Yet what truly torments Amma is that faint, flickering half-smile with which Uma charms men (any men: her own uncle, bus drivers, Mat Din, the roti man on his afternoon rounds); that dip-and-bob with which she gathered Gerald Capel's pink roses from his outstretched arms; the way she says hi—never hello—deep in her throat to the boys who telephone under the pretext of confirming rehearsal times or bus routes. In all of these graces billows something flimsier than an invitation but more substantial than a dream. That Uma, who knows so little about the end goal of her own flirtations, should nevertheless be leaning eagerly towards this goal—that she should be driven so blindly by base instincts—is unbearable to her mother. Unbearably stupid, unbearably off-putting: watching Uma fills her mouth with an actual fishy taste, cold and soft as the flesh of a spoiling cockle.
Only rarely is it also unbearably sad. When was the last time she felt protective of Uma? Not since Uma needed her. Not since Uma was a small child, before she began to read fat books and recite poetry and flaunt her genius. "I'm cleverer than my Amma," she'd announced to the Ladies one day, and though Amma knew then that Paati had fed her this poisonous idea, it had made no difference; Uma was forever addicted to its sweet aftertaste. How can you feel protective of a child who yawns with boredom in your company, who rolls her eyes at you at six and mocks your lifestyle at ten? Your tea parties and jumble sales, she'd say, and for all she had Amma's bones and coloring, how much she looked like her father in those moments! Your charitable endeavors.
If you're so much cleverer than me, Amma can't help thinking now, we'll see what sort of cards fate hands you. We'll see what fairy-tale life is waiting for you and your men. The part of her that wants to see Uma slowly destroyed by an endless string of disappointments is not, in truth, so small. Why should I feel sorry for her when she doesn't feel sorry for me? It could be the family motto, this question, something to emblazon on their coat of arms, except that not one of them has noticed how often the others ask it.
Of course Amma's tide of distaste has had its brief turnings. Two years ago, when the old Uma began to fade, leaving in her place a distracted, nail-biting hummer with hooded eyes, Amma did feel a twinge. What happened, Uma? What's wrong? But she could not bring herself to speak these questions—no, she and Uma would never talk like that, it was inconceivable—and soon they were submerged by rhetorical ones. I thought you were so strong and happy, I thought you didn't need anybody but your grandmother and your father, now what happened?
The sharpest twinge of all, an old agony that Amma still struggles to smother, predates Uma's transformation. To quell the guilt that thins her saliva like tears at the memory, Amma must, even now, lie down and close her eyes, and still a certain homemade play performed on a Saturday afternoon in 1978 will not leave her alone. The play had followed a long period—two weeks? three weeks?—during which Appa had come home perhaps twice, and then unseen in the night, leaving in the morning without speaking a word to any of them.
"Can't you shut up?" Amma had said one day when Suresh had made a joke at the tea table after she and the children had sat in silence—the children blowing on their hot drinks, munching their biscuits, arranging their crumbs into neat piles; she staring at the wall behind Uma's head—for twenty minutes. Suresh! The only one who'd been sure enough of his place in the world to speak at all on those long afternoons, and that was what she'd said to him. "I'm sick of your voice," she'd spat into her teacup. "Why don't you tell your jokes to your Appa?" But when she'd looked up, she'd caught Uma's eyes, not Suresh's.
One week later, the children performed their play in the sitting-room. They'd rehearsed every day that week; they'd made the programs, the tickets, everything, all under Uma's expert supervision, for she was already the drama club star. "You have to dress up nicely to come," Aasha had informed them. "Going to a play means must dress up nicely, isn't it?" Grudgingly they'd obliged. Appa had read the newspaper downstairs while Amma got dressed, and when she came downstairs he'd gone up to put on a long-sleeved shirt and tie. She knew he did this to be decent, to save them both the embarrassment of having to enthuse about their dear little ones like normal parents, for it had been weeks since Appa had spent a night at home, and months since they'd had dinner as a family. For them to have to pretend to one another would've been odious; bad enough that they had to sit next to each other on the flowered settee in the sitting room, in special reserved seats Uma had adorned with tissue-paper streamers.
