“For what pineapples?”
“It stimulates saliva. Though obviously she shouldn’t lick the skin.”
“Bloody asshole idiot,” shouted Aunty Number Five – you reckoned her name was Aunty Chamlesh, though you weren’t for definitely sure. “You think this is some game or what?”
The assembled aunties and uncles all started murmuring. And nodding – lots of nodding. Giving signals to each other.
“No. I don’t think that this is a game. That’s the whole point. That’s why there ain’t any rules as to how I should be reacting.”
Snorting from somewhere. Biscuits and rice cakes. Lonely low-fat crackers like the edges of burnt birthday cards. Relatives and non-relatives. Random elderly men with turbans and long white beards even though your family weren’t even Sikh. Only thing missing was your mummy as a wig-wearing judge.
“Listen, young man,” Aunty Number Six tagged herself in. “Only reason we tolerate all this crap of yours is because your mother keeps begging us not to shout at you. She’s so used to you bloody selfish shitting on her, she doesn’t even to complain.”
“Exactly,” said another unidentified aunty. “Exactly, exactly. She lives for you, she lives for you and all you can do is your bloody selfishness.”
You knew from your mother–son couples counselling that the reason their bullshit boiled your blood was cos part of you probly agreed with them – i.e. it weren’t actually bullshit. After all, if they were just sitting there calling you a crack dealer or something, it wouldn’t have meant shit to you cos you knew for sure that you weren’t one. You figured that even if only 2 per cent of your mind agreed with them, that’d still mean you against 2 per cent of yourself. You’d watched your mum fight against 2 per cent of her body and so you knew how much that fight could fuck you up. As if Aunty Number Five could read your mind, she then started dissing the couples therapist who’d told you all this. “All this Westernised wanting-your-space nonsense of yours is all because of the counselling.” Then she turned to Uncle Deepak. “Isn’t it? Tell him what it is I told you.”
“Dhilan, why you don’t tell us what we can do for you?” said Uncle Deepak. “Is there something more you need from us? To help you start acting like the responsible grown-up? I’ve told to your mother many times, the two of you should have never gone to see all those counsellors and bouncellors. This is what family’s for. All your problems will be resolved if you keep it in the family.”
In the corner of the living-room-cum-bedroom-cum-hospital-room-cum-courtroom, a man leaned forward from the sofa and you could’ve sworn down he was your old headmaster – the one who’d died while shouting at some kid for wearing trainers to school. Except this man here was wearing a turban. And with a long white beard and so on.
“You wanna know what I think?” said your fucking same-generation cousin Ravi. You sucked on your mouth ulcers while he waited for everyone’s attention. Then, as if he’d just discovered the concept earlier that same week, he declared, “Dhilan, I think you’re in … denial.”
You counted to ten. Fifteen. Fuck it, twenty. Then you told him, on the calm, that being in denial would imply you didn’t think she was really dying, whereas, in actualtruth, you’d been thinking she was dying since you started high school – back when Ravi reckoned you was just being a goth.
“Okay, tell me something,” Aunty Number Four or Five sounding sweet as her own jalebi. “Do you feel your mother’s a burden on you?”
Oh. Fuck.
What the hell were you s’posed to say to that? She knew full well that if you said No you’d be contradicting all your behaviour and digital data and so on. But if you said Yes then you’d be full-on fucked cos your aunts and uncles probly defined the word “burden” as something a person doesn’t want. Figured if you was a nurse or a social worker or something then you could just say the technical term was “burnout”. But seeing as how you weren’t a nurse, you didn’t know what word to call it. And so you just stuck with the dictionary definition – the definitions you’d spent the past nine years defining: “Well, obviously she’s a burden.”
The sound of everyone drawing a collective breath through their collectively clenched teeth. Kinda sound you might hear if time flipped into reverse. Straight away, you wanted to scroll back and elaborate. But what could you have told them? That, technically speaking, you’d been a burden on your mum back when you were a baby/toddler/infant/boy? Or should you have tried to explain that part of the “burden” here was the fact that you’d already lost her? Lost her years back.
