Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri [115]
“That’s clever,” Chitra said, speaking directly to my father for the first time since my arrival. She spoke approvingly, with the tone of someone who is used to acknowledging small achievements, and it was then that I remembered that she had been a schoolteacher in her former life. “Yes, KD is better.”
I found the nickname inane, but my father seemed proud of it, and it was preferable to Chitra’s alternative. “And what do I call you?” I asked my stepsisters.
“I am Rupa,” said the taller one, her voice husky, like her mother’s.
“And I am Piu,” said the one missing the tooth.
“We are very glad to be in your room,” Rupa added. She spoke stiffly, a bit distantly, as if reciting something she’d been forced to memorize. “We are very much appreciating.”
They spoke to me in English, their accents and their intonation sounding as severe as mine must have sounded to your fully American ear when we arrived as refugees in your family’s home. I knew the accents would soon diminish and then disappear, as would their unstylish sweaters, their silly hairstyles.
“Rupa and Piu are eager to see the Aquarium and the Science Museum,” my father said. “Perhaps you can take them one day, Kaushik.”
I didn’t reply to this. “Very tasty,” I said instead in Bengali, referring to the food, something my mother had taught me to say after eating in the homes of other people. I got up to bring my plate to the kitchen.
“You have not eaten,” Chitra said, intercepting me. She attempted to take the plate from my hand, but I held on to it and went to the kitchen to pour myself some of the Johnnie Walker my father stored in the cupboard over the dishwasher.
“What do you need? I’ll get it for you,” Chitra said, following me. I was suddenly sickened by her, by the sight of her standing in our kitchen. I had no memories of my mother cooking there, but the space still retained her presence more than any other part of the house. The jade and spider plants she had watered were still thriving on the windowsill, the orange-and-white sunburst clock she’d so loved the design of, with its quivering second hand, still marking the time on the wall. Though she had rarely done the dishes, though it was in fact I who had mostly done the dishes in those days, I imagined her hands on the taps of the sink, her slim form pressed against the counter. Ignoring Chitra, I opened one cupboard for a glass and another for the Scotch, but all I found there now were boxes of cereal and packets of chanachur brought back from Calcutta.
My father came into the kitchen as well. “Where’s the Scotch?” I asked him.
He glanced at Chitra, and after some small silent communication between them she walked out. “I put it away,” he said once we were alone.
“Why?”
“I’ve stopped taking it. I sleep better at night, I find.”
“Since when?”
“For some time now. Also, I didn’t want to alarm Chitra.”
“Alarm her?”
“She’s a bit old-fashioned.” He pulled out the stepstool that lived in a space beside the refrigerator and unfolded it. He climbed to the top and opened up a cupboard above our refrigerator that was difficult, even with the stepstool, to reach, and took out a half-empty bottle.
I wanted to ask my father what on earth had possessed him to marry an old-fashioned girl half his age. Instead I said, taking the bottle from his hand, “I hope it’s all right if I alarm her.”
“Just be quiet about it, especially around the girls.”
My parents had never been quiet about their fondness for Johnnie Walker, around me, around anyone. After my mother’s death, just after I turned eighteen, it was I who filled her shoes, nursing one watered-down glass and then another in the evenings in order to keep my father company before we could both justify going to bed. I almost never drank the stuff at college, preferring beer, but whenever I came home I craved the taste, unable to avoid the