Invited to a Birthday Party

The new family in our town invited us, children between the ages of five and eight, to their daughter's sixth birthday party on April 1. April Fools' Day, we're not going, everyone said, and I worried I'll miss the party if there was one. Yet when my mother dressed me in a pink tunic with matching pink hair clips and handed me a gift-wrapped doll for the girl, I worried about attending only to be fooled.

We lived in a hill station near the India-China border, with some houses atop small hills. They didn't look small to me, though. The new girl's house was on such a hill. I worried how I'd climb the hill by myself because my elder sisters were not invited. But I wanted to go.

That afternoon, my sisters played "Dancing Queen" on our stereo and disco-danced with their friends. I sang, but I never danced with them because I worried they'd laugh if I couldn't sway and dip and turn and tap my feet like them. All dressed up today and tempted to swing forward and backward like the two reverse B's on the ABBA record cover, I stood up. The windows started to tremble. The clattering of a cup or bowl somewhere in the kitchen, the tilting of the table lamp, the shrieking of the girls, everything scared me. Mummy rushed us out. Our Nepali cook came out running, prostrated on the ground and licked the mud.

Mummy said, "What are you doing?" He didn't answer. The earthquake ended soon.

Mummy sent me to the party, if there was one, with our cook. I climbed the hill holding his hand, my other arm carefully wrapped around the present for the birthday girl. I asked why he licked the mud during the earthquake. "To calm the earth, so it would stop quaking," he said. I believed him but worried that an earthworm might get into his mouth next time. Then I asked him if he ever climbed the Mount Everest when he lived in Nepal. He laughed and said, "Not yet. Maybe I will. Someday."

"Won't you be afraid to climb such a big mountain?"

"You need to start doing something and believe in yourself to get over your fears," he said.

I was the only one who showed up at the new girl's house. The birthday girl and I ate so much chocolate cake I worried my stomach might hurt. When her mother played a Carpenters LP record, the birthday girl said, "Let's dance."

I hesitated.

"Come on," she said.

I held the edges of my tunic and I twirled, singing "Top of the World." Then we both jumped up and down, breathless, reaching for the red and green and pink balloons. I caught a slippery-smooth pink balloon, held it to my nose and breathed in the rubbery-sweet scent.

Her mother gave me all the parting-gift bags, which she called return gifts, all fifteen of them. Lily and I became best friends, and so did our mothers. I didn't know how the children who didn't attend the party would react. But I did not worry about it.