The generosity of a friend is normally overwhelming and you are consumed with gratitude as you enjoy the fruits of the doggie-bag the next day. What transpired however, led to a grudge that I will hold forever, and take to the grave. Cremation. Whatever.
We are done with a delicious meal and she hands me some leftover daal in a pot with a loose-fitting lid. Son is supposed to hold the pot on his lap. But (stupid) son decides to lay it on the armrest while putting on his seat belt at the precise moment that (mindless) mom decides to put the car in reverse.
The container goes for a loop and upchucks its contents onto son’s lap.
He shrieks in disgust. “My new shorts!”
I shriek in horror. “My leather seat!”
We do what all normal, functional families do in a moment of crisis. Blame each other and start shouting. I calm down first, not because I am the adult and the more mature one, but because it is close to midnight, I am tired and want to go home.
Take off your shorts and sit in the back seat, I instruct him. He does as told, grumbling and whining. He then throws the shorts back in the front seat, where it continues to absorb more daal.
We take the freeway and as we near the exit, the accelerator stops functioning. So spare me, I do not know the mechanical, technical term of what the eff went wrong, but the fricking thingamajiggy that makes a car go forward just stops doing its goddamn job and we roll slowly to a stop on the exit ramp.
I pump frantically at the pedal. Nothing. Turn the car off and turn the key. Big mistake. Now the engine won’t even start.
“Get out”, I say. Now, there are often times, when my son wishes he had been adopted and I am sure this would rank highly as one of them. Higher than when we got thrown out of a train in India. Also at midnight. For not having tickets. But that’s another story. There are also times when my son thinks that he is adopted. Like when I forgot his name. Or his birthdate. Or to pick him up from school. But that is also another story...one which we can leave for his therapist.
“In my underwear?” he screeches, totally mortified. Man up! I bark at him. Put your shorts back on and march. Now he does not wish he was adopted. He wishes he was dead.
I find my daughter’s school P.E. T-shirt in the trunk of the car, and use it to wipe off some of the daal off his shorts and give to him, congealed yellow gobs of it still clinging to the fabric tenaciously.
You used her P.E. shirt? She is going to kill you, he says. She won’t know, I snap. We won’t tell her or I will kill you. Now start walking.
A car stops ahead of us. I warn my son: We are absolutely not hitching a ride with anyone. I have watched enough lurid episodes of Law and Order and the local news, to know that there are kidnappers/serial killers/rapists and axe murderers lurking on exit ramps always looking for victims. But they are two women. With a dog. And a Suburban. ‘How bad could they be?’ is not the question. How bad do we want to get home?
But we are reluctant to take them up on their offer of a ride. And explain that we have had an ‘accident’. They start backing away. We explain. They relent and put us in the back with the dog. Now my asthmatic son is covered with daal and doghair. And has started to wheeze. He no longer wishes to be adopted or dead. He wishes to kill someone.
Not as much, however, as Infiniti service repairman, who had to open the car door the next morning and face a backdraft of 110 degree heat combined with the smell of fermented daal.
Glossary:
daal: lentil soup
gora lok: white folks
vadki: bowl
rotli: tortillas, roti, chappati
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