to a small table against a wall. A slim novel was tucked into my handbag – one of my sisters had taught me never to leave home without one – and I ordered a dish of vegetable pasta and some water. I was the only person in the restaurant dining alone, and while I recognized some of the other people there from the office, I know that they didn’t recognize me. I kept my eyes on my book the whole time, as if raising them and looking around would mean that I was opening myself up to the humiliation, surely, that women feel eating by themselves. And when these people around me laughed, as they did often while in conversation, I was certain that they were laughing at me.
As awkward as I felt, however, this was so much better than standing in the kitchen with my mother-in-law, grinding cumin seeds.
Even if I would still have to do that later.
Finally, I knew what people meant when they talked about being in ‘commuter hell’. I had been told that once anyone drives in India, getting behind the wheel anywhere else in the world is a dream; Los Angeles, especially, with its infamous freeways, which were never particularly free. There were rules in this country. In Delhi, people parked sideways along narrow streets or in front of entrances or on top of the pavement, safe in the knowledge that it would take two days for a tow truck to get there. Speeding tickets would be torn up with an offer of a few hundred rupees, and it didn’t matter if you didn’t have your licence on you – or if you didn’t have one at all, for that matter. But here, in this land of rules and regulations, I knew that I couldn’t just slide by. It had taken me three attempts to get my licence; I kept knocking down those orange cones during the test. And when I was finally a fully qualified member of the driving community, I refused to use those freeways.
‘I’m scared to merge,’ I said, crying to Sanjay. ‘So many cars coming, one after the other, nobody letting me go. I want to stay in one lane only.’
‘If you do, you’ll end up in Santa Barbara,’ he said. ‘If you want to live here, you have no choice.’ This was why I knew I would never fit in. Other drivers slid in in front of me, whether I was prepared for them or not, and barrelled through lanes as if they owned the roads. I always gave them priority, convinced they had more right to be there than I did. I would rather end up in Santa Barbara than fight for the right exit.
Tonight, after shifting and merging alongside the rest of the cars on the 101 freeway, filled with their stressed-out lone occupants, it wasn’t till seven thirty that I finally pulled into the drive of our house.
Our home was distinguished from all the others on the street only by the bunch of dried chilies suspended above the front door, and the small plastic mural of Laxmi embedded into the stucco wall on the right of the entrance.
I opened the door, and saw my family seated around the dining table, about to tuck in.
‘Priya, glad you made it home in time. We weren’t sure when you would be back. Terrible traffic, right?’ said Sanjay, rising from his chair.
My in-laws looked up, while my sister-in-law, Malini waved casually across the room.
‘Hiya, bhabi,’ she said, referring to me in the way that all good girls are meant to call the wives of their elder brothers – although I knew, based on the contents of her closet and the secrets that I sensed lingered in the walls of her bedroom, that Malini wasn’t really a good girl.
‘We ordered Domino’s pizza and garlic bread,’ my mother-in-law said, huffily. ‘It became late; nothing was ready.’
‘Sorry, Ma,’ I replied. ‘Rush-hour traffic. I think it’s going to be like this everyday. I don’t know what else to do.’
‘Hah, never mind, we’ll work something out,’ she said, surprisingly sympathetically, cutting stretchy string cheese that connected a slice of pizza to the plate. ‘Maybe you just do all the chopping and cutting in the morning before you go, and then Malini and I can fry everything later.’
My sister-in-law, nibbling on a piece of bread, did not look amused.
‘You have to learn eventually, beti,’ my mother-in-law said, addressing her. ‘You are twenty now. Soon, we will have to find a boy for you and then what will you do?
‘And then,’ she continued, turning back to me ‘on weekends, we can do everything else – cleaning, dusting, sweeping properly. We will have to make new arrangements because of your job.’
That seemed a pretty equitable arrangement. Besides, didn’t everybody in America live this way? Work at work and then come home and work still?
‘Anyway, how did everything go?’ my father-in-law asked, his bald spot shining beneath the light, his thick and unruly eyebrows reminding me of a picture I had once seen of the jungles of Borneo. I was surprised by his interest; he usually only interacted with me to tell me that the cauliflower could be crispier.
‘Everything went well, Papa,’ I replied. ‘I think I will like it there.’
‘What is your salary?’
I told them, and my in-laws promptly proceeded to work it out in rupees, causing them to ooh and ahh with delight. It then fell upon Sanjay to remind them that while two hundred thousand rupees was, indeed, a fortune in India, forty thousand American dollars was just forty thousand American dollars, a lot less after tax.
‘Better you open a bank account,’ my father-in-law advised. ‘We will see how much goes towards your own savings, and how much we can use for the house expenses. Also, we have to remember that you won’t be working for long. Soon, God willing, baby will come, yes?’
I looked over at my mother-in-law, thankful that she wasn’t wielding her wooden spoon just now, although she was waving a spatula around somewhat menacingly.
‘So, tell me about the job,’ Sanjay said to me later, as we lay on our bed, watching television. ‘Are you enjoying it so far? You know, if you don’t we can find you something else.’
‘No, no, I really like it. The people seem nice – at least the four that I’ve met so far. And it’s such a great place. They run all these different magazines, and even some TV thing, and I work on the floor of a magazine called Hollywood Insider, which reports on celebrities and movies.’
‘Wow! Do you think you’ll ever get to meet anyone famous?’ Sanjay asked.
‘I doubt it. I’m just a girl answering the phones in reception. But I really am enjoying it,’ I said, snuggling up to him and enjoying the privacy of our bedroom. I knew it would be short-lived; in an hour, as was his habit every night, my father-in-law would summon me downstairs to make hot pista milk for him. And once I was in the kitchen, my mother-in-law always found something else for me to do.
‘Hey, I have a great idea!’ Sanjay exclaimed. ‘I’ve always wanted to get one of those deals where we make bags for when a movie comes out – you know, with cartoon characters and stuff. Now that you know these people at the studios, maybe you can help me do that, introduce me to the right people. Shall I give you some samples to take into the office tomorrow?’
‘Sanjay, I don’t know if that’s appropriate,’ I said. ‘And I don’t know these people. I’m just a receptionist there. How can I carry a load of bags in tomorrow as if I’m selling something. It looks a bit
