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For Mataji
"It's like going to sleep with your eyes open," she murmured. I didn't understand. Maybe the true meaning was lost because I didn't know all the Punjabi words. It's like Punjabi jokes, they make me laugh until my stomach aches but when I try telling them in English, they're not funny anymore. I fell asleep next to her and dreamt about the brand new vacuum cleaner I wrote on with pen. Oooh was ma ever mad. She slapped me. I felt so grown up because this time I didn't even cry. In the morning ma dressed me in a white dress, kissed me, and rushed off to work. It was early, eight o'clock, and I was feeling quite cranky. I sat at the kitchen table and tried to count all the little marks on the wall which I had made the day before with my crayon set. Mataji told me to drink my juice. It was in my favorite, old scratched-up thick yellow glass. As I picked up the glass my elbow slipped off the table and the juice ran pretty colours all over my dress. Mataji scolded me for being so clumsy and pulled me into my room. She had never dressed me before, it was always ma. She rummaged through the drawers and pulled out a white slip with lace on it. She started putting it on me. "This is a nice dress," she said.
The nurse came in and fiddled with the I.V. I watched it drip down slowly into the tube. I wondered if she could feel every drop enter her. Her sleep was disturbed. "Were you sitting here all this time?" she asked. "Yeah, I was thinking about when I was little and we lived in Thorncliffe Park." She started to cry. I thought it was nostalgia and sentiment. "I must have done something awful in my last life," she said. "What do you mean?" She was out of breath and couldn't speak. I tried to console her with my hand rubbing hers. "Must have been something horrible," she repeated. "They took me into a room and poked needles in my head. What did I do?" She began to sob. I felt lost, confused, startled. Was she...