The purpose of the play became painfully clear as it progressed. Its title was Clara Finds a Family; it told the simple (though slightly absurd) tale of Little Orphan Clara's search for suitable parents. Having placed a classified advertisement in a local newspaper, Clara sat under a tree in front of the town hall auditioning potential candidates, all based on characters in Uma's favorite books. Aasha played Clara at her own insistence, although many of the lines were so long for her that Suresh had to do a voice-over from behind the curtains (an area known as The Wings for the duration of that afternoon). The first candidate was the Duchess from Alice in Wonderland (accompanied by a shriveled Duke all Uma's own), rejected for her predilection for corporal punishment; then Little Nell's grandfather (unacceptable for his history of bad financial decisions); then the bereft Mayor of Casterbridge ("Just because you sold your own family," Clara scolds him, "doesn't mean you can have me"). The next candidates hit closer to home. An aristocratic English couple, distinctly Wodehousian in diction, were curtly informed, "All you know, sir, is your club, and you, ma'am, care only for tea parties and fine hats." Little Lord Fauntleroy's mother fared better—Clara took an immediate shine to her kind eyes—but at the last moment Clara shook her head sadly and said, "No, you're so sad all the time you'll never pay attention to me."
Bolt upright in her seat, feeling Appa shift beside her and cross and recross his legs, Amma hated Uma intensely in that moment, this too-clever daughter of hers who didn't know or didn't care what injuries her rapier inflicted on soft flesh—and then, in a second, as though some precipitating chemical had been added to the beaker, a terrible grief clouded that hatred. She couldn't sit through this play, she couldn't, but she must, or they would all know what she was feeling, she must—
And she did. There was one more pair of candidates, a farmer and his wife. They had no title, no country estate, no great ambitions, but they were simple and kind and good. They had nothing to offer Clara but a straw mattress, a bedtime story every night, and one patched dress that had once belonged to the farmer's wife. "Yes," Clara said—and this line Aasha did not forget or mangle—"yes, of course I'll go home with you!"
The play closed to resounding applause and a standing ovation (if an audience of two can constitute an ovation). There were shoulder-thumps for Suresh and friendly tuggings of Uma's plaits; then everyone sat down together and feasted on a tea party Lourdesmary had been commissioned to prepare for the occasion. But after all the same questions had been asked twice each—How long did it take you to think of all this, Uma? Suresh, how much time did you spend making those programs? Aasha, where did you learn to act like that?—they settled back to drink their tea and Milo and think their own thoughts.
Poor things, Amma thought then, poor things!
She was entirely correct: the children wrote and performed that play with the sole aim of shaming their parents into better behavior. They'd concluded, after her tea-table savagery, that it was up to them to try to fix all that was wrong in the world; a little initiative might work wonders. "Anyway," said Suresh, always the realistic one, "even if they don't realize what it's about, they'll still have to sit side by side and watch it. Then we'll say, See, we did make Appa sit and listen to our jokes! And after that we'll all have tea together. They'll remember it for a while. Appa will feel bad because we put so much work into it and he'll come home nicely for a few days, and that'll make Amma happy. Isn't it?"
Indeed, Appa stayed home the night after the play, but he went into his study and shut the door. And because th
ey'd had all those curry puffs and cakes for tea, no one had dinner.
Uma remembers that afternoon just as clearly as Amma does. On her opening or closing nights onstage, she sees her parents in their front-row family-and-VIP-only seats and is immediately assailed by the image of them all dolled up in their sitting room. For on that day Uma and Aasha and Suresh watched an entirely different play, not just Clara Finds a Family from a different angle. This play-outside-a-play starred Amma and Appa, and demanded so much attention from Aasha that the poor child remembered almost none of the lines they'd worked so hard to drill into her. The children watched it from the corner of their eyes, and whenever they had to turn away, their skin burned with such fierce longing that new eyes burst open on their necks and backs, unblinking, begging, Please like this, please. It's the best we can do. After this we can do no more. But Appa and Amma could never invest themselves as fully in Clara Finds a Family as the children did in that other play: every hohoho, every tinkling laugh, every discomfited drawing in of breath or half second of fidgeting reminded them of the risks of their endeavor. Appa and Amma could fail to grasp their message, or worse yet, could secretly hate both message and messengers.
