Cover Page

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Melanie Abrams

Dedication

For Vikram

Epigraph to come

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CHAPTER ONE

WHEN THE TWO O’CLOCK BELL RANG, KIDS SWARMED THE ELEMENTARY school pickup zone, their backpacks dragging on the warm asphalt or slung upside down on their tummies. Tyler was usually one of the last children to arrive, but today he ran to the car and waved an orange construction-paper leaf in Josie’s face. “We made leaves,” he said. “There are deciduous trees and evergreen trees.” He held it out to her. “This is from a deciduous tree.”

“That’s great, Ty,” she said, and took it. He had drawn brown spidery veins down the middle, and on each point of the leaf was carefully printed the letters of his name. “Did you write this by yourself?”

“Of course,” he said, and snatched the leaf back. “And I cut it with left-handed scissors.” He climbed in the backseat and buckled himself beside the baby. “Twelve more days of first grade,” he said. “Where’s Mommy?”

“Home getting ready for the party tonight.” Josie looked in the rearview mirror and watched Tyler scowl.

“It’s Friday,” he said.

“I know, but today we had to make an exception to the rule,” she said.

“But it’s Friday.”

She looked back again and tried to change the subject. “How big is Australia again?”

“Australia is two point nine six million square miles and is located on the Indo-Australian Plate,” he said.

“Wow, that’s a lot of space.”

“China is over three point four seven million square miles and has one point two eight four billion people as inhabitants,” he said, and kicked the back of her seat in time with the syllables.

“Tell me more,” she said. It wasn’t the best way to avoid a tantrum, but it was one way, and she was too tired from reading about the burial rituals of the Konkomba all night to try any of the recommended “positive coping skills.”

Josie hadn’t wanted to be a nanny. She had moved from Santa Barbara to North Carolina and into the graduate dorms—small, cramped spaces with a shared kitchen and antiseptic-smelling bathrooms—and holed up with her books. She liked her classmates, went running every weekend with a girl from Boston, ate breakfast once a week with the head graduate TA, and she had met guys—slept with a graduate student in library science who could compare every part of her body to food (her hair was like honey, her eyes like the inside of a kiwi)—but she felt temporary and untethered. Then in October of her second year, she had been assigned Tyler’s first-grade class for her Ethnographic Research Methods seminar and everything had changed.

She was ill the day sites were chosen, and later tried to convince the professor to change her topic. But the professor told her it was only one small paper and it would be good for her to branch out early in her career. Perhaps, he said, she would find out her interests lay beyond corpses and coffins. She had gritted her teeth and said nothing. She was a second-year graduate student but had been researching for years—books on the burial rituals of the Ewe of the Volta Region and the Ga of Accra—and she had spent the previous summer at the University of Ghana at Legon, studying and doing preliminary research alongside the program director. She was twenty-seven, not one of these fresh-out-of-college kids with notions of discovering the missing link. But she accepted the assignment and told herself to think of it as a kind of test; if she could put up with fifteen hours of the alphabet song, she would prove herself worthy of higher pursuits. So she sat in the corner with the coats and the lunchboxes thinking Tyler just one of the many towheaded boys who kicked their sneakers against the table legs and peeled the paper wrappers from his crayons. But on her second day, Tyler approached her after lunch and said, “This classroom is twenty-four feet by twenty-five feet and three inches.” He stood so close, he was almost on top of her shoes, and he looked at the ground and fumbled with the measuring tape in his hands.

“And the ceiling has seventy-four tiles on it,” she said. He froze and then looked up and at her right shoulder.

“How do you know that?” he asked.

“I counted,” she said. He didn’t say anything else, just stood there pursing his lips and pulling on his zipper until Mrs. Grayson told him to take his seat. But after that, he began seeking her out. The bell would ring for recess and he would hurry to her chair and spout distances as if they were observations on the weather. Mrs. Grayson would try to talk him into going to the playground and, when that didn’t work, try to physically pull him away, but the truth was, Josie didn’t mind. “It’s okay,” she finally said. “Let him stay.” There was something calming about the emotionless hum of his numbers. She would sit in her chair and go through her notes and listen to fact after fact play reliably in the background.

This went on for a week until one morning Tyler dragged his mother into the classroom. Mary was pale and dark-eyed with a halo of black curls, and although she looked nothing like her own mother, Josie was struck by their similarity—the vast amount of space they seemed to occupy despite their small frames.

