I knew from the strange, crooked shapes my students made with their fingers that they were failing their hand gesture tests. They sat on the worn floor of the dance studio, legs splayed to keep the bells of their ghungroos from pinching their ankles. I watched them flip through the packet of illustrations I had given them. They squinted under the fluorescent lights, trying to remember any fragments of Sanskrit spelling they could, and which twist of a pointer finger changed the mudra’s meaning from a bee into a deer. At their age, I invented the answers I didn’t know. If I could conjure a peacock with five fingers, why not a cupcake or a bunny? The world was represented with a single pointed finger – couldn’t I have made a universe with that?
The alarm on my phone chimed, signaling the end of our class.
“Thank you, Sister Sandhya,” my students said in a jumbled chorus, handing me their papers. I tried to shuffle the tests into a neat stack as they scrambled for their backpacks in the corner. I wouldn’t grade them later. It seemed unfair knowing I would miss their recital. There were only three days left with them in this room of sweat, dust, and incense before I moved into my freshman dorm.
“Don’t forget to take your namaskar,” I said, standing in front of them in the starting pose. When students were this young, in their first summer of classes, we always had to walk through the steps with them. I watched as they abandoned their backpacks, staggering around the room to give each other space. At their own pace, they mimicked my stance – knees and elbows bent, arms forming a line across their chests.
It was the first lesson in Bharatnatyam dance. At the start and end of every practice or performance, a dancer had to take their namaskar. It was a combination of ritual steps – first meant to obtain permission from Mother Earth to stomp all over her, and then a dual gesture of gratitude and apology.
With my hands in front of my chest, my fingers snapped into place, like the folds of a fan opening all at once. I tapped the floor with my right foot, then my left. They followed me with dissonant footsteps. The ghungroos strung around our ankles jingled with each movement. I drew a circle around my body with my hands in shikara, a thumbs-up representing the sounding of bells, or an archer’s bow pulled taut. I sank to the ground, low as I could while still suspended above it. With the advantage of their short stature, my students managed the next step in sync with me, placing their flat palms on the ground. Our hands rose to cover our eyes. They dropped to our chests again, posed for prayer, as we stood and finished with a bow.
“Hey,” my cousin Nisha said, poking her head in the door, “your dad’s waiting downstairs for you.”
My students ran out, squeezing between her legs and the door frame. Nisha always let her class out a few minutes early. It was something she had enjoyed as students here – extra time for gossip and mischief before our parents picked us up. Now we were the ones that gave lectures about straight arms and postured feet, leading exercises that trained muscles to handle future rigor.
I untied my own ghungroos, thick cord fastening brass bells to the velvet backing. I changed quickly, swapping the sweaty cotton top and leggings for a purple t-shirt and shorts.
“See you tomorrow, right?” Nisha asked.
I gave her a thumbs-up as I navigated out of the lobby through a rainbow maze of plastic folding chairs. Outside, Queens Village was a harsh exit from the little world of the dance studio. Across the four-lane road, through a blur of honking, revving cars, was a man with a silver cart full of sugar cane. Larger than the pile of stalks were the wheels that crushed the taste out of them. He sold cane juice in a plastic cup with a straw for three dollars.
I knew my dad would be waiting for me in his usual spot, around the corner past the laundromat and the liquor store and the immigration lawyer’s office with a sign in four languages. I rapped my knuckles against the window. After he unlocked the car, Dad turned down the volume on the stereo. It was a soca medley burned onto a USB drive, and Byron Lee and the Dragonaires sang through the speakers as I settled into my seat. The cup holders in the center console were full: two green glass bottles of Tomboy cream soda. The bottles were still cold, sweating in the heat, and that told me we wouldn’t be going home for dinner.
“Does a flight get in tonight?” I asked.
“In thirty-two minutes,” he answered before turning out into the street. Time and New York had watered down his Caribbean accent.
I pulled one of the soda bottles into my lap, cracking it open by twisting the cap underneath my shirt.
“There’s chicken patties for us in the backseat,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said, mouth full of soda fizz.
While I contorted myself to rummage around the backseat, Dad drove straight toward JFK Airport. He often spent his time like this outside of work, driving to the international arrivals terminal to wait for flights coming in from Guyana. As a kid, it seemed like magic knowledge to me – that he had some kind of instinct for the airplanes, that they called to him. In reality, he just had a bunch of friends who worked at the airport.
