Saree

by Su Dharmapala

  It was just that my mother loved my brother much more than she loved me. She bought all the crayons and toys for Ryan and she’d never let me play with his things. I still remember sitting in my own playpen longing to touch the colourful toys in his – but being never allowed to. Whenever my father would object to her treatment of me, the row she created was unimaginable.

  ‘Albert, don’t you dare speak to me of treating her well!’ my mother would scream. ‘I brought her to Australia, didn’t I!’

  ‘You couldn’t exactly leave her behind, could you?’ my father would reply; only to unstopper a torrent of rage.

  ‘There I was pregnant and you’d run off to Australia. Bigger than a house. Not that my mother would let me out at all after you left. Made me go up to Badulla for the entire pregnancy.’

  ‘That was because the air up there was good for you . . .’

  ‘Stuck out in the middle of nowhere! And then I became a mother of two! I told Mother I could not care for two children. I told her that I should leave that one behind in Sri Lanka,’ she shouted, pointing at me. ‘But Mother insisted I take both with me! She got cancer, but instead of growing a tumour she grew a heart! She even brought the baby to the airport and made sure I got onto the plane with her.’

  ‘How could she not, Anoja? Marion looks exactly like your sister, and she was lost in that bus crash! Your mother would have wanted the best for her!’

  ‘My sister? She dies and everybody forgets what a hag she was! Ugly! Were you in love with that ugly witch, too?’

  My father gave up after a while. Years later I found out that my father had seen a psychiatrist about my mother’s attachment problem. The psychiatrist had said that it was extremely rare for a mother to attach to one twin and not the other. To be a normal and loving mother to one child and abusive to the other. I suppose he thought the problem was not with the mother but with the child. Me. I learned very quickly not to be seen or heard. Being shouted at every time you speak does that to you.

  But I remember the crayon and paper day like a ray of sunshine after weeks of rain. We’d just moved to a new house and we had paper left over from wrapping the crockery. There must have been a family of children living in the house previously, because I found the crayons at the back of a cupboard. I smuggled a lovely long strip of paper out into the backyard and I drew. Flowers. Horses. Dogs. Rainbows. Cats. Anything and everything. Fitting as many pictures as I could onto that bit of packing paper.

  My absence must have been noticed eventually because I remember my mother’s reaction when she found me. ‘What’s this?’ she’d mocked. ‘What use are tiny pictures? No one can see them! Stupid girl! Albert! Look at this stupidity your daughter has created!’

  My father hadn’t totally given up on me by that stage. After my mother had stomped off, he’d pulled me onto his lap and asked me to explain to him what I’d drawn.

  ‘I like to draw long pictures. Pictures you can wrap yourself in,’ I told him.

  ‘You really do take after your Aunt Nila, Marion. She was a saree maker, darling. And a fabulous artist. Such a tragedy she died in that bus crash,’ my father had sighed. He told me all about her. How kind she was. How gentle and sweet.

  That night I dreamt that my Aunt Nila was my mother instead of Anoja. Only beside her was a man engulfed in flames. Behind them was a beautiful lady in a white saree. Her face was covered with tears. The beautiful lady looked at me beseechingly, as if she was trying to promise me something. She didn’t speak to me, but told me things, things I have forgotten, but the one thing I do remember was her telling me that my mother loved me and all would end well.

  But the magic of drawing with a simple crayon never has left me. And the nastier my mother got, the more I would draw. Hiding in the toilet or out the back in the shed. Creating unending reams of colour that my mother would use to line the bins. It was a habit that stayed with me, though I eventually swapped crayons and pencils for ink and paints. It’d amused my fellow medical students no end that I often spent the night before a big exam in front of an easel painting.

  Which was why I was painting today. With wild abandon. Splashing colours on a canvas with feverish intensity. Lucky Nair had been impossible to deal with lately.

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to be double-checking all the medication you give my mother?’ he had asked, coming in on Jodi and I while we were checking the locked bar fridge containing the opiates.

  ‘What do you think we’re doing now?’ I’d asked, turning to show him the clipboard with the drugs list the pharmacist had dropped off.

