One Hundred Shades of White

by Preethi Nair

  ‘Well, let them eat it,’ I shouted back at her.

  ‘I’ll just sit here until you finish,’ she said adamantly. Hours went by and she was still there.

  ‘I hate you!’ I screamed at her.

  ‘Well, I suppose someone’s got to,’ she laughed.

  ‘And I hate your doll. She’s horrible and I call her Creepy,’ I added.

  Hours went by and it was nearly dinner time and I conceded. But Maggie never made you feel like you had lost. She got up, left the table and said, ‘You want to come and watch some television with me?’

  I sat there on her bed, watching her sleep. Most of her had already gone and the part that was clinging to life was a mere flicker of the person she once was. ‘It’s not important how you die, it’s who you touch,’ the astrologer had said. Without her, I could not even begin to think what would have happened to us. Squeezing her hand, I could not control my breathing and began to sob. ‘Don’t go, Maggie, please don’t go, I haven’t told you how sorry I am for what I did, for leaving you the way I did. For judging you and not giving you a chance. It wasn’t you, there was so much going on at the time. You can’t leave without knowing how much I love you, you can’t, Maggie, you have to know how sorry I am and that I love you.’

  A tiny squeeze came back and then I heard the doorbell, and Joyce’s footsteps running downstairs. ‘She is upstairs,’ Joyce replied. My heart beat faster, was she here? Had she come to meet me? Was it her? My hands became sweaty and tears streamed down my face.

  NALINI

  Soothing coconut milk poured into the potato and onion stew as it boiled doubts away. It was the only thing Maya really liked to eat. Served on a bed of pancakes made with pulses, throbbing black gram and angry red split lentils. Hardened seed surrounded by layers to survive external conditions, taking hours, like the years of absence, to soak and soften into a gentle centre, all that I knew she was. Grinding resentment in a blender, surrendering the liquid into a harmless batter, poured into a solid cast iron pan. Finally coated with ghee, soft and golden, which melts into kindness. My daughter was coming home. Sprinkling just a little turmeric, so she would hardly notice it was there, I placed the mixture in the fridge and went upstairs to change.

  Wounds are sealed with turmeric and from the thousands of fronds from the crocus flower, which make saffron. Bright yellow and reddy-orange like the warmth of the sun, sent to heal any place of hurt or injustice. It is a funny thing but we are unable to administer our own medicine, healing others to cure our own insatiable grief. I often wondered why my mother did this, but now I know. I fed the mourners chicken with a marinade of turmeric and saffron as they came to offer their condolences after Satchin’s funeral. When they had gone, I came down in the middle of the night, took a pair of scissors, and cut the heads of every single flower they had left as a mark of their respect, black night absorbing the colours that nobody could see. The morning sun shone in the lounge and brightened the stains, which covered the sadness on the carpets and the walls with sporadic yellows and reds, like a child’s finger-painting.

  Nobody explained this kind of pain to me, not even my mother; the split second when you see big, dirty trainers lying in the hallway and you smile with relief, thinking it was all a cruel joke. Then you remember, and your heart breaks. You breathe in his scent as you enter his tidy room but there is no loud, irritating music and your heart breaks again. An extra plate that is unwittingly set, a phone call from someone who is unaware that he is gone and the heart splits open. Grief is all engulfing.

  Nothing pulls you out of it, not even seeing another suffer in the same way; the sobs that I heard from the other side of the wall were Maya’s, who stored her tears for night time. We grieve alone. Months went by and it didn’t get easier. Getting out of bed and facing reality was like a punishment. I wondered whether telling someone about the lies would ease the pain, make it all go away. Because, maybe, the loss feels so great that losing everything would feel exactly the same and it wouldn’t really matter anyway.

  ‘Ravi, I have something to tell you,’ I cried, as he came to console me.

  ‘No, Nalu, I know,’ he responded calmly.

  ‘No, you don’t know, you don’t understand. Maybe Satchin was taken because I lied.’