Instead, you just decided to complete the general stun-gun effect – reached into your pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, like some kinda clown-town-fucko-drama-queen. An ad for lung cancer on the back of the box. Next, as if you weren’t being enough of a ridicu-dickless cliché, you reached across and tried using one of your mum’s sick bowls or bedpans as an ashtray. Problem was, it was one of them disposable cardboard ones so pretty soon the ash was burning right through into your lap. Aunty Number Six jumped up to douse out the bedpan with her glass of lassi – we’re talking an ice-cold lassi cum-stain all over your fucking crotch. While you dabbed your general dick area dry, she handed you your mum’s pink plastic kidney bowl. “Here. Take it. The cigarette won’t burn through this one.”
And so you swallowed your dipshit pretentiousness and started fretting about the cigarette smoke. “How long does Mama usually take in the shower? If you open the curtains, we could open the windows. How long before she gets out of the shower?”
“Well, let’s see,” said Aunty Number Seven. “It takes her a little longer than normal these days because of the plaster cast on her broken femur. Sometimes she has to stick it outside the shower to stop it getting wet, other times we wrap it for her in a plastic bin liner.”
“You see,” said Aunty Number Fifty-Four as your scowl dropped into the kidney bowl, “it’s high time you came back to reality.”
Big fucking surprise: Uncle Number Twenty-Nine agreed with his wife. “Do you know why it is your mother’s making such a tamasha about showering today? It’s because she’s so much excited that you’re coming to see her during the daytime instead of ten rush-rush minutes in the night. Such a small, simple little thing has made her smile more than I’ve seen her smile in two weeks. Why the hell you couldn’t just do this for her before? Every day you could have been bringing her the joy.”
Could feel some kinda carbon-copy jury take their seats up in your head. We’re talking permanent residency. All of them thinking what they already thought. All of them having the same opinion. Taking each other to some next level of the same opinion.
“And then when you do come and see her, she tells us you do the bloody miserable moodiness,” said Aunty Number Three. “Even on her birthday you were sulking and bringing her down.”
“Sulking?” You weren’t asking whether you’d been on some sulk cos you knew for definite that it was true. Instead, you were asking whether they were seriously being serious that your sulking was even an issue. Your mum’s last birthday – her forty-eighth – had been widely billed as her last last birthday.
Once again, Aunty Number Fifty-Four read your mind and hit you with another truth bullet: “You don’t think we didn’t find it difficult also? Heh? Huh? Eh? But we all of us just put on the brave and happy face for her sake. You should have done the same – after all, it was her birthday, not your birthday. All the times she’s put on the brave face for your birthday.”
In the corner, your old headmaster started nodding and pouring himself a scotch. Poured one for one of the bearded Sikh men too.
“Here, look, why not I show you,” said Aunty Number Twenty-Seven as she pulled some brand-new iPhone on you. Started playing back the video she’d filmed during your mum’s last Last Birthday. “See?” she said. “See how you’re not even trying to smile.”
You started weighing up whether you’d be still crying on your mum’s birthday thirty years after she’d act
ually died. Or would the tears dry out after twenty years? Ain’t like there was some law that said you’d ever have to stop – like as if mourning could ever actually have an end date, even if it even had a proper start date.
Aunty Number Forty-Five was trying to watch the fone footage with you but kept having her small-screen squint-fits. No problemo – your cousin Ravi was at the ready with an adapter and cable to connect the iPhone to the 33-inch plasma TV. Dude probly even had boxes of popcorn in his bag. Nachos, even. (Though no hot dogs obviously cos the cinema ones are usually made of beef.) “See, Dhilan?” he said as he kicked off the special red-carpet screening. “See how while everyone else is trying to lift your dear mother’s spirits, you’re just sitting at the end of the table and sulking?” He grabbed Aunty Number Fifteen’s iPhone from your hand and started scrolling forward. “And here – look – you look like you’re at a funeral.” Before you could tell him that he ain’t never had to mourn someone every time they tried to smile, he scrolled forward again. “See? And see there? You see that? And even when she cut her cake – see what kind of atmosphere you’re creating.”