  ‘How should I know what you are doing?’

  ‘If you don’t trust us, why don’t you check it yourself?’ Jodi had returned fire stomping off in anger.

  ‘She is a mite tetchy,’ he observed.

  ‘The nurses who work here are trained professionals. As I am. Believe it or not, we care for your mother and we are doing our best to help her.’

  ‘If you really want to help her, you’d help me find a cure for her,’ he growled back

  ‘I am so sorry, Mr Nair, but there is no cure for your mother,’ I told him gently.

  ‘What? What about this? Have you read about the powers of fruit juice?’ he’d demanded, whipping out his paper-thin laptop. ‘Look! Look at this! This is why I got my mum out of that hospital. At least here I can get her to try some alternative therapies.’

  Out of compassion, I’d taken his laptop and sat at the little desk by the sideboard to look at what he wanted to show me.

  ‘All I can see are plans for a saree mill and some designs for a saree,’ I told him.

  ‘Oh, sorry. Here it is,’ he said, flicking to the right window. ‘See, they are saying that goji berries have worked wonders with patients with myeloma. And there are these sulfur springs I want to take her to in New Zealand. If you would just speak with her . . .’ he pleaded.

  ‘But she does not want to do any of that, puttar,’ a deep voice answered, as Lucky’s father came into the corridor, softly closing the door. ‘Doctor, she’s asleep,’ he said, answering the question clearly written on my face. I was concerned that Shanthi might have been distressed by our argument.

  That was when I heard a sob. Within a blink of an eye, Raju Nair moved fast to engulf his son in his strong arms. ‘Let her go, puttar. Let nature take its course. She fights pain almost constantly now. Let her go.’

  ‘But what if I’d been a better son? Would she listen to me if I’d been her real son?’ Lucky cried. The pain of losing his mother was ripping him apart.

  So having loving parents is as painful as having abusive ones, I thought.

  ‘I doubt you could have been a better or more real son to us,’ his father whispered, joining his son in tears.

  The second universal truth that Jane Austen failed to acknowledge was that a visit from the in-laws must always elicit panic cleaning. Gauri, Raju’s sister, was coming to visit and the entire household was in a state of uproar.

  ‘Have you put out the flowers? And is there a statue of Ganesh?’ Shanthi called out weakly. She’d had an amazing rally when Lucky had arrived but looked as if she was fading fast again. Her sister-in-law was flying in from London to spend what little time she could with Shanthi. But her deteriorating health didn’t stop her from worrying incessantly about their visit.

  ‘Make sure you’ve wiped down the bathroom. Have you checked the sheets, Raju? You know how particular your sister is about sheets!’

  Raju and Lucky rolled their eyes. Not only had the cleaners done a thorough job, but they’d spent the last few hours ‘Indianing’ the house – placing little Hindu statuettes about the place and fanning incense through the rooms.

  ‘Gauri is very religious. She’ll be wanting to know why we haven’t been doing poojas every hour,’ Shanthi groaned.

  ‘Praying twice a day is quite enough, all things considered,’ Raju replied wryly.

  ‘Maybe we should get a pundit to come and visit while she’s here. Have either of
you contacted any of the Hindu temples in Melbourne?’

  Raju and Lucky looked guiltily at each other.

  ‘What are you going to do when I die? Have you not organised anything?’ Shanthi cried, only to fall silent at the thud of closing doors and the sound of someone coming up the driveway.

  ‘Quick! Positions everyone,’ Lucky cried as I dashed to the head of the bed and Raju sat down next to his wife.

  Since Lucky had accepted that his mother would die and not recover, he’d become much easier to live with. ‘I just thought you’d given up on her. I guess I just needed to accept the truth,’ he’d confided in Kristen, Jodi and I one afternoon. ‘I am so sorry.’

  ‘My dearest sister, I cannot believe the tragedy that has befallen you,’ a voice called down the hallway.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ Shanthi cried as a tall woman with burnished ebony skin burst into the room.

