Dear Nani

I’m writing to you from the mountain top in Sewanee. I’m participating in a creative writing

conference here. I think I told you this, but you probably forgot. You always love reading my

pieces, so I’m sending you a few stories with this letter. I’ve enlarged the font, so you can read

them. I know you’re forgetting so much, so let me tell you what I remember.

I remember bowls of Annie’s mac-and-cheese with peas and purified water from a pitcher. I

loved that mac-and-cheese, and I also loved the bowls. You always used the same one, ceramic

white and laced with green tulips on the lip. One time, I asked my mom to make the

mac-and-cheese, just the way you did, but it didn’t taste quite the same. When I asked why the

water was purified, not the normal water I had at home, you said “Only the best for my favorite

granddaughter!” I remember smiling.

Even when Nana spent hours in his room, lying on the gray comforter and staring at the chipped

ceiling with glazed eyes, you were moving around, grabbing balled up socks and playing cards

trapped under the legs of kitchen chairs, bony fingers hammering nails into the wall to hang up

my school pictures and family photos, light bouncing off smiling faces.

I remember watching Young Sheldon in your living room in the evenings. Usually for the first

twenty minutes of each episode, you would be bustling around in the small kitchen, pulling out

chocolate-almond Dove bars and pouring us glasses of fizzing Coke, but I loved when you would

join Rahul and me on the couch, the embroidered burgundy blanket draped across our laps. I’m

pretty sure I looked at you more than the television screen, how a smile broke across your face

whenever Missy and Sheldon teased each other, reminded you of me and Rahul, I think. You

were so pretty when you laughed, your head thrown back, slightly crooked smile and dimpled

cheeks, dark eyes creased. I don’t remember you ever scolding us, even when bits of chocolate

broke off the bar and fell onto the carpet, lost in the plush crimson. I always fell asleep before the

episode ended, my soft snore pushing into the quiet room.

This piece that I’m writing now came from an “I remember” prompt. When our teacher assigned

it to us a few days ago, the other kids in my class rolled their eyes. It’s a generic prompt, an easy

one. But I couldn’t wait to jump in, to close my eyes and picture your egg-shell white plaster

walls, your large fluorescent light bulbs, the small manicured lawn out front. I do a lot with

memory in my writing. It’s funny how memory works, how I can remember which photos are

taped on your fridge but lying in bed some nights, staring up at the glowing stars taped on my

ceiling, I forget the sound of your laugh. I have a bit of an obsession with memory in my

writing, maybe because there’s so much of it. There’s always more to remember. And I’m

watching you and learning how easy it is to forget.

I remember you would carry me to the bed, your fingers pressing gently into my ribs, until you

no longer picked me up. I learned this one evening as I lay sprawled on the couch, my brother’s

voice muted. I waited for you to scoop me up, for your cool hands on my waist, but instead you

gently shook my leg and told me I was too heavy for you to lift. When I looked up at you, lines

creased your cheeks, your dimples. I went to my red-and-white trundle bed that night with a

lump in my throat and fell asleep to Rahul’s voice talking on the phone in the room next to mine,

where he slept. I woke up in the morning to find clumps of dark brown hair in the bathroom trash

can, thick locks among cherry Dum-Dum wrappers and Old Navy t-shirt receipts. That was how

I found out. I ran, crying, to the kitchen, where I found you. You set down your whisk and

pushed the bowl of egg yolks to the side to sit down with me, groaning as you lowered yourself

onto the cool linoleum tiles. Our backs against the refrigerator, you pressed your hand firmly

onto mine. Later that afternoon, I curled up in the sagging bean bag in the corner of the room, my

face in the fuzz. When you survived the chemotherapy, and the doctors removed the lump in

your breast, I thought you were immortal. Then aging kicked in, and I could see every day that

you weren’t.

I remember Wii tennis, standing on the crimson carpet, flinging the remote around to hit the ball

flying toward us on the screen. We almost hit each other so many times, a light breeze from a

remote whizzing too close to skin. I got a bruise from when I slammed my arm mid-swing into

the side of the brown sectional couch. You were never too good at playing. You’d have to sit

down on the couch a few points into the game, out of breath, your shoulders pressed against the

fabric back of the couch, and you’d lose some leverage on your swing. So, I played easy on you.

Some points, I even pretended to not see the ball and swung a few seconds too late. You would

always grin when you won, spinning around on the carpet, your arms flying around your waist in

celebration.

At our meeting yesterday, my teacher told me to remove some of the details. They’re

unnecessary, she said. I nodded, smiled politely. I didn’t know how to tell her that the kitchen

isn’t just bright, but sunlight falls through the window in showers. The carpet isn’t red; it is

maroon with flecks of gold and auburn if you kneel down and stare at it long enough. The

speakers aren’t low quality; the voices crackle like static into the family room. I understand what

my teacher is saying, but I am attached to these details I’ve grown up with. The carpet is not red.

Whenever I walked to the bathroom, I would stop at the portrait of your brother, clean-shaven

face, dimpled cheeks, military uniform ironed and smooth. He died in a plane, you had told me

once, after I’d asked a few times. When I probed further, you suggested a game of carrom and

walked out of the room before I could respond. I have a lot of questions. What did you want to

be or do in your life? Did you get it? Were you loved in the way you wanted to be?

I remember tea-stained photographs slid into vermillion photo albums, your plump figure

standing on the roof of your uncle’s apartment flat, your smiling face fading from the page. You

had long hair, reaching down to the small of your back, your aquamarine sari losing color. In

these photos, the sun was behind you, yellows and oranges splashed across a smoggy sky.

Kneeling on the carpet staring at these images, I imagined standing there with you, the India heat

hugging us. In later photos, farther into the album, I could see you and Nana, cradling crying

babies in your arms, my mom and my uncle. The two of you were sitting on a purple couch. It

must have been soon after you moved to the United States. I noticed after looking at the photo

closer that your smile didn’t quite reach your eyes, your cheeks weren’t dimpled. Did you want

to move? Were you happy? I wish we talked about me less.

I’m not doing you justice. In a few days, I’ll share this essay with my teacher, and she’ll smile

and tell me she thinks you are the sweetest grandmother ever. I will sigh when she’s not looking.

The time when you ran through the house slapping Rahul with a ping-pong racket because he let

the pancakes burn will run through my mind. You are not sweet. “Sweet” is for grandmothers

who sit at the kitchen table on Sunday afternoons and knit green and white scarves while

drinking chamomile tea with cinnamon biscuits.

I remember swimming at the community pool near your house, how you groaned as you moved

into the water, your legs aching and sore. Later, you didn’t go in at all. You just sat on the

reclining pale green chairs on the deck, your bare feet resting on the slabs of concrete baking

under the sun. You used to play catch with us at the pool, a transparent red ball soaring between

our pruned and wrinkled hands, but later, only Rahul and I played. It was never as fun.

Sometimes, we would toss the ball to you, underhand and light, and you could usually catch it,

and throw it limply back. But most of the time, you just lay on the chair’s webbed surface, eyes

closed, wrinkled hands folded on top of your stomach.

I’m in a creative nonfiction class here, so I’m writing about you. I think what I’m writing will

make you sad, so I won’t share it with you. You’re forgetting things, like my age and how to

make instant coffee in the mornings and where you’ve put your cane when you use the bathroom

after lunch. I’m writing these memories down because when my teacher gave us this prompt, you

came to my mind first.