Joy and Sorrow

I opened the curtains of my apartment window and took in the crisp May night. Tall street lights lined the empty sidewalk below, no cars passed by. On the other side of the street stood faint outlines of some lightless buildings. I assumed I was the only one awake. On my window lock, a tiny black beetle went about its way, flickering its thin legs. I waited, letting it pass. Then pushing the locks, I opened my window, slightly. Cool air rushed into the room, carrying with it the sounds of rustling leaves. From somewhere I couldn’t place, a dog barked. Fading sirens wailed at a distance. A flock of birds soared above, and so I looked up.

It was 2008. I was thirty. I had flown from Kathmandu, across Europe and the Atlantic, to New York, all the way to Denver. It was my first time on an airplane, my first time in America. I knew of no one and nothing.

The ACC, my resettlement agency, had accommodated me with a small but furnished one bedroom apartment on the corner of Colfax and Yosemite. The building I was to live in, a brick building, was one of the three in the greater apartment complex. I did not know what sort of place I had come to or what the coming days held for me. Later, of course, I came to understand that Colfax and Yosemite marked one of the wickedest parts of the city — full of drugs, gangs, and crimes. But back then, while trying the furniture, opening and closing the fridge door, stepping onto the cold bathroom tiles, I did not care. I didn’t know any better, and I’d had little in the camps.

I closed the window, then the curtains. It was quiet and everything sat still. With each step I took around the living room, I felt the soft carpet caress my bare feet. Looking down, I heard the loud bass in my heart. I stood in the middle of the room, staring at the bare white walls of my new apartment. No frames or plates decorated it, no photos. I stood there, leaning against the glass table, trying to settle myself. When enough time had passed and I could no longer hear the thumping of my heart, I went to bed — thinking that Colfax and Yosemite was still America, and all that remained was for me to start calling it home.

The next day, I heard a knock on my door. I was still fidgeting with the locks when I opened my way to a slender woman, slightly taller than me, who introduced herself as Sarah.

“I’m your case manager,” she said.

I looked at the folder in her hand, and reading my name on it, invited her in.

“I hope you found the apartment alright,” she said, standing next to the couch.

“Yes, cozy,” I said. “Have a seat, please.”

I offered her a glass of water. She accepted.

“I need you to sign a few things for me,” she said, opening the folder, holding a pen for me with her long, thin fingers.

I could follow the faint veins on her hand all the way to the side of her neck. Thick blond hair hung down her back. And every time she talked, she focused her sharp blue eyes deep into mine, and to my unfamiliarity, held it until she finished her sentence, then smiled.

“Yes,” I replied.

Over the next few weeks, Sarah would visit me, help me apply for jobs, drive me to the ACC, where I completed my residential documents, or accompany me to Safari Second, where I purchased cheap, second-hand clothes for myself.

“Looks good,” she would sometimes say, casually, studying the outfit on me.

I would nod, slightly.

Often more, she took me grocery shopping. And sometimes — understanding my dietary preferences — to Rancho Liborio, a Mexican supermarket few blocks away from where I lived. In Liborio, I found what I could not find in King Soopers or Safeway. The cashiers there were also nicer, and I had begun to grow a taste for their Pan Dulce with my chai in the mornings.

On the days Sarah was not scheduled to visit, I would continue to unpack the little I had brought with me, watch passing cars out of the living room window, and occasionally, out of curiosity, walk down the road. People of all races and backgrounds lived in my close vicinity — and the surrounding air carried the lightly acidic, tangy smell to let one know.

“Selam,” my neighbor would say to me.

He was from Ethiopia, and often we crossed paths in the hallway.

“Selam,” I would respond.

One evening, I invited him over to my apartment, cooked rice, dal, and sabzi, and showed him our way of eating with hands. The next day, he invited me to his place. And from his couch, we watched Eddie Murphy’s Coming to America and shared a plate of Injera.

Further, a little past Colfax and Yosemite, there was an old rusty AutoZone, and next to the motel, a small family-run Mexican food truck. Every now and then, when I was tired of rice and lentils, I would go and eat there. The food was cheap, at least until I converted the price into rupees, and facing West at dusk, I could see the great Colfax road pave its way to the Rockies. And there, one day at the food truck, facing West, I tried beef, tucked between two soft corn tortillas, for the first time in my life.

