“Make me a vegetable sandwich. And put those sunflower seeds in in. Make sure you put those sunflower seeds in it. Do you have sunflower seeds?” I asked her.
And Kijra stood with her back to me, looking in the long cupboard where her mom kept nuts and bread and cereal and such. The one where Raj (formerly Namar) often stood complaining.
“Yes, we have the sunflower seeds, but we don’t have the bread you like.”
“That dark bread? Really thin slices? I love that bread. I don’t want a sandwich then. What kind of bread is that anyway?”
“Pumpernickle bread.”
“Oh no. You don’t have that bread. What a bummer.”
“How about I fix you some fried mango?”
“Fried mango? I’ve never had that.”
“It’s really good. And I have the mango already sliced,” she said, and she got the mango slices out of the fridge. They were kept in a little plastic container.
I stood behind her, my back to her, looking out the six framed narrow windows that went nearly to the ceiling. Her back yard always reminded me of an Ibsen play, for some reason. I guess because it was the scene that I imagined from some of the descriptions in there. Rolling green hills, nestled in clumps of tall, neatly manicured trees, filled with singing birds.
“Ug, these mangoes are sticking!” she complained, scraping the metal spatula loudly against the pan, which caused her Hindu father, to come into the room. From then on I started wishing that Kijra could maybe poach me an egg, for some reason. And when he came in he started watching the pan, and kijra’s struggle with the egg, and said, “Kijra,” in his strong Indian accent, “your problem is one of attachment.”
It was a small Professor Vedanta joke, so typical of him. Kijra giggled silently over this and then finally served up my mangos and we sat in the tiny little dining area off to the right of the kitchen. I always looked around when we ate in there, because it was decorated just like a little Danish dollhouse. Little wooden beams here and there at thirty degree angles, all equidistant and symmetrical. The wood matched the color of the slats in the six framed windows that opened in, rather than out, from turning odd little handles near them, that neatly matched the beams and the walnut colored table.
“Yumm. These are so good. And I have the munchies so bad.”
“Shh,” she giggled, putting one finger to her thick lips. They were ridiculous lips really. So ridiculous that Sigfried had simply named her “Lips.”
