Burnt Sugar

by Avni Doshi

  The baby is finally asleep. She exhales deeply, heavily. Air thrusts in and out of her lungs, expanding her abdomen. I put my hand near her nose. For a moment, my daughter is breathing fire, and I decide to call her Kali when no one is around.

  If feeding is a form of love, eating is a kind of submission. Meals are conversations, and what we don’t say is left over in the food. In scientific studies, mice on a calorie-restricted diet begin to eat each other.

  In laboratory settings, rats enclosed with a square foot of flame-retardant fabric drop dead in a week.

  There are some other variables to consider, but the message is clear. I throw open the windows and fill the tables with food.

  Dilip and I are never alone. We don’t speak much, and conjugal rights are a thing of the past. We just want to stay afloat.

  On the nights that I sleep, I dream so vividly that the mornings are as dry as cotton balls, a hazy waking moment with a plangent drone coming from the mosque at the end of the road.

  My mother-in-law is fulsome, calling me beautiful, her own precious angel. She must have read up that the way to win a girl over, the girl who has stolen your son, is to make her believe that she has surpassed him in your heart. Kill her with kindness.

  I dream about killing them all sometimes. Not me, but some version of me, a masculine me, a muscular me. Their bodies are left to rot. They bleed different colours, and Anikka is happy that they are dead and knows they’re more beautiful this way. We burn them together and are untouched by soot and flint.

  Anikka. They named my daughter Anikka. It’s a sound that mating birds make. Her name is unfinished, new age, pointless. When I asked them what the name means, they could not tell me, but my mother-in-law said people could call her Annie for short when she goes to study abroad. My grandmother says it’s a name for the goddess Durga, which appeases me, but I am angry again when I search for the name and the first entry that appears is the biography of an American porn star.

  Overwhelmed by my questions, Dilip asks, ‘If you didn’t want me to choose, why did you give over your power?’

  All I know is that a certain kind of madness comes over you when you are locked within walls with so many women. A certain madness erects itself when the way you tell the time of day is by the water levels in a vase of flowers.

  I hug Anikka to me tightly every day and synchronize the activity to a timer so she will remember the abundance of love and physical affection she received as a child. Some imprint of the sensation, being compressed, the restriction of blood flow, the warmth of another body, should stay with her. Babies like to be straitjacketed, to feel cloistered – anything that reminds them of the womb. After a day of this, the baby doesn’t like the attention. She makes it known. She doesn’t understand how lucky she is, and she protests.

  I begin to question whether she is lucky – and whether I am mistaken. Doesn’t she want to be swaddled by my body? Is the sensation of receiving a kiss less pleasurable than that of giving it? I have heard that babies find adults terrifying and ugly, that our textured skin and large bodies are repulsive to them. I can almost remember having these feelings as a child – that even the most beautiful adult was dirty and wretched. Maybe, later in life, she will flee this home. Maybe she will run from me. Maybe our mothers always create a lack in us, and our children continue to fulfil the prophecy.

  *

  My mother watches me and I cannot recognize the expression in her eyes. Sometimes I think she is aware of what is going on, that she is trying to communicate something to me. She hasn’t mentioned anything to Dilip, has said nothing about my relationship with Reza.

  Dilip still believes that the photo is something I found but never truly owned, something that is absurd and unrelated to me. So much of the art he has seen is absurd, why should he look for meaning in any of it? He would never imagine that this man who was my mother’s lover would subsequently become mine.

  He would never imagine that I had kept this a secret from everyone. To Dilip, Reza is a name that was only ever uttered by Ma – the hallucinations of a demented woman, whose past of promiscuity was well known.

  I feed Ma sugar daily, and she consumes it like an addict. She becomes more like another sofa every day. No one notices this is the reason – no one makes the connection. They don’t believe in science unless it comes from the mouth of a doctor and in the form of a tablet. They don’t go to the studies, to the source. Rats. Rats and mice are the key to understanding who we are as humans. What happens to a rat in ten days may happen to us in ten months or ten years, but it will happen.

