God Loves Hair Page 2

  When we travel to India to visit my parent’s family, my aunts tell me how pretty I am. I seize the opportunity to test out their observations. Maybe you should dress me up in a sari and see what I would look like as a girl, I say coyly. They jump at the chance. They spread out their rainbow sari collections on the bed, and I feel like a princess as I choose the bold magenta and black one. It looks like something my mom would wear. They spin me around in the endless sheer fabric that smells like oil and mothballs and pleat it a couple times at the front so it looks like an accordion hanging from my waist. But my transformation isn’t complete. Bangles all the way up to my elbows, thick black eyeliner, a string of white jasmine flowers in my hair. From afar, my dad thinks I am some sweet village girl. I am the prettiest little girl in the world.

  SRIDEVI

  Have you ever played MASH? Just a pen and paper can tell you what kind of home you will have (M for Mansion, A for Apartment, S for Shack, and H for house), what car you’ll drive, what city you’ll live in, and which girl you will marry. Sridevi, the famous Bollywood actress, is always on the top of my list of dream wives. No one can dance or act like her. She is a true star.

  She might not be the best singer, as she painfully showcased in Chandni, but that’s why they typically use playback singers in Bollywood, which is just a fancy way of saying the actors lipsynch. And no one is as beautiful as her. Not my dad’s childhood crush, Hema Malini, and certainly not this new young hot-shot in town everyone is raving about, Madhuri Dixit. People are so fickle.

  My favourite Sridevi movie of all time is Nagina, where she plays a woman who is the human incarnation of a snake, except she doesn’t know it. When she hears the snake charmer’s nasal song, she faints onto her bed. Her innocent brown eyes turn a menacing blue as she starts convulsing to the sound, completely entranced and powerless. She puts on a white sari, adorns herself with diamond jewellery, and then confronts the snake charmer through glorious choreography.

  I like pretending that somewhere deep down inside, I too am a snake, just like her, waiting to be set free. I pull the thin yellow sheet off my bed, wrap it around my head, and twist and twist it as though I have a long Sridevi-esque braid. I turn on the Nagina soundtrack and make my eyes really big. My hips slowly begin to wind as I struggle against the music. Main teri dushman, dushman tu mera, main naagin tu sapheraa. Then, when the ache in my stomach becomes unbearable, I let go and dance.

  PERVERT

  It’s always been just the four of us. My dad, my mom, my brother, and me. No extended family at Christmas or Thanksgiving. No favourite aunties or uncles. My grandmother, Ajji, once visited from India, bringing with her a treasure chest of stories about my mom, a passage into a world I had never known; apparently my mom was my age once. But when Ajji got homesick, she accused my parents of trying to kill her. My parents don’t have any real friends either. The ones they do have, the ones they call upon only in an emergency, they pay back with gifts or repeatedly invite for dinner until my mother is satisfied that our silent debt has been paid off. I too seldom have my friends over, but if I do, they will also receive a hearty meal. In no one we trust, and the house is our fortress.

  My dad shares his birthday with his older brother, also known as The Doctor, The Actor, The Favourite. They never speak, except for on that day. When I am seven years old, my uncle and his Golden Family decide to visit us from the United States of America. There is a lot of talk about how attractive my cousins Anish and Praveen are. Praveen is fair and has light eyes. The more a brown person looks like a white person, the more attention they seem to get. Even if they are ugly. But I am preoccupied with the idea of an extended family, having a family that extends past the four of us, and that there is an actual resemblance among all of us. I see my giant nose on their faces. We are related! I imagine Anish and Praveen are the older brothers I never had, and I love them immediately, desperately.

  One evening, Anish is on the living room couch watching the Stanley Cup playoffs. I am on the floor by his feet focusing hard on the TV screen, hoping this interest will impress him. But his own focus on the game is unshakeable. I turn around, wind my arm under his knee, and make my hand the shape of a snake in between his legs, in honour of my favourite Bollywood film Nagina, trying to get his attention. Look! I hiss proudly. Anish looks at me and my snake hand, his eyes groaning, then looks to his brother on the opposite couch and says: What a perv!

