Same Sun Here

Dear River,

I cannot tell from your name if you are a boy or a girl so I will just write to you like you are a human being.

You are the first American I know whose name means something, so I think maybe you are not from this country. My brother says you are. He says all people in Kentucky are Americans-not like in New York City, where most people are from everywhere in the world.

My brother is seventeen years old. He has a big smile and strong legs because he is a bike messenger. All the girls love him, which makes him very conceited. Personally, I don’t think the girls would love him any more if they had to pick his smelly socks up off the floor, like I do.

When I first came here, I didn’t like NY, but my brother helped me find appreciation by telling me interesting things. For example, did you know there’s a curse on the Brooklyn Bridge? When my brother looks at something, he sees how it works. He is like that about things like skyscrapers and subways. Next year, he will be a student at CUNY. He wants to make a great invention so he can go to MIT for free. He may have smelly feet, but he is still my favorite human being. I say human being because I have a favorite dog (his name is Cuba) and a favorite parakeet (her name is Xie-Xie).

You know what goes with rivers? Fish. My name is Meena and that means “fish.” Everyone in my family calls me Mee-Mee. I am twelve years old. I like to run up and down the stairs of our building, and I can go all five flights without stopping. I like to feed pigeons, even though it’s against the law, and I like to read books from the Seward Park Library, which is eight blocks from here. This week, I borrowed A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a novel by Betty Smith. I am on page 92, and it is sad and very exciting.

I think you’re like me and don’t have a computer, since your name was on the snail mail list. I could go to the library and send you an e-mail from my brother’s Yahoo, but the line is always long and you only get a half hour and I type very slow like a turtle. Kiku (that is what we call my brother, but his real name is Karan) has a com puter, but he always keeps it with him in his backpack. Anyway, I am used to writing letters, because my grand mother doesn’t have a phone. And I am reading in my book about a girl named Francie who lived in 1912 when there were no computers. I have decided that I want to be like her.

I wonder what you look like. I am short and skinny. This is a good thing for squeezing on the subway. But I would rather be like Kiku’s secret girlfriend, Ana Maria, who is so pretty she stops traffic. I do think my hair is nice. It is long and black like Ana Maria’s, but hers is curly and mine is straight.

I guess I should tell you more about myself. I was born in India, in a town called Mussoorie, in the youngest and highest mountains in the world. Mussoorie is the most beautiful place I have ever seen. Everywhere you look, there is mountain and sky, and some days we are lost in the clouds. The trees are always full of birds with clear voices and monkeys with long tails and bad tempers.

When I was nine years old, Dadi (my grandmother) brought me to New Delhi (the capital of India) on the train. It took eight hours to get there. Then we went to the airport and I flew to America by myself. That took twenty-two hours, with a stopover in Germany. I felt cold and sick in my stomach the whole entire time. I think if human beings were meant to fly around in the sky, we would have been born with wings.

Mum and Daddy and Kiku have been in America nine years. They got here two years before 9/11. They left Mussoorie when I was three years old. It took them a long time to save enough money to bring me over, and I did not recognize them at the airport. It was strange to look into all the faces and not know if any of the people were my mother or father.

I came here on the H-4 visa. That means I can’t work but I can go to school. Daddy says I should always tell Americans about my visa so they don’t think I’m illegal. This year, my parents will apply for naturalization. They just got their I-551 Alien Registration Cards in the mail, so in about a year, maybe, maybe, they will be citizens. You should see the amount of papers and phone calls it takes to become an American. Mum says it is like having another job. I think it’s funny that we have Alien Cards— as if we come from outer space! I promise, I don’t have any antennae on my head. I am 100% Homo sapiens.