The Rain Said She’ll Go Away
Written by Amita Mridha
2004
I was born, then put in a box. Two pounds too small. My mother crayoned flowers on Styrofoam cups and sang soft, honeycombed Rabindrasangeet. She was in the hospital room for many weeks before my birth, watching snow fall through the window. She would watch Toyotas speed through the parking lot, and the tangerine hues drift in the Midwestern sky. Every day, she’d repeat the refrain: “মেঘ বলেছে যাব যাব…” (Megh boleche jabo jabo / The rain said she’ll go away, far away), while dotting the cups with washable markers, as the color bloomed into the foam and stained her fingers.
Her body was sore from constant bed rest, and she still managed to chat with the nurses about my name. Tultuli, she said. She wrote the name along the rim of all her cups, the vivid colors of a rainbow after a storm. “রাত বলেছে ‘যাই’,…” (raat boleche jaaye / the night weeps, “i’ll leave soon too” ).
2009
My baby cousin bites my elbow. I cry. My first summer in Bangladesh, under the blur of the ashen sky. The constant traffic in Dhaka is our soundtrack. My cousins and me run through the streets, dust on our heels as we stop at the food stalls. We suck on lychee jellies, crunch on tomato chips, and devour overloaded pani puris in one bite. I always slipped green chilies into my little cousin’s piece. We giggled as he spat it out.
2012
Me and my best friend Kristy scooch together into a booth. We share a milkshake while listening to Katy Perry’s Last Friday Night on an empty Tuesday at Pizza Hut. The TV showcases silent news of the Sandy Hook shooting. We don’t notice, of course. Our parents peruse the menu, while Kristy is stuck on veggie pizza, and I on cheese. We’re both wearing teal shirts with mustached animals on them, but she insists on us using different straws because germs. When I bite the end of her straw flat, she uses a tissue to flip it over. She smirks. Touche. I think, touche.
2018
First day of 9th grade. I have no friends. I plop down at an empty lunch table, alone in a room full of people. Sneakers squeak against the linoleum as people greet their friends with easy grins. They chuckle to themselves. Are they looking at me? I eat lunch, a dry chicken sandwich, left with a miserable fifteen minutes on the clock. I swipe out my phone, look around me, and tap the icon for Superstar SMTOWN— a Kpop-themed rhythm game. The techno finger-twisting beats of “Kick” drown everything out.
2022
High School Graduation. Andrew blows out his vocal chords, screaming, screaming, screaming an incorrect pronunciation of my name. “AMITAAAA !!!! MEET-MEET WOOOOO! MEET-MEET!!!” He screams, flailing about in his green gown, swinging his swimming team cord like a lasso above his head. He parrots my annoying childhood nickname and I smile. I’m delirious in the sounds of the cheering crowds, the paint dots of parents, students and teachers in the massive Dow Stadium. A few MAGA hats cluster throughout the audience.
2023
I am in my college dorm, quivering underneath my blankets. My door is barricaded shut. I just got the email— the first reports of the February 13th shooting at Michigan State. I wipe tears as the livestream plays on my phone. The cold light illuminates my tiny room, as groups of students run from the east gym and between dorms. The alert email was subtitled: Run, hide, fight, and yet here I am, alone in my bed, in suffocating silence.
~
The morning after, Ma drives me back home. She sings: “মেঘ বলেছে ‘যাব যাব’……”