  DEAR VISHNU

  They say Your skin is blue because You are infinite like the sky and the ocean of milk You rest on. I wish my skin was blue. Brown is boring, it blends into the dirt or concrete background. So I draw on my hands and arms with a blue ink pen. My teacher says that I can get ink poisoning, but this only inspires me to draw more for I have heard that it was drinking poison that turned Lord Shiva’s skin dark blue. I want to be a modern version of You. I would wear a peacock feather in my hair like You, maybe use my mom’s curling iron to match Your wavy locks, and get my ears pierced. But my four arms would carry a walkman, a book, a candle, and an apple. There should be a “Take Your Believer to Work Day” so I can study You in action, ask questions, and take notes. I am jealous of Goddess Lakshmi, Your consort, for the eternity she gets to spend by Your side. Does she know how lucky she is? If You smile, she shares it. If You speak, she hears it. It’s not fair that only one can be so close.

  When my mom prays, she becomes stiff as though one wrong gesture could displease You and result in her losing her job, or worse, having to be reborn. I wish she knew the version of You that I know, the one whose adventures and victories I read about in my Amar Chitra Katha comic books. You are The Protector, the one that the demigods rush to in times of crisis. They are instantly soothed by the sight of You, decorated with flowers and gold, and Your compassionate counsel. Countless evil demons are slayed by Your mighty chakra or bow and arrow, but You always appear calm, never angry, as though even destruction is an act of love. How do You do it? Sometimes there is a fire in me, and when it comes out, it’s never as pretty.

  Maybe it’s the blue that keeps You cool. If only I were blue.

  GIRLS ARE MOTHERS AND SISTERS

  Men sit on the left side and women on the right. We are divided by a red carpet. This is “to keep the monkey mind from being distracted.” Whoever thought up this tradition must have had a lot of foresight as most of my friends are girls, and we would definitely end up chatting during meditation if we were allowed to sit together.

  I learn at Sunday school that girls are like my mother or my sisters and need to be treated as such. I have always wanted a sister, someone’s hair to braid or nails to paint, so this is really a blessing. I can tell my own mother is pleased with my staunch adherence to this rule, the way I don’t notice girls outside of sisterhood. The way I don’t notice that my mother’s latest craft course creation, a ceramic statue of a woman that she calls The Nude, is actually naked. I am puzzled by this choice of name when clearly the statue is covered in gold paint. But I curb my curiosity after seeing how horrified my parents are when one of our houseguests keeps accidentally bumping into The Nude. Did you see how Gopal was looking at The Nude? He couldn’t take his eyes off it!

  Note to self: Don’t stare at The Nude.

  The older I get, and the older my “sisters” get, the harder it is not to notice the mountains of physical differences between us. Breasts. Breasts are beginning to poke out everywhere. At the Centre, sculptures of goddesses that once appeared to me as inanimate depictions are suddenly alive, boasting their large bare breasts. She is my mother! I train myself never to look in that direction, and if my eyes wander in curiosity or by accident, I immediately whisper Sai Ram, the name of God, for forgiveness.

  Going to Walmart with my parents is the ultimate test. We always end up having to cut through the women’s underwear section. I focus my attention on the ground, making a melody out of the tile patterns, and walk as fast as I can to avoid potential sin. Sai Ram, Sai Ram, Sai Ram.

  ES EE EX />
  Four o’clock is The Young and the Restless time. It’s the daycare owner’s favourite TV show. I like it because the women are stylish and confident, and the men are handsome and wear suits. Sometimes they take off their shirts to the sound of saxophone music and hold each other tightly. But it’s different than how my mom hugs me. It’s prolonged and almost devotional, with their hands moving all over each other. I imagine what that holding would feel like. That holding is called S.E.X. My parents don’t like S.E.X. Anytime we watch a movie together and it looks like S.E.X. might happen, they frantically fumble with the fast-forward, only to fast-forward most of the movie away. Or they just hold the couch pillows over my face. They think Full House, the family sitcom featuring the baby Olsen twins, is for grownups. And whenever my dad tries to kiss my mom, she always pulls back and gets this look on her face like she might need to go to the washroom. Doooonn’ttt!