On other days, I would walk past the food truck all the way to the bus stop. Every fifteen minutes or so, the 15L, which traversed through Colfax road, would make a stop. It was a vast world, the inside of that bus, packed only by people yelling and bickering, people reeking of marijuana and alcohol. Immediately, before even finding a seat, the courage I had conjured to enter the bus in the first place would fly straight out the very door. So I would stand, quiet near the exit, looking down at my feet so as not to attract any trouble, looking up all the same to glimpse what lay ahead.

I saw the city, men and women in business suits, racing with cups of coffee in their hands. I saw the suburbs. I saw the homeless. I learned that avenues in Denver went from east to west, and streets ran perpendicular. More importantly, I learned that I was living in historic times: a black man had never before been elected as the President of this nation. Change, people’s yard signs read. Hope.

Sometimes when I felt alone and hopeless, I would purchase a calling card from the convenience store. Then I would go to a street phone, an old metal box at the end of the street that always took more of my quarters than promised; from there, I would call my family in Nepal, ask them how they were, if the I.O.M. had given them their arrival date, kick the rocks on the ground, let them know how my life was faring in America, about the joys and sorrows of starting a new life in a new country.

By August, I was already busy with a job. Like so many of us in the early days of resettlement, I worked as a waiter in a Nepali restaurant. There I was paid the minimum of four dollars and twenty-six cents per hour, and I took the RTD all the way.

On my first day at work, I met another Nepali named Deukumar. He was a lanky, well-dressed man of around my age.

“Deo,” he introduced himself, shaking my hand. “Since Americans can’t pronounce the entire thing.”

Deo taught me everything I needed to know about the job. How to greet and seat the customers, how to carry the plates and serve the food, how to tuck the utensils inside the napkin. Deo was also understanding of my situation. Whenever he talked, he talked to me in Nepali; for although I was familiar with the cuisine we served, I was not so much with English. And whenever I mistook the orders, he would apologize on my behalf. He’s new here, he would explain. Sometimes even when it was clearly them at fault.

“In America,” Deo informed me, “the customer is king. He is never at fault.”

And I would continue to work, as was expected of me, with a smile on my face.

Deo and I took our lunch break together. For an hour we would sit at the most inconspicuous booth in the restaurant — at a corner just outside the kitchen door — eat the food that was prepared for the day, listen to the quiet music that played above us, and share what we had in mind.

“So tell me,” he said, changing the subject. “What did you do back in the camps?”

I was tearing a naan with my right hand. He had just finished his last bite.

“Anything I got a chance to work on,” I said. “We had no authorization, so it was difficult for us to find work.”

He looked at me with his sunken eyes, his arms on the table, and scratched the beard on his chin.

“Where did you work before you left?”

“I was working with cement,” I said, sipping on my water.

With a napkin, I wiped the salt and bread crumbs off my hand, then sipped on more water. He tongued the inside of his cheeks, wrinkled his fleshy nose, looking unsatisfied with my answer.

“The commute was long,” I continued. “It took me outside the camps. But the pay was worth it. It wasn’t much, but at the time, it was worth it.”

He kept looking at me, but then I saw him look at my hands. So I moved them.

As time passed, I learned that his family had moved to America on a Diversity Visa in the late ’90s, that they owned the restaurant and had one more on the other side of the city, that we preferred vastly different kinds of music. I showed him the hits of Narayan Gopal and Aruna Lama. He introduced me to Akon and Coldplay, artists who were apparently topping the charts, artists unbeknownst to me at the time.

After lunch, we would work until it was time to close. And before I left, I would help clean the tables, mop the floor, and pack the leftover biryani and samosas to take home for myself.

With my first paycheck, I went to Wells Fargo and opened an account. With my second, I bought myself a phone. My third — I sent all of it to my family. They said they were coming soon, and I figured they needed the money.

I went with Sarah to receive my family at the airport. She was also their case manager, and I hadn’t seen them for over six months. Sarah and I were able to find my family a two bedroom apartment in the same building. People were always moving in and out, so it wasn’t all too difficult. My thinking was to move in with my family, that if my younger brother and I shared a room, it would be the most economical.

