Yes, all of these, but also a familiar weariness, heated now to searing point. Each of Paati's words is a red-hot, almost last straw on Uma's young and straight back, each one a stab to her eardrums. Hotter and hotter Uma gets with each of those words, sweat-above-the-lips hot, sweat-on-the-neck hot, sweat-on-the-brow hot, yet she stands perfectly still, that tumbler in her left hand. What Aasha cannot see: the warring currents that move over the darkness of Uma's face. Old loyalties colliding with recent disappointments. The vapor of betrayal, the clammy mist of revenge. Uma's lower lip trembles. Her molars grind like millstones; a sudden grief floods her eyes. You can fool everyone else, she thinks, but you can't fool me. Her javelin thoughts only ricochet off the elephant skin of Paati's back, but she persists: You purposely went blind and deaf just so that you didn't have to know anything. And they think I'm the actress. Now you say I'm useless, we're all useless except your precious son. You just wanted whatever you could get out of me, you used me for your own games just like everyone else, every single one of them, every single one, all of you, all of you, all of you...
What follows is a dark and furious blur, a thunderstorm seen and heard through a windowpane: the glass of water shattering on the floor, arms everywhere—Uma's brown arm frantic and clumsy as a bird that had flown in through the window and couldn't get out, knocking into things, taking fright, and Paati's short, loose-skinned arms flailing—and gasps (but who gasped first? Paati or Uma? Or did Aasha merely hear herself gasp?), and Paati teetering this way and that like a collapsing high-rise, hands grasping uselessly at the edge of the tub—then, oh thank God thank God, grabbing the water pipe with both hands as she pitches forward. Just in time! Safe after all!
Uma says something then, but her words are so choked that Aasha's still trying to make sense of them when she turns and runs out of the bathroom, her hands clutching her skirt, her lips are pressed tightly together. The corner of her mouth twitches once as she disappears in the direction of the stairs.
Ask your son to bring you your water, then, if he's so wonderful. That's what Uma said. Aasha hears it now, as though Uma tossed the words at her when she passed.
The instant Uma's door slams shut upstairs, Paati's feet slide out from underneath her. Perhaps she was dizzy from the drama of her close shave, or perhaps she thought she could make her way back to the edge of the tub and misjudged the distance. Aasha's considered (but horrified) opinion is that a malevolent ghost pounced on Paati's unexpected moment of weakness and kicked in her knees.
"Ah! Aaah!" Paati flutes, eerily quiet. Hanging on to the water pipe for those few final moments, she looks like a wrinkled Tarzan remembering how to swing from vines.
The sound of her head hitting the pipe travels all the way up it, to where an already traumatized spider on the ceiling decides to scurry into a tiny hole in the plaster. There's blood on the pipe, and on the floor, trickling across the tiles and into the drain. Paati's curled toes uncurl. Her seaweed hair spreads out on the tiles, as nasty and out of place as any clumps of hair on any wet bathroom floor, needing urgently to be hosed down the drain hole, except that among these particular clumps is a head. Aasha cannot see Paati's face, but from the low, clogged-sink gurgle that comes out of her for a full ten seconds, she knows what that face looks like. The eyelids frozen open, the wide cataracted eyes, the loose lips, the dark pink tunnel of throat.
Outside, the rain clouds gather fast and thick. A sudden shadow, typical at this time of the afternoon, engulfs the bathroom, but today it seems anything but typical: the beads of sunlight on the water in the tank, the golden stippling of the floor tiles, the beams that dance up and down the walls, all seem to have been swallowed in a single gulp by something enormous and pitiless.
The bony heap of Paati on the floor isn't moving.
One step, two steps, three steps, and Aasha is standing over that heap. Paati's eyes are open just as wide as Aasha imagined them, but her mouth isn't. It's closed crooked, the lips and jaw askew like a Tupperware with the wrong lid on. All her loose skin hangs limp. The left side of her face lies flat as an appam against the tiles as if there were no bones in it. A patch of hair just above her forehead is matted dark brown, and there, yes, there's the blood streaming down her forehead onto the tiles, not as thin a stream as it looked from all the way down the corridor, a dark little river emptying soundlessly into the drain. There's the blood on the pipe, three fat drops. There's the single flower-shaped splatter on the wall, already thickening. And there, above Aasha's head, is the hole in the plaster where that spider waits, just as terrified as she is.
