sesquipedalien

“No.”

“Why!?”

“It’s too low.”

My sigh was far from gentle. I had gotten through five changes of clothes, and time was not abundant either. Plus, after six hours of driving, my patience was not exactly patient.

I slipped into the delicate white knitted top and stepped out.

“OK. That’s fine.”

Shoes were in a different circle of hell altogether. I finally walked out in the flattest pair I could find. Apparently he was on the shorter side of the spectrum.

I wished desperately for my sister.

My grandmother brushed my forehead with her lips and told me to be good. I smiled back saying I would be myself. She laughed and the sun peeked out of the shielded sky briefly, just to light up her sweet face.

“T, you always bring the rain.” My mother half grinned back at me as the garage door slid shut.

“Yes, the whole world is weeping with me.”

“No! It’s a good omen! It was raining the day you were born! Hush!”

I thanked the water drops for the lullaby as we drove between the hills of half charred trees. Unfortunately sleep itself was too self conscious to slap me.

A house is a structure. It is most defined, I think, by the scent that greets a guest.

This house was humble. There was no scent.

After respectfully greeting his parents, we gathered in the living room. The sofa creaked solemnly as I receded myself on to it. Interestingly enough, the carpet lacks color in my memory despite the fact that the carpet held much of my visions attention during my three hours there.

I glanced up occasionally, taking in the neat, half packed piles of boxes. There were trophies from the 1996 Catskill NY convention on top of the slightly dusty television. An anniversary gift stood on the lamp table next to my elbow. Only one framed picture stared back at me from the wall… the brilliant smiles of mother and father shone into the camera lens, gazes slightly surprised and unused to the position at which they stood: she in front of him with his arms around her waist and hands in her lap.

“Hello.” He greeted the whole.

The corners of my eyes studied him quickly. Jeans, checked shirt lined in shades of blue, clean shaved, gelled hair cropped closer to the scalp, a slightly dimpled smile.

Perfect teeth.

He sat into the sofa instead of on it. He asked about my brother. He smiled at the carpet. He played with his rakhis. He fiddled with his fingers. His nails were clean.

The parents continued their small talk of one subject or the other. The trips planned for December, the little happenings of everyday life, and oh, did we hear about this family’s hassles?

And then, there was silence. Complete, prologued, breath loud silence.

If I had been human, perhaps my cheeks would have flamed. Bloomed from invisible buds. The spelling of awkward painting its silently loud mark.

I filled instead with laughter. My lips stalled the urge with a wide smile behind my hand. Ah the absurdity of this! Of sitting in the year of 2007 practicing something that was of my cultural norm 6 decades ago! I glanced around to find them all staring at something below regular vision line and bit my lower lip… oh if some one could paint this! I laughed harder inside.

She announced dinner then, and we gathered again at the dinning table. I filled bowls of sweetened milk, fingers expertly doing their job, neatly, efficiently. We bowed our heads and murmured the shlok. And we ate. I sat across my father, he sat across his mother. We sat diagonally crossed.

Women often claim to have a sense of knowing when they are glanced at. I lack that radar most times. I am more interested in where my eyes land to notice eyes being directed at me. If he examined me at any point during the meal, I missed it. I caught his speed, though. His deftness and precision in a simple act as tearing a piece of flat bread. We finished at the same time. And waited patiently for the others to catch up.

He was waiting for our departure. He glanced at his pseudo-blackberry frequently after dinner. He had a place to be. I appreciated the fact by filling up with laughter again. I had a place to be too… land of nod.

After another attack of no-speak, I offered,

“We should be off.”

His father nodded to him and he disappeared returning with a slip of paper for me.

Ah. Contact Info. Nice. Thank you.

You forgot your insurance company buddy.

“That was weird.” I announced to my anxious parents from the back seat. “I don’t think people do this anymore.”

I fell asleep listening to the rumblings of traffic.

Accidents happen.

All the time.

Ha.

Radiohead’s newest album strumming into my ears, my cereal bowl nearly empty, I am reading about the eviction of some Polish nuns who have occupied a church against the Holy See’s orders for the last two years. There is a tap on my shoulder and I swirl around.

Her face is exhausted. She has had a hard night. A hard previous day. There is a sheen over it, a glaze that tells me water has yet to touch it. I breathe in and want to cough out.

I smile. “Hey you!”

“Hey. Can I read Physio in here?”

I scramble up, trying to take off my headphones and turn the music off at the same time. “Yeah sure! Just let me make my bed.”

“Oh it’s OK.” She settles on the hard floor next to my refrigerator, her heavy bag de-shouldered, her high ponytail limply following her head swings. I step back from her. It’s so powerful. Every movement releases gusts. Aged sweat, old lunch, rotted sleep.

Of sweetness dead.

“Well, I am still gonna make my bed.”

She laughs a little and sits crossed leg with the book open on her lap.

I fix my sheets. Spread the covers straight. Hang my clean jeans.

And every time I pass her, I hold my breath.

I finish and resettle at the computer.

Three minutes.

Her head is lost in the book.

Five minutes.

I can’t stand this.

“Hey, why were you late this morning to class?”

