Same Sun Here (3 page)

I hope you are having a nice day.

Your pen pal,

Meena Joshi

P.S. Please write a longer letter next time.

P.P.S. Sorry if that was bossy.

23 August 2008

Dear Meena,

Sorry my last letter wasn’t longer. I was running late for basketball practice and just wanted to get something in the mail to you. But I still don’t think I can write as much as you.

You asked what I look like. I am redheaded, with freckles all across my nose and shoulders. Mamaw says the freckles are because our people are originally from Scotland and Ireland. So I guess when you really think about it, we are all from some other place, way off across the ocean. Mamaw is half Cherokee, so I have her big nose. People give me a hard time about it and call me Toucan Sam sometimes, but I don’t care. I kind of like my nose. Mamaw says I will grow into it and it will be the best thing about me. I wish I was taller so I could be a better basketball player. Lately I have been doing this leg-stretching exercise my buddy Mark told me about, where you squat down and put one leg at a time out behind you as far as you can. It’s supposed to make you taller. I’ve only been doing it a week and already, according to my measuring tape, I have grown 1/16 of an inch. It’s pretty amazing.

It’s weird that you are originally from the mountains, because that’s where I live now. I looked up where you were born online, and it’s cool because the mountains there look so much like mine, with pine trees and everything. I always expected India to only have big palm trees, for some reason. You said your mamaw wouldn’t come to America because she would miss the mountains too much, so maybe she could move here instead of New York City. At least that way she’d be way closer to you than she is now, way over in India, and I bet she’d like the mountains here. My uncle sells houses and could find her a place. Let me know if you need help with this.

We have an Indian who lives here, Dr. Patel. My mamaw goes to him because she has sugar diabetes, and they are always laughing together. He says that she reminds him of his mother, and you should hear the way he says “Mama Justice” (that’s what he calls her). It’s funny with his accent, although Mamaw says it’s not polite to laugh at him over that and that he must be real smart to be able to even learn our language and to be a doctor besides. We have seen him and his wife at the Piggly Wiggly before, and she has a red dot on her forehead. Do you? I would like to know how those things work. Are they glued on there, or is it a Magic Marker, or what? I don’t understand, and Mamaw always elbows me when I stare at her.

My father is nothing like Mamaw, though. He is always making fun of anybody who is different. He used to say the N-word all the time (especially when we were watching basketball), but now he is friends with all kinds of black people down there in Biloxi. He works with them. So I wonder if he still says that word. I hope not. It makes me feel tight inside, like I am smothering.

You asked if I have been to New York City. HA!!! I’ve never been anywhere except to Dollywood, which is a big amusement park not too far away, with this awesome roller coaster called the Thunderhead. You should ride it sometime. When somebody is real sick they get sent to the hospital in Knoxville, and that’s where Mom used to go to shop for my school clothes on Tax Free Day, so I have been there a few times. It’s the only city I really know, but it’s too loud and there are too many cars. The houses are right on top of each other. I don’t believe I could stand it without my woods.

You asked me about music. (We have been studying poetry at school and how it doesn’t have to rhyme, so I think I’ll write this next part like a poem.)

Actually, one reason I did that was because my English teacher gave us homework to write a poem about a memory, and so after I typed that I realized it was a memory and I could kill two birds with one stone by writing to you about it but also making the poem for English class. Do you think it’s any good? Ms. Stidham says that the main thing is to make every line of poetry a mystery so that the reader wants to go on and read the next line. I thought that was pretty cool, when she said that, because I always thought the most important thing was to make it rhyme, but she said, no, and that nowadays poems that rhyme are kind of lame. We all laughed because it was funny to hear a teacher say something is lame. Don’t you think so? The only poetry I have ever really read is Sharon Creech stuff, like in
Love That Dog
. And I love this poem by Joyce Kilmer, but the only part I know by heart is “I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.” Mamaw recites the whole poem sometimes when we are out walking in the hills. She says it real loud, the way preachers will boom out a big prayer sometimes right in the middle of church.

Anyway, I did try to put in as much mystery in my poem as I could, but I still don’t know what to call it. I’ve been reading it over and over but I can’t think of a title. I think I’ll just call it “My Memory Poem.” Or maybe “Wildflowers” or maybe “A Memory.” I don’t know.

