by Meghana Mysore
The sky in Oregon blazed orange. Lakshmi looked outside, and thought of her mother’s kerosene lamp burning on through the night’s darkness. In India, she kept it on her nightstand, and left it on when Lakshmi’s father was out late at the neighbor’s house, chattering away. Lakshmi could hear the whispers of their voices, and the silence in her own house. Her mother left her door ajar, and the light spilled into young Lakshmi’s room. Lakshmi craved this light, its burning glow.
The sky glowed with an eerie beauty. Lakshmi and her daughter sat watching the news. Lightning had ignited the wildfire that spread over the state. Their belongings were packed up in suitcases. They were on a level 1 evacuation warning now, and Srinivas was on the line. He was watching the news, too. He had accrued hotel points from his frequent work travels to California and said they should use some and go.
Surya sat far away from Lakshmi, on the other side of the couch. They’d spent several weekends together like this when Srinivas was away for work trips. A wall remained between them; Surya stared at Lakshmi, her eyes like dark bullets.
“When is dad home?” she asked. Lakshmi ignored the question.
“Did you put the clothes you might need in your suitcase?” she asked her 12-year-old.
When the news issued a Level 2 evacuation for the area, Lakshmi decided they would go. She looked at the backyard, the skeletal branches of trees dancing in their ethereal surroundings. She stared at the whole mess of the branches, and imagined them catapulted into a fire. What would happen if it all went away like that, in a flash? She thought of her mother’s lamp, the flickering brightness.
“Should I get in the car?”
“Yes. Go now. I’ll be right there.”
Srinivas had booked a room at a Hampton Inn in Hillsboro. As she drove the Jeep down the highway, she thought about the sky in different areas of Portland, and in downtown, where the family had gone to the Saturday Market. She remembered the time she’d bought Surya spoon and fork-shaped earrings. This had made Surya happy. She stopped wearing earrings soon after, her skin drying around her ears from swimming.
In their hotel room, Lakshmi and Surya sat across from each other, on separate beds. Surya pressed her knees together, sitting up tall. When she was Surya’s age, Lakshmi suffered from bad posture. Her mother had no problem pointing this out to her again and again. She thought about telling Surya, but refrained.
“Should we go and find somewhere to eat?”
“It’s 4:30.”
“Well, do you want to turn on the TV? See what channels they have here?”
“It’s always Big Bang Theory. I hate that show.”
“Why?”
“The Indian guy’s a stereotype.”
Lakshmi smiled because she admired so deeply how her daughter spoke her mind. She loved Surya’s wit, her sarcasm, that all of her emotions, even if she tried to hide them, appeared in plain sight on her face.
“You’re laughing at me.”
“I’m not.”
Surya turned on the TV. On the news, Lakshmi saw the smoke rising all over town.
“Will our house get destroyed?” Surya asked. She lay down on the bed, her curly hair splayed out.
“No, no, nothing like that. The smoke is just dangerous for us to be around.”
Surya and Srinivas suffered from asthma. Lakshmi dusted the house several times a week, and around Surya’s bed frame so nothing triggering would get into her body.
Surya was typing something on her flip phone. Lakshmi wondered who her daughter texted. Srinivas texted Lakshmi: “You both try to get some rest, get some food.”
When they walked out, Lakshmi smelled the smoke, though it was less intense than in the suburb. It still made Surya cough, and Lakshmi rubbed her daughter’s back, but Surya flinched, pushing her away. They walked from restaurant to restaurant–an Italian place, a Moroccan place, Subway–and all were closed. An Indian restaurant was open. “How about here?” Lakshmi asked. “You like butter chicken.”
“It’s been forever since I’ve liked that,” Surya said. “I hate those creamy sauces,” she said. She didn’t eat Lakshmi’s South Indian food, either; once upon a time, she liked the okra curry she used to make. She remembered making dosa after dosa and Surya sitting on her stool, poking holes in the middle of the round dough, and begging for more. What had happened to that child, who used to be so hungry for many things?
