Rabeya and I before America
She is a woman of very small stature, short but a power pack of passion and energy. Her coconut-oiled ,shiny, blackish brown hair parted straight above the center of her nose pulled back tightly into a single braid fell down her lower back. She wore a soft flowing sari with threads of brightly colored pinks and gold sprinkled on a sky blue background. Her red dot worn proudly on her forehead and many jingly bangles inlaid with sparkly clear diamond-like false stones wrapped around both of her tiny wrists.
This was Rabeya, the lady who sent me to the United States. At the age of 19, I met this woman for the first time in 13 years since I left India. I was attending college at this time and living within a twenty minute drive from my parents. My adoptive mother notified me that Rabeya had come to visit and see me but I was very adamant about not seeing her.
I didn’t want to have anything to do with my Indian life that now seemed like another lifetime ago. I spent the last 13 years trying to put it all behind me, working so diligently to become American. Working on getting my last little nuances of an Indian/British accent expelled from my mouth, putting the final touches on learning American slang, wearing the Levi jeans that made me a true American, going to frat parties like all of the other girls, dating blond haired light-eyed boys, not looking too smart, going to all of the football games and partying with my friends. I had really made it, I was living the life of all the other white American girls and I felt somewhat accepted by them even though I looked different. The only reminder was the mirror now. I didn’t want some old lady that knew me as a poor child in Calcutta to mess up my image of being American.
After several weeks of Rabeya staying with my parents my adoptive mother Shirley phoned me and said “Pushpa, don’t you think you ought to see Rabeya? After all she did help us get you.” I replied ferociously with “NO, I don’t want to see that woman. What do I need to see her for?” She replied back with an underlying note of guilt “she came all the way from India and has been here for a while and she doesn’t understand why you have not come to see her. I can’t keep making up excuses for you.”
I realized I had put Shirley in a predicament and felt guilty and dutifully said “okay, I will meet her for lunch.” We made the arrangements for the next day. I would meet her at a Chinese restaurant and eat lunch with her. I couldn’t believe that my past was going to be sitting across a table from me. The past years were all about being someone that fit this new life and now I had to see someone that knew me before. It terrified me. No one I knew had ever been to India, no one in my family really knew what my life was before being adopted. I was the girl that knew four languages, that independently ran the streets in tattered dirty clothes and bare feet, starved, admired her handsome father, played poker with men, watched a man die, looked like everyone else, never thought about “fitting in” had now become a fake. No longer an Indian but a real American. I was proud of the hard work I had done through the constant studying of Americans and metamorphosing myself into the person I thought could blend and become a fabric of this culture.
I fretted through the whole night and next morning wondering how this meeting was going to be that I never in my craziest imagination thought would happen.
As noon approached I became nervous, worried that I was going to lose a piece of myself by seeing Rabeya. She was the one who did my adoption, arranged everything, did all of the legal paperwork needed in India, communicated with my adoptive parents and sent me to the airport in a cab to get on a plane to come to America. She had come for this visit to meet my parents for the first time and to see me. She only corresponded through letters all of these years and through the adoption so they wanted to meet each other in person.
Now I was going to meet this woman. As I rode in the green toyota corolla while my boyfriend Mark drove, I feared for my life. Why? I wasn’t sure. I was just scared, my past was coming to slap me in the face and I had no idea what was ahead of me. Rabeya, the lady who sent me here. What was it that she wanted from meeting me?
© Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog, 2008-2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
