INDIAN in INDIANA By

INDIAN IN INDIANA by Rajpreet Heir A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of George Mason University in Partial Fulfillment of The Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing Committee: ___________________________________________ Director ___________________________________________ ___________________________________________ ___________________________________________ Department Chairperson ___________________________________________ Dean, College of Humanities and Social Sciences Date: _____________________________________ Spring Semester 2016 George Mason University Fairfax, VA Indian in Indiana A Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts at George Mason University by Rajpreet Heir Bachelor of Arts George Mason University, 1987 Director: Kyoko Mori , Professor Department of Creative Writing Spring Semester 2016 George Mason University Fairfax, VA This work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noderivs 3.0 unported license. ii DEDICATION This is dedicated to the creative nonfiction professor dream team: Greg Schwipps, Kyoko Mori and Tim Denevi Also, to my friends Emily and Alli. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page List of Tables ...................................................................................................................... v List of Figures .................................................................................................................... vi Abstract ............................................................................................................................. vii Chapter One ........................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter Two...................................................................................................................... 22 Chapter Three.................................................................................................................... 35 Chapter Four ..................................................................................................................... 61 Chapter Five ...................................................................................................................... 74 Chapter Six........................................................................................................................ 90 Chapter seven .................................................................................................................. 107 Chapter eight ................................................................................................................... 124 Chapter Nine ................................................................................................................... 138 Chapter ten ...................................................................................................................... 159 Chapter Eleven ................................................................................................................ 172 Chapter TWelve .............................................................................................................. 192 Chapter THirteen ............................................................................................................ 194 Chapter fourteen.............................................................................................................. 205 iv LIST OF TABLES Table Page Table 1 ............................................................................................................................ 180 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page Figure 1 ........................................................................................................................... 175 Figure 2 ........................................................................................................................... 182 vi ABSTRACT INDIAN IN INDIANA Rajpreet Heir, M.F.A. George Mason University, 2016 Thesis Director: Dr. Kyoko Mori This thesis is a collection of essays. vii CHAPTER ONE In class when they talked about puberty I assumed I would be sixteen and on my way to a party wearing a Saturday shirt and with a thin yellow purse strap across my chest. But I was ten, in fifth grade and it was late November in Indianapolis. I got off the bus from school, used the bathroom in our house, and realized there was blood in my light purple underwear. Somewhere in the distance, I heard sirens, drawn out and carefully approaching. And fading. My mom was sorting mail at the kitchen table, wearing jeans and a sweater. Instead of going straight to her, I played with some magnets on the fridge and then wandered around the table. Though she hated everything else about the kitchen—the cream vinyl floor that couldn't be scrubbed clean enough, the dark cabinets which made it seem like it was always winter, dents and scratches on the window seat, the curtains that couldn't be pulled up all the way—she had the table custom built. A wooden border framed twenty-four teal ceramic tiles with smaller tiles at each intersection. From where I stood watching my mom's long fingers as they efficiently tore an ad from a magazine, our open floor plan allowed me to see my older brother Satwant and my twin brother Mandeep wrestling by the ottoman in the living room. They went to different schools; Satwant to middle school and Mandeep to a gifted elementary school that didn't offer me an invitation. Mandeep was older than I by 1 seven minutes. I came out feet first, peeing. The only hair I had was a unibrow. I had jaundice too and stayed at the hospital for three days under a lamp while Mandeep went home with our mom. Mandeep had big round eyes, curly hair, a peaceful disposition, and didn't scream or shake when someone other than my mom held him. “There’s blood in my underwear,” I whispered to my mom, making her dangly earring shudder. Her mouth, smooth in frosted pink lipstick, pinched downward, and then she looked away. I sensed a geographic distance, as if she still hadn't touched ground in Indiana since her move from Coventry, England in 1986 when she had an arranged marriage to my dad. Her parents, most of her siblings, and all the relatives she'd grown up with, were still in England. When she got to Indiana, she'd lived with her in-laws for the first married years, as is customary in Sikh families. Though my dad was her favorite of her three suitors, at twenty-two, she'd had to move to a new country to live with a family she barely knew. She had a story so different from other Hoosier women. Working full- time and being a mother of three was hard enough, but having no example or anyone to guide her made everything harder. And there I was, already getting my period so soon, and opening up a new, tougher chapter in motherhood. “Come upstairs in a minute,” she said, finally. In her room, she went into the closet, emerged with a white paper bag, and took out a hardcover book. We both lay down on the waterbed, facing the headboard shelves on which was a blue vase with fake flowers and a trophy holding the golf ball with which my dad got a hole in one. On the wall to our right were windows with blinds that I hadn't seen fully open in my lifetime and a large photograph of a beach sunset. On my mom's 2 dresser behind us was a jewelry box with bindis and gold wedding necklaces and bracelets in the bottom drawer and next to the jewelry box was an old candle that hadn't ever been lit. The furniture had never been rearranged and nothing in the room matched, unlike my brothers' and mine. I savored my mom's warmth next to me. She was beautiful, after all. She had large eyes like Mandeep's, a round and open face, curly shoulder-length hair, fairer skin, and a small figure, yet there was a womanly squishiness to her. An Indian Debbie Harry. I, on the other hand, looked exactly like my dad. All of my family members liked to point this out. It didn't feel flattering. Only people who hadn't seen many Indian people would claim my mom and I resembled each other. My face was long and narrow, my eyebrows thick, I was taller than my mom by at least three inches, and my limbs were bony. She'd only had one daughter and I hadn't even turned out well. And to add to that, I was hitting puberty already. She flipped through the book before us and then stopped at a two-page spread depicting a girl going through the stages of womanhood. The girl was white, not Indian, and I was relieved—despite the movie the visiting health instructor had showed us, I was starting to think all the changes were only happening to me. I was the tallest child in my elementary school, had difficulties maneuvering around furniture, went up two shoe sizes, and had acne on my cheeks and forehead. Early in the school year a girl at lunch had said, "I know why you wear skirts down to your ankles, it's because your legs are hairy!" After that, I started using scissors to cut my body hair; I didn’t have a razor and was too afraid to ask for one because I assumed my mom would say I was too young to 3 be shaving. Sometimes I confused pre-puberty changes with being Indian. It was a relief to have proof that "normal" girls also had those changes. By that point, I had realized she, unlike the moms of "normal" girls, was going to reject most of my ventures into expressing femininity: skirts above my knees, spaghetti strap tops, two-piece swimsuits, painted nails, and scented chapstick. Yet, my mom had grown up bathing in the sink. She had

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