chickpeas hit her foot before rolling away. She fell. âO bapre!â
I ran to the house and opened the door while Pappa carried Mommy into the house. She cried in pain, and even though we applied ice to her foot, it swelled up. Pappa rushed to Mrs. Milan, and she drove Mommy to the emergency room. Pappa went with them while I stayed home with Mela.
The car was barely out of the driveway when Mela asked, âWhen will Mommy come back?â
âSoon,â I said.
I was afraid to be alone with Mela in the house and so I kept busy. I put away the groceries while I talked to her. She was getting hungry, so I made her a cheese-and-tomato sandwich. âI donât want cheese-and-tomato sambich,â she said.
âDo you want a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich?â
âI like peanut butter,â she said.
I made her a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. She took one bite and made a fish face. âI donât like it,â she said, pushing her plate away.
âYou just said you like peanut butter.â
âI donât like jelly with it and I donât like peanut butter on bread. I like peanut butter on celery.â
âWe donât have any celery,â I said. âWhat do you want?â
â Rotli and vegetables.â
Many times I had rolled Indian bread, rotli , and a couple of times I even had made the dough, but Iâd never cooked it on the stove. âEat a sandwich now and when Mommy and Pappa come back you can have rotli and vegetables.â
âNo,â she said and stood there pouting.
âDo you want chocolate pudding?â
âYes. Pudding! Pudding for dinner.â She clapped.
So Mela had chocolate pudding and I tried her peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. The peanut butter kept getting stuck in my mouth and throat, and I had to take a sip of milk and swoosh it around to gulp the sandwich down. After two bites I threw it away and ate a tomato-and-cheese sandwich. I was glad that I had tried a peanut-butter sandwich at home and not at school. It was always easier to try new things at home when no one was watching.
âWhen will Mommy and Pappa come home?â Mela asked as she licked the last spoonful of pudding.
âSoon,â I said.
After five minutes she asked the same question, and I gave the same answer. All of a sudden she began to cry. Not a soft cry, but a loud cry, as if someone had slapped her hard. âMela, please. Donât cry,â I said.
âI want Mommy!â
âSheâll come.â
âNow. I want her now.â
The evening was falling slowly. Mommy and Pappa had been gone for three hours. I wondered if Mrs. Milan was back. I called her, but no one answered. Mela and I walked to her house and knocked on the door. There was no answer. We knocked again, still no answer. We walked back to our house. By now everything was dark inside. I turned on all the lights, making the kitchen and the livingroom bright. Mela and I snuggled up on the couch and I told her a story about the brave rabbit that went into the abandoned house and lived there by himself. It was Rajuâs favorite story, and he used to beg Dadima to tell it to us over and over again. How I used to protest that I didnât want to hear that story, I thought! And now, if by magic Dadima and Raju could be here, I would listen to that story a hundred and one times.
Mela was quiet. I looked at her. She was asleep.
What if Mommy and Pappa donât come back? I thought. What would Mela and I do? I wished we were in India with everyone; then I wouldnât mind Mommy and Pappa leaving us, because we wouldnât be alone. I wished we were still a whole snow cone and not a broken-off lump that was melting away fast.
The phone rang. It was Pappa. âSeema . . . Seema, is that you? Where wereâwhere did you go? I triedâI called a few minutes ago. Why didnât youâAre you all right? Is Mela all right?â His words were
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