Chapter 9: These weeds aren’t the kind you smoke.
I pull my bag from the backseat and give Amy one last goodbye wave. She waves back and drives off, and it’s weird, but I kinda think I’m going to miss her.
I thread through the cars and push into Soul Mountain’s outer foyer, greeted by the same series of framed, black-and-white family photos of Kathmandu, Harlem, and Ohio that have been hanging in the entryway for the past twenty-five years. They rattle precariously on the wall when the open door sucks in a cold draft of early spring air.
By the way I have to say “Excuse me” when I reach through the crowd for the second glass door and “Oh, sorry” when I bump the heavyset man on the other side with my gym bag, I know Soul Mountain is deep in the weeds.
(Time-out for restaurant lingo explanation: If you haven’t ever worked in a restaurant before, let me explain: “In the weeds” means you are backed-up and probably totally FUBAR (and if you don’t know what “FUBAR” means, sorry. You’re going to have to just look that one up). By the time you’re in the weeds, the kitchen staff is yelling at the waitstaff, the waitstaff is yelling back, the customers are grumbling, and the hostess is standing at the podium with a plastic smile that wouldn’t convince a gullible puppy, telling people things like, “Sorry for the long wait. We’re clearing off your table just now — it’ll be ready any second.”)
I glance around, looking for Gerry or my dad, but I don’t see either one of them, which is ominous. The teenage hostess behind the podium has eyes that are wide with panic, but she tries to smile anyway and asks me, “How many in your party?”
I shake my head. “Where’s Mr. Singh?”
Her face falls, like I’m about to deliver some really shitty news. “Which one?”
“Either.”
“Mr. Singh’s in the kitchen,” she says. “His son is helping a guest right now.”
“Right. Okay.” I nod my thanks and squeeze between her podium and a family of towheaded Ohioans, “pardon-me-ing” as I try to keep my gym bag from knocking over a chubby first-grader. The kid’s got so much extra padding on him that if I do knock him over, he’ll probably just bounce right back up.
I know. It’s wrong to say, but it’s true. I’ve obviously been living in Europe for too long if the girth of your average American resident is starting to surprise me.
“Ma’am?” the hostess calls to my back as I make a beeline for the kitchen. “Ma’am, do you need me to get Mr. Singh for you?”
I ignore her and keep walking, pushing through the white, saloon-style doors into the kitchen.
It’s as bad as I assumed it would be when I walk in, with my dad lifting a basket of chicken from the deep fryer with one hand, forehead beading with sweat, while he shuts off a beeping timer and opens an oven door with his other hand.
Meanwhile, there’s a guy trying to clear the backlog of dishes in the back and clearly losing the battle; a Hispanic guy I don’t recognize plating dal bhat tarkari, garnishing it with artfully cut carrots and cucumbers, dropping a sprig of parsley on top of his perfect mound of rice; and another guy I don’t recognize on the hot prep side next to my dad, stirring a giant rice cooker for all he’s worth.
Becker, a second cousin of my mom’s who’s so huge that he makes me look petite, booms out “Order up!” just as a skinny young waitress scurries into the kitchen and slaps a new ticket on the rack.
She glances at me for a single impatient second, not curious about who I am or why I’m standing in the middle of the kitchen so much as wondering why I’m suddenly in her way. “Where’s the side of mashed potatoes for table seventeen?” she barks, not directing her question at anyone in particular. “I told you about it at least ten minutes ago.”
Becker smiles, white teeth gums a sharp contrast to his purple-black skin. His bass voice rumbles out of his chest like a truck engine starting. “Don’t stress, lovely. I’ve got your mashed potatoes right here.” A ham-thick fist reaches over the head of the Hispanic guy, pulls out a small bowl from the stack, plops an ice cream scoop of mashed potatoes inside and adds a ladle of gravy before handing it to the girl.
“I need a fucking saucer,” she snips.
Before Becker can reach over the little Mexican’s head again, I do it myself, fishing off a plate from the top of the pile and shoving it at the girl. She nods curtly and disappears out of the kitchen without so much as a “thank you,” the bowl of mashed potatoes clinking on top of the saucer.
“Well, hello, young pup,” Becker says to me when she leaves, the same easy grin still on his face. He’s so mellow it’s like he’s got the other kind of weed working for him. “Did’n expect to see you here.”
My dad glances over his shoulder at Becker’s words. “Anika,” he says, voice full of relief. Relief because I’m at the restaurant to help, relief because I’m safely home, relief because I’m his daughter and he loves me — I don’t know. There’s no time to ask.
My dad is the only person I know who pronounces my name the way it’s actually supposed to sound. My name coming from his mouth is both familiar and disconcerting at the same time. Familiar because it speaks of family, disconcerting because it means I’m indisputably home.
After uttering my name like it’s a prayer, he turns away from me and back to his basket of fried chicken, shaking the hot oil into the fryer before reaching for a set of tongs.
