I AM 19. I’m attending Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. The grounds are classically New England: red brick buildings, rolling green fields, more trees than I’ve seen in all my years combined. The foliage is completely new, leaves and shades I’ve only drawn and painted before. Maple, birch, pine, acorn. Crimson, amber, lemon, mouse-brown, ashen gray. Seasons are new, therefore so is snow. It’s as spectacular as I’ve imagined, but the cold makes me literally nauseous. My body feels tipped, hung upside down. I layer sweaters to no avail.
I miss my family desperately. Momma and I spend long hours writing each other and speaking on the phone. I share everything I’m learning. She shares how things are back there. We say goodbye the same way, every time.
“Thank you for being mine and letting me be yours. I love you.”
I’m majoring in Women’s Studies and Theater. I’m going to be a voice for those who have been silenced. I’ve known three things since I was 15. I’ll adopt kids. I’ll be a professional artist of some kind. And I’ll leverage my work toward positive change. Aside from Momma, Gloria Steinem, and Oprah, my role models are Angelina Jolie, Jane Fonda, and Audrey Hepburn. I revere them not only for their beauty and talent, but because they channeled their careers toward serving others. Actresses who became activists and UN Ambassadors, they used their fame for something good. Such is the mission I feel like a fever.
I love academia as much as I love art. I find words, and learn to transform my fury into fortitude. I learn how to mine light from life’s shadows, to synthesize personal experience with studied research, to foster clarity, awareness, and a roadmap. Praxis. In addition to women’s studies and theater, I take numerous religion classes. I’ve harbored such anger against Islam my entire life. Education lets me clarify my thoughts the way butter purifies into ghee. I separate the false, prejudiced claims from the truly sexist and justifiably infuriating.
My professors feed me assignments beyond the curriculum, tinder for a voracious flame. I’m cast in two or three plays every semester versus the standard of one. The directors negotiate a special schedule. I rehearse two hours with Macbeth, run through the snow-kissed campus to rehearse three hours with Chicago, then run a final leg for two hours with Antigone.
I don’t have many friends. I have you, but it seems I still fail to fit with anyone else. I don’t fit with the international students, or the theater or women’s studies majors. Our international student population is 2 percent of the school. I’m the only international student in the women’s studies and theater departments. My work ethic, ambition, and earnest friendliness are apparently off-putting. And in the women’s studies department, my femininity and staunch stand against misandry, or “man-hating,” are perceived as weaknesses.
I keep to myself and focus on what I’m here for. I keep at a distance from the party scene. Having grown up in Bangkok, I’m disenchanted.
Both majors claim me completely: mind, heart, body. Women’s studies requires a massive amount of study, digestion of material, discussion, and writing. Theater demands rehearsal, memorization, reflection, adjustment, improvement, and execution, performance after performance. We are trained to always hit our mark, regardless of sickness, fatigue, or doubt. I am continuously on.
I wake up at 6 a.m., work out, study, write, attend classes from 9 to 6, rehearse from 7 to 11. I study and write some more, journal, sleep at 1 a.m., repeat. I Tupperware identical, diminutive, spiceless meals. Their polite, plastic containment supports the mechanics of my goals.
The people I do resonate with are my professors. I will always seek and find parents. My theater professors are kind, beyond-the-norm mentors. My women’s studies advisor is a trusted kindred spirit. She is brilliant, stands at 5’2” but fills an entire hall with effervescent magnificence. Her hair is cut in a chic silver bob that volleys light with every animated, impassioned word. I’m intimidated and besotted.
On our first day, we do an exercise our professor will later explain is standard for Women’s Studies programs. We’re asked to describe ourselves using three sentences. There are twelve girls and four boys in the class. Once we’ve all written our three sentences, we read them aloud.
Eight of us twelve girls wrote as our first sentence “I am a girl,” “I am female,” or “I am a woman.” Two wrote “I am a Black woman.” Of the remaining two, one wrote “I am gay” and another, “I am Latina.” As our second and third sentences, all eight wrote something to do with character or appearance: “I am kind,” “I am caring,” “I am beautiful.” Of the four boys, two are white, one Black, and one Latino. For their first sentence, they wrote “I am an athlete,” “I am 18,” “I am Black,” and “I am gay,” respectively. For their second and third sentences, they wrote of their ambitions and vocations: “I will be a senator,” “I am a scientist,” “I am an entrepreneur.” Our professor shares the kinds of answers collected over years, across campuses. Most white men wear their whiteness, maleness, and scope of ambition nonchalantly. Being the “dominant” race, they are the assumed lead character in the social lens, standing center amidst all orbiting matter, mostly aloof, absorbing the benefits, one of which is innocence, another, faith in their success. We girls are more conscious of our femaleness, appearance, and behavior with others, as anyone cast in a supporting “minority” role is conscious of the characteristics society uses to denote our peripheral “minority” standing. The further we are from the center, the more we’re made aware of it. The world takes great pains—and inflicts great pain—to remind us of our otherness, lack of privilege, limited bandwidth, and supportive duties.
