The Taste of Ginger(16)

We had been dating for about five months and had entered that comfortable period where we could sit with each other in our pajamas and eyeglasses without any pretenses. After a long week at the office, we’d polished off a bottle and a half of wine, and he’d been teasing me about how guarded I was about my past and family, joking that I must be hiding some big secret, something horrifying like underwear with holes in it or a messy closet! I never talked about growing up in a dingy row house near Chicago’s version of Little India. Or about how my parents had trouble holding down jobs after they had immigrated, and we often struggled to pay bills. It was a far cry from the life I had now, and it was a life I wanted to forget.

But my alcohol-induced state mixed with his sultry “I want to know everything about you” blue eyes made me share more than I ordinarily would have, including a story from junior high I had never told anyone.



Back when I was in eighth grade, my teacher had announced the annual field trip and passed out the permission slips, and I braced myself for the cost. Dad had lost his job again a few months earlier, and there was nothing new on the horizon. Seventeen dollars. I did the math. That was sixty-eight cans of vegetables at the discount grocery store where my mother had started shopping. My heart sank.

It took until the day before the permission slip and fee were due for me to work up the nerve to ask my mother for the money. The paper was now creased and worn from being carried in my pocket for two weeks, waiting for the right opportunity to approach her. Before emerging from my room, I sat cross-legged, head bent, palms together before the photo of Krishna Bhagwan that hung over my pink-and-white bed. Ever since arriving in America, I’d stopped doing my daily prayers, turning to Bhagwan only when things were bad, so I didn’t expect them to be answered.

I passed by my parents’ bedroom. Dad was lying in bed, underneath the sheets, watching TV. Ever since he’d lost his job, I rarely saw him doing anything else.

My mother was in the kitchen, sitting at the table with a notebook, calculator, and set of bills spread before her. Her brow was furrowed as she tapped out numbers. She had permanent bags underneath her eyes and constantly appeared exhausted. The familiar smells of roasted cumin and mustard seeds wafted from the kitchen and got stronger as I approached her.

I handed her the paper.

“Is it the same place you went last year?” she asked after scanning it.

“Yeah.”

She paused. “Do you need to go again this year?”

Even at the age of thirteen, I understood how difficult it was for her to ask this question. It was the first time she had ever suggested I not participate in a school activity. To my parents, school and education were sacrosanct because they were the way to live a life independent of obligation.

Putting on my most nonchalant face, I said, “No, it wasn’t that fun last year.”

I climbed off the barstool and ran to my room, all the while hoping she would yell after me that I could go. But there was nothing other than silence. My body started to shake, and I slid down the closed bedroom door. It was one of the rare instances when I allowed myself to cry.

Anger swept through me because I wished my parents would stop being so damn proud and just ask our family in India for help. They had money and fancy houses and servants. But my mother refused to tell them the truth about our life in Chicago. We were supposed to be living the American dream, and they would worry if they knew we weren’t. And even if we did tell them, my dad’s pride and fear of obligations would never have allowed him to accept help.

I knew it was silly to cry over a field trip, but this was the one thing I would not be able to explain away to my friends when they asked why I wasn’t going. None of them knew about my dad’s job problems. I was too afraid of them looking at me differently. Of them knowing that in addition to being Indian and vegetarian and having parents who spoke with a funny accent, I couldn’t afford a few dollars for a field trip. I cried knowing all my efforts to fit in would vanish in an instant. I cried because life was unfair. Or maybe it was because I was thirteen and didn’t know how else to deal with it.

Startled by a knock on the door, I wiped the tears away and frantically rubbed my eyes. I jumped up and used the camera my parents had given me on my last birthday to cover my blotchy, tearstained face, pretending to check if the lens was clean.

My dad walked into my bedroom and placed something on my dresser. “Here.”

I peeked out from behind the camera and recognized the crumpled piece of paper along with seventeen dollars in cash.

A few weeks after I’d told Alex that story, I had to fly to Seattle for depositions. When he dropped me off at the airport, he handed me an envelope. It was plain, letter size. We stood outside the busy terminal at LAX, frazzled people milling around us. He told me not to open it until I was through security. As soon as I saw him exit the sliding doors, I slipped my index finger under the seal. Inside was seventeen dollars in cash—a ten, a five, and two one-dollar bills. On each of the bills was a single word written in red marker: I, Love, You, Preeti.

I looked up, searching for him, but he had already been swallowed by the others weaving in and out of the terminal. My heart pounded as I finally understood what it meant to love someone and be loved by someone. He moved into my place the next month.

After we broke up, this was the memory I played over and over in my head like a movie reel, questioning how we could have gone from that moment to eventually parting ways. We’d had a plan. I blamed myself for not sticking to it. During our first year as a couple, we went through the highs and lows of Alex writing what he hoped would be a production-worthy screenplay only to have his agent tell him to try again. Then this past January, he got a different call. The one that began with, “Alex, old boy, I sold your movie.” We were so giddy with excitement over that call, having no idea it would set us on a trajectory that would eventually pull us away from each other.