing I’d been gifted with upper body strength. Maybe it was the oxygen deprivation, maybe it was the humiliation of knowing everyone was staring and judging. Doesn’t matter. What does matter is jazz band. I’m good with a trumpet. Great with it. The sound of a trumpet is the sound of my soul. Every time I play, it’s like I’m communing with the molecules and atoms that make me, me. Maybe, if I play long enough, loud enough, good enough, my DNA will rearrange itself, and I’ll figure out how to be smart, popular, and worthy.

  Getting into band might be a way to get all that and more. The only downside is that I need Mom and Dad’s permission. I have a better chance of scaling Mount Everest in a bikini and flip-flops.

  “What happened at school?” She flips the roti in the air, catches and claps it, then throws it in the air again. Specks of flour and bread fly and settle on the counter. Her dark eyes hold my gaze. They see something is going on inside of me. “You need tea?”

  Tea is my mom’s answer to everything. The world could be invaded by zombies, and my mom would say, “You need tea?” And if those zombies cracked open my skull and ate half my brain, she would pat my hand and say, “Yes, tea with extra milk and sugar.” Because dairy and sweetness solve life’s problems. Then she would say, “I expect your marks to stay the same.” Because that’s my family’s way. Whether you lose half your brain to a zombie or not, your grades must never suffer.

  “I don’t need tea.”

  She jerks her chin at the kettle and says to Grandma, “Put it to boil.”

  “Old woman, I don’t need tea.”

  Grandma rises.

  “I don’t need—” Why am I fighting this? “Just a small cup.”

  “What happened?” Mom’s concentration is back on the stove. “Wash your hands and help me.”

  Because you can’t just talk in my house. You talk and work. “What am I supposed to do?”

  Her brows pull together. “Find something.”

  There’s a sink of dirty dishes. Over the rush of the water filling the sink, I watch the soap bubbles form a white castle. “I was wondering if maybe we could go shopping this weekend.”

  “You need something for school?”

  “Kind of.” I shut off the taps. The bubbles spill over the sides of the plates. I have to be subtle about this. My parents can see a frontal attack coming from miles away. I need a soft volley over their front lines. Clothes are the way to do it. If she says yes to the request, then I know she’s in a good mood, and I can go for the Big Ask.

  “I’d like a new pair of jeans. Maybe a shirt.” As soon as it’s out of my mouth, I regret it. Not because it wasn’t a good idea. But because now that I’ve asked, I want them so badly, I can smell the new clothes, feel the smooth slip of the size sticker on the denim.

  One outfit, but if I pair the jeans with other stuff, and wear the shirt underneath, it could take my bargain basement clothes to the main floor. Maybe. All I know is having at least one outfit that has the right graphic and brand name would be like having a magical shield. Maybe if I look more like the other kids, they’ll pay attention. Imagine if I wore the outfit to the jazz audition. Me, a trumpet, and the right clothes? It would rearrange the stars and recombine my DNA.

  “You don’t need more clothes.”

  Mom’s words rip me from my daydream. “Yes, I do.”

  “Your closet’s full—”

  “Of clearance shirts from stores that are so inconsequential, they don’t even have a brand.”

  My mother shoots a dark smile at her mother-in-law. “Inconsequential. And I thought your making her learn a word a day from the dictionary wouldn’t pay off.”

  Grandma shrugs and keeps shelling the peas.

  “You’re making fun of me.”

  “You’re making fun of yourself. You don’t need clothes.” She drops the roti on the plate and faces me. A thin film of sweat covers her forehead and chin. “And the money your father and I work for to buy your clothes isn’t inconsequential, either.”

  “Why is it so bad to get a new outfit?”

  Grandma rises and moves to the kettle as it boils.

  “Why can’t I have clothes that look like everyone else’s?”

  “Because it’s a waste of money.” Mom slaps a roll of dough on the counter. “Hundred-dollar jeans that you won’t even want next year—”

  “Yes, I will!”

