Homemaking

 

Bookshelf with notebooks and small clay elephant.

***

She made homes out of old boxes and bleached out pillowcases. She made homes out of too-heavy earrings that dragged down her ears. She made homes out of imperfect things. She made them out of whatever was convenient.

Even now, I wouldn’t even know what to do with a perfect apartment. In my last place, there was a point when I knew it was time to go: the moment when I woke up in the middle of the night to find yet another cockroach had made its way from my bedframe to my shoulder, I knew. I turned on a lamp and stared at the sheets till I could justify the incident as a blessing in disguise – the mom I was working with at the time texted me to tell me that she had just gone into labor. But when I returned the next day, I had no more excuses.

Though I’d been living in the city for four years of college, it felt like a brand new universe when I was on the lookout for places. I had to think about train line access and whether I’d get enough light. I had to make peace knowing that more than half my paychecks would be going towards having a place to sleep at night. And I had to contend with the fact that I will be a gentrifier in most of the neighborhoods I can afford.

Here and everywhere, she was a fixer of things. In a house with painted locks and cracked headboards, she polished the silverware until it gleamed.

“The safest space I have right now is… my home,” says my interview buddy on the As[I]Am podcast. They go on to describe the hard work they have done to make that happen, to spin their own cocoon. That resonates with me. I think about all the homes I’ve been blessed to set foot in this year. In a city where free event space is scarce, people use their apartments creatively. I’ve seen people host salons in their living rooms and workshops on their kitchen floors. Some of the most inspiring art is shared in the tiniest of venues.

When her brothers brought the war into their dining room, she knit her fingers behind her head and hummed a tune. Homeland, homeland...

I continue to think that the measure of a New York transplant is in her apartment stories. The ones I’ve been up close and personal with are the “escape from roommate hell” and the “pest-pocalypse,” with their ever-popular variations. But I've also seen people breathe life into inhospitable places. In a marriage of desperation and ingenuity, we learn to make the city love us. It's not always romantic, but at least it isn't lonely.

While they screamed and kicked each other under the table, she wiped down the tabletops and shut off the lights. In the dark, they fell silent, seething. They felt the walls to get around. She stomped her feet against the floor, just to know she could. It was a comfort, really, to know that it would hold, no matter how heavy.

(experimenting with blending fiction and non-fiction today in my piece about home and homemaking)

Impulse Mothering

It’s little late for Mother’s Day, but I’ve collected some of my scattered thoughts about the concept of ‘mothering’, inspired by a Tweet that me and my friend Amanda Zhang put together.

I have been thinking about how complicated Mother’s Day is as a holiday. Some of us were not raised by our mothers or are estranged from them; some of our mothers are dead; some of us wanted so badly to be mothers but couldn’t. Some of us have different genders and were told we couldn’t be mothers, or our babies were taken away from us by illness, authority figures, or people who did not trust us to care for them. Yet, despite all that, I think that mothering is a powerful force and a concept that can transcend into other relationships.

I have more thoughts on this topic, but for now you can read on to you’ll find that Tweet, and several short pieces:

Both physically and spiritually @mandazhang: shoutout to all the moms who are too far away for us to see today
— Jordan Alam (@thecowation) May 11, 2014

1.
We were talking in a coffee shop about horoscopes. Our futures seemed just as complicated as our pasts, and we were living with one foot in either direction. I sipped my hot chocolate; she sipped her tea.

2.
I searched the shelves, hungrily looking for names that sounded desi or desi enough. Names like my father’s – long and many-syllabled – and names cut short by American tongues. Any of my friends would call them “coffee names,” what you would tell a barista or a waiter who had to shout out when your order was ready, and would butcher even uncommon white-sounding names.
My sister had only recently found out that desis were allowed to write literature, and ever since then I had been dropping off more and more books with my step-mom for her to read through.
“Nadia, we’re going,” Malika called out in a harsh whisper. The other library patrons looked up, accusatory, as I responded at a normal volume.
“Just a few more minutes.”
“You sure she’s even done with the last one?”
“You can read two books at once.”
“Yeah, but not fifteen. You’re setting yourself up for fines.”

3.
Who appears in the dreams of women,
Raised by other mothers?
The drama teacher,
Leaning from the purple hammock;
The best friend,
Breathing laughter over the cordless phone.
Her father’s care package, open and unwrapped,
On the kitchen table.

Also, life updates! Last weekend I read at the Smithsonian APA Wiki-Edit-a-Thon, so check out that great recap here. And I am writing a serial story called Dark Spot for SpliceLit, an online literary magazine co-founded by the amazing Veda Kumarjiguda.

And As[I]Am is having a call for content creators that ends next week! If you are a media maker, follow the link and check out how to apply!

"Holding Hands:" My Piece for 1,000 Words, an Eyes on Bangladesh Event

Hey all! Remember when I said I was doing a reading? Well, the reading happened last Saturday and it was amazing. I was so honored to be amongst such passionate folks -- writers, listeners, and organizers -- that cared about disrupting stereotypic narratives of Bengali life and art. It was also amazing to be in the physical space where the photographs were being displayed; I lingered much longer than just the reading, talking to people and taking in all the amazing photographs.

