Evening Is the Whole Day

by Preeta Samarasan

  Aasha loves the sapphire pendant with that same pure yearning, like thirst, though Amma does not know it; Aasha has given none but the smallest outward signs of her love. The pendant is like the inside of a snow globe, a whole world unto itself; holding it is like flying, or swimming, or drowning without fear. A magical drowning, a welcome falling towards an ocean bed of mermaid castles. One day Uma, lucky Uma, will wear this pendant around her neck before a two-sided oval mirror in America. Sometimes Aasha wishes the pendant were destined for her own bridal trousseau. If only—but she always stops herself there, because truly, in her heart of hearts, she wants Uma to have it.

  Aasha leans across Amma's bed and touches the pendant with the tips of four fingers, though she knows she shouldn't. In the mirror she sees that Amma is still studying the teeth of her comb. She picks up the pendant and watches it trap a sunbeam. Bright blades of blue slice through the room; blue butterflies flicker on the walls and climb up the white curtains. A single blue butterfly alights on Amma's face, blue wings draped across her cheek. Amma starts and turns.

  For a moment she bites her tongue. A cool wave fills her cheeks and hands. Don't, she thinks. Just look at her face. Aasha, stricken but tempted towards hope by this brief silence, holds her gaze.

  Amma knows the games she should play; she's seen other mothers play them; she's played them halfheartedly herself from time to time when Uma was a very little girl. But now when she remembers all that—the referring to herself in the third person—Amma feed Uma now, okay? Amma coming, Amma going upstairs—the nursery rhymes and hangman and paper dolls, the sweaty weight of small children in her arms—she feels as though she's been swimming underwater for too long, her lungs stretched till they're transparent, the blood vessels distorted like pictures on party balloons blown too full. One breath and she will drown. She remembers, too, the morning she woke up and reclaimed herself: I am tired, she said to herself then, hearing Aasha whining to be let out of her crib. I, I, I. Not Amma; Vasanthi. She relearned the contours of her name, touching its walls and beams and doorjambs in wonder, but how insufficient, in the end, that liberation has been! For here is this child grabbing at her life with its sticky fingers, a child that had crawled out of her only six years ago, transformed in eight difficult hours from an internal parasite to an external one. That innocent greed on her face, that's always the worst part.

  Amma turns her face towards her open window and half chokes on a lungful of heavy, floral air. Mat Din must be fussing with the rose bushes. I'm tired, she thinks again, and of their own volition these old words begin to spin, as words sometimes do between brain and tongue, until they are a cyclone, a blurry, burning, dusty trap. If only, if only she could escape, but instead she shuts her eyes tightly and hears herself say, "Go away and leave me alone, Aasha. I'm tired of you. I'm tired of all of you. Leave me in peace."

  Aasha drops the pendant on the mattress, turns around, and leaves. It's that easy.

  FOR NINETEEN YEARS the Ladies have circled around Amma, grateful to have been selected for membership in this, the most exclusive of rich-wife circles in Ipoh. The roster has seen few additions since its original drawing up; the Ladies are all married to toplawyers or topdoctors, all coiffed by the same hairdresser, all (except for Amma) genteelly devoted to ikebana, cake decorating, and volunteer work at the Home for Spastic Children. They have never drawn attention to the petering out of Amma's hobbies, or asked her what she does all week between tea parties these days, for though they cannot say exactly how she occupies herself, they nourish suspicions (and sometimes more) of her unhappy home life.

  Several times during the course of each Sunday afternoon, Amma is tempted to enlighten them. Without warning, in the middle of someone else's words or during a lull in the chatter, she finds the very muscles of her mouth forcing themselves apart against her will, forming an Oh or an Ah or an Eh, waiting to sneak a by-the-way past her, but she catches them at their tricks every time, and raises her cup to her parted lips, or hastily stuffs into her mouth whatever phrases she has pulled from the air to follow the escaped syllable. Oh—how are your renovations coming, Daisy? Ah—Jasbir, so nice of you to bring us all these jams from your U.K. trip. A close shave every time, and the unspoken confession lingers in her inner ear for the rest of the afternoon: By the way, Leela, Daisy, Jasbir, Dhanwati, Latifah, Rosie, Padmini, Hema, Shirley, by the way, here's what I did this week. I sat at my dining table watching for my husband's car on the street, for eight hours on Monday, six on Tuesday, eight again on Wednesday, nine on Thursday—what? What's that, you say? No, no, definitely not all that exciting. I don't have any hobbies at all, you see. But my husband does. And it's his extracurricular activities that feed my imagination as I sit at that table every day...

