"The Grief Wand at Wells Fargo" by Shreya Dharavath

Two days before my twenty-first birthday, I emailed my father after nearly a decade. The last I’d heard of him, he was in Nepal, to which my mother scoffed that he’d rather take care of a couple of monks than his daughter. I said, Ammi, I said that she couldn’t say that. Someone could hear, Ammi. I wish he had heard. I am bitter and I stalk his Flickr photos and see him ringing a Tibetan singing bowl and I wish my mother’s words rang in his ears like he was getting hazed at a Berkeley frat. My mom will always say what I will think and I will always chastise her for it. I am so bitter and I am only twenty-one. I emailed him nothing but a YouTube  link to Shakira’s Chantaje. Sent from my iPhone. It’s the only song by  Shakira that my mom does zumba to. One, two, three. One, two, three. One I’m bridging these, two divorced souls together in the catastrophe claustrophobic cubicle of an email is what I am doing, three. Nobody is doing it like me. I am twenty-one with grey hairs sprouting already, but they love Shakira and they love me. So he will be so ecstatic to have heard from his daughter that he hasn’t seen since she was eleven and wore velcro Twinkle-Toes. 

He was not. 

I am ravenously buying subpar sourdough at Safeway and gawk at his nascent response and laugh extremely loudly and tongue my cheek neurotically. I say fuck the subpar sourdough and I say, wow. I say Baba’s lost his hair but not his humor! I sugarcoat it. If he sees no need to sugarcoat what cannot be taken with a grain of salt, then I will. I defy him. I rebuke him! He says, Shreya, why do you care so much now if you did not then? I think, true. I get a kind of Catholic guilt over an apathetic amateur me who could not tie her shoes and hid beneath velcro straps. I get a sort of sick swell in the pit of my stomach over my Flickr slideshow that plays back all the moments where I did not care. Chantaje by Shakira plays in the background and the  slideshow stops when I learned to ride a bike without my trainer wheels. 

He wasn’t there when I learned how. My neighbor’s dad taught me his children were only babies. I feel like I’m in debt for the use of  their father before they could. I feel like I’m in debt all the time. I feel like I’m in debt to the sink for cooking a meal so when I make pasta, I’ll steer clear of the strainer. I use a fork and then reuse it to eat. Less things to clean. Less things to pay back. 

Nor was my father there when I realized that the world is much bigger than Wisconsin. And for the sake of my good conscience, I ought to keep up with the current global events! I ought to know the affairs of small-c communist China, what yams to eat to prevent male pattern baldness, and why my dad only came home on Fridays for an hour. 

He would sit in the room in the basement and I thought the basement was dark and cold and I was scared but I lied and said I would not go down because I did not care so I did not know what he liked. Caribou Coffee, American Spirits, and Shakira CDs. He did not like opening the blinds in his room, my mother’s side of the family, and when he lost a bet. His fists shook. 

The worst part of being honest with myself is that I was the gamble lost that loosened his once usurping hands. The worst thing about being honest with you is that I loved the pity. I loved it like I was Carrie Bradshaw. I loved it like a new pair of shoes. 

Even before the divorce, my mom enrolled the both of us in a recovery support group that met on Sundays on top of the Wells Fargo she worked at. A co-worker recommended it! Co-workers love recommending. And the other divorced moms all had a smoker’s patronizing nonchalance about them that I look for in all of my crushes now. I see a smoker on Hinge and I go, oh yeah. The kids and the grown-ups were segregated and we had to craft grief wands to wave and I thought, oh yeah. I’m going to wave my wand so hard and will my parents back together. This arranged marriage is going to be rearranged. But before that, I’m going to charm one of these ladies into pinching my cheeks and asking how old I am. Yes ma’am, I am so young and darling and none of my toys are scribbled on. I keep my Barbies’ clothes on and I eat my vegetables and only throw away my bananas. My teachers still call me a bright young girl and I’m not troubled. I never even liked him that much anyway. Surely, my mom is my whole world and I’m thankful for the distance. I’m going to make them all love me. I have the best fucking grief wand in Wells Fargo.

My grief wand was an invalid and my mother pretends there was no floor on top of Wells Fargo. I am curious in a spiteful manner and I pick at the scabs on my scalp until the blood cakes and I ask her where my wand wafted off to then. I am too bitter and her birthday is next week. I am too bitter and I did not reply to his email. He did not follow up and I am not a follower, not even of God. I spend all my time battering my bitterness that I do not know what my mom likes now either. Swatches, God, and intermittent fasting. She does not like when I forget to call, living in an apartment, and failure. I fail to call and I live in an apartment and I am sorry. She would like to get back with my dad. 

Nice. 

What if this was said when we all lived together? When the fire station was across the street from our house, and the firefighters could douse away the burning soot of their affairs. They could tell him to put out his cigarette. It’s a hazard, they would say and then I would say, whatever you say, beautiful. I love firefighters. We could get Caribou coffee and…

But what if nothing was said at all? I wish she had said nothing at all. I wish she hated him so much that the thought of his voice crumbled impenetrable objects to shards in her soft little fist. No, on the ground. I don’t want to hurt her. Sometimes I wish she hated him so much that she couldn’t stand to look at me. ‘Get!’ , she would say and ‘Go!’, I would, happily. I would do anything for her. I would look to the sun for every waking moment of my life to prune my eyes, his eyes, from her. 

I want to get her a Tibetan singing bowl for her birthday. I’m not cruel. This isn’t a callback to my dad’s Flickr. She likes to pray and I like to pretend. She likes to play the Tibetan singing bowl at the holistic shop with the welcome mat urging us to Namastay Here. And here I smudge my dirty, filthy, no-good runner’s feet for longer than needed until the white shopkeeper stares. I have my dad’s feet. Size twelve and the wide kind that makes me need Doctor Scholls’ and Clarks’ and to give away my kitten heels from Steve Madden because they are a lowballed size nine from Depop. We take up so much space, my dad and I.

We deserve a discount, I joke, but Ammi does not hear. I am so bitter and she just plays and I play pretend.

Shreya Dharavath is a Wisconsinite transplant in California, studying politics and hating politics and just trying her best. Her work focuses on the bittersweetness of missing those one lets go of first.