If we weren’t reminded, we wouldn’t know how to behave.
In women’s studies, I quickly carve my niche. I’m drawn to the history of dominance and voicelessness pulsing through centuries and cultures. The psychology of misogyny, power, and abuse fascinates me. These days, I don’t have the time to read books for pleasure. Everything I read is academic nonfiction, volumes by Simone de Beauvoir, Adrienne Rich, Gloria Steinem, and their protégés. I memorize countless persuasive essays and case studies on rape, domestic violence, war crimes, sexism in the workplace, and religious doctrine. I fill every nook of my mind with fodder. Stories, statistics, talking points, even self-defense classes, for lessons to use myself and pass onto others. They say information is empowering. Sometimes though, information is so painful, it impales. My heart begs my body to break for a run and while I run, I weep. But I continue learning, resolved to do what I can.
I AM 20. Momma tries to leave Papa and returns, thrice. She leaves, he promises he will change, she returns. Every time, she sobs. I hate being half a planet away.
Along with I love you, the sentence women repeat with equal, rabid frequency is, He is going to change.
“I believe he can change. People can change, Reemani.”
“People can. But it’s a matter of choice. And ability.”
Then, Nana Bhai passes away, on December 24th, 2002. Winter break. I fly to Bangkok and we all return to Bangladesh for the funeral.
Waves of people pay their respects to our benevolent giant. Naan is inconsolable. I stay by Momma’s side, so close you’d have to peel me off like skin from fruit. The tough protecting the sweet. She cries for both of us. I prohibit my tears until I’m by myself with Nana Bhai.
Strangely, there’s a sliver of twenty minutes when his coffin is left alone on the ground floor of our family compound. On this small patch of cold cement, he lies in his coffin and I sit on my haunches, my back against the wall of the building, my knees tucked into my torso. He’s wrapped in white linen, from toe to neck. His eyes are rimmed in violet, as though he fought sleep for days. He looks peaceful though. I talk to him. He speaks too.
We wait while the funeral procession gathers in the family courtyard. It is finally quiet. Time graces us our own nook, though it has shown very little mercy otherwise.
I weep, curling like the leaves of mimosa touch-me-nots, that fold inward from the slightest contact of rain, animals, and insects. I wonder if they, too, curl from sorrow. Momma, my uncle, and my aunt move as a flock of birds. Grief and love have stitched them seamless, and they walk, cry, speak as one undulating movement of feeling. The first and only time Momma and my aunt are ripped from my uncle is when Nana Bhai’s body is taken to be buried. Women aren’t permitted in the funeral procession and during the burial. Gentle Momma curses and roars. The closest we are allowed is the cemetery gate. While the rest remain in the courtyard, she and I drive over to the cemetery, and whisper our love through the iron bars.
My parents and siblings return to Bangkok. I fly back to college. My parents inhabit a stalemate but only for a few months. Momma hoped tragedy would soften Papa. It is futile. She delivers him a pithy sentence like a single rose.
“If I wish to honor my father, I must leave.”
Her choice has taken time to coagulate like blood on a gash kept fresh by years of determined picking. Sometimes death is the force that stuns us alive. She travels again to Dhaka and files for divorce. Once back in Bangkok, she moves in with a girlfriend, the mom of one of my high school friends.
Papa is shocked and devastated. He never thought she’d actually leave, despite the times he told her to or she sobbed she would. Now, he calls me often, weeping uncontrollably.
“It’s a mystery,” he repeats. “How could this have happened?”
“Papa, you’re an intelligent man. It happened because you gave her incentive.”
He doesn’t like that. “No,” he shouts, growing bitter, crying harder. The heat he would throw on both her and me now falls solely on me.
“I have to go to class, Papa. I love you.” I hang up, bracing myself for the next phone-call.
They spin, and their natures switch. She expresses anger built from decades, and he sobs. We kids dance on a tightrope, juggling fire and water, trying to keep the elements from falling.