The hotel restaurant was open and Surya ordered a chicken and basil dish. She and Srinivas ate meat, though Lakshmi wished they didn’t. It wasn’t just about Hinduism or what their relatives would think; the thought of meat, its texture–which she imagined as slimy, since she’d seen a raw piece of chicken–disgusted her.
Though her daughter was not talking to her, Lakshmi enjoyed the peaceful silence. Surya ate quickly, gulping each bite down so fast she didn’t seem to be tasting the food. Then her face grew a reddish hue, and her lips bulged out slightly, and she looked at Lakshmi.
“What’s wrong?”
Surya pointed wordlessly at her plate, then spit out what she had chewed. Lakshmi saw the greenish part of the mixture and understood. Surya had eaten pesto, which must’ve had pine nuts in it. Lakshmi didn’t have the bag with the EpiPen and the Benadryl. “Let’s go upstairs,” she told her daughter. “Can you breathe?”
Surya nodded. She held her daughter’s hand and Surya rose. She waved to the waiter and paid. This hadn’t happened for some time now–maybe a year or so. Lakshmi felt like it was her fault, somehow. If Srinivas were here, it wouldn’t have happened.
She patted Surya’s back and held her hand tightly. This time, Surya didn’t let go.
In the room, after taking Benadryl, Surya lay on her bed. Lakshmi watched her, her hair all over the pillow, eyes closed, her mouth open. She felt the urge to describe how she looked right then, how her image transported Lakshmi across the planes of time. She knew Surya didn’t want to be seen like Lakshmi saw her, as a child, but what else could her daughter be to her? She remembered when they’d found out Surya was allergic to nuts. Srinivas had fed her a walnut and then they were in the hospital, Surya’s lips red blossoms. “She’s brave,” the doctor had said, poking all over her arm to test for allergies. “A brave trooper, this one.”
Lakshmi watched the news on silent. The same images–the bright orange sky, embers of smoke. She turned it off. She moved to Surya’s bed, trying not to make sounds as she adjusted her body. She saw the hotel notepad on the bedside table. She brought it to her lap, and began to write.
Her hair, wisps of clouds. The pink sky rising, citrus sting. Her lips as she’d been that day, long ago. I ran home from the store so quickly, cereal box in hand. Ran home to my daughter.
Lakshmi was embarrassed by her overwrought descriptions. She swore that, once, she could write. But the feeling that was central to her writing, the emotion that used to overflow before she was married to Srinivas, had withered. It felt forced. She used to hear something, a rhythm, within her. It was gone now. Sometimes, the role of mother to her felt like a part, something she’d slipped into without quite knowing why. She loved this child. She just couldn’t quite find the words for that love.
Perhaps this was how her mother had felt. She remembered the many evenings of kneading phulka dough alone, trying to concoct songs in her head to keep her company. All those times, while the chatter roared on in the living room, Lakshmi’s mother was sleeping. Lakshmi felt it, too, this urge to sleep on and on, to crawl into an abyss away from motherhood, from being a wife, a daughter.
Surya moved, grabbing Lakshmi’s thigh. It was an awkward place to grab, and confirmed Lakshmi’s thought that her daughter was still deep in Benadryl-inspired dream-land. But a few moments later, she rose, still bleary eyed, but awake.
“What happened, mari?”
She had her earphones in; Lakshmi hadn’t noticed before. She fiddled with them, pulling them out of her ears and putting them back in. “Can you hear anything?” Surya asked. Then she asked why it was so hot.
“I can see if I can turn down the heat.”
“I’m so tired,” she said.
“Here, some water,” Lakshmi said, filling a cup from the sink. “Do you need more medicine?”
“No, it knocked me out. There’s still a little pain in my throat.”
“I can make you some tea.”
“I don’t want that.” She drank a sip of water. She drank slowly, and her words came out even slower. “I want my face to not have to be fixed.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“That’s what Kyle Anderson said.”
“What? When did he say that?”
“When we were doing our projects in computer lab about what we were going to do when we grow up.”
