Sonali’s Mom

Samantha Steiner

            There’s a fish, big as a beating heart, in the private ecosystem of an aquarium tank. Two couches shrink-wrapped in vinyl. A mirror dotted with red velvet bindis. A shrine made of wood and glass in careful symmetry.

            Sonali invites friends for dinner. The friends are investors, recruiters, coders, engineers. They are Dominican, Jamaican, Gujarati, white. They scoop rice, saag, lentils with their hands, glug water from plastic bottles. 

            In the next room, Sonali’s mom dresses for her evening shift at the grocery store. She chooses slacks, a blouse with flowing elbows, earrings made from real gold. 

            Sonali’s friends spoon rose-flavored ice cream into styrofoam bowls. They find their seats on the two couches, run their thumbs over the vinyl slipcovers, hug the embroidered pillows. They talk about quitting their jobs, visiting their families around the world, returning to places they haven’t touched since childhood.

            Sonali’s mom emerges dewy, tiny, and the guests greet her in unison. She waves away their praise for her cooking, laughs when they tell her, not for the first time, she could pass for Sonali’s sister. She sets a tupperware before each guest: lychee, pineapple, coconut meat, arranged together and blessed for the occasion. Someone proposes a photo: the friends crowd around Sonali’s mom. 

            She leaves for her evening shift; the guests shout their thanks again; her daughter hugs her. At that moment, in a second-floor apartment in Jackson Heights, there’s a community crowded around a beating heart.

Samantha Steiner is a visual artist and Fulbright Scholar. She holds a BA from Brown University and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has appeared in The Emerson Review, Coffin Bell Journal, and Gingerbread House Literary Magazine. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @Steiner_Reads.