Italian Ice Chronicles

As the sun moved across the clear blue skies, the slippery juice of my mango Italian ice crawled down my chin. On this usual Sunday morning, I sat on a mahogany post in the parking lot of Peppino’s. I was about six years old—a girl with a statement unibrow, who was tall for her age yet still a little chubby. It was a carefree time. Sunday mornings felt like caramel, where the clouds traveled slowly across the sky. My father sat across from me, his tan skin reflecting the sunlight. He wasn’t eating Italian ice, which I still don’t know why until this day. I think he was just simply enjoying the fact that we were spending time together. 

A few years later, on a crisp summer day, my father took me out to lunch at Mario’s Pizzeria during his break at work. I ordered a pepperoni slice, my father ordered a plain slice. My mother used to make me dab off the excess oil from the pizza with a napkin, but my father never did. We sat outside, the wind weaving itself through my long, silky hair and my father’s thinning dark hair. I remember his smile—almost innocent. His lips spread across his face, revealing white teeth and dimples set under and on the left and right of the bottom lip, just like mine. His sharp nose jutted from his face and scrunched a bit when he laughed. Our dark chocolate eyes, both the same almond shape, disappeared when we laughed. We walked to a gelato place, and as usual my father didn’t order dessert, even though I knew he loved the thick, elastic treat as much as I did. I got two scoops of creamy vanilla and scarfed it down in minutes. My father joked with me after about how I didn’t offer him a spoonful. He never took offense at this, he just enjoyed me enjoying my gelato.

As the summer sun started to set and the air became cooler, I sat on a tall black-cushioned barstool. I was sixteen years old. My elbow rested on a white marble countertop. My father sat to my right, holding his beer topped off with a creamy foam. While I was contemplating what drink to order, my father told me, “Don’t get a Shirley Temple. It makes you look too young.” We had been talking about coming to Kee Oyster House in White Plains for a long time just to get oysters for a dollar each. My father is a foodie, something that he passed down to me. We love going to new restaurants together. If he goes to a new restaurant with one of his friends and ends up liking it, he makes sure to bring me there. 

I think that comes with being born into a loud and crazy family of immigrants—bonding with each other through the colorful flavor of spices. My father’s parents are originally from Punjab, India. Right after they got married in 1967, they moved to London and started a family. That same year, Sunil Khurana, my father and their first child out of four, was born. In 1976 they moved to Queens, New York, and then to New Rochelle in 1985. Wherever they moved, tradition stayed consistent with them—making Indian food. Keeping a significant part of the Indian culture was very important to my grandparents. My dad and his family never went out to eat as it was too expensive for them. A lot of the time spent together revolved around the kitchen table—watching his mother’s delicate but calloused hands mold flour into rotis, sitting next to his stern dad at the head of the table, eating chicken curry. When his family assimilated to the English culture, his dinners would expand to homemade fish and chips, something my grandmother still makes to this day. In America he was introduced to the classic Americanized food—burgers, fries, take-out Chinese food—slowly straying away from only eating Indian food. 

When my father lived in Queens, he also bonded with his friends through food. After school, he would often go to his best friends’ houses to eat. They ate homemade Korean, Italian, and Indian foods. Now it is fascinating to see how much my dad enjoys going out to eat with my family. 

At the age of eleven my father began helping his father with his plumbing job. A few years later when my father was fifteen, he went after school to his parents’ small liquor store in East Harlem and worked. His hard work and determination paid off as he now runs a larger wine and liquor store with his father. 

My father took the highest level math classes at Benjamin N. Cardozo High School in Bayside, Queens, and he graduated in the top ten of his class. He transferred to New Rochelle High School in his senior year because his parents wanted to move to the suburbs. There wasn’t even a math class left for my dad that he hadn’t already taken. Now when he’s driving me places, I catch him solving random math problems in his head (and I make fun of him for it). His narrow lips whisper to himself silently and one hand rests on the steering wheel. The other paints imaginary numbers in the air or on his black work pants. 

School started to become hard for me when middle school rolled around. I think my father expected his level of intelligence from my siblings and me. I was always scared to bring home my test grades or my report cards. I felt that the high eighties in math or earth science weren’t good enough. I already knew the outline of the story—I come home, I show my mother my report card, and then I wait for my dad to come home from work. While doing homework or watching TV, I hear the crunching of the garage door opening and a car door close in the distance. A few moments later, his black Rockports step onto the worn-out brown mat. “Hello everyone!” he exclaims, as he steps into the kitchen. He proceeds to the usual: say hi to my mother, me, my sister, and my brother. He peers over the stove, the scents from dinner engulfing his nostrils. He washes his calloused hands at the kitchen sink. “How was school?” 

“Good.” 

“Did you do anything fun?” 

“Sorta.” 

Depending on our moods and how interesting our day was, this conversation could last a few minutes or up to an hour.

“So… let’s see your report cards.” 

The dreaded statement. My siblings and I would look around at each other, hoping for one of us to take one for the team and volunteer to go first. The air felt like Greek yogurt, thick with tension. My father always knew when we got our report cards.  I don’t know how, but he just knew.

