We See a Different Frontier: A Postcolonial Speculative Fiction Anthology (13 page)

Subhir’s father said, “Make it right? How can you still think I was wrong? I was the smart one. I left before I was forced to leave. How many of the people we went to high school with have stuck around here?”

“That’s different, Ray,” Aravind said. “And you know it’s different. They went to Los Angeles or Seattle or Sacramento. They didn’t run out on their country when it needed them.”

The argument continued in the front seat of the car.

“Look, we still going to do business or not?” Aravind said.

“How can I work with someone who’s held a grudge against me almost twenty years?” Subhir’s father said. “I can’t believe you still think I’m a traitor. Do you know how stupid you’re being?”

“You did betray us,” Aravind said. His voice was quiet. “I don’t know whether this county would’ve turned out the same either way. But you didn’t even care what happened to us. You worked on those poor old parents for years while you made deals behind their backs. Told them they could be rich. Spun them stories about the high life. And when you finally broke them down and made them sign, you whisked them away from the land they loved and lived on and spent their lives improving and you shut them up in an apartment in Bangalore, right above the muck of the sewers, while you let this place go to hell.”

Subhir’s father was quiet for a few minutes. The motel came into view. His mother gripped Subhir’s arm and whispered, in Gujarati, “
You
should not be blaming your father—”

Then Subhir’s father cleared his throat and said, “Every day, my father sits in a restaurant in Bangalore, reading the English newspapers and loudly mocking your president for his latest blunder. Our cousins stop by and ask him for advice on how to raise their children. He is present for every wedding, funeral, and birthday. Anyone in need just has to ask, and they’ll get money for their health or educational expenses. He and his expat cronies sit there for hours, and tea comes to him without asking, and people call him ‘sir’. People like your father. He died behind that reception desk, didn’t he?”

As soon as Subhir’s father stopped the car, Aravind grappled with the door. He stalked into the lobby of his motel and disappeared.

The door buzzed as Subhir and his parents were packing. When his father answered, a uniformed man said, “Mr. Rajiv Joshi, I’m Sheriff Pereira.”

“Joe?” his father said. “I didn’t know anyone was still around, besides Aravind.”

“Yeah, Ray, I’m afraid I have to ask you to leave.”

“I haven’t committed any crime,” Subhir’s father said.

“None that I can arrest you for, anyway. But the hotel’s full up. You have to go.”

“I know my rights. This is racism. The Civil Rights Act. You can’t do this.”

“You’re not being kicked out over your
color
,” the sheriff said. “But I heard tell you gave up your citizenship years ago. Right now Americans need these rooms, and, well, Vin would be breaking the law if he rented to you instead of them.”

“That bastard,” Subhir’s father said. “Fine. We’ll be out soon.”

“We need these rooms immediately,” the sheriff said. He stepped to the side and two deputies walked in. They nodded at Subhir and his mother, who were standing by the beds, and then gathered up armfuls of clothing right out of the open suitcases. One ripped Subhir’s laptop from the wall and bundled it up with the rest. Then they headed out and down the hall.

“Dude, this can’t be right,” said a voice from the hall. “We’re not sharing this time?” A teen came by and poked his head into the room. He was wearing an Eastland High football jersey. “Umm,” he looked at the sheriff. “Coach said this was my room. Number 308.”

“It’s all yours,” the sheriff said. “Would you three please step out?”

In the lobby, Subhir and his parents sorted through the pile of clothes left by the door while teenagers rampaged around them. The coach said to the sheriff, “Thanks for donating us these rooms. I thought we were going to have to sleep all crowded up on the floor at my sister’s place again.”

Aravind came in through the door behind the counter and said, “Here’s your receipt for the rooms, Joe.”

“No problem, Vin,” the sheriff said. “And here’s the receipt for your contribution to the Sinclair County Police Benevolent Association.” He stared at Subhir’s father while saying these words, but Aravind looked away.

“Aravind,” Subhir’s father said. “How could you do this?”

