PUSHCART NOMINATION
A STATE OF BECOMING
by Sita Bhaskar
“Am I pro-choice or pro-life, Lokesh?” Girija lowered nine-month-old Kanti onto the changing table and reached for a diaper. Even though she was in America, she spoke in Tamil, her native language, except for the words “pro-choice” and “pro-life” for which she did not know the Tamil equivalent. Lokesh leaned over the changing table and brushed his fingers lightly across Kanti’s cheek. “I don’t know. We’ve never had that discussion before, have we?” he asked. Girija held Kanti’s tiny feet together and raised her bottom, sliding the diaper under her. “Why would we discuss that?” “Then why ask the question now? You didn’t have any doubts before Kanti was born.” He paused. “Or did you?” Girija opened the dresser and considered her choices. Lilac floral leggings or pink overalls? “Kanti? What does Kanti have to do with it?” It was close to Kanti’s mealtime and Lokesh stopped her from devouring the squeaky toy bunny for lunch by rescuing it from her pudgy fingers. Conversation not revolving around Kanti, conversation in full adult sentences between Girija and Lokesh had to wait offstage like actors in the wings waiting for a cue. Lokesh went into the kitchen to prepare Kanti’s meal, while Girija dressed her in lilac floral leggings, quite forgetting that her question remained unanswered. It had been this way since Girija had started taking ESL classes. “English as a Second Language” took Girija on several forays into the cultural labyrinth. More often she felt like a camel – storing up chunks of spoken English to digest and regurgitate at leisure. When Kanti was an infant, Girija had joined the “B4-One Mothers Group;” she felt like she belonged in it because mothers spoke about the same things – the maternal language of breast-feeding, teething, the color and consistency of baby poop. If she had been in Trichy, her hometown in South India, she would’ve discussed the same topics in Tamil. But she worried about her understanding of the English language. What would happen when the B4-One-ers became After-one? She would have to step up the pace of her ESL lessons to go beyond B4-One vocabulary. “So, you guys became pregnant right after you got married and decided to have little Kanti here?” a B4-One mother had asked at Girija’s first meeting. Girija nodded. There had never been any doubt in her mind that she wanted to be mother as much as she wanted to be a wife. Not anybody’s wife, but Lokesh’s wife. “Must be a pro-lifer, huh?” said another B4-One mother. Girija nodded again. She had no idea what the term meant, but with her limited English vocabulary she knew “pro” was good; “pro” was positive. So, she reasoned she was pro-life. “Me, too,” the mother said. “I can’t imagine how anyone can be pro-choice.” Pro-choice? Could she be both pro-life and pro-choice? English was so hard. For the moment she kept her confusion to herself. The conversation meandered around pro-choice, pro-life topic in the desultory manner that only mothers of recently-fed and successfully-burped infants could tolerate, and Girija couldn’t follow the details. She could memorize the words, but she felt she could not understand them for a long time to come. So she busied herself with baby-talk with the B4-One babies. When the group dispersed, she stopped on the sidewalk on her way home and wrote the words “pro-life” and “pro-choice” in Tamil script in her spiral notebook. Lokesh would help her with their meanings. The conversation with Lokesh, like punctuations in the sentences of daily life, was left unfinished, but Girija knew she could seek explanations in her next ESL class. The ESL classes had been Lokesh’s idea. Left to herself, Girija would have waited to learn English until Kanti went to school, becoming fluent grade level by grade level until Kanti reached high school and then both mother and daughter would spout heavily-accented American English at rapid-fire speed. But Lokesh had nudged her into ESL classes. “You have to learn to speak English. Only then can you take part in everything that is happening in the country,” he said. Language. Girija spoke Tamil. Falling in love with Tamil – a language - and pursuing a college degree in it was encouraged by Girija’s father, a Tamil Scholar himself. If Girija’s mother had been alive she would have steered her daughter to more practical avenues of learning – an education in English as the foundation, with doors and windows opening to Hindi and Tamil, to join the creative air of music and the arts. But Girija’s father, immersed in ancient Tamil literature, had not been able to look ahead to the modern day world where Girija would have to pursue her own life after she left her father’s shelter. Falling in love with Lokesh was quite another matter. It had taken Lokesh three visits from the cold climes of Wisconsin to the hot tropical weather of Trichy to lure Girija into accepting his proposal. If only the exchange of engagements rings and wedding garlands had been as easy as the exchange of suitcases that had led to their