Oh, there is one more thing you need to know to meet me. I also have a dog, Rufus, who is the best dog that ever was. Everybody says so. I have had him since I was four years old (I am 12 now), and he is the best friend anybody could ever ask for. He will run around and play with me if I’m in the mood for that, or he will sit real quiet with me and look out at the mountains, too, if that’s what I’m in the mood for. He always goes along with me and Mamaw when we go walking in the cool of the day. That’s what Mamaw calls it, the cool of the day. When we go fishing, Rufus just lies down on the creek bank with his chin on top of his paws — until we start to reel in a fish. Then he gets so excited that he runs back and forth along the water’s edge with his tail wagging and his whole butt shaking, he’s so wound up.

Rufus smiles all the time. Have you ever seen a smiling dog? I don’t know what kind he is. “You old mutt,” Daddy always says, and gives him a good pat on the side. Mamaw thinks he has beagle, blue heeler, Jack Russell, and maybe even some pit bull. I’ve put a picture of him in here. It’s not a very good one because he moves around so much that it’s hard to take a picture of him. But I got him to lie still by rubbing his belly.

About that okra: Mamaw grows a big garden and okra is one of her favorite things. She says it’s beautiful to look at and delicious to eat. When it’s ready, she slices it up and soaks it in buttermilk, then rolls it in meal and flour and fries it in the skillet. It’s delicious, especially with fried green tomatoes. One time Daddy was eating some of Mamaw’s okra, and he said, “This is so good you have to pat your foot to eat it,” and we all laughed like it was way funnier than it really was. Have you ever had a fried green tomato? It is the best thing in the world, guaranteed.

I guess I better go and get my chores done. I have to mow the yard this evening. I can’t believe I wrote so much, but that’s what happens when I get to typing. My mother taught me to type when I was only eight because she said that a person can’t do anything nowadays if they don’t know their way around a computer. And I can type almost as good as I can play basketball. I’m not meaning to brag, it’s just that those are the only two things I can really do good at all. I suck at lots of things, especially mechanical things. Mamaw is all the time having to put the chain back on my bicycle, because I never can figure out how. I’m terrible at cooking, too. I can’t even make a peanut-butter sandwich right. I always tear the bread when I’m trying to spread the peanut butter.

What are you good at?

I sure hope you’ll write me back. Tell me more about New York City. I can’t imagine what it is like to live there with all those taxi cabs and people in suits and going to plays all the time and eating at the Rainbow Room. I don’t believe I’d like it, but it sounds like an exciting place to visit.

August 27, 2008

Dear River,

Thank you for your letter!!! It was as good as reading a book. I put Rufus’s photograph under my library card in my box of Special Things. I keep the box hidden behind the sack of rice in the kitchen closet. Nobody, not even Kiku, knows about this hiding place. It is also where I keep my watch set to India time so I always know when Dadi is sleeping.

I have been thinking of what you said — that we can tell each other secrets and be our own true selves. That sounds very nice to me.

I think it is cool that you play basketball. There is a basketball court near here, and I like to watch Kiku and his friends play. Kiku taught me H-O-R-S-E, and sometimes he picks me up so I am almost as tall as the basket and I toss the ball into the net. I guess that is cheating in real basketball, but Kiku says for me it is OK. What is it like to play a real game? It must feel good when everyone cheers for you.

I would like to try eating okra the way your mamaw makes it. It sounds delicious. Dadi and I used to watch the okra leaves in her garden turn to follow the sun across the sky, from east to west. It was like a kind of magic. I am so happy to know that you live in mountains full of okra. And no, I have never eaten a fried green tomato before.

I wonder if we can mail things like tomatoes to each other?

I like that your poem is about how things used to be in your family. You should keep writing lots and lots of beautiful poems until you have enough to fill a book. And I think it’s super funny that your teacher said “lame”!

On the subway, there is something called Poetry in Motion. Poems are printed up above the seats so that when you are sitting there on your way to the next station, you have something to think about. I read a poem on the subway that rhymed called “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” I never knew before that the title of a poem could be a whole long sentence, did you? Actually, maybe you could do that for your poem! Maybe you could call it “We Were Like a Circle” or “What We Used to Be.”