  For several years now, the Ladies have been hearing certain entrancing rumors about Appa. In fact, a small faction of the tea-party circle meets Outside, as they put it (which merely means one or the other of their sitting rooms during the week, in addition to the regular Sunday gatherings of the whole group), to discuss these rumors. They have admitted neither the clandestine nature of these meetings nor their purpose out loud to themselves, but each of them deeply, inarticulately, yet reverentially understands both nature and purpose.

  Their secret pity for Amma is a rich and oily delicacy; to conceal the unease in their bellies in front of Amma, they flatter her more frantically than ever. They enthuse over her clothes and her figure, her furniture, her china, the skills of her cook. But most of all, they dwell on what they believe to be her greatest comfort and source of pride: her children's genius, which they have charted assiduously for years. They know every milestone and each unreal feat: that Uma had read all of Dickens before she was out of her primary school pinafore; that Suresh beat children twice his age to win the overall gold medal in an international art competition when he was only eight; that little Aasha has memorized all of Uma's stage monologues just from listening at her door. (The discovery of this last achievement must be credited to the Ladies themselves: on her way to the bathroom to powder her nose one Sunday, Mrs. Surgeon Daisy Jeganathan overheard Aasha reciting Ophelia's "O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!" soliloquy under her breath on the staircase.) In the past few months they have needed the children's successes more than ever, for Amma's mood has darkened before their eyes. Oh, she hosts the tea parties as regularly as ever and goes through the expected motions, dressing up, putting her cook through her paces. But her veil is wearing out in patches, and she lets things slip: an unnecessary sneer here when someone inquires after her husband, a near snort there at Mrs. Dwivedi's commiserating sighs (Oh, these toplawyers are so busy, Vasanthi, so overworked, I know).

  What a blessing, what a sweet, ripe blessing it is to the Ladies that Uma's departure for an Ivy League university approaches fast and glorious! They talk of little else these days: everything from the weather (Just think how much colder it'll be in New York!) to the local treats served for tea (None of these Uma'll be able to get in New York, poor thing) proves an exquisite segue to Uma's full scholarship to Columbia University.

  Today the Ladies notice an unusual chill when they walk through the wide front doors of Vasanthi's sitting room. Outside, it's an ovenlike afternoon; Mrs. Rangaswamy, who has had to drive herself on account of her chauffeur's stomach flu, has scorched her hands on her steering wheel, and Mrs. Surgeon Daisy Jeganathan's beaded clutch purse is as hot as a live coal from sitting in a patch of sunlight during her ride to Kingfisher Lane. So whatever it is that strikes each of them separately cannot be a chill. Is it a sound, perhaps, a faint hum, a loose blade on one of the ceiling fans? Is it a smell, a cold, harsh smell like Dettol or carbolic soap? Something's amiss in the Big House, and it's tripped even Vasanthi up: when she greets them with her usual bittersweet smile, each one notices a feverish gleam in her eyes. She's applied her lipstick carelessly, given herself a deep crimson mouth a little larger than her own, as if her shaky hands made it impossible to color within the lines.
The Ladies' habitual flattery, already sweet on their tongues, melts and trickles down their throats in an instant. But as they stand fingering the tassels of their sarees, Mrs. Dwivedi's late arrival saves the day, and the game begins.

  "Had to drop my Rajesh off for his maths tuition class," Mrs. Dwivedi pants, wiping the sweat off her brow with an embroidered cotton handkerchief she's extracted from the crannies of her generous bosom. Her midriff spills out between her peach-colored saree and her saree blouse, like a cream doughnut some impatient child has pricked with a fork. "Sooo long he was taking to get ready, what to do, these children nowadays? Even for tuition class must get all suited and booted. Going to study or to meet girls, I wonder." This exordium has afforded her just enough time to pile her plate high with treats; now the other Ladies follow suit.

  "Yes," Datin Latifah offers, "our Hisham also giving us endless headache. Have to cancel our annual Paris trip next year, I think—exam year for him, you know? And he, I tell you, all the time playing the fool, football-crazy, hockey-crazy, anything but school-crazy, hai."

  "We parents have no rest," Mrs. Jeyaraj concurs with a sigh. "Everywhere the same story, I tell you, every mother I meet has the same complaints—except you of course, Vasanthi."