At the airport, I spotted my mother first. Her green sari surfaced against the bland crowd. She seemed weaker and older than I remembered her to be. My brother and father hadn’t changed a bit. And walking beside them, all of whom struggled to keep the pace of the hasty crowd, she was looking everywhere.

She, too, saw me first. And there, at the shy meeting of our eyes, it occurred to me that I couldn’t quite remember the last time I had seen her in something nice. Staring at her, following her tiny steps on the airport floor — in a way, it broke my heart. But then a smile spread across her face, and she pointed my way, nudging my father.

“How was the flight?” I asked. “Was everything fine?”

“Yes, fine.”

I introduced Sarah to my family, and my family to Sarah; who, to my slight embarrassment, welcomed them with an embrace — a level of intimacy I had yet to express in front of my parents, let alone to themselves.

“Shall we?” I asked, squeezing in.

And so we headed home.

By the next month, my brother had already started high school, and my father a job. My father washed dishes at the Grand Hyatt in downtown. And like me, he too took the RTD to work.

In no time but a year, we had more than thirty Bhutanese-Nepali families living in the Denver metropolitan area. The I.O.M. was speeding the process, and having heard about life in America, more and more people were willing to resettle. In response, some of the community members got together and founded an organization. Being one of the first people to resettle in Denver, I was also given a seat at the organization’s board. Together, we arranged fundraisers for the needy of our community, hosted sports tournaments for all ages, organized concerts during the months of Dashain and Tihar.

And it was here, at these concerts, that I was able to get a true understanding of the size and nature of our community. At the gates were volunteers selling tickets and merchandise. Behind the curtains waited dancers, musicians, and singers for their performance. In the audience cheered children, the elderly, and at the back, away from the priests and community leaders, those on the verge of accepting Jesus Christ as their lord and savior. And hiding within it all, under the dim hue of the auditorium, flirted young, soon-to-be, some already, lovers. Here were some with the intentions of preserving their culture, some taking on new identities — in one way or another, all trying to better live out their new lives thousands of miles away from their homeland.

The organization was also able to get some funding from the state. We used it to form a community center. We also purchased a van. Every day around noon, a driver would drive the van around the city, collecting the elderly at decided stops.

My mother would also get in the van. By noon she would have finished everything around the house and be on the couch, staring at the clock, empty-handed, with nothing left to do. At the community center, she could at least chat with people, learn English, learn about the Constitution of the United States, sing and dance at the Poojas and Kirtans they celebrated.

I like it there, she would say. I feel closer to the Gods.

I didn’t stay for very long at the organization. The meetings, which were never on time in the first place, often conflicted with my job. And some of the board members also started playing politics — the same dirty game that had gotten us kicked out of Bhutan — and so I left.

There were other problems in the community, too. Suicides, DUIs, old folks staining sidewalks, spitting red betel nut juice as they marched to their neighbors.

One day, I received a call from my brother.

“I’m near my school with my friends,” he said, panting. “I’ve blood all over my clothes.”

“What happened?”

“Some black guys jumped us in the bus,” he replied, mumbling as he spoke.

“Call 911,” I told him. “Wait, I’ll call.”

That night, my parents and I met him at the hospital. He had a black eye, a fractured nose, and a dislocated shoulder. Seeing him that way, like an abused street dog, mother ran to him and wept on his lap, scolded him, said he had brought it upon himself, and wept some more.

“What happened exactly?” I asked him.

He wanted to say something, but the slightest of movements cause him to wince.

Moving my hand, I told him it’s okay. “Get some rest.”

Later, I learned that my brother and his friends had been mistaken, looking the part, for Burmese students. That the group of black guys had, in fact, come to sort out an earlier incident. My brother and his friends had simply happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. The entire community, worried that it might lead to deeper problems, got together and told my brother and his group of friends not to do anything in return.

“We will fix this through legal means,” we told them, giving them a firm stare. “This is not Nepal anymore. Your entire life can go down the drain.”

They looked at each other, paused, then looked at our faces, and nodded.

But being at the age they were, with damaged body parts and damaged egos, they united with their Burmese friends and did exactly what we advised them not to do. It took a couple of arrests, a handful of restraining orders, and an entire year of legal work to settle everything down. My brother was fortunate enough to escape with nothing permanent, but the fear that something similar might occur again remained. So those who could move away, moved away from Colfax and Yosemite.

