The maker's mother

[rhubarbie]

A premonition in the form of a dream. We have been transported to a hotel or lodge. There is a spirit of friendly competition in the air. The two of us are on the same team. I wander away from our room, but when I come back, you have already made a short film, sure to impress the judges. The first sentiment of this dream is inadequacy, for I have done nothing for us. There are whispers about how talented you are. It seems there are others in our room. My father drops by, all smiles. The smile from my brother’s wedding. The second sentiment of this dream is the satisfaction of pleasing my father. He leaves, but the others are still there. We speak with them. I am lying on my side and your hands are on me in a simple way, taking possession as a partner does. The third sentiment is the warmest one. It is of acceptance, safety, and comfort. But something happens, a decision is made to mingle with the other guests. You are the first to get up and leave the room. Some time passes before I find myself in the doorway of our room, looking out into the hallway, searching for you. I see you speaking in your way to someone. You are neither near nor far, but you are facing me, and so I cannot see the other person’s face. The final sentiment in this dream is one of abandonment. 

The next day, I hear from others that you have taken up with someone. She is young and precocious. She is younger and more precocious. There is a sting, but then I marvel at the power of my own intuition, of how well I know you, and I hope the abandonment is not permanent. 

[rhubarbie]

Dispatches from a soul being searched

It’s nearly 1:30 in the afternoon. I left the office about half an hour ago and found myself at Rizzoli again. The pilings on the shelves confront me with paths not taken, greener grass untrodden. Rather suddenly, I am overcome by an urge to use the bathroom and am pleased to find three empty ones in the back of the store. Entering one, I see marks on the bowl that suggest someone else had recently felt similar urges. It is a 70-degree day outside, but the heat is on in the small bathroom. As I wash my hands, I check to see if my eyes will betray me when I return to the office. Unfortunately, they will not be the only turncoat. The very posture of my mouth only makes matters worse, slouching uncontrollably downward, downward, leaving nothing to speculation. 

I decide I shall return later to purchase the notebook I was coveting. In the meantime, I have to muster up the self-deceit to return to the office and complete the tasks I’ve laid out for the day. 

[rhubarbie]

Naniji

When I tugged on the skin of her elbow, it formed a precipice, stuck frozen in time until she chose to fold her arm.  But in her selflessness, she indulged me such that folding her arm was an accidental act of carelessness.  She would keep her arm straight, content to see me marvel at the absence of elasticity.  Such is the way of grandmothers.  Punjabi was her first language, Hindi almost indistinguishably second in line.  English was quite a ways further, but she knew the vocabulary of a young girl's favorite animals. Our phone conversations ended with her taking on the persona of a cat and we would exchange meows for minutes before hanging up - the language of a distinct filial contract.  

When she died, I pictured her in full, in her prime, most grand of grandmotherly years.  Draped in a white and turquoise floral sari made of pure silk chiffon.  As usual, the underpinnings of her white-turned-gray blouse and petticoat peeked out. She had a set of eleven hair pins in the shape of narrow Us that held in place her coiled, slushy gray hair bun.  She was always awake hours before me.  By the time I sat down to her salt and pepper-adorned buttered toast, she had already bathed, combed and recoiled her long hair and conducted her morning prayers and meditation.  Her gravelly voice was so starkly bare in its expression of unconditional love that it was impossible to picture her as a disciplinarian to eight children.  She would get visibly upset on occasion, her face scrunched up with internalized pain or concern.  I miss her from a deep place.  

[rhubarbie]

Of moths and men

This evening, as I was making my way home on the G train, I found myself staring at the fluorescent lights in the subway car, willing myself to sneeze.  The fact that my nose still felt tickled and my evening was indeed sneezeless led me to chalk it up to the physics (the optics, really) of fluorescent light waves.  They just must not constrict the pupil as much as their incandescent counterparts, but believe me, they are still more virtuous in their smaller carbon footprint - size 5.5 US Women's, I believe.   As my nose started running to compensate for lack of sneeze, I started thinking about moths - you know, how they're attracted to the light.  My brother and I used to play basketball in our driveway.  'Basketball' is really quite generous a term for what we played in that driveway that sloped enough to make a lay-up feel like the ascent of Mt. Kilimanjaro.  It was really just variations of H-O-R-S-E, and general bullying of a younger sibling.  At times we would play at night, when it was the right amount of warm for an East Coast summer.  We would switch on the floodlights and the summer moths would come in droves.  For all we know, they all just needed to sneeze so very badly, and they hovered around the bulb, squeezing their eyes so tight and bursting them open, hoping that tonight would finally be the night.  The night of the sneeze.  

