by Avni Doshi
I stare at the moon a moment longer. When Dilip is home, I will ask him to look at the moon with me.
My mother yawns. ‘Did it start today?’
I need to think for a moment. ‘Yes. This morning.’
Ma nods. She leans back against the cushion. ‘With the moon, as always. Kali Mata, you always smell like pineapple.’
The moon has migrated across the sky, now hidden behind some buildings in the distance. I begin another drawing of its surface, this time from memory.
‘What is this?’
I look up. Nani is holding a crumpled piece of paper in her claw.
‘I was leaving notes for Ma around the house. So she can find them and read them. Maybe it will help her memory.’
Nani smiles. ‘You’re a good girl. Read it to me.’
I hesitate and press the scrap against my palm. In a few weeks, it has begun to look like ancient parchment.
‘The time you added chilli to Antara’s khichdi,’ I read.
Nani laughs, and coughs when I finish reading. ‘When was that?’
‘She wanted me to learn to eat spicy food, I guess. She wouldn’t stop, even though I developed a bad case of the hiccups.’
Nani shakes her head. ‘Your mother didn’t add the chilli to your khichdi. I added ginger to it because you had a very bad cold.’
‘That’s not true,’ I say.
I was sure I remembered it, the taste of pain in my mouth.
‘I’m telling you,’ she said. ‘Have you asked her? She will tell you.’
I had read that one to Ma and she had looked at me vacantly before I stuffed it into the sofa for her to find again.
‘Even if I ask her,’ I say to Nani, ‘she doesn’t remember.’
‘Maybe she doesn’t remember because it never happened.’
I feel the backs of my legs stiffen. Has she been speaking to Dilip? Has Ma convinced her that I’m lying?
The paper is carried out of my hand, but when I look around, all the windows I see are closed. Above my head, the fan moves with a soft swoosh as it completes its rotation, returning to the part of its hidden mechanism that sends it forth again. I bend to retrieve the paper but it floats away from me like a flattened ghost. Nani begins laughing and her voice is raspy, as though the mirth and the cough have become one and there is no boundary between her amusement and discomfort. We watch the paper vanish under the sofa.
From my pocket, I produce a key and hand it to my grandmother.
‘What is this?’
‘To open Ma’s bank locker.’
Nani puts on her reading glasses and examines the keychain. It is a faded and muddy orange Garfield the cat. She looks up at me and arches an eyebrow.
‘Just in case,’ I say. ‘We have to be prepared.’
A new doctor smiles when we enter the examination room. The one from last time is on holiday.
Ma shifts in her gown. She tells the doctor it smells distinctly of another woman’s sweat. On the doctor’s desk are his instruments, standing in a steel cup. A slick tongue-depressor, a curved pair of pincers. I don’t have words for the others. In his hands, they look sharp, unkind. The room feels unclean. My eyes move from Ma to the ceiling, the white light, the air conditioner.
‘Have there been any other episodes?’ he asks.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘She’s been having nightmares. The maid says when she enters the house in the morning, she finds Ma sitting in a corner, frightened.’
The doctor’s expression does not change. He makes a series of notes on a page in Ma’s file. His handwriting is typically illegible. ‘I feel,’ I begin, ‘that everything is moving very quickly. Her symptoms are worsening.’
‘Everything seems to be as good as can be expected,’ he says. The hair on his face grows in patches of black and white. His two front teeth taper up, and he whistles when he speaks.
‘She’s been taking the medicine,’ I say.
‘I’ve seen cases, especially when it is early onset, where the degeneration occurs at a faster rate.’
‘Is that what’s happening here?’
‘We can’t be certain.’
‘Then what are you saying?’
‘Actually, the studies on this are rather inconclusive.’
I open a notebook and begin to read off a list. ‘I have been showing her pictures, old videos. We’ve been watching her favourite films. I have been taking her for walks and drives in places where she used to spend time. We’ve been cooking, especially from recipes she hasn’t made in a while.’
