Nobody should be out this far without a car, Sam Ellisen thought. The sun beat down on the long stretch from Mesquite to North Las Vegas. Cars ran hot, and even newer cars with their fancy electronics had to turn up the heat to suck the hot air out of their engine. At least, that's what the smart drivers did. Nowadays, kids don’t know to turn on the heat and crank their windows down. And now the godforsaken idiot is walking. Sam pulled to the shoulder and waited for the kid to catch up. 

The small breeze that blew through the open windows was nothing compared to the forceful wind that came from driving, and Sam heated faster because of it. He sat in the baking desert, sweating, and watched the figure come closer in his side mirror.

The stranger huffed out of breath for a bit before speaking. “Thanks, man.” 

Sam didn’t like the way the kid called him ‘man’ but reached across the seat to unlock the passenger door. As he shifted his body, he felt the perspiration on his back. Sam’s shirt clung to him in an awful way. 

The truck doors stuck for a second, as usual, but the hitchhiker pulled again and climbed in. 

“Your car break down?” Sam asked while looking over his shoulder to merge back on the highway. Cars barreled past, none of them slowing for the old truck with the old man and the stranger in it. Then, a break in the pack of cars appeared and Sam pulled into the lane. 

“Nah man, I’m hitchhiking my way across America.” The kid said it like that was something to be proud of. Hitchhiking, in Sam’s mind, was dumber than letting an engine overheat. “Somebody let me off a couple miles back. Said I was stinking up their car.” 

“Hmmgh,” Sam grunted. He didn’t think the kid smelled all that bad, but the rushing air from the open window prevented him from smelling much of anything. Once he was back to cruising, he gave the kid a good look over. The white boy with ruddy cheeks and dark brown hair looked out the window and then at Sam. The kid ran his hands, rough from the beating sun and hard work, though his pompadour hair as if he knew what hard work was but didn’t like it. Sam turned his judgment back to the road. 

 “I’m Conner,” the kid said. 

“Mr. Ellisen.” 

The kid laughed, but then shut up when he saw Sam’s scowl. 

“Man, it’s hot,” Conner said. He rubbed his face with his shirt. “Is your heat on?” he asked, and then without pausing for Sam to answer, he said, “I guess you do have an older truck. Dad always said in these older cars you need to crank the heat to prevent it from overheating.”

Sam found himself surprised at his desire to commend the boy for knowing that, but when he opened his mouth to compliment his companion, Conner had moved on. Sam decided to let Conner fill the silence. 

“I started in El Paso, so you’d think I’d be used to the heat. Though, out here in the west, it’s mad hotter. I stayed in Arizona for a while. Met a guy who just got out of jail for some misdemeanor. Something about putting a pervert in a cast—said it was worth it.”

I’m inclined to agree, Sam thought, merging around a slow sedan.

Conner kept talking and talking about the people he met and the things he learned. Sam nodded along, letting him speak, listening to the secondhand tales, enjoying the company despite his initial evaluation. He even said a quiet ‘Thank you’ when Conner pointed out a motorcyclist in the truck's blind spot.

For the better part of an hour and fifteen, the boy spoke, Sam listened, and they both sweated. As Conner told him about mopping floors for a meal at a rest stop and doing an oil change for a ride out of Colorado Springs, Sam’s heart seemed to melt. I guess—I guess he ain’t so bad, he thought, everybody makes their own way. 

They entered North Las Vegas while Conner went on about a mom of six trying to convince him hitchhiking could be deadly. 

“She told me the same story three or four other people have told me: the urban legend about a serial killer picking hitchhikers up and driving them into the woods to kill them. Can you believe that four people all said the same thing, with the same emphasis on the woods?” Conner asked. “We’re nowhere near the woods.”

Sam supposed that the tale might be true or at least based in reality, but he figured there was no talking Conner out of his pilgrimage across the states. Besides, I ain’t his momma. 

After a moment of silence, Conner continued, “That’s when she said, ‘Honey, go home.’ But I just gotta do this. I wanna see things and—oh—” He pointed to a sign. “You could let me off on Flamingo, Mr. Ellisen.”