You backed off instead of punching your cousin in his always clean-shaven face. Because the worst thing about your mum’s birthday video weren’t the way you were sulking like some spoiled little emo-brat with semen-tinted teardrops. It was the sight of how scared of you she was. Like she was more afraid of your hi-def stubble than she was of her own prognosis. Like as if, in that one split second, you’d switched from curing her nightmares to causing them. Like she already knew back then the shitfest that was coming next.
You shoulda just hit the pause button. Cos you knew straight away that you were always gonna be paused there. Bang in the middle of that pre-bereavement bereavement mindfuckery. But, of course, all this digital footage meant you could still drill deeper and deeper into all the Bigfuckingdeal-Data. Not just pause, rewind and playback, but pinch-to-zoom, screenshot, crop, filter, auto-enhance, timestamp, geolocate, metadata, higher-def, 3D effect, combine the footage with other eyewitness footage, Google Image Search, remove red eye, make yourself an eternally eternal gif. Each time you moved closer to your mum and her birthday cake, her leaning the fuck further away. And each time the others forced her to lean in for another mother–son foto, she’d freak out – her left shoulder actually rising up against you on some sorta self-defence-type shit. You didn’t even take a slice of her birthday cake – the iPhone footage actually caught you telling her that your hands were too dirty to eat with cos you’d been holding the handrails on some fictitiously delayed Tube train. But no one else in the room seemed to notice the worst-worst thing about her last-last birthday: how after you told her that shit about not wanting a piece of her cake, your mum stopped eating her own slice. Spat it out into her napkin like a radioactive dollop of chemo vomit.
“And to top it all off, Dhilan, you turned up an hour late,” said Ravi. “Look, let me rewind and show you. All of us trying to make awkward small talk. Nobody wanting to be the one who asks where the hell you are and why your mobile was clearly switched to airplane mode.”
“Enough.” Your masi stood up outta nowhere and did some snatch-and-grab action with the iPhone. “Whose idiot idea was it to show this video? You want the poor boy to stick pins into his eyes or what?” And then turning to you: “Dhilan, I don’t want you to ever watch this video again. There are happier videos – many, many much, much happier videos. And I will make sure Ravi emails them to you. Because we’re not trying to make you feel the guilt, we’re just trying to make these days happy for her.”
Your mum and the Macmillan nurse entered the living-room-cum-bedroom just in time to see your masi hugging you – hugging you tighter than actual Huggies. Uncle Deepak’s attaboy arm around your shoulder. Her bath-towel-turban as if she had hair drying underneath it. Fronting like the whole committee hearing had just been some impro-freestyle coincid-fluke.
36
WORD IS RAMONA was laughing right before it happened. Word is you couldn’t really tell when the laughing stopped and the screaming started. I try walking like I don’t know where I’m going. There’s sobbing in the corridor and no fone signal. No energy drinks in the vending machines. There’s always sobbing in this corridor. Should be a word for getting lost on purpose.
Turn right after minor family dramas. Hang a left after full-on family throwdowns. Mama told me not to worry about her. Told me I could go and light up her whole life later – “But please this time, Dhilan, don’t forget the visiting hours end at eight.”
I’ve brought Ramona’s toothbrush and underwear just in case she needs them. Her six-inch stilettos to avoid confusion. Sorry it took me so long – a dog ate my travel pass. I was stopped by the police for crying in the street. I got here quicker than I could. Now another blood-soaked corridor – it’s like finding your way around disability claims forms. I walked in here through this sneaky shortcut back entrance and I’m making my way to the main entrance. Know my way around a tax return backwards too. Well, good for me, yeh. I told you this shit’s been good for me. That homesick smell of disinfectant – just gulp it down your nostrils. The lullaby sound of sirens. Snort it up your ears. All them times I hear alarm bells in my head and reckon it’s just a ringtone – that shit ain’t my fault. Or when I clock the beat of the countdown and reckon it’s just the beep of an alarm. Ain’t my dirty dumbfuck fault. Same shit goes for global warming and Islamist and alt-right terrorism. Same shit goes for all the good shit. Ain’t my fault if her sickness has been good for me.