After the car was parked safely in the concrete garage, we made our way into the terminal. I was halfway through my first chicken patty as we walked, egg-wash yellow pastry flaking off into the paper bag with each bite. It was loud inside, and the unfamiliar languages around me were music, bright like a trumpet or lingering like a bass guitar. Dad reached his hand out towards me, and I handed him the bag of patties. He made quick work of one with big, messy bites. Crumbs littered around his feet.
“Dad, someone’s going to have to sweep that up you know,” I said.
“Can’t help it, San,” he said, brushing more pastry from the belly of his shirt.
“Here,” I said, taking the bag from him. I pulled a napkin from inside and wrapped it around the remainder of his patty, spiced chicken peeking out, before I handed it back to him.
“You must be related to your mother,” he said, laughing to himself before taking another bite.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said. My mother is the kind of woman that nothing would function without.
“Are you nervous?” he asked. Specifics weren’t needed for me to know he was asking about college.
“A little,” I answered, “but I think that’s normal.”
“Do you think we’re doing the right thing? Not keeping you at home?” He gave me a serious look, one he wore rarely. It had been my idea, and within the framework of education, my parents were willing to indulge an adventure. It had earned me, and them, a considerable amount of criticism from the family. Their voices echoed in my head, incredulous that anyone would let their child, let alone their daughter, live away from home at the mere age of eighteen. Wasn’t this an American rite of passage?
“Some people would say it’s strange to live with your parents as an adult,” I said.
“Well I don’t know them. That’s for rich people,” he said, shaking his head.
A kid rode past us, mounted on a four-wheeled suitcase as his parents chased behind him. He came to a stop at the revolving door, spinning glass an obstacle he couldn’t overcome.
“I think I’ll learn a lot, Dad. You moved to a whole new country as a teenager, I think I can handle a different state,” I said.
“I didn’t do it alone.” He turned to look at me, and I could tell his mind was only half with me, and the rest was somewhere else.
“I won’t be alone either, Dad.”
The arrivals board next to us began to blink, pixels shifted to tell us that the flight from Georgetown had landed. I held the remnants of our meal in my hands as Dad approached the gate. Less people took him up on the offer now. When he first settled in New York, so many people needed help that there wasn’t always enough room in his car. He gave them what they needed: a free ride, a connection to get a job, dinner at the roti shop, a way to contact people they knew but couldn’t find, or even a place to live. For years, this was how my Grandma kept a full rotation of tenants going in the attic apartment of her house.
Once, there had been a cousin of Dad’s friend from primary school. We drove him to a relative’s house, and they spent the entire ride poking fun at the person who connected them. There was another man named Sonny who worked with leather, making drums and shoes by hand. A woman we picked up once lived in Grandma’s attic for a year. She had dropped out of school at twelve to raise her siblings, and eventually found a job as a babysitter in Long Island. As the crowd thinned, I saw Dad helping a woman with her luggage. She was carrying a toddler in her arms as Dad handled her suitcases, and I watched as he followed her outside and helped her into a cab. No takers today, then.
After an evening of packing suitcases and boxes with Mom, I made it through the following day of dance class. I worked with the students on their posture, on drumming their feet against the floor in the right rhythm. The students were all thoroughly distracted at the end of class, poring over everything the jewelry vendor set up in the lobby that day had on display. There were waist chains, necklaces, earrings, clip-on nose jewelry, sun and half moon pendants that would be bobby-pinned into their hair for performances.
“I have to tell you something,” I said. Nisha froze as she worked to tie the laces of her sneakers into a bow.
“What?” she asked, voice flat and eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“I have an appointment to get a tattoo tomorrow,” I said.
“Oh lord,” she said, covering her face with her hand. She took a deep breath and shook out her arms before straightening her shoulders and turning to look at me again.
“Okay, here’s what we’re doing. I’m going with you, and we’ll sleep over at Grandma’s afterward. She’s always thrilled to have us. Got it?”
“Got it,” I nodded. This was what I had been hoping for. She had always been the more mischievous one, quick to invent excuses to tell parents and other tricks.
“But if you mess this whole thing up and my parents don’t let me go away to college, you know you’ll owe me forever, right?” Nisha said, finger pointed straight at my face.
“Don’t worry, I won’t.” I agreed.
I was an only child and she had only brothers, so we had always been sisters to each other. We started dancing at the same time. As we grew, I liked to imagine our ancestors could’ve practiced the same steps we did. Then we learned that our family likely came from northern India, and Bharatnatyam was a southern Indian form. By then we loved it too much to switch to Kathak.