Lucky Uma, to have escaped in time. She won't have to contemplate this tableau, or dream about it later.
Aasha backs away from Paati, out through the door and to the safety of her wall and, just the way she traveled up the corridor, slides and shuffles all the way back down again, flat against that wall. Like a lizard slithering lightning quick into a crack, she slips once more behind the green settee, and there, in the privacy of her hideout, she shuts her eyes and opens them, shuts and opens them over and over to end this terrible dream. Any minute now, surely, she will open her eyes to find Suresh standing by her bed and shaking her, muttering, "Eh, wake up, stooopid!" But the seconds march on and there is no Suresh, only the dusty back of the green settee. Between this waking dream and the real world to which Aasha aches to return there's a gap that's widening steadily. First just a hairline crack, then a foot wide, now as wide as the monsoon drain outside the Big House. On the far side of the gap Uma still stands behind Paati in a sunlit bathroom, waiting to tap Paati on the shoulder and hand her a tumbler of water. But on this side there's a small brown heap on the bathroom floor, cobweb shadows dappling the sunlight on its haunches.
The teaspoon alarm rings through the house again before Chellam's footsteps approach. Round the corner she comes, her skirt sopping wet from her impromptu laundry session, her feet dragging more than ever from the weight of all that water. Up, up, up the corridor. Into the bathroom.
There's a long, slow drawing in of breath as Chellam refuses to believe what her eyes are telling her. Her eyes lie to her all the time, after all, and this could be nothing more than a—there could be some other explanation—she should look more closely, she shouldn't panic—and then Chellam screams. It's the loudest sound Chellam has ever made, and for a minute Aasha cannot believe it comes from her. It's Paati! she thinks. Paati woke up and now she's screaming from the fright! Then she sees Chellam sink to a squat and lean her head against the high wall of the tub.
Footsteps down the stairs. Amma, her caftan streaming like flames behind her, comes running into the bathroom.
"Chellam! O, my God, O Sami O Govinda O Rama Rama Rama, Chellam! I told you, isn't it, not to leave her alone for so long? Didn't I tell you? Now look what has happened! She must have got so tired she fainted and hit her head nicely—oh my God, my God. Did you want this sin on your head, of all things?"
Chellam, as is her habit, says nothing.
AT ONE-THIRTY Dr. Kurian is summoned for the last time to the Big House on Kingfisher Lane. Paati has been towel-dried, laid out on a cot Appa hauled down from the storeroom upstairs and set up in front of the green settee, and covered with a fresh bedsheet. Coated, goateed, bow-tied, tongue-tied, seven grey hairs tufting mournfully from his otherwise-denuded pate, Dr. Kurian whispers his not-quite-questions into the oppressive afternoon air:
"Lot of marks on her legs, hmm."
"Could be she's fallen down before, maybe..."
"All these small-small bruises everywhere..."
"That's a very big red patch on her back, no ... Looks like a recent thing. Could be she hit her back also as she fell, not just her head. Yes. Yes?"
The family gathers close around him. Appa in his bestquality courthouse trousers (he's supposed to be righting the wrongful death of ten-year-old Angela Lim; instead, here he is, called away during a courtroom break to witness the aftermath of a death far less sensational). Amma in a caftan whose
edges are still wet from the bloodied bathroom floor. Chellam two feet behind Amma. Suresh and Aasha pressed up against the wall by Paati's feet. Uma alone has stayed away: she's upstairs, sitting ramrod-straight on the edge of her neatly made bed. Dead! she thinks. Did she faint from the shock? A heart attack? Doesn't matter. Not my problem. She shuts her eyes, rubs a hand over her hot face, pictures herself standing in the bathroom. Glass in hand, Paati's leathery old back before her, yes, there she is, and then the moment of—what to call it? Madness? But when I left her she was fine. She was already gearing up to shout more nonsense.
Aasha deduces through careful observation of the five other faces downstairs that no one else is wondering where Uma is. Dr. Kurian, avoiding all eyes, would be happier with an even smaller audience; Appa's shaking his head at Paati for her bad timing; Chellam's staring at her feet and rubbing her nose with an index finger; Suresh is studying the cotton wool in Paati's nostrils.
