by Manjeet Mann
Using terror
to maintain
control.
Your loyalty and
your strength
are tested.
No
one
is
safe.
Turn the volume down,
turn the telly off.
Don’t say a word.
Can’t he wait?
Five minutes,
just five minutes.
He stands in the doorway,
swaying.
Mum – exhausted –
rolls out chapattis.
I offer to make them,
but Dad wants Mum to make them.
Mine won’t be good enough.
I serve.
Dad eats.
Everyone is quiet.
Dad: These chapattis are dry.
Mum: It’s yesterday’s dough.
Why are you serving me bad food? You trying to kill me?
It’s not bad. Just not fresh. It’s from yesterday.
You trying to make me ill?
Let me butter them.
You think I’m going to eat them?
I’ll make new dough.
So I can sit and watch the rest of my food go cold?
I’ll put it back in the pot.
Are you stupid? Are you? Are you brain-damaged? What is this crap?
Hot food on my arm.
Mess on the carpet.
Blood on Mum’s head.
Mum running.
Kitchen to hallway to lounge.
Dad cutting her off,
Mum turning.
Lounge hallway kitchen stairs.
Dad is faster,
me running behind them,
trying to get between them.
Mum and Dad’s room.
Mum gets a suitcase.
He pushes her against the wardrobe.
So you want to leave me? You want to leave me?
Banging on the front door.
Everyone. Is. Quiet.
Mum is being carried out
on a stretcher.
Our neighbour is standing outside
with a cup of tea.
He’s really gone and done it this time.
I’m keeping quiet,
but you, my girl, wanna
save yourself.
Hope is lost. Thoughts
Of ever being free
Seem so far away.
Palpitations of anxiety
Inducing feelings
That turn my stomach upside down
As I watch my mother sleep,
Looking like a vulnerable child.
I make her comfy on the sofa
and take the day off from school.
I try and form a protective
shield around her tiny 4 foot 11 frame.
I feel if I’m around her all the time,
he can’t get near.
Let her heal this time.
I want to make her happy.
Place a light bulb in
every dark thought,
charge her up,
give her courage
to leave, something, anything.
isn’t
like
anyone
else’s.
requires some
imagination.
I offer to go to the shops
whenever I can.
Work on my sprints
down to the petrol station.
Work on my hills
on the way back up.
I continue with my lunges
and squats and burpees.
I need to stay strong.
I add more press-ups
to my routine.
I do bicep curls
with shopping bags full of tins
and triceps dips on the kitchen chair.
Something tells me my arms need to be
just as strong as my legs.
This used to be Ruby’s domain
and without her
I’m lost.
No fun bingeing
on your own.
Mum and I
walk down the sweets aisle
in the supermarket.
Have whatever you like.
Whatever’s going to make Christmas good for you.
I don’t know.
I don’t need anything.
She picks up a bottle
of pink lemonade,
wincing with pain.
You like this?
Yeah.
Put it in the basket.
The first time we bought pink lemonade
Ruby and I pretended it was
champagne.
We drank it all on Christmas Day,
got ourselves drunk on sugar.
Put it in the basket,
she says again.
We’re going to have the best Christmas ever.
You’ll see.
She takes the paper and
moves it close to her face,
then far away,
then close.
I want to laugh
but don’t want to put her off learning.
S.
Good.
She takes the next piece of paper.
She looks at me,
then at the paper.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t know the word.
Can you make out the letters?
She studies it.
Again, moving the paper close to her face
and then further away.
This one says Rai.
It does,
she’s right,
but I think it’s a lucky guess,
so I ask her to read out the letters.
She does the same dance,
close, far, close, far,
then she turns the paper upside down
and cocks her head to the side.
She’s confused
so I turn the paper the right way up.
What’s this letter?
Her mouth opens; nothing.
This one?
Mouth opens; nothing.
I know it says Rai, I just don’t know the letters,
she says.
That’s OK, we’ll keep going through it.
