The Gurkha's Daughter (17 page)

“No, right now. I don't want to go to that stupid school. I hate Math Sir.”

“But how will we get there?”

“We'll ask people. Tell them we live near there.”

“But we are in our school uniform. Won't they know that we should be in school?”

“Yes, let's just remove our sweaters.” She was wise beyond her years. “We'll look like servants, and no one will guess.”

We took off our pullovers, boarded a bus, and changed to another one just when the conductor came near us collecting ticket money. On the next bus, the conductor asked us for money when we got on, and Gita casually paid. I was curious—where'd she get the money?

“God promise you won't tell anyone?” she said.

“Yes, God promise.” I made a cross with my finger, mentally numbering this secret. It would depend on how serious it was.

“I took it from Aamaa's purse.”

“What if she finds out?”

“She won't. This was just a little of what she had in her purse. She has a lot of money.”

“Maybe I'll get some from my Aamaa's purse, too.”

“Yes, Mit Aamaa doesn't spend a lot of money. My Aamaa often says that to Appa. She probably has more money than my Aamaa in her purse.”

We got off near Swayambunath, where Gita made me circumambulate the stupa and ask God to burn down our school so we'd never have to go again.

Free food was being distributed in one corner, so we stood in line for some
alooko achaar
and
sel-roti
, which we ate off leaf plates.

“Let's go up there and eat,” Gita said, pointing to a viewpoint. Swayambunath was located on a hilltop, so we could see all of Kathmandu from various junctures. Gita wanted to use the
binoculars, which a suspicious dirty boy, a little older than us, wouldn't allow.

“But we have money,” Gita said, waving a hundred-rupee note at him.

“Where are your parents?” the boy asked.

“Inside,” Gita said. “Praying.”

“I don't believe you.”

Gita flashed her tongue at him and called him a monkey.

We ran away, but the boy followed us.

“If I am a monkey,” he shouted, “you are a donkey.”

He used a word Gita and I weren't allowed to say.

Gita turned around and lunged at him. They both fell down, she on top of him. And then she scratched his face and slapped him a few times.

A group of worshippers gathered around us. A woman tried separating the fighting pair but received a kick from the boy. Hands and legs were everywhere, as were clumps of hair. The pointy-nosed astrologer was right—Gita's luck was worsening. I'd have to ask him what she could do about it. I wouldn't like it, though, if he suggested she get another
mitini
to transfer her ill-luck to.

Finally, a policeman appeared and hit the rolling bodies lightly with his baton.

“How can you behave that way when you are a girl?” he chided Gita.

“How can you hit a girl?” he asked the boy.

“She's a donkey, this girl,” the boy said as he got up, his comment prompting a slap from the policeman.

“He tried stealing our money,” Gita offered by way of explanation.

“Where are your parents?” the policeman asked.

“We came here in a school group,” Gita lied. “Our teacher is waiting for us by the museum. Please don't tell Sir I was fighting. Please. Please. Please. We are late. We need to go.”

Before the policeman could say another word, we were running downhill.

“I know,” I said when Gita finally looked at me. “God promise.” I signed a cross. Two big secrets in a day.

On the
safa tempo
ride back home, we attracted the attention of a middle-aged man.

“Where are you children going?” he asked.

“Memsaab has sent us to get her children from school,” Gita cheekily replied. “She also asked us not to talk to strangers.”

The man looked at the other passengers and shrugged.

“These people send little girls to pick up little girls,” he said to no one in particular. “No wonder we have so many cases of kidnapping.”

I expected Aamaa to say something when I got home, thought I'd get a beating, and my ears turned red every time she asked me something about school, but nothing happened. I promised to keep my secrets to myself—five in all, for I lumped the truancy with Gita's fight because the latter happened during the former. I then ranked my secrets in my mind: my spit swapping with Gita was still the most treasured secret, second was the Swayambunath episode with Gita, third was Gita's theft, which was followed by peeing standing up with Gita, and Aamaa's drinking was relegated to Secret Number Five. The secret about the
mitini
—the one the pointy-nosed astrologer asked me to be quiet about—wasn't really a secret because it didn't involve Gita.