We moved, too. With what my father and I made, we were able to afford a three bedroom apartment near Lowry Park, a considerably safer place than Colfax and Yosemite, in the outer reaches of Denver. All of us were able to continue our lives without the move affecting us too much. My brother still went to the same school. My father still washed dishes at the Hyatt. And I was still a waiter at the Nepali restaurant. All of us — except mother.

For the first month, she kept mentioning the old place, as bad as it was, for the people she had befriended. At Lowry Park, she had no one with whom to walk around the neighborhood or sit under the sun and peel oranges. The community van also didn’t travel our way. So for the entire day she would stay inside the apartment, cook the rice, daal, and sabzi for the day, watch Ramayana on the television, and wait for one of us to come home.

By the second month, she had gotten used to the day’s solitude. Compared to the things she had endured in all the years she had lived, the move was nothing for her to overcome. Seventeen years prior, she had fled Bhutan with her family, my brother still inside of her. She was barely five feet tall, about a hundred pounds, but she had unimaginable strength in her grip, and the skin on her arms had, as a form of adaptation, long turned numb to the heat of sizzling oil. For fifteen years she lived in a makeshift bamboo hut. For fifteen years she awoke at four in the morning to fetch water from a distant well. For fifteen years she fed her husband and her two sons with the food she cooked squatting in front of a mud stove, blowing air on embers with her smoked-filled lungs. Life asked of her to learn three different languages, live in three different countries, on both sides of the Prime Meridian. And everywhere she went, she called — in whichever language necessary — and made it — as mothers tend to do with their ways — a home.

Don’t worry about me, she would often say. I have lived it all.

On the first Tuesday of the third month, she passed away, leaving the rest of us empty and bare, like dandelions after a gust of wind.

The night before, she had gone to sleep after washing the dishes in the sink. The next morning, my father shook her, thinking she had overslept, but she kept on sleeping, never to awake again. Her time had come, the doctors said, labeling it a natural death.

For three days, my father did not eat a grain of rice or drink a drop of water. As understanding as they were, he was not able to keep his job. Barely, I was able to keep mine, while my brother needed a break from school.

As her oldest son, I had to shave my head, trim my nails, and, with a torch, free her soul from her body. The funeral, as required by tradition, lasted thirteen days. And for thirteen days we ate no meat, and our food was free of salt and garlic. We could not afford to fly to Nepal to float her ashes in a holy river, as so many did to honor their dead. But we kept her, sealed in a copper pot, next to the Gods and Goddesses on the mandir she herself had built in the corner of our Lowry Park apartment, only days before leaving this world.

That winter, it snowed a lot.

Now that my father was without a job, I had to get a second one at the nearby gas station. There I worked the graveyard shift after my job at the restaurant. Before I started my shift, I stopped home for a quick meal and then, to save on gas, walked the short distance to the gas station. I walked slowly, looking both ways before crossing the street, carefully planting my feet on the chirping snow — the long winter night slowly seeping in from behind.

At home, all of us were left with a room to ourselves. I would return from work to a messy kitchen, oil and turmeric stains on the stove, the couch pillows on the floor, then walking past the small, dimly-lit hallway, to a cold, empty bed. Shivering under the blanket, sometimes coughing, sometimes weeping, I would sleep with my knees to my chest. Every now and then, the wind would blow the window open and sink me deeper into the night.

One night, I found myself awoke from restless dreams to sounds that clattered. Slowly I picked myself up, my head heavy, my body light, and sat on the bed until my eyes adjusted to the dark. The chair next to my bed was still, the clock on the wall ticked. I saw my closet door open, also my window. The noise seemed to come from nowhere in particular, but I rose, slipped on my sandals, my clothes, and tried to trace the rattling sound.

As I made my way into the narrow hallway, from the corner which led into the living room and the kitchen, light escaped. Naturally, I assumed someone to be there, perhaps using the plates and utensils.

“Baba,” I called.

Now the noise stopped, but I received no response. I walked towards the light, until I faced the living room and the kitchen, and saw a horde of black beetles, about a few thousand of them, clicking and scraping, scurrying all over, dripping from the kitchen stove. My heart cringed and stopped. The light flickered above. The kitchen air was green, with a pheromonal smell that stung my nose. Then, from behind, I heard the main door creak.

