B
ack from India, the four of us dropped back into routine. I found myself helping Mom with chops in the kitchen. Mom’s cream and orange-trimmed curtains fluttered around a slice of backyard and I could see the honeysuckle bush nestled against my bedroom window. As always in the late afternoon, the tips of the branches gleamed gold and verdant tendrils grasped at the air like delicate fingers.I hurried with my part of the chops, not really helping all that much, and left the kitchen. The humid press of clothing suctioning onto my skin after the air-conditioning felt good, despite all the Indian adults telling me it was bad to feel the heat, that the sun was to be avoided. But to me it felt like Rani Villa heat, like my grandparents’ veranda at midday, like what we had just left again for years, and I found that I relished the hot Kansas sun at four o’clock, softened and less angry. The neighborhood girls appeared from out of their yards just as if I’d never been away and Susan, Kathy, and I plucked honeysuckle flowers, gently pulling the stamens to get at the tiny liquid drop poised on the end. Bee-hum made the surrounding air pulse: the effortless chant of small things. I had heard this hum at Rani Villa, and I heard it in Kansas: satisfaction in a vast realm right beneath our noses.
Our own bodies thrummed with the bees as we carefully pulled the tender, slightly rubbery, translucent stamens smoothly between our lips. As the sun
warmed our necks, we looked cross-eyed at our fingers and concentrated on softly pinching the orange tips. The taste was fleeting-sweet and could be missed. There were so many flowers we did not fear the drowsily buzzing, satiated bees.
My father was mowing and dandelion fluff was smoothly drifting through the air. I looked up to see him pause and drink water in the Indian way: the rim of the glass never touching his lips, the liquid arcing through the air and hitting the back of his tongue. He swallowed and his strong neck convulsed.
The timing of the act was impeccable. No dribbles marred his shirt as he turned the glass upright after the water was airborne. He then walked over and handed the remaining water to me and I tipped the glass while holding it slightly above my nose, trying to imitate his technique. I felt a burst of pride in the fact that my friends would never think to do this. They continually passed each other their Pepsis or Dr Peppers for a sip, gumming the straws or bottle tops without thought.
In India, my parents had cautioned us to not drink anything from street vendors unless it was from a coconut stall. The coconut vendor would puncture a round brown coconut husk and stick a straw through the opening. No need to do the water trick, as nothing needed washing. I watched as vendors of other drinks, like delicious salty or sweet yogurt lassies, put the used glasses in tubs of graying water at their feet once a customer was done. Lassies were a favorite of mine: lush and also light with froth, my favorite kind fruity and sweet. I would much rather have had a lassie. But even though I was young, I could see the wisdom of choosing a coconut drink.
In our backyard, I watched one friend’s face when my father did the water trick on that hot, dry Kansas day when he had stopped mowing. I still felt such admiration for the feat—it showed cleanliness, consideration, and savvy—and I expected awe from my friend. But her look was different from admiration:
something a little horrified but almost tender, like someone watching a quaint custom of the natives. The small thrum of contentment forming in my throat slowly constricted until I could not feel it at all.
To distract myself, I looked over at the clothesline, and remembering the birds, I put the glass down on the patio, wiping dribbles off my chin, and ran around the honeysuckle to check the hollow ends of the T-shaped pipe. The fat honeysuckle effectively blocked my view of the clothesline and for days I would forget about the birds that might nest there. But if the birds built a
Small Things Satisfied 51
nest in the end of the pipe, the tiny offspring would totter off the edge in early bursts of independence and fall to their deaths. Fearing this, I checked now for the telltale gathering of twigs and straw debris. I had to stand three or four feet back to see that high but when I saw plant bits, I called my dad. He cut the mower engine off again, came over, and cleared them out of the end of the pipe. But it was a battle to keep the pipe bird-free. They were stealthy.
It seemed as if one day there were a few twigs and the next a finished nest, with chirps echoing hollowly from inside.
When I was seven, birds got a thatch of twigs going before we noticed and later in the season, small baby birds dropped five feet to the grass and died. Yet there were never dead baby birds at the base of our trees. Was the lack of the rhythms and familiar chirping of other birds in nearby branches the reason the pipe children wandered? Were they dissatisfied? Pushed by a terrible karma? My mother’s Pekingese, Sugar, drawn to the base of the clothesline, gently lifted the limp baby birds in her jaws, tasting what dogs love to taste, and their fragile translucent skin failed. My fingers had reached out to save the tiny creatures, and in jerks I pulled back. No. Then softly, bad dog.
As night crept in, there was no more bee dance. I went inside for bath and bed as the birds stopped flying. The tips of the honeysuckle raked the screen outside my bedroom window and shadows loomed, distorting the tender-leaved branches. One shadow flicked the bedroom wall. I waited under my sheets, unable to close my eyes. Something scraped across the mesh screen. I grew stiff lying in my twin bed with my legs straight out in front of me, my eyes on the window. There. Barely audible, a faint brushing sound scuttled along my nerves.
The round, plump honeysuckle bush had changed now: its familiar aura of bee hum that I shared with friends, gone, and I knew the dream would come.
A feathery skip of the wind made me clench my fists. The delicate scratching noise was made by a man and he would get in through the window and hold me with a knife at my neck at the bedroom door and my dad would wake up and I kept quiet so Baba wouldn’t come down the hall because I was so afraid of what might happen to him and if I was quiet enough the man with the knife tight to my skin wouldn’t know about everyone else in the house. Night after night I had this dream and would go to bed crying until I finally, finally, told my mother and she patted my stiff knees and said it is okay now. And, it was.
She somehow dispatched the horror of it with four words and I released the notion for a spell that if I tried hard enough I could protect my family
from the outside world, could protect them from being pushed into acting in unpredictable ways. Even at eight, I knew India was suspect because of the stories about starvation there and a little-understood religion, and that any misstep of ours represented confirmation of our Kansas community’s worst fears. I wanted those wolves of misunderstanding kept away.
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mishti lassie (sweet yogurt drink) Makes 1–2 drinks
1 ripe mango or banana or papaya, peeled and pureed 2 teaspoons honey or sugar (to taste)
¼ teaspoon saffron threads, steeped in 2 teaspoons hot water (optional) 1 cup water with ice
2 tablespoons lemon juice (to taste) 1 cup plain yogurt
Blend all of the above ingredients in an electric blender, crushing the ice.
Lovely served chilled. Optional garnishes for each glass: ¼ teaspoon crushed pistachio nuts or a sprig of fresh mint.
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nonta lassie (salty yogurt drink) Makes 1 drink
1 cup plain yogurt 1 cup water with ice salt to taste
fresh cilantro sprig (optional)
Blend the ingredients in an electric blender and serve. Garnish with a sprig of fresh cilantro if desired.