Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(17)

“He was wet on the bus,” Emma said, wasting the hour he had spent coaching her to shut up so she wouldn’t ruin Mum’s evening.

Some boys in his grade had dragged him into the locker rooms and pushed him under a shower in an attempt “to teach the curry sweep how to wash off the curry” so they didn’t have to hold their breath around him all day.

He didn’t care. Being wet didn’t hurt. At least no one had punched him that day.

Thankfully Emma hadn’t mentioned the curry smells.

Because to Mum a nasty wordplay on chimney sweep was just words, but mentioning the smells of their landlady’s cooking—DJ’s cooking—was sticks and stones. It drew blood.

The first time Emma had let slip that the boys liked to spray DJ with cheap deodorant while passing him in the hallways, Mum had packed up DJ’s clothes in a laundry bag and taken them to the local dry cleaner’s instead of washing them in the ancient washer in the attic.

“Those things cost too much, Mum.” He had tried to get her to see sense. “We can use that twenty quid to buy Emma paints.”

She had smacked him upside his head, albeit affectionately. “Emma doesn’t need any more stupid paints. You need to develop some self-respect. No one can have self-respect while smelling like curry.”

“How am I supposed to develop self-respect if you still smack me around when I’m fourteen?” he’d said because he knew it would make her smile.

She’d ruffled his hair. “Why don’t you care when those boys treat you like that?”

“Just because some spoiled gits say something, that doesn’t make it true.” He’d wanted so badly for her to believe that he didn’t care. Truth was, dry-cleaning the clothes once would do nothing to get rid of the smell of frying onions for six hours in a little kitchen, every day. The smell was in his pores. An even bigger truth was that he loved it. Those six hours were the best hours of DJ’s day and he would not let anyone take them away from him. Not even his mother.

“You were never supposed to cook for her. You aren’t her servant, DJ!”

“I know that, Mum.” It tore a tiny hole inside him every time Mum said that. Ammaji said cooking was the most noble of all service. He believed her with all his heart. But he also knew that all Mum wanted was for him to make it out of these attic rooms.

“Your father wanted you to be an engineer. What will I say to him when I meet him in heaven?”

What DJ had wanted to say was, “Maybe start with asking him why he left us penniless if he cared so much about my future?”

He never said it though. Because Ammaji had once told him that anger tears up your insides. And that only he could choose who he let tear him up.

Years later he had forgotten her words and it had ended up tearing not just him but everything he cared for apart. Emma had been the one to bring him back from the brink then. And now she was lying in a hospital bed. He needed to get back to work so he could get back to her, and not let some insufferable snob level him by bringing up nasty memories.

The two women were still talking. Instead of going through the door, he stepped away from it. He’d heard enough.

Sod all if he cared what they thought of him anyway.

Rajesh appeared next to him and pushed the door open a crack to peer at the women. “Told you the maal here was fit,” he whispered. “They’re something else, innit?”

Yup, definitely something else.

DJ took a deep breath. “We’re working, Rajesh. Let’s try to keep it clean.” Walking back into the kitchen, he put the platter down. Then he scooped some ice out of the freezer and pressed his burning hands into it.

“In that case you take the short one and keep it clean. I’ll take the tall one. She looks like she could use something dirty.”

Somewhere in the distance “the tall one” let out a laugh, an unencumbered laugh, as though life in her ivory tower was just too splendid for her little heart to bear. Where the hired help just wouldn’t stop doing things to make her titter with amusement.

“Don’t waste your time, mate,” he said, signaling his assistant to start taking the ramekins to the serving area. “Your tall one has no interest in cavorting with the hired help.”





Chapter Five


Some people felt things in their heads, others felt them in their hearts; DJ felt things in his stomach, which was fitting for a chef. He watched as Emma dabbed and smudged oil pastels across her sketchbook. The waxy smell of the colors made it almost easy to forget that she was perched on a hospital bed. His Big Brother senses had been tingling all day. Now they mingled with that smell and made his belly cramp in discomfort.

Last night it had been past midnight when he finally got to the hospital after the Raje dinner, which had gone off flawlessly despite the caramel almost-disaster. He looked at his hands. The blisters weren’t as awful as they could have been because he’d had the good sense to keep on icing them through the night. Emma had been fast asleep when he slipped into the chair next to her bed. He’d been too wired to fall asleep, so he’d watched over her and nursed his stinging palms.

She looked so peaceful when she slept, always had. Like a cherub with those ebony curls framing her face and those soft cheeks sprinkled with freckles. Unlike him she had inherited their Anglo-Indian father’s coloring. His own skin was all Rwandan-Tutsi like their mother, dark and luminous. He’d taken Dad’s hazel eyes. They’d cherry-picked completely different features from their parents—her dark-eyed and light-skinned, him light-eyed and dark-skinned, as though they’d known that their parents would be gone too soon and they’d wanted to keep as much of them as possible in the memory boxes that were their bodies.