  "Really," Mrs. Surgeon Daisy Jeganathan says, "you don't know how lucky you are, Vasanthi. Your Uma, without opening her books also can get straight A's. Our children no need to dream of Columbia University also. By now Uma must be packing already, isn't it?"

  Amma's mouth is full. She chews and looks around the room, but none can decipher her expression.

  "Make sure she takes lots of warm clothes," Mrs. Rangaswamy says. "Even in September New York is like Antarctica already."

  "And better you fill up her suitcase with cream crackers and Maggi mee and that type of thing," says Mrs. Chua, "and one or two cases of Brand's Essence of Chicken. She's going into pre-med, isn't it? Where she'll have time to cook? Brand's Essence of Chicken is very good, just open and drink and you get all your nutrition."

  "Pre-med, yah, that's right!" Mrs. Bhardwaj says. "I almost forgot, man! It's like a fairy tale only. Pre-med in America, Ivy League some more—where our children can—"

  "Actually," says Amma, setting her plate down on her pressed-together knees, "my great daughter thinks she wants to be an actress."

  The Ladies twitter. Mrs. Surgeon Daisy Jeganathan throws her head back and grants this joke her late-night, bridge-party laugh, the laugh she generally saves for the tall tales of her husband's tipsy friends.

  Upstairs, a door shuts sharply—not a slam, certainly not a slam. Just a decisive closing. Footsteps, firm but not particularly hurried, head down the long corridor above the Ladies' heads. And then a second set of footsteps, less firm and more hurried.

  "Oh, didn't you all know?" Amma says in a voice to win an elocution contest. Resonant as a gong, each syllable diamond-hard, a voice that would make Uma's drama instructors proud. "You didn't know all this doctor-doctor farce is just to pacify us? You didn't know about my daughter's flashier plans?"

  Upstairs, Uma steps into the bathroom but leaves the door open a crack. Not once since she hid her voice away has she done this; she's always closed the door, even if only to wash her face or brush her teeth. From where she stands, Aasha can barely see her listening face before the mirror.

  "My daughter," Amma goes on in the sitting room, "thinks Hollywood is waiting for her with open arms. Because only one thing matters to girls nowadays. I'm sure you all know what that is, no? Well my wonderful Uma is no different. She'll be pursuing the most competitive degree of all. The M.R.S. Her main goal is to meet men, my dears. Here itself she has started; what more in America? Buying her warm clothes is one thing, Padmini. That all you don't worry, her father will buy whatever she needs. But getting her to keep her clothes on is another thing."

  The Ladies adjust their hair and look at their watches. Datin Latifah breaks the crimped edge off one of her curry puffs and nibbles it down to a nub.

  "Come now, Vasanthi," Mrs. Dwivedi is saying, but Amma will not be deterred; she looks at the Ladies' frightened eyes in their geishagirl faces and is suddenly more aware than ever of how sick and tired she is of them, and of herself in their company. The exhaustion propels her, makes her sit up straight and speak clearly, fills her with a confidence she has not felt in years.

  "Come now?" she says. "You mean to tell me you know my own daughter better than I know her? No, you come now, Dhanwati. Already I can barely control the girl. Some St. Michael's boy practically made love to her onstage after her last play. Once she's thousands of miles away what can I do? But it's all right, Ladies, it's all right. Don't feel you have to comfort me and console me. Frankly I couldn't care less. Once they're no longer under my roof it's their business what any of them does. Their father can deal with whatever havoc they play with the great family name."

  Because it is only four-thirty, far too early for the Ladies to take their leave of Amma without appearing rude—and because, further, a great quantity of food remains to be consumed, including the spellbinding Black Forest cake from the Ipoh Garden Cake Shop—they mince towards other topics of conversation. Amma has perturbed, astonished, even shocked them, but the cake and the sherry in the fruit salad help them to pretend otherwise. They will have to find other unguents for Amma's wounds; they will have to overhaul their current strategy. And these examinations and investigations will be particularly delicate because they must never be named or addressed explicitly; without raising the issue in their Outside meetings they must, by the time they reconvene at Mrs. Surgeon Daisy Jeganathan's house next Sunday, have devised a new distraction. But for now they help themselves to cake and rum balls, and finger the Irish linen tablecloth in wonder, and remind each other of Miss Chan Sow Lin's Chinese Restaurant–Style Cookery Course at the club next week.