No one questioned our absence in school the next day, but Gita then returned to school with unmistakable
gauri bet
marks. Gurung Badi had found out her daughter was a thief. Maybe my bad luck was rubbing off on my
mitini
after all.

I turned ten on April 30, 1997, ten days before Gita did. Aamaa said that I couldn't have a birthday party because of the
unpredictability in Appa's life right now. Appa and Gurung Bada might soon have to move to another country from Hong Kong, she said. No one was sure if they'd be transferred to Brunei or the UK, but Aamaa went to Pashupatinath a lot these days.

The pointy-nosed astrologer made more trips to our place than he had in the past. He often asked me if my luck had changed, to which I didn't know the answer. Gita did get more beatings from her mother than before, so my luck must have changed. I asked the astrologer what she could do to change her luck, to which he remarked there was nothing she could do and that I'd have to keep the actual reason for our ceremony a secret from her. I wasn't about to make it Secret Number Whatever—my rankings were in a mess because Secret Number Three, Gita's stealing from her mother, was no longer a secret.

Something important was about to happen, and if the astrologer's increased visits didn't prove it, Aamaa and Gurung Badi's hushed talks, during which Gita and I were banished outdoors, definitely did. They talked about this impending transfer as much as they predicted the content of Gurung Badi's bulging tummy. Inquisitive, I went to the one person who had an answer for everything.

“Don't you know?” Gita asked. “China is taking back Hong Kong.”

“Really?” I said, faking comprehension.

“Yes, and because your Appa and my Appa both work for the British, they will have to go, too.”

“Go where?” I asked. It was even more complex. I wondered how Gita made sense of everything.

“To Britain. The UK and Britain are the same country, Mitini. Or to Brunei—my Appa is going to London, but your father has been transferred to Brunei.”

“Yes, I know that,” I lied. “I wasn't sure that Appa would go to Brunei.”

“Of course they will, and Aamaa says we are going, too. She says we can live much better in the UK than in Hong Kong. She has also had enough of taking care of two children—one me, and my little sister in her stomach—and needs a husband's help now.”

It made sense. Just the day before, I heard Gurung Badi tell Aamaa that she wanted to kill Gurung Bada.

“They do their thing and are gone—fools,” she said. “They don't know what we go through for nine months and then after. We are worse off than widows. I don't even want another child.”

“But we are here.” Aamaa was sympathetic. “We can take care of you to some extent.”

“Yes, but an absent husband is as good as having no husband. Once the baby is born, I will ask him to take us all away. I don't care how we live there, but I am going. I will otherwise let him know that I will never allow my son to join the service.”

“How do you know it's a son?” I asked, momentarily forgetting Aamaa's rules of decorum that entailed never interrupting when elders talked about something serious. And this, I knew, was serious.

“Oh, I know it is—only a son could give me so much trouble. All he does is kick and kick and kick. He's already giving me more problems than his father.”

Before Aamaa could say something, I volunteered to excuse myself.

I prayed to God, for Gita's sake, it would be a daughter, a young sister she could dress up. I wondered if the pointy-nosed astrologer would know the sex of the baby.

“I think she will be as pretty as you,” I said to Gita.

“Yes, and she'll only wear sleeveless clothes,” Gita declared. “In the UK, the clothes will be so much cuter.”

I prayed we'd join Appa, too—if not in the UK, at least in Brunei.

“In the UK, there is no mud,” Gita said. “Everything is so clean, and I can wear so many sleeveless dresses.”

Gita had cousins who lived in the UK, and they occasionally sent her pictures. She carefully studied these photos and developed her own sartorial sense based on them. She cut out a heart on her shirt to show off the mole above her chest and had even asked her mother for a nose piercing, but Gurung Badi wouldn't have any of that.

