Burnt Sugar

by Avni Doshi

  ‘The baby will grow into them,’ Purvi says.

  Dilip makes a joke about whether she will survive that long. No one laughs. In fact, I feel offended. I’d forgotten about my husband until now. He is the only one who has remained unscathed through all of this. The baby and I are bruised and battered. He looks smug, proud of himself or his family. I have the urge to ask him what he’s done for any of us.

  A frown mars the baby’s forehead. It mirrors the one on mine. At least I think I am frowning. I touch my forehead. Yes, there are creases. I wonder if she felt my irritation. Or was she the one to frown first?

  I wonder if she is dreaming, and what she is dreaming of. In her sleep, she draws her mouth in like an old woman. She looks a little like Ma, like Nani. The beginning of life so closely resembles the end. I can see it there, in that wise face, the plan to live to a ripe old age.

  My mother-in-law arrives the following day. She has already called the astrologer with the baby’s date and time of birth. Letters are revealed, ones that will be auspicious when choosing a name.

  ‘The letters are a and va,’ she says. ‘The same as yours were, Antara.’

  I shake my head. Those were not my letters. My mother named me to be her foil. My daughter should have different letters from her mother.

  My mother laughs. I had forgotten about her standing behind my shoulder. ‘Antara,’ she says. ‘I’ll call my baby Antara.’

  Everyone is silent. I turn and smile at her. ‘I’m right here, Ma.’ I stare at her face. It is illuminated. I wonder where she is right now, and when she will decide to return to us, inhabit the body that she only loosely resides in.

  ‘There are many good names,’ my mother-in-law continues, as though nothing is out of the ordinary. ‘Anjali, Ambika, Anisha.’

  ‘No. None of those.’

  ‘We can’t just call her Baby for ever.’

  Baby. Baby was just fine. It was easy, meaningless, belonging to every child in the world. I wish Kali Mata were here. She would have known exactly what to call her. She named many of the sanyasis all those years, fashioning something from Sanskrit, joining a series of sounds together that would call them to their destinies.

  I wish Kali Mata were here. She would love this baby. She would know exactly what to do. With the baby. With me. With Ma.

  The nurse with blue buttons comes into my room.

  ‘You should rest for some time,’ she says. The side of her nose looks raw. She must have a cold. I don’t want her to touch me. I definitely don’t want her to touch the baby.

  I try to close my eyes but cannot turn away from the window. The sky is pale fire. It’s not so late, there are still colours to be found. The light makes its way inside. In the distance, the speaking streets and plumes of smog are incandescent.

  Kali Mata was dead in her apartment for four days before someone found her. She was nearing seventy. The servant who was supposed to sweep her house daily had not been going. We refused to give him the last month’s salary. After Baba died, Kali Mata didn’t have much to do with the ashram, but I hear they buried her black clothes beneath the old banyan tree near the meditation hall.

  A year ago, Dilip and I finally made a trip to Pushkar to scatter Kali Mata’s ashes. When I looked in the box, I was amazed that such a large woman could fit into that small space. The dust looked clean and I had an urge to put some on my skin.

  Dilip shook his head. How could I even think of that? I didn’t know. I could not explain to him how much I wanted her as a part of me.

  The city of Pushkar was cold that winter, and I shared a chillum with an elderly mendicant roaming the alleyways near the Brahma temple.

  Dilip didn’t approve. ‘That’s disgusting. Did you see his teeth?’ The temple was orange like the setting sun, and as the day got darker it looked bloody. I was stoned and followed a single white cow that walked with a delicate sway. The animal had never known the weight of a yoke and freely trawled the streets. Through the narrow corridors of the old city, where the doors were barricaded shut and the havelis were inhabited by monkeys and men, the crowds dispersed to let me and the animal pass.

  Was this real, or had it been staged just for us?

  The chillum was strong. Kali Mata must have walked this way, through the same alleys, a young widow, a childless mother. The walls of the city looked blue at midday, and the colour reflected off the cow, turning the animal iridescent, somewhere between sky and water. I tried to take pictures of it, but the colour couldn’t be captured. The cow sat at the edge of the ghats and we followed her there, sitting a couple of steps away. I wanted more of the chillum but settled for the smoky air.

