This is it

Mandira Pattnaik

I’m sorry Bieber is no longer fourteen. I’m happy neither am I, and I don’t need to tell Dad the Periodic Tables. Or search for hoatzin babies with tiny claws in their wings on trees above the waters nearby. I’m sorry my aunt who loved a swim, will not be here anytime soon, because that man she married set her alight. And never hear how she sang, ‘Waka! Waka!’ I can’t say if my teenage daughter knows Shakira. I can’t say what anyone knows. I spend a lot of time thinking what anyone thinks, what anyone thinks about me. I know my nails are chipped, no color on them for weeks, I often promise I’ll get them nice. The salon is across the street and nobody will be ashamed of me anymore. I’m sorry I never did make it. “I pay in dollars”, my sister from Dallas said on a visit. I looked on. I always do that because I’m converting into rupees how much for, say, a Subway burger. I’m sorry if there’s a family reunion when my sister’s here in Delhi. We’ll send the car. Mum’s voice booms over the call. Mine sounds sheepish, Of course, Mum, but I’m busy. Busy getting the cobwebs off Arun’s room. I still love his smile when he says, At last a day off! Just the way I used to years ago. I call Mum later, tell her, We’re house hunting. She knows we can’t afford it, but women love a conversation, the spice of a lie. I know it amounts to nothing, like the things we only shop at windows, after we’ve filled our bags with ration-shop grocery. I can’t say if the neighbors smirk at my floral printed dress while I’m trimming the bougainvillea, the one I flaunted two summers ago, and how the laundry that hangs in the yard gives us away. I’m sure they’ll wish us on Diwali, adore the lamps we line the windowsills with; Arun will offer his hand, they’ll do namaste. I’m sure I’ll serve them the best ladoos in town, laced with the aroma of ghee, apologizing profusely that we haven’t better crockery. They’ll talk to me at the door. I might cry, but I’ll not. Under twinkling stars, later, we’ll play Baby, Baby, softly, on the tiny deck, and Arun will like us to dance on the terrace, like when there was nothing, and we were fourteen. But I’ll think of how my girl will feel, and continue to fold the laundry.

Mandira Pattnaik's work has appeared/is forthcoming in Best Small Fictions Anthology 2021, AAWW, Timber Journal, Contrary Magazine, Watershed Review, Passages North, Amsterdam Quarterly, DASH, Miracle Monocle, and Press53 among other places. Her work has received multiple nominations for the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, and Best of the Net, and Honorable Mention in CRAFT Flash Fiction Contest 2020 and Highly Commended in Litro Magazine Summer Contest 2021. She contributes regular columns for Reckon Review and Trampset. More at mandirapattnaik.com