Burnt Sugar

by Avni Doshi

  *

  That night in bed, I am quiescent. Still as a rock. Dilip takes a long shower and walks around the room with wet feet. The windows are closed to keep away the mosquitoes that will awaken at dawn. He lies down next to me. We haven’t spoken in some days.

  Tonight, the silence feels alive. I am not sure if I started it, but it seems like something I would do. Doubts tumble in quickly to bury me; maybe he and I, we were never quite what I thought. I believe that if we don’t resume our conversation, if we never refer to it again, it will go away.

  If we never speak about Ma, she will cease to exist.

  The same might be true for the little picture he found, and the lie that accompanied it.

  I am hopeful, if afraid.

  But there is something else growing in the room, in the bed. A feeling I can’t put my finger on. I try to imagine what he is thinking, what he wants to say.

  The next day, Dilip’s mother calls. I almost don’t answer.

  ‘I’m worried about the two of you,’ she says. ‘And now you want your mother to live with you? Do you think that’s wise? Shouldn’t she stay in her own home, maybe with a live-in nurse? You do your work from home, won’t having her around the house make that difficult?’

  A few days later, when we are on speaking terms and the past seems bite-sized and manageable, I wonder aloud about what this upheaval has been for Dilip, and what it has been for me, and in the future, how we will exact our revenge and make the other repent.

  He is silent.

  I say that these things are not always conscious, that sometimes the way we act is determined by equations we fall into over and over again. However simple the problem, and however clean the solution, there is always a remainder, a fraction of something said and misconstrued.

  He rubs his eyes and says he would never hold on to that sort of enmity.

  1989

  Nani told me my mother pierced her own nose using a blunt pin, and flunked seventh standard not once but twice. The only positive memory my grandmother had of her own child was from the war in 1971, when her daughter, still young and docile, helped her tape brown paper to the windows of every room to prevent glass from shattering over them as they slept.

  I remember sitting between Nani’s legs as she poured oil on my head. It trickled down the side of my cheek and found its way to my neck. She folded it into my hair, holding me tightly with her knees. Oil reached her churidar and dripped on to the floor. ‘Your mother, she never let me do this. She wouldn’t sit still, she said she hated the smell. Imagine. I told her, keep it for one night and wash it out. She never listened. That’s why her hair has become what it is. But you know your mother. Difficult.’

  I knew my silence would be heard as an affirmation, but this was a time of uncertain alliances between all of us.

  Nani may have been the architect of my short banishment to boarding school, but nothing can be proven. In later years, the adults took to pointing fingers at one another. My grandfather most vocally said he was against the idea from the start, though I remember he was the one who presented me with the small blue suitcase again, one morning in July 1989.

  We piled into his red Maruti 800, all four of us, and began the drive to Panchgani. The car hugged the curving mountainside, and it rained most of the way, obscuring the view from the window. In the seat between me and Nani was a Thermos and a steel box of sandwiches. The narrow hairpin turns continued, and I began to feel sick. Outside, I caught a glimpse of a woman standing knee-deep in mud. The earth in Panchgani was full of water and sap.

  We were already in the car when they explained where I was going. Panic expanded in me. I spread my body across the seat. I didn’t know if I could stay away from home for so long. I hadn’t packed for the journey. The bubbles returned to the back of my throat, the ones from the ashram, choking me, bouncing with the car. With the next bump, I threw up on myself.

  My grandfather opened the windows and started humming the tune to Amar Akbar Anthony. Nani used napkins to clean my clothes. ‘Do you know how to cover books with paper?’ she asked.

  We stopped the car and I felt the mountain breeze on me. My skin prickled under my clothes. The smelly wet patch felt wetter. I got out of the car and the mud found its way into my shoes. Ma glanced at me through the front-seat window and turned away. Nani patted my back, asked me if there was any more inside. I said yes, that the bubbles were still with me, crowding the back of my mouth. I felt them scratch my tonsils. I moved my tongue down my gullet, but the bubbles did not shift. I put my finger down and felt my tonsils. Then I gagged once more.

