1
THWARTED BY AN INVASIVE PARAKEET
One fateful spring day when I was only seven, I learned two things.
One: I would be a fashion designer someday. I’d been filling my coloring pages and notebooks with drawings of my dolls in fabulous clothes for years by that point, but that was the first day I felt the thrill, the mind-consuming rush, of figuring out how to create actual clothes from my drawings. I’d cut off a piece of fabric from my old Eid lehenga (which didn’t fit me anymore, and my sister refused to wear Indian formal wear) and wrapped it around my Surf City Barbie, because seriously ... how gauche to live in swimwear twenty-four seven. I stapled up the hem and used safety pins to cinch the back to get it as close as I could to the image in my notebook. Seeing Barbie go from California dreamer to Bollywood glam solidified my gut instinct that day—I was born to create clothes.
And the second thing I learned? Achieving that goal wasn’t going to be easy, but I’d have help and support along the way. Because that very same day, instead of being angry that I’d cut up my outfit, my parents took me to the library and showed me my first college, university, and vocational school catalogs. It was a desi-parents thing—our culture was steeped in ambition and strategic goal setting. I learned I’d be a fashion designer because my parents would help me get there. My goals werefamily goals. My successes all our successes. Together, we put togetherthe Planto help me start my own fashion line before I was twenty.
Yay for Eastern collectivist cultures.
Even with all that planning, none of us expected that ten years later a rogue parakeet in Paris would derail the Plan spectacularly and give me another life-changing, fateful spring day at the age of seventeen.
Once again my parents barged into my room while I was cutting fabric. After the email I’d forwarded to their respective work addresses that morning, I knew a discussion about the Plan would be coming. And it wouldn’t be an easy one. But I didn’t expect it to be quite this bad.
“Tahira, we need to talk,” Dad said. He sat on the pink patchwork comforter on my single bed.
I stayed at my sewing machine. The last time Dad said “we need to talk” with that look on his face was shortly after I’d told them I was dating my boyfriend, Matteo. Dad had awkwardly thrown a new box of condoms at me before pantomiming with his fingers how to use them, in case I wasn’t aware. Mom then told me the college dropout rates for teen mothers. Of course I already knew all that. Sex ed was pretty comprehensive around here.
“Can I keep sewing?” I asked.
“Are those the shirts for the shoot tomorrow?” Mom eyed the black, white, and gray custom-printed fabric I’d designed myself.
I nodded. The fabric had come in only that day, so I needed to hustle to get these done before my photo shoot at noon tomorrow. But I didn’t mind a marathon stitching session. Sewing was my happy place.
Mom rubbed her hands together. “Okay, Tahira. Your father and I have talked, and I’ve made some calls. We think we have a way to get you back on Plan. Do you want to hear about the new fashion industry summer job we found for you?”
Step eight of the Plan to get me my fashion line was the one the parakeet had destroyed. I was supposed to have had an internship witha Toronto-based fashion designer, where I would work my fine ass off so I’d get aglowingletter of recommendation and plenty of content for my application portfolio to FIT—New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology (hopefully with a scholarship; step two, already accomplished, of course, was to get straight As to help with that).
The designer I’d scored the internship with, Nilusha Bhatt, was more of an up-and-comer than at the top of the game. But shehadbeen invited to Paris Spring Fashion Week after she’d hired me, so she was clearly on track to being huge.
But according to Nilusha’s email earlier, two days ago, a rogue ring-necked parakeet had dive-bombed onto the oversize feathers on the designer’s summer hat. Maybe to collect some bedding for its nest? Who knew? Anyway, Nilusha’s Miu Miu pumps wedged into the space between cobblestones, and she nose-planted on one of those quaint continental Paris streets. Her nose was fine. But she broke her leg in three places.
I exhaled. I didn’t reallywantto hear about whatever new job Mom had found now. I wanted more time to mourn the one I’d lost. I wanted to keep sewing now for tomorrow’s shoot. I wanted to call Matteo again and vent about how unfair it was to lose my epic summer job because of a bird on another continent. I wanted to sketch out the cool design idea I’d had on my way back from the post office to pick up this fabric before I forgot it.
But what I wanted most in the world was success in the fashion industry, and my parents were here to help me get it. Most people who made it big in fashion, and I mean reallybig, had help from family. Maybe their mother was the style editor forVogue, or their dad knew the creative director at Gucci, or they had a godmother with a house in the Hamptons next to Tom Ford’s. But the only long-standing connection in fashion my family had was maybe some clout with the Spadina Avenue fabric stores, and that one sari store on Gerrard Street that gave my mom the best deals. I wastooCanadian,toobrown, andtooMuslimto have built an upper hand in the style world. So my parents made up for it by teaching me how tohustle, times three. Thanks to them I’d had grit, determination, and Asian ambition bred into me since birth.
And that meant I had no choice, really. I wanted to be in the fashion industry, and doing what my parents asked was how I was going to get there. I pushed the fabric pieces to the edge of my sewing table and folded my hands on my lap.
“Okay,” I said, “I’m listening. How do I get back on the Plan?”
“This sucks, Tahira,” my best friend, Gia, said the next day as she stopped taking pictures of me and let my SLR camera hang from her neck. Gia, Matteo, and I were at Graffiti Alley, a long stretch of vibrant art in the alley behind a major street in downtown Toronto. It was a bit of a pain-in-the-butt location for photo shoots because we were always fighting other photographers and tourists for the best backdrops, but my Instagram followers loved seeing my designs positioned against the bright art.
“I don’t get why this designer has to stay in Paris all summer,” Gia continued, standing five feet in front of Matteo and me, both of us leaning on the art wall. “Can’t she recover from a broken leg in Toronto?”
“Her leg is, like,shattered,” I said. “They had to put a pin in it.”
Maybe it hadn’t been wise to tell Gia just now that I’d lost my coveted summer internship. I needed her attention as my photographer today. But I’d been too upset to talk to her last night.
“Anyway,” I continued, twisting the simple silver ring on my index finger, “she said it’s easier to just stay there with her friend to recover. Her friend’s roommate is a nurse. A hot male nurse named Didier.”
Matteo snorted. “She told you that?”
I nodded. “Nilusha is awesome.” I’d lost so much. She would have been a great boss.
Gia fanned herself with her hand. “Shut. Up.Amalenurse?” Gia was in the theater program at our school, and it showed. She was determined to be a rom-com star one day and was trying to build a platform as an Instagram influencer to help her get there. “AFrenchmale nurse? Why can’tIget hit on the head with a bird?” she said, pouting. “Nothing good ever happens to me. Does this French nurse have a French Canadian cousin or anything?”
I raised a brow. I loved Gia, but she sometimes took the whole boyfriend-desperation thing too far. We’d been tight since grade nine and were closer than sisters. “G ... this isn’t about you. I’mdistraught. Ineededthis internship.”
