Wrong Note

On my first day of kindergarten, Mrs. Miller takes roll. She begins some sort of symphony, a rapid chorus, Emma, Jake, and Katie sing, Here, Here, Here! Then, I hear a cacophony that doesn’t match The melody before, something that sounds so unlike my name, I don’t even realize Mrs. Miller is calling on me. Soon, I learn to wait for the telltale pause And stop the music before it goes out of tune. “The one you can’t pronounce is probably me.” I come home to my mother drinking tea with her friends. I try to greet them in my broken Hindi, but I don’t get much farther than hello. An auntie murmurs something to her neighbor, and the women laugh. “What? What did she say?” Mom tells me, “You wouldn’t understand, you’re so American now.” She laughs, and it sounds like cymbals falling from The roof, clanging, clattering on the ground. I hear a faint song as I walk into the high school cafeteria, It’s the other senior girls bragging about their summer breaks, Trips to New York skyscrapers and European art museums. I try to bring up my trip to India, and the girls stop me— “You go there every year, it’s nothing we haven’t heard already.” The sound is a violin, played with a knife, and All the strings break. I almost marry a man, someone I think is my forever, And it’s great — until I say that I want our wedding To have Indian elements too, and I want to wear a lehenga, Red, the Indian bridal color, bold and bright. He tells me his mother won’t approve, that a pristine bride wears white, He laughs as he tells me that we can’t have Indian food, Because who could stand the smell? The music thunders in my ears, I stretch across continents Like the skin of a drum, And the mallets pound with Each invalidation, Each isolation, I turn it in my desperation Into a powerful incantation, I’ve had enough, I am enough, Enough, Enough, Enough! I have decided to stop listening to the music, The cymbals and broken violins. Instead, I will compose a symphony of my own. I will take these two places I call home, These two beautiful refrains, And I will weave them into a harmony That makes you see how miraculous it is To be me.