1 Hair

Papa’s oxygen tank sat obtrusively on the living room floor: discoloured steel against dusty pink carpet. I traced the tube with my eyes from tank to man; its plastic coiled into his nose like a tentacley creature that was keeping him alive. He talked slower these days, but he still talked: a lot. He was sitting facing us, the bay window to his back, and the overcast sun illuminating the back of his bald brown head. That head had been bald for as long as I could remember, except the strip of hair that extended from ear to ear, which I used to comb as a child. That was years ago, when Papa had a padded neck and bulbous belly. Now, it was diminished, deflating a little each day.

Ever since Grandma died, Papa could only talk about two things: God, and his wife. It seemed that he had forgotten that his kids and grandkids were all saved and that we had also been raised by his wife. He was going on, yet again, about Grandma’s hair; he had been repeating himself a lot lately.

“We used to go for a drive with the top down, and she was sitting in the passenger seat, and her long black hair would blow in the wind,” I think he used to be brought back to that moment every time he saw me.

“Never cut your hair, it’s just like your grandma’s.”

There was once a time a few years back when I had gone to a family event at my Papa’s with straightened hair. Straightened hair was cool: it made me look older, thinner, whiter. It took an hour and a half to do, as my hair was naturally very curly. Smoke would billow from the iron as I applied to my curls my hair retained moisture really well. I did it occasionally, and I always felt beautiful when I did. When I went to the family event, Papa confronted me. He said,

“Why do you do that to your hair?” It wasn’t the first time he’d asked me that question. But it was the first time that he added, “it look ugly.”

My immediate reaction was to be offended and embarrassed. I was a teenaged girl riddled with insecurities. But in that living room, I realized what he was really saying. I made a point to never straighten my hair for family events after that.

***

I woke up from the anesthesia slowly at first, only experiencing a quick, blissful moment of forgetting where I was. Before I could open my eyes, the sounds of the OR reminded me, and then I was hit with an intense pain in my abdomen. I cried out; a weak, uncontrollable moan. I tried to open my eyes, but things were blurry.

“Where’s my baby?” Also uncontrollable were those three words that kept tumbling out of my mouth, over and over. I knew where my baby was, I knew he had had an infection and was in the NICU. I knew I couldn’t see him because I might have COVID-19, but my heart still asked, “Where’s my baby?”

The nurses assured me that he was fine as they wheeled me out to meet my husband. He joined us on our way down the aisle to the maternity ward. Tears were streaming down my face and the moaning continued. My vision was blurred by my watery eyes and the clouds of anesthesia still clinging to me, but I managed to catch a glimpse of my husband, who was holding my hand. He looked broken, tearful: helpless. I had never seen him in that state. His blurry, pained face woke me up, and I realized I was still moaning. I stopped moaning and switched to, “I’m okay, I’m fine,” still saying it through tears. I was not very convincing. When I think back to the pain, I do remember a dull, intense disturbance in my body, but that’s not the pain that I remember clearest.

“Where’s my baby?” is the pain I remember. That’s where the moans were coming from.

After calming down and waking up a little, Steven asked if I wanted to see my son; he had a picture. Part of me yearned for it, part of me recoiled. I looked at the baby and thought, that could be anyone’s baby. I didn’t feel him being pulled from my body; I didn’t see him emerge or hear his cry.

My second thought was about his brownish body, broad nose, and full head of black tendrils. It made me almost laugh, even in that moment. He had my hair.

2 Nose

He was a dirty blond boy who desperately needed a haircut and a few more pairs of clothes, but that didn’t stop me, or my best friend, from having a huge crush on him. I had known him for years, her for much less, but he chose her. She was small, slight, light caramel pin-straight hair and dainty features.

Me and my friends decided to go to a movie that happened to be the exact same movie and showing time they had chosen. They were with another couple. We sat in the same row, a couple of seats apart, with me on the end closest to them.

He had started throwing stuff at us, I thought to tease us at first, like a boy with a crush; I still hoped he liked me (hence why we were at the same movie and in the same row). Then I realized he was throwing pennies at me. I turned to him in the quiet theatre and he said,

“Get a nose job!”

I was so sensitive about my nose. This was such a blow, so crippling, that instead of leaving, making a scene, or telling my friends what he did, I ignored him, and tried to pretend I hadn’t heard him.

***

Crook

  1. 1.

    Bend, curve, hook.

  2. 2.

    A dishonest person; a criminal.

Between your eyes, down

the jagged slope where he aimed his loose change

when he suggested, “get a nose job!”

  1. 1.

    A candy-cane, a solid shepherd’s staff

  2. 2.

    A jutting facial protrusion that says

“I’m not white”.

