Maya Running
By Anjali Banerjee

Chapter One: On Display

Dad drives while picking his nose, an eccentric habit of geniuses. I hunker down in the back seat, pull up my parka hood and go incognito. I am Invisible Future-Girl sent back in time to study embarrassing fathers.

In the passenger seat Mum pretends not to notice, irritation scrunched in her shoulders. She's decked out for re-entry into the Indian world: woolen coat over turquoise sari, Kohl rimming her eyes and a round, red bindi on her forehead.

Dad thinks he looks cool in corduroy jacket and Clarks Wallabees shoes. We're both wearing jeans. I don't want to be ethnic. I want to run on the tundra beneath the Northern Lights, make igloos or snow-angels, write to Anne Frank in my diary or clean my closet and find a door into Narnia. I want to see John Travolta, my dreamboat in that new movie, Grease. I want to ride elephants through the Bengal jungle, the way my great-grandfather rode before he choked on a wishbone and died. I would rather be anywhere but here, going to the Gross house for supper.

"Why can't I stay home and study?" I ask. "Tomorrow is a school day, and I don't even know the Grosses."

"Ghose, not Gross," Mum says.

"Their boys are babies. I'm old enough to baby-sit myself."

"You are going, and that is final."

"Why don't you want to go, Maya-baby?" Dad says with a bruise in his voice. "They're my very oldest friends."

I roll my eyes. Everyone is Dad's Very Oldest Friend from the dawn of history when he lived in Darjeeling. If they speak in Bengali, I just nod and pretend to understand.

Mum and Dad shift into Conversation for Grown-Ups. They discuss riots in communist West Bengal, the weather in British Columbia and political unrest in Quebec, where The Parti Quebecois has made French the official provincial language and forbidden the use of English on signs. By 1980, Dad says, Quebec might separate from Canada.

I'm glad to be living in Manitoba, where signs are in English and I can find my way around.

Dad stops picking, switches on the radio and whistles off-key to Daydream Believer.

The Navigator Look comes into Mum's eyes. She keeps a permanent Manitoba map in her head. She points to the left. "Turn here and we'll be there in no time flat."

Dad swings past rows of spruce trees and telephone poles and snowy fields rolling away in the headlights.

The Ghose family lives in a stucco split-level on the outskirts of town. Inside, the house smells of sweaty armpit, not of home, and I go rigid when Mrs. Ghose, a wide woman in an orange sari, hugs me and pinches my cheeks. I drown in the folds of her belly.

She steps back and grabs my chin. "What is this in your mouth? Look, you have braces."

Heat pricks my cheeks. I close my lips over the metal. At first, the braces gashed my lips bloody, then the cuts healed. Now it is easy to forget the wires in my mouth until someone yells, look! You have braces!

I do? When did that happen? Let me run to the mirror and see. Like elves climbed in and went to work while I slept.

Mrs. Ghose has already let go of my chin. She grabs our coats and pats Mum's cheek as if she's a little girl. I hear whistling in another room and the ping, pop, ping of an electronic game.

Mum and Dad head off to the right while Mrs. Ghose shoves me left, launches me like a missile into the family room, the dungeon where the two young Ghose boys are playing Pong, the new tennis video game on TV, in color. They both have on polyester shirts under knit vests, cat's eye glasses and high-water pants showing hairy ankles and striped tube socks. Their extreme nerdiness doesn't seem to bother them.

"Snacks for you children?" Mrs. Ghose shouts. "Sahadev? Vishnu, for you? Drinks?"

"Yes, Ma! Fanta Root Beer." Vishnu is maybe seven years old with rumpled hair and underwear sticking out of his pants. He hardly resembles a great god who is everywhere, which is what his name means. Sahadev shakes his head vigorously, unable to tear his gaze from the bouncing white ball on TV. He's about nine.

"For you, Choto-Maya?"

"No, thank you, Mrs. Ghose," I say politely. I am not Choto, small, yet I have been sentenced to languish in the children's prison, and now I have to pee.

"Auntie Mitil! Call me Auntie!" Mrs. Ghose screams as she bustles away.