And we do.
Over and over and over
again.
Mum and I
alone
all
day.
Eating.
Chatting.
Watching
TV.
When Dad
stumbles in
after midnight
he collapses
on the settee
and falls asleep.
The day
comes and goes
without a
fight or
beating.
Mum was right.
We have had the best Christmas ever.
I put away clothes
into drawers.
I notice a bundle of papers
under Mum’s underwear.
Scraps and scraps of paper
with her name
written on all of them.
Some right.
Some wrong.
One perfect.
MRS SURINDER RAI.
Temple.
I usually make excuses,
I try to avoid it.
Homework,
exams,
feeling sick.
Tomorrow
is New Year’s Day.
I can’t get out
of this one.
Dad insists
we need to cleanse ourselves
of past sins and
pray for a better year.
I hate to tell him, but
no amount of praying
will cleanse him
of his sins.
I am asked where I’ve been.
I am told it’s been too long.
I am asked my age seven times.
I am asked if I’m considering university. When I say yes,
I am met with annoyed looks.
I am told there’s no point.
I am told it’s too expensive.
I am told it’s best to settle down.
I am told to make my parents happy. When I say I’m too young,
I am told engagements can last a long time and there’s no hurry.
I am laughing in my head because no one can see the irony.
I am told to give their condolences to Ruby for having a girl.
I am told how tall I’ve got.
I am told I’m the opposite to Ruby, who is just like Mum.
I am told I am just like Dad, that I have his height.
I am trying to contest it. I don’t like being told
I am anything like Dad.
Dad sits at the top
of a long table,
like a kingpin
in a gangster movie.
The other uncles greet him.
They shake his hand.
He is fawned over
and is well respected.
I watch Mum
still afflicted with pain
as she sits
with her tray of food.
She still needs painkillers,
she still can’t sleep on her side,
she is walking with a limp.
He is seen as
a pillar of the community,
a righteous man,
a holy man.
It is time someone
knocked
him
off
his
throne.
Ruby and Tiya
are here to see in
the new year.
I wish she’d spent it with
Jas and her in-laws.
I promise myself
I’ll
be
nice.
Before Dad comes back,
I tell them to sit down
around Mum
at the kitchen table.
I give Mum a pen and paper
and we all watch her
write her name.
It’s a moment
of monumental
significance.
Tesco’s Finest chocolate eclairs.
I’ve been staring at them all week.
Mum complaining I’d break the freezer
if I kept opening and closing the door.
They’ve been defrosting for
nearly twenty-four hours in the fridge.
Spongy fingers
filled with cream,
topped with dark chocolate.
French, fancy, posh, a treat.
We are none of these things,
but it’s a treat for New Year.
The best yet.
The fanciest New Year yet.
For one night we can transform.
Pink lemonade at the stroke of midnight
and then the eclairs.
I figure if I begin the new year eating something that good,
something that’s the opposite of us,
it’ll really be the start of new things.
Are they defrosted yet?
They will be by tonight.
Mum getting annoyed
with me opening the fridge
every half an hour.
After dinner, Dad’s out down the pub.
Ruby and I tell him to come back early.
Eleven thirty, we say, so we can watch the fireworks on the telly.
Don’t be late!
Otherwise you won’t get an eclair
and we’ll drink all the pink lemonade.
We all joke, but I know
we all have a knot
in our stomachs.
We watch the countdown to the
one hundred greatest comedians
with one eye on the clock.
Eleven thirty.
Take the eclairs out of the fridge,
place them on a large dinner plate
in the style of a fan.
I give them a sniff. Sweet.
We flick between watching fireworks
in Sydney, Bangkok and
ninety-four on the greatest comedians list.
All the time looking at the door,
occasionally thinking we can hear a key being turned.
Twelve thirty.
Still waiting.
One a.m.
Still waiting.
Mum tells us to call the hospitals.
A yearly ritual.
Same for the past four years.