  I opened my eyes to the sight of a brick building and a sloping roof partly covered by trees. The patterns of the Portuguese tiles. I traced the green diamonds with my fingers. Nana stood with a bent woman dressed in white.

  ‘Sister Maria Theresa,’ the nun said. She sniffled and leaned perilously to the right when she walked, and looked like she was hiding another head under her habit.

  Inside the walls, the school was different than it seemed from the front. Red brick gave way to a sooty courtyard. Small monkeys were hanging from trees in the distance. The land beyond the back gate twisted into a ravine. Along the walkway, earthen pots were filled with dried shrubs. The champa trees had no flowers. Girls in navy-blue skirts and blouses filed past. Their shoes were polished and their shiny braids hung straight as they walked.

  ‘There was a fire in the dormitories last year,’ the nun explained. ‘The girls are living in the gymnasium until it is rebuilt.’

  Past the brown double-doors of the gymnasium, four rows of beds and cupboards extended from one side of the hall to the other. At night, the beds would be filled with girls in their dark uniforms and tightly wound hair.

  ‘This looks nice,’ Nani said. She touched the plaid bed sheets. Ma plunked down on a bed. She hadn’t said a word for most of the day, and kept her eyes on her feet. Her mouth was still and straight.

  The dining room was a large windowless cavern under the main building. I retched at the pungent smell.

  ‘Not used to fish, I see,’ the nun said.

  Hours later, the red car picked up dust as it started down the road, away from me. I imagined Ma turning back, motioning for me to run after them. When I rubbed my eyes and looked for her, she was already gone.

  My year in boarding school would be the last time we’d be apart until I was much older and left of my own accord, against her will and without consent – but we did not know that at the time, having only known the past, when my will and consent were the ones in jeopardy. When I returned to Pune, I entered my mother’s new home like a stranger.

  In boarding school, I resolved to keep my possessions light and limited, whittled down to what was most important in the event that I may need to leave. Objects had to be considered, prioritized, and life lacked the heft required for grounding, leaving me nauseated with the changes in pressure.

  *

  A thin girl with bifocals sat on my bed as I unpacked in the dormitory. My body was filled with a trembling I couldn’t quell. The girl, by contrast, was easy and comfortable. She wore her socks above her knees and had a small scar above her mouth.

  ‘I’m Mini Mehra. My bed is next to yours.’

  Mini explained that life at Saint Agatha Convent was alphabetized in all things. Lamba and Mehra would be next to each other as long as they both attended the school, unless some other Ls or Ms came between them. She was from Mahabaleshwar and lived in a semidetached house with her brothers and parents. During dinner, she showed me how to cover the fish in yellow dal to disguise the taste. She explained that the oblong balls were boiled eggs, which could be peeled and were the tastiest things on the plate. After lunch, I emptied the contents of my stomach into a flowerpot.

  In time, I learned some things on my own. We were allowed to bathe twice a week in lukewarm water, no matter the season, but we could wash our hair only once. Every six months, spoonfuls of castor oil were administered to combat const
ipation, which afflicted students and teachers alike. I taught myself to clean my shoes, tie my laces, braid my hair and make my bed.

  Headmistress Maria Theresa had another name given to her by the students – she was known as the Terror, and on my second day at Saint Agatha I learned why. While the other students were studying history, science, English and maths, I was to be locked in a small office with her. Behind her dark wooden desk, below a large, austere crucifix, was a picture of a young woman whose body had been stuffed into a stocking of a dress. The woman stood at an angle, dark-skinned. Her red lips were smiling, and the sun coming in from the window obscured the left side of her face. They looked alike, yet not alike enough to be related. I looked at the picture on my first day in that room and wanted to ask the nun who the girl was, but decided to wait for a while, until some time passed, until we built a friendly rapport. Later, I would wish that I had taken the opportunity at the start.

  ‘I’m not sure how a girl can become a big, hulking thing of your size and not know how to read,’ she said.