I turned and caught a glimpse of a figure, pulling the door shut to leave the apartment. I turned around to turn the kitchen lights on, only to find the stove spotless clean, the lights above steady and calm. A sharp chill froze me in my position, and I stood there, soaking in what I had just seen, the bass in my heart now alive and wild.

I turned again, opened the main door and exited the apartment. The hallway lights were faint, too weak to sustain themselves in the cold. And at the end of the hall, I saw the figure again, only its thick black hair heavy on its back, as it opened the door to the stairs.

“Wait,” I yelled.

I hastened, worried it may stray too far. I passed the fire extinguisher on the hallway wall, opened a door, and my sandals slightly sticking to the dirty stairs, reached the bottom of the building.

Through the glass door, I saw the figure standing under and examining a tree on the other side of the street. Why? I thought, and cautiously, walked out. Ice covered the road. Snow flurried. From across the street, and for some time, I studied the figure. The clothes it had on, some sort of fabric, was so white that it stood out even against the bright snow. And from the glances it gave, I recognized the figure. I stood in the snowfall, alone in the streets, admiring her. No vehicles passed us by, not a single soul. And without knowing, I started walking toward her, pulled by her luminous glow. As I did so, she began to move.

“Wait,” I called from behind.

But she kept moving, effortless on the snow, as light as the flakes themselves, and headed towards the snow-covered fields of the park. I walked faster, trying to catch her. She held her pace. But the faster I walked, the more the distance between us seemed to grow. And the more I walked the park, the farther away its center moved.

Snow fell heavier and thicker, now swarming about my head, blurring my vision. The wind blew, every few seconds with a shriek, piercing through my thin clothes. She remained ahead of me, closer to the center, still crisp and brilliant in the depth of the night. By now I could no longer feel my feet. My spine, hard like ice, ached. For the long while I kept walking, there was no noise, only fields of snow, fields of snow. In the cold silence, I heard only the beating of my heart.

“Mother,” I yelled.

She kept walking, the loose end of her sari fluttering in the wind.

“Wait!”

She didn’t.

“Please,” I cried. “I’m sorry.”

I kept on moving, following her, stumbling and shivering, forgetting the cold that was cutting deep into my bones.

“I’m sorry,” I squirmed.

The frigid wind slapped and dropped me to the ground.

When I saw her white glow slowly blend in with the snow, tears seeped out my eyes and rolled down my cheeks. They held a certain warmth, a sort of pressing, a release. I wept more and more, thinking about my younger days — days when tears didn’t drip so easily — longing for a calming, for forgiveness never solicited. I thought about the time I had slapped her, intoxicated with dendrite, strayed in grounds, much like Lowry Park, that seemed vast and endless. I licked my chapped, frozen lips, tasting blood. I thought of how I had spat at her, on her face. I felt a roar in my heart, a blizzard. Coughing, I choked on my own tears — which no longer warmed my skin, but froze into crusts and pierced my cheeks. I sank in the snow, unable to get up, thinking of how she had dragged me home, and with a tree branch, beaten me to death, how she had brought me back to life the next day.

“I’m sorry,” I cried, one last time — my voice inaudible in the cold.

I looked around. But she was long gone.

In 2011, a year later, when we had recovered enough, my father spoke of my marriage.

“She’s a daughter of an old friend,” he said. “They live in Utah.”

I was thirty-four then, exhausted, with nothing to my name. Altogether I was working upwards of sixty hours a week, I was losing weight. Often I was sick. The thought of bringing a woman into my life had never once crossed my mind.

“They want to send her to a family they can trust. She is their youngest daughter.”

I had no other choice but to sit and listen.

“She will only make it easier. Besides, what is home without a woman.”

I thought for a long while before saying anything. Then finally, I told him okay.

Marriage was a duty that, sooner or later, I had to fulfill.

I was told her name was Mina, that she had dark hair and a round face, that aside from working forty hours a week at an old-care, she usually kept to herself. She was five years my junior, but given her reserved nature and the pressures of society, her parents had taken it upon themselves to find her a man.

