Island of a Thousand Mirrors by Nayomi Munaweera Page A

us. A dry-as-salt landscape marked by rectangles in every shade of blue: cerulean,
     navy, baby, aquamarine, turquoise. A desert city of swimming pools.
    In a dry-eyed, hyper-vigilant, vertigo-prone state of jet lag, we confront America.
     We had expected Amazon blondes and hatchet-jawed cowboy types. Instead there are uniformed
     Vietnamese men, Indian security guards, Malaysian Salvation Army workers all speaking
     an incomprehensible form of English.
    Bored black women glance at our passports. They ignore our staring eyes. We have never
     seen black people except on television, and then they are usually stealing things
     or running away from white policemen. Perhaps they are used to this kind of racist
     scrutiny, the openmouthed curiosity of the newly arrived, because they quickly wave
     us into the arrivals lounge, where Ananda Uncle with wide-open arms awaits.
    He herds us into his vast, cushioned car. California in December is colder than anything
     we have ever experienced. Our teeth are chattering, we cross arms over the thin cotton
     clothes we have flown across the world in. Yet, more than the cold, it is the dryness
     of the air, a sense of moisture abandoning our skins we feel most immediately and
     profoundly. The air is thin; it stretches endlessly blue and parched into the sky.
     We shiver and start as if exposed to hoary ice-frost and Ananda Uncle says, “Wait
     until it is summer, then it will be hot enough to turn you into dried fish.” He laughs
     and in the backseat next to me, La sticks her tongue out at him, pulls it back in
     quickly before Amma sees.
    He drives through streets as wide as rivers, passes other cars, each a silent moving
     island. He calls our attention to various sights. “There over the hills is Brentwood.
     And on those hills, the Hollywood sign. But can’t see that now. Too much smog. When
     the air clears, eh? On the other side is Disneyland.” He drives with one hand on the
     wheel, the other gesturing expansively. “This country. You can be anything here. You
     can become president, you know. Here anything is possible. When I came, years back,
     I slept on the park benches outside the hospital, made friends with the nurses. Had
     them call me in when I was needed. That way I saved on bus money, didn’t have to go
     home.” We are mesmerized by the purring embrace of soft leather, his endless narrative,
     the blue city unfolding outside the windows. The car eases onto the wide gray roads,
     and we fall asleep, exhausted and caught in the octopus coils of freeways.
    I dream of the Wellawatte house, of dropping down into the blue room where Shiva waits
     for me. “I’m going to America,” I say. “Los Angeles.”
    “Don’t be crazy,” he says. “That place doesn’t exist. It’s only in the movies.” I’m
     trying to tell him that he is wrong, that I am going, that I am already there, when
     he throws his head back and starts to laugh. He’s right, I think, it doesn’t exist,
     it’s only in the movies.
    I wake to La’s head slack on my shoulder, her mouth dripping into the cloth of my
     T-shirt. It is evening now, the sun setting in dramatic purple and orange hues all
     around us. The light different from anything I have seen, making me aware suddenly
     that I am exactly on the opposite side of the world from where I have spent my life.
    We have pulled into a neighborhood. There are tall, graceful houses, square lawns
     of glistening neon grass, empty streets that make me wonder where the people are.
     Surely there must be people. But I see only a car here or there unloading a mother
     and a few children. There is no one walking, no shops spilling into the street. There
     is no music, no car horns. It is all profoundly quiet, profoundly lonely.
    We curve into a driveway. In front of us, a mansion with ornate fairy-tale turrets
     rises out of lush greenery. We stare and stare. Does he live here? In this enormous
     house that could hold twenty, or more? Ananda