Nisha’s mom, my Aunty Veera, drove us to Grandma’s house the next morning. Unlike my dad, she loved to be loud, whether she was blasting music or speaking at an ungodly volume.
“Have fun girls,” she shouted out the window, waving her hand as we climbed up Grandma’s stoop.
We dropped our duffel bags in the guest room. When it was more than the two of us, we had to sleep sideways on the bed. As kids it hadn’t made much of a difference, but now our legs hung so far off the mattress when we slept that way we could touch the ground. Either that or we slept fitfully, curled up and kicking each other. But not tonight.
In the living room, we joined Grandma for some tea and Jeopardy reruns.
“I think we’re going to go into the city for a bit this afternoon. I wanted to take San out one more time before she leaves,” Nisha said, lifting the mug to her lips to take a sip.
“You girls will miss each other won’t you?” Grandma asked. She shook her head and returned her eyes to the television.
“Are you going to tell me what this grand tattoo idea is?” Nisha asked as we waited on the subway platform. I could still hear the rush of traffic on the street below us.
“What do you think of Sanskrit tattoos? Is it lame if I get one?” I asked.
“Rihanna has one,” Nisha answered, like I couldn’t have asked a sillier question.
“I just want it to be meaningful,” I said, craning my neck to look for the train.
“If it is to you then what’s the problem? What’s it going to say?” Nisha asked.
“Namaskar,” I answered, “around my ankles where we usually wear our bells.”
I had googled it, wanting to make sure I had the lettering down. With a ballpoint pen and post-its, I practiced the lines and curves myself. I didn’t want to end with a mistranslated tribute to chicken curry or a yoga pose instead. I had been disappointed to learn that in most contexts, namaskar was a greeting, one that relayed a higher level of respect than namaste. Nisha was right, though. What it meant to me was the piece that mattered. If I couldn’t dance at our studio anymore, I wanted to find a way to continue performing its most sacred ritual.
“I like it,” Nisha said. She squinted her eyes like she was trying to render the tattoo in her mind.
When the C train arrived, we nestled into a set of two seats together. I pulled a headphone splitter out of my purse, and we listened to music together as we sped through Queens and Brooklyn. I played some of the Bollywood songs I knew Nisha wanted to choreograph for dance school this upcoming year. I mixed in some new songs by Sevana and Lila Ike, reggae artists we loved.
We exited at Canal Street and walked to the tattoo parlor. They promised that Nisha could sit with me if she kept out of the way. She did, lacing our fingers together so I could squeeze her hand when I needed as if that alone would relieve the pain. I fought to stay still when the tattoo gun made its initial contact with my skin. It stung, with the sharpness of a paper cut or a bee’s rage, but seemed to have a much longer half-life. The trick I used at the dentist seemed to work well, focusing on flexing my toes inside my shoes as a distraction. As the artist worked the pain faded to a dull, present ache. Time became a meditative warp, feeling like whole hours or mere minutes could have gone by. Then they were done. The Sanskrit phrases wrapped around the outer curves of my ankles, recognizable from my handwritten practice:
नमस्कार
When we finally returned to Grandma’s house, my calves wrapped in plastic, aftercare materials stuffed into Nisha’s bag, Grandpa was the one watching TV in the living room. Helen at the height of her cabaret glamour darted across the screen with Shirley Temple ringlets in a black and white Bollywood movie. He was mesmerized, and we couldn’t blame him. After a fair number of debates and movie marathons, me and Nisha decided Helen was our favorite item girl who had starred in the films of that era. She seemed to have infinite energy, and was expressive beyond compare. We snuck upstairs, and could hear that Grandma was in the kitchen, hard at work on dinner. After I changed into a pair of pajama pants that concealed my ankles without constricting them, we helped Grandma serve the meal. It was simple, cook-up rice and roti, but no one made it like her.
I nearly made it to my move-in date without being caught, but the night before our road trip to Boston, my Mom was waiting for me outside the bathroom. She told me later that she had noticed the extra time I’d been taking in the shower, the long garments I’d been wearing in the late summer heat. Towel-clad, my ankles were bare, tattoos on display for her to see. My wet hair dripped onto the rug in the hallway as I waited for her to say something.
“Mom?” I called.
She tilted her head and fixed the glasses on her face to get a better look.
“You’re good at thinking for yourself, aren’t you?” she asked, bending down to get a closer look at the inked script.
“I guess,” I answered.
“Okay,” she said, nodding, and she left me to go downstairs.
