after “In Which I am Already the Queer Igbo Elder I Needed” by Nnenna Loveth Nwafor
I can tell you stories just like anybody else about this place. I ate the soft mangoes in the heat with the rest
of them, I saw the doctor sew my sister’s forehead up from blood. Mangoes are different here. There’s
more of them, and one of them you can hold in one palm and massage in the other, in a circle with the
seed at the center, until you rip a hole off the top and drink it, sweetest of nectars.
You did not travel across an ocean to a place you cannot be yourself. The last time I saw you, you were
chubby-cheeked and big eyed, your smile was too big to hold in my two hands. Your mother told me you
won “Cutest Baby” in her own village, back across the ocean in Utah. I believe it— you were a cute baby,
and you’re a beautiful young woman now.
Hey, it’s okay to not let them split you open in their hands. Someone can love only what they know and
still love all of you, because otherwise, what else? You didn’t know me, but I’m still a part of you. You
don’t know what it’s like to really live here, but we do, you’ve heard stories your whole life and you love
it, don’t you?
Now that Deepak and Kavya and Rishi and Shreya and your cousin Vedant are all settled down, it’s your
turn. When are you going to get married? Oh, it’s never too early to think about catering, dear. We can
start teaching your friends to garba dance now, can’t we? It will be a three-day event, except yours can be
bigger than your cousins. We’ll find a forgotten ceremony in the back of the book, there. We’ll remember
it beautifully, won’t we?
Lila Mankad is a senior creative writing major at Houston’s Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. Her work has previously been published in Octopus Ink and The Jupiter Review. She is an Indian-American native to Houston, where she lives with her family. She enjoys writing poetry and plays, and is excited to continue creative writing at Carleton College next fall.