"Did they laugh?" Suresh asked that night after Amma and Appa had gone to bed.
"Did they cry?" Aasha asked. "Did it make them sad?"
"Ish, I don't know," Uma said, feigning impatience. "Everyone had a good time and now it's over. I don't know who laughed and who cried and who saw what."
But she did know, and these days she has much occasion to resurrect that corner-of-the-eye view of Amma's mercurial feelings that afternoon. First the anger—the way Amma had leaned forward an almost imperceptible inch, then leaned back to sit as still and straight as a telephone pole—and then the sorrow splashed across her face. The trembling chin, the downturned mouth. You were sorry then, Uma thinks. You were sorry you'd been so rotten to us. Have you forgotten? Or did you only decide you had to be even more rotten because we'd made you feel bad?
There are no answers but Amma's endless provocations, delivered with curled lip and flared nostrils, acidified tenfold since the closing night of The Three Sisters:
You know what you looked like when you took that boy's flowers? You think you looked like some fine lady, is it? Is that why you keep looking at the photo? Like a cheap floor dancer you looked. Like a—I won't say it, no need for your brother and sister to hear that word. I know and you know, that's enough.
Any man will do, isn't it? Any man looks at you and you're in heaven. With your own uncle also you were like this, what. We all could see what was coming. Now one pigeon-toed schoolboy looks at you with stars in his eyes and wah, you think you're Sophia Loren.
Suresh wishes Amma would shut up and mind her own business. Aasha wishes the same thing, in less vehement words. Because even though Uma rarely seems to hear Amma—and when she does, only smiles faintly and continues humming to herself—neither Suresh nor Aasha can shake their dread.
No no, Suresh reasons with himself, we're just jumpy because bad things have been happening, so it seems like more bad things must be coming. It's not really true. Uma has a shell so hard nothing can crack it, so thick-walled and shiny no one can see anything in it except themselves. It reflects Amma's schoolgirl petulance right back at her and leaves her feeling so foolish that soon, surely, she will surrender.
Then one day Uma does lift her head from her proof-copy photo of the curtain call (Gerald Capel offering up his flowers as if to a goddess, Uma's bosom shining like the promised land above the stage lights). She looks straight at Amma, who has just said, "I suppose if that kind of attention is the only way you have to make yourself feel good, then why not?"
"At least," Uma says, "I have a way to make myself feel good."
That is the day on which Amma announces her intention to host the next tea party.
Every day since then, the infernal tea party has crept closer.
Friday.
Saturday.
Sunday.
Vellamma spreads the Irish linen tablecloth, and a darkness falls over the house like a blanket of smoke. They can hardly breathe.
Amma's in her room doing her makeup when Chellam summons her from the foot of the stairs: "Maddam! Maddam! Paati calling!"
Amma comes out to the doorway of her room and stands there, the stairs making accordion pleats in her long shadow. Leaning on the banister, Chellam repeats her message:
"Paati calling, Maddam." Her voice droops with tears. The skin on her thin calves is dry and white-scaled.
"Ask her to take her medicine. Put some Tiger Balm on a handkerchief and give it to her."
But Chellam says she's already done all those things. Medicine, Tiger Balm, hot coffee. Paati just wants Maddam, that's all.
"Vasanthi! Vasanthi!" Amma can now hear Paati's hoarse shouting. Her voice rises high and then cracks hopelessly on each call, like the battle cry of a geriatric rooster.
Down the stairs a half-made-up Amma glides, her shadow slithering before her, molding itself to each stair. Across the sitting room, through the dining room, down the long corridor, the sleeves of her caftan filling like the sails of some long-ago merchant ship on a doomed voyage. They all feel her pass: Aasha, who stands just behind Chellam; Suresh, who's reading an Archie comic in the dining room; Uma, who is in the kitchen stocking up on provisions so that she doesn't have to leave her room during the tea party.
