How To Know When You Have What You Need

            There’s no place like home. There isn’t ever anything that comes close to the feeling of comfort and holy belonging that I’ve heard about, but I will never know. Throughout my childhood, every time I was in the middle of a happy moment I knew I could turn to an adult and see sorrow. Grieving that this happiness wasn’t being experienced where it was supposed to be, with the people who were supposed to be with us.

            I grew up in a slim community of around a thirty people. Being in a community of thirty seems fine but could never actually be enough when you were spoon fed stories of mazes of buildings that your people lived in, where the feeling of belonging had materialized into a place. It tasted like honey. It’s clear that our customs were built for a people who moved as a unit, because attempting to continue them in our village was as sad a single bee in an empty hive.

            I am 12 years old, I live with my mother, my father, my grandmother, my brother. We live in a dusty village that knows hot sun and few people. But everyone around me always made sure I didn’t come from here even though I was born here. I came from a valley that cradled lush forests and powerful rivers close to sleeping Gods. When the heat around us made the ground and sparse trees waver like a dream, I always filled in their place with the valley that I knew was my home.

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            The morning greets you with a face of its own, a just-washed face with dew drops dotted along its curves and dimples. When you step out into the world, it’s like you bring a fresh towel with you, wrapping this young world in a dry warmth. The streets are cold, but they are not empty. Tents and people huddled up, where the brush dies and before another is born.

            The edge of the marketplace peeks out at the end of the road, from behind the façade of buildings before it, a well-worn sign that beckons travelers with “Good Food Here.” You approach your stall and set up for the day, for the long string of customers on their own journeys. While preparing the chiya[1], you run your hands through the dried tea leaves. Even when curled around each other, they have a steady aroma that carries the scent of mountains and the laborers that tended them. It has an addicting attraction like unfamiliarity packaged in nostalgia of things you used to want.

            Outside when the sun beginning to rise, a piece of the dark sky falls away and a horse and rider approach the marketplace. The horse catches your attention first: black coat and mane murky with dust, making it look like a mirage about to be blown away. A person jumps down out of the worn saddle. feet pushing against the ground and arms stretched up, every muscle fiber in a tense stretch. Their hair is perpetually defying gravity in coils as if they’re still falling down from the sky, it bounces as they make their way towards the stall. They step with a smile that’s ready just for you. After ordering and picking up their food in a whirl of movement, they make their way back. The horse and rider slowly amble out of sight, making its home in the opposite horizon.

            When the light has reached the roosters and they crow commands, the road brings two people in want of caffeine and in need of some respite. Your eyes trace the older woman who seems put together but the moment you get to her clenched hands you look away because you know she is not welcoming curious gazes. Next to her is a teenager that has put up a shield exactly the shape of her mother. They exchange words created by patchy, scalding hate blisters inside them, but turn away and sit next to each other at the counter. The woman in the turns to face you, her skin creasing in the quotation marks in between her eyebrows. It calls back to another woman, who walked through those faded roads and stood in front of you with creases deepened most in the lines she earned from smiling. This sharp woman though, does not smile. She has no joy left to give you, so you pour some into her cup.

            After years of working at this lodge, the customers blend together. It makes the kind ones more memorable and the harsh ones more bearable. All of them though, are puzzled by your lack of words. They try to speak at you and send you messages through their eyes, but you have never been able to read eyes. The language you speak is in the shoulders, jaw, cheeks, lips, hips, hands, and lines collected in the face. You manage to get your meaning across this way. You’ve gone your whole life this way; when you were young you were frustrated and fighting every instinct but as you grew older you learned that there were other ways that people said what they feel. The strangest thing was that sometimes they didn’t even know they were saying it, their body was loud on its own.

            A couple crosses in front of the stall, warm air in between them but not a bridge, not yet. You recall now, when you learned that people have multiple dimensions, how every time you realized it you fell in love all over again. Then made excuses to fall out of love because it hurt to make yourself hope that hard. This couple reminds you of another person that was broken in love. They were open and vulnerable in a way that gave you a voyeuristic pleasure, to see their pain so clear and so still you can see yourself in it. You can’t look too long though, this house of mirrors will blur the lines between where you end, and they start.

            It’s only the middle of the day but your feet are already complaining, the ache traveling from the sole to the ankles and eventually to the knees. The stall is in the shadow of a man who stands like the clock, limbs stiff together, marking noon. He stands firm, as if each step would be his last and he would remain on that spot until the end of time. His body is tall, thin, dressed in black. His face is also tall, thin, dressed in black – a blunt and beautiful depth under his eyes and cheekbones. He stands still against the crowd that presses together and moves in many different directions at once. I remember once there was a person that brought in a jar full of ladybugs, pressed together economically. Their eyes were distinct in millions, trillions, they felt infinite in that little jar. Nothing can be claustrophobic if they never experience freedom. Once you experience freedom though, that shining moment can dim the rest of your short life like it did mine.

            A sight you hardly ever see: me, at the counter, asking for a piece of what you have to offer. I am bigger than I was but not as big as I will be, my belly button is just at the counter and the jars that I can see contain barely anything. But over where I can see are shelves full and fuller of sweet and sour and spicy. I used to be a kid that had words spilling out of my mouth faster than I could even think, I used to prod for responses until I came to my own conclusion that you had nothing I wanted. But here I am, asking for a place to stay and think because I can’t bear to go home just yet.

            I’m deviating from your story, I’m sorry. There’s too much furry ugliness lodged in my mind like mold. I’m here because I need your softness, your newness, a respite from hunting for a place in this world. I remember the day we met, I was confident enough to convince myself my bike could fly and that there was nothing I didn’t know. My chin went up to the counter, I demanded words from your mouth. You did not indulge me, placate me, or soothe me because you knew I didn’t need any of those things. Your steadiness kept me grounded, even when I realized I must prove my worth to people that don’t speak my language of bare confidence.

            I stay with you behind the stall, you teach me to see the people that pass. I try to look, you correct me. Seeing is not looking. All day, we stand, and I try to find how you know when someone will approach the stall and when they won’t. How you know to start preparing the water. Eventually, maybe because I learned something or because that woman was so clearly in need of respite that even a silly chicken could see, I knew when to put the kettle on the fire. We could tell she was going to be pulled towards us because her frame was too stiff and too proud to last without some rest. The strong ones need rest the most, you know. She had grey hair that was thinning, and a silver pin in it that had seen better days. When it was new, that pin was proud to live in hair that was thick and luscious.

            The old-proud woman asked for a herbal tea, the kind that was picked from the nearest farm, only half a day’s distance. She sipped from the earthen cup; her back was straight. When she walked away from the stall, there was more comfort and ease in her gait.

            At the end of the day, when the stall is still, the security grille settled, the keys turn in the lock, and you turn your back to the door. From one entrance to another, you place yourself into the mosaic of warm windows. You have a place in this world, exactly the way you are.

[1] Masala milk tea. Also known as chai.