Assistant Editor Sakinah Hofler: Sometimes we come across pieces that feel timely. Urgent. Right for right now. Misha Rai’s “Lessons in Loss” echoes emotions what many of us might be feeling during this time, amid isolation, loss, tragedy. She, however, explores a different type of pandemic, one that’s ongoing, with no cure or saving in sight. “Some parents,” she writes, “went so far as to bring back chocolate in clear plastic bags, carefully throwing away crinkly bright hypnotic wrappers far from their homes.” The careful detailing of these migrant families and their plight in this “red-gray building,” as well as the careful care and worry for their children is worth reading and absorbing over and over again.
Click below to hear Misha read the story:
Lessons in Loss
Families in the red-gray building are used to making whole worlds out of small spaces; they’re already blue with tragedy.
They are always foreign. They came to one of the cold Uniteds—United Kingdom, United States; they would have gone anywhere that wasn’t the place they were trying to leave; the word UNITED has a rich ring to it; sun-rich United Mexican States, United Arab Emirates—on planes, ships, trains, boats, trucks, on foot, crawling on elbows, bellies, in cargo holds, every nook and cranny the human brain can conceive of and the human body can be stuffed into, desperately ready to break free. Legally, illegally.
The red-gray building is often in the papers. Trending on social media. Poverty porn. Children disappear from this particular area and are never found again. Two six-year-old cousins were the first to go missing from outside a ground-floor flat years ago. An attempt has been made to forget the exact date; particulars, as everyone knows, keep all loss alive.
When those girls were first taken, other parents in the red-gray building taught their children to walk heavy on the balls of their feet, keep their outdoor shoes from tip-tapping on the wood and concrete. In those first months, marked by the pain of the Atwans, birthday parties were canceled. Fathers brought home chart paper on which mothers, in tracksuits or nightgowns, crayoned blue, green, red balloons and laughing clowns. None of these would startle-pop or elicit a shriek. No birthday songs were sung. No one clapped. A soft kiss, a gentle “Happy Birthday,” a precious child made do with.
Some parents went so far as to bring back chocolate in clear plastic bags, carefully throwing away crinkly bright hypnotic wrappers far from their homes.
Other parents showed their five- to ten-year-olds how best to avoid the bite of a snake, the jaw of a tiger, the horn of a rhinoceros while climbing a ladder; their seven- to eleven-year-olds why one city was better to own than another, how to slow-shake dice to roll the desired number; their six- to thirteen-year-olds how to smear the carom board with talcum powder when they lined up a zooming shot. Anything to keep them safe in the two boxlike rooms their parents rented. Imaginary friends were welcome.
They taught their children to laugh into their hands, suppressing gurgles from turning into belly-bounding hoots.
Now police cars lead black-yellow school buses around the building once a day. A metallic voice from a speaker encourages parents with children to come out for free food.
“No,” the policeman says, “there is no other news.”
His gloved hands tack over missing posters with up-to-date announcements about the quarantine. Pandemic. Casualties in double digits are listed.
Everybody knows that you cannot compare one loss with another; it’s what you do with the little hurts you swallow that also make your children who they are. (Im)migrants. Invisible.
Misha Rai is the 2018–2021 Kenyon Review Fellow in Prose. Her writing has been aided by support from the Whiting Foundation, UCROSS,MacDowell Colony, Virginia Colony of the Creative Arts, and the Dana Award in the novel category. Her work has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies.
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