In 1983 I was sweating in the shade of a sky blue room. On the floor was a small jumping spider, rubbing its head with its front paws. I watched him for a while, he was suspicious, keeping his eight eyes on what he thought was moving at all times. I listened to the old black circular fan here at pedda atta’s house in Podili, the town where my father had grown up. Above me, and standing out sharply from the background of the wall, was a picture of a lightly mustached man, someone I never met. Pedda atta grew tired when she looked at her son. Her daughter, Radhika, took me up to the flat cement roof with piles of mud to stop the rain from leaking inside. She wore an orange red petticoat and matching ribbons wrapped in her black hair. Her smile was perfect. One of her dimples darker than the other.
Tattaya had found his way into my family’s living room in California. He is the figure of loss. He sits in a chair in the garage next to the minivan when it rains and smokes cigarettes. In good weather, he follows the cardio-vascular jogging route in the park down the street until his cigarette is finished.
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Nov 28, 01:21 AM