This Too, Is Holy

The year I noticed wrinkles sprouting from the corners of my eyes, I realized I had to know the recipe to Thatha’s cake. Time no longer felt granted and endless, and when the end of December came I decided this time I would figure it out for good. 

As I drove to the store, large flakes of snow fell from the sky. The flakes were scatted for now, but by this point in the season it was expected that in the morning, trees and power lines would be lying down in rest. In the grayish white blur that came into view from the headlights, I could see my grandfather’s short hairs falling to the ground, wispy white tufts floating to earth. 

Before his body became an unfamiliar place, without hands strong enough to tug or feet sturdy enough to chase, there was time when he could delight us kids. I still wonder how he played along, why he bothered indulging our games when he could have easily demanded anything from us and we would have obliged.

They were games that could only be amusing to a child, delightful because they inflicted pain and frustration on adults. For precious moments the balance of power tilted in favor of the smaller, stickier person and something about that early taste of authority seemed hilarious, like the best joke ever told.

For one of our games, I walked closely behind the curved slope of Thatha’s back and reached my hands up to the thin cotton undershirt stretched snugly over his shoulders. Where the hemline of the undershirt dipped part way down his back, dark skin stretched over bumps where bones tried to join the world outside. I yanked the curly white hairs that sprouted from the skin one at a time.

“Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!”

He kept his shrieks in line with the spirit of the game. Looking back I realize I never knew if I was actually causing him pain. His frame had already shrunken so much by then I imagine he felt each white thread being pulled through his hollow body.

“Ouch! Ouch! Ouchieee!”

Another game of ours was the mysterious disappearance of the TV remote. Somehow right when my grandparents wanted to watch their 3 o’clock soap on SunTV, the poor remote would find itself shoved deep into the abyss of the couch or somewhere thrillingly close to water in the bathroom.

I didn’t mind watching our daily TV serial, but ever so often I thought myself clever enough to accidentally leave the channel on Nick Jr. while they searched for the remote and enjoy Dora the Explorer instead.

My younger brother Muthu was particularly enamored by this daily ritual. If our regular show came on and both Ammamma and Thatha weren’t present, he’d waddle through the apartment on chubby legs and call for them until they took his small fingers in theirs and let him lead the way.

*

Thatha was also good at things that were serious, unlike my mother. I was always dissatisfied with her responses to my questions.

“Where does the Earth come from?”

“Space.”

“Where does space come from?”

“God created everything.”

Somehow I sense her answers were just that – answers, not truths. They seemed to cover up the question rather than look it in the eyes.

Thatha’s responses were different.

“God created the universe from earth, fire, air, and water. Those are the ingredients he used to make everything.”

I must have seemed unconvinced. He shuffled to the kitchen and returned with a match box.

“I can prove it to you. This matchbox is made of cardboard. Cardboard is made of thick paper. Where does paper come from?”

“Trees!”

“And where do trees come from?”

“The ground!”

“Exactly, The Earth. So this matchbox is the Earth.”

He struck the match hard and fast against the side of the box.

“Earth creates fire.” He blew out the match and showed me the head so I could see it glow orange with a life of its own.

“Watch what happens now.” He blew gently this time so I could see the orange glow become stronger, as if wanting to become enflamed again.

“Like humans, even fire needs air to survive.”

He picked up his drinking cup and dropped the match into the bottom of the silver tumbler.

“And water puts out fire. So all four elements need each other. We cannot have one without the other, and that is why God created everything from them.”

When Thatha told stories, I never knew what to say. I looked at the match floating in water and wondered why my mother didn’t know this. Hadn’t he taught her the same?

*

Once someone in my first grade class had explained the full story of Nativity in front of everyone during story time. His name was Thomas and he had cheeks that were perpetually red. I imagined the angel Gabriel with the same redness painted on his face.

“And then Jesus Christ was born!”

Ms. Hamilton took over.

“Thanks for sharing that story Thomas.” She turned to the rest of us and provided a disclaimer. “But remember, not everyone celebrates Christmas.”

This caused a stir. A few whispers went out among the fifteen of us seated on the mat in the corner of the room, the classroom library.

“Some people celebrate Christmas and some people celebrate other holidays, like Hanukah and Kwanza. Christmas is only celebrated by Christians.”

A girl with perpetually damp hands and brown pigtails raised her hand.

