The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Brown Girl Chromatography by Anuradha Bhowmik

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Elegy for the Surgeon

Baba’s lace-up leather shoes from Bangladesh had needlepoint patterns pricked in the skin and bands of lentil-sized eyelets. He’d never tell me the truth about our American life in the early 90s, but he slipped up from time to time: pow-dered milk, trash picking, pocket change, etcetera. While he tried on Velcro shoes from the Kmart clearance, I walked toward the aisle of Barbie Jeeps. Soon he traded laces and fine stitches for double straps and casino work. Hid the black Bata brand shoes in a latch-lock suitcase with our Bangali birth certificates, stethoscopes, spare passport photos from first grade featuring pigtails he tied with rubber bands. I cut my hair in layers when I turned twelve, to look like the popular girls who smoked ganja after school. So your dad wears skirts? He went barefoot at home, traded his lungi for trousers when Americans came over. The black leather dress shoes creased at the toe. They weren’t cost effective like the ten‑dollar Thom McAn’s: scuffs and dry sweat coated with ultra-shine shoe polish and Dr. Scholl’s insoles. He never noticed the embossed Size 9 and Made in Bangladesh fade from the inner leather lining, the unfastened eyelet lost in a crisscross. He kept a shoehorn handy by the door, until the cheap rubber soles wedged thin and lost grip.

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