meeting. In a world filled with identical expandable, upright, wheeled suitcases, Girija and Lokesh were the only two passengers on the train from Madras to Trichy who had not tied multicolored ribbons, bands, or bows to their unlocked suitcases as identification. So it was not surprising that she pointed to the wrong suitcase amidst the clamor of porters and the booming of train arrival and departure announcements on loudspeakers at the chaotic platform of Trichy railway station. The porter had picked up the suitcase Girija pointed to, heaved it onto his head and hurried down the milling platform with petite Girija trying to keep up with him as he wove in and out of the waves of red-shirted, red-turbaned porters, passengers, luggage, and vendors. Girija was first introduced to Lokesh through a faint whiff of cologne that floated out of his suitcase under the horrified gaze of her sister-in-law, her brother Babu’s wife. And then with hesitant prodding, as if the owner of the suitcase had folded himself in with khakis, jeans and tee-shirts, they pried an American passport from a large leather travel document wallet. And gazed at Lokesh Muralidhar, whose clean-shaven face with rimless glasses looked out at them with an earnest look that said, “Please find me soon and return my passport. I have to return to America.” But how to find a person with the help of a permanent address in America when the person had arrived in Trichy by Rockfort Express just like Girija? There was no airline manifesto they could check; this was the railway. The trusting nature of the American passport-holder was soon revealed by the complete absence of any other identifying information in or on the suitcase. Girija pictured his life in America, her knowledge gleaned from television serials – unlocked doors, trusting neighbors, waking up to the glorious aroma of freshly baked bread that a neighbor had left on the kitchen counter tiptoe-ing across a lush green lawn glistening with morning dew. So they waited for the address pinned to the inside of Girija’s suitcase to bring Lokesh Muralidhar to their doorstep. Which it did. And he visited them. Again and again. First in search of his suitcase. Then in a quest for the girl that had smitten him at first sight. The mild-mannered individual peering out of the passport bore no relationship to the determined suitor that he turned out to be. Lokesh arrived the day after the suitcase mix-up and rang the doorbell with a slightly annoyed look on his face, as if it were Girija’s fault that he was left holding her suitcase. His Tamil sounded foreign to Girija, like a shrunken tee-shirt he was determined to stretch out to fit him again. Even after Girija had returned his suitcase to him, he clutched at her suitcase as if he didn’t want to give up his only excuse to visit her again. At the end of his vacation, he proposed to Girija with the same earnest look she had seen in his passport photograph, and refused to be crushed when she turned him down. “I told you to educate her in English, appa,” Girija’s oldest brother said, when Lokesh had returned to America with only his suitcase and no Girija in tow. “Now look at her. She had hoped to lose her heart to another Tamil scholar in Trichy, but she has sent it to America in Lokesh’s suitcase.” “Pah, English!” Girija’s father said. “Girija has the ability to weave words together be they Tamil or English.” She did, in frequent phone calls with Lokesh, in hours spent with him during his next visit; she in Tamil, he in English. “If he spends any more time in this house, I’ll have to put his name on the ration card and get him voting rights in the next election,” her father said. Instead Girija had put his name on her marriage certificate and migrated with Lokesh to Madison, Wisconsin, with her degree in Tamil and a willingness to learn English. “Why use words like pro-life and pro-choice?” she asked Lokesh more than a week after she first raised the question. She had engaged in several discussions on the subject with her ESL classmates in varying animated Chinese, Hispanic, and Middle-Eastern accents. “Why not say ‘against abortion’ and ‘for abortion?’ Everyone knows what abortion means.” Lokesh held Kanti at his shoulder and patted her gently on her back until she gave a loud burp. She reared her head up in surprise. Girija was for life; she was all for the joy of living. Of course she was. She who had lost her mother in grade school knew the value of life. “I believe in women making their own choices, too, Lokesh,” she said. “Deciding if they want an abortion or not. Is that morally wrong?” She peeped at Kanti over Lokesh’s shoulder. Kanti squealed in excitement and held out her arms. But Girija had a special ESL session that evening, so Lokesh turned her around and walked her to the car. The last ESL class was a special session for immigrant students preparing for their citizenship interview. The students quizzed each other in turns. It was strange to hear the names of all the presidents of America recited in different accents. The Bill of Rights