Sam knew his route from Salt Lake to San Diego, and Flamingo was gonna be ten minutes away. He looked at the kid and blinked. I ain’t never gonna see him again. 

“I, uh, wanna tell you something kid.”

“Sure.”

“Don’t interrupt.” Sam saw in his peripheral that Conner raised his hand up like he was agreeing or something. 

Sam sighed, like something cumbersome was leaving his body. “I was offered a million dollars when I was a kid, about your age. This was back when a million dollars was closer to a billion nowadays. I got this fancy letter in the mail, inviting me to a game at some casino along the California coast. I was living there those days. It said to take my letter and show it to a floor manager. I was adventurous back then. They took me up something like six flights of stairs into a big gold room. The walls were gilded and they reflected off each other except a darkened window. A big fat man sat in a ring. Sweat dripped off his face. He looked like he was nodding off, sleeping even though the room was loud. They were playing some big band jazz—I can’t remember the song.” 

Sam paused and looked at a passing sign for a personal lawyer. Conner said nothing. Another sign for Flamingo flew by. 

Sam continued. “The floor manager walked me around the man and to a table with a big bag on it. He told me to look inside, and so I did. It was full of money. ‘It's a million, if you want it,’ he said. Well, my gran was dying and my parents were getting evicted and loads of other stuff. I started spending it in my head, thinking of all the ways I’d fix up my life. I went to grab the bag. ‘You gotta kill him,’ the floor manager said. Then he pointed to the black window in the far corner of the room. He said something about how his employer was a strange man.” Sam paused, “‘Eclectic and superior’ was the words he used, wanted to watch rats squirm.”

 He shifted in his seat and felt the sweat on his back as he did.

“He took out a gun and pointed it at the fat man. Well, I was shaking then, sweating like the room was boiling. My hands were craving that money. So I took the gun. I walked around to see the man’s face cause shooting a man in the back felt cowardly. He was doped or something cause he couldn’t say anything, just moaning and crying. He was the saddest, most pathetic thing ever, looking at me with half-closed eyes. I wanted to. I held the gun up and everything. I was shaking so bad I couldn’t hardly hold it.”

A drop of sweat rolled into Sam’s eye. When he took his hand to rub away the sting, his fingers shook. “But I couldn’t do it. I saw myself in those gold mirrors, all distorted and mangled. He, the manager, took the gun after a while and shoved me in an elevator. I was crying and praying some god-forgive-me nonsense. I ran outta that casino and got in my car. It was raining pretty bad, and I couldn’t see out my eyes. I peeled out of the lot—I couldn’t stop—and slid into the crosswalk. I hit a lady walking. She died.” Sam’s voice caught on the last word, choking him.

 “They gave me four years for manslaughter. Never served it though; the judge was accused of doping. So they let me out after seven months on account of an unfair trial. My parents had this new house, too, and I asked them how they got it. ‘A check came in the mail,’ they said. ‘A million dollars.’”

With obscured vision and a racing heart, Sam took the exit for Flamingo. He pulled into a lot. The truck shook to a stop. Without the rushing wind, the truck began to bake like an oven. Sam felt the sweat and tears mix on his cheeks and could taste the salt when he licked his lips. 

Sam finally looked over at the boy with sad eyes, pleading, in silence, for him to say something. Conner opened the door. Before he stepped out of the truck, he said “Ya know, most people tell me, when I get out, to go home.” He slammed the door shut and leaned into the car through the open window. “What’s your point, Mr. Ellisen?”

Sam looked into the young man’s face, looking into youth—wanting to be forgiven, validated, and loved—and said, “Confession.”

On our summer vacation to Washington state, my mother pulls me back from Mount St. Helens with her gingham oven mitts. She is careful to protect her own hands when handling mine.

On the long drive home, I practice speaking with my new gravelly voice that sounds like I’ve been drinking glass and bourbon or chain-smoking like my grandmother.

We go to the doctor when I cough for six months straight, leaving white shrouds all over my sister and the dog and my tenth birthday cake with its ten volcanic candles.

