Sun Blotches and Angelic Smiles Everybody in my family has different hands. Mine are light brown with weaving veins, like rivers flowing through a desert. Curvy lines streak across the surface of my palm, bards silently singing the story of my life. My sister’s hands are smooth and innocent, round knuckles jutting out when she curls them into a fist, the nostrils of her nose flaring with adorable anger. Dad’s are rough with hardship, his palms jeweled with callouses. He has broad fingers and nails thick and ridged, like clam shells. His sinewy tendons bulge when he flexes his hand, strong and supporting, always ready to help. Grandpa’s hands are like sandpaper. The skin on his hands is wrinkled and blotched with sunspots. His fingers are like the gnarled limbs of an ancient oak, weathered and wise. Grandma’s are small and pudgy, the fat from the hams of her hand gently creasing as she grasps her cup of ginger chai. Uncle’s hands are light as feathers, his long and slender fingers gracefully sweeping across the keys of the piano, like a casual wind fluttering across the surface of a sandy beach. Knotted joints curl around the tips of his metacarpals and phalange bones. I want hands like Uncle, a musician’s hands. Auntie’s are always gleaming with eloquence, her designer acrylic nails sparkling like shining stars. Her hands are a smooth tan, their oily surface engulfing me in a warm, comforting hug. But Mom’s hands—Mom’s hands are the summer sun, soft, welcoming, and always warm, like when her eyes wrinkle with joy and her mouth peels into an angelic smile. Everybody in my family has different hands, some lighter, some darker. Some smoother, some rougher. Some are warm, but they’ll eventually become cold as old Time washes over them. Hands. They hold the marks of our past and will soon tell the story of our future. * * * Clocks in Tuxedos Thick sheets of tension drape over the room as trembling fingers reach across the boards. Beams of intense concentration emanate from players’ eyes, lines of focus creasing their foreheads. Shiny raindrops slip down cheeks, the result of many conceding defeat. Faces flush with a despaired red, their egregious mistakes abruptly annihilating all hopes of a trophy. Then, the horn bellows its long, sonorous sound, announcing the time has come. The judges, dressed in their neon-green and orange vests, place down the Chronos timers. Wavering sighs of anxiety escape from many mouths at the sight of the timers. Dressed in a tight black tuxedo, my timer begins to drone in its monotonous tick-tock tick-tock. With each passing second, an ounce of apprehension grows, sticky sweat coating the back of my neck. My opponent is an older teenager, wearing a red-and-blue-striped shirt. Burgundy freckles are splattered across his face, and he has curly maroon hair. Behind his pair of claret spectacles, his eyes suddenly light up with joy. As his mouth peels into a beaming smile, he confidently brings his hand forth and moves his queen across the board, placing her next to my king and says the words of a chess player’s nightmare: “Checkmate!” * * * The Tree of Salmon Berries The tree of salmon berries is an unarmed merchant, constantly being harassed by malicious robbers. They reach in their selfish fingers and pull off its jewelry as the tree screams a silent plea. The tree’s green neighbors remain in stupid oblivion, frivolously fluttering in the July breeze as they revel in the company of heaven’s water. The wavering limbs of the tree shake with anger, futilely attempting to slap the thief. But it is a tough tree. Always coming back fuller than ever, only to repeat the vicious cycle. The tree of salmon berries is the man in the maze, constantly navigating through and overcoming obstacles, only to find the next corner and hurdle. The tree sees me as yet another monster of greed. And the tree is right. I am very greedy, but I need to be. The greediest are the most successful, for without greed there is no motivation. Caesar, the indomitable emperor of insatiable greed, led the ancient Roman Empire to power and might. Without greed, one is weak and will find oneself bending to others’ wills, becoming more servile with each passing day. I will continue to steal from the tree, ripping its children from their home and devouring them like a cannibalistic demon. The tree of salmon berries will remain the subject of torture, forever ruled by the great lord by the name of Greed. * * * Conquering Ghosts Dear Young Aditya, So stop. Don’t get on the bus and go home. Turn around and tell the truth. Don’t let the ghosts of your actions haunt you, weaving their threads of guilt and shame into your brain. Confront and conquer them, so you don’t wage an endless war with the demons of your past. What’s the worst that can happen? Mom and Dad find out and yell at you. But, in the matter of a week or two everyone will forget about it. The burden will be lifted from your shoulders, no longer plaguing you. On the other hand, if you internalize your crime, little straws of hay will be sprinkled upon the pile of guilt every day. As time passes, and your shameful secret gnaws at your insides, that pile of hay will become a stack, which in turn will become a heap. A heap of guilt and shame so heavy that it will be too late to turn back and tell the truth. You will have to live hampered down by your impulsive, rash decision, always present and ominous, like a painful scar seared across your skin. Please don’t do what I did. Don’t walk away. Your older self, Aditya *
