“Forget cream. With coconut milk, it’s the coconut
fat that rises to the top.”
My mother tells me this while shaking her belly.
With the benefit of an audience, her dinner prep has transformed into a
production worthy of a circus, the spices standing to attention while she
brandishes her spatula with the authority of a ringmaster.
I swing my gangly legs from my perch on the kitchen
stool, watch as she adds brightly coloured spices to the spitting coconut fat,
liberating their scents until they fill the tight space. No matter how often my
father shimmies open the window, the smells remain like familiar friends:
garlic and onion mixed with clove, curry powder, and garam masala, as pungent
as the food stalls of Kolkata.
The aroma greets me early the next morning while
the household sleeps with a bloated heaviness. Turning on the kitchen lights, I
locate the chilli powder in the back of the cabinet and sneak it back to my
room. When I hear their radio crow the morning news, I shake out a small amount
of powder, tip my head back, and pop it into my mouth. Instantly, my throat
convulses with hacking coughs. I have become the fire eater in my mother’s
circus, the heat cutting down to my stomach, my face expelling tears and mucus
and spit in an effort to extinguish the flame. My mother rushes in and puts a
hand to my forehead, clucks her tongue.
“You can stay home today,” she says.
It is more the relief than the chilli that leaves
me lightheaded.
I stay home three more days. On the last, my mother
comes to my room.
“Sarah’s here,” she says, “It’s good to see her.
It’s been since your great eight graduation.”
Before going down, I sniff my sweater for any
lingering odours from last night’s fish.
Finding Sarah in the den, I join her on the couch,
crackling in its original plastic. We slide towards the sagging middle, her
shoulder bumping against my chest, and I smell the peanut butter on her
breath.
“It’s nice of you to visit,” I say.
“I brought you your math homework.” She pulls out a
package of worksheets.
We sit in silence as I struggle to come up with
something to say. I stare at the copper Hindu deities flanking the television.
My mother had given up trying to teach me their significance, calling me a
coconut instead – brown on the outside, white on the inside.
“Remember when we used to play family with my mom’s
statues?”
Sarah looks down. “Yeah. Well. Thank her for the
snack.”
She leaves on the back of a one sided
goodbye.
The next week, I see Sarah outside class,
surrounded by her new friends. They are holding their sides, doubled over with
laughter.
Getting close, I hear her say, “Do you want peanut
butter and jelly?”
She repeats the phrase again and again, using an
exaggerated Indian accent while wobbling her head from side to side.
Catching sight of me, she stops mid sentence,
turning as red as the chilli powder tucked under my pillow. Pin prickles of
discomfort spread under my arms and a wave of heat slaps me across the face. I
duck my head and race into the classroom.
That night, I confront my mother. “What happened,
what did you do?”
“I made her a sandwich,” my mother says, her
eyebrows knitting.
“And then what happened?”
“She ate the sandwich.”
“Don’t ever speak to my friends again,” I say, and
leave her, deflating in the kitchen.
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