One Hundred Shades of White

by Preethi Nair

  ‘She was very homesick. We had an argument before I left, Mol. She thought we were all going back and I told her it would be another two years,’ he said. ‘I said some things that maybe I shouldn’t have. I was hard. Too hard. Maybe she thought things would be better without me.’

  Better! We had to live in a cold bedsit with rats. Satchin and I looked after each other, he cooked by reheating the food Amma had left us and when I complained, he opened tinned soups. We wore things from the jumble sales that the other children laughed at and we walked on streets where empty petrol cans rusted beside the houses that had been gutted, torched by people’s hatred of all things foreign. I had to watch my friend Fatima come to school with various bruises because her father could not cope and there was absolutely nothing I could do because we were told not to trust anyone, to say anything. This was better?

  ‘No,’ I cried, ‘We stayed here and she said you were dead.’

  ‘Don’t blame your mother, it wasn’t her fault, Mol.’

  Don’t blame her? What kind of woman would do that to her children and then marry someone else when she was already married?

  ‘Why didn’t you fight for us when you found us? Why didn’t you see us?’

  ‘She didn’t let me and you seemed so settled and happy, so much time had gone by, and I thought it was for the best. The best for you and Satchin, and you had a little sister.’

  ‘When? When did you come?’

  He told me how he had met Ravi Thakker through his friend and colleague, Anil, who was Ravi’s brother. Then he had seen Amma. ‘Does Ravi know?’ I asked.

  He shook his head.

  ‘Anil told me last week about Satchin and I had to come and see you, Maya, I couldn’t stay away. Even if I saw you for a moment it would be enough. I couldn’t go on without seeing you, just once. Was he happy?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I cried. ‘Satchin was always happy.’ I talked to him about Satchin, the way he laughed and fought with me, how he took care of our little sister, the way he was good at everything he did and how my father would have been so proud of him.

  My father told me things about when Satchin was little. ‘He used to wait for me to come home so he could ride with me on the scooter. Then, as he became older, he grew to hate the sight of a suitcase. The only times he ever cried was when he saw that case being brought down because he knew I was going away.’

  He searched for something more to say, but he couldn’t. How could he when she had robbed him of that, robbed him of everything? I filled in the missing years and for those few hours we brought him back, he was sitting there on the bench with us.

  I wanted to leave the house and go back with him to Chicago but he asked me to wait, saying that I could always come in the future. My place was here at the moment, to look after my mother. How could he forgive her like that? Be so compassionate and still put her first?

  ‘Don’t tell her that you’ve seen me, Mol, promise me. You can come later and stay, when you are a little older, but promise me you won’t tell her now, she won’t manage with it all.’

  We sat for another hour or so, talking, then he said he had to go. I screamed, begged him to stay, to stay with me, but he had to catch a flight that evening. He promised that he would come back soon and see me for longer and, in the meantime, he would stay in touch. If any time I needed to, I could go to Chicago and be with him. He kissed me and left me there on the park bench. ‘Don’t go, Achan, don’t leave me alone, not now,’ I cried as he walked off. He didn’t hear me.

  I sat there for another hour or so and then it was dark. The tears were replaced by a seething anger; how could she have put us through all that? What kind of a heartless person did that? Did Maggie know what kind of a woman she was? What about Ravi Thakker in all of this? She wasn’t even really his wife – and my little sister? What would happen to my little sister? It made sense now; Tom disappeared shortly after she met Ravi Thakker, just cut himself off from us, he probably did that because she had left him too, left him for another man. That’s what she did, that’s what she knew best. I wanted to tell Amma I knew it all; forget what Achan said about her, she didn’t deserve compassion. She was a selfish woman who thought of no one but herself. I ran home, opened the front door, dropped my bag in the hall, and ran up the stairs, storming into her room. I found her lying on her bed pathetically, my little sister sitting on a pillow beside her, stroking her face. She looked up at me with red-rimmed eyes and I wanted to shake her and tell her that she deserved everything she got, everything, she deserved to suffer, no one in the world deserved to suffer more, but all I could manage was, ‘How are you feeling now, Ma?’

