India - Berkeley - River

The earliest memories of wishing you were somewhere else

Pretend I was born in India. I’ll wind your worn sari around my shoulders and waist. I’ll take your bright pink lipstick and put a mark on my forehead. We’ll pretend that all the freckles are gone. I’ll bathe in lemon juice and they’ll disappear. My hair will be so black, glossy, and long I can sit on it, or wind it up on top of my head like Sita.

I know where all my mom’s Ravi Shankar reel to reel recordings are. I know where the jam jar is where she keeps her sandalwood. It’s the jar we ate all the strawberry out of.

My mom didn’t make jam, and her mom. . . I don’t know. Agnes Williams Halloran, my maternal grandmother, died shortly after childbirth from pneumonia in 1932. I do know she had a lively life until she married and started having babies— she was the first Nickelodeon piano player in Fargo, North Dakota. She received beautiful autographed photographs and heartfelt letters from all the early silent movie stars. Judging from her collection of the dark-eyed femme fatales, like…