Come On In by Adi Alsaid

Author:Adi Alsaid
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inkyard Press
Published: 2020-08-10T18:13:50+00:00

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Today Ma’s brow is furrowed when I leave for school. Since school started, August, September and October became waves of newness strung into days, and now it’s late November.

Like every other day, she reminds me, “Priya, I pray Rishi is okay in school, check on him.”

The elementary and high schools are next door to each other.

You’re worrying about the wrong kid, I should’ve told her. He might be hearing impaired and he might have a long way to go with his speech, but he’s already found his voice. It’s your “normal” daughter who has been mute in school for more than three months. At first, I knew the exact number of days I hadn’t spoken, then I lost count. It’s easier to count the few words that I have spoken.

Ma has no way of knowing that; I’d never tell her. It would make the circles under her eyes dark as the night. Ma and Baba say we need to “work hard” to build our new life. I have never slogged so much at school. My hardest class is American History. I have nightmares in which a stern general from the Revolutionary War quizzes me. Last week, the English teacher asked us to diagram a sentence. English has been the language of instruction in my school in Bombay since kindergarten; I have written and read myriad sentences, but never mapped one. My parents know English, but they’ve never mapped sentences either. Staying after school almost every day for weeks to meet teachers and catch up has become routine. All that learning has left me with no energy to connect with anything but my books.

I watch as Rishi struts into school like it’s the only one he’s ever known. Maybe it’s easier to fit right in if you’re eight and in second grade. High school feels like another planet, with different rules and customs, where everyone has attended each other’s birthdays since elementary school, except me.

Rishi’s smile is his entire face as he signs to his friend, “The bus was tardy!”

He already uses words like tardy. We’d never heard that word till we came to New Jersey. Back in Bombay we were just late.

Rishi’s voice is louder than it needs to be, and the edges of his words run into each other. He is so busy greeting his friend that he’s unaware of the glances that some of the other kids throw his way. With a twinge I realize that I am not the only person who understands him perfectly anymore. When Rishi was little, I was his one and only sister, friend and protector.

As I walk to my school building, a leaf gracefully twirls down and whispers in my ear. I pause and feast on the magnificence of Fall.

I’ll write to Dada and Dadi and tell them about this carpet of jeweled red, yellow and gold leaves. Will they believe me? They’ve never seen anything like it. In Bombay the leaves are always green. They don’t transform and remind us that everything changes.

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