Summary
Tollington continues to change. With the town schoolhouse demolished, the local school kids must now commute to school via bus; kids no longer play in the streets. With the new motorway constructed, light pollution now muddies the night sky; city commuters stop in Tollington as a countryside escape.
The cast is removed from Meena’s leg, and Meena begins bike-riding as a form of physiotherapy. On one ride, Meena stumbles into Tracey, who has grown so pale that Meena thinks she has seen a “ghost hovering.” Tracey is upset with her sister, Anita, for dating Sam Lowbridge, and hopes Meena will help end Anita’s relationship. “Yow are her best friend. Yow tell her to stop it now,” says Tracey. But Meena dismisses Tracey, saying she doesn’t “give a toss” what Anita does anymore.
As Meena slowly recovers from her accident, her day-to-day life remains simple and untroubled. She takes regular bike rides, studies for her eleven-plus exams, and entertains her younger brother Sunil. Meena acknowledges that she has become the “cliche of the good Indian daughter,” and yet this does not bother her; Meena realizes she is “content.”
Meena’s period of self-confidence is threatened in the final two weeks before her eleven-plus exams. Anita and Sam Lowbridge begin leaving menacing notes behind for Meena to find. One says “FAT COW,” for example, and another reads “SEXY LEGS.” Meena’s concentration on her studies falters, despite her attempts to ignore the notes.
The night before Meena’s eleven-plus exam, Mr. and Mrs. Kumar work to relax Meena. They treat Meena to a bath and her favorite meal and prepare Meena for a good night’s sleep. Meena and her family have placed a lot of importance on the eleventh-plus: if Meena passes, she will be accepted into a more prestigious school, and the family will move from Tollington. But as Meena gets ready for bed, Auntie Shaila calls on the telephone with bad news: her husband, Uncle Amman, has had a heart attack and is in the hospital. Mr. and Mrs. Kumar want to visit Uncle Amman, but are hesitant to leave Meena behind. Meena convinces her parents that she will be safe alone after promising not to open the door for anyone.
With her parents gone, Meena goes to sleep. But she soon awakes to the sound of knocking. Tracey is at the front door, in tears. Meena asks Tracey, “Where’s your dad?” and Tracey responds, “He… he’s killing her.” Tracey’s response misleads Meena into believing Anita’s father, Roberto, is a child abuser. Tracey runs into the street, and Meena follows behind as Tracey leads Meena onto the unlit property of the Big House. Meena keeps repeating to herself, “I Have An Exam Tomorrow,” but is resigned to the fact that she no longer has control over the circumstances.
Near a pond on the Big House estate, Meena and Tracey find Anita: she is underneath Sam Lowbridge, and the two are having sex. Anita lies motionless, and Tracey believes Anita has passed out. So, Tracey runs to her sister, shouting at Sam. Anita suddenly awakes: she was only pretending to be unconscious. The two sisters begin to fight, and disappear into the nearby bushes. Meena is left alone with Sam Lowbridge. Sam asks Meena, “Where you been?” and claims the offensive notes he had left for Meena were an attempt to bring Meena back. Meena confronts Sam about his racism. Sam attempts to defend himself, saying his xenophobia is targeted at the “others,” and not at Meena. Meena says she is the others. Sam surprises Meena by kissing her on the lips.
Anita returns, throwing rocks at Meena and Sam. Anita yells at Sam for kissing Meena. “Yow like her better?” she cries. Suddenly, Tracey charges towards Sam, but Sam side-steps, and Tracey falls behind him into the pond. Tracey cannot swim. Meena runs to the Big House, seeking help.
In the Big House live an old married couple, a French woman named Mireille and an Indian man named Harinder, or Harry. They call an ambulance for Tracey, and let Meena rest in their personal library. Meena is amazed: all this time, a wealthy Indian man has been living just next door to her family. Mireille and Harry explain their choice to live in solitude as an escape from bigotry: Harry had studied at Cambridge and yet “no one wanted him here, he got offered clerical work.” Meanwhile, Tracey is taken to the hospital. Although she is pronounced clinically dead, the doctors are able to resuscitate Tracey. The town sees it as a miracle.
The following day, the Kumar household receives two letters. One is from Anita and is addressed to Meena; Anita desperately wants to talk with Meena, but Meena ignores the message. The second letter is from Harinder Singh, the man living in the Big House. In it, Harry invites Mr. Kumar to his estate for a meal.
A police investigation is launched into Tracey’s accident after Tracey claims someone pushed her into the water. Tracey accuses either Anita or Sam. Meena is the only eye-witness and so she must give testimony to the police. Meena imagines telling a giant lie to enact revenge on Anita and Sam: she can claim Anita and Sam were both complicit in Tracey’s drowning. But when given the opportunity, Meena chooses forgiveness, and tells the police that it was all an accident and that no one was to blame.
The next day, Meena takes (and passes) her eleventh-plus exam in her headmaster’s office. Mr. Kumar visits Harinder Singh at the Big House. Harry offers Mr. Kumar real-estate advice, and returns to him Mrs. Kumar’s necklace, which Meena lost on the property. The Kumars prepare to sell their house, and have a goodbye party, only inviting Mrs. Worrall. Meena writes a goodbye letter to Anita. “She never replied, of course,” ends the book.
