But this American girl, with all her high-and-mighty ways, may just be worth all the work I do for her. She’s very interesting in some ways. Her clothes, for instance, always have words on them. I’ve never seen girls wear clothes with sentences written on them, only boys. Maybe this is how they do things in America. Today, her shirt is light blue. On one side is a tomato with stick legs and a mustache; on the other side is a ketchup bottle. On top of the tomato is a speech bubble with the words BRO, IS THAT YOU?
I think they call ketchup bro in America. How strange.
I set the mango in front of her, gleaming gold. I’ve cut it into strips the traditional way: two big sections down the lengths, and one big pit. She stares at it uncertainly. “I’ve only ever seen mango cut into cubes, and they’re usually orange.”
I try not to shudder. She’s ignorant and slightly dumb. Still, the fact that she knows English is enough to increase her value in my eyes. I stretch my lips into what I hope is a smile. “Try. Promise you like.”
She turns to me. “That’s another thing. How do you know English?”
I have to be patient, I tell myself. “Do you think I’m . . . what do you say . . . uneducated?” I ask her, but gently. There’s a high chance she actually does think all Pakistanis are uneducated. Yesterday, she marveled at a McDonald’s ad on television. I wonder what she’ll say when she hears we also have Pizza Hut, Hardee’s, KFC, and all the other American restaurant chains. Not to mention the latest iPhones. Her eyes will probably pop out of their sockets.
She shrugs. “I don’t know. You work here all day. When do you go to school?”
I squelch my frustration. Her questions are too many, too fast. I’d rather she taste the mango. I gesture toward it. “First eat. Then I answer.”
The kitchen door bangs open, and we both look up, startled. Tahira bustles in, holding a laundry basket full of wet clothes. “Salaam, Maryam Ji.” She grins, bobbing her head. “Eating delicious mangoes, I see?”
Mimi looks at her uncertainly. “Is it any good, do you think?” She uses the wrong word for good, which makes me relax just a bit. This girl isn’t perfect either.
Tahira stares at her with round eyes. “Any good? What sort of question is that? A mango is the best fruit, the sweetest, the juiciest! When I was a young girl, my friends and I would climb up the tree in our village and eat two or three at a time. Once my brother got a stomachache so bad—”
This could go on forever. “Don’t you have to hang those clothes outside, Tahira?” I prompt, giving her a hard look.
Grumbling under her breath, she departs out the back door to the clothesline.
“Now, where were we?” I say, shutting the door firmly behind her.
Mimi looks at the door, then back at her plate doubtfully. She picks up one slice gingerly and bites into it. I look at her face as it transforms from boredom to interest, and finally to utter delight. She gobbles down the slice, then another, then sucks on the pit. Juice dribbles down her chin, but she continues to eat.
“Wow, wow, wow!” she whispers. “What on earth is this fruit? How is it so amazing?”
“So you agree? Pakistan wins?”
She licks her lips and reaches for another mango slice. “Oh yeah, definitely. Pakistan ten, America zero.”
I’m pretty sure that’s a sports comparison. Americans are known to be very sporty. I sit down next to her and point to her journal. “So now you make deal with me?”
She nods eagerly. “Anything. I’m dying to hear all about it.”
I consider this. I know she’s not really dying, so her excited expression must mean she’s extremely eager. “Why?” I ask.
“Are you kidding? You’re finally talking to me. Do you know how many times I’ve tried making friends with you, but you just scowl and walk away? I mean, you’re the only person my age in a thousand-mile radius. Why wouldn’t I want to talk to you and hear about how your English is so good but you work as a cook? It’s fascinating!”
I can feel the scowl she’s talking about worry my forehead. Despite her lightning-fast speech, I’ve managed to get the gist of it. How easy her life is, how simple.
I struggle to explain the facts of life to her. “I’m a servant. Your nani would . . . kill me? . . . if she see me sitting around, eh, chatting.”
She immediately looks around the kitchen. “I think she’s sleeping,” she whispers. Interestingly, she seems as afraid of Begum Sahiba as everyone else.
“Of course she is sleeping,” I say. “Everyone sleeps in the afternoon.”
“The lunch your father made was very good. My mom says she needs a nap after such delicious food.”
I nod. Anyone who praises my abba can’t be all bad. “Thank you. He work very hard.”
“Works very hard.”
I pause. “What?”
“Works very hard, not work . . .” She stops and bites her lip. “Never mind. Where is your abba right now?”
I wave to the back door. “There is a little covered . . . eh . . . outside where all the servants lie down to . . . eh . . . relax in afternoon. I don’t like to sit with them because, you know, the driver, he smoke, and it make my eyes water.”
She nods. “I hate cigarette smoke too. It’s so yucky.”
Yucky. I like this word. But I don’t tell her that. I have to ask her about the deal before it’s too late.
“So,” I say, switching to Urdu, but speaking slowly so she can understand me. “You asked me how I know English. My abba used to work in a different house when I was little. My job was to play with the children of the family. The children had a tutor who came to teach them math and science and English. I was there the whole day, every day, and so I learned with them. Writing in English, just a little bit. But I can read a lot. The newspaper, storybooks, the signs on the street. They didn’t even realize it.”
She is silent. “So you never actually went to school?” She speaks in Urdu too, broken and hesitant.
I take a deep breath. There’s no use getting angry. It’s a reality I can’t escape. “Poor people have to work. We don’t have the luxury of school.”
“I . . . I . . .” She switches to English. “I’m so sorry.”
I blink away the fierceness from my eyes. This is good, I remind myself. She’s feeling sorry for me, which means she may help me. “I’ll be okay now you are here,” I tell her firmly. “You can teach me English.”
9
Mimi
If Pigs Could Fly, Where Would They Fly To?
Sakina’s words echo in my head all night. Teach me how to speak English so I can pass the admission test for school. Her English isn’t all bad. She knows words, but not grammar and tenses. Probably the same as my Urdu. I agreed without a single thought, of course, right there in the kitchen while the family and servants all took their afternoon nap. How could I not? A deal is a deal, and that mango she fed me was truly delicious.
A cool breeze wafts in from my open window and makes the white cotton curtains billow in waves. My bed is on the other side of the room, a strong brown wooden thing with four huge posters and a leather headboard. It belonged to my uncle Faizan, who’s studying to be a doctor in England. He and Mom are Facebook friends, but he hardly ever calls on the phone because Mom says he’s something called a millennial. Two years ago, he visited us in Houston during spring break. Mom took him around to see all the sights, and in the evenings they sat in our little living room and ate Pakistani takeout food from Kabob Kitchen down the street, keeping me company as I watched Nickelodeon. All I remember about that trip is that every sentence Mom and Uncle Faizan spoke started with Do you remember . . . ?