Evening Is the Whole Day

by Preeta Samarasan

  Amma shrugs her shoulders, unlocks the grille with a sigh, beckons Uncle Ballroom to enter. "Well, if Raju—"

  "I take it Raju isn't home now?"

  "No, he isn't."

  "If you prefer, I could call him at his office."

  "He's not at his office."

  "Oh. Ah. Well—"

  "You may as well put your bag upstairs in the guest room while waiting. Your brother"—having restrained herself from referring to Appa as your great brother, Amma pauses and licks her lips to mark the effort—"won't be home for some time, I can tell you that. When he comes home you can explain yourself to him."

  And so Uncle Ballroom is admitted into his brother's marble-floored, lace-curtained castle, which, within moments of his entry, he finds strangely altered. True, little Aasha, who stands in the shadowed archway eyeing him noncommittally, has grown a great deal, a change upon which Uncle Ballroom feels obliged to remark, being an uncle and all. But it's her manner, not her height, that strikes him more: a quiet vigilance, a silvery subterranean river of distrust. Even if he were inclined to attribute this to two years' worth of growing up and nothing more, other changes hold him back. A sharp new edge to his sister-in-law's voice, a sardonic twist to her face that colors everything she says with irony, an unrelenting tension in the very air. Is the house too quiet? Inexplicably cold for these tropical climes? Too clean? He can't explain it, but there it is, that unease, like the high hum of a distant generator.

  And when he goes to greet his mother the surreality of it all stares him in the face: in two years she's turned into a little old lady stuck in a rattan chair, doddering, muttering, cataracted, incontinent, the whole works. At first, when he kneels before her and she takes his hands in hers, he feels nothing but remorse. You fool, Balu! Did you think time would stand still for you? But then she fixes him with the clearer of her two milky eyes and nods, as if something in his appearance has either confirmed a suspicion or satisfied her, and he realizes that despite her cataracts she's still the clever old crow she always was. The rattan chair, the weak bladder, the trembling knees, all these might be real and unchangeable in the perceived order of things, but beyond them is a truth few can see. His mother has turned herself into a little old lady at will—but why? Well, it probably suits her at this naturally lazy stage of life, and she's always been one to do whatever suits her. She was tired and bored and all in all quite ready to be waited upon, so she took up residence in that rattan chair. In all likelihood she exerts more power over the household from that throne than she did walking around on her own two feet. Already he sees the evidence of her unchallenged reign: "Vasanthi! Lourdesmary!" she's shouting. "Has Raju been informed? Tell him to come home for dinner tonight, tell him not to eat any of that Chinese rubbish he always has to eat outside. Lourdesmary! Go to the market and buy a live kampung chicken. Buy three catfish. Is catfish still your favorite, Balu? What else shall we cook?"

  As surely as it's a throne, the rattan chair is also a retreat. Uncle Ballroom remembers his previous visit, the late nights of blackjack and gin rummy in Raju's study, his mother always winning after pretending the brandy had gone to her head. And then that last rainy night, his mother's see-no-evil-hear-no-evil face, his distressing realization that whatever stand he took would have to be taken alone ... Oh, Mother, always so shrewd, so selfish, so weak-willed. So this is how you've absolved yourself of all responsibility, eh? Well, maybe she's happy this way. This willful blindness must bring her some peace of mind. Through extended and concentrated role-playing, she may even have convinced herself that she really is nothing but a helpless bag of bones. Something in the sudden and excessive rheuminess of her eyes tells him his appearance has dislodged parallel memories from the godforsaken hiding places to which she consigned them two years ago. But before those cloudy drops can spill down the ravines and crevasses of her cheeks, Paati pulls herself together, frowns, and hollers, "Chellam! For God's sake bring us an orange squash or something! Such a hot day, don't you have a grain of sense in your head? Do you have to be told every time?" Homing in on this small irritation, shaking it between her teeth like a dog, Paati thus banishes older, bigger worries: Uncle Ballroom sees that she's completely recovered her composure by badgering this Chellam character, whoever she is. The multiple benefits of playing the crotchety old coot pile up before his eyes as Chellam appears with two glasses of orange squash on a tray.