It was a lot of work to write this new response piece to their work, mostly because I wanted to respect representations of people that I do not share experiences with, even if my work fiction. But in the end, I had a deadline and I had to take the plunge. For any friends and fans who couldn't make it to the reading, here is a recording of "Holding Hands," my piece in response to Taslima Akhter's photos of Bangladeshi garment workers and the Rana Plaza factory collapse. Recording credit goes to Kyla Cheung. Text below the jump, including a more formal introduction than the one that was read in the recording. I appreciate all of your thoughts over Twitter or email.

This piece will also appear in The Margins, a magazine published by Asian American Writer's Workshop.
 

Friday Fiction: A Distant View

Here is a quick-writing experiment I did with describing scenery through a child's perspective.

The houses turned to tiny islands whenever it was rainy season. They flooded the fields, fortified the side walls, and hunkered down under tin roofs to listen to the plink plink and gush of raindrops, signaling that Allah had blessed them again. Selena snapped pictures from the car window and stared. They swung around busses and telegaris with ease, but the rain impeded their progress nevertheless. Gullies of brown much bubbled up from the potholes and unpaved streets, forcing everyone to slow down. IT was safer this way, her father claimed, but her cousin sighed loudly that they weren't going fast enough and that there would be tons of traffic up ahead. Everyone else was asleep. Selena imagined that the tiny islands contained just as tiny people, living out their tiny lives at a great distance from the city where they lived. She wondered how the children got to school when their houses were surrounded by water. Maybe these villages didn't have any children. Only the tallest stalks poked out from above the water line - jute and strong-willed plants, her father said, rice stayed submerged for the majority of its growth. When they visited their village, most of her friends' families kept chickens and goats, to whom they fed grass and leftover meals to. Only people ate rice, so Selena didn't know why they had to have so much of it. The watery fields seemed to stretch on forever.

Friday Fiction: A Few Sentences

 This Friday Fiction is (mercifully) short, as to test out the power of a few sentences - enjoy!

She watched the bubbles escape from her nose and break for the surface, making tiny rainbows with the light from the sun. It would be so easy, she thought, to just keep pushing downward and let all the air release from her lungs until she became some half-living thing. She would drift from bank to bank unhurried, making her way slowly downstream towards the fishermens' nets.

But she resurfaced.

Saturday Fiction: The Other Villagers

 
Ok, so it's technically a little late to be called Friday Fiction, but if you'll forgive me a few hours, here's the start of my next writing project:

Friday Fiction: Hand (A Bird in the...)

Going with a trend on Twitter, I'm going to start posting some of my fiction work on - you guessed it - Fridays. Here's the first installment of a short story that I'm working on:

When the moment was right, Sera snatched the paper crane right out of Sister's hand.

Indifferent to the gasp and then wail of surprise that followed, she ran fast, the green colored paper shining in the glow of full sunlight, as she heard the clomp clomp of little shoes - Sister and Sister's friend - beating down the grass behind her. Faster! She sprinted, weaving away into the small copse of trees at the edge of their backyard, where the old post marked the start of unsafe territory. A broad grey cloud covered the sun. She could no longer hear the footsteps, but she continued running, looking down at her crumpled prize and then around at the gnarled trees that looked like goblin men.

A Week in Pictures & Socks and Shoes

This week is the final one before spring break for me, in which time I have to devote my brain power to studying for a tough midterm and readying myself for the visit of my best friend, Heathy. It's going to be a great (and tiring) week, so instead of posting my usual series of long written posts, I'm going to do short fiction and opinion pieces relating to pictures that I have taken throughout 2011 and 2012. Let me know what you think of the change of pace!

When Mara Mori made that special pair of socks, she never thought about the shoes that would go with them. The shoes I had were worn down at the heels and patchy, like someone had mended them again and again with whatever stiff cloth they could find. I wore those shoes day in and day out, trudging back and forth from school with a scowl on my face to keep people from asking questions. "Where are your winter boots, Aubergine? Why are you wearing such strange socks?" At the time, I couldn't think of a sound reply other than "mind your own business." Even when I got a new pair of shoes that year, I still felt just as protective.

Somehow, Someway

I know.
Sometimes it's completely wonderful to spend a weekend away from yourself. Away from all the little opinion pieces floating around in your head, narrating your life as if you were some sort of child and needed to be directed at every turn. Eat this, don't touch that, be careful! Things aren't so much different when you're on your own and trying to make it.
So sometimes, even though it's not really advisable, there's a period of time when I don't really care about the tiny so-not-gonna-happen crushes, the crusades towards victory over psychology homework and scholarship work. I let it all go.
Now, don't believe I go all crazy and start jumping into fires or something stupid like that. I'm a "party girl" without the booze or the cheap thrills. I like staying up late at night and talking to my roommate about things that will never happen to me. Sharing stories that aren't really mine - they just bounce around in my head and I put them to paper (kind of like I am now). Somewhere, in the world of fiction, a girl who is the complete opposite of me can run free and take over me. Mind, body and soul.
Dia hasn't come back for a while, she hasn't littered my texts with her boy-crazy, overly-hot insanity, but she is always lurking there. At the edge of my mind where people wouldn't expect a girl like me to reside. The brink where people often jump off. The clouded forest. The silent grey trees.
Here is where I stand today: a more serious vacation than I'd planned, taking time from the world of letters making up my worth and people telling me that I'm not really there. I have to learn to be original, and sometimes... that just won't work out. And so here, where I'm forced to be whoever I need to be, I have chosen.
I like myself enough to keep things rolling. And, so it seems, other people do too.
P.S. I'm revising my thoughts on fiction classes; if they're done right, they're fantastic.