Remember needing to convince them you are?

Today it’s a point of pride,

yesterday it earned you a penny

from the shaggy blond-haired boy you had a crush on.

***

He was complaining about his nose being too big early in our relationship, well before we were engaged. I was surprised to hear it; I didn’t think his nose was big. I admired how straight it was; a normal slope.

“Your nose is fine, mine is messed up,” I freely admitted. He looked at me funny; I felt self-conscious for a moment.

“Really? I love your nose.”.

Stomach

***

“What’s for dinner?” I had asked Grandma as she held my hand to cross the street. The bus stopped right in front of our house, on the other side of the road. She still always met me at the stop. It was noon (kindergarten was still only half a day) and yet I already wanted to know what was on the menu for later. This became my famous line. Papa would quote it back to me for the rest of my life. I would be embarrassed of it as a teenager.

There was a very good reason why I always asked what was for dinner, because it could have been any one of the following: pilau, dhal and rice, geera chicken, stew chicken, curry goat, curry dear, dumpling soup, and her own homemade roti; dhalpuri and buss-up-shut, which I only recently learned is also called paratha.

One afternoon, Grandma let me help make the roti. I came in for the last step, but she let me roll a very small, six-year-old-Sarah-sized roti and cook it on the pan. I still remember how it tasted and felt. It was greasy and warm, with little brown marks, and it tasted like her roti, but a little chewier (I hadn’t properly rolled it). I was wearing one of her aprons. It extended to my feet, like a special dress.

***

The doctor had said to give him whatever we eat and not to make special blended food just for him. She said to take whatever we cooked for dinner and throw it in the blender. The thought of blending chicken grossed me out, but it was a cheap and healthy option, and David was not a picky eater.

I had made stew chicken; the recipe was from my dad, who got it from my Grandma. Well, Grandma didn’t have recipes, so he tried to replicate it, and I tried to replicate his. The result was a far cry from the original, but it smelled right. I scooped some rice into the Magic Bullet, then scooped the curry stewed chicken and veggies into the strainer and rinsed them off. I added them to the blender with a little bit of water, and blended.

I sat down to an eager David, ready for dinner. I gave him the first spoonful; he didn’t want it. I tried again; he spat it out.

“Put some sauce in there, it’s so bland,” my husband suggested. I had thought the curry flavor would be too strong for him. I scooped the sauce from the pot and poured it in. I tried again. The first spoonful was a success, and he finished the whole bowl.

3 Soul

It must have been hot and sticky, not in an intense way, because the sun had gone down, but in a way that crowds your lungs and clings to your skin; humid. I can hear the crickets and other insects and animals native to the island in the thick foliage and up in the coconut trees. They could probably hear the sound of the dirt road crunching under their feet, little Papa’s steps making smaller and quicker noises than his grandmother’s.

“There, over there, see that, Keetah?” His Christian name was Ivan, but his real name was Keetah. Little papa looked up at his grandma, who was pointing to a statue at the centre of the road up ahead. It was old and eroded, but you could still tell it was a large cross with a half-naked man hanging off of it, his head bowed, something jagged and pointy sticking out of the top of him. Keetah looked on at this sad sight; he felt bad for the man.

“That’s where God is,” she said it with such confidence, and it surprised little Papa. He confusedly looked at this weak, dying man and thought of him as God. What a fascinating mystery, he thought. He never forgot that moment as long as he lived.

I regret not wearing a bright colour. I had thought about doing it, but chickened out, worried that people might think I was being disrespectful. I had put on black and blended in with the crowd of mourners. There were many; some who knew my Papa very well, some whose lives were only casually touched by him, but his reach was far and it showed in the form of a very full sanctuary.

He had told me long before he was even sick that he wanted people to wear colourful clothes to his funeral. He said it would be a day of celebration, not mourning, because he was with Jesus. It was hard to celebrate when we had lost him on earth.

I sat in the front pews reserved for close family. My step-mom was comforting my dad, my sister’s boyfriend was comforting her. I sat alone and thought about the last time I was here, a year and a half ago, for Grandma. I was much sadder then; we all were, because she was the first. Papa had been sick for a while, going slowly, so we all knew this was coming. Near the end, I would pray to God while driving home from the hospital in tears, asking Him to just take Papa so the pain would be over. He was at rest now.

Above on the two large screens, the projector showed a video of Papa before he was admitted to the hospital, looking skinnier than ever, hooked up to his oxygen tank, leading bible study in his living room. The men in the video were all there in the sanctuary. I wanted to try to be just like him.

We sang some hymns, and when the pastor started playing The Old Rugged Cross on the piano, my dad leaned over to me and said, “That was Papa’s favourite.”