Aerogrammes and Other Stories - By Tania James Page 0,40

who, in her cowrie necklace, seemed suddenly a savior. With one glance at me, she started jogging in my direction, her shells chattering like teeth.

“Newt,” I hyperventilated, pointing. “Fell down the stairs.”

She uttered one word with total control—“Where”—and sprinted toward the crowd of girls, pumping her arms, as unaccustomed to running as I was to merengue.

I watched from a careful distance. By the time Mrs. Main knelt down beside Newt, Lydia Coe was helping him sit up. His mouth was moving. He was telling them what had happened, how I’d raged at him like a rabid animal. Or maybe he wasn’t. No one looked my way.

I went inside and put my head down on my desk, exhaling frothy rings of vapor onto the Formica. My head felt tight and clogged. Through the window I could see Newt limping along, flanked by two boys, Mrs. Main, and several more girls helping shepherd him across the grass. It wouldn’t be long before Lydia Coe would come bursting through the double doors in search of ice packs. For now, it was just me and Ethnic Ken, stuck straight up in the pile of toys. The possibility of theft flashed and faded. It had never occurred to me that I could grow out of Ken in a matter of minutes, that “5 & Up” had a ceiling after all, and running straight into it left a lasting bruise.

That night, I hovered in the doorway of the bathroom. My grandfather was squatting over the drain, probing each hole with a toothbrush whose bristles were splayed and gray. “I can’t get it clean,” he said. He dropped the toothbrush and folded his arms over his knees, shaking his head. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

I sat on the ledge of the tub. Before he came to live with us, the tub was always speckled and laced with grime. Now it was a spotless, astonishing white, even the veins between the tiles scraped clean.

He put his face on his forearms.

“Look.” I dangled a red mesh bag of marbles in front of him. I’d felt a little guilty about lifting the little bag from the Toy Drive box, but those kids weren’t the only needy ones.

He drew a quick, ecstatic breath. “Where did you find them, Ammu?”

“Somewhere under my bed.”

I expected him to question the label, which read, “Classic Marbles, $2.” Instead, his hand closed around the bag, clenched as tightly as every tale my grandmother had told him. “See, I remembered,” he said. “I remember everything.”

I tore open the bag and emptied them into his palm. He fingered the different marbles—blues, yellows, reds, and clear ones ribboned with white—each a precious, painted planet. I rested my hand on his shoulder.

“It’s hard, Ammu.” His chin trembled. “It’s hard being here.”

I nodded and took the big cloudy blue from his hand, rolled it between my fingertips. I asked him to show me how to play.

Light & Luminous

• • •

Minal Auntie didn’t sleep last night, imagining the moment she would be called to the stage and handed the trophy that has eluded her for the past four years. But now, as the competition wears on and one routine follows another, she grows drowsy. Her eyelids feel leaden. Next to her, a mother slings a towel over her shoulder and begins breast-feeding her baby beneath it, a bored look on her face.

Minal Auntie leans away from the suckling sounds and opens the program. She finds her school—“Illinois Academy of Indian Classical Dance”—and beneath it: “Minal Raman, director.” Her girls are up next.

Every year, Minal Auntie ponders whether to withdraw her students from the All-India Talent Showcase, an annual event that is thick with Indians and thin on talent. In her opinion, there are far too many routines featuring untrained folk and “fusion” dancers, like the six girls currently taking up space on the stage, shimmying and writhing to a tabla-laced rap song. Last year Minal Auntie complained about a similarly indecent number whose song included the lines “He fills my cup. / I like it rough.” To no avail. The worst part is watching tubby little Sanjali Kapoor thrust her hips this way and that, utterly unconvinced by her own sex appeal.

For the past two years, the trophy for Best Group Dance has gone to Twinkle Sharma of Little Star Studios. When Little Star opened three years ago, Minal Auntie predicted a quick and happy collapse; who needed a teacher for raas and bhangra and Bollywood when one could so easily