She looks up. “Oh because I came with C. She had to ready the kids and all.”

“Did you have a chance to shower?”

“No… didn’t have time.”

“Would you like to take a shower?” In my mind, I am crossing my fingers.

Her face falls in that typical, ‘aw no… I don’t wanna bother ya’ mask. “No, I’ll just take one later.”

Damn my fingers! “Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

I can’t help it…

“No really H, I think you should.”

She’s surprised. “Do I smell?”

I nod.

“Badly?”

“Very.”

“Really?”

“You’ve filled the room with it, to tell the absolute truth.”

She laughs self consciously. “OK.”

I hand her my extra towel, show her the soap and shampoo, tell her to lock the door, and open the window in my room.

15 minutes.

She’s in front of the mirror in a shirt I never wore cause it hung so loose. A comb is working through her hair.

“Much better.”

“Haha! Thanks for telling me I stank.”

“You did. Heh.”

“I hadn’t taken a shower for two days actually.”

I am shocked. “H!!! How could you not shower!?”

“Well, exams! And stuff.”

“Jeez. Little advice: take a shower ~everyday.~ Your stink is not very pleasurable. I don’t care if your rats don’t care.”

She smiles at me in the mirror for a second until a knot screws her face in pain.

“I hate doing this.”

I give her my sympathy face.

She winces again.

“I usually ask my mom to do this…” She looks at me timidly.

“What? You want me to untangle your hair?”

A relief passes over her expression. “Could you?”

I am amused. A little taken aback too.

I take the comb and run it through, starting at the ends, leading up. I feel older. Like a sister or an aunt.

“Don’t you ever do this yourself?”

“No… unless there is no one there.”

“Why?”

“I dunno.”

“Jeez.”

I struggle through heavy twists and jumbles… does this girl never comb her hair!?

“I am assuming you don’t comb it at all with no one around.”

She smiles guiltily.

“There, done.”

She tied it up in her regular pony tail.

“Thank you for everything K. People need pals like you.”

I smile and busy myself with something else.

It’s sort of unsettling, combing through tangles.

Of a classmate.

23 years old.

It was a boiling 1o7 degrees with an equally oven breathed wind stirring up construction dust outside. The conditioned air, a gentle shock to the homeostatic status of the skin.

I have a habit of sitting at the front of the lecture room.

From day one, it was evident to me I was going to be suffering. Oh the numbers and concepts and all the scientific jargon that was to be swallowed was perfectly edible to my poor, uninterested brain. That is a different distress altogether anyway.

But this…

I have a habit of Googling my professors. It is not to ridicule as much as it is to respect. To gain some sort of appreciation (or none) of the person who was going to be preaching for the next 16 weeks of some subset of their personal expertise. Most times, it’s fascinating to see where these minds had started and what maya bound stages they had climbed to be at present.

I knew enough about this late-middle aged, head shaved, glasses donned, Nike shirted, strap sandaled individual that first time.

“Hello.”

It ground through a mill of his mother tongue, the letters, grains too alienated to be finely revealed.

To this day, I have never heard the word “cosine” so uniquely slain.

It is frustrating, I’ll grant you. It is hard to learn when you have a TA or Professor that has difficulty in communicating something that is going to earn you points on the next exam, thus pass the class, and thus hold that glossed diploma at the end. It is harder still when the topic being taught is something of another language itself: Calculus, Physics, Chemistry, Organics… subjects which the last English speaking generation seem to have greatly missed (and perhaps will keep missing).

Still.

This is worse.

To behold a world class expert of a subject so rarely brought out and up in this society struggle with not the understanding, the capability or vision. No. Oh no. He has it all. It’s stored there in his brilliance. It’s the right hand of his being. It’s the damn passion behind his spectacles.

No.

Not that. But this.

English.

Stuttering. Hesitating. Looking down with his eyes closed, his wedding ring grazing the naked head often.

Waiting for the perfect word to come capture his intelligence and cast it to the world.

And knowing that the tittering in the background was addressed to him and only him.

Oh the agony of sitting there.

Of observing. The humbling.

The humbling of an already humbled soul.

By a crowd of ignorant ones.

It was always around 107 degrees with a furnace wind.

The open toes were usually freezing by the end.

Numbed.

She saw the sun shining, the whiteness of the snow almost blinding in the glare. She smiled. At least, she thought, it was going to be warm! With that sun, and the blue sky… Yes. It would be warm.

She slipped on her shoes and opened the door.

It was February. In Pennsylvania.

The sun is not warm in winter, she learned.

And since then she has learned a lot.

My mother came to the United States to join my father quite alone. I was a three year old clutching her dress while my sister rode on her hip. She had never been on a plane before. Her English was non-existent. Her one hand bag was dumped in front of her by security merely because they had seen an object resembling a gun. They didn’t help her clean up their mess. She waited for eons for a bag that never did show up… she managed to report it. When she walked out of the airport and saw my father, she finally cried…

But her hardships had only truly begun.

It never occurred to me how much my mother must have gone through until I heard other young wives complain.

She had no one here but my father. She was uprooted from her culture, her tastes, her habits, her friends. She was a lone tree in a land of harsh opportunity…

Yet my mother never complained. At least, I have never heard it myself.