I handed him my report card, the air seemingly thicker than before. There were the usual statements and gestures: “Good job.” A nod of the head. If we had a “bad” grade (below a ninety), which was rare, he’d say, “Why is this not a ninety-five?” 

I noticed the wrinkles folding in between his eyebrows. His eyes squinted behind his wire glasses. His small teeth were hidden behind his lips, kept in a straight line. He told me that getting below a ninety for math and science was not acceptable. He seemed to be disappointed. But he also noted that he was proud of me, and that he only pushed me because he knew I could go further, which I never could fully believe as I felt I was pushing myself to the maximum.

I never understood why he was so hard on my siblings and me until I got older. I think the constant pressure came from my father’s parents’ ideology: wanting their children to exceed what they had done, which I don’t think is a bad notion to have. I just think it is a large buildup of expectations after a generation or so. I knew from when we were younger that he expected Ivy League children, due to his consistent push for me and my siblings to get all A’s and enrolling us in Kumon, a program where we would do extra math and reading work. Now, even though he understands that we aren’t Ivy League children, he still hopes for us to attend well-known schools. 

As high school approached, I slowly stopped sharing my grades with my father. He used to know when all my tests were, and what grade I got on each of them. Gradually, I started keeping my test and quiz schedule to myself, which started to create space between my father and me. But he still asks my siblings and me, “Do you have any tests or quizzes this week?” We usually answer honestly but don’t go into detail about the subjects. He’ll make sure to check in afterwards with how the test went. After a week or two, when we finally get our test back, most of the time, he has already forgotten to ask us about the grade.

I sometimes wish I could go back to being a little kid, filled with Italian ice and admiration for my father. Like any child, I didn’t see any imperfections in him. He was, and still is, funny, smart, and nice—a people person. His laugh seems to silence everything around him. It fills the room with bubbles of vivacity. 

But as I grow older, the banana peel I call reality unfolds before my eyes. Car rides on the way to school become silent, as my siblings and I are either trying to catch up on sleep or homework. When I get home from school, I go straight to my homework, leaving no time for a conversation as sweet yet dense as honey. I notice that he and I get into fights over small problems. He thinks I talk back, but like many stubborn teenagers, I see it as me voicing my opinions. The Greek yogurt starts to spoil and sour, and the Italian ice melts away.

I notice his dismissiveness to my family. He notices when I have an attitude. We both call each other out on this, but hate to admit that we are the ones in the wrong. The dismissiveness could be a hand flung in the air telling me, “stop” when he gets annoyed at my adamancy to leave the house on time. I get upset that we are late to school, and I walk out of the car angrily, silence filling my mouth. His voice deepens while getting louder, and the sound waves travel sharply through my ears. We could go for a few weeks on end and not say a single word to each other. We both hold grudges until the other apologizes or says a simple, yet resentful, “hi.” I think I inherited his stubbornness.

It is a cold Sunday night. I’m sixteen years old. My family and I are eating dinner around our mahogany kitchen table. My mother’s Palestinian food sits on the table. Scents of cinnamon, nutmeg, coriander, black pepper, cumin, paprika, and cloves consume the air around us. One of my favorite dishes rests before my hungry eyes. Maqluba, meaning “upside down,” is a popular Middle Eastern dish, filled with strips of eggplant, lots of rice, and seasoned meat. Among the home-cooked meal is my least favorite dish, as well as my father’s least favorite dish—molokhia—a stew filled with chicken, garlic, lemon, and molokhia leaves. It is then served over rice. The combined stew and rice creates a soggy feeling in my mouth. My siblings and I sit on the window seat, while my parents sit across from us. What divides my father and me is the sixteen-year-old oval table and some newfound tension from a couple mornings ago when we reached the peak of our fighting. At 7:30 a.m., I’d had enough. I burst into a yelling match with my father about not leaving on time for school. We sat in the car while I let my anger and tears spill like boiling hot tea. I couldn’t stop. My father refused to move, like a cake mixture when it is too thick, until I cleaned up the spilt tea. 

At dinner, words do not circulate between my father and me. 

A year later, on a winter day that felt as cold as frozen fruit, my father and I sat in a small Italian restaurant in the West Village known for their Neapolitan pizzas, Kesté. I had just finished a dance audition, and my dad was raving about this restaurant. Behind his thick-lensed glasses, his almond eyes widened enthusiastically. His black eyebrows rose to create a few lines in his head. “Amita, there are margarita pizzas here for only five dollars each! And all of their ingredients are imported fresh from Italy.” So we only ordered the five-dollar pizzas. Our conversations were no longer as fluffy as freshly whipped cream like they used to be. But they were meaningful and mature, like aged cheese and wine. “Dance is a very competitive field to go into. If you don’t get into the schools you want to get into now, don’t give up. You have to keep working hard until you get where you want to be.” I admired his support for my hopes and dreams. Everything felt like it went back to the simpler moments between the two of us: times of slippery mango Italian ice and oily pizza slices.