On the day of our wedding, we shared a rug in front of a holy fire, murmuring Sanskrit verses, taking each other’s names at the instruction of a priest. Not once during the entire ceremony did she look at me. But from the numerous times we had to lean over and throw grains of rice in the fire, I was able to forge an image of her. Her skin was brown, like walnuts. She had a slim, slightly pointy nose. Henna, bright and red, wrapped her arms. And a tiny mole dabbed her right cheek.

When the ritual was over, we moved to a small couch covered with flowers and decoration; so the guests — family, relatives, and close friends — could take pictures, congratulate us, and, by putting red tika on our foreheads, bless us with a happy life ahead. People came and went. Mina and I, although placing our gifts in the same pile, did not say a word to each other.

Custom dictated that a new wife be brought home on the same day as the wedding. So we collected her parents’ blessings for one last time and left Utah as soon as possible. On the flight back to Denver, she sat on the seat next to mine, leaning against the oval window of the plane, sobbing. I did not try to talk to or console her. I did not know what to say. Besides, despite it all, we were still strangers. So I let her be — unable to offer her any warmth or solace — let her cry — giving her the greater part of the narrow airplane seat — in peace.

We arrived home late that night. The moon was big. My brother helped me with the suitcases up the stairs. And when that was done, my father, because mother was not with us, filled a copper pot with dry rice and placed it at the doorstep for Mina. Slowly she pushed the pot and spilled the rice with her feet, marking her arrival and the prosperity she brought to her new home as a Buhari.

From the way she talked with my family that night, quiet but clear, her back straight, it seemed as though she would adjust sooner than I had thought. But that was unveiled quickly, for later in bed, she resumed her sobbing. I awoke and, unable to help, was left to stare at the ceiling.

At the time I didn’t know what she thought of me. We had barely spoken. But remembering her at the airport that night, struggling with the loose end of her sari as we waited for her luggage, I was reminded of myself when I first came to America. I did not know where life was taking me, or what would unfold in Denver. In fact, even the State of Colorado wasn’t my own choice, just the one raffle out of fifty I had happened to grab when deciding the State to be resettled in. Similarly, I was to her but an arbitrary man whose father had happened to once befriend hers. She could’ve been married to anyone. But here she was, lying on the bed next to me, curled in a ball, shuffling her feet under the blankets, now a part of my family. A family which, as a Nepali wife, she had the responsibility of sustaining, holding its pieces together. And to her misfortune, she had to do it alone — without what might have been with the help of my mother. When I realized the role she was to play as my wife, a tear fell, and I felt inside me a deep, solemn respect for her.

In the mornings that followed, I awoke to the warm smell of incense sticks. Quickly I would dress for work, eat the breakfast she made, and leave.

I didn’t tell anyone at work about Mina. Nobody asked — I had told Deo I was leaving to see my family — and truly, I didn’t have much to say about her. Every day she would awake before me, leaving me without the excuse to ask her if I could use the bathroom first or even share the sink. By the time I awoke, the bathroom would be swept clean for me, only our toothbrushes side to side. Already she would be in the next room, eating breakfast with my family.

She got along well with my family. She was polite and caring, using the highest order of conversational address, even when talking to my brother. She got along the best with my father. He would sit her down on the couch, or if she was preparing food, grab a chair and a second knife and sit down next to her, tell her stories about my mother: what she was like, how he missed her. All the while Mina would listen, nodding.

When I came home from work, I would be engulfed by the warmth of steamed rice, the smell of turmeric and onions sauteed on the pan — while the pressure cooker whistled and old Nepali songs bragged in the background. Seeing me, she would turn the volume down. I would greet her, she would nod. Quietly I would enter our room to ready myself for my second job.

When I would exit our room, a plate of food would’ve already been placed on the table for me. I would ask her if she was going to eat as well, but always, she would reply “after you.” Before I left, she would hand me the food she had packed, usually a light lunch, or when I was sick, a bowl of ajwain soup I could heat in the microwave.

Everyone would be asleep by the time I came home from work. So I would enter our room, leaving the lights off, quietly change, and sneak under the blanket and fall asleep.

The only conversation we would have without the presence of my family was when she would call me to ask if I could stop at the grocery store on my way home from work.

One day, I got one such call.

“Hello,” I picked up.

“It’s me,” she said, her voice more nervous than usual. “There was a little accident.”

“What happened?”

