The Whole Story of Half a Girl (14 page)

“Sonia said it would be okay,” Kate says in her bubbly way. “Is that your sister?” Kate points to Natasha, who’s hiding by the stairs chewing on a piece of her hair.

“Yup,” I say.

“Natasha,” Mom says. “Come say hi.”

“Hey,” Kate says. “Are those drumsticks?” Natasha comes closer and holds them forward, nodding.

“You play the drums?”

Natasha nods.

“That is so awesome! Will you play something for me?” Kate asks, her smile wide, eyes bright.

Natasha glows and nods furiously.

Then Kate turns to Mom. “Mrs. Nadhamuni,” she says perfectly, “that’s a really pretty necklace.” She steps forward to see it better. Mom fingers the fancy silver circle that hangs from a chain she got from India years ago. She wears it so much, I don’t even notice it anymore.

“Oh, thanks.” Mom touches it as if trying to remember it herself.

Mom turns to me and clears her throat. “Sonia, can I talk to you for a sec?” She doesn’t wait for an answer, just starts walking to her bedroom. I look at Kate to tell her I’ll be right back, but she’s busy looking at the tapestry that hangs over the fireplace in the den area. Our first floor is really one big room, kitchen, den, and living room all blending into one. There’s nowhere to hide.

I follow Mom into the bedroom and sit down on the big lumpy bed. Mom closes the door and faces me. Her room smells like old coffee. I see two mugs on the dresser.

“What’s going on?” Mom says, hands on hips. “First of all, it’s a school night. You didn’t ask her to sleep over, did you?”

“No, but I don’t have any homework anyway,” I say.

“Just tell me why you didn’t ask me first.”

“Because you said you didn’t want me to see her anymore, but she asked if she could come over. What was I supposed to say? No?”

“Yes, you were. And I didn’t say I didn’t want you to see her anymore, just that you needed a break,” she says.

“Do I have to tell her to go home?” I say. My mouth is dry. I try to imagine telling Kate she can’t stay.

Mom lets out a big sigh, lifts up her glasses, rubs her eyes.

“No, I guess not,” she says, and opens the door. “Look, I have some work to do. Just let Natasha play with you guys, and we’re going to talk about this later.”

“Oh, come on!” I say without thinking. “She’ll just be a dork.” I’m sure Kate didn’t plan on babysitting a six-year-old.

“Sonia, you’re really pushing it” is all Mom says before she opens the door, motioning to me to go first.

When I come back to the front of the house, I don’t see Kate or Natasha; then I hear talking and laughing upstairs.

Kate’s sitting on the floor with Natasha, painting my sister’s nails purple.

“Hey, little squirmer. Hold still,” she says. Natasha wiggles her other hand at me. “I had some in my bag,” Kate says. “It must be so much fun to have a little sister.”

Natasha blinks at me and goes back to gazing at Kate while she paints each nail carefully.

I don’t answer. I sit down on the bottom of Natasha’s red bunk bed.

Then Kate asks Natasha to play something. Natasha blows on her little fingers a few seconds and gets her sticks. She plays a couple different beats that I’ve heard ten thousand times, and finishes off with a stupid and very loud solo. Kate claps her hands wildly after she’s done.

“Wow, you should totally start a girl band,” Kate says.

“A what?” Natasha says. “Oh, no. I chipped one!” she cries, examining her nails.

“She’s only six,” I say, and sigh.

“I’ll fix it,” Kate says, rushing to her side with the bottle of nail polish. I’m starting to feel like Natasha and Kate are babysitting me. Everyone likes Natasha. She’s funny and cute and little. It’s always that way. As soon as she was born, people started ignoring me at family holidays, everyone fussing over baby Natasha. I’m always the serious one, the one reading in the corner who people leave alone. Sometimes I like it that way. Sometimes I don’t.

After Natasha’s manicure and performance and second manicure, we all go into my room.

“I can’t believe this is your room,” Kate says.

“How come?” I look at the blue and green tie-dyed comforter. The beige rug, the huge overflowing bookshelf, my enormous dark wooden desk. I wonder if I have anything weird on it, like the travel section of the newspaper or some embarrassing thing I was writing.