  The people I live with don’t think about diet, about insulin, gut bacteria, the whole solar system that is contained in a single molecule of our bodies. Dilip and his mother believe that I am looking after my mother, indulging her because she is unwell, and sweets and rich cakes will make her feel good.

  The difference between murder and manslaughter is intention. Or is it premeditation? But intent can only be proven if you inhabit the brain of another. Motive would also be difficult to discern. Who would argue with the fact that my mother is my only true parent, and as a loving daughter I want to give her pleasure while I still can?

  It is clear to me that my mother is a child – emotionally, she has never progressed past being a teenager. She is still at the mercy of hormones. She still thinks in terms of freedom and passion.

  And love.

  She is obsessed with love, and the idea of the love she had with Reza. Did he even love her? Did he ever say it to her?

  He left her one day without a thought about how she would feel. Is that the kind of man she should be pining for well into her fifties? Doesn’t she have anything better to do than threaten her only offspring because of a man who had no lasting interest in either of them?

  Sometimes, when we are too many in the house, I wish she would die, at least for a little while, and then come back in any form I saw fit. Maybe a dog who would follow me around.

  Even as these thoughts enter my head, I can’t believe I am thinking them. I love her, my mother. I love her to death. I don’t know where I would be without her. I don’t know who I would be. If she would only stop being such a terrible cunt, I would get her back on track.

  And this won’t actually kill her, it is calming her down. Life without sugar makes her sharp and erratic and, in truth, unhappy – like she was when she came into my room and went through my things.

  At least I don’t think this can kill her.

  I don’t want her to die. Sometimes I think that, when she goes, I will just float away. Sometimes in the chaos, I forget that she is there. We all forget. We forget to speak to her or acknowledge her presence.

  The rest watch me give her a blue pill at the appropriate time, with no grasp of how useless it is. I leave the prescription out as proof of my good care. Can it really be so simple – to fill her with biscuits and bread every day and poison her in plain sight? Sometimes I think I am doing this just to see if I can get away with it.

  I begin administering a sleeping pill her doctor suggests to help with the insomnia. This seems to work for a few days, until she begins to wake up in the middle of the night, groggy and doddering, to use the toilet. I tell the doctor this worries me. What if she falls? What if she breaks her hip while the rest of us are sleeping? He advises me to try an increased dose and see how she does with it. I give Ma two at bedtime, and she sleeps through the night, sometimes well into the following day.

  My father calls. My mother-in-law answers and doesn’t know who it is. She hangs up on him the first time. He calls back and clarifies his relationship to me. My mother-in-law is sheepish when she tells me who is on the phone. My father clears his throat when I say hello. I am pleased that they are both embarrassed, but try not to show it.

  My father says he has heard about a baby and would like to meet her.

  I pause at his choice of words before telling him that I have not been taking her out of the house much, only for vaccines and when
I have to take Ma to the doctor. He says that’s no problem, he would be happy to come and see us.

  ‘How is your mother keeping?’ he asks.

  ‘Not well.’

  He is silent, and I imagine he is nodding. ‘Well, I should come to see her too.’

  I tell Ma that my father will come over the weekend to see us.

  Dilip smiles at this news. ‘I’m looking forward to meeting him.’

  My mother nods, and looks at my mother-in-law. ‘My husband,’ she says. ‘My husband and his mother are very difficult. Mothers-in-law are always trouble. Don’t get married if you can avoid it.’

  ‘He isn’t your husband any more. And his mother is dead.’

  She nods, seems to think over this information, before her attention returns to her plate.

  ‘You don’t seem to be taking an interest in helping her,’ Dilip says. We are in our bedroom. I am snapping the removable fabric of my new bra. My breast looks like it is in a harness. Anikka nuzzles it, smelling for milk, before she finds the nipple.