“So you’re the infamous Josie,” Mary said. “I’m Tyler’s mother …”

“She’s a doctor,” Tyler said. “And that’s my sister Madeline,” he said, pointing to the baby in Mary’s arms.

“… and we need a nanny.”

“Oh … no,” Josie had said. “I’m a graduate student.” But Mary persisted, said that their last nanny had been a graduate student and couldn’t she at least take Josie out for coffee to discuss it? She grabbed Josie’s hand and pleaded, and Josie felt all Mary’s confidence pressing into her palm like a warm penny.

So they walked down to the coffee shop on the corner, Tyler scuffing his shoes against the curb, Josie awkwardly holding the baby’s diaper bag, and Mary charming Josie with stories about her stint as an encyclopedia salesgirl in college.

She was just like Josie’s mother, who could hold an entire room’s attention just by clearing her throat, could get even the tightest-lipped strangers to share their secrets. People adored her, adjusted their schedule around her elaborate themed parties—A White Christmas in December (complete with manufactured snow and sleigh rides), the Black and White Ball in April, and Josie’s favorite, because of the snow-cone machine and petting zoo, the Morgan Backyard Carnival in August. At the fancier events, Josie was allowed to come for appetizers and then put to bed. Often her cousin Natalie would also stay the night, and the two of them would sneak out to the stair landing and sit with their nightgowns pulled over their knees and watch the festivities. “Let’s count the drunk people,” Natalie would say, but Josie would shake her head. “Let’s send down a paper airplane with a message,” Natalie would try, but Josie would ignore her and, if that didn’t work, elbow her quickly in the ribs and send her sulking back to bed. Josie wanted to watch her mother, watch her enchant her many admirers with just the turn of her head, a hand on a lapel. Josie’s father was always close by, ready to refill her wineglass or light her cigarette—the perpetual suitor. It was spectacular, her mother’s magnetism—all that power so effortlessly exposed. “Your mother should have been born a French princess,” her mother’s sister, Aunt Steffi, would say, and Josie would nod solemnly, a bit terrified at the vision of her mother in her tennis whites shouting “Off with their heads!”

But unlike her mother, who even her father admitted was sometimes too “self-possessed,” Mary’s self-assurance seemed to radiate to those around her. At the coffee shop, Mary bought Josie a coffee and a cinnamon roll. They sat at a cramped table and Mary told Josie how she was researching the human immune response to tuberculosis, how most Americans weren’t even aware that TB was making a comeback. Her hands fluttered when she spoke, and once she gripped Josie’s knee for emphasis, and there was something about the way she placed her hand on Josie, the way she dipped her chin and looked intently, that created an unexplainable swell of softness in Josie’s stomach. So after the second coffee date, Josie relented and came and looked at the sunny room with a bay window that she could have for only twenty-five hours of work a week. And after their third date, a late dinner with too many glasses of wine, Mary told Josie the story of her divorce—the cheating husband, the unexpected second pregnancy, her ex’s complete disappearance after he was served with the child support order—and Josie handed over her references and soon found herself packing her things and moving into the extra bedroom.

At first it was strictly twenty-five hours a week and no weekends—a perfect part-time job, especially in preparation for June when she would have no classes and only be reading for exams for a year. Mary was in the lab more than fifty hours, but the baby could go to the university day care, and Tyler had school. Soon, though, Mary was asking for just a few more hours, just one extra errand, and Josie was glad to concede. After all, Mary was generous with Josie. She gave her books on West African art, picked her up an extra lipstick at the department store, brought home grocery store tabloids because Josie confessed they were her guilty pleasure. So even when the requests increased, Josie reasoned, it was really a partnership. Mary liked doing things for Josie, and Josie liked doing things for Mary, but perhaps even more true was that Josie liked the velvety blanket of Mary’s attention. Mary smoothed Josie’s hair and Josie wanted to pick up Mary’s dry cleaning, make her tea, organize her office.