Analysis
In Chapter 13, the novel’s closing chapter, many of the remaining narrative threads are resolved, and recurring questions answered, although some are intentionally left open. First, Meena uncovers the mystery of the Big House. Throughout Anita and Me, details and clues have foreshadowed the Big House’s significance: for example, Anita convinces Meena a child-eating witch lives inside; later, Meena discovers an inexplicable statue of the Hindu god, Ganesha, on the Big House property; even later, Meena sees a lone bear-like figure standing outside the Big House, watching Nanima’s welcoming party. Each of these details leaves Meena, and the reader, wondering: who (or what!) lives at the Big House? In Chapter 13, seeking medical help for a drowning Tracey, Meena runs to the Big House and finally meets its occupants: an aging couple, Mireille and Harinder Singh; to Meena’s surprise, the Big House is owned by a wealthy, educated Indian man. Throughout the novel, the Big House has been a source of anxiety for Meena—a foreboding presence within Tollington. But suddenly, the Big House has become a symbol of unexpected representation: Meena finds a positive role model in Harinder, a man who challenges immigrant stereotypes, and who ultimately helps the Kumars plan and navigate their move from Tollington. The Big House’s symbolic transformation, from threat to help, can be understood as a criticism of the tendency to demonize the unknown, the other—which is at the root of most bigotry.
A second plot point to reach its conclusion regards the necklace Meena stole from her mother, and lost on the Big House property. After Mr. Kumar visits Harinder Singh, Mr. Kumar returns home with Mrs. Kumar’s lost necklace—Harinder had found it on his property. Mrs. Kumar begins to wonder how the necklace got there, saying “Do you think…”, but Mr. Kumar interrupts saying, “Daljit, leave it […] It’s come back. That’s enough” (p. 327). The recovery of Mrs. Kumar’s necklace has a two-fold significance. It symbolizes Meena’s recognition of her past mistakes, and it also symbolizes a second chance afforded to Meena. Amongst all the misfortune in Anita and Me, Meena has the chance to start anew, with a new point of view.
However, one narrative thread is overtly left unanswered: the uncertainty of Anita and Tracey Rutter’s home life. Throughout Anita and Me, Meena encounters several grim indications that Anita and Tracey have been abused at home: Meena sees finger-print bruises on Tracey’s thighs; later, Anita tells Meena that her mother, Deirdre, claims to have been beaten up by Anita’s father, Roberto–– but Roberto says it’s a lie. Initially, in Chapter 13, it seems as though the secret of Anita’s dark home life will be disclosed: Tracey calls for Meena’s help saying, “He… he’s killing her! He’s g…g…going to kill her!” (p. 308). Hearing Tracey’s cry, Meena thinks, “So that was it! It made sense of every thing, their dad was beating her up, Roberto was a child beater and that’s why Anita was so cruel and mixed up” (p. 308). But yet, Meena (and the reader, too) has been misled: the “he” to which Tracey refers is Sam Lowbridge, and he’s not “killing” Anita; in truth, he's having sex with her. These clues—all of which suggest Anita and Tracey have an abusive home life—are deliberately placed by Meera Syal. And Meera’s decision to leave the clues unsolved carries symbolic significance. It shows that although Meena has greatly matured throughout the novel, Meena also has more to learn in her youth; and it shows that life doesn’t always offer answers, that life often remains ambiguous and uncertain.
But, arguably the biggest point of resolve in Chapter 13, is the conclusion of Meena’s narrative arc: Meena’s acceptance of self, which undergirds her choice to forgive Anita and Sam. At the beginning of the novel, Meena is caught in a lie, having stolen candy from Mr. Ormerod. By the end of the novel, the narrative has come full circle, and Meena is given a metaphoric second chance: a chance to tell the truth. Meena is the only bystander to Tracey’s drowning, and must give testimony to the police investigative team. She daydreams about lying to the police, enacting her revenge on Sam and Anita: “But the truth was, every little fabrication that went before […] had merely been the rehearsal for the show which was about to begin […] I had been planning a spectacular revenge for so long and now, finally, I was ready” (p. 324). But, instead, Meena tells the truth: “He was telling me I could put them away if I wanted, but I’d had my revenge, I was leaving them to themselves and I believed utterly now in the possibilities of change. ‘It was an accident. I saw it. Tracey’s lying if she says anything else’” (p. 326). Meena’s revenge, she decides, will be her own personal growth. Meena has learned that people can change—for she herself has changed—and now leaves Sam and Anita to learn the same lesson, of their own accord.
In choosing forgiveness, in choosing not to punish Sam and Anita, Meena actualizes one of the novel’s largest thematic arguments: that to empathize with a bully is not to condone the bully’s behavior; to understand is not to support. Meena does not continue her friendship with Anita—in the novel’s final line, we see that the two never speak again (“She [Anita] never replied, of course” [p. 328]). But, neither does Meena continue to hold resentment towards Anita. It is an argument for ambiguity, allowing for complexity of character and moral uncertainty—an argument expressed through the entirety of Anita and Me. It is a book that shows that comedy can be used to illustrate a tragedy, without trivializing the tragedy, and a book that allows its protagonist to find belonging “wherever [she] stood and there was nothing stopping me simply moving forward and claiming each resting place as home” (p. 303).