"I'm here," Amma says to Paati very softly. To Chellam she says, "Okay, go now. Go." And Chellam goes, glad to be released, entertaining delicious visions of Paati choking on her coffee that set the lump in her jaw throbbing like a war drum. In the back yard, she picks up a broom and sweeps the cement desultorily. Aasha climbs the stairs and sits on the landing.
"What now?" Amma says to Paati. "What do you want?"
"That stupid girl," Paati says. "I just wanted ... Aiyo! Amma! Enna? What did I do?" A high whimper trails out from Paati's corner into the children's ears. A metal clatter cuts through that misty sound like thunder.
Chellam drops her broom in the dust.
Aasha hunches her shoulders up to her ears and pulls her neck in like a turtle. Beetle-browed, she begins to count the ancestors in the last row of Paati's wedding photograph. Some are tricky, because they're mostly hidden by the people in the row in front of them. Do they count as halves, then, or quarters?
In her rattan chair, Paati bawls like a small girl lost in a crowd.
Uma shuts three kitchen cabinets one after the other and makes her way back to her room, carrying a small bowl of cold sardine filling, a tin of Jacob's Cream Crackers, two small boxes of chrysanthemum tea, and (in her teeth) a packet of cheese. Out of the corner of her eye, Aasha sees Uma's legs pause on the landing. Slowly, Aasha's eyes travel up those legs, but just as they reach Uma's face it slams shut like one of Tata's old screen doors. A great rush of air as it slams, a bang at the end that makes Aasha jump. A locking and a bolting, and Uma's gone behind that face.
In Paati's corner her eversilver kovalai lies on the floor in a pool of coffee. Paati's wiping her tears with both hands at once, flat palms rasping the skin of her face like sandpaper. In trouble now. Shame shame.
"Chellam!" Amma calls. "Please come in and clean up this mess. Paati has spilled coffee all over the floor. I have to go and get dressed."
Chellam hurries back in to clean up the mess they've made, her Japanese slippers leaving light prints in the backyard dust.
Amma sweeps back up the stairs and into her room.
Suresh slips out to the corner shop.
Aasha climbs the remaining stairs very slowly, reluctantly, arranging both feet neatly side by side on each stair before moving on to the next.
Uma's door is locked, of course.
But Amma's is wide open.
Before her full-length mirror, Amma has slipped out of her caftan and into her silk petticoat. Now she fastens the hooks of her gold-threaded saree blouse from bottom to top: thief, beggar man, poor m
an, rich man. Always rich man: all her saree blouses have four hooks. She contemplates her reflection and fingers the teeth of her comb. Sunlight glances off her mirror straight into her eyes, half blinding her. She squints, blinks, looks down at the comb in her hands.
Her blue Benares saree waits on the bed; her accessories are laid out on her dressing table. The gold mother-of-pearl peacock pin for her shoulder. The earrings and bracelet of Rangoon diamonds. And on its long, long chain, a thousand facets in its teardrop body, the Burmese sapphire pendant.
The pendant once belonged to Amma's mother, in the days when she attended weddings and other worldly celebrations and had therefore taken pains not to look like a nobody. Just before Amma's wedding, her mother did not, as other mothers did, make an occasion of presenting her with the jewelry that would now be hers until she passed it on to her own eldest daughter. It was Amma's father who unlocked the jewelry safe, not out of any eagerness to give away the riches of his household, but because people would talk if his daughter went to her husband's house with nothing. "Aren't you going to give your daughter any of your jewelry?" he asked his wife, his voice failing to rise at the end of the question. "Take what you want," Amma-chi said. "All that is nothing to me."
Amma took only the sapphire pendant, because she had to take something; her father was waiting. Only one thing: this would pacify him, for all he wanted her to have was a nominal dowry. Too much and he would twitch and seethe. And then her two sisters would have to fight over what was left. She chose the pendant because once, long ago, when bright colors had been enough to delight her for hours—when a deep green bottle or a glass of ruby-red syrup had meant as much to her as this expensive object she now held in her hands—she had loved it. She no longer knew how to love things in that way.
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