  "Our new girl," Amma says. "Takes care of Mother only. One hundred percent devoted to her. She stays here full time." Yet one hundred percent devotion is not what Uncle Ballroom sees in the hooded eyes of this skinny girl with bad skin: devotion, if it's there at all, is diluted by something else, and when she hands a glass to Paati she's neither gentle nor respectful. "Inthanggai," she says sullenly. Here. Take it. What she doesn't say, but would've said if she'd been alone with Paati: You can stop complaining now, you old fart. Still, he hears the words as clearly as if she's spoken them aloud, and what rises within him is not indignation or a resolve to take this too-big-for-her-Japanese-slippers girl down a peg, but mirth, and more—dare he acknowledge it—a pale current of sympathy. Poor child—how old is she, anyway? She looks exhausted and underfed, and he cannot imagine her life in his brother's troubled household, nor the strain of attending a wizened crone so thoroughly dedicated to her dowager-dragon role.

  No, he tells himself. Not this time. He may be a man of integrity, but this time, for once, he is resolved not to be the one who sees too much. He too can feign innocence and short memory; he can wash his hands of other people's causes and mind his own business. He quells the strong whiff of something-rotten-on-Kingfisher-Lane with the assiduous application of Tiger Balm to his temples. "Terrible headache," he says apologetically. "Must be all that traveling." And he returns to his perusal of the New Straits Times, to the winners of the slogan-writing competition sponsored by Chartered Bank on page 3, to the full coverage of the badminton tournament in the sports section, to the recipe for Owl and Angelica Soup with Cordyceps in this week's "Cooking with Chinese Herbs" column.

  Just before dinnertime Appa comes home, as if by instinct; he would not normally have returned on a Saturday night.

  "So sorry, Brother," Uncle Ballroom says, rising to meet him at the door. "I wish I could've let you know I was on my way, but—at any rate, I'll stay well out of your way this time." And then he repeats, almost verbatim, the promises he made to Amma this afternoon: "You'll hardly see me. I'll be busy in town the whole time. I'll be careful not to step on anyone's toes."

  Big man that he is, Appa cannot be seen to deny his brother a roof over his head on account of an old quarrel. He forces his features into some semblance of a smile. "Okay, okay," he says, holding a hand out to Uncle Ballroom. "No problem. Welcome back to the Big House. Hah-hah!"

  At dinner Appa is the consummate host, jovial, attentive, expansive.

  "Have you heard the one about the three lawyers, Balu, one Malay, one Chinese, one Indian?"

  He's delivering the punch line when Uma comes downstairs to take her seat at the table. Uncle Ballroom gives her an unflinching hello and an avuncular smile as Appa goes on, not looking at either of them:

  "Wait wait, don't tell me—you're back because of Visit Malaysia Year 1980, aren't you, Balu? You must've seen the ads in New York London Paris wherever you came from? The only time you'll see Indian faces on TV. Local color, what? The Bharatanatyam dancers and the teh tarik sellers and the Thaipusam crowds. The rest of the time we're supposed to shut up and hide our faces."

  What d'you think of this kampung chicken, Balu? Not your supermarket rubbish, eh? Let me refill your wine glass. Colleague brought me this stuff straight from France. It's the only wine I've found that goes with Lourdesmary's devil curries.

  But despite Appa's best efforts, the somber cloud over the dining table will not lift. Uncle Ballroom manages a smile or two, but these are quickly squelched by the sight of his other dinner companions: Vasanthi as stiff and dry as a lidi broom, Aasha's h
alf-sick, stricken mien, Uma never lifting her eyes from her plate. Even Suresh merely soldiering bravely on through his chicken thigh so as to be released as quickly as possible.

  Uncle Ballroom looks again at Uma and finds himself unable to swallow his mouthful of chicken perital. Uma's grown too, but only a couple of inches, and her hair is exactly as it was two years ago, long and wild, dry at the ends. Yet she's changed so much that Uncle Ballroom would have had to look twice to recognize her at a bus stop or in a queue; the girl before him is simply not the same one who cajoled him into giving her dancing lessons two years ago, and gave her grandmother a run for her money at card games, and laughed at the drop of a hat. That easy laugh, that innocent, girlish flirting with father and uncle and driver and grandmother—yes, even grandmother, for Uma had been a charmer then, sparkling, generous with her affections, a lover of the limelight, a tease, an indiscriminate flasher of dimples—has it all evaporated just like that?

  Uncle Ballroom takes a sip of water and a deep breath.

