Same Sun Here (5 page)

It is very exciting that your mountains look just like mine. I googled Black Banks at the library and read that is in the Appalachian Mountains. Mum always says, “People are people.” I guess mountains are mountains. I never knew that before. In Hindi, the word for pine tree is this:

I don’t think I believe in the Bible because I am Hindu. But in our bedroom, Mum has an
aarthi/puja
space, where she keeps a picture of the Virgin Mary right next to Lord Krishna. Also, Mum always says, “Do unto others,” and I think that is from the Bible. In Mussoorie, I went to St. George’s School, where there were many Christian teachers. There are lots of missionaries in Mussoorie because the British used to go there when they felt hot. Kiku says Christians think that everyone should change to be like them or we will all go to hell. You are a Christian and it does not seem like you think I should be one, too. Do you?

Sometimes Kiku says mean things because he is a teenage boy with a lot of hormones. I wasn’t going to tell you this, but I had to ask him what “the N-word” means. He told me, and then he said a white person who uses the N-word hates Indian people, too. I am telling you this so I am not keeping secrets from you, but I hope you are not upset.

I asked Mrs. Lau what kind of dog Cuba is and she said, “He’s a New Yorker.” She said he followed her home from work twelve years ago. She thinks he is one of those fight dogs, but he was too nice to fight so he ran away. This was a new story for me. If I had not met you, maybe I would never have asked Mrs. Lau that question. I am so glad to have met you.

I hope your mother doesn’t have a headache today. Has she been to Dr. Patel? By the way, I think it’s not nice that you think the way Dr. Patel speaks is funny. And I think your mamaw elbows you because it is rude to stare at someone just because they look different from you. You said yourself it was bad when your daddy didn’t like people different from him, right?

I bet Mrs. Patel is homesick like me. I don’t like it when people make fun of the way I talk. It doesn’t seem like I have an accent, because I am writing, not speaking, to you. But I DO have an accent, and if you made fun of me for it, I would not want to be your friend anymore and Kiku would probably beat you up.

Next week, the day after Labor Day, school starts. When I first came to New York, it was March, so I could not go to school because of the city rules that say you have to wait till September. That year, Kiku taught me from his books and made up examinations for me and put smiley faces on them. And then for three years, I went to PS 110, but we didn’t do much except read out loud from textbooks. Ms. Bledsoe at the Summer Program got me transferred to PS 20. It is just ten blocks from here. I start there next week. I do not know anyone, so I am a little nervous. I don’t know if I will make any friends.

Mrs. Lau says you shouldn’t have more friends than you have fingers. She says real friends are hard to find. I think she is right. My best friend, Anuradha, has not written me a letter since I moved to New York. I think she has a new best friend and has forgotten all about me. Mrs. Lau says if this is true then Anuradha was never my best friend in the first place, so I shouldn’t sit around feeling sad about it.

Next weekend, Daddy comes home. I cannot wait to see him.

I hope you and Rufus are smiling. Please write back soon and tell me more about your real true self.

Your pen pal,

Meena Joshi

P.S. I have been thinking of what you said about computers. Tomorrow I will practice typing at the library.

P.P.S. Here is how Dadi makes okra:
Heat oil in a pan and throw in a pinch of cumin seeds. Fry till the seeds stop sizzling, then add 1 sliced onion, 6 cloves of garlic, and fry till onion turns pale brown. Next add okra. It will be kind of sticky at first but don’t worry, that goes away as you mix. Add a pinch of coriander powder and a 1/2 pinch of mango powder. Fry it all for a little while, then add 2 cubed tomatoes. Cook for another 2–3 minutes. Eat with rice or
chapatti
and . . . YUM.

P.P.P.S. I have started doing those leg stretches. I think it’s working.

P.P.P.P.S. Last thing, I promise. I have never been to an amusement park. I am afraid I would throw up on a roller coaster, but the Thunderhead sounds like so much fun it would be worth it.