“Yes, Marissa?”

“I celebrate BOTH Christmas AND Hanukah.” She screamed “both” and “and” to rub it in.

A boy with bright blue sneakers that lit up when he walked raised his hand.

“Yes, Anthony?”

“What do you call people that don’t celebrate Christmas?”

Ms. Hamilton took longer than ususal to respond.

“It depends on their religion, if they have a religion. They could be Jews, or Muslims, or…just people!”

*

For our Christmas party at school, my mother went to the Indian store and, as per my clear instructions, picked out all the green and red milk sweets.

“Fifteen plus one for the teacher,” she said when she dropped off the box with me in the morning.

In the classroom, a folding table was covered with treats. I felt my mouth turn wet just looking at the dark brownies and frosted white cookies and cupcakes with colorful sprinkles.

Everything was red and green, or blue and white, and I wanted to live in this exciting world of sweets and songs. My favorite song was We Wish You a Merry Christmas, which I performed often enough at home that Muthu had started singing along using words of his own.

When it was time for the party during the last hour of the day, everyone got in line next to the table so we could each pick our treats and carry sugar-ladden white paper plates back to our desks. I picked a brownie, a white cookie with green frosting, and a red milk sweet. After we ate, we sang carols with the music teacher and made colorful chains out of long strips of paper.

As instructed by Ms. Hamilton, everyone took home whatever baked goods remained from what we had brought in. Almost everything was gone, except for a stack of napkins and a plate of milk sweets.

I sat with fourteen plus one milk sweets in my lap, waiting for the bus to travel its daily route. My stop was one of the last, so it would be a while before I could get off. I opened the sweets and picked up a green one. It tasted like it always did, creamy and sugary. I tried another red one and found the taste was the same.

By the time the bus pulled into the apartment complex, the tray was empty.

When I threw up later that afternoon, the red and green had become a yellowish brown.

Thatha let me sit on his lap when I told him what happened. He smelled of mothballs and the Dove soap we kept in our bathrooms. His vaishtee was blue, and something about the color was calming, like the water used to cool a smoking match.

He was unlike my mother, who held me quickly and tightly if I was upset and used the same words to patch every wound. His hands remained at his sides. I finished speaking and when I started to cry again, he let me lean on his chest.

*

That Saturday there was a surprise waiting for me in a plastic Price Chopper bag sitting on the counter.

Inside was a box with a picture of a yellow cake on it.

Thatha seemed content. “Today, we will make our own cake.”

I had never baked a cake before, but I liked it immediately. There were a lot of things to touch and pour and mix, and I felt it was the sort of activity I would usually get in trouble for.

There was even a container of chocolate frosting to spread on the cake. Thatha playfully smacked me when I licked the spoon “Don’t make yourself sick again.”

That night, everyone got a piece of cake. Muthu ended up covered in it, with chocolate frosting all over his face, even on the edges of his long eyelashes.

*

Five boxes of cake mix, three containers of chocolate frosting, and one bottle of wine accompanied me home. The snow had begun to stick and the roads felt crunchy underneath the car tires.

I hadn’t drunk straight out of a wine bottle in years. I let the syrupy liquid coat my lips, cooling and drying them like paper. What is it about the taste of something adult that brings one back to childhood? For a moment, I am again small and the surprises of the world are no longer anxieties but delights and adventures.

I decided to follow the ingredients listed on each box. No substitutions, though I vaguely remember something about us adding an extra egg.

Once baked, the cakes look disturbingly uniform. The very same shade of yellow. What makes a yellow cake so yellow?

The dark frosting spread unwillingly, and it took some force to cover each cake until no light spots poked through. Everything was again uniform and it seemed the deciding factor would be taste.

I am not sure where the confidence came from, whether it was truly the taste or some unknown heuristic, but either way, Betty Crocker had won. For whatever reason I was sure this was a cake I had eaten before.

Muthu and his girlfriend would be coming over tomorrow. I’d have to enlist their help eating the rest of the cakes. I wonder if Muthu remembers our tradition of yellow cake at all, he was so little for the years we kept custom alive.

I took the whole Betty Crocker cake in its pan and sat in front of the Christmas tree in the corner of my house. I had put it together last weekend and was pleased with the twinkling lights I had found at the store. The cake became thick in my mouth as the lights blinked to the tune of songs I couldn’t hear.