Dear Nani,
I’m writing to you from the mountain top in Sewanee. I’m participating in a creative writing conference here. I think I told you this, but you probably forgot. You always love reading my pieces, so I’m sending you a few stories with this letter. I’ve enlarged the font, so you can read them. I know you’re forgetting so much, so let me tell you what I remember.
I remember bowls of Annie’s mac-and-cheese with peas and purified water from a pitcher. I loved that mac-and-cheese, and I also loved the bowls. You always used the same one, ceramic white and laced with green tulips on the lip. One time, I asked my mom to make the mac-and-cheese, just the way you did, but it didn’t taste quite the same. When I asked why the water was purified, not the normal water I had at home, you said “Only the best for my favorite granddaughter!” I remember smiling.
Even when Nana spent hours in his room, lying on the gray comforter and staring at the chipped ceiling with glazed eyes, you were moving around, grabbing balled up socks and playing cards trapped under the legs of kitchen chairs, bony fingers hammering nails into the wall to hang up my school pictures and family photos, light bouncing off smiling faces.
I remember watching Young Sheldon in your living room in the evenings. Usually for the first twenty minutes of each episode, you would be bustling around in the small kitchen, pulling out chocolate-almond Dove bars and pouring us glasses of fizzing Coke, but I loved when you would join Rahul and me on the couch, the embroidered burgundy blanket draped across our laps. I’m pretty sure I looked at you more than the television screen, how a smile broke across your face whenever Missy and Sheldon teased each other, reminded you of me and Rahul, I think. You were so pretty when you laughed, your head thrown back, slightly crooked smile and dimpled cheeks, dark eyes creased. I don’t remember you ever scolding us, even when bits of chocolate broke off the bar and fell onto the carpet, lost in the plush crimson. I always fell asleep before the episode ended, my soft snore pushing into the quiet room.
This piece that I’m writing now came from an “I remember” prompt. When our teacher assigned it to us a few days ago, the other kids in my class rolled their eyes. It’s a generic prompt, an easy one. But I couldn’t wait to jump in, to close my eyes and picture your egg-shell white plaster walls, your large fluorescent light bulbs, the small manicured lawn out front. I do a lot with memory in my writing. It’s funny how memory works, how I can remember which photos are taped on your fridge but lying in bed some nights, staring up at the glowing stars taped on my ceiling, I forget the sound of your laugh. I have a bit of an obsession with memory in my writing, maybe because there’s so much of it. There’s always more to remember. And I’m watching you and learning how easy it is to forget.
I remember you would carry me to the bed, your fingers pressing gently into my ribs, until you no longer picked me up. I learned this one evening as I lay sprawled on the couch, my brother’s voice muted. I waited for you to scoop me up, for your cool hands on my waist, but instead you gently shook my leg and told me I was too heavy for you to lift. When I looked up at you, lines creased your cheeks, your dimples. I went to my red-and-white trundle bed that night with a lump in my throat and fell asleep to Rahul’s voice talking on the phone in the room next to mine, where he slept. I woke up in the morning to find clumps of dark brown hair in the bathroom trash can, thick locks among cherry Dum-Dum wrappers and Old Navy t-shirt receipts. That was how I found out. I ran, crying, to the kitchen, where I found you. You set down your whisk and pushed the bowl of egg yolks to the side to sit down with me, groaning as you lowered yourself onto the cool linoleum tiles. Our backs against the refrigerator, you pressed your hand firmly onto mine. Later that afternoon, I curled up in the sagging bean bag in the corner of the room, my face in the fuzz. When you survived the chemotherapy, and the doctors removed the lump in your breast, I thought you were immortal. Then aging kicked in, and I could see every day that you weren’t.
I remember Wii tennis, standing on the crimson carpet, flinging the remote around to hit the ball flying toward us on the screen. We almost hit each other so many times, a light breeze from a remote whizzing too close to skin. I got a bruise from when I slammed my arm mid-swing into the side of the brown sectional couch. You were never too good at playing. You’d have to sit down on the couch a few points into the game, out of breath, your shoulders pressed against the fabric back of the couch, and you’d lose some leverage on your swing. So, I played easy on you. Some points, I even pretended to not see the ball and swung a few seconds too late. You would always grin when you won, spinning around on the carpet, your arms flying around your waist in celebration.
At our meeting yesterday, my teacher told me to remove some of the details. They’re unnecessary, she said. I nodded, smiled politely. I didn’t know how to tell her that the kitchen isn’t just bright, but sunlight falls through the window in showers. The carpet isn’t red; it is maroon with flecks of gold and auburn if you kneel down and stare at it long enough. The speakers aren’t low quality; the voices crackle like static into the family room. I understand what my teacher is saying, but I am attached to these details I’ve grown up with. The carpet is not red.
Whenever I walked to the bathroom, I would stop at the portrait of your brother, clean-shaven face, dimpled cheeks, military uniform ironed and smooth. He died in a plane, you had told me once, after I’d asked a few times. When I probed further, you suggested a game of carrom and walked out of the room before I could respond. I have a lot of questions. What did you want to be or do in your life? Did you get it? Were you loved in the way you wanted to be?
Tara Prakash is an eleventh grader at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. Her work has been recognized in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards (where she won a National Gold Medal and a National Silver Medal), YoungArts, the New York Times, Blue Marble Review, Bow Seat’s Ocean Awareness Contest, The Daphne Review, and other literary journals and platforms. As a 2023 mentee in the Adroit Summer Mentorship Program, a participant in the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, and the founder of a nonprofit, Write to Right, which teaches writing to underserved communities, Tara loves writing poetry, flash fiction pieces, and creative nonfiction essays.