  ‘How could the gods do this to you? Why does tragedy always befall us?’ Gauri cried, falling dramatically into her brother’s arms. ‘Is there nothing to be done? What have the doctors said? How long do you have left?’ Gauri asked tearfully.

  ‘The best person to talk to is our doctor,’ Raju said. ‘May I introduce you to Marion Gamage? She is the doctor in charge of Shanthi’s case.’

  I went to shake hands with Raju’s sister as she wiped the tears from her eyes, but as she looked at me she started visibly.

  ‘Have we met before?’ she demanded. ‘You and my daughter could be sisters!’

  And when I looked across the room to the young woman now lounging on the couch and checking her phone; I had to concede that the resemblance was startling. We both had the same high cheekbones, wide set eyes and broad shouldered frames.

  ‘I am certain we have never met,’ I insisted haltingly.

  ‘I have asked the questions. The resemblance is startling, I agree,’ Raju interjected before I could answer. ‘But Dr Gamage is of Sinhala descent and I cannot find any relations. Her family are from Badulla and her parents’ names are Albert and Anoja.’

  ‘Raju had Sindhu check if the Gamages were even distantly related to the Mendises – but even he cannot find a connection,’ Shanthi added weakly. ‘I am sure Sindhu knows all the Mendis families on the island personally now that he has been harassing them for nearly thirty years.

  ‘Mendis is such a common name,’ Gauri remarked. ‘My secretary counted 20,000 Mendises in the Colombo district phone book alone!’

  I ignored them and spoke to their mother. As Gauri turned back to me, I explained Mrs Nair’s diagnosis and prognosis. ‘Your sister-in-law has a particularly aggressive case of myeloma. All we can do is make her comfortable now.’

  ‘Have any poojas been done?’ Gauri demanded.

  ‘We’ve been more focused on spending time with Amman,’ Lucky replied. ‘Time is precious and it is all we have left.’ He pointed to the crosswords in the corner and a box of Scrabble.

  ‘Pity there isn’t a box of Monopoly there,’ Sally, Gauri’s daughter observed nastily. ‘Because that’ll be what it’ll be when you die, Aunty. Lucky will get everything and we’ll be left with nothing!’

  ‘Quite a step up for a low born brat,’ her brother David added.

  ‘That is quite enough!’ Gauri snapped. ‘Your aunty is dying and you’ll keep your mouths shut!’

  ‘How? How can you say that Amman?’ David demanded. ‘You too will be destitute because everything will be left to this bastard son of the kitchen maid!’

  It only took three days in the company of Lucky’s ‘cousins’ for the nurses and I to start feeling sorry for Lucky. Within five days, any one of us would have happily stuck them in the back with a scalpel.

  ‘That is it!’ Kristen growled at me at the nurses’ station. ‘If that cow makes another dig at Lucky about eating in the kitchen because his mother was a maid, I am going to stick her with a fork.’

  ‘Make sure you stick it in deep and turn it slowly so it hurts,’ her mother drawled from behind as Kristen and I nearly jumped out of our skins.

  Kristen made a hasty excuse and hurried away leaving me alone with Gauri. You would have needed a chainsaw to cut the tension. What could you say to a person who’d mothered such two awful people?

  ‘I need to explain my children,’ Gauri said looking at me sadly. ‘It’s my fault they are the way they are. My ex-husband raised them mainly while I was busy setting up and running my business empire. He was a refugee who’d fled the ’83 riots in Sri Lanka and everything he did was clouded in hate. And he taught them hate, too.’

  From the other room, we could hear the roar of the PlayStation game that David had been told repeatedly to reduce the volume to while his aunt was resting. And on the lawn Sally was exposing her already dark skin to dangerous levels of UV light, lolling about in a bikini reading the latest copy of some fashion magazine.

  ‘You need to tell her to put on some sunscreen,’ I yelped. ‘The Australian sun is very dangerous. One good sunburn is all she needs!’

  ‘And Lucky, too. Look, he is out there on the beach too. In this heat!’ Gauri grumbled heading out with a can of spray on sunscreen. ‘Can you give him this hat, my dear? He is the light of my brother’s life and I do not want him to burn in this ridiculous Australian sun.’

