Bharati Mukherjee - Miss New India

Anjali flashed on something Peter had said. Innocence and blindness, something about them, but she couldn't keep them straight.

Husseina finished packing a toiletry kit and threw it into the suitcase. Then she lifted a Gucci purse off the topmost shelf of the almirah and fanned out a fistful of passports. "My father does favors," she said. "People give him things, like free identities. What should I be tonight? American? No, too risky. Canadian? Too cold. Qatari, Aussie, Kiwi, Pakistani, Indian… what-oh-what does poor little Husseina want to be? Where do I want to go? I've got all the damned fucking choices in the world. I've got a million of them." She gestured at Minnie's posters of bland British children playing with pets. "I'm like those fucking little girls up there on the wall. Instead of kittens, I've got passports. That's all I've got."

Tookie, not Husseina, was known for foul language and cursing. Anjali rushed down the hall to her room, plucked her jeans from the clothes tree and her T-shirts and underwear from the hamper, and then hurried back. Husseina had already stripped down to her bra and panties. "Thanks," she said, "just leave them on the bed. You can pick up your loot tomorrow."

Dream logic or not, she was beginning to put things together. Husseina had acted strange the night of the gala. She'd been out on the porch, with her cell phone. And she'd been angry, difficult at breakfast. Husseina's careful façade was chipping.

"Did you give Minnie a month's notice?"

"Fuck the bitch! End of one chapter."

"What should I tell Tookie and Sunita?"

"Tell Tookie anything you want. Be careful with Sunita-she's not as innocent as she seems." Then Husseina launched into a monologue. "I'll go out as an Indian tonight. Maybe I'll be an American tomorrow-that might be fun. Fake identities are very easy when your whole life's been one big fucking fake." She read through the list of Panzer Delight cities before slipping the T-shirt on. "Been there, done that, except maybe Bratislava. Good to know there's still something worth living for." She was shapelier than Anjali. Then the jeans; there too, tighter and less boyish. She tucked her hair under Anjali's most colorful scarf, talking all the while.

"You want to hear something funny? I never told anyone this. When I was in the ninth grade at the American School in Dubai, I got a phone call from my father to go to the airport, pick up a ticket, and fly back to Hyderabad right away. I thought someone had died! When I landed, he showed me a picture and said, 'This is my auntie's grandson. They call him Bobby. He is a good boy, with a scholarship to London. What do you think of him?' As if anyone cared a fig! His next words were 'You will be marrying him tomorrow.' I was only thirteen, and I had a paper due on Hawthorne and I wondered if getting married could be an excuse to pass in the paper late. Of course I couldn't mention it, but no one would believe it anyway. Truth is always more shocking than lies, isn't it? The next morning my new husband left for England and I went back to the ninth grade and no one knew I was married. My husband didn't write to me at school. He didn't write me, period."

None of this made any sense to Anjali. Even Husseina's tone confused her. She was like a spinning top. There was an edge to every word she spat out, as though the next one might come out in a scream.

The mysteries of Hyderabad, explained but not comprehended. Panzer Delight, with all its umlauts, would be out the door and heading back to Europe. And she, Anjali Bose, ghost of Gauripur, would inherit a closet full of expensive silks. No one had ever confided in her, except maybe Peter and Ali. She owed Husseina something heartfelt, or profound, but she was a girl with a bright smile and nothing else. She dredged up Peter's words again, hoping she'd got them right. "Innocence is attractive in a girl," Anjali said. "But I suppose blindness isn't."

Husseina stared. At last she said, "I almost misjudged you. You're not a vulgar little bore like Tookie. Or a cunning little mouse like Sunita. You see through things, don't you? And you keep quiet. It's important to keep quiet."

"I'm just repeating nonsense. Forget anything I say." She didn't like the way Husseina had stared. She didn't like Husseina's tone, the nakedness of her disregard for their fellow Bagehot Girls. Anjali had tried to act smarter than she was, remembering phrases from smarter people, and Husseina had caught on and given her credit and now she knew some kind of uncomfortable secret about Husseina that she shouldn't.

When Husseina spoke again, it was woman to woman, her hand on Anjali's shoulder, her face up close. "Frankly, I don't know where I'm going. Bobby said, 'Trust me and don't tell anyone you're leaving,' but he doesn't trust me. He's sending a car and driver, that's all I know. Life is very strange, isn't it?"

"Nothing is the way it seems," Anjali replied. "It's all light and angles."

"Yes, light and angles. May I quote you?" asked Husseina.

And I must remember truth is more shocking than lies, Anjali counseled herself as she went back to her alcove. That was the only lesson she could extract from Husseina's unforced revelation. She left the door curtains parted slightly and sat cross-legged on her cot in the dark until Husseina-sexy in her T-shirt and jeans, tiptoeing with a suitcase, unlit cigarette in her lips-slipped past.

She couldn't wait for morning to usurp Queen Husseina's room and role in Bagehot House. As soon as she was certain that Husseina had fled, and even imagined a car slowing down and a car door's muffled slamming-one of Minnie Bagehot's fantasy Duesenbergs pulling up to the curb with the lights dimmed-she went into the master bedroom, trying on one luxurious silk kameez after another and admiring her new silk-enhanced curves in the cracked full-length mirror. And then she stretched out, for the first night in her life, alone on a full-size mattress. Husseina's room was dark, private, and silent.

It was accidental that she awoke early, at six A.M.,, in that unfamiliar room. Perhaps Tookie had come back late from work and brushed against the door. Or dogs had barked, crows had cawed, or it was something internal, a sense that something was wrong. Maybe Husseina had never left, no driver had turned up, she was lying, or she was crazy. Women didn't give up a closet of silk for a handful of unwashed cotton. She didn't need an alien rainbow of expensive silks in exchange for her faithful Gauripur T-shirts and well-worn jeans. She would miss the umlauts of Panzer Delight. The umlauts, not a handful of passports, were the true sign of a wider world.

And so she got up, straightened the bed cover, grabbed a white salwar and kameez-the closest thing in the closet to a sleeping suit-and went back to her old room for one last nap. Her old room might be loud and dusty, but at least she'd earned it. Husseina might still come back. It might all have been a dream. She again fell asleep, but almost immediately, it seemed, there came a light shaking of her curtain, and then it opened. Minnie Bagehot invited herself in. It was seven o'clock.

"What are you doing here?" Minnie demanded. "I watched you leave."

"I would certainly have given you proper notice, madam."

"But I distinctly saw you sneak out of the house with bag and baggage in the middle of the night. And smoking a cigarette, no less. Smoking on the public street!"

So, it's true: Minnie never sleeps and never forgets. She marks little demerits on a piece of paper, adding up to a dump. "Madam, I have never smoked a cigarette in my life. It must have been Husseina."

Minnie grabbed Anjali by the shoulders. "You have the audacity to lie to me? You think I'm a blind and cuckoo-in-the head old lady you can cheat? I recognized your clothes. Husseina would never dress like you or that Goanese." She let go of Anjali and shoved her down hard on the cot. "It's a matter of breeding, simple breeding. You are the sad outcome."