“What are the regulations on a foreigner owning land in California?” Aravind said. “I hear there’s something funny about the titling to the Koresky place.”

“I’ll have to look into that,” the sheriff said.

As they were leaving, Subhir saw Nisha standing in the door to the restaurant, wearing her uniform shirt. She ventured a faint wave at them, but only his mother returned it.

His father spent the four-hour drive in silence, except for a single muttered “Dammit” occasioned by traffic around the Bay Bridge.

“Baseball traffic,” his mother said. “You used to check the game schedule to make sure it would not interfere with our drive home.”

Shortly after, Subhir said, “You missed the exit for the airport. Or are we flying from San Jose?”

“We’re still flying out of SFO,” his father said. “The two of us.”

“After all this?” Subhir said. “How can you justify leaving me here?”

“This had nothing to do with you,” his father said.

“You lied to me,” Subhir said. “You weren’t driven out. You wanted to leave. Let me make the same choice.” He wished that he was in the front seat, where he could speak to a face, instead of just radiating words towards the barren highway unspooling in front of them.

“When I left, it was always meant to be temporary,” his father said. “And now it’s time to come back. It’s time to rebuild.”

“Why did you do it?” Subhir said. “You grew up with them. And for them to hate you…”

“You can’t understand,” his father said. “They didn’t understand, not even at Stanford. Things were changing, but they all did the same things in the same way and said everything would turn out fine. And they were so smug about it. Smug enough to call me a traitor, when I did the only sensible thing. I tried to show them… but they drove me away.”

“Things did turn out fine,” Subhir said. “Aravind seems fine. People are still living. They didn’t need you. And even if they did, you didn’t try to help them. You just took the money and left.”

The car drifted towards the barrier wall and then swerved to the right as Subhir’s father overcorrected for the drift. Then they were decelerating and pulling onto the shoulder. When they came to a stop, Subhir’s father pressed his head to the steering wheel. The horn rang out an unceasing note.

His mother opened her door and stepped out, then yanked open Subhir’s door. “Get out,” she said.

His father was still slumped over. A hand grabbed Subhir by the sleeve and pulled him out, onto the grass. His door slammed shut. The car’s horn fell silent, but his father wasn’t looking up. A truck flew past, screaming sound and air at them, and missing the side of the car by a foot.

After long silent moments, his mother said, in Gujarati, “Can you really hate him for leaving this place?” she said.

“He lied to me,” Subhir said. “You both did. America didn’t drive him out. He left because he could make more money in India. And before he left, he stole. He took their water and gave it away. He made those people poorer, while he got richer.”

His mother shook her head and said, “Do you think it wasn’t stealing when your father’s father stayed here? A wealthy modern farmer with a master’s degree in agronomy? Couldn’t India have used him while its people were starving? Couldn’t he have saved lives? India, America… they’re just places. We all went to where we could find a future. There are plenty willing to stay behind, and sell their lives to a place… to dirt… and they do stay…and they become poor… and those places still prosper or decline as the rains, or the markets, dictate. Because places don’t care if you devote your life to them.”

Then his mother opened the door and said, “
Challo
, he will be late for moving in.”

But his father got off at the next exit, and said, “Use my phone, book another ticket back.”

He entered the highway in the other direction: away from Stanford, away from America. Subhir’s mother leaned over the seat and glared at her son.

Subhir looked out over the highway. It was just another stretch of the same mile of wasteland that he’d been travelling through for the last four hours. To him, this was America. And Subhir didn’t hate it. How could he? It was too hapless to hate.

It was just a place. And he didn’t feel anything towards it. Not anymore. He knew that if he said, “Wait,” they would happily deposit him here, and he’d sink down into America and serve out his time. He wanted to. Just to make them happy.

He warred with himself for hours over that word. But… how could he repeat his father’s mistake? How could anything he learned here ever be relevant to his life? How could even a single moment spent here ever be real? He knew where he belonged, and he wouldn’t gamble that away.

