Red, White, and Whole: List 2

Drumbeats pumping
guitars thrumming
synthesizers bopping
saxophones wailing
and melodies

Amma tells me how she filled the house with music and good food,
and left her husband and her daughters bereft
as illness made her sink into the land of pain
where even they could no longer reach her.

Amma lights lamps and burns incense to honor God
in a little shrine in the prayer room in our basement.

My family did not come to America
to be mediocre.

Every weekend Sunny and I spend hours in her basement
sprawled on the floor,
watching magic on the screen.

The faint white scar under his eye
seems more prominent.

Amma and Prema Auntie write letters to each other using aerogrammes.
They are more than just stationery.
Sky blue and folded into envelopes
like puzzles,
they are secret treasure chests
brimming with words of love.

In Bombay we change from the international airport to the domestic one
in a bus full of strangers
in the middle of the night.

Their accents aren’t very strong,
but sometimes people act like they are.
They act like they can’t understand
when we all know perfectly well that they do.
Baffled Sears salesmen,
bank tellers at the drive-through,
the car mechanic looking at Amma’s brakes.

It’s the old superstition,
from the myth of the demon who could only be vanquished
neither inside nor outside,
during the day or night,
on earth or in the air.

Savitri was so virtuous, that when she came of age,
her father and mother told her
Choose a husband for yourself, because we are not worthy
to choose one for you.

She chose a noble young man named Satyavan,
a prince without a kingdom,
living a peaceful life in the forest with his blind father,
a deposed king.

I love school,
despite the bad lunches
where I poke at a wilted salad,
crunch on a mealy apple.

I love social studies and French and pre-algebra,
where Rachel and I finish our homework in class
and pass notes stealthily under our desks.

Blood is made of many parts, says Amma:
The liquid serum, which holds antibodies and salts and sugar
and the cells—
red cells, white cells, platelets—
those cells are made in our bone marrow,
the hollow spaces in our bones that aren't actually hollow,
but teeming with life.

Blood is made of many parts, says Amma:
The liquid serum, which holds antibodies and salts and sugar
and the cells—
red cells, white cells, platelets—
those cells are made in our bone marrow,
the hollow spaces in our bones that aren't actually hollow,
but teeming with life.

But she could get trained to draw blood
and spin it into its components
much more quickly.

A silver half sari is draped around my waist
and over my shoulder,
whisper-light and diaphanous as starlight.

Daddy wears a cream kurta that glimmers.

Almond barfi, cut into diamond shapes
adorned with silver foil

It’s about a boy whose girl has broken up with him
and gone away.
But he can’t forget her.
It’s tender,
wistful,
but somehow,
it makes me happy.

Relief buoys me, and I breathe again.

And don’t dwell
on how strange it is
that Amma hasn’t sewn anything
in weeks.

She stands in the foyer with Daddy,
watching me come down the stairs in my new dress.

The song is “Faithfully,”
and as the singer keeps crooning about circuses
I find myself with
Pete’s hands on my waist