  I waited, wondering if I should answer.

  ‘Your forms list your mother’s name and your father’s name, but you have your mother’s name. Why is that?’

  I opened my mouth but my tongue was like felt.

  ‘Never mind. I can guess what the answer is. Open your book of letters and stories.’

  I fumbled through the small pile and found the book. Before I could fully open it, she slammed her hand on top of mine.

  ‘What is this?’

  The book had been covered in paper. The job was shoddy. Mini had tried to show me the fastest way. On the first page of the textbook were letters, scribbled in pencil, forming what must have been a sentence.

  ‘Did you write this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know how to write? Are you a liar?’

  ‘No.’

  She reached out and pinched my cheek, twisting the skin between her fingers. I felt her nail pierce through.

  ‘Go through each page and erase every mark. These books were pristine when they were given to you. You will keep them that way.’

  I began turning the pages, quickly but gently, so she would know I respected the book and its binding. She left the office, letting the door crash behind her. She was wrong, the books were not pristine. Some of the edges were turned, curled in. There were scribbles in corners. I wondered how many girls had read this very book, had sat in this office, before me. Rubbing my burning cheek, I realized these must have been the doodles of four-year-olds. By my age, they were all reading books, memorizing tables. I opened to a page of swathes of green and blue, sky and grass. Reading the picture was easy. I moved my finger over the black letters that ran along the bottom. They could have said anything. In the centre of the picture was a tree with a thick, broad trunk; smooth, unlike anything I had seen in Pune. Below the tree was a girl holding an orange ball in her hand. In the corner of the picture was a dark mark. I ran the eraser over it and it began to fade, taking some of the sky away with it. I didn’t understand that mark. It seemed senseless. It didn’t say anything or mean anything. It only cleaved the bright blue in half. The ball in the girl’s hand was lined. Adding an extra line to it would go unnoticed. I pushed my pencil into the centre of the ball and carried it to the edge. And now there was a line. A line just like the errant one in the corner, but this new one had found a home in the picture and could reside there without causing trouble. Another line could be made on the girl’s yellow dress, around the collar which curved in an S-shaped frill. I added a layer of frill.

  A yank on my braid sent my head back. I looked at the ceiling. I looked at Sister Maria Theresa’s face. Saliva collected at the side of her mouth.

  ‘I tell you to erase the markings and what do you do?’ She lumbered around and peered at the page. ‘Only your first day and already a vandal?’ She grabbed the pencil from my hand and pointed at the book.

  I began rubbing, but the line would not disappear. Unlike the blue, the yellow turned muddy, almost green. The girl’s dress faded at the neck. I stopped rubbing and laid my hand down on the table. Sweat had collected all over me. Sister Maria Theresa bent her head to look at the picture and, without warning, stabbed the pencil into the back of my palm.

  We both looked at my hand, at the pencil erected in it, like the tree in the grass of the picture. Like the flag at the entrance, where Ma had left me. I screamed, first at the sight of it, but didn’t feel a thing until a pain unlike anything I could remember went snarling up my arm.

  Sister Maria Mathilda, who administered medicine, used two balls of cotton to check for particles left inside my hand. She was gentle, but didn’t touch me any more than she had to. I was dismissed after my hand had been bandaged in gauze.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Mini asked.

  ‘The Terror,’ I said, trying not to cry.

  Mini opened her mouth into a perfect O when I told her about the hole in my hand. ‘She’s not allowed to do that.’

  I opened and closed my hand. I hadn’t learned to be outraged yet.

  The next morning, Sister Maria Theresa began my lessons. Neither of us made any reference to the day before. On days that I was slow, unable to keep up with her pace, she dug her nails into my skin, each time some newly discovered patch. If I or my work was slovenly, a ruler was applied to my knuckles or the backs of my calves. I learned words like ‘sin’. I learned that cleanliness had little to do with bathing.

