Uncle parks still talking, unaware of
our silent awe or perhaps just not commenting on it, perhaps used to the struck silences
of all the newly arrived, all the shell-shocked souls he has similarly rescued. Pulling
our suitcases out of his trunk, he says, “Just hard work and some luck, and all doors
are opened.” He flings open his own door and we are greeted with the most unexpected
of scents, cumin, cardamom, chili frying. We had expected more exotic odors, perhaps
hot dogs and hamburger meat, pizza. Whatever we expected, it was not the scents of
Alice’s kitchen. The disorientation is overwhelming. What is this place that we have
landed in that looks so foreign and smells so familiar?
* * *
Ananda Uncle sweeps us around his house. In each enormous, soaring room, we are greeted
by carved ebony furniture, ceiling-tall almirahs, peacock-feathered fans, gaudy batiked
women and flowers, carved elephants, coconut shell turtles, posters of palm-swept
beaches: pieces of island nostalgia thrown up like flotsam on a foreign beach. I hear
Amma whisper to Thatha, “My God, it’s like a handicraft shop.” It is our first experience
of immigrant nostalgia. A force that we will all succumb to, more or less, at various
times.
At six o’clock Ophelia Aunty comes home. She is Ananda Uncle’s beautiful Burgher wife.
The one for whom he risked Sylvia Sunethra’s wrath. The one for whom he moved, as
his mother said, to this “bang-bang, shoot-shoot country.” We are shy in front of
her tailored suit, her efficient heels and lacquered face, while she looks the four
of us up and down, taking in our unavoidable otherness. But there is also a gentleness
radiating from her, a certain tenderness that makes it clear why our uncle has chosen
this woman over all others.
She takes us into the kitchen where a hook-nosed imp stands on a stool and stirs steaming
curries. Ophelia Aunty says, “Rosie, these are Sir’s sister and her family. They will
be staying for some time.” The tiny woman waves her hand, mutters something into her
pot. By Ophelia Aunty’s deference we can tell we are in the presence of a culinary
genius with skills akin to Alice’s. The scents she stirs make the tears prickle behind
my heavy, sleepy lids. America is exciting but already I miss Alice, Mala Aunty, our
grandmother, the house cats, Shiva, everything familiar that we have lost, with a
sudden sharp tearing in my chest.
In the room Lanka and I are to share, a brass cutwork lamp casts broken shadows upon
posters showing the plump breasts and faces of Sigiriya maidens. We lie down on the
soft beds, kick off the thick blankets; we have never slept under anything more than
the thinnest cotton sheet or in separate beds before. We lie awake for hours, our
thoughts bucket heavy with this new place and the strangeness of time moving in an
unnatural rhythm. It is almost dawn, a grandfather clock somewhere in that huge house
booming four before I fall asleep, and then I dream of the island as seen through
clouds, the pain in my veins as it is pulled away farther and farther until swallowed
by the frothing ocean.
When I wake, La is curled around my back in that narrow bed, both of us shivering
despite her hair, which lies upon us like a silky duvet of the purest black. The light
flowing through the window is tepid amber. We go downstairs to learn that we have
slept into the twilight of the next day, carried forward in jet lag through two revolutions
of the planet.
For some time, we flounder between time zones, somnolent and sagging in the afternoon,
wide awake at 3:00 A.M . Amma goes to work with Ophelia Aunty, leaving before we wake up. She is a preschool
teacher’s aide at Ophelia Aunty’s school, tying the shoelaces of white kids, wiping
their noses, learning to sing nursery rhymes in a new accent so that the children
don’t complain that they can’t understand
our silent awe or perhaps just not commenting on it, perhaps used to the struck silences
of all the newly arrived, all the shell-shocked souls he has similarly rescued. Pulling
our suitcases out of his trunk, he says, “Just hard work and some luck, and all doors
are opened.” He flings open his own door and we are greeted with the most unexpected
of scents, cumin, cardamom, chili frying. We had expected more exotic odors, perhaps
hot dogs and hamburger meat, pizza. Whatever we expected, it was not the scents of
Alice’s kitchen. The disorientation is overwhelming. What is this place that we have
landed in that looks so foreign and smells so familiar?
* * *
Ananda Uncle sweeps us around his house. In each enormous, soaring room, we are greeted
by carved ebony furniture, ceiling-tall almirahs, peacock-feathered fans, gaudy batiked
women and flowers, carved elephants, coconut shell turtles, posters of palm-swept
beaches: pieces of island nostalgia thrown up like flotsam on a foreign beach. I hear
Amma whisper to Thatha, “My God, it’s like a handicraft shop.” It is our first experience
of immigrant nostalgia. A force that we will all succumb to, more or less, at various
times.
At six o’clock Ophelia Aunty comes home. She is Ananda Uncle’s beautiful Burgher wife.
The one for whom he risked Sylvia Sunethra’s wrath. The one for whom he moved, as
his mother said, to this “bang-bang, shoot-shoot country.” We are shy in front of
her tailored suit, her efficient heels and lacquered face, while she looks the four
of us up and down, taking in our unavoidable otherness. But there is also a gentleness
radiating from her, a certain tenderness that makes it clear why our uncle has chosen
this woman over all others.
She takes us into the kitchen where a hook-nosed imp stands on a stool and stirs steaming
curries. Ophelia Aunty says, “Rosie, these are Sir’s sister and her family. They will
be staying for some time.” The tiny woman waves her hand, mutters something into her
pot. By Ophelia Aunty’s deference we can tell we are in the presence of a culinary
genius with skills akin to Alice’s. The scents she stirs make the tears prickle behind
my heavy, sleepy lids. America is exciting but already I miss Alice, Mala Aunty, our
grandmother, the house cats, Shiva, everything familiar that we have lost, with a
sudden sharp tearing in my chest.
In the room Lanka and I are to share, a brass cutwork lamp casts broken shadows upon
posters showing the plump breasts and faces of Sigiriya maidens. We lie down on the
soft beds, kick off the thick blankets; we have never slept under anything more than
the thinnest cotton sheet or in separate beds before. We lie awake for hours, our
thoughts bucket heavy with this new place and the strangeness of time moving in an
unnatural rhythm. It is almost dawn, a grandfather clock somewhere in that huge house
booming four before I fall asleep, and then I dream of the island as seen through
clouds, the pain in my veins as it is pulled away farther and farther until swallowed
by the frothing ocean.
When I wake, La is curled around my back in that narrow bed, both of us shivering
despite her hair, which lies upon us like a silky duvet of the purest black. The light
flowing through the window is tepid amber. We go downstairs to learn that we have
slept into the twilight of the next day, carried forward in jet lag through two revolutions
of the planet.
For some time, we flounder between time zones, somnolent and sagging in the afternoon,
wide awake at 3:00 A.M . Amma goes to work with Ophelia Aunty, leaving before we wake up. She is a preschool
teacher’s aide at Ophelia Aunty’s school, tying the shoelaces of white kids, wiping
their noses, learning to sing nursery rhymes in a new accent so that the children
don’t complain that they can’t understand
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