“I will get a piercing once I am in the UK,” Gita promised. “All Gurung girls have it. Aamaa wants me to grow a little before I can get it, but I want it now. I am almost ten. I am old enough.”

I undressed Sandy, the big, black doll Gita had given me, and dressed her again. I undressed her and dressed her again. Dress. Undress. It didn't seem like the astrologer had succeeded in ridding me of my bad luck.

“We will take a plane and land on top of Mount Everest for tea,” Gita said, animated. “Aamaa even says I can drink some beer.”

I wondered if Gita picked Sandy for me because I looked like her, just as I had picked the fair, beautiful doll for her because she looked like Gita.

“No rice anymore, thank God,” she said. “Only bread and butter and cakes. And I will eat with chopsticks. Renu didi told me that's what they use there.”

“What are chopsticks?” I asked.

“Sticks to eat everything with. That's what they use in Hong Kong, so that's what they eat with in London, too. Maybe I will send you some as a gift.”

“Yes, and I can eat with them here, but who will teach me?” I asked hopefully.

“Ask your Appa to when he comes home on vacations. And I will get a new
mitini.
You should get a new one, too, now that we won't live in the same place.”

It was all I needed to run crying to Aamaa. I was losing my best friend, and
she
was the one—the one who now had my bad luck—going to a magic land.

Aamaa said we were staying simply because I'd receive a better education than I'd get in Brunei, where Appa would be transferred.

“They treat us badly there,” she said, like she'd been there. “All Gurkha children go to the camp school. Here, you go to an English-language school.”

“How can that be?” I asked. “But Gita is going to the UK.”

“In the UK, they can study in English schools, but in Brunei you can't.”

“Then why can't Appa go to the UK?”

“Because he wasn't transferred there. Don't worry—Gita will suffer. She won't be able to understand the way they speak in English in the UK.”

So, Gita was unlucky. Then why did I feel miserable? The pointy-nosed astrologer would definitely ask me not to think about such things and concentrate on my math instead.

Things are blurry after that. I think Appa came home a few months after Gita left, or it could have been weeks. He had grayed around the temples and looked smaller than I remembered him. He had completed fifteen years in the army and had hoped for a few years of extension or permission to work in the UK, but neither happened. Gurung Bada, according to Appa, wouldn't retire anytime soon because he had made himself the Gurkha Sahib's absolute favorite. All of McFerron's complaints went unheeded because the Gurkha Sahib himself liked alcohol as much as Gurung Bada did.

Thankfully, I had something else besides Sandy the doll to remember Gita by. She had left all her
bhara-kuti
behind. Gurung Badi wouldn't allow her to take the little utensils
because they would eat up space in their luggage. I barricaded myself from the newfound tension brewing between Appa and Aamaa by selecting various combinations of plates, pots, and pans and using them in my solitary games on the terrace.

“I am retired,” I said in Appa's voice. I put my mustache on and drank from a small steel cup, chipped at the edge. “I get a pension.”

“A pension of not even ten thousand rupees.” I removed the mustache. “We can barely pay for her school with that. You can try something—be a bodyguard or a security.”

Mustache on.

“I am a retired Gurkha. I belong to a regiment that has won thirty-six Victoria Crosses. Do you think I can go around looking for jobs as a security guard?”

Mustache off.

“Then how will we make ends meet? Forget your dream of adding floors to the house. Forget everything. You're not even thirty-five. We have a life ahead of us.”

Mustache on.

“Don't worry. We will be granted British citizenship. We can then all go to the UK and work.”

Mustache off.

“How long will we wait? By then all our savings will be gone. Is this what you get for all these years of service, of living away from your family?”

Mustache on.

“I am with my family now.”

I forgot to take the mustache off.

“Then I was happier when you were not here. At least we weren't worried about what we would eat. I am tired of living in this half-completed house.”

Mustache still on. Phantom cigarette between the lips.

“It will happen soon. The British are kind people. They wouldn't turn us away. We have fought with them for more than two hundred years. It will happen soon. And soon, we will all live there.”