Abby Spencer Goes to Bollywood (5 page)

Mom looks pale. “Do I know this Naveen?” Mom mutters.

This guy is supposedly a Bollywood legend. Is he the same guy who went to college with Mom and wanted to be a TV anchor?

“Mom, why didn’t you ever google my dad in all these years?” I blurt.

“I did, Abby. But it was years before I tried searching. At first, the hurt and rejection felt like shackles that I could never break free.”

What? I’m not sure I get it, but the words make me pause and look at Mom differently.

I’m too overwhelmed to utter a word.

“Then, as the years passed, the hurt was not as raw, and I googled him. I discovered Naveen Kumar. I told you I had more to share,” Mom says, pacing the room.

“I realized he didn’t seem to want any part of his time in Dallas. He had moved on. I was scared that he might think I was a stalker or wanted part of his fame or money. And I had to think about how his fame would affect you. I wanted you to have a normal life. The last year or so as you got older, I was scared you would search and find him.” Mom looks at me, hoping for understanding, I think.

I don’t know what to say.

Mom takes a deep breath and continues. “I read how his life was an open book and how he was always followed by the media. The media speculated about his romances, when he would marry, and why he wasn’t married. I knew I owed you more information, but honestly, Abby, the idea of a life without privacy makes me shudder.” Mom’s voice is shaky and her face is drained of color.

Grandma and Grandpa heard this before. I can tell by the looks on their faces. Grandma retreats to the kitchen to make chamomile tea and to give us privacy. Chamomile tea

would be her answer if a hurricane rocked the house, which is what this feels like.

“I’ll be darned!” says Grandpa, trying to lighten the air in the room. “Holy guacamole! Sparkles, your father is a Bollywood sex sym—” he stops and corrects himself, seeing the horrified look on my face. “A Bollywood film star!”

Sex symbol! The word that rhymes with Tex-Mex made the assembly last year giggle in embarrassment. And it was only mentioned in the lyrics of a song. Of course, it was mainly the sixth graders who snickered and shuffled.

In the world according to Abby, sex anything should not be used to describe my father.

Then my grandpa gets serious. “Abby, we all felt that you should have a life away from celebrity till you were older. Your mom planned to tell you soon.”

In a weird way, Grandma’s chamomile tea actually works and calms us a bit. Maybe it’s the familiar thing when everything else is upturned and blown away.

After my shock wears off, Mom decides to thoroughly search the Internet. The old phone number she has isn’t even valid anymore. With 6,992,831 hits, she thinks one might lead us to a way to contact him. But it’s like looking for a needle in the Internet haystack. Fan sites and gossip sites clutter everything.

After hours of searching and not finding anything, I’m

exhausted. It’s after ten. My mind hurtles between a rock and a mound of homework.

I want to meet him. But I don’t want to meet him. Mom should’ve told me. Maybe she shouldn’t have.

Maybe I should find a daisy and strip its petals to find my answer. Instead, I gnaw at my nails. Finally, my grandparents leave and I go to bed. I leave Mom still hunched over the computer, mesmerized.

The next morning, I still have to go to school. It’s International Day, and I promised Priya I’d model Indian clothes. Mom has bags under her eyes the size of puffy caterpillars. She bravely chugs coffee at the kitchen table, trying to wake herself. Without looking up, she says, “I told Susan about all this and she’s been incredibly supportive. I’m running late again. But I was up till three. I found a web site for a production company that your father seems involved in and it had a contact number. With daylight saving time, there’s a ten and half hour time difference. I checked. I plan to call tonight.”

“What will you say when you call, Mom? Please let Naveen-Kabir know he has a thirteen-year-old American daughter?” It’s so absurd I start to giggle.

Mom spits out her coffee and cracks a smile. “Welcome back, Abby’s sense of humor, even if it is snarky. Have a great

time at International Day. We’ll figure it out, honey,” she says and I leave for school.

