Visit

A few days into their visit, my home starts to look like theirs. Loaves of whole wheat bread line the kitchen table, along with paper bags full of half-eaten coconut macaroons and pumpkin-walnut teacake slices. Tupperware is stacked in the freezer, full of fish curry and chicken dopyaza. A toaster has appeared (of course you need a toaster!), as have handfuls of kala jeera, laal mirch, cinnamon sticks and elaichi seeds, each poured into Mason jars and labeled with red Sharpie markers on white sticker sheets in my mother’s handwriting.
My father’s leather jacket hangs on the back of my desk chair; his watch and wallet leave their shadow on my windowsill.
Later, he will teach me how to cook a simple dal—a project he’s been working on since I was in high school, and a skill I have some- how still not mastered. We will do battle, armed with ladles, beside a stove that’s missing a foot in the thick, still air of my graduate student apartment.
The sweat beading on our foreheads will mingle with the bubbles of heat collecting over the lentils until finally the smoke alarm, no match for the hullabaloo of our perfumes and potions, will pulse out its overwhelmed panic.
We’ll erupt in giggles as I climb up on the step stool, fan the alarm with a flattened cereal box from the recycling bin. He’ll tell me he’s so glad that my place is finally set up.
I’ll not tell him that next week I’ll get around to shoving a wad of newspaper under the unsteady cooktop while a bag of broccoli steams in the microwave. He’ll not feel it then, when a tiny part of me evaporates.