Read The Hindi-Bindi Club for Free Online Page B

time, then lights out,” I say. “Deal?”
    “Deal!”
    “Okay, here we go…Once upon a time long, long ago, in a land far, far away…” When I reach The End for the second time, Jack’s sacked out, but Lina’s still rearing to go. Eric appears at the door, ready to provide backup.
    No reneging tonight, kiddo. Mommy and Daddy have Big Plans. Eric tucks Lina in and carries Jack to his room, where he does the same. We wait until they’re
both
down for the count.
    “Double-check,” I whisper. “Triple-check.” Our Lina’s a sneaky one, always coming into our bedroom, claiming to want a drink of water, or go potty, never mind that she just did.
    Eric peeks into Lina’s room again and gives the thumbs-up.
    Stifling our laughter like naughty kids, we sneak downstairs and into the garage.
    “Man, the lengths you go to when you’re parents,” Eric says.
    “Tell me about it.” I stop, bump into him. “Keys. Do you have the keys?”
    He waggles his eyebrows and jingles them.
    “You are
such
a stud.”
    He laughs and kisses me.
    “What was the first present you remember asking Santa for?” I ask.
    “Lincoln Logs. You?”
    “Guess.”
    “Aw, don’t make me—”
    “Come on, guess!”
    “Ummmm…A musical jewelry box.”
    “Nope.”
    “A tea set.”
    “Nope.”
    “Gimme a hint, wife.”
    “A hint, husband? Well…” I pat the trunk of my car. “You might try looking in here.”
    “Oh, yeah?” He pops open the trunk and scans the kids’ goodies that we’re retrieving to wrap and rehide. “Hmmmm…” His gaze zeroes on a target. A slow grin. “A globe.”
    “Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner.”
    Eric chuckles and shakes his head. “The things I do for love.”
    “And sexual favors.”
    “That, too.”
    It takes a few trips to transport Santa’s loot inside. We sprawl on the floor by our Christmas tree and, from time to time, tiptoe upstairs to check on the kids. Still snug in bed? Yep. Eric passes Jack’s globe to me, so I can do the honors.
    Oh, how I loved my globe, I remember as I wrap this one. I was four when Santa gave it to me. “Gifted me,” as my dad would say. He showed me where we lived and the places he and Mom were born and raised. (“Born and brought up.”)
    “This is America,” Dad said. “We are here, just outside the capital, Washington, D.C.” Then he spun the globe clear around to the Other Side. He pointed to a peninsula similar to the shape of Texas—an analogy I’d make several years later—located above the Indian Ocean and below China. “This is India. Mommy and I lived just outside
that
capital, New Delhi.”
    I was fascinated. Everything about geography intrigued me. Countries and capitals. Land and seas. Especially the notion of the earth being round—people living on the Other Side. My day their night, my night their day. The fact we looked up at the same sun, moon, and stars. And perhaps most mind-boggling of all: the possibility that thousands of miles beneath
my
feet walked
other people’s
feet!
    Questions sprouted left and right in the fertile terrain of my mind. Why didn’t people fall off Earth the way my Fisher-Price people fell off the globe? If you dug a tunnel straight down into the ground, would you come up on the Other Side like a rabbit? (I attempted to answer this one myself and started digging a hole in the backyard, but after hitting rock after rock, I concluded any passage to India would require a bigger shovel.) And if the “rest of our family” lived on the flip side—grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins—did I have a brother or sister over there, too?
    I was four. I mentioned that, right?
    Well, that was twenty-nine years ago. Today I have my own preschoolers. Lina isn’t the least bit interested in globes. Hers sits atop the lavender bookcase in her room, serving the dual purpose of bookend and dust-catcher. She can’t dress it up, invite it to tea parties, or really play with it in any way—geography games don’t