Family
Composition 0
When my father first saw my mother on stage, he was amazed by how the words flew out of her mouth so naturally. I’ve never seen my mother perform, but in old photographs, she always appears angelic. She had luscious blonde curls and stormy grey eyes. She didn’t have my frizzy brown hair or my big feet. I only have her grey eyes. In these photographs, my father looked like a young prince, with cool brown hair and soft green eyes. It was truly a miracle that they met—they would always look so perfect together no matter what. I am an artist myself, in the studio art program at Yale. Throughout my life, I’ve been told I can paint anything, as long as I use my senses. If I hear a bird’s song, for example, I can paint what it sounds like. I’ll add a bit of yellow for happiness or brightness here, a bit of white and black for sadness or loneliness there. If I taste berries, I can paint bursts of sweetness in red, purple, and pink; if I smell oranges, I can express it as clouds of sunshine and gold filling the canvas. My professor’s name is Dr. Richards. Up until now, I’ve been allowed to paint the present world of sounds, sights, smells, and tastes, but Professor Richards wants me to do something different for my next project. He wants me to remember what my childhood was like and paint it. He gave an example of enjoying a good time with my parents, like a picnic. As if my childhood had been as predictable as that. But the problem is I have very few memories of my real parents. Of my mother especially. My art studio is an abandoned classroom, a tranquil place that comforts me whenever I get stuck. There is a beautiful view through the window, looking over a small garden with pansies, chrysanthemums, and violets in the summer. You can also see the Yale flag up high, waving, and a perfect reflection pool by the main library. Sometimes I end up staring at it for hours, trying to imagine the different images cast into the pool or create pictures out of the sound of water trickling. For weeks, I haven’t known where to start with my painting. Professor Richards is insistent that if I try hard enough, my memory will tell me what to do, but I can’t seem to get it across to him that it is impossible to find a single memory capable of capturing what I can’t know about that memory. I guess it’s just that I keep going back to how my parents met, wishing I could have been there. When I try to think on my own childhood, inevitably my mind wanders back to my parents at Juilliard, and that moment my mother first walked by the music room, not expecting the sound of my father playing the piano. My father had already been struck by my mother’s voice on stage, so the fact she walked by, noticing him too, was the closest thing to fate there is, I think. And I guess I want to tell Professor Richards that this is the only memory I need to recreate, even though it isn’t mine, but in a way, I want to tell him it is—because the simultaneity of these two moments is what allowed me to be born. I shudder to think of this miracle, that I am somehow here, alive—even though my parents aren’t here to bear witness to that fact. Yet somehow, I think that if I can try to make my longing real on the canvas, my parents might be able to know that I live on through them and their first memory of one another. I want to tell him that I’m stuck trying to envision the bright smile of my father and the warm eyes of my mother, the light on the stage, and my father’s piano—he once told me his piano was the only way for him to understand anything, especially his love for my mother. My mother died at the age of 30, when I was just four, and my father left just a week after she died, unable to bear his grief. I was raised by two adoptive parents, and though they have both been very loving and supportive, encouraging me to pursue my dreams as an artist, I still think about my birth parents, wondering if they also like to smell soap before they use it, or if they had to set their alarm clock in the same corner of the room, perfectly aligned against the wall, or if they liked the light buttery taste of corn and the cob or toast as much as I do. I wonder if I would have needed these things as much, too, if my mother hadn’t gotten sick and my father was still here to confirm my odd habits. The repetitions circle my brain like a plague as I try to picture the room in Juilliard where my mother first discovered him playing. I imagine my mother in a pale green dress, walking past the door as “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz seeps through the door. I imagine my mother pausing by it, ear pressed, devouring the sound of fingers gliding smoothly over the keys. These repetitions should be enough I think, and I want to tell Professor Richards this, as I pick up a colored pencil and begin to sketch the outlines of my parents over the canvas. A pale green dress for my mother, like the stem of a violet. I hum “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” as my lines grow thicker. My humming is rudimentary, yet I can hear a whole orchestra in my father’s single piano that leads to foggy streaks of blue and purple skies, the color of bluebells and soothing lavender. I sketch a picnic scene and imagine a picnic basket we might have shared if they could visit me:
