I can’t believe I didn’t kiss her. Her face was right there. The glow from the sign for Dhaliwal Gas is bright enough for me to write the couple rash decisions I’ve made so far. I lean on one of the pillars and angle my pen, a joyless impulse purchase from the dollar store. I wince as I look at Mindii’s ruthless edits on the list of my first rash-ish decisions and quickly turn the page, the tip of the pen staining a fresh sheet of paper. I lift the pen back up. “Went to the makhi mandi and ate sausage,” seems very reductive. So does “Then went roller skating.”
I wish I understood this notebook. There’s a pencil sketch of this thin dude wearing a plaid shirt and jeans. It’s not a great sketch. I mean, it’s a nice enough sketch with shadows and shit. I just don’t understand it. There’s a small smudge or something under his eye. In neat handwriting next to it, Goldy has written a poem. Another thing I didn’t know about him. In romanized Punjabi, which is the most annoying thing to do to someone who knows how to read the Gurmukhi Punjabi script because no matter how many times I read it, it still takes me five minutes to slog through and connect the romanized sounds to the actual sounds of Punjabi. I can’t ask Mama or Papa or anyone to decode the poetry. Why can’t I understand this? I was breaking down sonnets written in iambic pentameter when I was in third grade. I could recite the first stanza of Heer by the time I was in sixth grade. I’m bigger than this shit. All I’ve been able to decipher is it’s something about a bird who tries to fly and gets attracted by something shiny on the floor. Then it dies. The fucking end. Profound poetry by Goldy the Friggin’ Poet.
Mindii is standing by the gas pump filling up. She looks like the kind of person who would say “I’m hungry” while driving around, then pull up to a random restaurant on the side of the road to chow down. No hesitation. No overanalyzing. No looking up endless incentivized reviews for six hours, like I do just to say “Fuck this shit, I’m gonna get a thousand-year-old hot dog from 7-Eleven for a dollar ninety-nine.”
I loudly and angrily close the book and put it back in my pouch. I need to figure out how to write this and just can’t do it right now. Is there like a rash-decision-making gene that I don’t have? When I think about all the rash decisions Goldy made it’s mind-boggling. I don’t know when he began drinking or the moment he became an alcoholic. There must have been a moment though, right? It can’t be all of a sudden you take a drink and then that’s it, you’re an alcoholic. Even his death feels like a rash decision. He was sober for months before. There should just be one way to be an alcoholic. Then you can fix it. Punjabi songs always show alcoholics as being such happy drunks. Not like Goldy, drinking whiskey straight from the bottle in his bed, alone. My eyes start to water and I blink real hard to stop.
I can’t even write these puny rash decisions by comparison: Had Hmong sausage. Went roller-skating. Why does it have to be perfect? If I feel I’m gonna stutter I can’t just own it and say yep this is me, deal with it. Either I don’t say anything at all and people think I’m quiet or shy or something, or I end up replacing words and become that weird dude. I wish I could be like Goldy and not give a flying pakora what people think.
An uncle comes outside to throw a couple small bags of trash into the dumpster. Every Punjabi dude around Papa’s age who is not related to me is my “uncle,” out of respect or whatever. It’s hard to find a gas station or liquor store in Fresno that isn’t Punjabi-owned. I’m trying to blend into the shadows and not make eye contact with this uncle, but it’s inevitable.
He turns to look at me and I freeze. He freezes too. I realize I’ve probably confused him with my cosplay. I’m not sure how to unlock the gaze. Just turn my armored body and chain mail helmeted face away from him?
Mindii clasps her hands together and does a little bow.
“Sat Sri Akal,” she yells, with pretty clear pronunciation. The uncle sees her and smiles. I clasp my hands and do the same thing. Not exactly the same. Maybe a little better, not that it’s a contest. I get no smile, no love from this dude at all. He just glares at me, then walks back. I think he preferred it when he didn’t have confirmation that I am Punjabi and Sikh enough to know SSA.
I bet he’s going to be looking for the Punjabi-looking Dafydd who said hello to him in the gas station parking lot every time he goes anywhere with Punjabis, and will be looking for this figment at the gurdwara from now on. Maybe this moment will become the great enigma of his life. Like that book about the white dude and his incredibly boring search for a whale. “How do y-you know Sat Sri Akal?” I say to Mindii.