  Maggie would have answers, Maggie always found answers. She would be straight with me, she always told me things how they were. I ran over to her house, knocked frantically on her door. ‘Maggie, open the door, open the door. Are you in?’

  ‘What is it, Maya, darling? What is it? Is it your mother?’ she asked as she opened it.

  I shook my head

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  I couldn’t speak.

  ‘You’re freezing, you’re in shock, darling, come upstairs, the fire is on and it will warm you up.’ She led me upstairs.

  ‘Sit down, sweetheart, I’ll just go down and make you a cup of tea, whatever it is, we can sort it out.’

  She turned her back before I could say no, I don’t need tea now, I need answers. I sat there shaking, waiting for her to come back.

  ‘Have a sip of that now, Maya. Take a deep breath and tell me.’

  ‘I’ve had enough of lies, Maggie, there are things I need to know. I need the truth,’ I sobbed.

  ‘What about?’ she said, sounding a little jarred.

  ‘About Tom, Tom and …’ I began, meaning if there had ever been anything between Tom and Amma? I wanted to ask if my mother left my father to go off with Tom.

  But she didn’t allow me to continue, ‘I knew this would happen and you’re old enough to hear the truth …’ She interrupted me, not giving me a chance to finish my question. She began telling me the story of Tom, almost as if Satchin’s death provoked an overwhelming need to unburden herself to me. She told me things that I really did not need to know or want to hear about her. Truth is like that, sometimes so ugly. ‘So I had no option, darling, I had to work on the streets …’

  ‘Stop!’ I wanted to shout, that’s not what I need to know.

  ‘No, no,’ I shouted.

  ‘Darling, I want you to know the truth about me, I want you to hear it all and not bits of information that you’ve picked up from somewhere.’

  She continued and, somewhere in that exchange, our relationship changed. I no longer saw Maggie as she was; the person who could fix things, reassure me or make things better, she wasn’t the woman who replaced my own mother. She was a woman with the same failings. After she finished, she wiped her tears and asked me if that answered it, if that had put an end to the gossip I had heard. Was there anything else I needed to know? Any questions that needed answering?

  ‘Nothing,’ I replied.

  Even when we had nothing, we had each other. I had Maggie to set my boundaries for me, to tell me how things were, yet she too had been dishonest. Never had I felt so lost, alone and confused as I did then. Now there was real emptiness, the people I cared about were not who they pretended to be. Satchin was gone and could not even verify if the memories I had were real. Then there was Suri, Suri who was my everything. He had turned into nothing along with the rest of them. Love was an illusion, nothing was real any more. As I arrived back home, I sat at my desk and wrote a letter. I vented my rage on the wrong person because there was no one else to punish and I wrote some awful things to Suri and ended by asking him never to contact me and to respect my family’s wishes by staying away.

  I posted the letter almost immediately so there wouldn’t be an opportunity to hesitate, to take it all back and think things through with the sobriety of time. I also decided not to say anything to Rav
i or Amma; it wasn’t right to do that to my little sister, she didn’t deserve any of it, neither did Ravi. There was only a year left before I could go to university, so I made it my resolve to bury myself in books and get my exams so I could get as far away from them all as I possibly could.

  ‘Are you all right, Miss?’ the air steward asked as he put the food tray down beside me.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, wiping my tears. ‘Nothing for me, thank you.’

  ‘Are you sure, perhaps I can get you something to drink?’

  ‘No, I’m fine.’

  Conversations between myself, Ravi and Amma became monosyllabic and my little sister kept me going in the days I wanted to give up and take a flight to be with my father. He wrote as he promised, not as often as he said he would, but news arrived at Amy Willis’s house and she forwarded me the letters as we had agreed. Sometimes I called reverse charges but it was always at an inconvenient time. He was a busy man.

