by Parul Shah
Part-2
I knew the smell well, my mom was cooking oondhyuu and pooris for an order that night. Oondhiyu made her a little famous around Houston, she grew the paapdi and rutaaru in our backyard for it after smuggling their roots from India. There were about 25 different spices and ingredients in her authentic oondhiyuu, and half the vegetables only grew for a few months. Back in India, people apparently celebrated the season by having oondhiyuu parties. I figured it must be like the crawfish boil parties that non-Desi, meat and fish eating people in Houston go crazy about. Oondhiyuu smelled pretty good to me, but every spring when the grocery stores boiled crawfish for sale, my family silently gagged at the smells but smiled politely when we were offered samples. Everyone has to make a living, this we understood. Oondhiyuu season was second only to Diwali in terms of my mom’s catering profits and with oil and gas companies laying people off every other month, my mom’s cooking was our safety net in case my dad got sent back abruptly from Dubai. It hadn’t happened to us yet, but we lived in fear of it.
She did all her catering cooking in the garage because my dad said the heat from the cooking drove up the AC bill unnecessarily. So she’d put on one of her Indian nighties that permitted the most air flow while covering her legs for modesty, squat on a foot stool and preside over a couple of portable gas stoves placed in the middle of the garage floor. She’d spread newspapers out on plastic folding tables and plop the freshly fried pooris onto them. And all this is what Henry Lopez did not need to see and judge. My mom, long black hair in a single braid down her back, in a bright paisley muu-muu, sweat dripping from her forehead, methane-perfumed clouds billowing from the gigantic vat below her. I could just imagine her looking up from her pot and smiling, offering Henry a poori and Henry laughing or gagging or fake puking. I winced at the thought, which I took to be a certain premonition, and my pulse and my pace quickened.
Henry and I didn’t exactly walk home together because the laws of the universe would never permit such a thing. Physics dictated that his longer, sports star legs carried him further, faster than me. And social justice required me to stay well enough away from Henry so that nobody could misconstrue my presence as evidence of being his middle school popularity equal, much less girlfriend. To sidle up next to Henry would be to risk his scorn, it was far safer to walk well behind him and imagine that he secretly liked me. But Henry’s ruckus had to be shut down before he reached my house so I hugged my Trapper Keeper extra hard as I ran to catch up to him, my French Horn case banged violently and rhythmically against my knee with each footfall. A few pieces of loose leaf paper flew out, probably the math homework I finished in home room so I could watch Facts of Life with my undivided attention. I let them fly in the wind, I didn’t care, all that mattered was intercepting loud-mouthed Henry before he got to my driveway.
My house came first, before Henry’s. As I neared him, I pretended to also be repulsed and thoroughly confused by the stench. I screwed up my mouth and eyes emphatically as I looked quizzically into Henry’s eyes as if to say “What hideousness is this?”. We had eight more houses and one intersection before mine. You could get to Henry’s house from the intersecting street too, but Henry liked to tease our neighbor’s dog so he preferred the longer route past my house. In my daydreams I imagined Henry and I becoming a secret item, secret because of course he was actually well above my station in middle school life and anyway I wasn’t allowed to have a boyfriend much less a non-Gujarati, not-even-Indian boyfriend. For such a relationship to be out in the public wold be the hilt of being besharam. Sometimes I’d dream that I’d talk Henry out of teasing Snoopy, explaining that Snoopy was Mrs. Polk’s only living friend and that he was just barking and going crazy because he needed to protect Mrs. Polk. In the dreams, Henry would give in and promise not to tease Snoopy. But that was a dream and deep down I knew that Henry was a real life jerk, which was why he was popular and maybe why I was not.
I’d need to distract Henry with something more fun than teasing Snoopy. I recalled how girls in sitcoms hit on their male targets and felt that my whole life of TV watching had prepared me for this moment. Without thinking, I launched my offensive.
“Hey, can I come over to your house? We could maybe watch TV or something? Your mom’s not home for a couple of hours right?” I managed to say most of this without stuttering, as if I was a feathered hair American girl in cut-off jean shorts and spaghetti-strap top blowing fruity bubble gum bubbles rather than a lightly mustached Desi girl in Kmart Wrangler jeans clutching an over-stuffed Trapper Keeper in one hand and a French Horn case in the other, my upper lip fuzz glistening with tiny sweat beads. My face blazed with shame and my stomach braced for the gutt punch, and yet still, somehow, a sliver in me thought maybe he did secretly like me.
Henry’s eyes narrowed as he peered at me, as if I’d gone crazy. He gazed down at my pragmatic tennis shoes and moved his gaze up my stiff Wrangler jeans, my JCPenney logo polo and sweaty armpits, and finally my glasses resting lop-sided at the tip of my bulbous nose. “No way, Jose. Gag me!” And with that, he turned toward the intersection and headed directly home, my mother’s pride left intact while my own lay shattered on the suburban sidewalk.
I wanted to cry but I was too close to home. As I approached our driveway my mom looked up and smiled. “Garam-garam poori jo-ye? Do you want nice warm pooris?”. It was just as I’d imagined, only Henry wasn’t there to insult her for being resilient, resourceful and gracious. I smiled and nodded yes, put down my Trapper Keeper and French Horn to reach for a poori and began telling her about the police officer that stopped me at the corner to let me know bad guys were checking out garages for things to steal. Maybe we should keep the garage door closed, I casually suggested.
