Nina McConigley - Sorry Sari

 

The first time I ever wore a sari, I was 13. Now, I grew up in Wyoming, which is not only the least populated state, it's also probably the whitest. And so, there's no place to buy a sari, so I wore my mom's. When we had moved to America, she had brought boxes of them. They're not the most practical thing for Wyoming winters with the wind and the snow, [audience laughter] but that's okay. 

 

Growing up, I always thought I was the wrong kind of Indian. When people would ask me, “What are you?” I would say Indian. I wouldn't correct them if they thought I was Arapaho or Shoshone. The other thing about growing up in Wyoming, is that you as a kid get to visit a lot of forts and historical sites, and you can always dress as cowboy or Indian. I would be Indian, because it was easier. [audience laughter] I liked dressing up until on a fourth-grade trip, someone tried to scalp me while we looked at the Oregon Trail ruts. 

 

The thing I wanted when I was 13 was to be Dorothy Hamill. I wanted to be a figure skater. That summer, I had taken a picture of Dorothy Hamill to the MasterCuts at the mall and asked for her haircut. [audience laughter] When they were finished, I pretty much looked like a mushroom [audience laughter] or a helmet, whatever you want to say. My mom, when she picked me up, she had beautiful, long Indian hair. She didn't say a word. But I didn't want to be a good Indian girl. I wanted to be Dorothy Hamill. 

 

That summer, I also got my period. Now, I wasn't surprised by it. I had read a lot of Judy Blume, [audience laughter] so I knew what was supposed to happen when you got your period. But I knew that what was coming was that I was going to have a coming-of-age ceremony. In the part of India where my mom comes from, they do a ceremony to shepherd you into womanhood when you get your period. The ceremony is you have a ritual bath, you get clean, you get your first piece of gold jewelry, which goes to your dowry. You drink an egg to be fertile, a raw egg and you wear a sari for the first time. I knew that was coming. 

 

So, I waited for about three periods before I said something to my mom. [audience laughter] Sure enough, soon after, on a Saturday morning, she and my aunt woke me up and they said, “Today, you're going to have your ceremony.” It started with the ritual bath, which, when you're 13, being naked is a very horrific thing. Being naked in front of other people, even worse. So, I put on my Speedo, [audience laughter] which was purple and blue stripes. My mom and my aunt went through, and they put some baby oil on my hair. Usually, it would be coconut oil. But they rubbed my hair, and then they put me in the bath and dumped water over my head. After that, they spent about half an hour trying to make the Dorothy Hamill haircut into a bun on top of my head. They used a bunch of bobby pins, probably 50 of them. They strung my hair with carnations. 

 

My mom kept telling me like, “If we were in India, you'd be having jasmine. We would just walk outside the door and pick this jasmine.” And then, I got my first piece of gold jewelry. It was a little necklace and earrings came from Zales at the mall. [audience laughter] I didn't really like it, because it was the 1980s. I wanted to wear jelly bracelets and silver. [audience laughter] Didn't really care. But then, it came time for me to pick and wear a sari. I picked one of my mom's most simple saris. It was a pink one. It had a gold border. I had to wear one of her blouses, because there wasn't a place to get one and it poofed out in front. 

 

They slowly dressed me in the six yards of cloth that it takes to wrap you in a sari. When they finished, I looked at myself in the mirror and I didn't know what I thought I looked like. After that, my mom ushered me into the living room, where she had invited a bunch of friends over to celebrate the fact that I had gotten my period. [audience laughter] I think that a lot of our Wyoming friends didn't get it. They thought they were coming to a birthday party, because I got some gifts. [audience laughter] We sat around, and ate samosas and some carrot cake, and celebrated that I was a woman. [audience laughter] If getting your period isn't excruciating enough, celebrating it, [audience laughter] not good. 

 

I wore this sari for about an hour. And then, after that, I went into my bedroom and I rolled it up in a ball and I went back to reading my biography of Dorothy Hamill. The ceremony didn't mean that much to me. I didn't really care about it. But I knew it was my mom's way of trying to keep our Indian ness. In Casper, where I grew up, there's no Indian restaurants, there's no Indian grocery store. We knew five other Indians. It was her way of keeping a bit of home, of keeping that. 

 

When I was 23, about five days before I was supposed to leave Wyoming to go to graduate school in Boston, my mom was diagnosed with Stage 3B cancer. I had my bags packed. The day before I was supposed to leave, I asked her oncologist, I said, “If you were me, would you go to graduate school?” And she said, “No.” And I thought, okay. So, I didn't get on the plane. Our life after that became this round of going to chemo and radiation and doctor's appointments. All of our Wyoming friends were great. They brought us a lot of food. Our refrigerator was heaving with lasagnas, and casseroles and chicken noodle soup. But my mom didn't want to eat. She just stopped eating. And one day she said, “I just want some curd rice.” 