What exactly would we figure out? What to say? How to get a hold of my father? Or where do we go from here? I’m so preoccupied that I could have eaten a spatula instead of my toaster waffle and not known it. I stare out the window on the ride to school instead of chatting as I did most mornings. When I get to school, I head toward the gym in a daze.

As soon as I walk into the gym, I say aloud, “Wow!”

An array of flags has transformed the All-American gym into a United Nations assembly hall. There are at least twenty-five festive booths representing different countries. Volunteer moms bustle around getting their tables ready.

The air is soaked with the aromas of food. Butter croissants from France, bite-size tacos from Mexico, Greek spanakopitas, Indian samosas, and custard tarts from England. I stand at the entrance for a minute and take it all in, feeling excited. I head toward Priya’s booth, where Zoey is waiting. Priya’s mom has draped our table in a cloth embroidered with mirrors and arranged a few artifacts from India on it. Currency, jewelry, books, fabrics, and an intricately carved rosewood box. It looks like the one Mom has at home with her memory stuff. I wonder if my father gave that to her. A huge map and

posters swirl around the table.

The new knowledge about my dad gives the objects

new meaning. It feels right that I’m volunteering at the India booth. But what do I know about India even if my father is there?

It’s in South Asia.

Priya’s parents came from there. I love samosas and chicken tikka. Oh! And Gandhi was Indian.

Wow. It smacks me in the face. I don’t know much! I have so much to learn.

Mrs. Gupta is setting up her laptop with the help of the tech guy when I walked up to her. “Hi, Abby, we’re almost ready,” she says. “Here are your clothes. Priya will help you get dressed.” She reaches out to hold my hand. “And Abby, thank you so much for doing this.”

“You’re welcome. Why do you have the laptop, Mrs. G.?” I ask, peeking into my bag of clothes.

“Oh, I have a music video that I’d like to show if we can get it working,” she replies.

Priya and I rush to the locker rooms. I open the bag to find the dressiest, most ornate, and stunning outfit I’ve ever seen. The skirt is pale bluish-purplish silk. Gold and silver embroidery adorn the hem. The blouse is pink, trimmed with the same lavender color from the skirt.

“Wow! Priya, this is gorgeous. What if I ruin it?” I slip into the skirt and blouse.

“You won’t ruin it,” Priya says as she buttons me up. She pleats the scarf, which matches the skirt, and drapes it around the skirt, partially covering the sliver of exposed midriff between the skirt and the blouse. She throws the other end of the scarf over my shoulder.

And voila! I’m ready. It looks like a sari, but it isn’t. A sari, Priya tells me, is six yards of untailored fabric draped around the body.

I looked in the mirror admiring myself and then it strikes me. This isn’t just International Day. It’s a debutante ball for Abby Tara Spencer.

Overwhelmed by the discovery that had catapulted my life to crazyville in the last twenty-four hours, I grab Priya’s hand. She looks at me and then at her watch. “You look amazing, Abby. We better get back to the gym before Mom comes looking for us.”

In a saner frame of mind I would’ve realized this isn’t a Kodak moment. But my mind is whirling. I grab Priya’s hand tighter and whisper urgently, “Priya, what if I told you I learned a lot more about my father?”

“Abby, not funny.” Priya packs my clothes. “We need to get back before the bell rings.”

I can’t blame Priya. She doesn’t know my life has taken a mega twist. No normal person chooses to make major life-changing announcements in the locker room.
Not
with the

sounds of metal locker doors clanging.
Not
with the faint smell of sweaty socks from a million years wafting around.
Not
with minutes left to the bell.

Sure enough, the bell buzzes like a chain saw.

“And what if I told you my father is very famous in India?” I whisper as Priya opens the locker room door and we’re thrown upstream into a sea of kids heading to class. I guess once I start, I can’t stop, even if Priya thinks I’m being funny.

Priya gives me a look that says,
Ha! Ha! Hilarious.

We run back to the gym and take our places at the booth. Priya looks at me and says, “What’s up with you? As far as I know wearing that outfit doesn’t make you a fantasy writer.”