"Auntie Mitil," I say to myself. Mrs. Ghose doesn't feel like an aunt.

I wait for the right moment to ask where the washroom is, but the boys don't acknowledge me. They're at that age, I suppose, when all girls have cooties.

Thin strains of an evening raga stray in from the living room. The sitar twang zigzags on and on with no discernible tune. Dad often closes his eyes and hums along while tapping his fingers on his knee.

I imagine him laughing with the grown-ups in another room, which might as well be on another planet. The smells of frying pakoras and curry swirl down through the atmosphere.

Sitting on the couch, I cross my arms and legs. A vacant spot inside me grows bigger the more the boys play and the grown-ups laugh. For Rent, For Lease, Room Inside Maya, the sign reads. The empty place is also endurance, a poised kind of waiting. Only I'm not sure yet what I'm waiting for.

"Boys, samosas! Maya! Come, come." Dr. Ghose bursts in then, a slight man with graying hair combed sideways over his balding head. He's a doctor, not the same kind of doctor that Dad is, not a nuclear engineer. I'm often forced to explain the difference. Dad studies two-phase flow, while Dr. Ghose studies intestinal flow. He's a GI man. I think of those little GI-Joe dolls. The guns and uniforms and army helmets and boots are all molded from the same piece of plastic.

Dr. Ghose's mouth blows Bengali bubble-words, which the boys understand. I can tell by the way their bodies shift, the way they nod at the right moments. Bengali is part of their lives like combing oil through their glistening hair or praying to Hindu gods.

Envy digs into me, a craving to understand Bengali.

"Baba, I'm not hungry," Sahadev whines, pushing the glasses up on his nose.

"Me either, I want to play," says Vishnu, the great god with his underwear showing.

"Ah come, you love samosas, home-made, lovely, lovely," Dad says from the doorway. He does the Indian sideways head tilt around Indian Friends. It's like Halloween. He wears his Canadian costume for Canadians, the Indian costume for Indians.

As Indian tradition dictates, the children eat first. Mrs. Ghose and Mum hover in the background, filling plates and glasses. I sit very still and eat with knife and fork, keeping my elbows off the table, while the boys stuff their faces with their hands, smearing dahl around their mouths.

The adults' voices fade into a murmur of blood rushing in my ears.

"Look at Mayasri," Mrs. Ghose says. "She is being so good. Why can't you boys be so good? She is an example for you. Maya, have more rice and dahl? So thin you are. You are not eating. Kamala, has she become thin?"

This is what Indians say even if you weigh a thousand pounds. I am Skinny Future-Girl with buckteeth and braces.

"She keeps quite busy," Mum says. "Ballet, skating, cross country skiing--"

"All those extracurricular activities? And her studies? She is doing well?"

"Quite well. Highly commended."

I am on display.

"Boys, Mayasri excels in her studies, dances the ballet and what are you doing? Playing video games. Lazy boys." Mrs. Ghose whacks Vishnu on the head hard enough to knock a chunk of samosa from his mouth. He grabs a spoon to fish a pakora from his glass of milk.

"She also plays the piano quite well," Mum says.

Mrs. Ghose's eyes nearly pop out of her head. "She will give the boys lessons?"

I want to say no, thank you, I won't give your irritating great god any stupid piano lessons.

"If she has time." Mum frowns, allowing me this much. Next to Mrs. Ghose, Mum looks young and slim and beautiful. She doesn't seem comfortable either. I bet she wants to run home and tear off the sari. But she's Indian. She grew up in Calcutta. She can speak the language, make Bengali food, and wear a bindi on her forehead. She can fit in if she wants to.

My throat closes over a lump of dry rice. A terrible idea occurs to me. This supper is a setup. Mrs. Ghose wants me to marry either Sahadev or Vishnu in one of those arranged marriages. Why else would I be here? I'll have to run away.

Now all the grown-ups crowd into the humid kitchen. I'm trapped in a Bengali movie without subtitles. As they talk, everyone laughs and cries at the right parts, while I sit clueless in the middle.

