AMASS by Jai Dulani
Jimmy Smith saw it all. My family standing on the pavement. The fire trucks parked in front. Flashing lights whipping our faces. Roaches scuttling from my house. In droves.
The television had been on. Probably Wheel of Fortune or Married with Children. An always unfamiliar reality of Americans being too lucky or too crass. My brother and father were sitting on the couch, the war-torn air of their relationship floating in the galaxy between them.
“Don’t you smell smoke?” my mother asked when she, my sister, and I walked through the front door. They looked at us blankly through the burnt air.
The smoke was coming from our basement. Acrid sweet. Our dryer was malfunctioning.
A potential house fire or explosion wasn’t enough for my brother and father to speak to each other.
* * *
A cockroach can withstand 10 times more radiation than a person. It is, however, a myth that they would survive a nuclear event.
* * *
My dad: unfinished projects, failed business ventures, poor hygiene, and chronic back pain. Amassed in our car and home: buckets of rusty nails, hangers, lamps, cans of paint, sheets of wood, brand new Lee jeans, Reebok and Nike shoes, stacks of newspaper piled next to his bed, in front of the couch. Ads for stores and houses circled with a red pen.
* * *
Jimmy Smith is in line talking to other boys. I hear something about roaches as they look at me. The virus of a white superiority complex spreading. Fourth grade was a particular kind of other.
* * *
When my sister, mother, and I moved to India, my dad stayed in Pittsburgh. For the entire five years we were gone. He sent us dollars that turned into lots of rupees. Maybe that’s when the hoarding got worse. A tomato for dinner. An overgrown beard.
* * *
My sister and I had protested our move to India. I was ten, she was thirteen. Dad hammered a glass of water against his forehead. Tiny crystals fell. A trickle of blood stained our memory. “What else do you want me to do?”
* * *
A cockroach body can survive without a head for up to a week. Without a mouth, it dies of thirst. Headless, wiggling on its back.
* * *
Also in fourth grade, I left my glasses at a rock-climbing field trip. The metal gold nice ones. After weeks of unsuccessful squinting, a teacher sent a note home asking my parents to get me new glasses. I had to get the big plastic frames that took up half my face. They were cheaper. My father got into an argument with the store staff, I think about a coupon. “Sir, if you don’t calm down, we’re going to have to call security.” My brother bent down, put his hands firmly on my shoulders, “Just be okay with the big brown ones.”
* * *
My brother: a punched hole in his bedroom wall, cassette tapes and CDs of Depeche Mode, Pink Floyd, The Cure, Bon Jovi, R.E.M., and Guns N’ Roses, paper boy job, choir, cross country track, ripped jeans, dark metal glasses, girlfriend and girl friends, U2 concert, Amnesty International, hit by my dad.
* * *
I am sitting in the school auditorium with my elementary school best friend and crush, Ariel Jenson. Ariel was pretty and artsy, so it was an enigma that we were friends. She choreographed a dance for us to do at the talent show to Madonna’s song Erotica and planned our coordinated outfit – black tights, white shorts, and a black top. When the host mentioned Madonna, I cheered and Ariel whispered, “Cheering for Madonna isn’t cool.” I’m not sure how dancing to Madonna was but I trusted Ariel in these matters. Once, she cut my hair in the school bathroom and gave me bangs. My brother said I looked like a dog. Ariel said it was pretty.
We have a few minutes before the bell rings. I tell her what happened the night before. My mom fell down the stairs. My sister was screaming as my dad came from the living room and saw my mom on the landing, my brother at the top of the stairs. My mom was near the edge when my brother pushed her. Ariel was speechless. My family’s Indian-ness, our lack of money, our volatile ways all mushed together like dal and rice.
* * *
Cockroaches can run up to 3 miles an hour.
* * *
Ariel was the only friend I ever had over to our house. I moved awkwardly past the roach motels in the kitchen, my eyes darting at the shadow behind the toaster.
Ariel’s house was beautiful. The den had a brown leather couch, a record player, framed pictures of her and her sister, blonde, blue-eyed, and smiling. Her parents, smiling. Every room was inviting. No clutter. I told her I wished my family had money so we could be normal.
“Money doesn’t make you normal,” she said.
* * *
My brother refused to move to India with us. My dad said, “I don’t have a son.” My brother became homeless, his senior year of high school. Years later he told me, “I used to sell my plasma for money.” His voice, skinned and tender.
* * *
One time in India, while beating eggs, a palm-sized cockroach fell out of the whisk handle, plopping into the yolk. My sister and I screamed and shrieked and pouted like the American girls we were.
* * *
One time in India, my dad was visiting us from Pittsburgh. He took my glasses off my face before he slapped me. I was past curfew and glasses are expensive. My closeted queer relationship had kept me out longer than I intended; my girlfriend had a knack for threatening self-harm at specific moments. As I ran away from my dad to one side of the dining room table, my sister silently slipped into the kitchen and broke an empty Canada Dry glass bottle against the counter. To get my father to stop chasing me, she slammed the jagged green glass into her wrist. I remember her face turned red as her blood dripped onto the linoleum floor. My mother hollering in Hindi in the background.
* * *
When you kill a cockroach, little guts stain the site of demise.
* * *
In May 1998, when we returned to Pittsburgh, every inch of our house was occupied with junk. My sister’s eyes welled at the dust that triggered her asthma. I looked around wide-eyed, my long hair pulled back in a half ponytail, my glasses steadily perched on my fifteen-year-old nose. We went to our aunt’s house to sleep.
* * *
When you kill a cockroach, little guts stain the site of demise. Even brief victory is sickening.
Jai Dulani’s work has appeared in The Offing, Waxwing, Foglifter, No Tokens, Golden Walkman Magazine, and Best New Poets 2020.