A Superior Education

by Sudha Balagopal and Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar

2y.kang

First Grade Bloomers

When Mumma drops me at my new school in Calcutta, she shows me the yellow slide in the playground. The slide is shaped like the letter S and has red steps.

I like slides. They make me feel as if I’m flying. At the park, I open my arms, and Mumma catches me at the bottom of the slide.

My teacher, Sister Teresa, doesn’t smile. She holds a wooden ruler in her left hand. With her right hand, she writes big letters on the blackboard. When she holds a finger to her lips, we must be quiet.

Rupa, Tina and I sit in a row. Tina, next to me, tells me the big letters on the board say “Monday.” Sister Teresa sends her to the corner for talking. Tina sits facing the blue-painted wall until the bell rings.

At recess, I’m climbing the rungs of the slide when the teacher shouts. “Lipi! Come down. At once.”

Her loud voice means I’ve done something wrong. Will I go to the corner, too?

Sister Teresa lifts my skirt. “No bloomers? Does your mother not know our policy?”

Rupa, at the bottom of the slide, giggles.

“Sit there,” Sister Teresa indicates a bench.

My classmates squeal, navy uniform skirts lifting as they fly down the slide. Underneath, I can see long, white, puffy underwear. This morning, Mumma laid out my clothes and my favorite green panties.

I cross my legs tight, try to hide dusty knees, dirty socks and the shame inside.

Third Grade Demerits

“I’m thirsty. Wish I could take a sip from my water bottle,” I whisper in Tina’s ear. Before she can respond, Rupa raises her hand.

“What’s wrong, Rupa?” Sister Margaret asks, annoyed at the interruption in her multiplication lesson.

“Lipi spoke in Bengali,” Rupa says, points a finger at me.

“We have an English-only policy at this school,” the teacher purses her lips and adjusts her habit. “Stand up. Apologize.”

My eyes sting, my throat’s parched.

“Sorry, Sister,” I mumble. The girls exchange glances. I wish Mumma would come and hide me in the folds of her sari.

“Monitor, give Lipi a demerit,” Sister Margaret commands. Rupa straightens the Monitor badge on her shirt and walks toward a white chart pinned to the front wall. It has the names of all the girls listed on the left; the right is divided into two columns: Merits, Demerits.

Rupa picks up a red sketch pen from the teacher’s table, marks an X against my name in the Demerits column, and returns to her desk, her head held high. I wish Papa had never made me change schools.

“This is an English medium school,” he said when I protested against leaving my old school and friends. “You can’t do anything in the world without knowing the language.”

I stare at the mark against my name, red as the vermilion Mumma wears in the parting of her hair.

Seventh Grade Fairy Mary

“Girls, I have to select performers for the nativity play on Christmas,” Sister Maria announces. “Those interested, come to the music room at recess.”

I run as soon as the recess buzzer sounds and reach the music room before anyone else. Within seconds, a line forms behind me. Sister Maria calls me in.

“Ah, Lipi,” she says, “have you acted before?”

“I played Sita at Ramlila, last year,” I reply. Mumma wrapped me in a silk sari, wove jasmine buds in my hair. She put a kohl mark behind my ear to protect me from the evil eye.

“Come forward,” the teacher says.

She holds my chin and tilts my face towards the tubelight, turns me around, measures the length of my braid with her palm. I feel like the cauliflowers and eggplants Mumma inspects before paying the vegetable vendor.

“You can be a shepherd in the play,” she decides.

“Sister, can’t I be Mother Mary?” I ask after a pause, drawing every bit of courage I have.

“Your skin’s too dark, Lipi. Mother Mary has to be white, you know, like a fairy,” she replies with a raised brow. “I need a fair maiden for that role.”

Sweat trickles down my back.

“Next,” she calls out.

Light-skinned Rupa enters. The door slams behind me.

High School Evisceration

I jump on as the bus is about to pull away from school.

Not-my-friend Rupa sings from the middle row, “Earthworms don’t grow on trees, on trees, on trees.” Others pick up the refrain, repeating what Sister Gertrude said after biology lab today.

“Shut up,” I scream. “I hate earthworms.” My ears burn.

The driver hits the brakes. “Behave,” he says.

I sink into the only vacant seat, across the aisle from Rupa. At the end of the school day, her uniform shirt is still as white as her grinning teeth, her hair neat in the single braid.

My shaky fingers couldn’t pin down the slithery earthworm during biology lab. By the time I cut him (or her?) open, the creature had disintegrated into blobs of mud.

“You’ve eviscerated the specimen,” Sister Gertrude said in her loud voice. “And you want to be a doctor?” The teacher’s thick eyebrows meet to form a large caterpillar on her forehead.

Mumma also hopes I’ll be a doctor. She was married at seventeen.

“I’ll grant one last chance or you fail biology,” she said. “Earthworms don’t grow on trees.”

I know that. The slimy crawlers wander on the school’s sidewalks after a rainstorm, never on trees. What I don’t know is the meaning of eviscerate.

I shuffle through my bag, pull out the dictionary.

Rupa sneers, asks, “Searching for a word?”

I shut the book, look out the window. Dark clouds mean rain. Tomorrow we’ll see more earthworms.

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Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar is an Indian American writer. She is a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee; her work has been published in MoonPark Review, Spelk Fiction, Barren Magazine, and also in print anthologies. She can be reached at twitter @PunyFingers.

Sudha Balagopal’s recent short fiction appears in Split Lip Magazine, X-r-a-y Literary, and Pidgeonholes. She is the author of a novel, A New Dawn. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions, and is listed in the Wigleaf Top 50, 2019.