One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Page B

can go through life without encountering at least one amazing thing.” A shiver came over her as she said the last words, a blurry déjà vu. Where had she heard the phrase before?
    “You don’t know my life,” Mrs. Pritchett said.
    “I’ve never told a story,” Mangalam announced flatly. His tone indicated that he wasn’t going to start now.
    “It’s not difficult,” Uma said. “I’m sure you remember the stories your parents told you when you were little.” But at the mention of his parents, a shuttered look came over Mangalam’s face.
    “I’m not good at explaining,” Malathi said. She looked unconvinced when Uma promised to help her find the right words.
    “What if no one likes my story?” That was Lily.
    Though Uma assured her they would love it, she shook her head and busied herself with rummaging in her backpack.
    Tariq opened his eyes and glared at Uma. “Did you consider that we might not want everyone to know our business?” Before she could think of a rejoinder, he shut his eyes again.
    One volunteer, Uma thought in desperation. That was all she needed. But even Cameron, whom she had counted on, was examining the lines on his palm.
    Then she heard a voice, quavery, speaking English with a rusty Indian accent.
    “I will be first.”
    It was Jiang. They stared at her with varying degrees of incredulity.
    “Gramma,” Lily began, “You can’t even speak English.”
    Jiang blinked in the ray from the flashlight that Cameron had trained on her. Uma thought an impish expression flickered over her face. Had the old woman pretended, all these years, not to know the language of America?
    Jiang said, “I am ready. I will tell my tale.”
     
    THE RULES UMA SET DOWN WERE SIMPLE: NO INTERRUPTIONS, no questions, and no recriminations, especially by family members. Between stories, they would take breaks as needed.
    They arranged the chairs into a circle. Malathi came out with a tin of Kool-Aid fruit punch. (Where had she hidden it? What else was she hiding?) She mixed it into the bowls of water sitting on the counter, placed the bowls on a tray, and served them as though she were the hostess at a party. The sugar made people more cheerful, though Uma guessed it would ultimately make them feel worse. Oh, well! Carpe diem. Cameron switched off both flashlights. But in spite of the claustrophobic dark that fell on them, Uma sensed a new alertness in her companions, a shrugging off of things they couldn’t control. They were ready to listen to one another. No, they were ready to listen to the story, which is sometimes greater than the person who speaks it.
     
    “WHEN I WAS A CHILD,” JIANG BEGAN, “I LIVED INSIDE A SECRET.”
    From outside her house, in the narrow alley lined with the smelly gutters typical of Calcutta’s Chinatown, an observer would have seen the ugly, square front of a building, windowless and muddy red like its neighbors. In the center of this façade was a low, narrow door of cheap wood, painted green. The door opened only a few timeseach day—for the children, who walked a few blocks to the Chinese Christian school, or for the father, who was picked up for work by the monthly taxi he shared with two other Chinese businessmen. Sometimes in the afternoon the grandmother might undertake a visit by rickshaw to her friends, all of whom lived within a mile of the house. Or a guest would arrive unexpectedly, causing a flurry of excitement and a dispatching of the cook to the market for bean cakes or fresh lychees. Should the observer have peered into the interior of the house, he would have seen only another brick wall—the spirit wall, built for the express purpose of deflecting the outsider’s gaze.
    “But no one ever looked,” Jiang said. “No one gave the Chinese any thought—not until much later. Indians considered us below them because many of us were in the tannery business or owned leathergoods stores. That was okay with us. We had our own people, and we got from them