And there was Tyler. He had crept into her affections. He was a peculiar little kid, and he had fallen for Josie. Her third week at the house, Josie had cut a basket of strawberries into inch-long pieces and let Tyler carefully dip each into chocolate. It made him deliriously happy—all that dipping and placing, dipping and placing—and after, he had snuggled up to Josie on the couch and astounded Mary. Tyler did not take to people, and he certainly did not cuddle them; he rarely let his mother that close to him. For whatever reason, Mary said, Tyler had chosen Josie. And the way Mary said it—like she was bestowing a blessing—and the way Tyler felt against Josie’s side—firm and unwavering—made Josie believe that perhaps she had found something good and solid.

Now Josie pulled into the driveway and honked the horn, and Mary came out to help with the groceries for tonight—a dinner party for nine people. Nine people and a man named Devesh Khanna. Devesh, who the dinner party was really for. Devesh, for whom Mary had composed ten different e-mails before impulsively picking up the phone and calling. He was a trauma surgeon at the teaching hospital where Mary worked and had first called Mary to consult on a case. “The patient was febrile and not responding to first-line treatment,” Mary told Josie excitedly. “He wanted to know what drug regimen to give!”

Josie had finally met him last Thursday when she and the children had gone to pick up Mary from the hospital. He had been waiting with Mary on the quad, and when Josie pulled up, Mary made Josie get out of the car to meet him. He was dark-skinned and stood close enough to Mary to graze her briefcase with his stiff white shirt cuff. Josie looked at him, looked at Mary, and felt a prick of apprehension at the base of her spine. “You’re the children’s nanny?” he had asked. “Josie’s more than a nanny,” Mary answered, but Devesh had fastened onto the idea. “More than a nanny,” he smiled. “Is that what it said in the job description?” Josie tried to laugh politely but was grateful when Tyler interrupted. “Africa is more than eleven point five million square miles, that’s twenty percent of the earth’s surface,” he said. “Its highest point is Uhuru Point at nineteen thousand three hundred and forty feet.” Mary quickly got in the car and rolled up the window.

Later that night, Mary had sat on Josie’s bed and peppered her with questions: wasn’t he cute, didn’t he have the darkest eyes, wasn’t his accent sexy? “Yeah,” Josie had said indifferently and tried to change the subject. “You’re just jealous,” Mary said, and Josie, incredulous, had asked, “Of him?” “No, of me,” Mary said and looked at Josie coyly. Josie rolled her eyes, but she could feel the blush spreading upward from her neck.

Now, Mary opened the backseat door, and Josie took a deep breath and tried to sound convincing. “Damn, I forgot the coffee.” She’d been shopping all afternoon, found the organic basil and Chilean wine, the two dozen white tulips and filigreed place cards Mary had insisted upon, but she had purposefully forgotten the coffee. She wanted to go to the coffee shop and just sit by herself, an hour free of sticky juice boxes and The Wheels on the Bus CD.

“Don’t worry about it, we’ll use the grocery store stuff,” Mary said.

“No, it’s okay, I’ll go.”

“That’s silly. No one can tell the difference.” Mary unbuckled Madeline from her car seat and hoisted her onto her hip. “Ow,” Mary said, and grabbed for the baby’s hand. “Not the hair.”

“I know, it’s her new thing. If you make her laugh, she lets go.” Josie blew into Maddy’s face and she broke into a wave of giggles and batted her hands at Josie.

“Smart girl,” Mary said and kissed Maddy on the head.

“Twelve more days of first grade, Mommy!” Tyler said.

“That’s great, Ty,” Mary said.

Josie grabbed two bags and followed Mary into the house. “Do you … mind if I go to the coffee shop?”

Mary looked at her and readjusted the baby on her hip.

“I won’t if you don’t want me to,” Josie said.

“No, you go.” Mary dug in her purse and pulled out a twenty.

“I have money,” Josie said.

“Take it,” Mary said.

Josie hesitated, and Mary pushed the bill into her hand. “Get a smoothie or something.”

Josie looked at her feet but took the money. “All right … well, thanks,” she said.

“Be back by four, okay?”

Josie nodded and walked down the block toward the coffee shop.

Every time Mary insisted on giving her extra money, Josie felt guilty and uncomfortable. Because the truth was, she had money. Lots of it.

Her father had made his fortune in real estate when Josie was still a baby. He had started with a parking lot in Canoga Park, old grazing land that no one wanted; then came an office building on Ventura Boulevard; some warehouses in downtown L.A.; and then the malls—mammoth retail and entertainment centers that spanned Southern California. Now he was dealing in luxury hotel properties all over the West Coast.

