By Sunu P. Chandy
Content Warning: Internalized racism and fatphobia. Strong recommendation to follow-up by binge watching seasons one and two of the excellent series, Survival of the Thickest, featuring Michelle Buteau, and reading Sonya Renee Taylor’s transformational book, The Body Is Not an Apology.
Dedicated to the kind woman in seat 18c
The whole ride
I gave you the treatment
I used to give B, the only Black kid,
in my elementary school. Like they say
we are the same, but I need
to believe I’m not as bad
as you. My skin is lighter
brown, and my hair is less kinky
in this our one-traffic-light Ohio
town. Why do they keep saying,
we are the same, and so we should
date? And in response, why do I hate
you so, and then hate myself so?
And now similar questions arise
leaving the incredible city of Toronto,
where even the TSA agents, and Lyft
drivers, and museum staff were often South
Asian women. I was coming down
from this high of two days
filled with South Asian women,
my poetry event at Glad Day,
Jamaican food with Quaker friends,
the Tamil Pride art exhibit
and another museum exhibit
on Muslim women entitled,
Being and Belonging.
As I boarded the airplane,
my face likely visibly dropped
when I saw my seatmate. My seatmate
understandably took up
part of my seat. But I needed my whole
seat, and probably more. The young
woman quietly pointed
to her waist as a way of asking
the flight attendant for a seatbelt
extender. And I wished I
was not taking notes.
I wriggled and jiggled
and squeezed myself in
with my own seatbelt. So much so
that the man in front looked back
and smiled and said:
Are y’all set back there?
In my mind I was thinking
at least I’m here falling off
some weight chart, but perhaps still on it,
while you are floating out there
somewhere in the abyss. Saying no
to the drinks and snacks
as how could you possibly
put your tray down.
And all this time
I somehow didn’t realize
I had also become
the one no one wants
to sit next to, both
brown and large.
And did I mention it was the evening
of the anniversary
of 9/11? I was flying with my South
Asian often mistaken
for Arab brown skin. And I still
had the nerve to look down
on anyone? I looked down
at this friendly seatmate
for the entire one hour and 12
minutes. And was it because
of her size, or my size,
or something else entirely?
And not for one minute
did I blame the airline industry’s fatphobic
limitations or racism after 9/11,
or genetics or medical issues, or menopause,
or age, or the realities in life that create
food as a comfort, as one
of the only comforts left.
I blamed none of these things,
but instead, I blamed us. I blamed her,
and I blamed me, and I came home
and cried. In my defeat I cried, at my shame
of essentially glaring at her for 72 minutes,
at my shame of almost not being able
to fasten my own seatbelt, my shame
of only being on page 12 of the actual book
on my nightstand entitled, Your Body
Is Not an Apology.
On the plane, after I drank my sparkling
water and took the bag of pretzels
to bring home to the kid, a drop of water
fell her way as I returned the cup
to the flight attendant.
And the only nine words
we exchanged in those intimate 72 minutes
of our bodies pressed together
was me saying: Oh, I’m so sorry,
and her saying: Oh, it’s okay, you’re fine.
Sunu P. Chandy (she/her) is a social justice activist including through her work as a poet and a civil rights attorney. She is the daughter of immigrants from Kerala, India, and currently lives in DC with her family. Her award-winning collection of poems, My Dear Comrades, was published by Regal House, and she is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet. Sunu’s work can also be found in anthologies including The Penguin Book of Indian Poets and The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood. Sunu is currently a Senior Advisor with Democracy Forward, and on the board of the Transgender Law Center. Sunu has been included as one of the Washington Blade’s Queer Women of Washington.