Then they were on the plane, and he saw his father, one row up, lean past his mother and slam the window shut. Subhir looked out his own window, and soon those golden hills were receding beneath him and taking the burden of that unspoken word with them. And all that his choice left behind was a tiny residue in his heart as he flew towards a home that he would have to love all the more because of the losses he’d suffered in returning to it.

Lotus

Joyce Chng

Respect the waterway — anon, circa 2100.

It was the smell of burning that woke Cecily up. She got up, wrapped her sleeping robes around her body and padded out. It was still cold, even in this time of morning with the sun shining bright in the sky. She squinted—blue, with white fluffy clouds. It looked like a good day ahead. She adjusted her footing; the boat rocked gently beneath her.

“Good morning,” her companion greeted her. He held a plate of burnt fish. She sighed. After all this time, he was still burning fish. And fish and fuel were not easy to obtain. Those little
ikan selar—
she was hit by a pang for home—came from their dwindling supplies. They needed to travel down the Waterways for the barter.

However, the fish was still salvageable, just as things were still salvageable in this day and age. She nibbled at them, grimacing at the bitter taste of carbon in her mouth. The flesh was surprisingly sweet. She used to eat them as a child, deep-fried and accompanying a special coconut rice dish her mother cooked.
On Sundays
, she remembered,
when every family member was home
. But where was home now?

She washed the fish down with water, savoring the taste of it. Sweet. Slightly brackish. Drinkable water was hard to come by too and every boating folk had their private stash, their hoard. So ironic that they were surrounded by water, water, water.

While she was eating, her companion—he called himself Lent, first name Si—went back to repairing Flotsam, their boat. Flotsam was more than just a boat; he was their house, their shelter and their identity. Without Flotsam, a boater was without a name, without a solid tangible background. Yet, Flotsam had suffered from minor ills—his rotors refused to work after a particularly long journey, or his fuel tanks—ethanol, but hard to distill—were empty. He had served them faithfully, loyally.

Si whistled as he fixed the rotors. He was a trained mechanic and he loved working with machines, getting his hands dirty with engine oil and tools. Cecily watched him with a rush of tenderness in her breast. They were all travelers on the Waterways. He came from an old city called New York, she a tiny island by the name of Singapore. These places were now submerged in water—only the skyscrapers served as reminders of their joined pasts. Home, solid terra firma, was gone.

They were all using new names, even though they keenly remembered
who
they were. It was better for the Waterways where names did not matter.
New names, new places, old Earth
. They were still infants when the tsunami and subsequent melting icecaps came and conquered the land. Those who survived the Washing as they called it came out different. Changed. Transformed. And some said “cleansed” and “purified”. Those who lived found, salvaged and built boats. There were even large ships, the size of container ships (or were actual container vessels) serving thousands of families crammed together. They traveled the Waterways too—and trade was always good with the large ships.

Once in a while, boaters would congregate, bunched together for protection, for community. Cecily had seen one or two of these villages. Boats, big and small, bobbing with the waves. Cooking fires sending up curls of smoke. They communicated by kayaks and by signal flares. Boater children grew nimble-footed walking on the planks joining the boats. On certain nights, the boaters would gather at one of the larger boats and tell stories about old Earth, when land was still land. Sometimes, they would sing. Sometimes, they would dance. The boating villages were always temporary. After a month or two, the boats would disperse, traveling the Waterways again.

Si cheered. He had fixed the problem. Flotsam was live! She smiled, placed a straw hat on her head and prepared for another journey.

Of course, there were still patches of land here and there. They were occupied, fought over and occupied again. Many still preferred to live on the boats. Much safer, less cut-throat. The landers were vicious and territorial. Much of old Earth’s history was filled with lander violence. The landers were so jealous of their land that they even forbade contact with any boater. Ironically, some of the small lander communities still depended on the boaters for essential items like food and clean water.

Flotsam moved forward, Si at the wheel now. Cecily made an offering to Maju, the Goddess of the sea, and then stood beside her companion. It would be a long day.

“Land ho!” What a misnomer! — A common boaters’ saying
.