was recited in lilting sincerity by Chinese students. The American system of government and the three branches of government was parroted by students from the Middle-East. The Hispanic students sang the “Star Spangled Banner” while Girija along with two men from Sri Lanka and a woman from Pakistan recited the Pledge of Allegiance. The ESL teacher, an immigrant herself from Laos, capped the evening with a cake decorated with red, white, and blue icing in the pattern of an American flag. Traveling outside the comfort of her ESL class and the B4-One Mothers group to the immigration office in Milwaukee was a long mental journey for Girija. Having gained entry so easily into the sisterhood of married women followed soon by the world of motherhood, Girija worried about her final passage into the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. But the ESL classes held her in good stead and her application for naturalization was approved. Within a few weeks she got a letter for her swearing-in ceremony. With careful baby steps she had entered her adopted country. “You are her aunty?” Girija was at the B4-One Mothers Group and decided to reach out to a newcomer. She knew Sandy, the child, but not the adult who brought Sandy that day. “I’m her mommy,” the woman said. She lifted Sandy in the air and blew on her stomach. Sandy gurgled. “Yes. Mommy. Sandy’s mommy,” she said, her voice muffled against Sandy’s little tummy. “Then? Pam? Pam is Sandy’s aunty?” Girija asked. She had only seen Sandy with Pam and assumed Pam was the mother. “Pam’s her mommy, too. Isn’t she, precious?” Her voice was still muffled. Girija hid her confusion in a flurry of polite introductions. “Hello, I am Girija. Nice to meet you.” “One was divorced mother and other was step-mother?” Girija asked Lokesh that evening. Lokesh held out his fingers and Kanti grasped them to pull herself up. “Could be,” he said. “But more likely they are partners. Partners. Like in a couple.” Girija held out her fingers, but Kanti looked from her to Lokesh as if uncertain if she could leap from daddy to mommy. “You do understand that, don’t you?” Lokesh said. Kanti reached for Girija’s fingers but they were higher than she could reach. She toppled over with a cry. “Yes, I think I understand,” Girija said, and gathered Kanti into her arms. When the B4-One Mothers Group met again, Girija watched Sandy as if she were Sandy’s mother and not Kanti’s. And left the meeting satisfied that two mommies were just as good as a mommy and daddy. A home filled with love; that’s what made up a family. It was possible to fill two roles at the same time. Just like her father had been both mother and father to her after her mother’s death. So when Sandy’s mother handed out fliers during the next meeting, Girija thanked her and tucked it into Kanti’s diaper bag as if it were an invitation to Sandy’s first birthday party. “Fair Wisconsin – A Fair Wisconsin Votes No.” She did not understand the ensuing conversation and there were too many new words for her to remember and write down in her spiral notebook. Kanti took a tentative step forward. “Look Lokesh, look,” Girija said. Lokesh was reading the flier she had brought home. “Sandy’s mother gave that to me. I didn’t understand what they were talking. What does it say, Lokesh?” But Girija looked nonplussed even after Lokesh explained the gay marriage ban to her. “But it is already illegal?” she said. Lokesh nodded. “And this vote makes it more illegal?” “If you put it that way, yes,” Lokesh said. After a few baby steps Kanti flopped down on Girija’s lap. Girija placed her chin on Kanti’s tousled curls and rocked back and forth with her, while Lokesh reached for the television remote. At the next commercial break, Girija said, “But Sandy is perfectly healthy. One hundred percent normal. Just like our Kanti.” Kanti was already crawling toward the remote control. “Not just like – but almost,” she said, as if Sandy could not do anything as spectacular as coveting a remote. Lokesh held Girija and Kanti in the circle of his arms. “If you don’t want to make it more illegal, then you should vote, Kanti’s mother,” he said. “Oh, when is the election?” Girija asked. “Next Tuesday.” “But that’s the day of my citizenship ceremony,” Girija said. “Will the ceremony get cancelled?” She was surprised to find that election day was not a holiday in America. “You can vote right after the ceremony, Mrs. New-American-citizen,” Lokesh said. “But I don’t know anything,” Girija said. Lokesh held out his fingers to Kanti, still higher than she could reach. She swayed and bounced on her diapered rump until she grasped his fingers. “You are a fast learner,” he said. Girija reached for the remote and switched on the television. Lokesh stretched on the carpet and indulged in baby babble with Kanti, while Girija listened to political babble on the television. Suddenly he sniffed. “What’s that smell?” Then he held his nose close to Kanti’s diaper and said, “Hey, Miss Kanti-poo, time for a change.” “That’s what they are saying on TV, too,” Girija said. The