 The doctor declares my lungs are looped with lava. I imagine Virginia Slim and the Marlboro Man are living there too. I feel them hopscotching over the lava onto my pretty pink girl lungs like it is a magic carpet. I cough and cough again. He tells my mother I have the lungs of an old woman and she blames it all on the volcano, not the old woman who sleeps in the room next to mine.

I stay home from school and make looped potholders like Rapunzel in a tower, quickly accumulating enough to escape out the window but I don’t because I am winded by the wind and my grandmother’s cigarettes in my face. At first I looped and re-looped and crochet hooked them off the metal loom to replace my mother’s singed picnic oven mitts, out of guilt. I find I have a rather entrepreneurial spirit and become good at creating them in color schemes to match our neighbor’s kitchen or my teacher’s science lab that I haven’t seen yet.

I didn’t have much choice.

“Stay in bed,” my mother said.

“Stay in bed,” my grandmother said.

I believed them both. I laid down obediently under yellowed ghost sheets that blew more smoke into my lungs, stayed horizontal as my grandmother dropped Pompeiian ashes on my face, made notes in my diary like I was Pliny the Younger.

The pile of potholders by my bed grew, competing with the flammable book stacks. I alternated looping with reading, nylon rows and rows of boxcar children that live in the green forest, not a gray bedroom. I eventually escaped to fourth grade and the Prince Charmings that I had heard laughing outside of my bedroom window for months.

***

My grandmother lives now in a box, paralyzed in some ashy crouched form, cancer slim, gray cigarettes in her gray pockets. Her chest is sunken and she hasn’t managed to escape the tiny yellow-walled house like I did. She’s clutching her tiny gold Timex in her hand, the second watch hand frozen at the time the ash and lava poured into her bedroom and finally choked her.

“There are no lungs to include,” the coroner tells me.

“How was she breathing?” I ask.

A white question cloud exits my slim lips, blows like a gray tsunami around the gray hospital room with only pale pink chairs to break up the mundane.

“You would have to ask the doctor,” he says.

“How am I still breathing?” I ask the coroner.

“You would need to ask your mother,” he says.

He points at a gray and white x-ray with no hint of pink (not extraordinary in itself for all x-rays are those colors), but I only see Virginia’s footprints and a left-behind cowboy hat. I feel myself falling and reach for my potholder cushions.

My mother holds out her oven-mitted hands to catch me but she’s too far away and I sink into the volcano, again.

“Bina! Come downstairs! They’re here!” My grandmother yells to me, frantically trying to fix the dupatta which keeps falling away from my face.  Could you be more Indian?

I swat my grandmother’s hands away from my face. My grandfather stands in the corner of the foyer, leaning against the shoe closet, amused by my grandmother.

“Remember Bina, do not look up. Don’t speak unless they ask you a question and keep your head down all the time. And no jokes this time. That’s why Raul’s family didn’t want to finalize the union.”

My grandmother goes on and on.

“No nanima, the family didn’t want us married because Raul’s ego couldn’t take being married to a girl who makes more money than him.” I can’t help but defend myself.

My grandmother gives me a hard look and points her finger at me angrily as a warning before opening the door and putting up an inauthentic smile. She perfected this change of attitude. I call it the granny face-flip.

When she opens the door, I make sure to keep my head down like she says. The sparkly dupatta is in the way of my eyes again, and my sari is much too long; I’m suddenly very aware of my lack of height and the very real possibility that I could trip on my sari in front of this family. Looking down, there are some ruby red painted nails in some white heels and two pairs of men’s shoes as well. A beaten pair of white sneakers peak out of some khaki pants and classic Indian uncle sandals are paired with jeans.

Obviously, an Indian male wouldn’t have the decency to dress up. He must’ve been too busy being taught that having a penis made him the center of the universe. Like my grandmother always tells me, Pathi Parameshwar.

“Mina, it’s so nice to see you again! How are you? You’re looking very thin.” Naina aunty’s white heels step forward to hug my grandmother.