[rhubarbie]

Henry on 10th

On weekends, Henry stands on the stoop of his apartment on 10th street.  He stares disapprovingly at most of the people that walk by.  I wonder how long he's lived on this street.  Why here and not Harlem, where most of his New York gigs probably go down?  When Johnny and I chatted for the last time, he told me about the East Village scene in the 80s, back when he lived at 265 for a handful of cash - dopeheads on the corner, police helicopters up above.  I guess Henry wouldn't have found much more quiet or solitude in Harlem during that time.  I get the same look from him as the other recent grads and yuppies that have tried to take root downtown.  It's true, I look like most of them when I roll out of bed on Sunday mornings and make my way to 7th street for a cortado.  But I actually recognize Henry unlike those other schmoes.  

[rhubarbie]

Untitled

"So, have you been in love since?" I knew it was a mistake.  Inviting him here.  Into the bedroom I grew up in.  The wallpaper had been torn down years ago.  The one with the teddy bear combing the doll's hair.  The walls were a lemony yellow now.  But other relics of my childhood and adolescence sat heavily all around us.  Overly feminine touches for the girl I never was had taken reign on the walls.  The lamp that sat on the bedside table had been switched out too, I was just noticing.  I thought about the time I perched a stuffed animal on the aperture of the old one.  I came back hours later to find the toy's underside baked with melted acrylic, the room smelling of congealed plastic.   I didn't want to lie to him.  He did indeed travel all this way from his own Pennsylvania hometown to keep me company while my parents visited an ailing aunt.  So, I said, "Yes, I think so" and saw him smirk as if to say, if you have to think about it then it can't have been love.  Well, I disagree, I replied in our silent debate.  Why do people always start off saying, 'love is like...', 'you know you're in love when...'?  Well, because, quite frankly, you just can't trust that you'll know in that moment.  It's really got to marinate in some thought before you can call it one way or another.   I want to ask, "Have you?" just to settle the score, and because I know he either really wants to say yes and tell me about it to make me feel crappy or he wants to say no and pry open a box that's been shut for so long it might as well be a hollow block of wood.  To be honest, both responses will require me to expend too much emotional energy, so I ask him if he wants to go for a beer run.  I've never bought beer in my hometown.  It's one of those too many witnesses, too many potential informants types of situations.  But I'm thinking I can convince him to go into the store while I wait in the car and find the hip-hop and R&B station that I know we'll both enjoy ironically.  And then once we're back, we won't come back into my room.  We'll stand across the kitchen island and talk with our beers, or we'll find a movie to watch in the den with our beers.  Like two old friends.  Who never loved each other.  At least not in that way. 

[rhubarbie]

Untitled

My mother and I were sitting on the porch on Monday. I was very conscious of the fact the we were indeed sitting on the porch and she didn’t know that. Porch is one of those words that isn’t fully part of her vocabulary. If I were to call it that, she might ask me in Hindi, “Is that what you call this, this part of the house?”. We go through this every now and then. She hears an idiom or a string of grammar that gets fuzzy while she translates it into her native tongue, and sends her into a spiral of confusion. In the past, I would use these words without a second thought and brush off her desire to learn their true meaning. But lately, I’ve been careful to avoid these roadblocks altogether. Mother has been sipping her tea for the past 15 minutes, in clear contrast with my father, who isn’t here, but if he had been, he would have finished within the first 3 minutes. My father doesn’t sip his tea. He drinks it. He drinks it rather noisily in fact, with slurps, gulps and content sighs, because, “What is the point of drinking tea once it has cooled?”.

[rhubarbie]

Untitled

If there is one thing I know about crying, it's that the worst kind of crying is lying on your back and crying.  Especially if your hair wasn't wet in the first place.  The tears pool up near your temples and once you're done, your hair stays damp, just in those two spots so you have to wait before you can properly forget why you were crying in the first place.  Sometimes my mother would cry this way with the shades pulled down.  She would do it so softly, maybe with the back of her forearm covering her eyes.  When I would try to talk to her, she would respond with this prune-y wet voice, like it had been standing in the shower for too long.  I haven't seen my mother that way in years.  I hope it's because she doesn't cry as often and not because I've moved away.