  "Have you heard Uma's big news?" Appa says. "She's going to the States in September. Columbia University."

  Yes, the disappearance of Uma's voice will soon be crowned by her physical vanishing. Every night, Aasha knows, Uma sits up in bed thumbing through the fat letters that have been tumbling one after the other into the letterbox, smudged and grimy from their journey halfway around the world. She plucked each one out before the letterbox lizards had had a chance to curl up on it and bedeck it in beady droppings, and now she puts the whole stack on the pillow beside her and goes through it before bed. As she touches each letter a small part of her temporarily disappears until she turns to the next: the Princeton letter spirits away her right thumb, the one from Cornell steals her left foot under the blanket, the one from Columbia leaves her eye sockets empty.

  "Marvelous marvelous," says Uncle Ballroom. "Hearty congratulations."

  "She'll be studying medicine. Well, pre-medicine, to be precise. Biology."

  "And theater," says Uma. These are the first words she's spoken since they sat down to dinner. Her eyes are looking not at Appa or Uncle Ballroom, but past the latter, at the window behind his head, through which she can see the vast garden bathed in the blue light of the streetlamps.

  "Of course! Theater!" Appa says. "I forgot about that. Uma's going to be a thespian-cum-heart-surgeon, I forgot."

  "Frankly," Amma says, "I think Uma's first priority is getting out of this cursed house." She can't resist; her opportunities to chip away at Appa's composure are few and far between. Even on the rare occasions when he's home, he's got cotton wool in his ears, but he's taken it out this evening, hasn't he, to impress his brother? Talks as though we're a nice happy family. As though he only is responsible for Uma's achievements. As though they sat and filled out the applications together. Medicine pre-medicine, oo wah! What's the matter, too scared to admit to your brother that even your precious oldest hates you nowadays? In case her point wasn't clear the first time, she elaborates: "What Uma wants is escape at all costs and no coming back. Whether she has to sell her soul to Hollywood or Harley Street or run away with the circus is immaterial. Correct or not, Uma?"

  "Hmm?" says Uma, smiling mildly around the table, imperturbable.

  But Aasha, little barometer that she is, little coal mine canary struggling for air, pushes her plate away and says, "I can't eat any more."

  "Not bad, Suresh," Appa says, ignoring all of them (Does he keep the cotton wool in his pocket? Amma wonders. Did he put it back in when we weren't looking?), "you made quick work of that. Want another piece? Drumstick? Wing? Another thigh?"

  "Anything also can," says Suresh.

  "I'm not feeling well," Aasha says more loudly. "I don't want any more."

  "You haven't eaten anything," Appa says. "At least eat a little bit. Don't waste good food."

  Aasha gulps down half her glass of water, holds her breath, and stares at Uma.

  Uncle Ballroom watches her watch Uma. She was always Uma's favorite, a sweet kitten for Uma to pamper and powder and show off, and he can tell from Aasha's eyes and the slight downward turn of her mouth that she hasn't forgotten all that. She's become a ghost all right, living in and for the past, sicker with longing than he's ever thought a six-year-old could be. Unaware he's watching her, she trails her index finger through the mound of rice on her plate to make two mini-mountains. She'll pretend to eat, her parents will pretend not to notice, and that, she thinks, will be that.

  Alas, her father's not in a compromising mood tonight. "Aasha," Appa says, "stop playing the fool and eat your dinner. Lourdesmary spent my hard-earned money on this chicken. Real kampung chicken. You don't know how spoiled you are. Free-range, fed with proper grain—"

  "Oh yes," Amma says before Aasha can say anything (but would she have said anything? Her lower lip juts dangerously now; under the table, Suresh kicks her knee to stop her from crying). "Free-range. Since you're in such a showoff mood, why don't you boast to your brother about how you yourself are free-range?" She's sure of one thing: if it's in her power to embarrass Appa at all, it can only be done in front of his brother. She drums her turmeric-stained fingers on her plate as if she's bored, and goes on, "Free to wander all day and night, free to make a special guest appearance to bully your own children when you feel like it, free to show us all you're the big boss in front of visitors, isn't it?"

