America for Beginners. Leah Franqui

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      The thought of cheese pushed his fragile internal life to the limit. Ronnie reached for his trash can and vomited all the Tums, and then, mechanically, reached for the container and stuffed another handful in his mouth. He knew he shouldn’t feel so stressed. This was not his only client who expected a Bengali guide. All Ronnie’s clients harbored strong expectations of a Bengali tour guide of decent birth and background, but once they arrived in America they were perfectly happy to be stuck with a courteous, helpful, cheerful, Bengali-speaking tour guide who had been well trained in downplaying his Bangladeshi patriotism; concealing his Islamic faith, should any such exist; and flatteringly expressing a strong desire to be re-included in either the Indian or the Pakistani state, depending on the audience.

      Picking out Mrs. Sengupta’s guide would be extremely difficult, Ronnie thought, nodding his head in grim agreement with his own mind. Who shall I give her? There was Vikrum, a burly fellow with gold teeth who made guests feel safe in this strange country, and serenaded them with early Bollywood tunes and village chants in his surprisingly melodic tenor. There was Ashwin, a mild-mannered guide whose ability to rattle off statistics made him very popular with visiting engineers and the like. There was even Puli, a consummate foodie who had mapped out the finest Indian cuisine possible in all fifty states. The man could find rice in a pasta store. But were any of them right for this widow? Besides, they were booked already. All that was really left was the new boy, Satya, a recent addition to the team.

      Ronnie paused his volley of thoughts and considered that prospect. It might be possible. Perhaps Mrs. Sengupta would want a guide who felt like the son who should have been taking care of her? It wasn’t a bad idea, that.

      Mrs. Sengupta was traveling scandalously alone, without a husband or gaggle of women her own age. This was something that had shocked Ronnie, and he had feared his horror during the initial phone-call inquiry would lose him Mrs. Sengupta as a client. She certainly hadn’t seemed very assertive in that first conversation, saying little, asking few questions, and hanging up as soon as she learned about the packages. He had thought it was just another Indian auntie with empty days indulging in a long-distance phone call for a thrill. But she did call back, and accepted Ronnie’s laughably expensive packaged “deal” without even a token attempt at bargaining. This saddened Ronnie, who always enjoyed a good back-and-forth over his absurdly padded prices, but money was money, and he swallowed his disappointment along with the fee.

      Mrs. Sengupta, understanding that she would be getting a male tour guide—Ronnie didn’t hire women for fear that they might distract his employees and male clients—requested that Ronnie provide a female companion/travel partner, for an appropriate extra charge, of course. In short, Mrs. Sengupta was looking to hire someone to be her friend. Ronnie, who had no friends himself, was unsure about hiring one for someone else. He wished, not for the first time in his life, that escort meant just that, and not a woman who pretended to be one’s girlfriend.

      Ronnie’s first instinct was to enlist his wife, Anita. It had seemed like the perfect solution, he remembered, munching glumly on a handful of dried peppermint leaves. He liked to switch between remedies for his stomach, hoping together they might work. Ronnie shook his head as he remembered proudly presenting his plan to Anita at dinner, Thai for her, stomach soothers for him. He had stirred his yogurt with a resigned sigh as Anita happily devoured a papaya salad, comforting himself with his brilliant idea. He was just leaning back in satisfaction when Anita surprised him by laughing her large braying laugh.

      “Oh, absolutely not, Big Nose!” Anita’s favorite pet name for Ronnie was one he hated. “Surely you must make joke. No way, no how, nowhere. Over my ashes, as they say.”

      Ronnie, stunned, said nothing, not even correcting her English, an opportunity he rarely passed up. They had agreed to speak English to each other for at least an hour a day, using it as a chance to try out new words and idioms that they might have been fearful to try out on strangers. Ronnie loved to assume an air of superiority, having been in America for so much longer than Anita, but the truth was, she was a far faster learner than he.

      He realized, sighing through his peppermint leaves, that he should have expected this from his wife, but at the time, almost a month ago, he was flabbergasted. It sometimes troubled him how Anita was nothing like what she was supposed to have been. He had specifically asked for a wife who would be, like the families he guided, enraptured with his intellect and his knowledge. Instead, he had gotten Anita.

      Although he enjoyed the freedoms of America, when Ronnie had decided to get married, he looked for his bride in Bangladesh. He had met nice Bangladeshi girls in America through his uncle and the growing network of Bangladeshi friends and neighbors who had flooded into Jackson Heights in the years since Ronnie had arrived. However, he had found the women raised between Bangladesh and America to be too much of everything. They were bold, these girls; they looked him directly in the eyes, they ventured to touch his shoulder when he made them laugh, and they sat too close at movies and meals. It made him uncomfortable. He would never be the authority with a girl like that. He had to look to the old country.

      He called his mother, who was initially annoyed to be disturbed during her favorite soap opera but forgave all when she heard his reason for doing so. She nodded constantly through the conversation, because she had never really understood that her face wasn’t visible across the phone line. After hearing Ronnie’s careful stipulations, she concluded that she had just the girl in mind, her friend’s sister’s daughter’s niece, Anita Das. Anita would do very nicely for Ronnie; she spent her days in her home helping her mother, who was, by all accounts, an excellent cook, which meant that Anita herself must have inherited this ability.

      For her part, Anita was not actually consulted at any level, but if she had been, she would have been thrilled by the new match. Not because Ronnie Munshi, a skinny child she could barely remember from the village school years ago, seemed to be any great prize, but because marrying him would be a one-way ticket to America. Anita would have consented to an Indian husband, a Pakistani husband, even a Chinese husband, had one presented himself, because they would have all meant the same thing to her: escape. Her family was not an unhappy one: she was not beaten any more than was deemed strictly necessary by her parents; she had been allowed to complete several years at the local school, and even took classes and received a junior degree from a two-year college in the nearest city. Still, Anita had been born, she had been told, looking up at the world, emerging from the birth canal with her eyes open and unblinking. Ever since then, she hadn’t been able to stop looking for something better or deeper or just more.

      She had been considering her own escape seriously, hoarding little bits of money in a hole in the ground in a corner outside of her father’s house, when the offer from Ronnie finally reached her, relayed through a series of long-distance interactions. This was two weeks after Ronnie had first contacted his mother, but eventually her mother deigned to explain to Anita that she had, at long last, found a husband, despite her tanned skin and disinterest in domestic duties. Her dance of joy was interrupted by her mother’s reminder that now would be an excellent time to learn to cook. Her major selling point had been her cooking abilities, passed down, it had been assured, from her mother. Anita merely laughed. Her mother slapped her hard, but that rebellious giggle was worth it. Her mother didn’t matter anymore. Anita was already far away.

      Though Ronnie had been certain that his delicate country-bred bride might find the US of A overwhelming, the reality was that Anita took to America like a fish to water. Initially, she had been worried about only two things. One was the food, and the other was the bedroom. However, Ronnie, who had never been with a real live woman, lasted all of twenty seconds after entering his virginal bride for the first time, and it would take him several years to improve on this performance. While not exactly a pleasant experience, it was, for Anita, a mercifully short one that seemed to give her new husband pleasure and, more importantly, a deep sleep.

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