Rani Patel In Full Effect. Sonia Patel
the hell up!
“You know nothing much surprises me. But this, I never would’ve guessed this about you, Rani. I mean MC Sutra.” He pauses then asks, “You seventeen, yeah?”
“Yeah, just about.” I’m straining to keep my cool. I’m freaked out that he’ll leak my secret about MC Sutra. I end up clasping my hands and begging. “Please Mark, don’t tell anyone about the rap or about MC Sutra. Please, please!”
“I won’t if…” he says real slow, “…if you read me the poem.”
He stretches his arms onto each side of the railing. For a second they appear more sinewy than usual. But then I see something I’ve never noticed before—a dreamcatcher tattoo wrapping around his right upper arm. But before I can ask him about it, he says, “I’m ready.”
I take a deep breath. “It’s called ‘Widow,’” I mumble. I open my notebook and flip to the right page. As I start reading, the anxiety slowly melts away like a half-eaten shave ice in the summer sun. I change up the speed, the volume, and the tone to match the words, pausing strategically along the way. Full on Patricia Smith.
I shaved my head.
Waist length, thick, good Indian hair
gone in five minutes.
Hair shed,
saying the unsaid.
To my mom whose arranged marriage
my dad disparaged,
so daughter became child bride.
He divides
me and her.
He kept me close, his little princess,
his little missus
and witness
to Mom’s “accidents” from
years of banging her head on hard cold walls, numb.
Brandishing knives in desperate suicidal threats.
Rani betta, my little darling, just forget.
Let me comfort you
with teenage back rubs, taboo.
But they help him pull through.
A dark web of emotional and sexual merging,
and I am emerging
as his mirror.
He tries to make things clearer.
He says,
I escaped India,
my mother’s frustrations,
my father’s perversions,
my own victimization
by immigration to America.
A better life was my intention.
But he had no foundation.
So he made me his reincarnation.
Attempts at normal friendships
elicit Dad’s guilt trips
and snubs.
His revenge: psychological break-up.
By him I am now ignored.
His insatiable thirst for being adored
quenched by another, half his age.
At first, rage.
New lover?
New daughter?
Winds of fury
intensify waves of sorrow,
steadily, one after another,
they smother…me.
I’m worthless.
Nothing.
Dead.
Mom’s suicidal frustrations in my head.
I punish myself and shed
hair, self-worth, dignity.
It, not she.
I realize I’m standing up. And crying. I sit back down on the bench and look quick at Mark. His expression is somber and his eyes wet. I had no idea my words could move a grown man.
“Is this about what happened at Kanemitsu’s last night?”
“Yup,” I whisper.
Mark speaks softly. “That line about your Mom near the end, I can totally relate.”
He’s frowning and seems more sad. We sit in silence, reliving our own painful memories. And despite the solemn mood, I’m astonished at all the firsts. First time a hot guy paid attention to me. First time I told anyone about my passion for writing rap. First time I told anyone about some of my family problems. Somehow I don’t feel so alone.
Instead I feel connected and grateful. Also butterflies. But not the usual few. A thousand of them.
At 9:15 p.m. on Saturday, September 7—two hours before Kanemitsu’s—Mom and I were closing up the restaurant. And I still sorta had my act together. Sorta because I’d been on the verge of losing my marbles for months. See, I’d been ninety-nine percent sure that my dad was having an affair. I figured the definitive proof of his goings-on would present itself soon enough since Moloka’i is small. With only about six thousand people on this thirty-eight mile long, tenmile wide island, how could it not? Besides, everyone knows everyone. What I didn’t know was that before this night was done the truth would be fully in my face. And it would all go down at Kanemitsu’s.
On that day, I was exactly one year and three months shy of eighteen. Adulthood was approaching. But my dad’s attention had slipped away awhile back. And with it so had my sense of wellbeing, my sense of how things were supposed to be. Of who I was. Of my value. I couldn’t figure out how I’d been managing to keep myself together.
I was thinking about this as I carried the last of the dirty dishes from the dining area to the sinks in the back. Whenever I think about something deeply, my mind just naturally gets a rhyme going.
My self is sliding away.
Self-worth, astray.
Self-confidence, flying like an angry jay.
Self-esteem, on the way to faraway.
Self-respect, not sticking around for these rainy days.
Two hours before Kanemitsu’s, I still had a full head of hair.
And all the customers had gone home.
I’d let my hair out of the bun that had been sitting on top of my head, so tight it felt like I’d been balancing a donut up there. I tilted my head back and shook out my thick black locks.
Aah.
My waist-length Indian hair flowed down my back like the river Styx. Some of my Gujju aunties on the mainland called it sahrus var—good hair. My mom called it vagrun var—wild woman hair. I didn’t call it anything. Mostly I tried to tame it by making it into a bun or a French braid or a ponytail.
Except when I was alone. Then I let my hair down. Loose and free.
I was thinking about where to start cleaning first—the floors, the table tops, the bar counter—when I heard a garbled male voice.
“Hey there little lady pretty Hawaiian.”
My mom was supposed to be the only other person in the restaurant. And she was in the back. Startled, I whipped around to see who it was, grabbing my hair to push it back up.
“No, leave it down. It’s gorgeous,” mumbled