 

Now, I had never really cooked Indian food. That's what your Indian mom is for, is to cook you Indian food. [audience laughter] So, I thought, I think, that for the rest of my life I would just show up and rice and curry would magically appear. So, I sat my mom down at the kitchen table, and from the table, she directed me in the kitchen. She told me how you make the rice, how you brown the mustard seeds and you wait till they crack and how to temper the spices. I slowly but surely made her some curd rice, and she ate. And over the next few months, I made a little rotation of Indian dishes. 

 

One day, I went into her bedroom, and she was really agitated and she said to me, “I had this dream that I died and that you, and your father and your sister buried me in a frilly pink nightgown.” [audience laughter] She didn’t even own a frilly pink nightgown. I'd like to point that out for the record. But she said, I don't want to be buried in Western clothes. Now, at this point in my life, we hadn't really talked about what would happen if she didn't make it. We just had been going to a lot of appointments. You don't talk about that. We didn't anyway. If my Indian cooking skills were low, my sari skills were lower, much lower. I hadn't really worn a sari that much since my coming-of-age ceremony. 

 

A few months before when she had first gotten sick, she had to go to the emergency room. When we got to the ER, she had been wearing a sari. And of course, they tell you like, “No, you can't come in. Wait in the waiting room.” About 10 minutes after she was admitted, a nurse, a really flustered nurse, came out and she said, “You have to unwrap your mother,” [audience laughter] It is like, she was a gift. [audience laughter] I went into the hospital room and I slowly started taking the sari off of her and putting her in a hospital gown. You know, sari is six yards of cloth and I tried to fold it in the little hospital room. I couldn't get it folded and I just ended up shoving it in the plastic bag, balling it up in the plastic bag they give you in a hospital to put your things. 

 

So, that day when my mom said to me, I can't be buried in Western clothes, I said, “Okay, but you're going to have to teach me.” So, I went to her cupboard. my mom's saris are all kind of stacked up. When you open it almost looks like books stacked up. I pulled out a sari. It was a green chiffon one. And from the bed, she directed me on how to put the sari on, how to tie the petticoat really tight and how you can put a knot in one corner and tuck it in and how you pleat it and drape it. I put the sari on, and then she had me take it off, then she had me do it again and then she had me take it off, [chuckles] she had me do it again. 

 

And then I did it on a Kanchipuram sari. I did it on a hand block sari and then finally I helped get her up out of bed and I undressed her. I could see the marks on her body from where they do the radiation. They mark it. I slowly but surely started to dress her. She had a sari on. We stood there looking at ourselves in the mirror. We put bindis on and I put my hair in a ponytail. I realized the whole time that I was lying to her, because I couldn't dress my mother if she died. I couldn't dress a corpse. I mean, it's one thing to dress someone standing up, but I couldn't imagine dressing her that way. 

 

When we looked in the mirror and I thought I wasn't just scared of losing my mother. I was really scared of losing my Indian-ness, because if she died, who in Wyoming was going to teach me? There's nobody. A miracle occurred in that a few months later, she went into remission, which were all really happy for. I did end up going to graduate school. I left Wyoming, which was and it came back and life went on. And the last time, I wore a sari was a few months ago. I got married. Yeah, it was exciting, got married.

 

[cheers and applause]  

 

I didn't think I wanted to be an Indian wedding or have an Indian wedding or be an Indian bride. But when I started looking through all the bridal magazines, I didn't see myself wearing a big white dress. I knew I wanted to wear my mom's wedding sari. Now, my mom's wedding sari is the one sari that since we moved to America, she's never worn. It's wrapped in tissue paper in her closet. It's white and it's got a lot of heavy gold brocade work on it. It's really heavy. When you hold it in your hands, it looks like sunlight. When I unfolded it to look at it, I could see there was some stains on it. There was some red stain and I knew it was probably rasam or sambar from my parents wedding 46 years ago. 

 

I took it to a dry cleaner in Wyoming, and he took one look at it and was like, “I've never cleaned anything like that.” So, I decided to just wear it, stains and all for my wedding. I liked thinking there was a little bit of my parents wedding there with me that day. The morning of my wedding, I took a bath by myself this time. [audience laughter] But my mom and aunt came over, and even though I know how to put a sari on now, they dressed me and they slowly pleated and they did the draping and they adjusted the palu, which is the bit over your shoulder. My mom put a safety pin in my shoulder and on my waist, because she was sure I was going to unwrap during the ceremony. When they were done dressing me, my mom looked at me and I looked in the mirror and I looked Indian. It felt really unfamiliar, but it also felt like home. Thank you.