4.
Where Narashima Comes Down
Where Narashima Comes Down
One of my old friends described the way I missed home as sweet. When I close my eyes my elementary school becomes the warmest, pinkest place on earth. I can taste the stale cotton candy my brother and I probably shouldn’t have eaten. Most school years ended with a series of unbearably hot days, when you can feel the heat in your ears and between your thighs as the school day neared its ending. Still, there were moments where we’d catch ourselves under the perfect tree’s shade or in a gust of wind as though a train just passed by. My girl scout meetings were held in Kindergarten classrooms and in those days of wrapping the year up we’d have to open the windows to keep our heads up in focus. But the waves of toad croaks would roll in with cool air as another variable as to what could distract eight year old me. Toad croaks still can, very easily. The endings of pink sunsets, when the space in between day and night stares right at you, terrify me. All possibilities are staring at me.
There was one time when I wasn’t staring back and the night suddenly appeared. My brother and I went to my school’s playground with my great aunt who had visited us from Hyderabad. She helped me go up the slide the wrong way when my brother refused to. At the time it didn’t feel like time was passing. We just kept moving. The same routine: go up the small slide, across the wobbly bridge, down the big slide and every now and then, traverse the monkey bars. It seems as if the world, the sun, and the moon passed us. After much protest our aunt took us home. Our school was directly across from us, making the walk about five minutes long and magical at night when we were chasing an indistinguishable kitchen light.