Free Bone and Bread by Saleema Nawaz

said, “and Judith-Christianne.” Sadhana regarded Emann, who wore a headscarf, and Judith-Christianne, a timid girl whose mother packed copies of The Watchtower into her lunch bag, with a strange pity. “We got off easy.”
    â€œI don’t know,” I said. Emann was sporty and smart, not to mention twice as popular as I was.
    â€œMama is not like other moms,” my sister said. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed.”
    We had made a pact that we would not invite anyone over because we were, just then, exceedingly embarrassed by our mother. There was the little white turban, for one thing, that she rarely wore outside anymore, but often still wore at home. And there was the time she was on a mono-diet of bananas and herbal tea and Jennica Moore came over and saw so many banana peels in the garbage she asked if we kept a monkey.
    â€œIt’s a religious thing,” I’d told her, while Sadhana glared. “I mean, a health thing,” I amended. “Cleansing. You fast from one full moon to the next and eat nothing but bananas.”
    â€œThat is super weird.” Jennica Moore looked really shocked and was glancing around our kitchen as though hoping to find something worse. I saw her eyes pass over the bronze Nataraja statue of Shiva dancing and the Indian Buddha floating on a pedestal of lotus blossoms, both presiding over the room from a mint-green wall shelf. Laid out between them was a Tibetan prayer wheel on a wooden handle.
    Sadhana said, “I know, right? Really weird.” Jennica was her friend, and I just happened to be at home. Anything I said wrong could and would be held against me.
    That was when Sadhana began talking about Mama as though her ideas were a kind of contagion, a viral pattern of thinking that would alter us, in obvious and irrevocable ways, into earnest, off-kilter versions of ourselves, wearing all white to strengthen our auras or writing down our dreams to decode messages from our unconscious selves. I was not altogether against these ideas, these versions of me that might be closer to my mother, but I could see Sadhana’s point of view. Being like Mama in the world would be a bit like throwing yourself to the wolves.
    In the campaign for normality, hair was the next frontier, and while we waged war against our unibrows, Mama was rooting for the other side. Though she no longer abided by all the pronouncements of the holy gurus, the practices concerning hair happened to coincide with her own wisdom. She was adamant that we not cut it and wept the day Sadhana came home with a shoulder-length ponytail. My sister kissed our mother’s cheek before dropping the scissored end of her braid into Mama’s palm. “Here’s a little bit of God’s precious creation,” she said lightly.
    There was a particular look of shocked horror on Mama’s face that always made Sadhana laugh.
    It was the same month that Mama discovered our bag of disposable razors in the cupboard under the sink. She brought them to the breakfast table with an attitude that was half-quizzical, half-disappointed. Mama had stopped shaving her legs in the sixties, even before she converted.
    â€œI can’t stress enough how unnecessary this all is,” she said, regarding the pink plastic Bics with a degree of mournfulness. “Why do you think you need to do what everyone else does?”
    I felt my cheeks flushing as I hesitated, while Sadhana said, too fast, “We don’t. You’re right.” I gave her a quick look and saw that she was trying to finish the conversation.
    But Mama was satisfied. “You’re perfect the way you are, kittens,” she said, cupping my face as she tilted it up with her cool hand. “It’s what’s inside that matters.”
    So we started concealing our stash in the bedroom. Razors, wax, Nair, tweezers, all stowed away behind a row of Nancy Drews on the bookcase. I had a qualm or two,