Published: November 19, 2009

cops many times. She has yet to receive a ticket. Sometimes she gets pulled over because she is driving too slowly. Other times it is because one of her headlights is perpetually broken. Once she got pulled over for speeding. Every single time, she has managed to convince the cop that she is an innocent, ignorant immigrant, trying to make it for herself and her family, trying her best to live the American dream.

The time she was speeding, she and my sister were blasting Beyoncé on the radio and touching about 50 in a school zone. The cop, a female, pulled her over. My mother stopped dancing in her seat and turned off the radio before the severe woman-in-blue came over to check out the situation. She looked so naïve and afraid that the cop let her go. Then, my mother went home and watched “Sex and the City” and overdosed on NyQuil.

Being an immigrant can have its disadvantages. The phone bill is expensive, the food tastes bland and it always feels cold. But while I long to belong, to adhere to an identity that is not confounded by nationalities, my clever mother has discovered and mastered advantages of being a foreigner. And it doesn’t hurt that she’s cute.

In eighth grade, in the midst of an awkward prepubescent stage, I went trick-or-treating on Mischief Night. Our family friends had come over with all of their children, who were about eight years younger than I was. I stammered and tried to protest, but my mother looked at me with her big brown eyes. “Why not go trick-or-treating tonight? I am sure all the white people have their candy already. They are so prepared.” And then she closed her eyes and thanked God we were in America, where there is an abundance of Halloween candy.

I stepped outside in my Indian dress and New Balance sneakers (the same outfit I had worn the past five years; I was an Indian princess with flat feet). Four smaller figures followed me. Across the street were the tall blonde girls and their ever-present group of boys, giggling and shrieking, rolls of toilet paper and silly string in hand. They saw us walking down the road. “Hey! Halloween isn’t until tomorrow!” And they kept shouting it, as if we were deaf, as if we couldn’t read a calendar, as though they were trying to help. I cringed in fear, wanting to be with those kids, while at the same time wanting to remain hidden in my conspicuous, heavily brocaded Indian outfit. Luckily, my mother was not as adept in cosmetics as she was at getting out of speeding tickets; I was hardly recognizable with red blotches on my cheeks and blue powder under my lashes.

We soon discovered that many “prepared white people” were not so prepared, and apparently it’s only on Halloween that they open doors to masked groups of people at 9:30 p.m. People talked from windows in fear of this group of midget terrorists, conspiring to hoard Ridgewood’s Halloween candy from the true trick-or-treaters who went out on Oct. 31. Some people were so flustered that they gave us money. I saw my classmates toilet paper my house from down the street.

When we returned home, my mother enthusiastically asked how many goodies we got. I told her we received hardly anything, because, and I repeated with emphasis, it was not actually Halloween. She widened her eyes and disheveled her clothing to appear like the immigrant who had walked straight off of Air India. “I don’t understand. They didn’t give you candy, beta?” And then everyone started arguing about selfish Americans and racism and victimization and bland food. My father peered into my empty plastic pumpkin basket, “Those fools. They always need to celebrate events on specific days. You appreciate your mother on one day of the year. You get your wife a card on one day of the year. You go trick-or-treating one day of the year. That is why this country will not progress. They cannot think outside the box.”

And that is when I began wishing I could actually be in this supposed box in which all Americans are trapped. I wanted to be tall, blonde, flocked by eager boys and vandalizing million-dollar homes on Mischief Night, not creating an advocacy group for daily trick-or-treating.

My mother saw the handfuls of dollar bills and coins we received that night, “That will help us get your grandparents visas. Or at least some candy for tomorrow’s round of kids.”

I sighed. That box, in which I wanted to be trapped like everyone else, seemed eons away.