When I step into the beeping, flickering A&E department, it’s like going back to school. The plastic chairs, the shouting, the whole fucking hospital thing. Ain’t no sign of Ramona but I clock her friend Naliah. Right before she stands up and slaps me. It’s fine, though – I’m like some cross-wired emergency services provider: always putting out fires in ambulance mode. I tell Naliah all that entry-level antshit about needing to stay calm. That I know this is all my fault – don’t matter that I weren’t even with Ramona when it happened. I tell her to shout at me, not the nurses. Fuck it, I even got stopped by the police for crying in the street. Then I tell her, yes, I’m an asshole. A dickhole, even – a dirty, infected dickhole. A peephole cigarette burn in a lump of fungified faeces. First time I ever lit a cigarette was in this exact same waiting area after they said it had spread to Mum’s lungs – that’s the kind of dipshit drama queen I can be.
You’re supposed to ask the doctors and nurses lots of questions. It demonstrably demonstrates just how much you care. I learnt this from watching my masi in action. I learnt this from watching flashbacks of my snot-nosed nine-year-old self. Best to avoid asking female nurses, though – no sense in making Mummy jealous. And it’s easier to do all that Q&A bullshit when there ain’t no doctors actually around – you just keep asking nurses to please call a doctor so that you can ask said doctor some questions. Trouble kicks in when all your bleeding-heart queries start running dry or scabbing up. That’s when you’ll ask anyone in a white coat anyshit just to show her that you’re doing something. Is it environmentally friendly to cremate prosthetic breasts? Do you reckon Spurs will win the Ashes?
Today, Naliah shoots down my questions with answers before I can even ask them. 1) Turns out Ramona hasn’t been crying – ain’t even shed a grain of salt. Screaming and grunting and convulsing, probly, but not crying. 2) Turns out she’s been taken away for tests and X-rays – i.e. my lame ass must’ve walked right past her. Whenever I’ve walked past Mum in the X-ray unit, all the lead-lined concrete in the world can’t block the vibes between us – doesn’t even block our fone signal. 3) Turns out she ain’t dying – either of injuries or embarrassment. The paramedics assured her it weren’t the weirdest accident they’d ever handled.
Naliah facepalms while she waits for my non-response. Truth is, neither of us is ready to talk details yet – the liquids, the tendons; the actual incident. Or whether Ramona did it by herself or if she was somehow twiste
d by yours truly.
We start trying to out-care each other. Ask the doctors even more pressing questions, express even deeper concerns, decline offers of tea and coffee even more strongly. But that shit has a safety switch – you can’t escalate all the way and offer to do the actual surgery. So eventually Naliah clicks back to the other Ramona-related topic – specifically the sub-thread about my “swollen-asshole behaviour”. All that torment and torture that, until today, she’d assumed was just emotional. Even asks me if my dad knows how much of a wank-flannel I’ve been, like as if I’d actually fess up my sins to my father.
I tell her my dad ain’t to blame for this shit. Fuck it, my mum ain’t even to blame for this. I could try blaming my fone, of course. All them social networks and search engines that reinforce our perversions/persuasions/general-fucked-upness.
But once again I don’t. Cos I did this. Me.
It was through the mortuary. Only reason I knew that short-cut back entrance I took here is cos you gotta walk through the hospital mortuary. The mortuary corridor is where I used to fone Ramona from whenever Mum was an inpatient up on the eighth floor. Proper dead silence down there – could pretend I was just foning from home.
“Hey Dillon, what’s up? How come you took so long to phone me back?”
“Nothing’s up. Just chillin in my crib, innit.”
In order to properly lie about where you’re foning from, it ain’t enough to just find a silent spot, though. You also need a spot that gives maximum forward visibility of any incoming noise. The mortuary corridor is divided by these big-ass fire doors spaced every ten or so metres apart. Each set of fire doors has those little glass portholes so you can scope all the way down to the top of corridor in case some trolley-pushing hospital porter is headed in your direction. Then you could micromanage the fone convo – steer Ramona into some kinda rant or monologue just as the porter approached and then just hit the mute button. As for the porter with the corpse or whatever, I’d just pretend I was grieving until they passed.
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