The House My Mother Carried

I was born in a home that smelled of turmeric and tension.

- Naqshab Hameed

My mother stirred dinner with one hand and soothed my grandmother's mood with the other. While the men discussed the news, she moved like a shadow, picking up anger before it hit the floor. Nobody counted these motions, the same way nobody counts breaths.When she asked to visit her own parents, the room cooled. "You left that house the day you married," my uncle joked, passing the salt. Everyone laughed, so my mother laughed too, but her spoon scraped the pot a little harder. The joke stuck to her skin like burrs. She carried it for days, a private rash.