“Was it supposed to be a secret? I saw it in this really fun British soccer movie, Bend It Like Beckham. Super cute, starring Keira Knightley and Parminder Nagra before they blew up.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I know the movie. My parents own a video store.”
“What does Sat Sri Akal mean?” she asks. “I’m guessing it’s not just Hi there.”
Without even pausing I say, “The full phrase is Jo Bole So Nihaal, Sat Sri Akal,” and let out a laugh. This is not hardwired information. I only know it because my brother loved researching everything too. Like when we’d recite prayers, he needed to look up the etymology of a word in one of the fifteen Sikhi apps on his phone, like Shabad Khosh, or in an actual book he had special ordered online. Then he’d need to explain it to me. It would make daily recitations take forever. One time he looked up Sat Sri Akal when I attempted to argue it was pronounced Sasrikaaaal, like it was one word instead of three, and said, “Okay, smart guy, what does it mean then?” He knew I was wrong, but it annoyed him that he was stumped and couldn’t articulate the meaning.
“It’s a jakara—a battle cry—and the whole phrase roughly means awesomeness. Like, I guess, h-happiness and stuff will be . . . uh . . . b-b-be-bequeathed.” I pause, relishing my use of the word bequeathed. “To the person who yells out ‘The Timeless Eternal Being is the Truth.’ ”
“So. Not Hi there, then?” Mindii says. She looks at me for a moment, not smiling. Just looking. I wonder if she thinks I’m smart. I look up at the sky as the nozzle pumps a last few gushes of unleaded plus into the bike.
She climbs on, and hits the kickstand. I have no rash decision and I didn’t write any of the ones I’ve done. I have accomplished nothing.
I am standing next to the bike, tightening my buttocks in anticipation as she is about to start the engine. It’s mostly dark, there are some trees and a field behind the gas station. No inspiration here. I could bluff and be magnanimous by letting her make an extra rash decision. No. Not doing that. I look on the floor. A torn black-and-white flyer illuminated by the lights from inside the gas station. The words All-inclusive open mic. Characters of all identities welcome. Eat donuts. I look back across the street and see the place mentioned in the flyer, a sign for Madam M’s Marvelous Donuts. “So where to, Twinkle Toes?” Mindii says, revving the engine with glee.
Another Airbender reference.
“To, uh, the d-donut place?” I say, still standing, an eyebrow raised in an attempt to gauge how into this idea she is. “We could walk there for an added layer of . . .” I pause. “Danger!” I yell, using both hands to signify the level of irresponsible rashness I’m proposing.
“The open-mic donut place?” Mindii says. “The cosplay stuff doesn’t start till way later. Prolly dead inside. I should write metal. ‘Probably Dead Inside’ would make a great song.”
She chuckles and paddles the bike with her feet near a barbed wire fence next to a closed RV lot. I watch her in awe. Zero hesitation.
We cross the street—careful, even though there’s not much traffic now—and are in the tiny parking lot of the donut shop, sandwiched between some boring, box-like buildings. The parking lot isn’t packed, but there are a respectable number of cars here. She takes out her phone to look at the time. Nine forty-two. We walk around to the back of the building. She takes confident familiar steps until we are directly in front of an enormous window with a metal door next to it. She’s been here before. A secret entrance? Through a window, we see a middle-aged man in the kitchen, using a pair of long wooden sticks to turn donuts in the fryer. He looks at Mindii and his face lights up.
Of course she knows the guy. Of course she’s been here. Of course she knows this random donut place.
“This is The Hangout,” Mindii says. “I used to be in a poetry group, but haven’t come here in a minute. Their donuts are so good.”
She opens the door and we start walking through the kitchen. I take a strong whiff of all the donuts. “What kind of poetry were you doing?” I say, hustling in my armor to keep up.
“Slam. Fresh donuts and poetry. Can you think of a more perfect combination?” Mindii says.
“I love the smell of donuts. Sl-slam poetry sounds, wow.” I’m at a loss for words.
“Why are they making them now? Don’t they make these in the morning?” I say as we stop to watch all the activity in the kitchen.
“No stale-ass morning donuts here. Cambodians make them throughout the day in small batches. Learned that from Uncle Ted, the reason this gem of a place exists in the first place, instead of Dunkin’, Krispy Kreme, or Winchins.”
“That’s pretty smart. So they’re always super fresh. What’s Winchins?”