  “And what will they be worth the day after you buy them? Twenty dollars.”

  “I’m a good daughter.” My face feels hotter than the stove, and I’m holding my breath so I don’t scream. I haven’t forgotten about the audition, and I can’t risk getting her so mad she says no, but I can’t let this go. “Do you know how many parents would kill to have a kid like me? They would love to get me stuff in return for my high marks, helping around the house—”

  “Get them to buy you the jeans.”

  “I do chores—you think the rest of the kids in my class have to do chores?”

  “We pay you an allowance.”

  “Big deal. The other kids get more money, and they do nothing!”

  She turns back to the stove. “When they’re forty, they’ll still be living with their mother because they can’t care for themselves.”

  I love how she says it without a hint of irony that Dad’s mother lives here. Sure, it’s my parents’ house, but still, she’s sharing a roof with her husband’s mom. From the corner of my eye, I see Grandma dump two teaspoons of sugar in the cup. Her hand hovers over the sugar bowl.

  “All I’m asking for is one outfit.” The words are spoken through clenched teeth. My heart is beating so hard I hear it in my ears.

  Grandma dumps another teaspoon of sugar in my cup and adds more milk.

  “That costs as much as a dinner out. The conversation is over. That money is for your university. That’s more important than jeans. We didn’t bring you to Canada so you could put on makeup and tight jeans. You’re here for the opportunities.”

  I want to barf. I’m so sick of hearing this lecture.

  “Canada is safe—you think it’s safe for you back in Guyana? You think the cops will protect you?”

  “Stop.” I put up my hand. “Stop before you tell me—again—how they’re so corrupt you were able to buy your way out of speeding tickets.”

  “They’re not all corrupt, but it’s not safe like it is here. There aren’t oppor—” Mom must see my eyes glazing over, because she stops mid-rant. “When you become a doctor, you can buy all the clothes you want. You can be a real star gyal.”

  Guyanese for a girl who’s so good-looking, she can be an actress. My mother makes it sound like an insult. The fact I’m more likely to be cast as Quasimodo than Esmeralda adds a layer of sarcasm and cruelty to her barb.

  “That’s a million years away.” My anger shoves the audition aside. I can be like my father sometimes. So caught up in the fight, I forget about the war. I feel his likeness, pounding around me, the shadow of him, warning me to shut up, but I can’t.

  Grandma looks my way; her dark eyes take in my face. Another teaspoon of sugar falls into my cup. If I don’t have a brain aneurysm because of my mother, the tea is going to send me into a diabetic coma. On the bright side, either way, it’ll get me out of school.

  “What’s a hundred dollars—and it wouldn’t even
be that much.” It’ll be more like ninety-eight, but still, that’s under a hundred, right?

  “Compound interest,” says my mother.

  “Huh?”

  “Compound—What are they teaching you in school?”

  Apparently not Negotiating with Stubborn Mothers 101.

  “A hundred dollars invested over ten years, with ten-percent compound interest will get you two hundred dollars.”

  “For less than a hundred dollars invested today will get me…” I stop. I don’t want to say “friends,” because it’ll look like I’m trying to buy friends with clothes. Which I’m kind of doing. Which makes me wonder why I want to hang out with kids who care more about brand names than my heart.

  Oh yeah. Because I don’t want to spend my life alone and I want others to see me and Emily for the kind of cool people we are. If it takes a pair of hundred-dollar jeans or a graphic on a shirt, so be it.

  “If the kids can’t like you for who you are, then they’re not worth it. Clothes don’t make the person.”

  If she starts talking about what’s on the inside that—

  “It’s what’s on the inside that counts.”

  Grandma hands me the tea and shuffles back to the table. She sits with a grunt and resumes the shelling of the peas.

  I set down the mug. “Really? It’s what’s on the inside that matters more?”

  Mom sighs.

  Grandma shakes her head, stands, and moves my way.