“It looks like a room for someone much older,” she says, “like your parents or something.” My cheeks start to burn. She sits at my desk and leans back in the big leather chair. Natasha sits cross-legged on the floor, still checking out her nails. Kate takes a pen out of the red leather pen holder and starts doodling something on a yellow lined pad I got from Dad. “I know!” she says, and holds up her drawing. “We could give it a makeover.”

“A makeover?”

“Your room.” She shows me her drawing. It’s a fat, bubbly diagram of my room. Right now all the furniture is flat against the wall. But Kate’s drawing has the bookshelf on a catty-corner, and the bed and desk switched, so that the bed would be under the other windows and the desk would be in the center.

“And we could tie your curtains with ribbons and maybe add a few more pillows on your bed. It would look soooo good.”

“Yeah!” Natasha says, throwing herself belly-first on my bed.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“You’ll love it,” Kate says, and gets up. She puts her hands on one side of my desk. “Help me move this?”

So we get to work, moving furniture, rearranging, organizing. I wonder why Kate cares so much. I would never suggest that Kate change her room around. But then again, it’s perfect. We move what we can into the middle of the room, taking stuff off the desk and books out of the bookshelves. Then Kate picks up a pillow and whacks me with it. I whack her back and she falls on her butt laughing. Then Natasha whacks me, making me fall, and suddenly we’re a big snowball of pillows and arms and legs.

Mom comes running up the stairs and bursts through my doorway.

“What on earth is going on?” Mom says. We freeze.

Kate jumps up, smooths her hair, and wipes some sweat off her forehead.

“We’re giving Sonia’s room a makeover! Don’t worry, Mrs. Nadhamuni, it will look great. Do you have any blue or white ribbon?”

“I don’t know if this is such a good idea,” Mom says.

I look at the sour, worried expression on Mom’s face, as if we’re painting the walls black rather than basically cleaning up my room in a way it’s never been cleaned before, and I wish I could take a big whack at her with a pillow. She starts walking around picking up a couple of books and putting
them down. I wonder if I had that same worried expression on my face when Kate asked me at first.

“Mom, it’ll take just as much time to put it back the way it was. Can we just finish it?” I say. I have to admit it’s been fun, kind of like when Mary Poppins comes in and cleans up the nursery.

Mom runs her fingers through her frizzy hair. I bet Kate could give her some good style tips.

“Just get it in some kind of order before dinner,” she says. Then she heaves a big sigh, which she does a lot these days, and walks out.

We all start giggling and then Kate stands up and asks me to take one side of the desk. We push it under the big windows where my bed used to be. We put the bed in the corner under the smaller window and it looks much cozier. I go to the linen closet and get more pillows with white covers, which Kate fluffs and arranges on the bed. We find blue ribbon in Mom’s gift-wrapping stash, and Kate ties the plain white curtains in a special way so that they bubble out. We put the bookshelf on a diagonal and reshelve all the books neatly. We clean up all the papers and clothes and books on the floor. Kate throws a sheet over my desk chair and ties more blue ribbon around the back of it, so it looks fancy. We even get some of Natasha’s blue paint and Kate paints big fat flowers on the front of the dresser around the knobs. When we’re done we all collapse on the floor in exhaustion.

“I can’t believe you did this.” I turn my face to Kate. “It’s like magic.”

“No it’s not,” Kate says. “My mom rearranges stuff all the time. It’s easy.”

“Dinner!” Mom calls. My stomach flips at hearing the word. I hadn’t even thought about what Mom would make and I pray it’s not eggplant-tofu casserole.

“Mrs. Nadhamuni, come check it out!” Kate calls down the stairs as if she’s talking to her own mother. She always acts like she knows someone well even when she doesn’t. Jackie does that too.

Mom walks in slowly and puts her hand over her mouth. I see her eyes travel over the bed, the curtains, the flowers on the dresser.

“Oh, my God,” she says in a way that’s so deep and serious, it sends a chill through me. What if she yells at Kate, makes her go home?