11 September 2008

Dear Meena,

I am writing to you today with real sad news. I don’t know how to say it all, so I will just say it and hope that it doesn’t come out like a big jumbled mess. Here’s what happened:

Yesterday, the bus dropped me off at the end of our driveway, just like always. We have a real long driveway and it takes a while to walk it, but it is lined on both sides by big woods full of old, old trees that remind me of big stone columns like you’d see on an ancient temple. Lost Creek is there, too, which is where we always go fishing. Lost Creek is mostly shallow with big gray rocks, but every once in a while there is a deep fishing hole. Because of the rocks and the rushing water, you can hear Lost Creek from a long way off, so it’s like a music in the woods. I usually walk through the woods instead of taking the driveway because it’s a different world there. It’s cooler, and the birds are louder, and there are all kinds of things to see. Sometimes I take my time and run my hand over all the moss. I get down real low and look at the ferns. This one time last summer I was moving real slow and quiet like that, and I looked up and there was a little fawn standing ten feet away, in the middle of Lost Creek, watching me. We stared at each other a full minute and I felt like it was reading my mind. Then it just eased away and disappeared into the woods.

Anyway, I was in the woods, doing my thing, and then I noticed that the birds had all hushed. This was real weird because it’s always crazy loud in there, with so many birds hollering and singing. So this made me listen harder, and then I could hear a machine running somewhere, even over the rushing of the creek. So I ran through the woods toward the sound, because we’re far enough outside of Black Banks to not hear any traffic usually. I could tell it was a big machine, like the kind you see working on the highway when they are making a new lane.

Finally, I came to where the big drop-off is, which is this line of cliffs that are about fifty feet high. You can see them from Black Banks and they’re what the town is named for, because when you’re in town you can look up and see them like a big set of black teeth on the side of the mountain. Before I got out to the edge where I could see, I stood in the woods, trying to catch my breath. Have you ever run so fast that it feels like something in your side has come undone? That little place was hurting me real bad, so I held my hand over it and breathed hard.

I’m not real crazy about heights, so I kind of eased out as close to the edge as I could. As soon as I got out of the trees I could see it. There were three ginormous bulldozers and a HUGE dump truck working on the mountain over to my left. The ’dozers were pushing down ROWS AND ROWS of trees. I couldn’t believe it. I know we have to cut down trees to build our houses and stuff like that, but they were
PUSHING
them down into a big mess and piling them up. Then the back of the dump truck raised up so that all these tires rolled out on top of the trees. Then the driver got out and poured gas all over the tires and trees and struck a match and —
POOF!
— they all caught fire, like somebody snapping their fingers.

I sat there a long time, wondering what in the world they were doing, and they just kept on pushing down more trees. Then I looked down at Black Banks. Looking down on the town from up there, you’d think that everything was perfect below. All the little houses in their neat rows, and the Black Banks River catching some sun on its waves, and the cars going about their business. I could see seven or eight church steeples and my school down there right at the foot of Town Mountain. Everything just right, while a mountain that close to town was getting treated this way.

When I got home Mamaw was worried to death, because I was never that late. When I told her what I had seen, she froze and said for me to tell her every single thing and not to leave out anything, so I did. Then she got on the phone right away and called somebody. She went in the laundry room to talk to them so I couldn’t hear her. I went over to the door and tried to listen in as good as I could, but the washer was running, so it was hard. But I did hear her say the words “mountaintop removal” over and over and over. And when she came back out, she told me that that’s what I had seen.

“I’ve been working with this group on fighting mountaintop removal for about a year now,” Mamaw said. She had set down across from me and was talking to me like I was grown. She has always treated me like I’m older than I am, and she says this is why I make good grades. “I knew that it was happening more and more, but I never dreamed it would get as close as Town Mountain.”