After a slight hesitation, she replied, “I broke the glass table.”

“Where’s baba?” I asked, thinking for a moment.

“He went out some time ago.”

“Bhai?”

“He’s not here, too.”

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“I’ll be there shortly,” I told her. “In the meantime, stay away from the scene.”

When I arrived home, the air was warm, and glass was scattered everywhere on the floor. My first impulse was to ask her how exactly it had happened, but seeing her on the couch, looking down, quietly holding her hand, I suppressed it.

“I thought you said you were okay?” I asked.

“I am,” she said, looking down at her hand. “It’s only a small cut.”

“We can go to the hospital if needed.”

“Really, it isn’t necessary,” she asserted. “I’ve already cleaned it.”

I looked at her hand from a distance, and then at her. And when she looked down, I went to grab the dustpan from the closet.

“I was just trying to — ” she started. I was still sweeping.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “We can just get a new one.”

She hunched back down in silence. And I regretted my words.

That weekend, my father and I went to American Furniture in Aurora and bought a new table. It was similar to the last one: a round slab of glass sitting on three metal feet. The feet curled at the bottom, but because it was so heavy, we struggled to carry it up the stairs.

We placed the table in front of the couch, the same place we had placed the last one. And although she had been quiet for the last few days, for the first time, Mina suggested otherwise.

“I think we should move the sofas first,” she said. “I’ll be easier to vacuum behind the couch, and that way, the table can also sit in the middle.”

We called out my brother from his room, and the three of us rearranged the sofas to her taste.

“Like this?” my father asked.

“Maybe move that one a little that way,” she replied, gesturing her hand.

My father and I looked at each other, then duly moved it that way.

“Yes, like this,” she said. “What do you say?”

My father, after seemingly studying the furniture, nodded.

To me, that was the clearest demonstration of the fact that Mina was indeed here to stay, to make her home amongst us, as an integral part of us, and that in the coming days, she would break more tables and break more things. But she would also fix them herself, and in fixing those things, she might sometimes ask for my hand, and there wasn’t much I could say or do; for when I had married her, when I had streaked the line of sindoor on the part of her hair, I had brought upon myself, amongst other things, the difficult responsibility of earning her heart, or at the very least, fulfilling its desires.

“I see,” I said.

And for the very first time, although she did so briefly, I caught her smile.

When I awoke the next morning, she was in the bathroom combing her hair. I did not say anything. I stayed in bed instead, allowing her to finish. But when she saw me sitting on the edge of the bed, she came out of the bathroom and spoke to me.

“I wanted to ask you something.”

“Yes,” I replied.

“A few weeks ago, I applied for a job at a nursing home in Greenwood Village,” she said, somewhat looking at me, somewhat at her feet. “And I got it.”

Straightening myself, I asked, “Yes?”

“Yes,” she replied. “But it’s only part-time.”

“When do you start?”

“They haven’t told me that yet. I have to go there first and sign a few things,” she said, slowly meeting my eyes. “I was actually wondering, if you are free today… ”

“Yes,” I said. “Let me get ready.”

The car ride to the nursing home was quiet. The sun shined bright in the sky, and the snow on the roads had started melting. At one point I thought of turning the radio on, but it was no mood for music. I was not aware that she had been looking for a job. She hadn’t mentioned it once. But when we reached the parking lot of the nursing home, she turned to me and spoke.

“I thought if I found a job,” she said, careful with her tone, “you could quit your second one.”

I turned to stare at the empty road ahead.

“You’re always sick, always coughing. If you work only one job, you can rest. You can also spend more time with your family.”

I kept staring, my tongue dry.

“I’ll be back shortly,” she said, grabbing her purse. “It shouldn’t take too long.”

I watched her, my heart thumping, as she disappeared into the building. And without thinking, I thought of the first time I saw her. I had to wait for over an hour, as my father and I chatted with her family, for her to enter the living room. When she did, she brought the second round of chai that evening. And in remembering her move about the room, steady with the platter, the free end of her sari draping her head, I was left saddened. What saddened me wasn’t because she hadn’t told me about the job, but the unwavering fact that, no matter how much I wished, I couldn’t tell her that it wasn’t necessary for her to work, that I, with my salary alone, could support her and the family. I remembered the modest bows she gave while serving the tea, the sound of bangles jingling on her wrist, the small fuli gleaming on her nose. You need not worry, I wished to say. But the truth was, even with my second job, we were barely making ends meet. The only thing I could afford to tell her was — sorry.