  “Then why don’t you wear your pajamas to work?” I ask.

  Mom stares at me.

  “If clothes don’t matter, then why don’t you go in jogging pants?”

  Grandma hip checks me to the side, flips on the tap, and refills the kettle.

  “That’s not the same thing. Of course, clothes matter—!”

  “Exactly!”

  Her breath hisses through her teeth. “You have to wear clothes. You don’t have to wear expensive clothes.”

  “If I want to fit in, I do. I’m the only brown girl in the school.”

  “And you think wearing cool jeans will suddenly make you blend in?” Sarcasm laces her question. “You think they’ll walk in and say, ‘Oh my god! Nira turned white!’”

  “No, but it would make me stand out less.” I take the tea. “When we left Guyana, you gave me this big speech about the cosmos. Said how the sky was filled with more than just stars. It was filled with planets and meteors and comets. And I’d never learn about all those things if we stayed in Guyana and played with stars. Well, guess what, Mom. Saturn and Neptune don’t like to play with you if you look like a meteorite instead of like one of the planets.”

  “You look like one of the planets to me. In fact, your head looks like it’s up Uran—”

  “Juvenile. I should’ve guessed.” I continue my dramatic exit.

  “So that’s it?” She calls after me. “You’re not going to wash the dishes?”

  “You said talk and do something.” I make eye contact. “I’m all talked out, and you got the last word. Just like always.”

  Her lips press together. In the background, the ghee sizzles on the tawa.

  I leave the kitchen as Grandma ladles another teaspoon of sugar into a mug.

  I sit on the bed, playing my trumpet. Technically, it’s a B-flat pocket trumpet. It has all the range of a regular instrument, but it’s smaller. In other words, “real” musicians don’t use it, except for practice sessions. Then again, “real” musicians didn’t learn how to play from watching online videos.

  Still, it’s a trumpet. I know how to turn its valves and keys into music, and it feels good in my hands. Cold and metal. As long as its weight is on my palms, the world still makes sense.

  I wish I lived in a world of music and not one of academics. Music makes sense to me. Notes are broken into whole, quarter, half. They always count for the same time, no matter what. Low notes take the bass side, higher ones get the treble. If I play one note and then another, it always makes the same sounds. A melody is always a melody.

  The only thing in my world that’s remotely the same is math, but math doesn’t move me like music. I put the mouthpiece to my lips and blow a middle C. The sound is clear and pure. From there, I run the scale, then my fingers find their life, my ears wake to the sound, and not-so-suddenly, I’m playing “Georgia on My Mind.” I hear the voice of Ray Charles in my head, crooning his love for Georgia. Telling her that she fills his thoughts and gives him peace. It’s my love song to my trumpet. He’s my Georgia, and he’s secure enough in our love that he doesn’t mind me calling him by a girl’s name.

  Forty-five minutes later, Mom finds me in my cramped room. She knocks but doesn’t wait for me to say anything before she comes inside.

  I sit up and prepare for round two.

  “Let’s go. Your father is home.”

  For a second, hope lifts me to the sky. Is Mom taking me shopping? The chance to ask her about the band audition surges in my heart, so powerful it makes my chest ache, and my temples hurt. “Go where?”

  But she doesn’t say “the mall.” She says, “Your cousin’s.”

  I groan and flop back on the bed. Last year, my dad’s brother moved to town, complete with his perfect wife and perfect child. When we left Guyana, the government kept our money. It was a tactic to keep citizens from emigrating.

  But thanks to an election and a new political party in power, my uncle was allowed to keep his wealth. So instead of a too-small bungalow in an okay part of town, his family lives in a two story with a walkout basement, in the newest neighborhood.

  “We’re leaving in five minutes, Nira. Brush your hair.”

  Brush your hair, I mime the words at her back, then slam my mouth closed when she whirls to face me.

  “I don’t like how you’re talking to me.”