Last year it wasn’t a waste of time.
He’d been found in the street.
Soaked by the rain.
Unconscious, passed out.
Paramedics thought he’d been there for hours.
A week in hospital with a bout of pneumonia.
No one of his description in the local hospital tonight.
We pour the lemonade down the sink
and throw the untouched eclairs in the bin.
Two thirty.
There’s a knock at the door.
It’s our neighbours.
They’re holding Dad.
We found him at the top of the road.
The boy goes to my school,
he’s in sixth form.
He gives me a sympathetic smile.
I am mortified.
Dad’s drooling and mumbling some crap.
He’s too big and heavy,
but they manage to lay him
on the floor in the living room.
There’s a stain on his trousers and a horrible smell.
We tell Mum not to touch him,
to let him wake up in the morning
and see what he’s done for himself.
But she doesn’t listen.
Says he’ll ruin the carpet,
and quietly and obediently does her duty.
None of us can pick him up
so he’s going to have to stay on the floor,
ruining our New Year and the carpet.
Mum is in the kitchen,
putting the washing machine on.
Ruby and I stand and look at him.
I hate him, she says.
Then she kicks him.
Right in the thigh.
He groans a little.
What are you doing?!
Why not?
He ruins everything.
She runs upstairs.
I am left on my own.
Standing,
staring at this mess of a man.
This massive embarrassment.
I hear Mum coming in from the kitchen
and, before she does,
I whack him on the ankle.
That’s for the eclairs.
And leg it upstairs.
Ruby and I talk.
So many things
that had been left unsaid
now pouring out
like the concrete
used to build the towers
that loom over us.
When I was told to get married, It felt like you gave up.
I fought. It’s been so hard on my own.
Believe me, I fought. I can’t stop the fights.
You weren’t always there. No one is here.
You didn’t see it all. You don’t see it now.
I had to think what was best for you. I tried talking to you.
I had to protect you. I wanted to protect you.
I distanced myself I’ve been so lonely.
because I needed to survive. I’ve missed you so much.
I’ve been in survival mode I couldn’t understand
ever since. what I’d done wrong.
Yes, I get angry Yes, I get angry
because I don’t know because it’s easier
how else to cope. to cope with the pain.
I thought you hated me. I thought you hated me.
What? What?
What h
as been
buried
for so long
finally comes
leaping
out.
Mum joins us.
The three of us huddle together
in my bed.
Nestled into the warmth
and protection of
each other’s bodies.
I’m in charge of the keys.
I’m not to let him out.
Not to tell him where the keys are.
Not to tell him where all his booze has gone.
Mum’s given me this responsibility.
Made me promise.
I wish she hadn’t.
It makes me nervous.
He’s unpredictable.
I hope he stays asleep till she comes back.
It’s not something I want to be dealing with.
But he doesn’t stay asleep.
He’s up and looking in all the cupboards.
He’s turning the place over
and I’m hiding,
trying to stay small.
He finds me,
stands in front of me, shaking.
Where is it?
he says.
I act dumb.
What?
You know what. My medicine.
He says he knows I’m lying.
Says he knows it’s in the shed.
I tell him I don’t have the key,
lie and say Mum took it with her.
He’s telling me the booze isn’t bad,
it’s medicine.
I’m saying I’m under strict instructions
not to let him out into the garden.
He’s pleading.
I’m pleading.
I’m gonna get in trouble.
You won’t, I promise.
I will.
I’ll say that I found the keys.
I’ll get in trouble.
We’re both crying
and he’s on the floor
on his knees
in front of me,
begging.
Please … please …
I reach into my pocket
and hand over the keys.
I have been teaching
Mum every evening
for the past four months.
You should go to the community centre, Mum.
They have language courses there.
They could teach you better than me.
She remains silent as
I watch her copy out
simple sentences.
I hand in my history
assignment.
Revolutions,
triggers
and wars.
I hand in my
English essay,
devoid of truth.
An essay of lies,