  So why have my parents signed my Grade Five S.E.X. education permission form?

  The video we are shown is nothing like The Young and the Restless. No candlelight, no bubble bath, no lace. Just a strict-looking man in a lab coat talking about dreams that make boys wet their pants. Blood floods inside girls. How to put a “condom” on a banana. What is this? I squirm in my seat and wish I had my own remote control to fast-forward past the nudity. I glance at my teacher’s face, hoping she looks as uncomfortable as I am, a sign that this viewing wasn’t her idea. She looks bored. The video ends. No holding.

  At daycare, I rant to the other kids: They were talking about S.E.X! ESS EEE EEX! Do you even know what that is?? How could they show us those things, those bad things? Polluting our minds at school! They were even showing us pictures of boobies! How could they embarrass the girls like that! I just wanted to go up to the projector and TURN IT OFF!

  I rant in the car, all the way home. I think my parents are proud.

  THE COLOUR PURPLE

  I love when colours join forces. The smell of wax and invincible possibilities when opening a new box of crayons. Or rainbows. Like my Smurfs rainbow belt and neon rainbow suspenders. But if I had to choose just one, okay, two, then I would say yellow is my favourite colour and purple is my favourite colour to wear. My mom tells me I am “a winter” which apparently means I look good in dark “winter” colours like black (not white), navy blue, and purple. To me, purple is more “spring,” like lilacs or the flavour of grapes.

  I plead with my parents for a Starter baseball hat in the same way I pleaded for a New Kids on the Block sweatshirt—until they relent. I am clueless about baseball and don’t really understand the point of sports. A ball being hit or thrown or kicked around doesn’t captivate me the way Nancy Drew books do. But all the other boys in my class have these hats. This cluelessness proves to be critical as my parents and I are standing in front of rows and rows of hats at the store. I am dizzy from the options and the fear of buying the hat of an unpopular team. After what feels like an hour of torturous indecision, I lean on my aesthetic sensibility, and reach for the purple Los Angeles Lakers hat. I have no idea who the L.A. Lakers are or if they are any good, but at least the hat looks nice. I place it on my head. It feels too big even though my mom adjusted the strap in the back. The three of us look at my reflection in the store mirror.

  I am one of the boys now.

  GARDEN HOSE

  When Monsieur Lambert isn’t looking, the four of us boys sneak to the back of the classroom, where the thick, blue French dictionaries are piled in the corner. We snicker and quickly flip to that page, the page we come back to over and over again, the page that distracts us when we are supposed to be memorizing our times tables.

  On that page is a painting of a naked, pink-skinned man and woman, side by side. Each of their body parts is labelled with a number that matches the appropriate French name, typed beside the image. But we don’t see numbers or words. We are even indifferent to the man’s penis, though the busy patch of hair surrounding it is a little startling. We are solely fixated on what hangs between her legs.

  She has a penis, too. But hers has a giant hole at the end.

  It looks like a garden hose!

  Yeah, it does!

  Don’t you know that’s how babies are made?

  Reeeeeaaally? How?

  The man’s hose goes inside the woman’s hose!

  A few years later, Nevin and I are studying the Playboy magazine he stole from his older brother while we wait for the bus. The women in the photographs are smiling attentively, and their legs are stretched wide. But none of them has a hose! In fact, there isn’t anything dangling between their legs! Instead, they each have a pink, fleshy, mouth-like opening, yawning.

  Maybe women’s private parts look different in different countries.

  GIRLS ARE DANGEROUS

  My dad and I are looking out at the chaos of students ahead. This is no Mill Woods Elementary. I am wearing my brand-new sneakers from Kmart, my hair is neatly combed with Amla oil, and my knapsack is stuffed with school supplies, pencils, and duo-tangs all individually labelled with my name. But I am not ready.