It wasn't Uma's fault, Aasha thinks. If Uma hadn't been so sad and angry—
And why was Uma so sad and angry? Whose fault was that?
The answer hurts Aasha's chest like too much cold water swallowed at once: my fault. She counts her mistakes from start to finish. Finish was just last month. Finish was the sapphire pendant incident. All these mistakes, all her fault; it follows, therefore, that it's her responsibility to set things right.
Amma's frowning and leaning towards Dr. Kurian as if she's about to grab his arm to tell him a secret. She blurts out answers he doesn't seem to want, and his watery eyes bulge slightly as he swallows each sticky glob of words: "Yes, Doctor, could be that. You know how these old people are, always knocking themselves here and there. Yes yes, she fell in the middle of her bath only, you see, she had nothing on, if she hit her back sure it would've made a mark like that on the skin."
Amma never talks so much to any of them, all those curtsying words, such a shameless please-please-thankyou-thankyou behind each one. Aasha wishes she would shut up.
With two fat fingers Dr. Kurian rubs at a spot on his neck just above his bow tie. "But," he says, then stops to clear his throat before starting again, "but you see, the way she fell ... If she simply got tired and fainted ... I mean to say, falling forward so very far, to hit her head on that pipe, it's not, you know ... It's quite an odd angle ... And the mark on her back..."
It occurs to various members of the assembled family that the good doctor will go on like this, muttering and mumbling things no one, least of all he himself, wants to hear, refusing to spare himself any embarrassment or inconvenience, poking and prodding and sniffing about until someone is horribly and irreversibly hurt or something is unexpectedly broken beyond repair. What can they do? How can they shut him up and send him on his way? The problem pirouettes in each of their heads in turn, showing off its skirts, and Appa opens his mouth and draws in his breath to say something—but what? Even as he licks his lips, he doesn't know.
If Dr. Kurian digs up the truth, what will happen to Uma?
Probably she won't be able to go to America. She'll be in so much trouble she'll have to stay here, no scholarship no university no New York. For ever and ever, until she's an old woman, she'll wish she were far away. Isn't wishing just the same as doing? If Uma wants to go away and never come back, isn't she already gone?
The opposite is equally true: if Aasha keeps Uma's secret safe so that she can go to America, Uma will always be thankful. She'll never forget, and who knows, who knows, she might even be so very thankful...
Overwhelmed with the possibilities, Aasha fixes Dr. Kurian with her unforgiving eyes, dips her chin, and steps forward to say her opening line:
"Chellamservant pushed Paati."
She doesn't turn to look at Chellam as she hisses the s of servant, nor after, in the perfect silence that ensues. She doesn't need to; she needs no external validation of this moment of triumph, in which, with three steel-bright words, she has (1) punished Chellam (for Leading Us On, for Pretending to Love Us like siblings in hopes of a salary and then withdrawing her fakery when we could not pay her price), and (2) saved Uma. Uma! O Uma-alone-upstairs, O dearest darlingest Uma, do you hear your sister through the ceiling and the floorboards? Do you hear how brave she is, how she has finally atoned—or so she believes—for all her past sins, for wanting too much and giving too little, for frantic inventions and fumbling plots? Say it, say it: now you will not fly away to America even though you're free to do so, because at last you see how ardently you're loved, because your sister has risked so very much for your safety, which she has won. Not fairly or squarely, but luckily for you. Everything will be all right now. You and she will make your sins up to each other one by one, plenty of time, you see, all the time in the world. A whole happily-ever-after stretches before the two of you. She strains to hear you think it...
...but Dr. Kurian, pesky as ever, drowns out your thoughts with further questions:
"Yes baby? You saw her push your Paati?"
"Yes. I saw her."
"Tell me, baby, tell me what you saw."