The day before she drove east, her father had put one hundred thousand dollars in an account and handed her the checkbook. And there was more if she wanted. Plenty more. “Sweetie, please use the money. It’s a gift from me; your mother doesn’t even have to know,” he had said. It made Josie sick, nauseated by both her own spite and the way her father allowed it, her father who still gave her mother gifts and effusive cards on the anniversary of their first date, their first kiss, the day of their engagement. “No,” Josie had said, “I want to do it on my own,” and although this wasn’t exactly a lie—she did want to find her own way—it was about spite. “I refuse to tell people my daughter studies corpses,” her mother would say. “I don’t study corpses, Mother. I study rituals, Ghanaian rituals.” “It’s morbid, Josie. It’s just perverse,” her mother said, and Josie would feel the adrenaline pump from her heart to her fists—that overwhelming frenetic feeling—and before she knew it, she was storming out of restaurants, slamming doors, throwing glasses against floors. Her mother would stare at her, calm and collected, and tell her her anger was more suited to a four-year-old. “But then again,” she murmured, “you seem somehow stuck at four.” It was this comment that finally made Josie back off, go inside herself. Her mother could win any game with this. Because at four Josie’s world had turned upside down, and at four Josie seemed to slip from her mother in a matter of moments. No, Josie refused to be beholden to her mother any longer, and if she took the money, she would be beholden. Despite Josie’s efforts, even secrets had a way of revealing themselves to her mother.

The coffee shop was one of her usual study places—with bad coffee and pay-as-you-go Internet, it was usually empty and quiet, and Josie would often let Maddy nap in her stroller while she struggled with her Twi translation exercises or tried to get through whatever book she was reading. She had set herself the goal of a book a day, giving herself a break from the heap of social theory every three days with an ethnography. Today she had brought a book her advisor had already nixed from her Orals list. It was almost all photographs, but spectacular ones, and she thumbed through pictures of Ga customized coffins—giant tunas, colossal onions, body-sized airplanes. Only in Ghana could you be buried in a gigantic wooden Mercedes-Benz. Josie brought the book close to her face to make out the grillwork on the hand-painted car.

“You’ll strain your eyes doing that.”

Josie looked up and saw Devesh standing above her. He held a cup of coffee in one hand and a newspaper in the other.

“Do you mind?” he asked, and gestured to the empty chair beside her. There were plenty of empty seats around her, and Josie wished she could tell him to find another seat. She would need to be pleasant, though, could hear Mary’s brusque “Josie!” just thinking about what she would like to say, so she shook her head.

“Thank you,” he said, and placed his paper on the table. “Just need to get some sugar.”

She watched him wind his way around the empty tables and chairs to the coffee bar. Once there, he poured four packets of sugar into his coffee. He emptied one, then stirred, emptied another, then stirred again. His actions were polished and slow, as if the world were waiting for him to perfect his latte. She watched him until he finally turned, and then looked quickly down at her book.

“There we go,” he said, and sat down.

She nodded and picked up her book. She didn’t want to talk to him, but she thought he would try, and she supposed she would have to be cordial. Instead, he leaned back in his chair and opened the paper on his lap. It was a foreign paper—she could tell by the size and the brightly colored pictures on the front—and she tried to peek at the headings beneath his large dark hands without being noticed.

“Indian Express,” he said.

She looked quickly back at her book. “Ah, right.”

“And you’re reading?” he asked.

“Oh.” She faltered. “I’m just looking at pictures right now.” She hoped he wouldn’t ask more. She definitely didn’t want to discuss her work.

“Pictures?” He looked at her and waited for her to go on.

“Of coffins.”

He waited for more.

“Ghanaian coffins, but they’re not really coffins.” She paused. “I mean, they don’t look like coffins.”

“Some light afternoon reading?” He grinned.

“Ha-ha,” she said.

“May I see?” he asked.

She handed him the book, and he flipped slowly through the pages. It seemed to take an interminable amount of time, and Josie had to bite the tip of her tongue to keep from demanding it back.

“People do all kinds of strange things with death,” he said, and finally handed her the book. “In Madagascar the Sakalava decorated their tombs with carvings of men and women engaged in compromising positions.” He kept hold of the book for a moment and grinned at her. It was a wicked grin, and she felt her heart contract.

“Quite something,” he said, and released the book.

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