  There was a pause and to silence my fit of distress, he assured me that he knew, that it was not important. What was important was that he was there for me and would always be.

  Three years passed before that conversation was resumed. Punctuated with delusion and question marks. By then, the very things I worked to protect had gone. My greatest fear was losing Satchin and Maya, most of my actions were determined by this, ever since they were babies. I was meant to look after and protect them as I had promised, but then I lost them both, in ways I had never imagined possible. Maya left for Spain and I sensed it would be a while before she returned, if she ever did.

  Grief brings you to a place where you realise that nothing really belongs to you, it is all borrowed and what you are faced with is the cold, blank reality that truth stays, it is the only thing that accompanies you, standing all tests of time. My mother was right when she said it just came in just two shades; black or white, ingrained in the soil with the hands with which it is planted. Truth grows constant, bearing its fruit, following your every move. Ravi needed to be told.

  ‘Nalu, whatever it is, I know and it doesn’t matter.’

  We were sitting at the kitchen table, he was trying to clear some plates but I made him sit down and listen. I told him that I wasn’t the woman he thought I was, I was already married, my husband had left us but in my heart, he was dead. Dead because that was what he deserved but he came back again and I paid him to leave so he would never make contact with the children. I lied to them. Satchin would never know but there was Maya, she needed to be told. Ravi did not flinch.

  Raul had informed Ravi’s brother that I was his wife the very night they came for dinner and Anil notified his mother who hurried downstairs the very next morning to enlighten her son. Ravi told her that he was aware and asked her to leave. All that he was certain of was that he loved me, and knowing me like he did, he said I must have had my reasons and when the time was right, they would emerge. After Satchin died, the reasons became irrelevant.

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

  ‘We all make many mistakes but the intention is all that matters, Nalu.’ he said.

  ‘And when I sold the shop?’ I cried.

  ‘You did what you thought was best at the time. It is past, Nalu. What’s important is what we have now and you have suffered enough.’

  ‘You should have said something; why didn’t you?’

  Ravi put his arms around me and I decided to face what I had neglected for so long.

  Maya, Maya needed to know. I wanted to call her back from Spain, sit down with her face to face and explain, and then if she wanted to find him, that was her decision. We had barely spoken in the last few years, each consumed with our own grief, and as time went by, she seemed to get further away from us, building her own life in another place. She seemed very happy. Many times I asked her to come home. ‘Soon,’ she kept saying, but she didn’t return. Then one day as I was in the garden planting some coriander seeds, I decided it was time to let her go. Never once did I stop loving her and it was then that I understood what my mother did for me and what she meant by letting go. I went back into the kitchen.

  Volcanic dried red chillies and mustard seeds bubble in boiling hot oil and burst, releasing their insides. The pungent smell fills the room with a black choking smoke, clinging to all that surrounds it, years of stagnation, guilt and sorrow that I had not been a good daughter, wife or mother, failing miserably in every role. I opened the kitchen door and windows, and the suffocating fog is enticed away. Courage revisits and blows a gentle, hopeful breeze telling me there is now space so I am able to start again, building brick by brick on new foundations. It happens when you are ready and not a day before.
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  Taking a loan from the bank, I leased a new shop, not as big as the previous one, but a little shop which would give big things. I painted the walls myself in a deep red. The carpenters came to fit the kitchen, make the counters and to lay the wooden flooring. Ravi had bought me a brass fan, imported from India, and that was the last thing to be fitted. Maggie said she didn’t want to come and join me. After Raul had left with the money raised by selling the first shop, we were consumed with our respective fears; I was afraid that he would come back and she thought there would come a time when Jack would find out about her past and also leave her. So we didn’t really work or concentrate but wallowed. Three days a week at home, we pickled bottles of fear that came back to us returned until there was no business left. When Satchin died, it came to a definitive end and then Jack became ill and so Maggie absorbed herself by taking care of him. She would never return.