Aasha swallows and replays the whole scene inside her head. It's stunningly clear now, no longer a blur but a copiously detailed story someone invented for shivers and goosebumps, just like the many fabulations in which Aasha has watched Uma perform better-rehearsed roles on a red-curtained stage. When the scene reaches its end—the fall to end all falls, the cracking the bleeding the goodbye-I'm-going—Aasha starts over from the beginning, making the necessary changes with surgical precision, no sadness, no regret for the moment:
"Paati was standing there in the bathroom and shouting-shouting because Chellam left her there all alone. When Chellam came back—when she came back Paati shouted at her some more, and suddenly Chellam angry and did like this." Aasha lifts her arm and shoves at the air in front of her, pouting as though at an imaginary playground foe. All around her there are stirrings and sniffs, Am-ma's tsk-tsking, Appa's headshaking, Chellam's deafening silence, but Aasha must soldier on: "Just to show her anger only. She didn't do it to make Paati fall. At first Paati didn't fall also. She caught the pipe and held on. And then"—now that she's begun, Aasha feels a certain obligation to the details—"and then she said—she said—I think she said, 'Now shout and see lah, shout some more!' Something like that. And then, at the last minute, there was like a—suddenly Paati just fell like that and hit her head, even though Chellam didn't push her again. As if—I mean just like that she fell. And she screamed and started to cry. I mean, Chellamservant screamed. And started to cry."
When she's done, she turns to Suresh, for reasons she herself doesn't understand. Her final, emphatic Chellamservant hangs between them like a lightbulb she's stood on tiptoe to switch on all by herself. Their rule has always been to call Chellam that name only behind their mother's back (and then only when she truly deserves it), for neither one of them has ever had any doubts, shared or private, about what they'd get if Amma found out: mouthslaps, thighpinches, lectures for the public good. But today Amma's stunned, sedated face—a slab of black stone, that face is, a block of nothingness—indicates that Aasha will get away without a mouthslap. That Chellam deserves the slur there is no question, in either of their minds.
Suresh is impressed and gratified by this small revenge Aasha has extracted, yes, but he is also—what? What is it that Aasha reads in his slight frown? A warning? A note of fear clouding his new respect? No: a promise of solidarity. Suresh knows she's lying. But how?
It doesn't matter. It's not important. The only thing that matters is his promise not to tell. Thank you, Suresh, thank you thank you thank you for keeping our secret.
You're welcome, says Suresh, his silent reply as clear to Aasha as a news reader's good night.
They have no time for anything more than this now, for already Chellam has turned around and left the room, and Dr. Kurian is patting Aasha's head, sighing, assuring her she's a good girl to tell the truth. Scarcely have the words tumbled off his tongue when he turns to sign the death cer
tificate, laid out on Paati's bedside table, with a hand that shakes to the same rhythm as his wattles. He sighs again and closes his eyes briefly. "I'll write 'accidental death from a fall,'" he says when he opens them. He's old, almost as old as the woman whose death he's come to certify; he's tired; at his age he should (he reasons with himself) be allowed the small mercy of a lie of omission. "After all it's not far from the truth," he says for the benefit of his audience. "I'm sure the girl didn't mean to kill her. These servants, sometimes they let their impatience get out of hand you know? And old people, you know how fragile they are."
No one corroborates or contradicts his hypothesis about what Chellam did or didn't mean. "I'm writing 'accidental death,'" he says again. "You all can do what you want from there."
At five past two, Dr. Kurian shuffles out of the Big House in his shiny shoes, to disappear forever into his lost world in which muttonchop whiskers and pinstriped trousers are still fashionable, decent men dance around difficult questions, and children trail clouds of glory and golden innocence.
When Appa has shut the front door behind Dr. Kurian, he sends Suresh to fetch Chellam back from her room.
"She's her father's problem now," Appa says to Amma's feet while they wait. "He can decide what to do with her. I'll get in touch with the bugger and tell him to come and remove her from our house at once. You all hear me or not?" He looks around the room challengingly, as if one or the other of them might secretly disagree with this course of action.
The only person who voices her objection merely thinks he's being too lenient. "Her father?" Amma says. "We should call the police! She should be handcuffed and thrown into the lockup!"
"Yes," says Appa, "that would be nice, and in the best of all possible worlds that is what would happen. But our only witness is a six-year-old. If we try to build a case on that, Aasha will spend weeks being questioned in court. And even then we might not get what we want. Better to let her family deal with her. I suspect her father's punishments will be as good as anything the lockup can offer."
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