Mamaw said that Town Mountain was public land and the coal company had leased it, and now they could pretty much do whatever they wanted to do to it. She said that mountaintop removal is just what it sounds like: they take the whole top off of a mountain to get to a thin little seam of coal! I took my mother’s camera and got a picture of it and am going to paste it in here:

Can you believe that used to be a mountaintop, that had birds and deer and foxes and a million trees on it? Do they do this to your mountains in India?

Then whatever dirt and burned up trees or whatever else they have left over, they push down between two mountains and make a valley fill, and this causes all kinds of bad floods. Mamaw said that if a place has coal and poor people, then the coal companies will take it out any way they can and don’t care what happens to the people. She told me so much stuff that I never will remember it all. It was just too much to take in. The thing I will never forget is that she said we might as well prepare, because eventually they’ll get closer to the house, since that land is right up against her property.

I don’t want to think about it anymore, Meena. And I can’t talk to anybody about it except for you and Mamaw. My friend Mark called me this evening, wanting to know if I could come stay all night with him, and I started telling him about it and then he got real quiet and said, “What are you talking about, man? Do you want to come over and play Nintendo, or not?” Like I was mental or something.

All right, so I have to get my mind off of it. I’ll do it by answering the questions you had in your last letter. I’ll try to make my answers brief, since this letter is going on waaaay too long.

1. Freckles are not bumpy.
   

2. I’m an only child.
   

3. I wouldn’t say it’s fun to mow the yard. But I kind of like it, too, because I can think the whole time I’m mowing. The thing I hate to do is weed-eat, which takes forever and is so annoying you can’t think about anything while you’re doing it.
   

4. We have three bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen, a laundry room, and a living room. So that’s seven rooms. And a total of ten windows (the laundry room doesn’t have one, but the living room has three). That’s a weird question, by the way. Nobody has ever asked me how many windows I have in my house.
   

5. Yes, I have my own room. It used to be Mamaw’s guest room, and when I first moved in it had pink curtains and a big fluffy bedspread, but we finally got rid of that and now the bed has my Simpsons comforter on it and blinds instead of curtains.
   

6. Yes, I am a Christian but I don’t think you’re going to hell. You’re way too nice.
   

Now I’ll reply to some things in your letter that weren’t really questions but need responding to.

1. I’m sorry somebody called you and Kiku terrorists. To tell you the truth, though, I might have thought the same thing before I met you, because I never knew anybody different from me before. I hope that doesn’t hurt your feelings, but it’s the truth. But even if I had THOUGHT that, I would have never been as rude as that moron who called you all that.
   

2. I think it’s really cool that your mayor takes the subway. The only time we ever see our mayor is in the homecoming parade, when he rides in the backseat of a convertible Cadillac and waves to everybody. He has jowls, which tremble when he waves.
   

3. It’s easy to remember that Mother Nature is in charge when you live in Eastern Kentucky, like me. If we stand out at the cliffs where the big black teeth are on the side of the mountain, we can see storms coming from a long way off, and smell them, too, long before they get here.
   

4. I think “Cuba” is the best name for a dog, ever. Besides Rufus.
   

5. Thanks for telling me that the red dot is a bindi. I like learning something new.
   

6. You talk a lot about Obama. I know Mamaw is voting for him, but I don’t think a lot of foks here are. I know Mamaw gets into arguments at the Piggly Wiggly about him. (Do you all have Piggly Wigglys? It’s a grocery store, in case you’re wondering.)
   

7. I see what you’re saying about staring at the Patels, but I didn’t do it to be rude. I just think they’re interesting to look at. I don’t understand how that’s bad of me.
   

8. You said that people made fun of you because of your accent. Well, just like I mentioned above, people do this to other Americans, too. Where I’m from we talk real different from everybody else in the country, so people are always making fun of us, especially on TV and in the movies. Mamaw says that the only people it’s still OK to make fun of out in the open are hillbillies and crazy people. One time Mamaw was in Cincinnati visiting her brother, and some woman called Mamaw a stupid hillbilly, just because of the way she talked. Mamaw told her off, which is what you should do when people make fun of your accent.