She hopped out of the bus, bade her bus driver a good day, and clobbered onto the soaked sidewalk. Pihu loved the smell of the green ferns, the emerald soaking into her wet pink sneakers, she could see them in her mind, they were now the little sweet cubes of Starbursts that she ate in hordes before losing her first tooth. She had never cared for sweets until the tooth fairy gave her fifty cents, their metallic scent all over her fingers, soon turned sticky by thousands of M&Ms.
Her ears pounded; Beats beating like her beating heart; the music seeped up her hair into her mind. She could feel the lyrics like a body of hundreds swaying in her ear; the chorus, just another tequila sunrise, stirring slowly across the sky, the gray, translucent sky, just like that day… She was back in Madison Square Garden, surrounded in a violet glow, kernels in her mouth, the silver haired woman next to her swaying, the guitar plucking the strings of air around her, the greens and yellows…
A leaf caught her eye, a yellow one in the center of the puddle. She stopped in front of the puddle before her, toeing it at first, then all at once jumping over, crossing a puddle, crossing an ocean, her nani waving, the red chili powder itching her nose, paneer wafting into her heart, tears at the airport, crossing an ocean, back on the soaked sidewalk. In every puddle, there was India, and in India she had not been for ages. Ages, old and young, since she had turned 12. Now, almost 18, she felt her body too small for the person that had grown inside. Like at the age of five, when she always drowned her cheerios, she seemed to be spooling out of her own body, a string of yarn drawing out from her eyes, her mouth, leading to darting eyes, darting words – the birds darted across the street, she thought of the chicken crossing the road, her kindergarten teacher Mrs. McDonald, not having had a single McDonald’s fry in over a decade. Fries were her mother’s favorite, which she binged while pregnant with Pihu; no wonder she loved potatoes. The sky looked now like a potato to her, tinged with yellow, clouds like distinct spores, now morphing into mushrooms, the portobello that her dad always fried for her. Her dad at this moment was probably sitting near the window, face raptured by the glare of his MacBook, the sun discreetly warming his back, waiting, she mused, for his favorite daughter. She sped up her walk, now like her sister, stadiums of people cheering her on, racewalking to the finish line, almost there, sweat pouring down her little face, drizzling rain down Pihu’s.
She hadn’t eaten in three hours, but her stomach was now full with her thoughts. Her mind, however, yearned for nani’s special okra and roti. She could already feel its warmth on her teeth, her feet skipped; she knocked her feet on the street; it knocked back with a familiar “hello”.
She walked, eagles in the sky, Eagles in her ear, this old world still looks the same, home.
– PJ