  A musician plucked at his santoor. His wife was dressed in a ghagra choli, soiled at the hem, and a buttoned waistcoat. She covered her head with the edge of her dupatta and sang solemn notes in accompaniment. Their sleeping child awoke, rising from his father’s wooden wheelbarrow. The child glanced at my impervious cow and turned to his mother. The mother squatted as she sang, her bottom hovering off the ground. The boy pulled up her blouse and exposed her dark breasts. I could see her nipples. They looked like bruises. He stood before her and drank, and she pulled him in, her voice faltering as she held his head.

  The boy turned and looked at us, smiling to show his sharp teeth. Then he turned back to his mother’s breast and bit her. She cried out in pain but continued singing, pushing the boy away and smacking him on the cheek. I touched my face. The boy went back into hiding.

  I am tired of this baby.

  She demands too much, always hungering for more.

  I have become an assembly line. Each part is incidental, only important if it can do its job. Milk drips when my daughter cries, staining my clothes. In the mirror, I see my stomach, dark and shrivelled as a date. I try to cover it with my hands when Dilip enters the room.

  I can’t imagine what he thinks when he looks at me, and I try to never be alone with him anywhere. He is thrilled with the baby, and cannot bear the sound of her cries.

  There is never enough time for sleep. I wish I had rested all the years of my life. I wish I had done so many things. Instead, I did all the things I am doing now. Sitting in the house. Staring at the walls.

  I’ve never been a stickler for manners, but this baby doesn’t stand on ceremony. She’s a rude little bitch if I ever met one. There are no polite pauses.

  I wonder how long it takes for children to grow up, and in my mind I mark the milestones, still so far away. When the baby will walk, when the baby will eat by herself, bathe by herself. When the baby will have her own life, go off into the world.

  There are other days when I feel I’ll never let her go.

  The baby looks so small at times. Dilip was right – it is a wonder we haven’t killed her yet. She exists from one day to the next; her life is forceful but tenuous. I always assumed children came into the worlds of their parents, but maybe the opposite is true. I can see myself in my daughter. It’s as though, through this birth, I have been twinned.

  Sometimes, I resent others helping me – when Kashta or my mother-in-law gives the baby a bath, or if Dilip rocks her when she cries. I hate that no one lets Ma hold her, that my blood should be prohibited from caring for her. I insist that they let my mother look after her. All arguments to the contrary meet with my ire.

  When she nearly slips out of Ma’s arms, I concede. My mother-in-law glances at Dilip with consternation.

  If I let my mind go back far enough, I resent that the cord was cut without my permission. No one tells you the full story, no one informs you of your rights as a mother. I would have kept the cord for longer. I’ve read that there are health benefits for the baby in maintaining the connection as long as possible.

  The baby scratches her own face, and I gather the courage to trim her nails. My hands shake the first time I hold the small, curved scissors. I break a sweat. The child sleeps. At the end, I collect the trimmings. A mound of little white slivers sits on my palm. I keep them by my beds
ide until my mother-in-law throws them away.

  ‘Hoarding this garbage will make you madder than you are,’ she says.

  That night, I think of ways of butchering Dilip’s mother. A week later, I collect the next batch of nail clippings and wrap them in a handkerchief in my cupboard.

  This is madness. I feel it – I inch towards it daily. But it’s a necessary madness, without which the species might never propagate.

  Weeks pass.

  In the day, nothing can be hidden. Not dangers or fears. Not the smell of putrefying milk, or the green veins below my eyes. I can see my hair thinning in the early light. Specks of dandruff gather along my parting. Entire days pass before I can wash my face. I run my tongue across my teeth and feel the film.

  A loud crashing sound rouses me one morning.

  The baby has fallen off the bed. She is crying bloody murder.

  Dilip rushes in. He finds me and the child both in tears. ‘I dropped her, she fell down,’ I say.