  Ana, my old cleaning lady, and Anita came to help me. Everything in the shop would have the fundamental ingredients of dried red chillies and black mustard seeds. The wind chimes rang and the priest walked in the morning before we opened. The old man smiled, his teeth had fallen out but he looked at me, beaming. Not saying a word, he smashed a saffron-stained coconut, took out his tin and left a blessing which he decorated on my forehead. The shop was adorned with fresh fruit and flowers, and little Annapurna was given her place, surrounded by scented incense. We were ready to open.

  People somehow manage to find what they need. Most of our customers brought their doubts, regrets, guilt and worries to the shop. As they sighed, the room filled with all that was bothering them; a broken marriage; the death of a loved one; a lie so big it was unable to be contained; an unresolved argument. It all stuck to the walls and counters. Out in the back, I would explode the chillies and mustard seeds in boiling sesame oil. The thick fog would leave no hostages, wafting into every corner of the shop, attaching itself to the walls and suffocating all the sadness that was already there. Customers would wheeze an irritable cough and their chests became heavy. The windows and doors were opened and the fan extractor would suck everything away: bitterness; regret, animosity, all swallowed up. A gentle breeze would circulate with the rotating motion of the brass fan, calming, soothing. The mixture of fried condiments were added to whatever felt appropriate on that day; sometimes it would be in the marinade for dry savouries and other days it went into the pickles. People came in and they went out lighter, letting go of what they needed to.

  Ammu came into the shop on Saturdays, not because I asked her to but because she loved being there. She would spend hours propping herself up against the counter talking to the customers, or in the kitchen with me. The packages and bottles were filled with her whistling or singing. At ten, she was a little version of Ravi, putting other people before herself. Ammu was constant. When Satchin and Maya both left, it really upset her and when she saw me lost somewhere in my grief, she would sit with me as if to reassure me that she wasn’t going anywhere.

  Watching her learn and ask me questions about the spices brings me full circle.

  ‘Why does cinnamon take away bitterness, Amma? Will this combination take sadness away?’ ‘Why do you have to serve it in that order?’ The questions I asked my own mother, who sat and explained as she let me practise. Sitting on the floor beside her, with the fresh spices that we had collected in our baskets, my mother and I crushed the spices with a heavy stone so they would lose their coarseness and left them out in the sun in preparation for the vegetable man, who came every week.

  Normally, nobody would let him in but my mother always invited him for tea and savouries. Lifting the basket of vegetables off his head, he would leave them on the floor with his worries, enraptured with spreading the village gossip a little further whilst devouring all that my mother placed before him. Then just before leaving, he would pick out all the rotten brinjals, aubergines and drumsticks that were strategically placed on the top and delve to find the freshest produce and hand it over to my mother. He would pinch my cheeks with his soiled hands, say ‘Aye chanthakari’ (beautiful girl) and leave.

  I worked four days a week at the shop and would be back home by four o’ clock, giving me ample time to prepare a good meal so that the three of us could sit and eat together. Leaving space for Ravi also healed the marriage. It wasn’t broken, I just hadn’t participated in the years following Satchin’s death – and probably even before then. Meeting Raul again had set me back in time with the need of constant reassurance that Ravi would not leave me or the children. Desperation does strange things. The space between us was occupied once again by new plans, conversation, understanding and love and that is how life became for the three of us and for the first time, I was not afraid.

  The shop was always busy but not so that people could not move. Only occasionally did I go out in the front to serve, when I sensed that Ana could not take time to speak to the customers individually. One Thursday afternoon, Ana had to leave early so I was serving. The shop was empty when the chimes went and a handsome, young man with black ruffled hair, dressed in a white T-shirt and blue denim jeans walked in. I looked down and then I looked up again, it was Suri. Startled, he stopped abruptly in the middle of the shop beneath the brass fan and stared at me.

  ‘Auntie,’ he managed to whisper.