“Exactly,” Mindii says. “Ted Ngoy is the reason none of these huge chains could break into the breakfast scene in California. One Cambodian refugee changed the entire industry. Hi, Uncle Channthy!” Mindii waves at the old man. He gleefully smiles at her, but continues deep-frying the donuts. “Just wait till you see the flavors,” she adds.
“Are there a lot of Cambodians that own donut shops?”
Uncle Channthy turns to look at my face, then back to the hot oil. “Yeah dude. Read a book. Watch a documentary. They have both here in the main room. Bunch of people going around eating glazed donuts in bright pink boxes and don’t even know who Ted Ngoy is.”
“Word,” I say. I have no idea who Ted Ngoy is.
We get to the main room, where there’s a small space for a stage, wires everywhere for speakers and mics. The front of the shop is all large windows, a long bench, but my nose leads me straight to the beauteous glass cases filled with donuts. There are the usuals: plain, glazed, drizzled, bear claws, cinnamon rolls, long johns, jelly filled. There are also red-bean-filled donuts, matcha, and a variety of what look and sound like Cambodian-style donuts, noum kong.
“What’s red-bean filling?” I ask.
“I don’t know, guy who makes rash decisions. Why don’t you tell me?” She is goading me.
A girl comes to the counter and smiles at Mindii.
“Haven’t seen you in a while. Performing tonight?”
“Maybe,” Mindii says.
It’s the first time I’ve seen Mindii be noncommittal. Before I have a chance to ask her what she’s performing or what she used to perform, Mindii is ordering.
“A matcha cream filled,” Mindii says. “And a large boba. Thai.”
“I will have a noum kong and a red-bean donut,” I say confidently, then immediately second-guess myself. But I say nothing.
We take our donuts and sit down at a table by a large glass window. She watches me ogling the spread before us. She gestures with her hand to commence, since she’s already started digging in. I bite into my red-bean donut and am surprised that I kinda like it on first bite—slightly sweet. Then it tastes mealy, a little strange. The actual red bean, which tastes just like you’d think red beans would taste. Despite my best efforts, my face contorts as I continue chewing. Mushed-up beans sprinkled with sugar. “Who,” I say around a vigorous bite, “thought this was a good idea?”
“A lot of people like it,” Mindii says, her mouth full of donut. “I don’t. But this matcha is so good.” She offers me a bite. It is delicious, warm, and soft.
I finish the red-bean donut despite still being unsure whether I like it, even after I take the last bite. Next, I sink my teeth into the noum kong.
“Wow.” It’s super chewy with a caramel glaze. “This is exquisite.”
“It’s deep-fried Khmer donut.”
“Coconut milk?”
“Yep. And palm sugar.”
We sit quietly for a few minutes, eating and sharing her bubble tea.
“I’m guessing that’s Ted Ngoy?” I say, wiping my mouth and pointing to a documentary playing on the television in the corner. There are also photos on the wall of a serious-looking man posing with donuts, some black-and-white, some in color.
“Yeah,” Mindii says. “Fantastic documentary. The Donut King, by Alice Gu. Plays on a loop here so at least people can get a bit of a history lesson. Ted Bun Tek Ngoy escapes genocide in Cambodia, learns about the donut business, buys a ton of donut stores across California, and sponsors hundreds of families who now do the same thing. And it wasn’t even to get rich, it was literally just to survive in a country that creates all these messes in other countries, then is all, ‘Why are all these brown people here?’ ”
She passes the boba to me and I take a sip. The documentary flashes snapshots of a new generation of Cambodians taking over their parents’ donut stores.
“Spoiler alert,” I say playfully. “Th-thanks for ruining the documentary,” I say.
“Oh, I didn’t spoil it yet. He loses it all gambling. Spoiler alert.”
I smile.
“Such a strange niche.” I watch more images scroll on the screen. “It’s like those rags-to-riches stories of the first Punjabi immigrants who came to the US in the early 1900s. They worked on railroads and lumber mills and as farm laborers, and had to deal with so many openly racist laws made just so Asians couldn’t make it. And still they took their shot, buying up things through white people they hoped they could trust.”
I’ll be glad to be out of school. Tired of reading about liberty and reciting the pledge when they can’t even use the words white supremacy or teach Californian history properly in school. Adults are the ones teaching us their bad takes on politics and lack of critical thinking skills.”
“Yeah. Like how is the Alien Land Law not taught in history classes. Or the fact the Ghadar Party–the revolutionary movement to end colonial rule in British India was started by steel and lumber mill workers in Astoria, Oregon, in 1913. Not a mention of any of those things, and not a peep about the Secret War,” I say, my voice getting indignant.
