Her Story

1

We shoaled into the cafeteria together. We knew who the sharks were, and how to avoid them; we knew exactly where they basked in the afternoon sunshine, waiting to sink their teeth into some poor fish’s flesh. We grabbed trays and plastic packets of ketchup and bruised green apples. We watched the lunch-lady fling clumps of brown gravy on scoops of mashed potatoes. Our plates filled, we flitted away to the table in the far corner like fish schooling in a hidden grotto where they’re safe to indulge in their own small feeding frenzy.

We knew there was safety in numbers, the three of us. We’d played together and laughed together since second grade. We’d stood side by side for hours to sell girl scout cookies. We’d run against each other at cross country meets. Sure, we’d squabble every now and then – but we knew we belonged to the same species, although our families were so different: Katrice, whose doctor parents came from Eritreya; Laurel, whose dad is a pastor and whose family has lived here for who knows how long; and me, Sandhya who prefers to go by Sandy, because it blends in and it matches my beige skin, which I inherited half from my history-professor mom who came to the States with her parents when she was five, and half from my father’s Irish ancestors who probably immigrated during the potato famine.

I saw the new girl at the end of the lunch-line that curled like a scraggly piece of seaweed drying on the beach. It wasn’t just the baggy, brightly colored salwar kameez she was wearing that made her stick out so badly; it was also the coconut-oil scent (stronger, I felt sure, than the stale cheese odor that permeated the cafeteria) wafting off her gleaming black hair, which she wore in a tight braid; and, most of all, the bright red bindi on her forehead, exactly like the one my mother insists I paint between my eyebrows on the rare occasions when we visit the temple.

We all saw her eyes dart to our table in the lunchroom. I know we all did, because at once, the three of us fell silent.

We had space for her at our table. We knew she could see that we had space. But we met one another’s eyes, not hers, and we stiffened like criminals in the shadows trying to escape her searchlight gaze, until we sensed her gaze had passed over us. Then, our relief tumbled into mindless chatter, mixing easily with the clatter of the not-so-silverware, the clickety-clack of plastic, the thudding trays, the shouts of laughter and echoing waves of noise.

At the dim edge of our horizon, she was visible, sitting alone at a table by the window, bathed in a golden rectangle of sunshine.

2

Her name was Vaishali – an old fashioned Indian name that Mr. Goldberg stumbled over and mispronounced when she walked into his class, later that afternoon.

We were already at our desks, and she gave me a half-wave as she slipped into the seat next to mine. I stared at my desk, pretending I hadn’t seen her hesitant hand.

But I couldn’t ignore the reason I was avoiding her. For years and years, I’d tried to be as unnoticeable, ordinary, insipid as I could be; and here, suddenly, came this new girl, looking like my grandmother might have done when she was fresh off the boat. She was everything I should have embraced, but also everything I was frightened to love inside me – personified, standing outside me.

3

By the end of her first week, it was easy for us to pretend she didn’t exist. We might have forgotten about her altogether and not needed to pretend at all, if it hadn’t been for the way the sharks homed in on her.

We didn’t snigger when Marlene called her Sasquatch, but we didn’t tell her to knock it off, either. When Jacques, leader of the cool gang, walked past her table and threw a handful of bacon bits over her rice, we looked at each other and then looked away.

Self-preservation is an instinct, just as hard to suppress as a shark’s thirst for blood.

It was as if we’d made a silent pact, the three of us. We let her eat alone. We let her sit alone. We let her walk alone. We were close-knit friends, and we were happy in our friendship and we didn’t need anyone else, after all.

Vaishali became as silent as a storm-tossed bark, and with each new battering, she grew calmer and wiser in a way that won my deepest respect. I did admire her strength – but so secretly that I didn’t even admit it to Laurel or Katrice, because the more Vaishali endured, the brighter cowardice grew in my heart. I could feel my fear, shivering like sunlight on the scales of a fish.

4

Mr. Goldberg was a phenomenal history teacher. He had the gift of getting our attention without needing to work for it. We listened to him recount the horrors of the Holocaust, the genocide of our indigenous people, the evils of enslavement and the continuation of those evils, through the Jim Crow era. We read about non-violence connections between Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior and Mahatma Gandhi – whom Vaishali always referred to as Gandhi-ji. We wrote long essays, we debated ideas, we learned to speak out in the classroom.

We thought we learned a great deal.

5

In June, when school was almost over, I noticed that Vaishali had missed a history lesson. We commented on her absence when, at lunchtime, we noticed she wasn’t at her usual table.

Maybe she’s ill? Laurel said.

Or, maybe her family’s moved? Katrice suggested.

Except why would anyone’s family move so suddenly, so close to the end of the school year, and that too after joining our school in the middle of that school year?

Or maybe she’s away somewhere nice with her family or something, Katrice continued, vaguely. I didn’t think Vaishali dressed or behaved like her family had the means to go anywhere nice, but it felt rude to say so, or even think that.

Maybe, I agreed.

We were sure she’d be back, in a day or two.

But three days went by and Vaishali was still nowhere to be seen.

6

They made a great big announcement about what had happened to Vaishali. The bullying had escalated and turned violent.

Jacques and his friends had waited for her after school one day. They might have – who knows what they might have done? All they said was she’d had the presence of mind to call 911 and Jacques and his buddies had been caught on a school security camera. He and his gang were facing suspension – maybe more.

According to our principal, the school would be starting a whole new anti-bullying training program next year. They said they took it seriously, and it must never happen again at our school.

I feel kind of bad, Katrice added.

Not like it was our fault, Laurel said.

For a moment a question hung, unspoken in the air. What if we’d tried to make a place for her at our table?

Then, we shrugged the question away.

7

We didn’t talk about Vaishali again. Why would we? The three of us hardly knew her.

I don’t think of her often. But every once in a while, I catch myself glancing at the sunlit spot where Vaishali would always sit at lunchtime, silent as a shadow.

Shadows are strange things. We nearly never notice them, but we can never detach ourselves from them. They creep along behind us, lurking in wait for those brief moments when, unexpectedly, the light shifts and they leap ahead of us, forcing us to acknowledge their existence.

Padma Venkatraman’s novels The Bridge Home, Born Behind Bars, A Time to Dance, Island’s End and Climbing the Stairs, have secured over 20 starred reviews, won multiple awards and sold > 250,000 copies. Visit www.padmavenkatraman.com to read more about oceanographer-turned-author Dr. Venkatraman and contact https://theauthorvillage.com/presenters/padma-venkatraman/ to arrange a visit.