I like it best with onions
The second matrimonial candidate was presented to me a few months after my college graduation. Instead of a tiny studio somewhere in Greenwich Village, I was once again back in my old room in a crowded suburb in Northern New Jersey. My mother, after working for over eight years as an insurance company, decided to take on a second job – my marriage maker. She had been a Gujarati and Hindi literature teacher in India, but transitioned into the immigrant work force once we migrated to the US. With a Master’s degree in hand, my mother started with a glamorous job working on an assembly line at a bra factory until she gained enough confidence to move into office work. I was to be her only client as my younger sister had just left for college.
He was the nephew of Bina auntie, who was not my auntie by blood but because any older person who is Indian is always addressed to or referred as an uncle or auntie. We had met Bina auntie when we moved into a large apartment complex in Elizabeth, NJ. There were six Gujarati families in the complex which was mainly filled with Columbian and Puerto Rican families. Between the ages of ten and fifteen, while living there, I spoke Gujarati as my first language, Spanish as my second and English only in school. My parents’ not wanting my sister and I to become completely Americanized or in this case Latin Americanized, made sure we spent more time playing with the kids of the other Indian families in the complex, however, my best friend was Yvonne Herrera and her mother made the best rice and beans I had ever had. I have tried for years and still can’t replicate the recipe.
This was also where I had my third crush on a boy named Papi – which in hindsight – yuck! Papi used to make fun of us girls and make us climb the stone gates of the complex and when we couldn’t get down he would make fun of us and leave us up there until we started crying. He was a prize. My second crush was a year before in fifth grade with a boy named Harry. We were in the same class and on a class trip to the park, he caught a fish with his hands brought it over and threw it at me. My first crush was very different though. He was in my fourth grade class and I was still shy about speaking English because I didn’t know all of words. Every day at the end of school, Angel, who sat in the desk behind me, would help me put my coat on and tie the strings to my hood so that my head was secured by my hood. I hated wearing the hood but since Angel tied the strings I kept that hood on all the way home.
Matrimonial candidate number two was not like Angel or Harry or even Papi. He came to pick me up at my parents’ house in a silver Toyota Corolla and I remember that it had really shiny hubcaps. He was fairly average, in body and looks. Again, close your eyes and picture an Indian guy and add a small beer pooch and there you have matrimonial candidate number two. He took me to Pizza Hut about ten minutes away from my parents’ house.
“I love pizza, it’s my favourite food,” he offered as we were seated at a white and red checked table with crushed red pepper and garlic powder dispensers.
“We’ll have two Cokes and a large pie with extra onions and jalapeno peppers,” he ordered without even asking what I wanted. Great sign that.
“Do you like pizza?”
I wanted to say no, but instead I said, “Yeah.”
“My mom makes the best pizza, she puts like jeera in the crust and it’s like thin in the middle and like really thick around the sides.”
He was actually salivating.
“Do you know how to make pizza?”
“Uhm no.”
“It’s the best with onions and peppers. I mean I like it loaded too, with veggies only, like olives and onions and peppers and sometimes garlic. I don’t eat meat, I never have so I don’t know what it would be like with pepperoni, but I wouldn’t like it. It’s also really good with just cheese but I think you have to have onions because onions taste good on everything.”
He reached in and grabbed the largest slice when the pie arrived and spent a few minutes mesmerized by the taste of really adequate pizza.
“So my mom didn’t tell me a lot about you, what do you do?” I asked at the risk of interrupting his pizza euphoria.
“I’m a computer programmer,” he said with his mouth full. I could no longer look at him.
“What do you do?”
“I work for a travel publishing company.”
“Wow, that’s cool, so do you get to travel.”
“No, not really,” my company sounded glamorous but my job was pretty mundane. I was a media trafficker for a quarterly travel directory.
“That’s too bad. You know where I want to go? Italy. They have the best pizza there.”
“Oh, of course.”
“Have you been to Italy?”
“No.”
“Are you going to have any more?”
There were four slices left and I had half of one.
“No, I’m done.”
“Cool. I’m going to wrap this up and take it to go,” he told the waitress.
“I’ll get it,” he said magnanimously when the check came.
“I’ll get the tip,” I offered.
I never saw him again or even heard about him. My mother asked how it went when I got home and I told her I really didn’t like him. He must have said the same thing to his mother and both of us moved on to the next in parents’ quest to marry us off.
