You Bring the Distant Near

The narrative moves forward seven years. The Das family moves from London to New York. On their flight across the Atlantic, the flight attendant asks Tara about her background, and she explains that she was born in Calcutta (Kolkata), India, and moved to London when she was nine. A young American soldier flirts with the beautiful 17-year-old Tara, whom Sonia calls Starry. While Baba would have made his daughter change seats, Ma doesn’t mind the attention Tara attracts provided that “he’s a ‘posh’ young man (read: educated) raised in a ‘good family’ (read: white or Bengali)” (13). Sonia recalls how her father took short-term engineering contracts in Singapore, Malaysia, Cameroon, and the Philippines while the rest of the family stayed in London. She and Tara saw their father infrequently, and the fighting between their parents grew worse due to their unstable financial situation. At Ma’s insistence, Baba found permanent work in America.

After Ma falls asleep on the plane, 15-year-old Sonia writes in her diary about her parents’ fighting, the fact that her mother had no say in their arranged marriage, and her hope that her new life in the United States will bring her more solitude and freedom. Sonia is proud of her dark skin even though her mother has tried to make her use bleaching cream for years. Starry evades the soldier’s attempts to gain her contact information and hug her goodbye because she knows that her parents would disapprove.

At the airport, Sonia and Starry hug their father, glad to have their family reunited. Baba drives them past the girls’ new school and a local library that Sonia can walk to from their apartment in Flushing. When Ma sees that the local children are Black, she tells her daughters that neither of them is permitted to leave home alone. Their apartment is small and sweltering, but Baba has gifts for each of them—a secondhand television for Starry, a new notebook for Sonia, and a new sewing machine for Ma. The next day, the girls obtain their mother’s permission to go to the library. On their way there, a Black boy around Sonia’s age named Gerald makes flirtatious comments about her curves and dark skin, much to her indignation. At the library, Sonia checks out some of her favorite books, including Little Women, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and Heidi. On the walk back to the apartment, she sees Gerald dancing with his little brother in the spray of a fire hydrant. Feeling something shift between them, she waves to the boy. Thinking of her diary and the books in her satchel, Sonia wonders, “Where am I from? Can the answer be stories and words, some of theirs, some of mine?” (35).

During her time in London, Tara imitated British celebrities, including Diana Rigg and Twiggy, because she didn’t want to become invisible the way that she saw other Bengali girls withdrawing into themselves. Although she loves acting, she never auditioned for school plays because the only careers her mother wants her to pursue are medicine and engineering. Tara worries that she, unlike her sister, is not intelligent enough for either of those professions and that she’ll be married off instead. Tara watches television to research potential new roles and decides on Marcia Brady because “[p]ower oozes from every American pore of her skin” (41). In the weeks leading up to the start of school, Tara practices Marcia’s accent and gestures in the mirror, but she sees a frightened, “flat-chested, big-lipped foreigner” (47) in her reflection. Ma sews new clothes for her daughters, including matching outfits based on Marcia’s costumes. Tara doesn’t feel that she embodies her role yet, so she asks Baba for platform shoes. The request triggers an argument between her parents about his salary and the money he sends to his mother in former Calcutta.

On the first day of classes, Baba surprises his daughters with platform sandals, and Ma dresses up in a green silk sari and an abundance of jewelry to accompany them to school. Tara envies how at ease her sister, whom she calls Sunny, seems in her own body. Some of the students snicker at the sisters, and Tara lets go of Sunny’s hand. The white receptionist asks Ma if she can speak English. Ma insists that Sunny take the entrance exam first. Tara waits for her turn, urgently hoping for “some Marcia Magic” (52) to see her through her first day at her new school.

Principal Daniels has the same confident bearing and handsome appearance as Mr. Brady, and Sonia thinks that this will make her sister feel more at ease. He welcomes Mrs. Das and Sonia to his school and tests Sonia in the areas of math, science, and reading. He asks her to read aloud from Little Women, and her voice brings the story to life so beautifully that he calls in several of his colleagues to listen. He praises Sonia’s academic ability and laments the fact that the gifted track is full. Mrs. Das regally insists, “Both of my daughters are talented, sir. And both must be placed in these gifted classes” (58). Principal Davis finds room for Sonia in the ninth-grade gifted program but doesn’t have a place for Tara in the 11th-grade gifted track. The principal is puzzled by how happily Ma accepts this information, but Sonia is familiar with her mother’s bargaining tactics. Sonia borrows some books from the principal and then leads Tara to the principal’s office so she can take the entrance exam. When Tara sees the principal and notes his resemblance to Mr. Brady, she completes her transformation into Marcia. As Tara confidently flips her long hair over her shoulders, Sonia almost sees “a glint of blond” (59).