Nimisha Ladva

She hands the weapon to my father.

But my dad does not take it.

He walks up to the window where the wasp is and with his bare hands cups them around the wasp and walks outside and simply lets it free.

Then he turns to me and my brother and says,

I'm your father.

My job is to put things where they belong, including you two monkeys.

To be honest, my brother and I do not care that we have just been insulted.

Because in that moment, we are figuring out that our father, skinny shoulders, thick glasses, Indian accent, that guy, that guy might be badass.

So in the neighborhood where we live, we are the only people of color.

We are such an anomaly that there's this one day I'm outside in the front garden, visible to everyone, when a neighbor walks by with a friend and announces, passing my house, here is where the colored family lives.

The kids at school could sometimes be cruel, and when the incidents added up, my father would come to school, talk to the headmistress, and leave with assurances from the grownups that they would seek to make my condition better.

Now, that said, I will say that I did have friends at school.

For example, there was Deborah.

And I not only liked Deborah, I really liked her little brother Michael as well.

And Deborah's mom was a baker.

And she would tell me things like things about sponge cake and fruit tarts and shortbread in three flavors and chocolate biscuits.

And I'm just amazed.

Because in my house, when my mom finds an eggplant at the market, she makes eggplant curry.

And that is supposed to be a treat for us.

And it's not working for us.