next morning, a disheveled Girija carried Kanti into the breakfast nook. “It’s just as bad as that pro-life and pro-choice thing,” she said. She sat Kanti down on her high-chair. “Even with only two major political parties, these campaign advertisements are so confusing.” Lokesh brought a bowl with a baby-sized serving of Cheerios and offered it to Kanti. He picked up one and held it to Kanti’s mouth. She turned her head away. “Sick of it already?” he asked. “Can you imagine the chaos if there were as many political parties as we have in India? But I’m not going to give up. I have one week to learn,” Girija said. Kanti took the Cheerio from Lokesh’s hand and guided it into her mouth. “Bravo,” he said. By late afternoon Girija felt like the candidates were campaigning in her head, their messages pinging inside her brain like atoms in a molecule. Her college degree had only opened her world to the rich literary heritage of Tamil. She had to learn about America for Kanti’s sake, unless of course Kanti decided to become a Tamil scholar in which case she was adequately qualified. Girija climbed the steps to the Federal courthouse in Madison with the constant din of campaign advertisements in her head, crossing swords with the Bill of Rights and at war with the Oath of Allegiance. In the courtroom from where she sat she could see Kanti in her Star Spangled banner dress perched on Lokesh’s lap. Girija had parted with her green card and her Indian passport when she checked in for the ceremony. If disaster struck at this very moment, would only Lokesh and Kanti be rescued while she lay abandoned quite literally in no-man’s land? How much power a government wielded with its laws of inclusion and exclusion. She felt quite alone. As the judge made his speech about the responsibilities of citizenship, Girija wondered about the burden of assumed citizenship. She had been born a citizen of India. It was just a state of being, not a state of becoming. Would she value her American citizenship more because it was an acquired status? Would the mantle of citizenship settle lighter on Kanti’s shoulders because she was an American citizen by birth? Girija stood with the rest of her fellow citizens-to-be and raised her hand for the Oath of Allegiance – the quaver in her voice matched her trembling fingers. She released her breath only after she received her Certificate of Naturalization. On the way home, Girija hummed the Star Spangled Banner and waved the small American flag she was presented at the ceremony. Then the campaign advertisements played a crescendo in her head and she slapped the flag lightly against her palm with the thin wooden stick on which it was mounted. She examined the flag to see if it was made in China as if that would sort out the confusion in her head, as if the election could be treated as a joke if it was. In the voting booth Girija’s brain – on overdrive all day - screeched to a halt. All the campaign advertisements crowded in around her and jostled for space in the narrow voting booth demanding her attention. They threatened, they preached, they shouted, they pleaded. “Vote Yes for Marriage,” “Vote No for Fair Wisconsin.” Fair Wisconsin had to be fair. How could she vote “No” for Fair Wisconsin? She thought back to her ESL classes and groped for the definition of “fair”. Fair was free from favoritism, fair was being impartial, fair was without favoring one party. Everything in fair was positive. So Fair Wisconsin should be “Yes,” not “No.” Why did they say “Vote No for Fair Wisconsin?” Who said that? Was it the opposing group? She tried to elbow the campaign advertisements out of the voting booth, but they pushed back. She wanted her first vote to be “Yes.” She would vote “Yes” to section 13 of article XIII of the constitution. ["Marriage. Shall section 13 of article XIII of the constitution be created to provide that only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state and that a legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized in this state?"] ## In two years Girija had progressed beyond her ESL lessons and had built up her reading comprehension. She could also understand rapid-fire television English. “Oh!” she said, as if she had cut herself on a sharp knife, except that she wasn’t holding a knife. “What?” Lokesh called from the kitchen. There was a discussion on California’s Proposition 8 on television. Girija shook her head in disbelief as the words scrolled across the screen. “Voting YES on PROPOSITION 8 will define MARRIAGE in California to mean only a union between one man and one woman. Voting NO on PROPOSITION 8 will define MARRIAGE in California to mean a union between any two people regardless of gender, which would include same-sex couples.” “What happened?” Lokesh said. “Nothing,” Girija said. “Just discovered a mistake I made two years ago.” She switched off the television and walked into the kitchen. “Are you okay?” Lokesh said. “I wish I didn’t understand English,” she said. She lifted the cover from one of the simmering pots and took a deep breath.