  He nods. His eyes move over the floor to find the guilty tile. ‘I don’t know if I can do this,’ I hear myself say. I am rocking back and forth. I wipe my nose with the baby’s sleeve, clutching her close.

  ‘I don’t know if I want to do this,’ I think to myself. I realize from Dilip’s face that I have said this out loud.

  ‘Okay, okay. Shh-shh.’ My mother-in-law is in the room. I didn’t see her enter. She takes the child into her solid arms. The baby settles into a roll of fat.

  ‘You know,’ my mother-in-law says, ‘I didn’t have a maid when I was your age, and I had to do everything by myself in the whole house. All alone, in the US. Cutting the vegetables, cooking all the food, doing the washing – you know babies give a lot of washing. And don’t forget, I have a demanding husband. Hot food on the table, three times a day. But I managed, no? Look at Dilip, he’s still alive, isn’t he? I didn’t go here and there and let him fall off the bed. And I had an easy situation. Only two. What about people with six children? Can you imagine?’

  She continues talking about how difficult things were. These tales have been passed down from mothers to daughters since women had mouths and stories could be told. They contain some moral message, some rites of passage. But they also transfer that feeling all mothers know before their time is done. Guilt.

  My mother-in-law tries to control what I eat. This makes me hate her more. She adds ghee to my rice and gives me tinctures to ‘remove the gas’ from my milk. I feel they make me gassier. I pass wind through the night. Dilip pretends not to notice.

  I imagine this is a ruse she has concocted to take my husband and child away from me. I want her gone, until one morning I find the baby’s white nappy stained blood red. I scream, rousing the household.

  ‘You ate beetroot last night, didn’t you? I told you not to,’ my mother-in-law says. ‘What do you expect poor baby to do?’

  Afterwards, I eat only what my mother-in-law puts on my plate. Every morning, I swallow a thick paste of fenugreek seeds with my breakfast. My perspiration grows more pungent and I am forced to wash my armpits in the sink throughout the day.

  Purvi arrives on some days, unannounced, bringing sweets and gifts. She holds the baby until she gets bored, then spreads herself out on the bed. Purvi complains of exhaustion, of a kind of homesickness, though she knows she is at home.

  My mother-in-law shakes her head. ‘Your husband’s home will never be the same as your mother’s home.’

  The baby turns her head away from my breast to look at Purvi.

  She smiles, showing her toothless gums.

  ‘She likes you,’ I say. ‘You should have one soon.’

  ‘Maybe. For now, this one is enough for both of us.’

  Purvi turns on to her side and gives in to the natural slump of her body, curving her back until her chest disappears. Sometimes she crosses her bony legs around themselves twice. Dilip doesn’t like it. He finds it creepy. I wonder if Purvi’s husband knows about her double-jointed thumbs, or the way she can crack her knees after sitting for too long.

  ‘She looks like you,’ Purvi says.

  I look down at the baby. Milky white spit drips from the side of her mouth. It pools around her neck, wetting the collar of her undershirt. I look back at my friend and know what she’s thinking. Nothing is quite the same. The baby reaches once more for my breast. Purvi watches. I feel exposed. Suddenly I don’t like having Purvi here, don’t want her in the house. She reminds me of too many things we have done together. I don’t want her around my daughter.

  At night, we eat in silence until cries sound from my bedroom.

  The baby is awake, trying to escape the swaddle I have imprisoned her in. My food is half eaten. I lift her with my clean hand. The other is stained, wet with spit. This act of juggling seems normal now.

  ‘Shall I take her for some time?’ my mother-in-law says. I am about to nod, but my mother stands up.

  ‘Let me hold baby Antara,’ she says.

  ‘No, Ma,’ I say. ‘You have your food. I am not hungry.’

  In the room, my stomach rumbles, but I ignore it and bring out my breast. The baby suckles, her throat moving up and down. Food has already dried on my fingers. They are pruned and yellowed.

