Summer in Seattle

Slowly releasing the tip of the pencil, Zara hesitated to see if it would balance. Her pencil fell over with a clatter and she could immediately hear the footsteps moving towards her room.

The door opened without anyone knocking and her mother Veena stood tapping her foot, the movement pulling her lime green chiffon scarf off her shoulder.

“Zara Chadha, what is all the ruckus? You are supposed to be studying.” Thanks to the blending of her British and Indian accent, even her mother’s sharpest words had a musical, lilting quality. Her habit of switching between her native language and English, melding them together in a tapestry of annoyance was something unique in and of itself.

“Mama, it’s summer. I’m not in class and I think I can manage my schedule well enough on my own. I’ve been doing it for years, you know.”

“Don’t you sass me, young lady. You want to be a doctor? You think they just hand out degrees on the street corner? How will you find a good husband if you don’t have a career?”

Zara turned in her chair to face her mother. They had been having the same conversation for what seemed like the entirety of Zara’s twenty-one years of life. In fact, she could almost remember the first time her mother gave her this speech. She was in preschool and didn’t want to finger paint because it was messy. Her mother somehow had equated finger painting to finding a husband.

“I’m going to have a career like I have been working so hard for; I’m not going to throw away all my hard work just to get married and stay at home making babies. What is the point of going to school if that’s all my future holds?”

“The point is so you will be a good match for your husband and all of that schooling will make smart babies. Everyone knows that.”

Her mother’s logic was tragically flawed and there was no correcting her.

“And before you ask, I’m not studying; I was practicing drawing my Time Lord script so I can finish this tattoo design. You’re going to love it, Mama. It will go right across my shoulders.”

“Oh, you think you’re funny? You’re not funny. You think I don’t know when you are being all American sarcastic with me?”

Zara was the first-born American in her family, and even though her parents had moved to the United States twenty-five years earlier, her mother still thought that there was some secret society she wasn’t part of. They had both attended university in England after their parents had moved them from India. Though their marriage was arranged, they fell in love, got married in a lavish ceremony and then moved to Washington to start their own family.

“That’s just regular universal sarcastic, Mama, doesn’t need any country identifier,” she sighed.

Zara loved her parents, she really did. They had moved so her father could work as a reconstructive plastic surgeon. He used his skills to go back to India every year and work with Operation Smile to help children with cleft palates. The work he did was one of the reasons that Zara wanted to become a doctor.

She saw what a difference her father made in children’s lives and it made her want to become a pediatrician. Her mother bounced between wanting her to be successful and wanting her to be well married. To her, being well-married meant the right man, the right family, and the right future.

“Come help me cook dinner,” her mother said as she started to turn down the hallway.

“We having spaghetti?” Zara loved spaghetti; she would eat it for every meal if she could. Food was a big deal in their house, so she never told her mother that she often ate meat outside the house. Her parents were vegetarians, and so was Zara, for the most part. But she had a horrible addiction to chicken nuggets and the occasional burger, but she figured that there were worse things to be addicted to.

Her mother whipped back to her and started wagging her finger. “Spaghetti? You like spaghetti. Nobody else wants all those noodles. So many noodles and messy! Too messy! We are having Toor Dahl, your father’s favorite. Now come help me make the roti.”

“Do I have to?”

A spark flashed in her mother’s eyes, “No gol roti, no rishta!” Then she stomped off muttering to herself.

Her mother had just told her that no one would marry her if her roti bread wasn’t round. And she probably honestly believed that.

Zara moaned and closed the notebook she was scribbling in. She adjusted the action figures that were lined across the back her desk, stalling before she went downstairs.

Glancing around to make sure her room was tidy so her mother wouldn’t get on her case; she tried to see it from her mother’s eyes. It was the same room she had lived in her entire life. Well, the life she could remember. Her parents said they had lived in an apartment when she was a baby, but there were no pictures and no proof of it.

Her room had been decorated by her mother in her mother’s style until the Great Poster Rebellion at the age of thirteen. Zara had thrown a crazy, probably hormone induced, fit that actually frightened her mother. So much so that her mother walked on eggshells around her for a long time afterwards.

After that catastrophic outburst, she had started putting things she liked in her room. Her father always gave her an allowance and wasn’t nearly as strict as her mother was. Zara filled her room with her first love. Sci-Fi, anything nerdy or weird. It didn’t matter if it was blue phone boxes or cowboys in space. She loved it all. Her replica vampire hunting stake, named Mr. Pointy, was displayed in a glass box with a picture of Sarah Michelle Gellar autographed no less from Buffy the Vampire slayer.

She had handmade a mobile that hung above her bed that had the spaceship from Firefly in the middle and little hand crocheted Jayne Cobb hats circling it. Zara didn’t care if it was Middle Earth or something in space, those were her people. In a home that was focused on academic achievement and marrying well, movies and TV shows were the mental release that gave her a chance to imagine a world far away from her studious life.

Last summer, her mother hadn’t talked to her for a week when she left the house to attend a convention downtown dressed as Holtzmann from Ghostbusters. Her mother had tolerated it, considering that she was covered in baggy coveralls and a blonde wig with goggles on her head. That way at least if anyone saw her they wouldn’t recognize her and bring shame on the family.

Her mother also didn’t know that she secretly had her Nani, her father’s mother, working on sewing up an almost exact replica of Kaylee’s ball gown from Firefly. Nani had moved from England when her husband passed away. She’d moved in with Zara’s uncle and aunty since they had more room, but she visited her often. Her Nani was one of Zara’s best friends. When Zara had been a child, her Nani would often sneak her sweets and let her run around on the playground when her mother would rather have her at home. Nani thought it was funny how uptight her daughter was, and she took delight in doing things that made Zara happy.

Not that her mother was all that bad. She just had high hopes for her children and expressed that love and devotion by nagging and telling Zara and her brother that they didn’t try hard enough. Her brother Arjun was already a successful architect in a firm downtown. Her parents were thrilled with his choice and proudly announced to everyone that he had his own apartment and drove a BMW.

Their community, although not small, performed an interesting dance of assimilation while keeping a firm grip on their traditions. The children were as westernized as any other child growing up in the United States would be, but Zara was expected to attend all holiday functions and participate so that her mother wouldn’t be shamed in front of the other families.

Tucking her long straight hair behind her ears, Zara tugged at her shorts, which her mother hated, and headed downstairs to make sure that her roti were round enough to satisfy her mother.