  The bathroom we girls shared had a muffled light, even when the sky outside was sunny. The tiles under my feet were wet, and I could smell the lye and soap and a dampness that had entered the wooden doors of the shower stalls. The halo around the drain was dark, embedded with years of dirt that had circled and disappeared down the hole. I stood naked in the stall. Mini was dressed, but neither of us commented on this. The right side of her spectacles dipped down and rested on her cheek, and I looked at her face a little longer to see if it was crooked.

  I didn’t know why she had followed me in. She flipped over the upside-down pail and turned on the tap. Water hit the steel with a violence. I watched it rise and reached out to turn it off as it met the halfway mark. That is all we were allowed, I knew. Half a bucket, lukewarm. But Mini touched my wrist and pulled a long stocking from the pocket of her uniform. I stared at her and blinked, wondering what other miracles she had in there. She fitted the elastic waist of the stocking around the nozzle and placed the nylon foot in the pail. Looking at my face, she turned the hot water tap on full. Water soundlessly continued to flow into the pail.

  ‘Lamba, are you in there?’

  My eyes widened and my stomach dropped. ‘Yes.’ My voice was a squeak.

  I heard the Terror’s steps closing in on the stall. Mini put her finger to her lips and stepped soundlessly inside the steel pail. Water dislocated. The tap continued to flow.

  I heard the Terror’s breath catch as she bent down. She looked through the small gap below the stall, seeing my feet and the bottom of the pail. Her knees cracked as she straightened.

  ‘Don’t take your own sweet time,’ she said.

  I listened as her steps disappeared in the corridor.

  Mini and I stood a little longer, I still naked, she in uniform, submerged to her knees in my bathwater.

  One night, I lay in my bed, staring at the dark ceiling. Beyond that room was the foaming sky.

  ‘Mini,’ I said. ‘I have to go number one.’

  ‘So go, na,’ she muttered.

  It was a long walk down the unlit path, past the sound of the haunted trees, the wailing animals, the cold.

  ‘Mini, come with me.’

  Mini turned her head away, mumbling.

  I lay back down. My fingers and toes were freezing, but a sweat had broken out on my body. I pushed my legs together and felt the pressure across my abdomen. If I clenched my eyes shut, I could almost see the sky lighting up as the night grew dark, streaming like milk. The stars twinkled. I felt my f
ace soften, my mouth fall open and sigh.

  I woke up the next morning to a sharp jab in my side. The morning light, unfiltered, warmed my face. I opened my eyes to see a strong chin and heavy jaw looming over me.

  ‘Filthy little Hindu. Look at the mess you’ve made.’ I was lying at the centre of my sopping bed.

  That morning, I stood at the door of the gymnasium, holding the soiled sheets above my head. My knuckles burned and I longed to lick them. The blood had drained out of my arms. My body quaked. My classmates walked past, rushing to their first lessons, giggling under their breath. They did not know me yet, these girls. Though I had lived among them for months, I spent my days separately. They knew I was different, slow.

  The beatings were not all bad. Sometimes they were the way we made friends. We would compare the red welts on our fingers and wrists. Those were our rings and bangles. The backs of the hands and calves tended to bruise darker. That was our mehndi. The girl with the darkest mehndi each week was the bride. We celebrated her and said she would be a favourite of her mother-in-law. The girl with most rings and bangles was our queen. We curtsied or kissed her hand when we passed her and did her bidding as was required.

  Sundays were spent in Mass. I moved my mouth along with the words of the hymns, but in my mind I repeated other prayers. Jesus, pale in plaster, looked down at me from the altar. I spoke to other gods, the ones Nani had shown me at home, but in Hindi so they might understand.

  I learned to draw so well, so finely, that the Terror could no longer see my mark. I learned to read, to write, to name the planets and multiply fractions.

  Some nights, I squatted down in a corner of the gymnasium and went directly on the floor. Piss splattered against my bare feet, but I trained myself not to think of it. The nuns soon noticed the puddles and started monitoring the gymnasium in the middle of the night, drifting in and out like ghosts in their white nightgowns. For those occasions, I taught myself to bring my heel up between my legs and push it deep into my pelvis.