  When I look at the window, I can almost feel myself going out of it, drifting, smelling the air beyond this still room, just beyond the wall, jumping down, faltering a little, maybe even falling the rest of the way, brushing off the dirt and dead insects from my palms and knees and running to the end of the lane to find a rickshaw-wallah smoking a bidi who might be willing to take me as far as Purvi’s house for half the rate.

  Or not.

  Why go to Purvi’s?

  I can go anywhere, there’s nothing stopping me. Maybe back to the train station late at night, and convince a chai-wallah to give me a cup for half the going rate, maybe something free for a girl alone, and there I can wait. There, I can be cleansed of all this. Of the dirty hands, the same food every day, my mother who thinks I am my daughter, my mother-in-law who is slowly taking over this house. Even Dilip. I cannot remember the last time we had a real conversation.

  I open the window and the warm air comes in, touching my face. It feels wet, the air. I wish it would stop. I wish it would still again.

  The baby’s head is covered in dark hair. A faint, dark fuzz covers her shoulders. She sucks her lips in her sleep.

  The window is open, and a small body can fall quickly, soundlessly. By morning, it can be gone. Isn’t that why the window is still open? And if not now, if not quietly in the dark of night, then when?

  I should close the window. The baby will get sick. The air inside is thick and still, but outside the dampness blows back and forth. This is not the kind of night for a baby or a mother. This night is for everyone else.

  The window is still open. Again, she begins to cry. I wish she would stop. I have heard babies’ cries before, but hers are worse. She is louder, so insistent. I can never seem to make her stop. My mother-in-law manages. I should have given the baby to her – I should give the baby to her. Maybe she can take the baby back to the States, raise her in the same way she raised Dilip. Dilip can go too. I can stay here alone, with Ma, with Nani. I can stay here alone and have some quiet.

  What does a dead child look like? Not so different from a doll. Kali Mata would know the answer. She had seen her child alive and then dead.

  The baby is crying. My arms tighten at the sound. My hands follow. She wails and I look out the window again. Patting the child’s back with heavy hands, I look down at the long pipes that drain into the ground, at the tops of balconies, at the hanging clothes and silent birds. The watchman is down below, concealed in the shadows, sleeping on duty.

  It must be quiet down there. Not too far, but so much quieter.

  In the morning, my mother-in-law opens the door without knocking and gasps.

  The baby sleeps on a pile of blankets on the floor. The bed is stripped down to nothing but a mattress. I am sitting at th
e edge of the bed, still looking out the window.

  I rub my face. I can feel the red spreading across my eyeballs. ‘What happened?’ she asks. Smudged spectacles cut across her eyes, and her pupils dart up and down like two fish bobbing in water. She has seen her son sleeping on the sofa, kicked out of his own bedroom, denied access to his California King. She is angry, disapproving of how I have managed sleeping conditions for both of her babies last night.

  ‘She couldn’t sleep on the bed. She was happier on the floor.’

  ‘Have you slept at all?’

  ‘No, not really. I needed to think.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Names. I’ve been thinking about names for her.’

  She comes to stand closer to the bed. I am a little less disgusting to her for a moment. Her mouth is almost trembling.

  ‘I’ve decided that you should choose. You and Dilip.’

  Her entire face opens up. She cannot contain her happiness. ‘Do you mean that?’

  ‘Why would I say it if I didn’t mean it?’

  ‘I mean,’ she says, recovering, ‘is that what you really want?’

  ‘Of course.’ The window is closed now. I don’t know when I finally resolved to do it. The light makes pastel streaks in the scratched glass. Do I deserve to name her after last night?

  My mother has a beautiful name. Tara. It means star, another name for the goddess Durga. Like Kali Mata.

  She named me Antara, intimacy, not because she loved the name but because she hated herself. She wanted her child’s life to be as different from hers as it could be. Antara was really Un-Tara – Antara would be unlike her mother. But in the process of separating us, we were pitted against each other.

  Maybe we would have been better off if I had never been designated as her undoing. How do I stop myself from making the same mistake? How do I protect this little girl from the same burden? Maybe that’s impossible. Maybe this is all wishful thinking.