Finally, Momma is free to be. She moves into her own apartment in Bangkok, the very first home where her name is on the lease. My brother is 17 and continues to live with Papa. My sister is 10 and lives with Momma. Visits with the opposite parent happen casually—custody is the one battle our family will not wage. The school my siblings and I have attended poaches Momma from her smaller one and hires her to found a new department. Her career grows in seismic leaps.
Then, a month after the divorce is finalized, she finds love. He is kind, a teacher who has taught on three continents, humbled and wizened by years spent alone. An introvert like myself, he is thoughtful and hilarious, used to be an actor, and is a runner as well. Born in Nebraska, raised in Oregon, he lives now in Seoul. Momma meets him at a teachers conference in Dubai.
She calls me four days after meeting him and says, “I found my person.”
I promptly lose my mind.
“Momma, you’ve never dated before! It’s a desolate wilderness out there and you’re a darling, little, impressionable cub surrounded by carnivorous beasts. You spent two days together! This is insane!”
“Reema, we’re in love.”
“Aaaaargh, Momma!” As usual, Papa’s calling on the other line, with nothing particular to say but urgent in his need to say it and feel heard. (Perhaps the multiplicity of lines was invented so one can manage the needs of all parents, all the time.) “You guys drive me crazy! I have to go to class.” A beep lets me know Papa has gone to voice mail. I’ll have to call him between class and rehearsal.
Lo and behold, Momma’s new love holds strong. Weeks turn into months and the months move toward a year. They make their long-distance relationship work through long weekend visits and Skype. We see a shift in Momma. My siblings see it happen in person; I hear it on the phone, then experience it when I visit briefly, between summer internships. For the first time in our lives, we witness Momma relax. Have fun. Laugh. Her laughter is glorious, the sound bubbling and curling like sugar deepening into caramel when held over low heat. We learn an incredible thing: Momma is funny as well. She’s a firecracker. She just needed to find her match.
She sings and dances. She plays jokes on us. She laughs until she hiccups and hyperventilates, until her face crumples and her makeup runs. Our poised, elegant, immaculately made Momma never looks more beautiful than when she is shaken, stirred, and unmade by joy. Love unknots her tightly stitched perfection. It releases her into something so lovely it must have a name.
Happiness.
Early on they know they’ll marry, by the end of this year. I’m thrilled beyond measure for Momma, and for us as a family. Heartbreaking though, is that Papa spirals downward in his grief. Desperate to return him to standing, we kids braid a rope, throw him this line. He tries but mostly, can’t grab it.
It is October of my sophomore year. I’ll be 21 next month. In two months, Momma and her love will be married. An email from Papa arrives.
He writes I have betrayed him. I advocated for their divorce. I failed to save their marriage. I am failing to halt this future one. I am unfit as a daughter and therefore, disowned.
I read the letter twice. I wait for tears that don’t arrive.
His love has always been a time of day I’m trying to catch and can’t. As though locked in a house without windows, set free only after the sun has risen high, I now run after the light, grasping at the sun as it moves from morning to noon to afternoon to dusk, too late, too lacking to ever feel warm.
Where did you go? Where do you go? Where have you gone? Come back.
Breathe. Assess the situation for potential danger, risks, and solutions.
Tuition. I need to guarantee tuition. The UN subsidizes part of it. If he legally disowns me, they’ll revoke their aid.
I’ll be fine. I have been working on-campus jobs since my freshman year. I have wonderful professors. They’ll help me find additional financial aid.
Wait. When Momma sent him divorce papers, he called her and his first sentences were, “Do you know what this will do to my career? And my family? My reputation? The shame.”
He won’t legally disown me. It would call ugly attention to his priorities. I quietly recite, One page. I put his words in my little pink box, home to an obedient ballerina spinning to a song sewn from a handful of notes, lingering in the air long after she slows still. I snap shut my laptop and go to rehearsal. I am the lead.
Soon it is the wedding. Given that she is in Bangkok, he in Seoul, and my siblings and I are in school, it makes sense for the families to gather for Christmas in America and have the wedding then too. We’ll share a few sacred weeks before everyone scatters, including the newlyweds. It’s the first time the families will meet. My brother and sister have met our soon-to-be stepdad, but I haven’t.
We meet in snowy Oregon. Momma, my siblings, my soon-to-be-stepdad and I all stay in a cabin in the woods, exotic and bizarre to the four of us born and raised along the equator. We have our first Christmas, ever. I’m stunned by the audacious bounty of the holiday, the continual eating of chocolate and cookies, the music and merriment, the brightly wrapped presents. Gold for the girls, silver for the boys, with handwritten cards so lovingly penned I’m stuffed on them alone. What more could there possibly be?