I lay a folder on his table, and begin to remove printed sheets of paper where I have highlighted sections in combinations of yellow, green and orange. The effect is citrus and difficult to look at for too long. He clears his throat and pushes his glasses back. ‘I have a suspicion that my mother is leaking,’ I say, pointing to a passage that lays out this thesis.
‘Leaking,’ he repeats.
‘Yes, all over and from everywhere.’
Moving aside an article from a science journal I had annotated, I open a pamphlet I have made by hand and reveal my magnum opus. A flow chart of my mother’s bodily functions, and a history of her life, starting from birth, where I note that my grandmother did not have a C-section and, therefore, properly inoculated Ma with microbes in the vaginal canal. From there, the events of my mother’s childhood spool downwards: lists of possible vaccinations and penicillin use.
The next page focuses on the damage done to her mitochondria, the ageless centres of her cells, which were inherited from her mother and continue to live in me. The word ‘mitochondria’ labels the centre of a giant spider, whose legs tangle and cascade into a web of faltering Krebs cycles. The web is shortened telomeres down-regulating the production of enzymes, the turnover rate of mitochondria declining. Along its edge hang little cages overflowing with reactive oxygen species, their production increasing exponentially, perilously, as the lipid bilayer, the membrane which holds the whole architecture in place, begins to crack and collapse.
On the other side of the paper, my mother’s intestine is a curving corridor, porous and full of holes, compromised from years of senseless eating and medication. Dead soldiers are piled up, their pyres already waiting.
‘What is all this?’ the doctor asks.
I look down at the sheet. ‘I have been researching. This is what I’ve found so far.’
‘Are you being serious?’ he says.
Suddenly I cannot look at him. I feel like crumpling it all up.
‘Please take this away,’ he says. ‘There are some new experimental treatments we can look at.’ He lists some of the side effects. Stroke. Heart attack. Depression.
I say we will think about it, and wish the floor would open up and swallow me.
‘Do that. And also, I recommend you find someone to help you with all of this.’
I wait for him to continue. He regards me with a tilted head. ‘There are therapists you can talk to,’ he says. ‘About how to handle the position you find yourself in now. Caregivers in this role can suffer as much as the patients. It can be very stressful.’
We go home from the doctor’s office, and pass the hordes going to Mass at the small church sandwiched between the local dairy and the German bakery. Ma and I don’t speak to each other but stare out the window. The church hangs decorations on Christmas Eve, which twinkle like stars from a nursery rhyme. The queues to light a candle at midnight cause a back-up, cutting off the flow of traffic, and horns and angry shouts drown out the hymns.
A short walk across the busy street, over a broken footpath, is the neighbouring mosque, where the call to prayer is observed five times a day. Christmas is no exception. The popularity of Christmas in Pune has never been limited to the Christians in town, especially because of the general belief that the statue of the Virgin erected near the entrance of the church bestows good luck on her worshippers. Diminutive and dressed in pink gauze, she is the object of an informal pilgrimage. As we pass by, I say an involunt
ary prayer for everything and nothing in particular.
The keepers of the mosque know many Muslims are waiting to receive benediction from Mother Mary and her son, and the evening azan bellows through the loudspeakers with particular force after dark on the twenty-fifth, a reminder that the duty of believers isn’t eclipsed by bright lights and a sparkling pine tree in the tropics.
I look at Ma. Her eyes close as the car brakes. I wish we weren’t such failures.
‘Why don’t you stay with us for a night or two, Ma?’ I whisper, partly hoping she doesn’t hear me. ‘Maybe next week? After New Year’s?’
She opens her eyes and looks past me on to the crowded street. ‘Maybe,’ she says. ‘Maybe one or two nights only.’
The date changes after midnight, and the commotion from church, mosque and bullock cart continues to swell. Voices are dissonant. Screams are indistinguishable from prayers. The streets heave with disorder. The uproar continues to escalate, but no one seems aware that the holy day has passed and the time has come to purge after the glut, to reflect on the excesses of the past day.