  "Oh, for heaven's sake, must we subject our guest to your hysteria? Must we—"

  Appa's diatribe is truncated by a rush of vomit, green, lumpy, frothy, pouring from Aasha's mouth onto her twin rice hills (as Suresh sighs loud and deep), spattering her hair and her frock and her hands, so that as she tries, terrified, to wipe her face with her left hand, she ends up smearing it over cheeks and chin, and it drips in viscous strings from everything. Above the table Suresh sighs more loudly still; under it he kicks her again.

  Amma rises and grabs her by one arm. "Chhi!" she spits. "Couldn't you run to the bathroom if you knew you were going to vomit? Okay enough no need to make a bigger mess in front of everybody. Come." As she drags Aasha away she calls out over her shoulder: "Chellam! Chellam! Come please! Aasha made a mess here!"

  From somewhere within the labyrinth of corridors comes an answering grunt. Not quite one hundred percent devoted to Mother, Uncle Ballroom thinks, if her tasks include emergency vomit-mopping. Perhaps ninety-eight or ninety-nine percent.

  But that night in bed, as the branches of the frangipani tree tap his windowpane at the very end of one of the longest, darkest, farthest-flung corridors of the Big House, it's Uma's face, not Aasha's or the poor pockmarked servant girl's, that surfaces unbidden behind Uncle Ballroom's eyelids.

  It's not my problem, Uncle Ballroom reasons with himself. There's nothing I can do. Yet still he hears Vasanthi's half envious escape at all costs, and sees Uma Then and Uma Now, Then and Now, Now and Then, Then and Now ... He reaches for the tin of Tiger Balm on his bedside table as his head begins to throb with sorrow and helplessness and regret.

  Downstairs, stretched out on the settee in his study—where he sleeps when he spends the night at the Big House—Appa, too, ponders Uma's immutable Mona Lisa smile and feels a familiar gnawing at his gut. "That blasted Lourdesmary woman," he murmurs to himself before falling asleep. "Always puts a ton of chili powder in everything. It's enough to melt a glass stomach. No wonder the children can't eat her food."

  THE NATURE of Uncle Ballroom's business in town is unclear, but on weekdays he leaves the house every morning after breakfast and returns well after dinnertime. On the weekends he stays upstairs in his room, watching the frangipani flowers drift down onto the tin roof below the tree. In answer to Appa's questions he has offered only a few derisory clues about an import-export business and a fellow he met in Shoreditch. He remains faithful to his resolution, whistling happy tunes down Kingfisher Lane each morning after a cheery goodbye to all and sundry, humming golden oldies back up the lane in the dark. But the effort is a great strain on his
nerves; it seems to him when he sits down to breakfast with the family that they're all afloat on an iceberg. Their movable feast on its red Formica table, the plates and glasses and spoons on their vinyl place mats. The iceberg moans and sighs and carries them all along like a blind slave shouldering a palanquin. The plates and spoons clink incessantly. The water in the glasses threatens to spill with every jolt.

  He does everything he can to close his ears to the storm swirling around him, everything short of sticking his fingers in them and singing at the top of his voice, but his very presence has fueled that storm by compelling his brother to play the big man, Lawyer-Saar, Big Spender (out of habit, out of arrogance, out of a vague sense that if he keeps Uncle Ballroom happy with tiger prawns for his nasi lemak and senangin fish curry for his roti canai, they will reach a tacit agreement to avoid certain uncomfortable topics of conversation. Never mind that it's Lourdesmary who must bear a burden she doesn't understand. Tiger prawns? she wonders as she grinds spices with a batu giling as thick as her waist at six thirty in the morning. Senangin for roti canai? Too much money can drive people mad, I tell you).

  Uncle Ballroom's keenly aware of two things: Raju's tireless performance provides Vasanthi with the very best stone on which to sharpen her ax; Vasanthi's got a secret source of venom, a neatly folded paan she keeps inside her cheek and chews on from time to time, tasting its flavor all day, spitting droplets of its red juice in Appa's face whenever she has an opportunity.

  "Blue?" she says to Appa one morning, apropos of nothing. "But don't the Chinese like everything red? Good luck and prosperity and all that?"

  Appa smiles beatifically around the table and says, "Balu, if you could contrive to be around for dinner one of these nights, I'll ask Lourdesmary to make us a proper old-fashioned mutton curry. Top-quality mutton she gets from the butcher when she tells him it's for us. Only has to say my name and the fellow runs and gets what he's been hiding from everyone else, you know?"