One evening she looks at the dishes I washed in the morning, says, “What is this?” Her nail scratches at a bit of dried-on egg. I say, “I’m sorry, Amma, I didn’t have time. I had to do homework.” I had rushed out that morning, the horrors of chemistry homework left unfinished the night before snapping at my heels. I see the tensing of her shoulders, her jaw moving, and I back away toward the door.
“What the hell is wrong with you? Look at this! Can’t you see this? Can’t you do anything right?” The plate flying past my head smashes like fireworks against the wall. The cat zips out of the way. I run to my room, throw the door closed, slump down against it. I wish there was something heavy I could drag against it. Instead I have only my body to keep her out. I hear the usual cacophony in the kitchen: exploding plates and glasses, the smashing of glass. Then her crying, and after that, silence.
Hours later I hear her just outside the door. She says, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I’m so sorry.” I stay quiet. Through the wood she whispers, “There’s only us. Only you and me. We have to stay together. I love you. My little girl.” She continues, “I was so young when I had you. Only eighteen. Just a few years older than you. Can you imagine? I didn’t know how to do anything. And when I was small…” She pauses, takes a breath before she goes on. “Mallini and I … we were like luggage. Moved from place to place. We never had anyone.” I stay stiff and silent, wishing I could be like the cat, sinuous and bending to all her moods, loved.
I’ve learned just recently in biology class that a female human carries all of her eggs in her from birth. So whatever Amma has survived, as a child, as a girl, I had been there inside her, waiting to spill into the me I’ve become. The ache of her brokenness, wherever it came from, is also mine. It must have entered me then, when I was just a curl of a creature. I must have absorbed it along with every other nutrient she fed me through that thick and rootlike cord. She stays outside my room for hours. I do not answer her. Eventually she goes to bed and I too turn my face to the wall and try to sleep.
*
There was the before-mother and here now is the after-mother. Another way of saying it: the Sri Lankan mother and the American mother. Whereas the earlier had been delicate and controlled (except when she was not), kept like a hothouse flower amid the beautiful carved furniture, the American mother is broader, a part of the world, out there among people in a way that would have been unthinkable in the world she grew up in.
Between my aunt and uncle and Amma, the travel agency is growing. There are always islanders willing to pay for passage home. There are always relatives dying, getting married, being born—so many reasons for return. My mother is there when they call. She says, “Yes. You can take a flight out on Sunday, early in the morning. I can book it now itself, if you like.”
Behind her head at the office is a lurid Technicolor poster of a Lankan beach, a lone palm tree stretching long over the tranquil water. This is what paradise looks like, all white sand and light playing on waves.
But Amma has never thought of home as a tropical paradise. She has never lain down on such a beach, and even if she had been forced to, she would have cowered under the shadow of a giant black umbrella, fearful for her complexion. And yet she longs to return, speaks often of going back, of reclaiming our house. Her true life is not here. The food is still strange; the people are cold. The only thing still holding her here: me. She can’t go while I am still here. She won’t leave me here alone. For this I’m grateful.
*
We are seventeen, Dharshi and I, giggling at her father’s birthday party. We slide away to her room, where with a flourish she pulls out a secret stash of cigarettes. We light them up in the bathroom with the fan turned on and end up coughing and choking. She frowns and says, “What the hell? I thought it’d be more fun.” She waves the stubbed-out cigarette around and puts her other hand on her jutted hip. She says, “This looks cool, right? Super sexy?” I nod. She is beautiful, with or without the cigarette.
We go downstairs and find a table loaded with curries, a crowd of people singing old, forgotten songs, a cake Aunty Mallini has made in the shape of an airplane with a goggled teddy bear pilot whose billowing scarf proclaims “Fifty and Still Fabulous!” Uncle Sarath dissects a piece of teddy bear ear, holds it up to feed his wife and then his daughter. He wipes tears from his eyes and says, “So happy to have all of you. What a lucky man I am.” I kiss him on the cheek.
In the later stages of the party, baila music blaring, dancing aunties and uncles all around, Dharshi and I sway our hips. We hook arms and swing around each other. This is as much at home as I have ever felt.
*