  I could hardly refuse – I’d taken the Hippocratic oath, after all – so I plopped on an extra-wide-brimmed sunhat myself and trotted down to the beach where Lucky was fossicking in a little rock pool.

  ‘Here, your aunt sent you this,’ I said, handing him the hat.

  ‘Could you hand me that bucket? I do believe that it is a baby spider crab. Must have got caught when the tide went out. Appa will be so happy to see it,’ Lucky said, catching the little crab with a net and putting it in the large bucket. ‘Don’t worry, little one. We won’t eat you. We’ll look at you and put you back.’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘Are you a marine biologist as well as a textile mogul?’

  ‘I’m neither, actually,’ Lucky laughed. ‘I fell in love with the sea when I was a child. My dad grew up next to the coast, so he made sure we spent a great deal of time down by the coast every year too. But I’m not a marine biologist – and I won’t be a textile mogul forever, either. When my father dies, Sally and David are bound to contest his will and I will lose my share of the business.’

  ‘Surely they cannot contest a will that has been written in sound mind.’

  ‘You forget that the case will be heard in India. Judges can be bought with a hefty bribe or two. My heritage has never been a secret. High born judges would delight in taking me down a peg or two.’

  ‘But Raju Nair is your father – doesn’t caste come through the paternal line? Does it matter who your mother was?’

  Lucky gave me a sad smile. ‘Did you think my father cheated on my mother with the maid? Raju Nair is not my father. I am no blood relative to either one of my parents. I am the son of the scullery maid and a railway worker. My mother was working for my grandparents when she abandoned me.’

  I couldn’t hide my shock.

  ‘Don’t worry. I have come to understand her decision – I accepted it a long time ago. She was pregnant with my sister and my biological father’s family were trying to force her into an abortion. I am sure you’ve heard of the Indian tradition of female infanticide.’

  I nodded. ‘How old were you when she left you?’

  ‘I was about eighteen months old, my parents think. They don’t have a birth certificate or anything like that. I tracked my mother and my sister down a few years ago in a little town north of Delhi. They live in an ashram devoted to the goddess Saraswati. My mother stole an elaborate jewelled saree from my father – from Raju – and sold it so she had enough money to enter the ashram for life.’

  ‘Don’t you hate her?’

  ‘How can I, Marion? If she hadn’t abandoned me, I would never have had the life that my parents have given me. I could never have had their love and their care. No one could have loved me
as much as they do.’

  ‘It must be wonderful to be loved by two people so clearly in love with each other,’ I said.

  We’d been walking up the beach the long way to the house. Why we were doing that I wasn’t quite sure.

  ‘They’re not.’

  ‘What do you mean they’re not?’

  ‘They’re not in love with each other. That’s not quite right, though. My mother is in love with my father – she has been since she was a girl – but he does not love her.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid! Blind Freddie can see that they love each other!’

  ‘They love each other, yes, but my father is not in love with my mother, and he never has been. He is still in love with his first wife. In fact my parents were never legally married. My father refused to marry my mother. They were married by Hindu decree, using the rites reserved for a second wife. But they are not legally married. Which was why the courts never allowed them to formally adopt me.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Lucky opened his mouth to explain, only to stop as a terrified scream ripped through the air. ‘Marion! We need you!’ It was Gauri’s voice, and I broke into a run. My sunhat got caught by the wind and blew out into the bay.

  ‘What?’ I panted as I reached her on the front lawn. ‘Shanthi was stable just before I left – what has happened?’

  ‘It’s not Shanthi! It’s my brother! He’s had a bad turn.’

  It didn’t take long for the paramedics to arrive but by the time they did come, I’d stabilised Mr Nair and had him comfortably resting in a cool bath.

  ‘It’s all my fault,’ Raju kept repeating. ‘The doctors keep telling me of the importance of hydration but some days I just forget.’

  ‘I need a full analysis of his electrolytes and do a full blood chemistry as well,’ I barked down the line to the pathology lab. ‘And call the results through to me!’