  Me neither. It’s not in my genetic code to talk back to adults or question my parents, but this life makes me feel like I’m a medieval prisoner, tied to four different horses. Myself. School. This country. My family. And everything is pulling me in a different direction. I don’t understand why there can’t be a compromise. Why everything I want has to be a losing battle. “I’m sorry,” I tell her because that’s genetic to every kid. We always have to be the ones who’re sorry.

  She sighs and sits on my bed. “I know this isn’t easy.” She reaches into her apron and pulls out a twenty-dollar bill. “Here. I was young once.”

  “What’s this?”

  “For your jeans. Put it with your allowance money. We can go this weekend to the mall.”

  The money suddenly feels hot as fire in my hand. I’ve won the battle, but the way my mother says it burns me. Like the cost of my win has been a small part of her soul.

  “Take it back,” I tell her. “I don’t want it.”

  “Nira!” The force of her turn makes the mattress bounce. “You come home, and you can’t even say, ‘Hello, Mom. How are you, Grandma? Thank you for making dinner. Thank you for putting a roof over our head.’ No, you come in and start yelling about how you need clothes and what terrible parents we are for bringing you here. Now you tell me you don’t want the money?” She storms for the door. “Your eyes pass me, girl.”

  Your eyes pass me. Guyanese for disrespect of the highest order. The accusation stings. She’s the one who’s being disrespectful. I didn’t want the money because it made me feel guilty. Now she’s making it like I’m a bad person for wanting to fit in. Like something’s lacking in me. She slams the door closed, and I’m not sorry anymore. I don’t care if giving me money cost a bit of her soul. She’s got loads to spare.

  I pull the brush through my hair so hard it makes my scalp sting, then I wrench my hair into a ponytail. I’m going to be ready and waiting in the car. She’ll see, I’m a good kid, and then she’ll feel bad. I don’t deserve her yelling at me.

  I’m so locked in the internal battle, so lost in the imaginary fight I’m having with her, I almost run into Grandma when I swing open the door.
r />   As placid as a quiet stream, she moves past me to the bed. “Come. Sit.” She glances at the floor and picks up a crumpled piece of purple paper. The jazz auditions. It must have fallen out of my pocket. She unfolds it, smooths the creases, then places it on my nightstand.

  I sit beside her. “Thank you for the tea.”

  She smiles and takes my hand, and I feel the squares of chocolate in her palm. “For you.”

  “No, I buy the chocolate for you—” I pull away to inspect them. The packaging on the chocolate makes me pause. “This is Ghirardelli. I bought you them months ago. Aren’t you eating?”

  “I eat and share them as I choose.”

  A stab of jealousy goes through me because I know who gets to share with her. Farah.

  She holds my hand, again. Her fingers are a world of their own. Soft and strong. Calloused and arthritic. I twine my fingers in hers and feel the breath between us.

  “It’s not easy to be the only one who doesn’t fit in when everyone else has a place.”

  I think of Emily and feel a pang of guilt. “It’s not just me who doesn’t fit.… It’s just, I’m the most different. And I got this idiot girl who keeps thinking I’m Hindi.”

  She laughs. “If she asks hard questions, I’ll answer for you. Here.” She presses money into my hand.

  I look at it and feel sick. Twenty dollars. That’s a hundred for her. “No, Grandma.”

  “I’m not so old I don’t remember what it is to want a cute dress.”

  “Yeah, but Mom gave me twenty and if you give me twenty—” I trail off and wait for her to understand.

  “What?” she says. “You can’t do the math? It’s forty.” She sucks her teeth, a sure sign of her irritation. “And they think Guyana is backwater.” She shifts her weight, drives her hand into my thigh as she heaves herself up. “What are they teaching you in this country?”

  “Obviously not as much as you can teach me.”

  She looks back, smiles over her shoulder. Worry wipes it from her mouth. “Nira, you can want all the clothes and friends and romance you want, but those aren’t the things that matter. If you can read and write, that’s what matters. The rest of it is garbage to distract you.”