I had been afraid of many things. Thankfully, it was easier to make friends than I thought. The sprawling campus was full of other freshmen who dreaded the thought of being alone. We knocked on each others’ doors to suggest walks around the safest grassy spaces, we squeezed ourselves together at cafeteria tables in the dining hall, and welcomed new faces to crash movie screenings in the common room.
I knew I would miss dancing, and the muscle cramps I felt in my calves at odd times reminded me of an essential element that had dropped out of my life. I auditioned for the school’s dance troupe in a rehearsal space full of mirrors. The floors were wooden, meant for tap and ballet shoes instead of bare feet like the rubberized surface I was accustomed to. With focused eyes and fluid limbs, I tried my best to follow the choreography and commit it to memory. The moves – jazz, then modern, then hip hop – did not come easily to me. I knew a different way to be graceful, to be striking.
“Anyone who can dance knows what a pas de bourrée is,” the lead dancer said. She twisted her feet across the floor, and not in familiar ancient motions. I could dance with fire in my hands, spin in circles on my knees, and even leap across a stage with a jug full of water balanced on my head. I never received an invitation to join the troupe.
My tattoos healed well, elegant and dark. Nisha called me often, and I was grateful to see her face. Even confined to a small screen, she was as loud as ever. In my parents’ hands, a cell phone was the object it was intended to be: a tool for communication. A cell phone was not a space for exploration, a portal to other worlds. It could be left in the car overnight the way a screwdriver could be thrown in a drawer. Still, they tried. My first trip back home was approaching quickly. I’d take the Amtrak down for Thanksgiving, riding down the Connecticut coast until I arrived at Penn Station. We weren’t there yet.
I was missing my favorite holiday: Diwali, the festival of lights. It was meant to represent the triumph of good over evil, though that wasn’t the part I loved most. Mom would make a feast, vegetarian for the holiday, and I would help slice cauliflower or stir sauces, and clap hot roti over the stove. Before we could eat, we’d say a prayer, and my mom would light the candles she’d made by hand. All it took was a set of decorative clay diyas, cotton wicks, and a healthy dollop of ghee. She’d set the oiled wicks ablaze, and I would flit around the house. We needed to leave at least one in each room, and save a few for the front and back yards. To let the light burn until it ousted itself was to anoint the space, and its inhabitants, with blessings for the year.
This year, I celebrated through a clumsy video call. The phone fell at least half a dozen times on the kitchen table before my frustrated mother shoved it into Dad’s hands. I watched her work quickly with the matchstick, and when all the diyas were lit, I muttered the prayer under my breath in my dorm room and Mom recited it loud and clear. She placed the phone on the golden offering tray, carrying me around the house as she floated from room to room. The camera faced the ceiling, but I could tell where she was by lightning fixtures and door frames.
“Did you eat meat today, San?” Mom asked, and I saw her hand fly over the camera.
“Nope,” I said, thinking about the heat-damp grilled cheese I’d eaten in the dining hall.
“Are you eating enough?” she asked. I had rushed through my meal, eager to make it back to my room before my parents called.
“Yes, Mom. It’s easy to just show up and eat,” I said, and heard her suck her teeth over the phone, her hallmark signal for frustration.
“I swear, Guyanese kids are the only ones who go to college and lose weight,” she said.
Then the image on the screen wobbled, and loud scraping noises made me cringe away from my phone.
“Here, this is yours,” Mom said, showing me the floor of my room, at an angle. She had placed a small teacup saucer in the center of my bedroom, flame giving shape to the dark space. I could imagine the rest of the room easily with just a glimpse. Then she relegated me back to staring at the ceiling.
“We’ll let you go,” Dad said, holding the phone in his hands again once they’d placed the diyas all around the house.
“Good luck with your homework!” Mom said, smiling and waving.
“Love you.”
“Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
The call ended, and I pulled a textbook from my backpack to start on my ethics homework. I had thought about ways to celebrate here, but candles were banned from the dorms, and starting a fire outside seemed like a sure recipe for trouble. The video call would need to suffice. I worked into the night, striking items off the to-do list in my planner, cross-checking my syllabi online, and finishing the outline of a few textbook chapters. I eventually fell asleep, curled into a plush blanket that Grandma had purchased for me a dozen years ago from a shop on Liberty Avenue where goods were advertised for sale hanging on hooks outside.
When I woke, I checked my phone, a habit I couldn’t break even though I knew it should be replaced with a better one. Perhaps all those blessed steps had worked, because there was a text message from Mom waiting for me:
The light in your room burned the longest.