I can’t answer because volunteer moms oohing and aahing over my outfit have surrounded me.

Mrs. Gupta has her laptop working. Kids file into the gym, their pretend passports in hand. They go from table to table, picking up information, food samples, and stamping their passports with visas from each country’s booth.

Then they’re at our table. Mrs. Gupta does her mandated spiel laced with facts. India is the world’s largest democracy, it’s a secular country, Hindi is the national language, etcetera.

Learn, Abby. Slow down, Mrs. G
.

Then it’s time for me to twirl as she explains that a girl would wear this dress on a special occasion like a wedding. I

strut and twirl to let the students see and admire the beautiful fabric. Priya claps the loudest. Mrs. Gupta thanks me and announces, “To end, I’d like to show you a song and dance clip from a Bollywood movie. It’s like the music videos we have on MTV.”

She points the remote and a pulsing beat of exuberant music fills the gym. In the video, girls in outfits like mine dance in sync to the beat of the music. It’s beautiful and mesmerizing. The infectious rhythm has me tapping my feet even if I don’t understand the lyrics. And then my father—yes, my father—erupts onto the screen and winks at the camera.

I freeze.

Mrs. Gupta presses a button on the remote and pauses my father in mid-leap. “That’s India’s biggest star, Naveen Kumar. You could compare him to Brad Pitt.”

I expect him to spring out of the computer monitor and into the gym. I feel like my stomach could jump out of my body at any moment. She unpauses my dad and he finishes his leap and launches into a dance routine designed to get people on the floor and moving…unless you happen to be his mortified, unknown-to-him daughter. Kids clap to the beat, moving their hips. It’s infectious. Even the principal taps his foot.

But not his daughter and her embarrassed friend Priya,

who whispers, “I told Mom not to play that. It’s so corny and Naveen Kumar is a doofus. No idea why the females of the world swoon over him.”

Priya has covered her face with her hands. She peeked at the screen through her fingers.

Zoey disagrees. “You’re kidding, right? He’s super cute.

Look at his moves.”

I want the earth to open up and swallow me. I’m not sure which is worse. Priya’s disdain or Zoey’s crush.

Yet my father-famished eyes study the image, soaking up syllables in a language I don’t understand. Trying to absorb and memorize every nod, squint, and movement.

“He’s someone’s dad, Zoey!” I say before I can grab the words back.

“He’s not married,” chimes in Priya. “Maybe he has a love child,” I say.

Why is a child born out of marriage called a love child? Why is the child not called an oops? Once upon a time, the love child was called ugly names like bastard. My skin crawls in protest.

“You’re talking crazy today. What’s gotten into you?” Priya asks.

I force out a crazy laugh and make googly eyes. They both join in.

Zoey does the Naveen Kumar dance moves.

And then I swallow, looking Priya in the eye and just blurt it out, “Naveen Kumar is my father.”

Zoey says, “Sure, and there will be world peace in 2015.” “You guys, I am serious,” I whisper urgently.

Priya looks at me like I’m speaking Mandarin or Portuguese or a combination of the two. Then she rubs her eyes as if I’ve grown two heads.

Zoey realizes I’m serious. Her mouth hangs open. If a fly wanted to visit her stomach, it could’ve had a direct flight.

Priya keeps staring and then goes red and stammers, “I didn’t mean what I said about Naveen Kumar being a doofus.”

“It’s okay, Priya. You didn’t know.”

“You made fun of her dad! You did, you did!” Zoey sings. “I am now the bestest friend, you are not.”

“Naveen Kumar is your dad? OMG, Abby!” Priya shrieks. “You guys, keep it to yourselves for now. I need to figure things out first. My mom is trying to reach him. And I just

don’t know how this will all go down.”

I don’t tell them that he didn’t care about me and didn’t contact my mother when she wrote him. That thought shrivels my heart. The words could never escape my lips.

He may be a big star but he is a lousy father.

Chapter 8