“Mom, we can put it back, don’t freak out.”

“Put it back? It’s amazing! Kate, I think you have a lucrative career in interior design waiting for you.”

Kate does her jumping, clapping thing, and hugs me and Natasha. Now we’re all jumping up and down and hugging.

“You guys must be hungry after all that work. Wash your hands and come on down,” Mom says like she’s on a game show. Now she’s smiling with her mouth and her eyes.

chapter twenty-one

My nose twitches at the smells from the kitchen. It’s definitely not eggplant, but I can’t really tell yet. It smells sort of, well, brown. I finally see the table. There it is, in the middle. A big, brown, non-meat meat loaf. Next to it is a salad, a platter of roasted cauliflower, and a bowl of brown rice. Kate’s just smiling, looking around, still pink in her cheeks from our redecorating work. She has no idea what’s about to happen to her.

We sit down, me next to Kate, Natasha and Mom across from us. The chair at one head of the table where Dad usually sits is empty. Kate immediately puts her napkin on her lap, so I do too, even though I normally don’t. I see Mom does as well and nudges Natasha to do the same.

“Is Dad coming home for dinner?” I ask, but I kind of hope he’s not. It’s easier when he’s not around. Before she can
answer, I hear the garage door open. Dad walks in holding his briefcase, his head down, his eyes dark.

Mom gets up quickly and walks over to him. He looks up like she just woke him. She says something softly and he lifts his weary eyes our way.

“Hi, Daddy,” Natasha yells, and runs over for a hug.

“Hi, Mr. Nadhamuni. It’s so great to finally meet you,” Kate says loudly, and gives him a big wave. Dad squints at her as if he’s staring into bright light and can’t help but smile. I want to hug Kate right now for her Mary Poppins ways. You just can’t not be happy around her.

Dad takes off his coat and sits down. A thick silence moves over the table like fog. I give a sideways glance to Kate, who has her hands clasped, resting on the table, and then I remember. She’s waiting for us to say grace. Her family always does, even at a restaurant. We never say grace. I didn’t even know what saying grace was all about until I started going over to Kate’s. It’s nice, saying thanks for all that food, except when it’s tofu-eggplant casserole. Mom asks for our plates and spoons everything onto them. I hold my breath and watch Kate, who still has her hands clasped.

“I hope this isn’t rude,” she says. “But I was just wondering. Do Jewish people and, um, Indian people say grace?” I cough a little.

Dad drags his fingers through his hair and looks at Mom.
She turns back to Kate. “Well, I think historically Jews have said grace after a meal,” Mom says, and pauses.

“But if you go way back and look at different religions, like Hinduism for example …,” Dad pipes up before taking a pause too.

“I think what we mean is …” Mom laughs a little. “The truth is we don’t really know. We can say grace if you’d like.”

“Oh, no, it’s nice to get a break,” Kate says with another one of her beaming smiles. We start eating. I watch Kate as she pokes the non–meat loaf and decides to eat a piece of cauliflower instead. She chews slowly and then faster.

“This is really good. What is it?” she asks.

She must be lying, but she’s being polite. I taste some too. At least Mom put butter and salt on it.

“Cauliflower,” Mom says.

“I’ve never eaten cauliflower.”

“You’ve never eaten cauliflower?” my entire family says at exactly the same time. Everybody stops chewing and we all crack up. During the rest of dinner Kate tells lots of funny stories about how bad Jackie’s cooking is, and how once a turkey exploded in the oven on Thanksgiving, which explains why they go out so much. We joke and laugh like Kate comes over all the time, like that’s the way my family is. I don’t think Kate liked the non–meat loaf much, but she did eat a lot of cauliflower. It’s the best dinner we’ve had in a long time.

When we’re back in my room waiting for Jackie to come,
Kate fusses with the pillows one more time, then sits down on my bed cross-legged. I sit at my newly prettified desk and lean back in the chair.

“Your family’s so nice,” she says.

“Thanks.” I spin around in the chair to face her. At least tonight they were.

“Like a real family,” she says, looking nervous.

I stare at her. “What do you mean? Your family’s awesome.”