There are stockings with our names in glitter. They hold additional presents: ridiculous, unnecessary, delightful things like chocolates fashioned to look like Mt. Hood, so delicately crafted that I don’t want to destroy them through something as unrefined as eating. But I do, and it feels divine. There’s also lip gloss, bath bubbles, fuzzy socks, running socks, miniature lotions and shampoos with scents like Cherry Blossom and Island Vanilla, and countless candles. We light a few. I’m careful to ration the light for later.
We sit inside the glow. My brother is beaming, my sister is giggling, and Momma is radiant, laughing as her fiancé attempts to stuff all the wrapping paper into shopping bags. It’s like trying to pack a cloud into a bottle. His brow is furrowed with effort. We each still have our main presents to unwrap. They have gotten me one, but I want something specific. I muscle my courage and tug on his sleeve.
“For my present, may I call you ‘Dad’?”
He stares. A few seconds pass. Oh God, I’ve asked for too much.
“Of course.” His voice is hoarse with emotion. His eyes brim then spill. Momma’s and mine follow. Nearby, by the window, looking out at the pillowy snow, I feel you smiling. My smile quickens to catch up with yours.
Then it is December 27th, 2004, the day of the wedding. I’m Momma’s maid of honor. Everyone wears saris and kurtas. We are burnt sienna, vermilion, daffodil, peacock, rose, scarlet, sunset-pink, mango, buttercup, royal blue, and every gold imaginable. If I still had my box of 100 Crayolas, they would nod their approval. When Momma walks toward us, I feel old yet renewed, and inundated with relief. We made it. The tight fist that is my heart unclenches slightly.
Dad was raised Catholic and Momma, Muslim. They are spiritual but not religious. They found a minister who wrote them a perfect sermon on love.
“Incredible that a boy, born in America, and a girl, born in Bangladesh, can travel through continents, time, and relationships, to meet in Dubai. Incredible that their love can bring together two families, now deepened and strengthened through their unity.”
I finally understand what it means to cry tears of joy. Yesteryear, the phrase was romantic affectation. Today, I live the words, the moment forever anchored in my cells by the scent of jasmine and the song of glass bangles dancing on our wrists.
Momma kisses Dad, laughs, turns toward me, and wipes away a tear.
PAPA RETURNS. He reowns me through an email, six months after the previous. He writes he’d like to see me. He is traveling to New York for a conference at the UN Headquarters. He takes the Amtrak north to visit briefly. We meet for brunch.
It’s a Saturday in late January, the air freezing but bright with sunlight. We’ll have only a few hours before he has to return to Manhattan. Papa meets me at school and we take a short walk through campus. The years have bent him; he is smaller than before. I will never, ever fail to be shocked by his diminutive physicality. In me, he lives so large. He wears a brown tweed jacket with elbow patches, looking like a befuddled professor, slightly lost in the walking world. We taxi to the restaurant. It’s designed to appear French, with cheerful red leather booths, small round checkered tables, and cross-hatched chairs. Big windows allow in abundant light. We sit, order, and while we wait for our food, he gives me $500 in cash and a bottle of duty-free perfume bought on his flight. Calvin Klein Eternity.
“What’s happening?” I ask.
He looks at me, turns his gaze out the window. I asked for a table by the window lest we want to face something other than ourselves.
“Can we talk about the disownment, please?”
His eyes return. “You’re young,” he says. “I forgive you.”
Astonishment mutes me. I spear my salad; he picks at his. Long minutes pass. In the loud silence, we finish our meal.
We taxi to the train station. The cold makes us shiver, highlighting Papa’s frailty, the toll of divorce and distance from his loved ones, and the fact he won’t be around forever. The ghastly wind catches hold of Papa’s comb-over, sets it flapping like a bereft wing. With his right hand, he brushes the dozen strands to the left, a gesture as dear, loved, and familiar as Momma’s scent, my brother’s laugh, my sister’s curls. Something in my chest twinges. After long months, my tears release. He is doing what any of us can—our best. The train careens in. We’re forced a quick, sudden goodbye. We hug, both crying.
The tragic truth is that only through grief comes his softening. For my siblings, he becomes the father I prayed for. Over the coming years, I’ll watch them from afar. My siblings will spend most of their summer and winter breaks with Papa. For a long while, I will decline invitations due to work and plain trepidation. It’s as though I, the oldest, were practice. He parents the younger kids kindly. Loving, attentive, sweet, gentle, reliable. I fill with relief, happiness, and envy.