“Who is he to say that? Let me talk to his parents.” Suddenly, the Lakshmi who had stayed all of Surya’s schooling years away from PTA meetings, away from the Blossom Grove parents, was ready to face Kyle Anderson’s entitled parents. She became, like many mothers, a fierce hen when it came to her daughter.
“Don’t do that. He swims with me.” She had a worried look on her face that made Lakshmi’s heart sink. “You know my friend Tara? She eats asparagus and chicken every night.”
“What we eat is fine. Keeps you strong.”
She sank back into the bedsheets. “The chlorine makes my skin dry. The dermatologist said if you had dry skin you won’t have acne but that’s not true. Our family has all the skin issues. I have a bad genetic code.”
“That’s not true. We have good genetics. So many smart people in your family, like your dad, and my mother…”
“I don’t know anything about Ajji. I never have anything to say to her on the phone.”
Surya shut her eyes again. She collapsed into the powerful embrace of sleep.
What had Lakshmi really said to her mother all those years growing up? The most she understood of her was through the flickering lamp light, the flashing signal. On always when Lakshmi’s father was out, but through the day she acted indifferent to him. At night when he wasn’t there the light cried out. Absence. Absence. The word crawled across the floor. Lakshmi remembered the rustling when her father returned, sometimes at 1, 2 a.m., and moments before he entered, her mother’s scurrying around like an animal. She turned off the light. So that Lakshmi’s father would never know how much she needed him.
One night, when she was eleven years old, Lakshmi, having had a bad dream–one about jalebi-eating monsters, their mouths awash in a tacky orange glow–tiptoed across to her mother’s room. She stopped in the living room, hesitant, afraid. She saw her mother’s head, could smell, so close, the coconut oil in her hair. She stood in her mother’s room, a golden hue of light reaching her mother’s toes, making them, in their discoloration, strangely beautiful.
She lay down next to her mother, making a pillow with her hands. Her mother moved towards Lakshmi, giving her a bit of her shawl. She placed her arm over Lakshmi, and Lakshmi could feel what linked the two of them together.
“I’m hungry,” Surya said, and so Lakshmi ordered from the hotel restaurant again. She got what Surya loved: carbonara pasta. She wondered if it was a good idea, Surya eating so heavily when she’d just recovered from her allergies, but she wanted her daughter to be happy, even fleetingly.
Surya heaped the pasta onto her fork and swallowed quickly. The medicine had made her hungry. But then her stomach hurt, and she ran to the bathroom. “It’s hard to breathe,” she said, and Lakshmi followed her in.
She searched in the bag for the inhaler, but, panicking, she couldn’t find it. She called Srinivas, but the call didn’t go through. He struggled with asthma and he’d be able to give her instructions. The WiFi wasn’t connected. She called him on WhatsApp. It sounded like he was eating something. “What happened?”
“Where’s the inhaler? Surya’s having trouble breathing.”
“The front pocket of the backpack.” It was an intuitive place, but with him telling her, she found it. Surya inhaled, breathing in the medicine. Lakshmi smelled the metallic scent of the inhaler, and encouraged her daughter to keep breathing. In, out. In, out.
Ēnāyitu? She heard the voice coming from her phone. What happened? Lakshmi’s mother asked.
Her face was on Lakshmi’s screen. She’d hung up on Srinivas and clicked somehow on her mother’s name. Her mother, 8,197 miles away, stared straight at her. Many mornings this week, her mother had sent Lakshmi her routine Good morning message with big sprawling white text on the background of a golden Ganesha. She hadn’t responded. Lakshmi felt a pang of guilt about this now.
“Amma, what’re you doing up? It’s very early there.”
“I get up before your appa now. Drink coffee. Listen to birds. It is peaceful.”
For as long as Lakshmi had lived with her mother, she’d never known her to get up early. She’d known her, in fact, for days, to not get up at all. Lakshmi hadn’t called her in a few weeks. Lakshmi found that as the guilt of distance filled her, piled up within her, she avoided the calls more. The silence between them festered into a bruise.
“Sometimes I walk,” her mother continued in Kannada. “You know they’ve made a new park? I take circles around the monuments there.”