  There is an awkward silence in the car. I am not sure what feels more foreign, my new timetable and its listing of new room numbers and new teacher last names or sharing a first with my dad. I tell myself this is what bonding feels like.

  Finally, he turns to me, and I am sure he is going to wish me luck or tell me to study hard, something to inspire me to greatness on my first day of Junior High.

  He says: Stay away from girls. They are dangerous.

  GAYLORD!

  Junior High has marked the sudden death of sweat pants. They have been replaced by name-brand denim and name calling which will continue every day for the next six years.

  Blond-haired, blue-eyed Will Jenson walks close behind me on my way to class. He is on his tippy toes as though he is wearing high heels, fluttering his hands, and talking with a lisp to his audience of jocks. Is that what I look like? Do you have to be such a sissy? They laugh, and I pretend I am oblivious. They have to laugh because Will is the most popular boy in school. Maybe if I laughed too, Will and I could be friends. He kicks me and I say, Sorry. He is puzzled. He kicks me again, this time timidly, like a child unsure of his own strength, and I apologize again. His friends find this funny. So he keeps kicking, they keep laughing, and I keep apologizing. I am bound to sorry, as though it’s my only defense, as though each sorry holds a tiny spark of dignity.

  The same jocks surround me by my locker later and warn me of impending dangers. Are you sure no one has beaten you up? You are definitely going to get beat up in high school. Definitely. One of the brown jocks, the one who laughs the loudest, follows me into the washroom. He stands wide at the stall right next to me, making his presence known. I pee as fast as I can, focusing my eyes straight down, thinking about how our matching skin doesn’t protect me and how that feels like a betrayal.

  I look for safety with the girls. We have more in common, like our love for Jodeci and General Hospital. I am safe for them too. I am the boy they can talk to about their crushes on the other boys. Maybe I am too safe. Mia Zinner, one of my few friends, likes to tell me how much she wishes I was dead. It’s only 9:30 a.m. but I just want to kill you, Gaylord.

  When I ask my parents if I can change schools, my dad tells me that my hairstyle is the real problem. In India, boys who part their hair like yours, in the middle, are … you know …

  So I learn which hallways to avoid (Sissy!) and which faces to avoid (If you ever look at me again, I will pound the shit out of you, you fucking fag). How to walk a little firmer, talk a little deeper, be a little smaller. But I can’t make it stop.

  I catch an episode of The Wonder Years when Kevin is getting picked on by a bully. Loser! Loser! Loser! Fed up one day, Kevin responds, Fine! I am a loser! The bully responds, You are?? in shock. He never picks on Kevin again. I immediately take note and am determined to test it out the next day:

  Gaylord!!

  Fine! I am a Gaylord!
>
  You are?? (Bingo! Just as predicted!) Yes! Yes, I am!

  Do you even know what that means?

  Um. Sure I do. It means … loser …?

  No! It means you like boys!

  BUBBLE BUTT

  We are junior scientists with our microscopes. We discover what mitosis and meiosis look like under the lens. But the real focus is always on each other, specifically each other’s body parts: Krissy Bell’s huge breasts, Zack Mason’s huge biceps, Travis Reeves’ supposedly small penis. And Mr Mitchell’s bum.

  Mr Mitchell is my gym teacher and he is perfect. His polo shirts stretch over his heroic shoulders and chest as though they were tailored for his body alone. All the women teachers seem to smile just a little bigger when he talks to them. Even his supposed flaws are attractive, like the way his forehead shines where his sandy hair has begun to recede. But his real gift is behind him.

  I have never really paid attention to any bum before, but Mr Mitchell’s is hard to ignore, especially in the tight blue jeans he wears. It is magnetic. Juicy even. Just the right amount of lift and bounce. Lisa Tober calls it (and him) “Bubble Butt.”

  This fascination with my gym teacher’s bum has led to an intense curiosity about what kind of underwear he wears. I approach him when he is sitting on the bench, legs open, and find any excuse to engage him in conversation.

  How was your weekend, Mr Mitchell?

  Can’t believe it’s still snowing, eh, Mr Mitchell?