I have trouble sleeping that night. The wires by my bedside table disappear into a mess on the other side of the wall. Above my head, the ceiling light is an eye that watches me.
The next morning, relative calm returns to the town, and the church promptly turns off the festive lights to save on electricity. The traffic – machine, human and animal – resumes its normal flow.
On Boxing Day, Dilip has a conference call and I go out by myself. The black top of the rickshaw flaps over the sides like an awning, and the rubber conceals my face, keeps it hidden from the sun, the eyes of leering men and other disasters waiting to happen. But the men’s eyes reach the parts the light reaches, and even when I don’t see them looking at me, through the cotton-ball clouds I can feel the warmth of the sun on my skin. Those are the parts they can see, my feet in my chappals, my ankles, the full length of my body, my bare arms. It’s easier for them to look at this headless girl riding around in a vehicle without doors.
Sometimes, their faces appear below the hood, ducking to catch who’s inside, but we are moving too fast for me to tell them apart and they all belong to the same body and road.
We pass the commotion of MG Road, the booksellers, the jewellery shops, the women and men calling out to one another over the hullabaloo. Things have changed around here, I’m sure of that, but the city clips by too quickly to know how. Through the dry, salty membrane in my nostrils I can smell Kayani Bakery. The rickshaw stutters and halts, the engine smoking at a traffic light. Two men lean against the dilapidated gate of the old telephone exchange. They share a bidi and, above their heads, shards of glass line the top of the boundary wall, glinting in the sun. I sneeze and the driver glances back at me. Orange saliva gathers at the side of his lips. He spits on the ground and empties his nostrils one by one.
At the bus stop, men catch hold of the back of the bus, pressing themselves against the red metal shell. A legless boy sells day-old newspapers at the corner, and a flea-ridden dog rolls on its back.
College students on scooters sit three to a seat, howling back to their friends left behind in the dust. The girls are smiling and their earlobes are full of holes. They are girls like Ma used to be, girls of single colour, head to toe, girls with hair that hangs back like creatures flying behind them. I watch the eyes on them, on their clothes, their limbs, their open mouths. The day feels warm and bright.
I meet my friend Purvi for lunch at the Club. The afternoon is for eavesdropping. We circle the walking track, and Purvi describes the nightclub she went to the night before. I listen to some of the account but also to two men discussing the benefits of forced sterilization programmes, and to the lyrics of a song some teenage girls are singing as they stroll the Club grounds.
The path loops around, and at one point it is only separated from a crowded intersection by a line of shrubs and an iron fence. I hear the screech of traffic piling up, drivers on either side refusing to give way, jerking their vehicles forward into small gaps. Drivers alight and gather to give advice over the endless toots of horns. Heads shake and curses are thrown about, first insults about someone’s mother, followed by a passing remark about a sister and a female cousin too.
The cacophony ignites with fumes of petrol. We stop and watch from behind a low wall of plants. I can smell burning rubber. The noise fights for space, bursting into an indecipherable clatter. An arm reaches out, and then several more. Throats are caught, shoulders pushed, and dust rises with the scuffle. Among the bodies, I see one fall, trapped under the weight of insults and rage. The heat beats down on their heads. A man looks up at us. His face is narrowed with a scowl. The shade sways as the trees above the path drift from side to side. I glance down at my hands, laced around the wire fence. I stretch them and let go but, in the distance, the fight continues. The man is lost in the fray.
Purvi is still talking. She is animated, sculpting the air with her hands, or rubbing one against the other, as if to erase some unwanted words. She says that rubbing palms or the soles of feet together is a yogic technique that integrates the left side of the brain and the right. When she was younger, she was a boyish girl who hated her hair and hid her hips. Now her nails are painted and filed into points. She’s one of my friends who married young and for the right reasons. She and her husband go on cruises, rent holiday homes and learn to ski. They buy and sell horses, rarely repeat clothes, and never turn off the air conditioning in their apartment. Sometimes, when we are alone like this, Purvi interlaces her fingers through mine and swings our arms, like a little boy trying out his bat. She touches me as we walk, brushing elbows and the vulnerable parts of our wrists, stepping into my path. A year ago, at the Club, she fingered me in a bathroom stall while our husbands ordered drinks at the bar. We’ve never spoken of it.