“Am I pro-choice or pro-life, Lokesh?” Girija lowered nine-month-old Kanti onto the changing table and reached for a diaper. Even though she was in America, she spoke in Tamil, her native language, except for the words “pro-choice” and “pro-life” for which she did not know the Tamil equivalent. Lokesh leaned over the changing table and brushed his fingers lightly across Kanti’s cheek.
“I don’t know. We’ve never had that discussion before, have we?” he asked.
Girija held Kanti’s tiny feet together and raised her bottom, sliding the diaper under her. “Why would we discuss that?”
“Then why ask the question now? You didn’t have any doubts before Kanti was born.” He paused. “Or did you?”
Girija opened the dresser and considered her choices. Lilac floral leggings or pink overalls? “Kanti? What does Kanti have to do with it?”
It was close to Kanti’s mealtime and Lokesh stopped her from devouring the squeaky toy bunny for lunch by rescuing it from her pudgy fingers. Conversation not revolving around Kanti, conversation in full adult sentences between Girija and Lokesh had to wait offstage like actors in the wings waiting for a cue. Lokesh went into the kitchen to prepare Kanti’s meal, while Girija dressed her in lilac floral leggings, quite forgetting that her question remained unanswered. It had been this way since Girija had started taking ESL classes. “English as a Second Language” took Girija on several forays into the cultural labyrinth. More often she felt like a camel – storing up chunks of spoken English to digest and regurgitate at leisure.
When Kanti was an infant, Girija had joined the “B4-One Mothers Group;” she felt like she belonged in it because mothers spoke about the same things – the maternal language of breast-feeding, teething, the color and consistency of baby poop. If she had been in Trichy, her hometown in South India, she would’ve discussed the same topics in Tamil. But she worried about her understanding of the English language. What would happen when the B4-One-ers became After-one? She would have to step up the pace of her ESL lessons to go beyond B4-One vocabulary.
“So, you guys became pregnant right after you got married and decided to have little Kanti here?” a B4-One mother had asked at Girija’s first meeting.
Girija nodded. There had never been any doubt in her mind that she wanted to be mother as much as she wanted to be a wife. Not anybody’s wife, but Lokesh’s wife.
“Must be a pro-lifer, huh?” said another B4-One mother.
Girija nodded again. She had no idea what the term meant, but with her limited English vocabulary she knew “pro” was good; “pro” was positive. So, she reasoned she was pro-life. “Me, too,” the mother said. “I can’t imagine how anyone can be pro-choice.” Pro-choice? Could she be both pro-life and pro-choice? English was so hard. For the moment she kept her confusion to herself. The conversation meandered around pro-choice, pro-life topic in the desultory manner that only mothers of recently-fed and successfully-burped infants could tolerate, and Girija couldn’t follow the details. She could memorize the words, but she felt she could not understand them for a long time to come. So she busied herself with baby-talk with the B4-One babies. When the group dispersed, she stopped on the sidewalk on her way home and wrote the words “pro-life” and “pro-choice” in Tamil script in her spiral notebook. Lokesh would help her with their meanings.
The conversation with Lokesh, like punctuations in the sentences of daily life, was left unfinished, but Girija knew she could seek explanations in her next ESL class. The ESL classes had been Lokesh’s idea. Left to herself, Girija would have waited to learn English until Kanti went to school, becoming fluent grade level by grade level until Kanti reached high school and then both mother and daughter would spout heavily-accented American English at rapid-fire speed. But Lokesh had nudged her into ESL classes. “You have to learn to speak English. Only then can you take part in everything that is happening in the country,” he said.
Language. Girija spoke Tamil. Falling in love with Tamil – a language - and pursuing a college degree in it was encouraged by Girija’s father, a Tamil Scholar himself. If Girija’s mother had been alive she would have steered her daughter to more practical avenues of learning – an education in English as the foundation, with doors and windows opening to Hindi and Tamil, to join the creative air of music and the arts. But Girija’s father, immersed in ancient Tamil literature, had not been able to look ahead to the modern day world where Girija would have to pursue her own life after she left her father’s shelter. Falling in love with Lokesh was quite another matter.
It had taken Lokesh three visits from the cold climes of Wisconsin to the hot tropical weather of Trichy to lure Girija into accepting his proposal. If only the exchange of engagements rings and wedding garlands had been as easy as the exchange of suitcases that had led to their meeting. In a world filled with identical expandable, upright, wheeled suitcases, Girija and Lokesh were the only two passengers on the train from Madras to Trichy who had not tied multicolored ribbons, bands, or bows to their unlocked suitcases as identification. So it was not surprising that she pointed to the wrong suitcase amidst the clamor of porters and the booming of train arrival and departure announcements on loudspeakers at the chaotic platform of Trichy railway station. The porter had picked up the suitcase Girija pointed to, heaved it onto his head and hurried down the milling platform with petite Girija trying to keep up with him as he wove in and out of the waves of red-shirted, red-turbaned porters, passengers, luggage, and vendors.