On the way back home, perhaps because we were nearby, perhaps because it was a way of explaining my situation, I felt the urge to drive past places I once used to but hadn’t for so long. And when the air started to turn gray and mucky and graffiti emerged on the building walls, Mina got suspicious.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“I once used to live here,” I told her. “Here in Colfax and Yosemite.”

She looked at me, but because I caught her only from the corner of my eye, I kept my focus on the road.

I drove past the public library, past Rancho Liborio, past the taco truck and the Auto Zone. And when I arrived at the old brick building, out of old habits, I parked at the same place I always used to.

On the courtyard were children running around, playing tag. An old man and his daughter were taking out the trash. I turned off the engine of my car.

“You see that window over there,” I pointed.

“That one?” she asked, trying to follow my finger.

“Yes, that one. That used to be my room.”

“Hm,” she nodded, not saying anything more.

“I lived in this building for two years,” I told her. “I know its every corner.”

She kept quiet.

“And the window next to mine — that one — there — that belonged to an Ethiopian man,” I said. “I wonder if he still lives there.”

She looked at the window. No Ethiopian man was visible.

“And once,” I explained. “I invited him over and cooked him a complete meal. Rajma, sabji, chicken. Everything.”

Now she looked at me, like the way she had in the car moments ago, in surprise. Only this time I looked back, and both knowing what she had meant, we laughed for the first time together.

Although we had laughed so softly, even today, almost a decade later, it is still alive and vivid in my memory. It must be so because, in the months that followed, things slowly started to turn around for us.

Not having to work a second job gave me the time to help her around the house, to spend more time with her. I would come home, change, help her chop the vegetables, or peel garlic and ginger and mash them into a paste for her. After dinner, after washing the dishes, we would take a stroll in the park. In colder evenings, we would stay inside and put on a film. Sometimes we would take our family out to eat. Sometimes, only the two of us would go for a night drive to the nearby mountains.

The extra time on hand also allowed me to do other things. Whenever someone who couldn’t understand English came through the ACC or any of the other resettlement agency, they would call me and ask if I could sit in as an interpreter. The more I volunteered, the more they called. And in the course, I learned all I could about the resettlement process in America. I volunteered for months, sometimes getting paid, sometimes for free — until, one day, I got a call from Sarah.

“Listen,” she told me over the phone. “We have an opening for a case manager.”

I listened.

“I think you should apply,” she said. “I mean you speak three languages and have gone through it all.”

“Okay,” I said. “I will.”

“I’ll put in a word.”

Seven years have passed since that call. Many more tables have been broken, many more things. Mina and I, with my father and our little daughter, now live in a small, two-story house in Centennial. Nearby there is a park. And because our house is at the end of the street, we have a large backyard that we use for gardening. Every evening when I water the plants, I like to think of my mother. I like to wonder what she would have planted, what she would have done to treat the dry Colorado soil. I like to imagine her sitting in our yard, under the sun, caressing its green grass with her palm, and as always, peeling an orange.

Every Dashian, my brother flies from Dallas to visit us. There he has found a job and lives with his college girlfriend. At least once a year, Mina and I try to fly to Utah so her parents can see their daughter, the one Mina herself has brought into this world.

Every day at work — although the rate has slowed down under the current administration — I am able to see people of all colors walk through the door, carrying white I.O.M. bags in their hand, with hopes of starting a new and better life in this country.

As a matter of fact, one such man stands in front of me. And although he doesn’t know my name, already I know his. I have read it in his file. I have read his history, too. He doesn’t know much English, and it is his first time in America. And in that way, he reminds me of myself, many years ago. He reminds me of my mother, too, at the airport, clad in emerald green. He also reminds me of my wife, and every man and woman in the history of our species. He reminds me of the others, too — like the birds that fly south to escape the cold winters.

And so I smile at him. He smiles back, for that is all he can do — smile. He has smiled his way into a country very different from his own, to live amongst people very different from his own. Yet were I to unfold the wrinkles of his smile, teardrops would roll down those creases like soft rain. I know. I once smiled the same.