  A year later, when I made it to Edinburgh, Ravi and Amma were thrilled. Thrilled is probably not the right word in a house that was suffused by grief but they couldn’t have been any happier than I was. Finally to be away from them, to have my own space and room to think. I absolutely hated it there but I have now come to realise that if you are not happy in one place, it doesn’t matter how many millions of miles away you are, happiness isn’t suddenly going to come and find you. Edinburgh was no better than London. The letters from my father became more infrequent, the emptiness even bigger, and I hated the course. Student life was just one endless round of drinking and small talk. Many times I thought of calling Suri, just to talk openly to someone and to have him listen without judgement. I always got as far as dialling the first five digits and then I would hang up.

  In the first two years at Edinburgh, I went home three times, saying that I was overloaded with work and for the first long summer, I got restaurant work and stayed there in town. For Christmas, I went home only because I knew how much my little sister loved it. For those three weeks, she would not leave me alone, hanging on my every word and following me about wherever I went. When I took her to school, she would shout in her loudest voice, ‘Bye, Mayo,’ and then look proudly at me as she ran off to play with her friends. All as I had done. I hardly spent any time with Maggie, making excuses that I had too much work to do. I didn’t cut her off because I stopped loving her, I cut her off because at that time, everyone seemed to belong in the same circle of deceit, none of them could be trusted; they had all hurt me.

  Amma and Ravi became mere shadows of their former selves. Amma’s long hair, now cut short, was greying. Ravi began working from home so he could help her look after my sister on the days that the lethargy was too much. She and Maggie had shut down the business and Jack was ill so Maggie spent all her time taking care of him. It was sad to see and the only laughter that came into that house was brought by the innocence of my sister, she kept them both going. I couldn’t take that away.

  I visited them briefly on my way back from the Spanish course. ‘There’s a change in you, Maya. Have you met someone special?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  As I was packing, getting ready to go back to Scotland, I came across some letters hidden at the back of my wardrobe. A few of them were from my father, hastily scribbled, telling me all was well, along with cheques that I hadn’t cashed, and behind them were a bundle of unopened letters. They were from Suri. Opening them up slowly, I hesitated before reading them; they smelt of him. All began by saying how much he loved me and if he could, he would turn back the clock so he was sitting where Satchin sat. ‘Sorry’ punctuated every sentence. Sorrow and regret filled the page. Every letter ended: ‘No matter where you are, Maya, or how much time has passed, I will always, always love you. I hope one day you find space in your heart to forgive me. Suri.’

  It had been three years and not a day went by when I didn’t think of my brother. Why couldn’t his life towards the end have been happier? Why didn’t I spend more time with him? Why didn’t he get to meet our father? Why did Amma do this to us? So many times I came close to asking her for the truth and all those times, I thought of the effect that it would have on my little sister and on Ravi Thakker. He was essentially a good, decent man, so I kept it inside where it was eating away at me. Suri was the only one who could have helped.

  Forgiveness. It was I who needed to be forgiven. That evening, I took the car and drove to his house. I wanted to get out and knock on his door but as I sat there thinking about it, an hour and a half went by. None of it was Suri’s fault, my anger was not with him, it had never been with him. I was about to step out of the car when I caught a glimpse of him in my rear view mirror. His arms were around the waist of an Indian girl who was smiling as he went to kiss her. He had obviously moved on and was happy. I started the ignition and drove off.

  If you were to ask me when exactly I fell in love with Marcos Gonzalez del Hoyo, I would say it was at that point. I desperately needed someone to hold me and tell me that everything would be fine, that they would be there for me. When Marcos came to visit me in Scotland, I made myself fall deeply for him. He became a way of distracting myself from everything that really hurt, he was safe, I knew where I stood with him. I decided to put the past behind me and start all over again. Spain seemed as good a place as any.

  Teachers came and went in quick succession at the school in Madrid. Whether we liked to admit it or not, all of us were running away from different things and hoping to find something better. Just as soon as we got a scent of whatever it was we were looking for, it eluded us and we would distract ourselves, pretending it didn’t really matter anyway. Most days after work we went from bar to bar eating tapas and drinking cañas and then we forgot about what it was that we were really searching for. It was like socialising with one big family, who all came from the same place, who understood each other. Without having the need to talk seriously about things, we spent our time messing around.