"Maya?"

"Yes?" I look up and blink. I have accidentally disappeared inside myself again. Mrs. Ghose - Auntie Mitil - stands across the table, staring.

I glance down, thinking maybe I dropped curry on my T-shirt. Everyone stares. Conversation dribbles down a drain.

I wait for the marriage plan.

Mum has gone into the other room with Dad and Dr. Ghose. They're discussing a brass table imported from India.

Mrs. Ghose repeats the phrase in Bengali. A question.

My throat goes dry. I nod. Maybe a yes will suffice, or a shake of my head, but still she stares.

Sahadev throws a pakora at Vishnu's head, and the great god sticks out his tongue, letting a slop of chewed glop fall on his plate. Sahadev says ew and snorts milk out his nose. The boys break into gales of laughter while Mrs. Ghose smiles with affection, her expression saying you boys will fetch a huge dowry someday.

This is the way things are in India. The girl moves into the boy's house and dumps loads of money on his family. This is one reason I think Dad wishes I was born a boy, his first and only child. What he doesn't know is I will never get married, so he won't have to worry about going broke.

This time Mrs. Ghose hurls the question, a spear with a poison tip.

Sickness comes to my stomach. I gulp. "I - don't - speak - Bengali."

Sahadev stops his spoon in mid-air. Vishnu closes his mouth. Mrs. Ghose's eyebrows fuse, pulling her face toward its center.

"Bangla bola na!" Slowly she shakes her head. Pity drips from her voice. "Ah Maya."

"She doesn't speak Bengali?" Sahadev gazes up at his mother in disbelief.

"She doesn't, stupid," Vishnu hisses across the table.

"Why?" Sahadev stares at me.

I say nothing. My parents like to have their own secret language. In the other room, they shift easily back and forth between Bengali and English.

"What was your question?" My voice comes out way too Canadian. My words slide and bump into each other.

I don't belong here. I imagine saying Excuse me, it's rude to speak in front of me as if I'm not even here, and we're not in India anymore, we're in Canada now. I imagine getting up, walking out into the snow, hitching a ride home.

But I sit stupidly in my chair.

"Bangla bola na!" Mrs. Ghose's voice fills with wonder, like I'm a rare shooting star, which is even worse. She turns and throws papadum to sizzle on the stove.

The matter is closed.

Sahadev and Vishnu return to their play fighting. I sit stunned, my mind whirling.

"Can I use your washroom?" I ask, nearly choking. Nobody replies. I say louder to Sahadev, who sits closest, "Washroom!"

He points to the door. "Upstairs."

I dash for solitude across the green shag carpet and up the stairs. Voices and sitar music drift from the lower level. For a short time, nobody will miss me. I stop to catch my breath and notice old yellowed photographs on the hallway walls. The Ghose ancestors gaze from their finery, flowing silk saris and heaps of jewelry. They sit in ornate chairs in palatial rooms. Wealth trickles from their shoes. How could these Ghoses have come from those Ghoses?

I wonder about my ancestors. Who were they? My great grandfather was Conservator of Forests for Bengal, wrote volumes about the Flora of Assam. My grandmother opened a university for women and then died of pleurisy in the Himalayas. She was only thirty-eight. My parents crossed the Atlantic when I was two months old, and here I am. These snippets of knowledge are puzzle pieces strewn across a table, waiting to make a picture.

I peek into a bedroom through an open door. One thing about me - I can be nosy when nobody's around. There's a double bed between two nightstands. On the chest of drawers sits a large wood carving of a many-armed god with an elephant's head and a rotund belly. Plates filled with candy surround him. The elephant's round face is kind, caring. A glow of comfort infuses me. Staring into the jolly elephant face, I could swear that he is alive, watching me.

"Lord Ganesh," Dr. Ghose says from behind me, "Remover of Obstacles. Very fond of sweets. Consult him in times of difficulty, but be careful. He's a bit of a trickster. Always playing jokes."

I turn, heat rising in my cheeks. "I - was just looking for the washroom."

Dr. Ghose points down the hall and smiles.