My Grandma Helen
I walk into the cold, barren waiting room. It smells like stale peppermints and dust bunnies. My dad has his hand on my shoulder, and I feel the warmth through my jacket. It’s the only thing I can feel right now. The clerk stands behind the desk, typing loudly on her giant computer. Her lips are glistening with bright fuchsia lipstick, and the mascara is clumped on her eyelashes. She has a gigantic smile plastered on her face, and it makes bile wash into my throat. “Hello,” she sings, tossing back her streaming, golden hair. “Good evening,” my dad greets her, with cheer that comes out of nowhere. I keep my mouth shut. “Would you like a mint, dear?” her voice pierces the still room. She plunges her manicured hand into the giant glass jar on the desk and shoves the plastic-wrapped candy into my hand before I can say no. “We’re here to see Helen Browne,” my dad continues, his words smooth and in just the right tone. I don’t know how he does that: somehow knows exactly what people want to hear and exactly how to deliver it. My mama calls him a “people person.” She says that he couldn’t be any more different than her. My mama gets this scratched-by-a-cat look whenever anyone says something she doesn’t like. Her lips disappear inside her mouth and her eyes squeeze shut and she clenches her coffee-colored hands against her skirt. “Oh, yes,” the lady responds. Her name tag says Patty. I don’t like that name. It reminds me of the cafeteria ladies at school, hairnets stretched over their giant buns, glopping food onto plastic lunch trays. I don’t know what happens next. All I know is that my dad puts his hand firmly on my shoulder again, and then we’re moving down the hallway and I stare at the green and black carpeting. Dad opens the door and we enter a cold, gray room that smells like clay. A single bed sits in the middle, and there sits my grandma. My heart drops and bursts open, pouring out love. My feet move me forward. Grandma Helen has been there for me since I was born. My whole life I felt like I had to hide my emotions everywhere except my own home. Me, Mama, Dad, Jasmine, Nathan, Grandma and me. Grandma and I would sit for hours on the porch rocking chairs, and sometimes not even say anything, just sit there thinking about the dewdrops glistening on the sharp blades of grass, and the clouds fading and the stars twinkling in the night sky. I would look over at her and her eyes would be closed and she’d just be humming to herself, and once in awhile she’d nod and smile. Sunday nights were for a huge family dinner that everyone would help make. Everyone would sit around the table, laughing and talking and eating all at the same time. I see Grandma sitting on the bed, back propped against two white pillows. She’s not who she used to be. The color has drained from her face. The wrinkles have stretched all across her skin. She’s here in this cold, sad building, not home with us painting her nails and experimenting with makeup. She’s not in the kitchen with flour and sugar all over her, cooking all day. She’s not surprising Dad with ice cold lemonade after he’d been gardening all afternoon, or giving Mom massages after a long day of law school. She looks over at us. “Mom!” Dad cries out. “It’s me.” Grandma cocks her head and looks right at him. “Adam?” she whispers. “Yes, Mom,” Dad whispers. “It’s me.” I walk over. “Oh, my babies,” Grandma whispers. She grabs Dad’s hand and pulls him close, and she wraps me in her arms. She kisses my cheek. And she lies back down on her bed. “Mom?” Dad whispers, and then I watch as her chest slows, and then stops, and her body is still. I run forward and grab her hand, squeezing it like I can bring it back to life, but I can’t, and then Dad is wrapping me in his arms and I feel him but I can’t think, and I just know that all of a sudden it feels like someone has thrown me off a sinking ship and I smack the water, and feel a rock hit hard against my head. * * * My grandma had been such a big part of my life, it didn’t seem right that she was just gone. She wasn’t afraid to put my dad in his place around the house, but she was always so sweet to my mom. She always told her, “Aisha, you need to relax.” Whenever I came home from school, my grandma Helen was always in the kitchen. She was a cook like a lot of grandmas I knew, but she was different. She didn’t just bake pies and cakes. Grandma Helen made Duck à L’orange and Beef Wellington. Every week, she tried out a new recipe, and every day she was at the table, thumbing through her cookbook and flipping through Taste of Home. The other thing she liked to do was listen to music, from Beethoven and Brahms to heavy metal. You could always hear music coming from her upstairs bedroom. Once, I peeked in her room and she had on her best purple evening gown and she appeared to be waltzing with an imaginary person. Her eyes were closed in bliss. On Saturday nights, she would move the antique wood coffee table, leather couches, and our huge rocking chair that smelled like coffee and mothballs, so the entire living room was open. She’d put out bowls of popcorn and cups of apple juice and iced tea, which was her favorite drink in the world. We’d wrap ourselves in blankets and watch an old movie, and sometimes fall asleep spooned together
