“Which room is it this time?” I asked. Putting a finger to her lips, my cousin guided me through the crowd to a room at the end of her house. She turned back to make sure no one was following us. No babies, and definitely no adults.
As we entered the room, she quickly shut the door and whispered, “Finally. Silence.” There was no one else in the room, but we always whispered in case someone was standing near the door. Then again, no one would be able to hear us over the shouting in the other room.
“What are they ‘discussing’ again?” I asked.
“It could be money,” she replied. “And you mean arguing?” My cousin had the most blatant smirk on her face, and there was no way I wouldn’t reply to that.
“I used air quotes for a reason.” My cousin gave me one look that translated to, “Stop being a smart aleck.” We sat on the twin bed and didn’t say a single word to each other. It wasn’t because we were angry at one another but because the silence was what we craved. I didn’t think I could listen to one more person speak.
In the next few minutes, three more cousins entered the room. They thought they could last longer, but everyone had a breaking point. We were all thinking the same thing: how pointless. Every family gathering was the same. It was either listening to our parents shouting over one another, tolerating Dadu’s complaints about our bodies, or sitting alone in the room furthest away from everyone. Believe it or not, I didn’t always have the third option.
In the summer of 2012, Baba got visas for his siblings. Being the eldest of my family, I had the privilege of going to the airport to pick them up. The other kids waiting for their families played in the arcade, but I was much too excited for games. I sat on the benches for hours waiting for the Emirates plane to land. At times, life with my family got boring, and the thought of meeting cousins I didn’t know I had was intriguing. They didn’t have to worry about communication. I may have been born in America, but Bangla was my first language.
They stayed at my house for the first couple months, and it might have been cramped, but the nights of Monopoly and pirated Disney movies made it a time to remember. Summer got dull after they moved out, and I tried to make up for it by visiting them as much as possible. I’m not sure which visit it was, but something changed in the next few weeks.
I would enter my cousins’ room to see them all sitting together, and while I was okay with standing, my aunt would walk in and say, “Shoro. Oke boshte dao.” I insisted that I didn’t need to sit, but she treated me like a special guest. As a nine-year-old, I didn’t understand the complexities of my family, but I did realize that where there was once a friendliness between my cousins and me was now a barrier that made me seem superior.
During my next visit, there were two choices: sitting with my parents in the living room or sitting among the women of the house. My parents felt like the safer choice until I heard their discussions with my uncles:
“We need to send money back to Bangladesh.” My uncles spoke in English, but with heavy British Indian accents.
“Who are you sending it to? I already brought everyone here. You said you wanted the American life.”
“But we need a house in our village.”
“No one is going to live there!”
“But if we don’t have a house there, manush ki bolbe?” Manush ki bolbe. What will people say? At the time, it didn’t make sense to me, and I wasn’t willing to stick around until it clicked that it was all about reputation for them. We left their house quite early that day.
A following visit was spent sitting with the women of the house, excluding Ma, who was alone in the men’s discussions. Entering the room, I was bombarded by a series of polite remarks from my grandma, or my Dadu:
“You look healthier. Did you gain weight?”
“Already pimples. We didn’t have those in the village.”
“With that skin tone, marriage will be hard.”
I stayed in that room for an even shorter of period of time than I did in the living room. I found myself wandering in the hallway until my parents had enough of my uncles and wanted to leave. I tried to stay home the next time, but there was no way my Dad would let me be home alone. I wasn’t even allowed to cross the street on my own.
So, we went back to my cousins’ house, and I walked back to their room, where it all started. When I opened the door, the smell of pizza wafted out. Seeing my face made them all move from the bed to the floor. They offered me pizza and placed my plate onto the bed, where they thought I’d sit. I took the plate off the bed and joined them on the floor. I’d had enough.