I know my grandmother too well. I’m sure she’s hiding her excitement and her big grin is purposefully suppressed into a shy smile. I call this the reverse granny face-flop. I’m sure she’s looking towards the ground, like the Indian actresses would in old movies whenever they were complimented. After all, why wouldn’t she be pleased? We must be the model minority.

“Oh yeah Naina. I walk an hour a day. Mahesh put in the walkway in our 3-acre backyard so I put on my headphones and walk at 5am in the mornings, except on Sundays. I get tired, you know, at 65. I walk a lot.” Nanima lives for compliments.

She was 300 hundred pounds when she was younger, which was not the ideal daughter for her parents to have. If Indian parents raised their daughter correctly, they get married. That’s the one defining factor of good parenting when it comes to a desi daughter. To be ideal for marriage, a girl must be thin with fair skin, have the ability to cook and clean, and be well educated but not ambitious. Everyone doubted she’d get married, and in a society where a lack of a husband is a lack of success, many Indian girls have low self-esteem. It’s their trademark. They just hide it well. After a stomach tuck, Nanima was able to bag a man.

“Oh wow. You should give yourself a break, Mina. You do more than a lot of young people, definitely more than Nithin.” Naina aunty gently elbows the boy in the white sneakers and khakis.

I guess Nithin’s white active footwear doesn’t indicate his athletic capabilities. That’s fantastic. Our kids will be couch potatoes.

“We saw the walkway when we were parking the car, and it looks so nice. Mahesh, you did a great job. I loved the gazebos and meditation centers you put in as well.” Naina knows the protocol well.

My grandfather stops leaning on the foyer wall and greets Naina aunty as well as her husband and son. Grandfather bows a bit, bringing his palms together from his sides to the center of his chest.

“Oh thank you Naina. I put those in and painted the gazebos in India’s colors. Did you like the paint? I was thinking about putting a fountain in the front.” My dear grandfather laughs. Of course his house would be decked out. He’s been flipping hotels his entire life after having fixed and flipped basements. He appreciates the rewards of living the American Dream.

My grandmother, being literally bred as the kind of wife to cook and host parties and gatherings, smoothly moves the group to the living room. This is a challenge for me. My sari makes me feel overdressed compared to Nithin’s khakis and sneakers. The struggle to not trip on my dress and fall flat on my face is very real.

I stay standing and wait for the elders to sit first. As they shuffle into the living room and sit on the brown leather couches, my grandmother tells me privately to go microwave the chai and appetizers on the counter and serve it to everyone.

I look for the ending of the red rug on the floor to lead me to the kitchen. When I finally finish microwaving and plating the food, I readjust my headscarf and re-enter the living room. Carrying a tray full of hot food and chai is not so easy when looking down, especially since I can feel my phone vibrating on my hip. It’s probably my tinder date for later tonight. My grandmother is so lucky that my horoscope said I’m more obedient when Mercury is in retrograde. Otherwise, I’d look up and check my phone in a heartbeat. Plus, if I can get through this meeting with Nithin’s family, it’ll get my grandmother off of my back for a few hours so I can actually go on my tinder date.

Paying attention to the elevation of the tray in my hands as well as the pattern of the rug on the floor, eventually, I reach the coffee table and place some appetizers my grandmother cooked earlier on the coffee table.

I hear footsteps behind me. My grandmother murmurs to me in Hindi, her mother tongue, telling me to serve everybody a glass of chai. Trying my best to portray the typical good Indian daughter, I look down and make sure to be submissive in every respect, even my posture. I hand a glass to the brown shoes, the heels, and the sneakers. When Naina and my grandmother seem deep in conversation, I sneak a peek at the boy. He’s looking down and inspecting the chai; he probably doesn’t want to be here either.

Nithin’s got brown eyes, dark hair, a strong build, and broad shoulders. His face screams fuckboy, but he looks so familiar. Maybe it’s just that most Indian guys I know through my family are fuckboys, too much of daddy’s money and not enough responsibility. Maybe I’ve seen him on Tinder? I can’t really put my finger on it though. I quickly look down again before anyone notices. Well, except my grandpa, but he’s a ride or die. He doesn’t snitch like that. He’s got too much of a soft spot for me.

