From Quarrels. Published by Anvil Press in 2018.

MY MOTHER WAS A WHITE SHEET DRYING ON THE LINE. Wooden clothespins held her tight as she lifted and snapped and filled like a sail. At night, when she covered me, I inhaled lily of the valley, burning leaves, the starched collar of a nurse’s uniform and the stillness of a recently abandoned room. She taught me how to iron the creases out of a man’s shirt after all the men had disappeared. My mother played piano by ear in the basement. A long line of hungry people gathered outside to hear her play. They wanted news from home. Overhead, handkerchiefs fluttered in the breeze. Little telegrams sent but never delivered.

COCKROACHES SWARMED OVER THE DECKS. THEY CASCADED out of the cutlery drawer and fell with a click into the stainless steel sink. Each one was an oracle. On calm nights, when the moon was a porthole through which our ship sailed, the pantry hummed with their prophecies. God spoke to us through them. I gave leftover scraps to the workers in port—pickled herring and black bread—and they brought me burlap sacks stuffed with green mangoes. On long voyages, we wore gloves in bed to keep the roaches from gnawing our fingernails.

IN OUR BASEMENT, THE WRINGER-WASHER BARKED LIKE a baby seal. Strangers showed up with offerings of raw fish wrapped in newspaper. My mother thanked them and started giving weekly reports on the pup’s progress. Brigitte Bardot sent a handwritten note on perfumed stationery applauding the rescue effort and chiding Sophia Loren for wearing fur. In the end, it got out of hand and my mother told the strangers, who had become her dearest friends, she had released the seal into the ocean. Look, she said, pointing to a bald head bobbing in the gray waves, he looks just like Gandhiji without his glasses on.