  It was with the double act, John and Michael, that this childish behaviour first started. They were two other teachers who began working at the school around the same time as me and who devised this ridiculous game based on a system of points. It was ten points for touching a bald waiter’s head, twenty for stealing a stranger’s tapas, thirty for drinking someone else’s beer and fifty was too outrageous to mention. At the end of the evening, all the points were totalled and the person with the least would have to pay for dinner. I always lost but often I didn’t make dinner, as I would suddenly remember Marcos’s call and run off.

  ‘He’s no good for you, Maya, it’s been two years and we still haven’t seen him; dump him’ Michael would say.

  But what did Michael know about anything? Did he understand Marcos as I did? I knew Marcos could be difficult at times: he was set in his ways and possessive but I knew all this, I knew all his faults, that is precisely why I felt safe with him. There was no room for ugly surprises. What did Michael know about anything?

  ‘You shouldn’t judge people, Michael, especially if you’ve never met them.’

  ‘That’s precisely what I mean. Don’t you think it’s a bit strange that none of us have seen him. Can’t he be asked to come up for a weekend?’

  ‘He doesn’t come because the only time I can get away from you is at the weekends.’

  ‘Well, you know, if you ever dump him, Maya, I’ll marry you,’ Michael joked.

  After a couple of years of teaching English, one of my students, Enrique Sanchez, offered me a job. He was an eccentric fashion designer who owned an exclusive boutique on Calle Serrano, an affluent part of the city. Enrique had joined my conversation class because he had begun to export his collections abroad and wanted to improve his English. The job offer came as a complete surprise because on the occasions I wore my own creations, he laughed at them. Enrique wasn’t an intimidating man, just extroverted, waving elaborately when he spoke: ‘Maya, cariño, those sleeves are hideous and that tuck there, what is tha
t doing for you? No movement, fabric is supposed to flow with you, not walk ten paces behind.’

  Once he invited me along to see his autumn/winter collection and there was a certain familiarity with cuffs on sleeves, the cut of a neckline and the ‘flow’ of fabric. I didn’t say anything. It was around that time that I decided to give teaching a break and took a few weeks off to consider other options. One day, he called me up at home and asked me to go for a coffee with him.

  We were sitting outside in the Plaza Mayor, the sun wasn’t particularly bright but he had these really black narrow sunglasses on and was commentating on the women as they walked by. ‘You see Maya, cariño, too co-ordinated; nothing original there. Have you thought about whether you are coming back to teach us?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know, Enrique. I’ve been doing this for two and a half years now, it’s time for a change,’ I replied.

  ‘Good, how would you like to come and work with me?’

  ‘Yes!’ I wanted to shout, but I hesitated and then told him I would think about it.

  ‘What is there to think about, cariño? I’ll offer you a good salary, plenty of opportunity to travel and you can learn, learn the business,’ he said, waving his arms.

  ‘How good is a good salary?’

  ‘You’re on what, maybe 150,000 pesetas now? I’ll double that,’ he said exuberantly.

  ‘Okay, Enrique, I’ll try it out and we’ll see how it goes.’ I was absolutely elated.

  Marcos, too, was happy for me. Both of us had settled down into a routine and our relationship was becoming effortless, maybe because I conceded a little more. The BMW was still parked right outside my heart but I knew it would only be a matter of time before he got out of it and would meet me at least halfway. We spent all our weekends together, well, Saturdays, anyway, because Sunday mornings he would spend in the gym and then after lunch he would catch up with his paperwork. I continued going up to his place because he hated the city. He had bought a flat in Palmadoro, in a prime location in the square, and I rented a small duplex in Madrid now that Jen had gone back. She promised that she would write and call as soon as she’d gone back to the States, but I never got to know what happened between her and Steve. The numbers she had given me didn’t work and my subsequent letters went unanswered. Spain and the people in it no longer existed for her, she had found whatever it was she came looking for and no longer needed us. That’s what happened to some of the people that came to Spain, they returned to their realities and erased everything else, perhaps this was easier.