Girija was first introduced to Lokesh through a faint whiff of cologne that floated out of his suitcase under the horrified gaze of her sister-in-law, her brother Babu’s wife. And then with hesitant prodding, as if the owner of the suitcase had folded himself in with khakis, jeans and tee-shirts, they pried an American passport from a large leather travel document wallet. And gazed at Lokesh Muralidhar, whose clean-shaven face with rimless glasses looked out at them with an earnest look that said, “Please find me soon and return my passport. I have to return to America.” But how to find a person with the help of a permanent address in America when the person had arrived in Trichy by Rockfort Express just like Girija? There was no airline manifesto they could check; this was the railway. The trusting nature of the American passport-holder was soon revealed by the complete absence of any other identifying information in or on the suitcase. Girija pictured his life in America, her knowledge gleaned from television serials – unlocked doors, trusting neighbors, waking up to the glorious aroma of freshly baked bread that a neighbor had left on the kitchen counter tiptoe-ing across a lush green lawn glistening with morning dew. So they waited for the address pinned to the inside of Girija’s suitcase to bring Lokesh Muralidhar to their doorstep. Which it did. And he visited them. Again and again. First in search of his suitcase. Then in a quest for the girl that had smitten him at first sight. The mild-mannered individual peering out of the passport bore no relationship to the determined suitor that he turned out to be.
Lokesh arrived the day after the suitcase mix-up and rang the doorbell with a slightly annoyed look on his face, as if it were Girija’s fault that he was left holding her suitcase. His Tamil sounded foreign to Girija, like a shrunken tee-shirt he was determined to stretch out to fit him again. Even after Girija had returned his suitcase to him, he clutched at her suitcase as if he didn’t want to give up his only excuse to visit her again. At the end of his vacation, he proposed to Girija with the same earnest look she had seen in his passport photograph, and refused to be crushed when she turned him down.
“I told you to educate her in English, appa,” Girija’s oldest brother said, when Lokesh had returned to America with only his suitcase and no Girija in tow. “Now look at her. She had hoped to lose her heart to another Tamil scholar in Trichy, but she has sent it to America in Lokesh’s suitcase.”
“Pah, English!” Girija’s father said. “Girija has the ability to weave words together be they Tamil or English.”
She did, in frequent phone calls with Lokesh, in hours spent with him during his next visit; she in Tamil, he in English. “If he spends any more time in this house, I’ll have to put his name on the ration card and get him voting rights in the next election,” her father said.
Instead Girija had put his name on her marriage certificate and migrated with Lokesh to Madison, Wisconsin, with her degree in Tamil and a willingness to learn English.
“Why use words like pro-life and pro-choice?” she asked Lokesh more than a week after she first raised the question. She had engaged in several discussions on the subject with her ESL classmates in varying animated Chinese, Hispanic, and Middle-Eastern accents.
“Why not say ‘against abortion’ and ‘for abortion?’ Everyone knows what abortion
means.”
Lokesh held Kanti at his shoulder and patted her gently on her back until she gave a loud burp. She reared her head up in surprise. Girija was for life; she was all for the joy of living. Of course she was. She who had lost her mother in grade school knew the value of life.
“I believe in women making their own choices, too, Lokesh,” she said. “Deciding if they want an abortion or not. Is that morally wrong?” She peeped at Kanti over Lokesh’s shoulder. Kanti squealed in excitement and held out her arms. But Girija had a special ESL session that evening, so Lokesh turned her around and walked her to the car.
The last ESL class was a special session for immigrant students preparing for their citizenship interview. The students quizzed each other in turns. It was strange to hear the names of all the presidents of America recited in different accents. The Bill of Rights was recited in lilting sincerity by Chinese students. The American system of government and the three branches of government was parroted by students from the Middle-East. The Hispanic students sang the “Star Spangled Banner” while Girija along with two men from Sri Lanka and a woman from Pakistan recited the Pledge of Allegiance. The ESL teacher, an immigrant herself from Laos, capped the evening with a cake decorated with red, white, and blue icing in the pattern of an American flag.