She was what she always was and always will be.

She’s walk us to our preschool in negative degree weather. She’d make us spring dresses that matched. She’d bake eggless cakes and cookies, and learned how to make Mexican and Italian dishes for our pleasure. She’d help me with arithmetic, read through books with us, dress us beautifully with taste and sensibility. She’d teach us our mother tongue, fix our grammar and sounds. She’d wrap an arm around each of us and sing us songs to sleep. She’d take us to the swings, catch us at the end of the slide. She’d take pictures and send them back home…back where she came from.

My grandmother never named her properly till she was five years old. They were registering her for school and they asked for a name. My grandmother peered around in a sort of realization.

“Jayabala!” Someone in the playground shouted.

My grandmother turned to the office. “Her name is Jayabala.”

Jayabala.

Victory.

Girl.

And no other name would suit my mother so well.

Happy Mother’s Day Mummi.

Much Love to thee.

I hate the book I am reading. But it clings to me. Clings and clings. Begging to be finished. My hatred is a sort of love for it. So I flip the page. And look up happily when the door creaks open.

It is she. Slowly moving, her knees loading the weight cautiously in measured steps. I watch. The sun folds gently into the creases of her sweet, sweet face. The swing creaks and she turns my way. Smiles. Her glasses somehow miss the glare. She reaches for the yellow plastic chair.

“Would you like to sit here?” I ask.

“Oh no no! The oil drops.” she responds, lifting the chair and placing it in the shade of the stucco column.

Oil. Baby oil. Ah. She washed her hair today. Like every Friday. I know, without knowing.

She places the little steel dabi on the cement, the yellow comb on her lap. Her legs relax, her toes painted in sunshine. Her fingers reach back lazily and undo the braid.

And what locks! Silver with traces of black. A queens wish. An envy of her neighbors. A possession her mother would have both cherished and feared for… I can see her, young, running on the dirt paths of her village, her mother yelling at her to not leave her hair out, drawing unwanted stares… I smile.

She pours the oil, her nimble fingers holding the dabi with a delicacy, her eyes measuring the amount falling onto her palm. She rests the dabi exactly from where she had lifted it. She hums. Her fingers, the same that had kneaded countless batched of dough, combed through innumerable plates of cumin, pinched uncountable grains of salt, the very same, now rub the oil into her scalp.

The shine spreads. Her humming is as natural as the green grass growing on the lawn. A part of this ritual as much as was folding a napkin after a dinner at a well mannered table.

I watch.

She takes so much pleasure… Sitting in a shaded spot, feeling the sun seeping through her sari, pouring oil into her thick, long, gorgeous silvering hair, humming, breathing, being…

She finishes. She combs gracefully, careful to not let the ends touch the dirt on the patio floor. Then she braids it, her fingers slow and practiced, as if taking time for the sake of taking it and having nothing to give back. She examines her work, her fingers running gingerly over her head, checking for bumps. There are none.

She catches me. Smiling.

“Why are you smiling?” She asks.

“For the sake of smiling, Grandmother.”

She laughs. Raises herself. Places the chair back in its rightful slot. She walks by.

And the door creaks again.

The page is forgotten.

And I sit. Just sit.

Smelling traces of oil in the still, still air.

Baby oil.

My childhood was messy. By messy, I don’t mean being one of those kids that had snot running down their lips which they wiped away with their sleeves… no. Messy as in, I didn’t care. I’d play rough. Tear my pants at the knees, wear out my shoes, hate combing my hair, love getting wet in the rain… The world was always a playground: Trees and monkey bars were my best friends. Balance beams were close, as was jump roping and racing on my bike. I was the child my mother would lovingly roll her eyes at and the sister who was too wild to be related to. Messy.

I had been assigned to sit next to an Aaron that year. He wore sweaters and slacks. Or jeans and polo shirts. Or shorts and striped t-shirts. They were always ironed. I don’t remember when I first started noticing. He was a prodigy, it seemed, in music class. The teacher would have him sing solos at concerts and count beats for the rest of us… I admit he had a nice voice. I admit I was jealous. Despite all this, he was nice to his neighbors: smile politely, address politely, talk politely, lend politely. He was class President. I even voted for him.

But what caught my attention the most was his handwriting. Let me admit again my messy state: my scrawl was readable, but not likable. It left a slight frown of frustration on my elders and a snicker and scoff from my peers. I didn’t care. Until I sat next to ~him.~ Angelic, perfect penmanship. His wrists would wave, much like when he was counting beats in music class, and his fingers would give way to a row of beautiful letters. I wasn’t jealous this time for some reason. Rather, it had hit me.

My scrawl turned to writing. My writing I would turn into art: Eight years later, I sat smiling down at his name on an award certificate… a name that was written smoothly in faultless curves with a calligraphy nib dipped in black ink. They paid me 75 dollars to do 100 names… But by then, it didn’t matter.

What had hit me that day, so many years ago, was a sense of ~beauty.~ A small tinge of it perhaps, but something nevertheless.

The capacity to create it, mature it, claim it, respect it…

A lesson well taught.

And well learned.