  I censor my thoughts around Dilip now. How do I explain that we are all refugees in this place, constantly redrawing the borders? Nothing is certain. Yesterday, when I called Nani to speak with her about hiring a nurse, she burst into tears. ‘I don’t want to know,’ was her only response. She repeated this phrase again and again. The natural order has been upended. Nani is an old woman now, she is supposed to grow old before her daughter. But Ma is the one who is senile. We lose her a little bit every day.

  I feel a touch of guilt when I think about this, but I parcel it for now. Tension suppresses my milk flow.

  The next morning, Dilip brings my mother a ballpoint pen and a notebook. I watch him settling her at the dining table.

  ‘Write it down,’ he says.

  ‘What?’ She looks up at him.

  ‘Whatever it is.’ His voice is kind and patient. ‘If it’s written down, you will always have it with you.’

  She takes the pen and looks at it, then stares down at the yellow pages lined with dark blue. Running her fingers over the first page, she flips through the pad and giggles to herself, amazed by how many pages there are.

  ‘Write about your first day at school. Can you remember that?’

  Ma wobbles her head back and forth and looks at him with a wide smile. He pats her arm.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I ask when he comes to sit next to me on the sofa.

  ‘We should be making her remember. She needs rehearsal.’

  ‘I have been doing that. There were stories from the past all over her apartment and it didn’t help at all.’

  ‘We don’t need to exercise your memory, Antara. We need to exercise hers.’ His voice has risen louder than I have ever heard it. My arms contract. The baby cries.

  ‘You used to make me feel so bad,’ Ma says.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. At the ashram. You would talk about your father all the time. You used to cry for him day and night, not eat, not drink. Papa, Papa, Papa. He was the only one you wanted. Even when you were born. You said Papa much before Ma. You waited for him to come from the office like a little dog.’

  I feel my forehead crinkling. Her eyes are bright and she seems sure. ‘I don’t remember doing that.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. She nods wildly and laughs. ‘You used to make me feel like shit.’

  My father hugs me by putting his arm around my shoulder and bumping the side of my body against the side of his. He takes the baby from my arms without asking, without washing the outside world off his hands. His knuckles are dark and hairy against her pale face. The mirrors in our living room show me the back of my father’s head. He has combed the thin hairs down to cover their scarcity. The new wife stands back, watching, hugging her son with one arm. She has a smile on her face that is worn too tightly.

  My mother-in-law offers the new wife a cup of tea. They fall into conversation, and I wonder if they are both grateful for the appearance of another, possibly less liked, outsider. I shake my head a little to lift out of my stupor and give the maids orders to bring some food. My brain is still full of cotton wool since the birth.

  My mother-in-law dashes around efficiently. She has become lady of the house.

  She has suggested on multiple occasions that Dilip start applying for positions in America. ‘Somewhere closer to home,’ she says. They bring this topic up when they think I am sleeping or out of hearing range. They do not realize that I have the ears of an owl now, that my aural reach can pick up the movement of my daughter’s breath across the city. This is what it means to be a mother. My claws are ready. I am always hunting.

  I ease into the sofa while everyone else still stands. My buttocks spread against the leather cushion. I glimpse myself in the mirror before looking away. The swelling on my jowls is still visible. The skin is dark around my neck. Stripes of scalp show through my thinning hair.

  My father’s son sits down across from me. We smile at each other without showing teeth. In the mirror, I see that his hair is long and curly and he has tied it into a ponytail. It reminds me of what mine used to be.

  ‘Are you still painting?’ he asks.

  I don’t correct him. ‘I’ve stopped for the moment.’

  The new wife laughs and she melts down beside her son. Together, they fit on a single chair. ‘With children, there is less time for hobbies.’ Her gums recede further as her smile expands. I don’t correct her either. She touches her son’s hair, as though she knew I was looking at it. ‘Children today have their own style,’ she says.