Traveling outside the comfort of her ESL class and the B4-One Mothers group to the immigration office in Milwaukee was a long mental journey for Girija. Having gained entry so easily into the sisterhood of married women followed soon by the world of motherhood, Girija worried about her final passage into the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. But the ESL classes held her in good stead and her application for naturalization was approved. Within a few weeks she got a letter for her swearing-in ceremony. With careful baby steps she had entered her adopted country.
“You are her aunty?” Girija was at the B4-One Mothers Group and decided to reach out to a newcomer. She knew Sandy, the child, but not the adult who brought Sandy that day.
“I’m her mommy,” the woman said. She lifted Sandy in the air and blew on her stomach. Sandy gurgled. “Yes. Mommy. Sandy’s mommy,” she said, her voice muffled against Sandy’s little tummy.
“Then? Pam? Pam is Sandy’s aunty?” Girija asked. She had only seen Sandy with Pam and assumed Pam was the mother.
“Pam’s her mommy, too. Isn’t she, precious?” Her voice was still muffled.
Girija hid her confusion in a flurry of polite introductions. “Hello, I am Girija. Nice to meet you.”
“One was divorced mother and other was step-mother?” Girija asked Lokesh that evening.
Lokesh held out his fingers and Kanti grasped them to pull herself up. “Could be,” he said. “But more likely they are partners. Partners. Like in a couple.”
Girija held out her fingers, but Kanti looked from her to Lokesh as if uncertain if she could leap from daddy to mommy.
“You do understand that, don’t you?” Lokesh said.
Kanti reached for Girija’s fingers but they were higher than she could reach. She toppled over with a cry. “Yes, I think I understand,” Girija said, and gathered Kanti into her arms.
When the B4-One Mothers Group met again, Girija watched Sandy as if she were Sandy’s mother and not Kanti’s. And left the meeting satisfied that two mommies were just as good as a mommy and daddy. A home filled with love; that’s what made up a family. It was possible to fill two roles at the same time. Just like her father had been both mother and father to her after her mother’s death. So when Sandy’s mother handed out fliers during the next meeting, Girija thanked her and tucked it into Kanti’s diaper bag as if it were an invitation to Sandy’s first birthday party. “Fair Wisconsin – A Fair Wisconsin Votes No.” She did not understand the ensuing conversation and there were too many new words for her to remember and write down in her spiral notebook.
Kanti took a tentative step forward. “Look Lokesh, look,” Girija said. Lokesh was reading the flier she had brought home. “Sandy’s mother gave that to me. I didn’t understand what they were talking. What does it say, Lokesh?” But Girija looked nonplussed even after Lokesh explained the gay marriage ban to her. “But it is already illegal?” she said.
Lokesh nodded.
“And this vote makes it more illegal?”
“If you put it that way, yes,” Lokesh said.
After a few baby steps Kanti flopped down on Girija’s lap. Girija placed her chin on Kanti’s tousled curls and rocked back and forth with her, while Lokesh reached for the television remote. At the next commercial break, Girija said, “But Sandy is perfectly healthy. One hundred percent normal. Just like our Kanti.” Kanti was already crawling toward the remote control. “Not just like – but almost,” she said, as if Sandy could not do anything as spectacular as coveting a remote. Lokesh held Girija and Kanti in the circle of his arms. “If you don’t want to make it more illegal, then you should vote, Kanti’s mother,” he said.
“Oh, when is the election?” Girija asked.
“Next Tuesday.”
“But that’s the day of my citizenship ceremony,” Girija said. “Will the ceremony get cancelled?” She was surprised to find that election day was not a holiday in America.
“You can vote right after the ceremony, Mrs. New-American-citizen,” Lokesh said.
“But I don’t know anything,” Girija said.
Lokesh held out his fingers to Kanti, still higher than she could reach. She swayed and bounced on her diapered rump until she grasped his fingers. “You are a fast learner,” he said. Girija reached for the remote and switched on the television. Lokesh stretched on the carpet and indulged in baby babble with Kanti, while Girija listened to political babble on the television. Suddenly he sniffed. “What’s that smell?” Then he held his nose close to Kanti’s diaper and said, “Hey, Miss Kanti-poo, time for a change.”
“That’s what they are saying on TV, too,” Girija said.
The next morning, a disheveled Girija carried Kanti into the breakfast nook. “It’s just as bad as that pro-life and pro-choice thing,” she said. She sat Kanti down on her high-chair. “Even with only two major political parties, these campaign advertisements are so confusing.”