  I didn’t know what to do so I came from behind the counter to where he was standing and I held out my arms. He took hold of me and began crying like a little boy. I stroked his hair, like I had done with my own son; when Satchin had fallen from the scooter; when he failed his exams and felt he had let us down. Tears trickled to the floor.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Auntie,’ was all he kept saying. It was as if it was yesterday but six years had passed since that terrible day. It looked as if he carried those years with him. Sadness poured out of him as if he had never been allowed to display it. ‘So many times, I wanted to come and see you and tell you that I am so sorry,’ he sobbed.

  ‘It was an accident, Monu,’ I cried, as I squeezed him tightly. ‘It was an accident.’

  Softly, I spoke to him until he calmed down. I walked over to the door, put the ‘Closed’ sign up, went to the kitchen, made some tea and put some savouries on a plate. I told Anita she could go home if she wanted. Suri took a stool and sat behind the counter facing me, his eyes bloodshot and heavy.

  ‘It has got better, Monu,’ I whispered, as he coughed and caught his breath.

  ‘How are you, Auntie? Are you okay?’

  ‘Everything is fine now. Eat, Monu, and drink your tea.’

  ‘And uncle and Ammu and …?’

  Maya, I wanted to finish. His Maya.

  Maya who he liked from the moment he came to work in the shop. She was twelve, always dressed in clothes she had made herself, except on the days the boys came and then she wore tracksuits so they wouldn’t laugh at her. But Suri was never laughing at her. Maya did not even notice the way he adjusted his hair before seeing her, how he went out of his way to help her or asked Satchin to invite her along to whatever they were doing. Satchin refused, so he would sneak away a few moments to go and speak to her on his own, inventing silly excuses. Maya, not understanding, would be frustrated with his lack of common sense. ‘How many times do I have to tell you, Suri? The boxes are kept in the cupboard in the storeroom,’ she would shout.

  Suri spent many evenings at our home, having dinner with us and then suddenly this stopped. I asked Satchin if they had fought but he said no. Then the days when he did come, he could barely look at Maya. Something changed between them. It was Suri who began to change her, softening the jagged edges, he opened a soft centre and she showed she cared. One day, Ravi and I were driving back from the supermarket and we saw them together, holding hands as they walked slowly to the top of the road, then he left her there. A few days after that, Ravi spoke to Suri and said wouldn’t it be better if he took her to the front door and then he could come in. He smiled with that warm, embarrassed smile that could only belong to Suri.
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  He was too injured to come to the funeral but he sent us some white lilies which the florist mixed up so a neighbour brought them later that evening, after all the guests had left. That was what triggered the decapitation of the rest of the flowers. Not that I ever wanted it to have been him that was killed, nor did I hate him. I’m still not quite sure what it was, maybe anger or desperation. Maya could not deal with it, she couldn’t deal with any of it and also cut Suri off like she did the rest of us, Maggie included, retreating to her room and her books, and just as I was getting myself together, she went.

  ‘Maya is fine,’ I filled in.

  His face brightened. ‘What is she doing?’ he asked avidly.

  ‘She has a job with a fashion designer.’

  Suri managed to laugh as if to say he might have guessed.

  ‘Is she here in London?’ His voice strengthened with excitement.

  ‘She’s in Spain, Maya has been there for the last four years.’

  ‘Spain,’ he repeated. ‘Is she … is she married?’

  I didn’t really want to mention that she was engaged. Engaged to a man that we had never met or knew very little about. ‘Tell me, Maya, what is he like? Send me pictures,’ I asked eagerly when we spoke. She said they would come to London to see us to discuss wedding plans, but they never did. ‘Go and talk to her,’ I wanted to say to Suri. ‘Call her.’

  ‘She’s engaged,’ I mumbled, not wanting him to hear the sentence.

  Suri looked disappointed. For a few minutes, it felt like he was back there with her, walking her home. Then he changed the subject, telling me that he was on his way to see his parents. His mother had called to ask him to stop by and get some savouries for some visitors that were coming around. He didn’t know where to begin but as he drove by, he caught sight of the shop.