  The two pairs of footsteps upstairs, however, cannot so easily forget what has been said downstairs. Quietly but firmly, Uma shuts the bathroom door and continues to study her face in that much-used mirror above the sink. How much introspection this mirror will have to witness in the coming months; how many furiously beating hearts will confront Fact and Rumor in its pristine surface! Uma's face is hot; her hands are cold. A row of tiny, barely visible pimples is beginning to form just below her hairline. Just heatiness, Paati would've said in the old days. Drink some barley water and all your pimples will disappear just like that. Anyway, even with pimples you're beautiful, my Uma child, my kannu.

  But now Paati wraps herself in her own silky web of woes, just like the rest of them. Her blindless, first willful, now literal, protects her. She's abandoned Uma to the mercy of all those who want her to turn blue in this airless house. She doesn't even know what Uma's dreams are, and this is what's hardest for Uma to absorb: that Paati, who once promised her she could be whatever she set her mind on, doctor lawyer singer painter anything also can, you name it you can do it, now would not notice if she were married off tomorrow morning to a fat landowner from Mysore. Not that Appa and Amma would ever make such a straightforward move; not for them the poor man's methods of trapping their daughters. They have a façade to maintain; they have to be able to boast (in Appa's case) or shrug off compliments (in Am-ma's case) about their daughter's acceptance to an Ivy League university. They have to hide the narrow pathways of their minds. And there are other reasons, too, for Appa to ignore the fantastic tales Amma weaves to goad him and occupy herself. Uma knows nothing about Gerald Capel the rose-bearer, save his name; she'd never seen him before closing night of The Three Sisters, she has not seen him since, and she's not particularly interested. Oh, he has nice eyes and a strong jaw, but she is leaving in two scant months, escaping this fishbowl town for better things. Boys like Gerald Capel are for the girls who will stay and study practical subjects at local universities and rent double-story semi-detached houses in Kuala Lumpur and come back to Ipoh to visit their parents every other weekend. But should Uma, to satisfy a passing fancy or to spi
te Amma, be seen around town hand in hand with Gerald Capel this week and another boy next week and yet another the week after, what would Appa do? What could he do? He would mutter some derisory warning, his face as strained as if each word were a new boil on his tongue. He would avoid her eyes and hurry away to seek solace far from his difficult wife and his daring oldest.

  Cowards, all cowards. What are these masked balls her mother hosts in her marble sitting room if not a sickening dance of cowardice? Each woman worse than the next, and her mother the worst of all: she doesn't even like the Ladies.

  Uma blows a slow stream of air at her reflection, turns on the tap, and splashes cool water on her face. Outside in the corridor, her sister waits. Uma can hear the small shuffles of Aasha's stationary feet, her sniffs and scratches, her faint and patchy humming. She's trying to hum "El Condor Pasa," but the range is too wide for her, and she slips and stops on the refrain.

  For a moment, Uma considers staying in the bathroom just to see how long Aasha will wait before she gives up. She could try out different hairstyles. She could take a nap in the bathtub. When she thinks of Aasha out there, she feels an insurmountable exhaustion, a weakness like thirst. Somewhere deep beneath this exhaustion trickles the old river of tenderness, almost forgotten. But not quite: Poor Aasha, Uma thinks, patting her face dry. Poor thing. But she won't let pity get the better of her. What a terrifying thing Aasha's selfishness is, a creature that needs no external sustenance: for two years Aasha has coiled her monochrome days around Uma's own like a python, hungered and schemed unencouraged.

  In the corridor Aasha hums and stops, hums and stops. The familiar stubbornness creases her brow: she will get Uma to look at her, perhaps even to talk to her, she will. It's possible, after all—didn't Uma speak to her on the day they went to the library together, before the annual prayers in the Balakrishnans' garden temple? More than speak to her—Uma held her hand and walked with her, and it was almost like the old days. That morning proved that Uma does see her sometimes. And see her she must today; Aasha must make sure Uma sees her and hears her, yes. More than the regular stubbornness impels today's mission. The house holds its breath; that dreaded Something Bad for which she and Suresh have been waiting, towards which everything has been building up for months, is waiting to burst upon them, and its imminence is intimately, though abstractly, connected with the expression on Uma's face. Aasha could cover her eyes with her hands and hope the Something Bad will go away on its own, or she could face it head-on. She's made her choice. She hums all the way up to the highest bit of her song: Away, I'd rather sail away, like ... And stops, and tries again.