“She is gone, and she is not coming back,” Swati corrected her.
“Whatever, beti. The point is that you cannot worry about something—someone—who is gone. You can carry a memory of that thing—that person—in your heart, but you cannot let everything else in your life fall to the side.”
“I am not letting everything fall to the side,” Swati said. She had a habit of wringing her hands when she was being criticized, and from his position in the kitchen, Harit could hear the jingle of her bangles. “I am doing well in school. I am helping Harit with his schoolwork, too.”
“It is not just those things. This is a time of your life when you must be thinking of your future. No man is going to want a woman who complains about losing her favorite toy. This is not normal.”
Harit was surprised at this comment. One thing that their parents were not was normal. They were some of the most self-possessed people in their circle of friends, known for their fine looks and their calm surety when it came to socializing. Their father, Jaideep, was a respected accountant, and even though Kamila handled many of the cooking duties, their mother was nevertheless famous for her mattar paneer and kadhi. “Unfair!” Swati said. “This is so unfair. You’ve always encouraged us to be unique and successful. I don’t think anyone would accuse me of not being successful.”
“Ah, yes, but it is a question of in what you are successful,” her mother said. “Being charming will get you only so far. You must be likeable and approachable, too.”
“So you’re saying I’m not likeable?”
“I am not saying that at all. I am saying that you may want to think about how you use your likeability. That is important, especially for a girl as special as you are.”
Even at this young age, Harit was aware of what his mother was doing. She was using the doll as a springboard to another topic entirely, a topic that girls dreaded: image. This was, in a word, cruel. It was cruel to take a boisterous young woman like Swati and make her question herself. Yet Harit also felt—and was sure that Swati felt—an unavoidable desire to heed his mother’s words.
And so, gradually, the doll was forgotten. Swati set herself even more fervently to her studies, and she learned how to re-create, in a poof of spice and milk, flour and greenery, the mattar paneer and kadhi of her mother’s renown.
But despite this change, despite the efforts that Swati made, there were the vestiges of her personality that could not be swept away. She was and would always be a headstrong woman, and men continued to sense this and back away. There was a close call, a young doctor—well, podiatrist—who took a liking to Swati immediately, but Harit’s mother caught him looking too lustily at the tender flesh of Swati’s ankles, and suddenly, the reason for his choice of vocation became all too clear. As Swati’s mother hurried him out the door, he scoffed, “No need to tire those pretty little feet searching for a husband—because you’ll never find one!” Men were prone to grand, harsh statements like this in Swati’s presence, but her tough demeanor refused to surrender to them. This was to their parents’ chagrin, but for Harit, it was one of the things that he revered most about her.
Harit and Swati grew up and went to school and became young adults, and then their father suffered a heart attack and was swept away as quickly as that doll. His spirit was repurposed to his family in varying degrees—Harit’s mother became more imperious, Swati more compassionate, Harit more afraid of being the man of the house—and then they came to America and found themselves irrelevant outside the confines of their household. Harit found a janitor job at a medical supplies company, and Swati found work as a part-time nanny, not just for Indian families but also for American ones. The Americans loved her energy, her smile, and they loved how expertly she played with little girls—the voices she could do for any stuffed animal and or for a variety of dolls. She began to get more work, more hours, and her mother did not mind simply because the money kept them afloat.
Then, years after their arrival in America, Harit, opening a box of cups and saucers that had escaped their notice, was astounded to see the Barbie—the very same doll—placed atop them, as if someone had meant for him to find it. The doll was bent so that it was curved into a cup, its arms and legs stretching upward like those of a baby calling for its mother. Harit let out a gasp. It looked no different from the way it had all those years ago, the dress as crisp and colorful as ever.
He was not a natural prankster. He had once tried to throw a surprise birthday party for Swati when they were back in India, but he had not told people to stagger their arrivals; he had also failed to have someone tail Swati to make sure she didn’t come home too soon. So there she was, falling in step with at least four guests and so unsurprised that she went over to the cake and presented it to the guests as if she herself had baked it that afternoon. Therefore, Harit worried about how to present this long-lost possession to his sister. Should he reseal this box of dishes and send Swati to open it later, so that she might experience the kind of excitement that he had experienced? Should he wrap it up as a separate gift and give it to her on a special occasion? Should he let his mother in on the secret?
No, he decided firmly—especially when it came to this last question. He remembered his mother’s conversation with Swati in that sitting room years before, and he knew that his mother would not share his elation at having rediscovered the doll, especially since Swati was as single as ever. Moreover, he wanted Swati to credit him with the doll’s reappearance.
Swati woke at five in the morning every day, before any of them, and the first thing she always did was scurry downstairs to take a shower in the first-floor bathroom. She preferred it to the upstairs bathroom because it had a slanted window that allowed the bather to look up at the sky without being viewed by passersby. Harit decided that he would pose the doll on a window opposite the bottom of the stairs. The oblong window, with its floating lace curtains, looked out on the street and would act as a frame for Barbie. Nothing could be more impressive than for her to see this childhood ghost, backlit by the breaking dawn and framed in soft white cloth. Meanwhile, Harit would conceal himself in the sitting room so he could see Swati’s reaction.