‘It’s my father, with his family,’ I tell Purvi once we are seated at a table.
They are enjoying Boxing Day. The new wife leans back in a white cane chair and he sits upright on the arm. They don’t touch, but look at each other often. She nods at whatever he says. Then she smiles in a way I haven’t seen before. Her shoulders shake, laughter breaks through. The sound washes over my body. Purvi glances at them before turning back to the menu, but I keep watching. The table they have chosen is bathed in sun. There are only a few metres between us but the light turns their world into a foreign one. When I lean back in my wicker chair, I could be looking at a painting, framed by the white pillars of the building, something almost Victorian. There is a past and a present, and a gap which cannot be closed. Can they see me? They must be able to see me. I am right here. They often look in my direction, but perhaps the sun blinds them. I am invisible.
Waiters pass back and forth. I blink and look away.
My father liked my mother a long time ago. He liked the way she looked, at least. Maybe he agrees to see me sometimes for the same reason, because I look like a girl he once liked – because I sit in his living room, imploring, confused, with the look of a girl who once hurt his pride.
I wonder what the upstairs of their house looks like now, since the new wife has been there for decades. If I asked to see it, would they show me which room belongs to whom, show me the changes they have made to the bedrooms since I was there as a child, the upgrades, a new sink, additional cupboards, retiled floors? Maybe I will suggest that, next time I endure the humiliation of a visit to their house. Of course his wife will offer to show me how they live. Or maybe the boy would want to show me around, since, technically, I am his older sister. Maybe through my humiliations, my father can witness the humiliation of my mother, feel avenged for the way he was made a fool of so many years ago. Or maybe he sees himself in my face, the way he sees himself in his wife. Maybe my father will show me the rooms he has designated for his child, and then the bedroom he shares with the woman he married, the one he inherited from his parents, a bed his son must have jumped on when he was young, where he fucks his ne
w wife now but maybe still imagines my mother. Maybe I can fuck him – this man who likes to look at himself – on the same bed, quietly, careful not to disturb the others, while his wife makes tea a floor below.
My stomach squeals loudly. ‘Are you hungry?’ Purvi asks.
I shake my head. My stomach isn’t growling, just speaking out of turn. It’s always done this during quiet exams, dinners, the suspenseful pauses in films – it always says the things I haven’t been able to, when maybe I am hungry but the hunger is of another kind.
I look towards the entrance, which is still decorated from the Club’s anniversary. The balloons once floated in the air, and now they hang lifelessly from the nooses of metallic streamers.
We watch television in bed after dinner, and Dilip does not lower the volume when I mention children. His eyes are on a news anchor who is talking over his guests. They discuss whether non-Indian brands have the right to appropriate Gandhi’s image for commercial purposes.
I am not sure if he has heard me. I wish we had more art on the walls. What’s the point of always looking at blank white? Dilip says it helps him clear his head.
‘I’m sick of India,’ he says.
I look at the television and tell him to change the channel. ‘No, I mean I’m sick of everything here.’ He looks at me and back at the screen. ‘Except you.’
‘What’s the issue?’
‘This life. This job. This town.’ One of his legs slides off the bed, and he is between sitting and lying down.
I nod, but he doesn’t see me, so I put my hand on his. On the television, the advertisement plays at a louder volume than the scheduled programming. A couple is sharing a melting bar of chocolate, licking each other’s fingers. It is meant to be romantic, but I think it is disgusting and have to look away to keep from throwing up. I hate this apartment. I want to live in a spread from a magazine where every surface has the right amount of beautiful junk. Where I can stand in the centre of the room, unmoving, like a statue, and dust would never collect on me or my clutter.