“That’s very nice, Amma. Surya’s struggling a bit now—can I call you back?” Surya was bent over the sink, taking in gulps of air. Lakshmi could see her eyes in the mirror–she looked at Lakshmi like she wanted her to disappear.
“You’re okay, jaanmari?”
“Fine,” she said, shakily. “You can talk to Ajji.”
Lakshmi sat on the bed, watching her daughter. She spoke quietly. “Surya ate some nuts and had allergies, and I think she’s panicking too. So her asthma is flaring up. Srinivas is in California and we had to evacuate our home and come to a hotel because of the wildfires. Surya told me,” Lakshmi said, her voice a near whisper, “that some boy at school told her she needs to fix her face. How can a kid be so cruel?”
“I can hear you!” Surya walked out of the bathroom, hands balled into fists. Lakshmi couldn’t tell what she was fighting. “This is why I don’t want to tell you things. You just tell everybody.” She was getting worked up, like she used to when she was even younger. The last time Lakshmi’s mother had visited Oregon, Surya was going through “a phase of fury,” as she and Srinivas had termed it. This was a few years ago–she was nine then–and often balled her hands into fists like this when she didn’t like the answers, the way things were.
She’d slam the door to her room and sit at the windowsill, making herself as small as could be. She’d wait for someone to enter her room, to come looking for her, but it had to be the right person. Lakshmi wasn’t the right person. When Lakshmi’s mother was visiting, Surya accepted her. This had annoyed Lakshmi. Once, Lakshmi stood just outside Surya’s door, looking in as her mother spoonfed Surya dal and rice. This was all she had to do?
“Here, eat hot food, you feel better,” she said. She didn’t have to say anything else. Surya swallowed, quietly. Surya had been wearing a sun-bright yellow dress. She stared at this woman who shared her lineage, someone she did not really know, and yet the only person who could comfort her through her simple silence.
Clenching her teeth now, perhaps because she didn’t know what else to do, Surya turned off all the lights. She stood in the darkness, a small shadowy figure, swaying. She cried loudly, like a child vying for attention, but Lakshmi knew that anything she did would upset her. “Come, sit here, Surya. Just breathe.”
Lakshmi’s mother gestured over the video call. “She can talk to me,” she told Lakshmi.
Surya took the phone.
“What’s wrong, mari?” her ajji asked.
“I can’t breathe. And mom said all those things.”
“She didn’t mean anything by it,” Lakshmi’s mother said. Surya ran back into the bathroom, the door shutting behind her, but then she opened it, leaving it ajar.
“She cares for you,” Ajji said. Surya’s sobs softened. Now Lakshmi was grateful for her mother’s words. She did know just what to say, even if she hadn’t known when Lakshmi was a child.
“Look at me,” Ajji said. “Look up. Your mother is not only my child; you are my child too. Do you hear me? I see you on the screen. Your hair, so full, so beautiful. Your eyes are shining.”
“I’m crying.”
“Doesn’t matter. They shine all the time. Bright. Like your mother’s.”
Surya sat in the bathroom for a while, and after some time, her breathing seemed to regularize.
She spoke, softly, “Good night, Ajji. Thanks.”
Lakshmi’s eyes were closing, but she wanted to be awake as long as her daughter was. Some time later, when she had waded in and out of sleep, she saw her daughter standing above her, and felt her small hand on her cheek. Surya touched her own face after. Then she turned on the light in the bathroom. Neither of them could sleep in the dark.
Meghana Mysore, from Portland, Oregon, is an Indian American writer whose work has been published in The Yale Review, Boston Review, The Rumpus, Apogee, Pleiades, Passages North, Roxane Gay’s The Audacity, and more. A 2022-2023 Steinbeck Fellow, Tin House Scholar and Pushcart Prize nominee, she has also received recognition from The Carolyn Moore Writers’ Residency, Bread Loaf, The de Groot Foundation, The Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference. You can find her at www.meghanamysore.com or on Twitter @MysoreMeghana.