My grandfather’s sits on the couch opposite of the wall I’m standing by. As a young female, I have to help host and do the serving for gatherings like this. I must act domestic. Any faux pau on my part would embarrass my grandmother; she would hit me with “what will people think?” I can’t disappoint her. The stockpile is getting low. There are not many boys that the family knows who haven’t already rejected me.

My grandmother and Naina aunty begin the classic Indian lady contest of who has the hardest life and who does the most housework. My grandmother is a professional at this game, though. She’s had twenty more years of experience at this game than Naina aunty. Is this my future if I agree to an arranged marriage into this family? Hell, is this my future if I agree to an arranged marriage into any Indian family? I’m much too white-washed for this.

I can feel my grandfather’s boredom just from standing near him. He hates this game because he knows none of it is true.

He’s employed a housekeeper since my mom was a teenager.

“Okay Mina. Your girl looks so beautiful. She takes after her dad.” Naina aunty’s long fingernails tap against her glass of chai. No, I don’t. I look exactly like my mom, but hell would freeze over before they gave any credit to Mom. Other Indians can’t acknowledge that divorced Indian women exist. Mom’s no longer accepted as part of the Indian community since her divorce. She’s not accepted into the Indian community but she’ll also never fully be accepted into the western community. She’s stuck in limbo.

“Oh yes, yes. She cooks well too. She made the appetizers and the chai.” Liar.

I was raised on take out.

Eighty kilometers outside Kolkata International airport, and your busy bee life is a vibrant static reflection on a lavender-rose, wrapped by the rental company’s ribbon. Your musing, a scrawl upon the fabric of a place. Next, between the faux-leather seat of the car where you’re strapped by seat-belts like an archaic harness, and the expansive paddy fields, your eyes measure freeway roads slicing the topography, cartwheeling across a rural stream and onwards towards your hometown.

Extravagance

Like an antonym for the dot on the map that it is, a place is an extravagance. The splurge is on the hand-painted freight trucks in a line ahead of you at the highway toll-gate. How the audacious graffiti is plastered loud on the colorful wood-and-metal bodies, mocking your bland cubicled existence at a city only a two-hour flight away. 

Marry a trucker, bond with tears — words of wisdom!

On the shoulder of the rail track by the highway, the richness of a chugging train — mirroring the trail of your thoughts — reminiscent of vacations at your grandpa’s.

Essence

The journey itself is home — Basho

Grab the essence of this spot. At the shanty where you halt for chai in an earthen cup, the quiet solitude is only broken by the swish of tyre on black tar. Miles and miles of the most fulfilling green, high upon which an ochre kite rules, soars, dives. 

Pause to hear the breeze clapping against itself, or strangers greeting each other, a spontaneous, Bhalo? 

Ruminate the way it is with the fluttering prayer flags hung on poles; imagine the five-horned monster of your girlhood tales, scurrying in fright at their sight. 

Climb back into the car, but wait to appreciate the simplicity of a family on foot as they walk past, unmindful of the attention, except the toddler on the man’s tired arm, gawking at you. 

Rev up the engine, and let a coconut vendor dart past, pedaling his rickety Hero cycle, onwards to a quaint little marketplace.

Scent

Below the low-hanging white cottony clouds scooting away from you, who, unlike you, have no destination to reach, no journey to terminate, notice the road sign which says only twenty kilometers remain. 

Like the beckoning fragrance of rose, like the earnest touch of an intimate lover, fill your senses with the scent of this place. 

Drive past the rice mills, the sooty brick-kiln chimneys, the odd pucca house with block-printed saris spread out on the roofs. 

At the last bend, rest your eyes on mango trees in an orchard, how they mingle in cadence like a musical band wearing fancy hats. 

Enjoy the welcome. 

Slow down, for the sweetmeat shops are telling you so! You need to buy some! Stand there in front of the counter, and let the warmth overrun you. Spare a minute to notice how the colors and shapes of different sweetmeats on the shelves behind the glass are like places on geographical maps, far more in worth than their appearance in size.

Notice the milestone in the range of your vision: the Zero gleaming in the light.