I pull the gym bag off my shoulder and point to the office door on the left. “Be right back,” I say.
Two minutes later, I’ve got on a hair net, an apron, and I’m sticking my hands under the tap at the hand wash sink. Two minutes after that, I’ve got a place on the line next to the Hispanic guy, taking over the artful slicing of carrots and cucumbers to free him up to do other things.
#
I don’t sit down again until almost eleven PM, when the fluorescent lights in the dining room flip on, the sweeping up starts, and the last customer leaves. I slouch into an empty chair in the dining room, sipping a glass of ice water and pulling the hairnet off my sweaty head.
The annoyed waitress from earlier is finishing up her side work, rolling clean silverware into clean napkins for tomorrow. The hostess is cleaning up, chatting with a bus boy as they clear the last few tables, and behind me, I can hear Becker laughing about something in the kitchen.
My brother Gerry plops into the chair across from me. He’s built like me — tall and broad (though not quite as tall as me) and naturally athletic. He’s grown a thin, trim mustache and goatee since the last time I saw him; the mustache is pencil-thin and winds around the edges of his lips in a style that’s way too Fu Manchu Asian stereotype for my taste. But then again, everything about Gerry has always been “way too [ fill in the blank with absolutely fucking anything ]” for my taste.
He grins at me, reaches across the table and slaps my shoulder playfully. “Hey, sis. You’re here. Your flight okay?”
“Yeah, it was fine. Got held up in Toronto for a while, but otherwise uneventful.” I stifle a yawn and rub at my dry, heavy eyes.
“Glad you found a way home from the airport. I guess you understand why I couldn’t leave to come get you right away.”
“Yeah. But it all worked out,” I say with a nod. I pause, then decide to address the elephant in the room head-on. “So you’re here. In Marcine.”
He sighs, glances down at the table. “I moved back home about six months ago. Been living with Mom and Dad.”
That’s surprising. The last I’d heard, Dad had basically excommunicated Gerry from the family and told him never to come home again.
“Nobody told me you were back home.”
Gerry chuckles. “No offense, Ani, but if I’m the black sheep in the family, you’re the dark grey one. And nobody tells you anything because you act like you don’t give a flying fuck. Not like you exactly make much effort to keep in touch.”
I take another swallow of my ice water and shrug.
It was true. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been the one to initiate a conversation with my parents or siblings. Other than occasionally liking their posts on social media, we didn’t interact much.
“So what’s changed? No offense, Gerry, but I thought you weren’t welcome around here anymore.”
He runs a hand through the dark, close-cropped curls on his head. “I got clean. Once and for all.”
“Once and for all?” I repeat skeptically. It was a line we’d heard before over the years.
“Once and for all,” he says again, nodding. “I can tell you later if you want to hear, but basically, I had a scary fucking experience in Oakland about a year ago, and that was it. I decided I was done. Went to rehab, took it seriously this time. Reached out to Mom and Dad and Dutch when I got out. And so…” He splays his hands palms-up in front of him. “Here I am. Clean as a whistle for a little over a year. Moved back almost seven months ago, and I’ve been working here in exchange for living rent-free at home. And I’m applying to school.”
I lift an impressed eyebrow. Maybe there was hope for my baby brother after all.
Maybe.
“Good for you,” I say, and when the yawn comes this time, I don’t suppress it.
Gerry laughs. “You must be fucking exhausted. Want me to run you home? I’m sure they can finish closing up without us.”
I push up from the table, swaying on my feet. “You get the car keys. I’ll get my bag.”
#
Fifteen minutes later, I’m flicking on the light switch in the basement bedroom that became mine when I finally got my own room around the middle of high school. My parents converted it into a guest room at some point in between my high school years and now, so the basketball and hip hop posters that used to decorate the walls are long gone, but there’s still a pile of dusty old plastic trophies and plaques on top of the bookcase in the corner. Maybe I’ll throw them away while I’m here. High school’s been over for more than twenty years, and it seems stupid to keep them.
I walk around the double bed, drop my bag between it and the book case. A framed snapshot catches my eye from amongst the dusty trophies, and I lean down to pick it up, wiping the layer of dust off the glass with my thumb.
It’s a selfie of Jenny and me from high school, our faces pressed close together as we laugh / scream on an Ohio State Fair roller coaster ride. The pic’s blurry and crooked; our hair flies out wildly behind us and the orange body of the roller coaster is visible rising above our heads in the background. Jenny’s got one hand wrapped tightly around a stuffed animal I won for her, and although the other hand isn’t in the frame, I know it’s in my lap, squeezing three of my fingers so tightly that it hurts.
I put the photo back on the shelf, face-down. Then I kick off my shoes, collapse spread-eagle onto the bed. I don’t even bother getting up to turn off the light. The last thing I do before I fall into a deep sleep is promise myself to bring a garbage bag down here as soon as I get a chance, to get rid of everything that no longer belongs. Trophies, plaques.
Pictures.
I’m fast asleep twenty seconds later.