Altared by Colleen Curran

Author:Colleen Curran [Curran, Colleen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-48135-1
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2007-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

my perfect wedding

samina ali

When I was twelve years old, I got my first period while my parents, two brothers, and I were spending Fourth of July weekend in the Wisconsin Dells, a gaudy tourist trap smack in the middle of the Midwest, which can best be described as a miniature and humble version of Disney World. There were bumper cars, twisting roller coasters, towering water slides, and, of course, the main attraction: the waterskiing show, where a troupe of expert water-skiers showed off their talents of impressive high jumps and twirls to a large, mostly white audience. All the hotels in the area were booked, and my immigrant Indian family had rented a room in one of the many crowded and nearly identical two-story hotels that featured a view of the main highway and a swimming pool adjacent to the asphalt parking lot. My dad liked to go to Wisconsin because, unlike where we lived in Minneapolis, fireworks were legal. In Wisconsin, he could load us up with firecrackers that my brothers and I would excitedly shoot into the wide gray skies at dusk.

My menses secretly crept up on me in the middle of the night. My mother woke me early in the morning, and when she saw the stains on the white hotel sheets, she led me to the bathroom and had me clean up before the others woke up. I still remember the confusion and horror I felt, this deeply private maturation process happening smack in the middle of a tourist trap in some cheap hotel room, where my father and brothers were steps away from my mother's commanding whispers and my quick and embarrassed movements. For the rest of the vacation, I felt strangely different but did everything I could to keep my sudden change hidden from the men, grateful it had been my mother who found me. Yet only a month later, my family flew back to Hyderabad and within days of our arrival, my father threw a party to publicly announce the onset of my menstruation. Rather than invite a handful of close relatives, as some families do to mark this occasion, my father, who is known for his dramatic gestures and his deep pleasure in entertaining, invited close to two hundred guests, most of whom I didn't know, hired three chefs from the best local restaurants, and lit off fireworks over the house.

For the occasion, I was dressed in the wedding outfit in which an older cousin had recently gotten married. The ensemble consisted of rich layers of red silk and a six-foot brocade veil that was wrapped around my developing breasts and over my head. My hands were intricately patterned with henna. My face was washed with turmeric, and kohl was deeply applied to my eyes. Gold bangles gently clinked on my wrists. Around my neck and ankles, dangling from my ears, down the center part of my hair, and cinched around each finger, were fifteen pounds of gold. I was seated on

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