  Dilip pours my father a peg of eighteen-year-old Scotch he brought back from a work trip. My father gives Anikka back to me and puts his nose into the glass. Dilip is jovial. Father is at ease.

  My mother-in-law brings a tray of tea out of the kitchen and the air takes on the smell of hot oil. Samosas and pakoras sizzle inside.

  The doorbell rings and we all jump. The baby squirms against me, rubs her face on my cotton T-shirt. She can smell the milk that has dried there, her own vomit too, the smells that even laundry detergent cannot wash away. I always smell like milk now. Like milk, shit and vomit. I can never shower it off.

  Nani enters but lingers by the door. She looks at everyone’s feet and stoops to remove her shoes. They have buckles at the back and she bends down to undo them, her weight tilting to one side and the other, her balance feeble. She reaches out for Dilip to take her hand while she struggles with the last strap.

  ‘Oh, Nani,’ Dilip says belatedly. ‘That’s okay, you don’t have to take them off.’

  She pats his face, then looks at my father, her gaze grazing below his ankles before she turns away. There is something regal in her disdain of my father’s feet, still in shoes. She nods to my half-brother and the new wife, and brings her hands up in greeting to my mother-in-law. On me and Anikka, she releases the full force of her affection and smiles. As she comes towards me, I realize I look more like her than I do Ma. My ankles and wrists have expanded and haven’t gone back to what they were before. I am an old woman before my time.

  Fried food is placed on the table. Plates and napkins are passed around. Dollops of chutney – green, garlic, coconut, tamarind – colour the rim of everyone’s dish.

  Nani opens a box of sweets she has brought from the store. She helps herself to a taste before offering it around. Her eyes roll back in ghee-filled glee. She passes the box to my mother-in-law.

  There are too many people in the room. I tell Ila to open the windows.

  ‘Good to meet you,’ my mother-in-law says to my father. She holds the box out to him and he breaks a trapezoid sweet with one hand. ‘We didn’t know Antara had a father at first, so we are happy to know you.’

  The room is silent. Dilip avoids my eyes and his mother’s. The new wife looks perplexed for a moment but recovers when the box is offered to her. She takes the rest of the triangle her husband mutilated and offers it to her son. He has a bite of pakora in his mouth and turns his face away.
She holds her hand there, waiting for him to accept the taste of sweet.

  Everyone is smiling and quiet. The baby makes a sound and the adults all sigh and laugh and look at me, relieved that she has woken up. They begin talking softly among themselves, Dilip and my father to my mother-in-law. The new wife to her son.

  The gathering is mostly a success. They all are enjoying themselves. Or they are pretending to. They all have reasons to pretend. The new wife and her son are pretending for my father. My father is pretending for himself, and perhaps even for Anikka and me. Dilip has the same interests, and his mother pretends for him. Nani will not pretend. She has left the room, perhaps to check on her daughter. She is not interested in being polite to anyone.

  I have not had to pretend, at least not yet. I am still, almost invisible in the room. The only reason they look at me is to glance at the baby.

  I feel like I am not here.

  Dilip says something and my father chuckles, his shoulders moving up and down. I wonder how long they can continue this act. How long will it take for them to grow tired, for the masks to fall away so the true essence of their feelings can show through? Though if they repeat it long enough, if the act is internalized – would it be an act any more? Can a performance of pleasure, even love, turn into a true experience if one becomes fluent enough in it? When does the performance become reality?

  The doorbell rings again. We are not expecting anyone else. My mouth drops open a little as Purvi and her husband walk in. He is carrying a bag of toys. From the few I can see peeking out of the bag, they are too big, too dangerous for Anikka.

  Purvi’s husband stops when he sees my father and they embrace in a hug. They know each other from the Club, my father says. Purvi sits down next to my father’s new wife. They are on the same bridge team, Purvi explains.

  Dilip comes to where I am on the sofa. He takes Anikka out of my arms.