“Exactly!” Mindii says. “It’s American history. Yet we got all the time in the world to talk about the greatness of the Founding Fathers, glossing right over them being enslavers.”
“Like that whole-ass musical they made about enslavers,” I say. “Took them five minutes to rebrand George W. Bush as a painter instead of war criminal. Watch, they’re gonna include Hitler in an art history class any day now, and kids are gonna have an even more skewed version of what counts as racism.”
“Dude,” she says in agreement.
“Oh shit,” I say, looking back up at the TV screen. “This is a terrible twist.”
I stare in disbelief, even though I knew this was coming since Mindii kinda gave away the spoiler. The Donut King started gambling, and gambled so much that he started selling off his stores to other Cambodians, eventually losing everything, his money, his reputation, his family.
I feel sad for him. And angry. He’s clearly addicted, but he’s also the one who ruined everyone’s life. I’m reminded of how I love and miss Goldy so much, feel sad about his disease, and am so angry at him. All those emotions at once.
“Whenever I watch rags-to-riches movies, I’m always so bored at how singular the stories are. It’s like a freaking cornucopia for Hollywood, not that they’ve noticed,” Mindii says, sipping boba. “Cambodian refugees escaped genocide in the late ’70s by coming here with nothing and bought independent donut joints like this just to survive in America. That’s the reason their sons and daughters and grandkids run this shit. Because if they lose it, that’s it. A part of their family history and Californian history is just gone.”
“Yeah, it’s like in places like Yuba-Sutter County, Punjabis own ninety-five percent of the peach farming industry because of previous generations putting in that work. If one of those grandkids is like, I wanna be a computer engineer, that legacy is done.” She looks down at the donut and I know we’re not talking about Ted Ngoy anymore. She’s thinking about the stall, and I’m thinking about Goldy.
The door chimes and two Hmong girls walk in to pick up a couple of pink boxes filled with donuts. One of them has blue hair and really impressive makeup, like some kind of dragon, and the other girl has orange fur and a tail, like a fox spirit. They look over at Mindii and leap up in the air with excitement. Mindii stands up and they give each other hugs while I awkwardly sit between them all.
“Oh my God, I can’t believe it. How long has it been?” the girl dressed like a dragon says.
“Too long,” the fox spirit says.
Mindii nods. She turns to me. “This is Yia”—she points to the fox spirit—”and Hazel”—the dragon girl.
“Hey.” They both wave. “We used to be Poj Laib. I mean, we’re still Poj Laib, just not in a group.” They all laugh. I laugh too even though I don’t understand the joke. At. All.
“Our poetry slam name,” Yia says.
“Fighting the idea that women are bad anything just because the patriarchy says so,” Hazel adds.
“An ode to all the bad modern daughters, bad wives, bad mothers, bad sisters, basically Poj Laib all over the fandom,” Yia says.
“That’s what Poj Laib means?” I say.
“Not bad pronunciation. David, right? From the books?” they say, skipping over my question.
“Dafydd,” I say. “It’s Petrichorian.”
Yia turns to Mindii and excitedly says, ”We never did Katara, did we?”
“No. I don’t think so.” Hazel, the dragon spirit, places a palm on our table.
“She is the ultimate Poj Laib,” she chuckles. “We better bounce. We’re on our way to the Airbender party.”
“It’s an anime party,” Yia corrects.
“Oh, is this like an all ‘fandoms’ welcome thing, but it’s designed with only one in mind?” Mindii says.
We laugh.
“What’s the deal with the open-mic poetry? It’s in cosplay?” I ask.
“That’s kinda it. That’s the deal,” Hazel says. “It’s a lot of fun. It started as just a general South Asian poetry meet-up, but then everyone all descended and Uncle Channthy was super nice, made everyone welcome. So it’s been around for a good couple years now.”
They lean in and give Mindii another hug and start heading out. The two girls leave and Mindii smiles at me. But there’s something off about the smile, an emptiness behind it. I realize what she’s doing. Pretending.
Apparently this isn’t just something my family does. I’ve forgotten how many times I believed Goldy no matter how many times he let me down. Just looking at his face, the desperation to be believed, and everyone’s willingness to just let us believe he had everything under control. Then, poof, it’s gone.
We’re all great at pretending. Until we’re not.