Lokesh brought a bowl with a baby-sized serving of Cheerios and offered it to Kanti. He picked up one and held it to Kanti’s mouth. She turned her head away. “Sick of it already?” he asked.
“Can you imagine the chaos if there were as many political parties as we have in India? But I’m not going to give up. I have one week to learn,” Girija said.
Kanti took the Cheerio from Lokesh’s hand and guided it into her mouth. “Bravo,” he said.
By late afternoon Girija felt like the candidates were campaigning in her head, their messages pinging inside her brain like atoms in a molecule. Her college degree had only opened her world to the rich literary heritage of Tamil. She had to learn about America for Kanti’s sake, unless of course Kanti decided to become a Tamil scholar in which case she was adequately qualified.
Girija climbed the steps to the Federal courthouse in Madison with the constant din of campaign advertisements in her head, crossing swords with the Bill of Rights and at war with the Oath of Allegiance. In the courtroom from where she sat she could see Kanti in her Star Spangled banner dress perched on Lokesh’s lap. Girija had parted with her green card and her Indian passport when she checked in for the ceremony. If disaster struck at this very moment, would only Lokesh and Kanti be rescued while she lay abandoned quite literally in no-man’s land? How much power a government wielded with its laws of inclusion and exclusion. She felt quite alone.
As the judge made his speech about the responsibilities of citizenship, Girija wondered about the burden of assumed citizenship. She had been born a citizen of India. It was just a state of being, not a state of becoming. Would she value her American citizenship more because it was an acquired status? Would the mantle of citizenship settle lighter on Kanti’s shoulders because she was an American citizen by birth? Girija stood with the rest of her fellow citizens-to-be and raised her hand for the Oath of Allegiance – the quaver in her voice matched her trembling fingers. She released her breath only after she received her Certificate of Naturalization.
On the way home, Girija hummed the Star Spangled Banner and waved the small American flag she was presented at the ceremony. Then the campaign advertisements played a crescendo in her head and she slapped the flag lightly against her palm with the thin wooden stick on which it was mounted. She examined the flag to see if it was made in China as if that would sort out the confusion in her head, as if the election could be treated as a joke if it was.
In the voting booth Girija’s brain – on overdrive all day - screeched to a halt. All the campaign advertisements crowded in around her and jostled for space in the narrow voting booth demanding her attention. They threatened, they preached, they shouted, they pleaded. “Vote Yes for Marriage,” “Vote No for Fair Wisconsin.” Fair Wisconsin had to be fair. How could she vote “No” for Fair Wisconsin? She thought back to her ESL classes and groped for the definition of “fair”. Fair was free from favoritism, fair was being impartial, fair was without favoring one party. Everything in fair was positive. So Fair Wisconsin should be “Yes,” not “No.” Why did they say “Vote No for Fair Wisconsin?” Who said that? Was it the opposing group? She tried to elbow the campaign advertisements out of the voting booth, but they pushed back. She wanted her first vote to be “Yes.” She would vote “Yes” to section 13 of article XIII of the constitution.
["Marriage. Shall section 13 of article XIII of the constitution be created to provide that only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state and that a legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized in this state?"]
##
In two years Girija had progressed beyond her ESL lessons and had built up her reading comprehension. She could also understand rapid-fire television English.
“Oh!” she said, as if she had cut herself on a sharp knife, except that she wasn’t holding a knife.
“What?” Lokesh called from the kitchen.
There was a discussion on California’s Proposition 8 on television. Girija shook her head in disbelief as the words scrolled across the screen.
“Voting YES on PROPOSITION 8 will define MARRIAGE in California to mean only a union between one man and one woman. Voting NO on PROPOSITION 8 will define MARRIAGE in California to mean a union between any two people regardless of gender, which would include same-sex couples.”
“What happened?” Lokesh said.
“Nothing,” Girija said. “Just discovered a mistake I made two years ago.” She switched off the television and walked into the kitchen.
“Are you okay?” Lokesh said.
“I wish I didn’t understand English,” she said. She lifted the cover from one of the simmering pots and took a deep breath.
©Sita Bhaskar, A State of Becoming ©Microsoft Clip Art/Photography Grey Sparrow Journal Contents Contributors
©Microsoft Clip Art/Photography Grey Sparrow Journal Contents Contributors
Grey Sparrow Journal Contents Contributors