Evening Is the Whole Day

by Preeta Samarasan

  How they traveled, in the short space of three seconds, from the purifying sorrow of that moment to the scene that would forever replay itself in their resistant heads—the tightening of Appa's embrace, his face in her neck, his tears wetting the white cotton of her nightgown, his hands straying a little too far down her back, then withdrawing, as if they'd been burned, to her face, but once more descending to her neck, her shoulders, and then to the comfort of a beating heart behind a warm breast—neither of them would ever be able to say. Not that anyone would ever ask them; they would only seek to retrace the path in between for themselves, and fail.

  Should Uma have screamed? Should she have called out quietly but firmly? Why didn't she, when Paati's door was ten steps away across the corridor?

  Those questions, too, she could not have answered. What she did was to swallow her thin saliva and close her eyes, certain that nothing would ever be the same. She could not confine her father to the wrath of an unmerciful world, to its red-hot branding irons and its ice-cold whispers, but neither could she bear this, this sorry, weeping mess of a man fondling her breasts and running his hands again and again down the curve of her waist, as if he were describing the female form in a game of charades. And so she did what her mother had done in far less alarming, more publicly defensible circumstances seventeen years ago: she closed her eyes and floated up to the ceiling, and then she kept going, traveling farther than her mother had, out the window, through the clouds of tiny, oblivious insects, into the blue light of the streetlamp and beyond, her white nightgown billowing pale blue in that light. And Appa, in whose chest Uma's limp willingness struck a forgotten chord, felt an obscure, guilty gratitude for that abdication, because anything else would've been so much uglier.

  Minutes afterwards, his shock-blasted mind would have forgotten whole swaths of detail. What had she been wearing? What had she said? And always, he would close his eyes in disbelief. Could that really have been him? But he could never escape the olfactory memory he'd retained of that night, for at consequential moments his young sense of smell now caught and held on to every little stimulus: Uma's faintly sweet sweat, and in her hair the hint of cigarette smoke mingled with her shampoo. And there'd been something else he couldn't name, a childlike smell that—though the actual smells of Uma's childhood had never penetrated his hermetic odorless universe—made him remember bathing and putting the toddler Uma to bed. What was it? A kind of soap? A lotion? He didn't know, but it was this smell that was his most devastating punishment, this reminder that what he'd done, he'd done to the child Uma had once been, the child she still was. But why had he done it, and how, and how?

  That night, a small noise somewhere in the house—water in the pipes? white ants in the foundation? beams swelling with early morning dampness?—brought him back to himself. He pulled his hands away; he looked at his watch. "Goodness, goodness," he said, his voice still thick with tears. "I better go to bed. You better get some sleep too. We both better get some sleep. Tomorrow is a school day." As though he might have stayed if it weren't; as though the thought of having to get up at seven in the morning were the only thing stopping him from further trespasses.

  He turned around, walked briskly to the door, opened it, and stepped right into the path of his brother, who'd just come back up the stairs. That night after dinner the family, minus Appa, had played poker, and Uncle Ballroom had lost badly; emptying his pockets of their change, he'd dropped a crucial scrap of paper on the floor of the study (scribbled on that scrap: the date by which he needed to pay this month's interest to his loan shark; the name of a horse someone had told him to put his money on the next race day; the telephone numbers of two more loan sharks). He stood face-to-face with Appa, the piece of paper safe in his trouser pocket.

  "Why, hello," he said, smiling amiably, preparing to give Appa a full account of Uma's progress as a dancer, and to recommend that he send her for real lessons, when something in the way Appa stood frozen wiped the smile slowly off his face. He blinked and suddenly saw all that had escaped him at first: Appa's red eyes, his rumpled hair and clothes and face, the open door behind him, Uma standing behind her father in the light. Even before his eyes met hers, he thought No, no no no, no, Uma, as if it would be her fault for making him see what he was about to see, for not shielding him somehow, closing her door, hiding behind it, whatever, but no, there she was, hugging herself tightly, her eyes red too, her white nightgown falling off one shoulder, her face, not swollen exactly, but somehow injured.

  "What the bloody hell are you doing up at this hour?" said Appa.

  And though Uncle Ballroom wanted to be left alone, to go quietly to bed and not face any of this, even, for once, to complain—to say I'm tired, I'm tired of always being the one to see too much—he forced himself to stay and explain. "I dropped a piece of paper in the library tonight, you see," he began. He extracted the scrap and waved it theatrically, as though this proof alone would fix everything. "A very important piece of paper, all my information on it, you know, telephone numbers and racing tips and whatnot—"

  "Racing tips!" said Appa. "Useless bloody fool, sponging off us for months at a time while you gamble your own money away!" His voice rose and lurched, cracked and banked as if he were drunk, and at all this ruckus just outside her door, Paati stirred in her bed. Looked at her bedside clock. Sighed deeply. Don't tell me, she thought. Balu's nicely dipped into the liquor cabinet and now he's making a scene.

  "Sorry, Brother, sorry, sorry," Uncle Ballroom babbled, and to himself he demanded, What am I sorry for? Why am I always the one feeling sorry?

  "Sorry!" said Appa. "Of course you're sorry! It's so easy to say sorry and then turn around and do the same thing, isn't it? How many times—?"

  Before Appa's eyes Paati's door creaked open, and she stood looking at them, her two sons, fighting like dogs at three o'clock in the morning. Turning his head to see what had made Appa fall silent, Uncle Ballroom saw his mother, a tiny, crumbling thing in the shadows, with sagging breasts and a powdery face. And she saw the unspeakable dismay on his face—not a drunken face, no—and then the panic on Appa's face, that lip-curling rage of the trapped animal, and close behind him, just as Uncle Ballroom had seen her, Uma in the light. Silent, shivering slightly.

  All those times Paati had invited a frightened, confused Uma into her bed, all those times she'd promised her granddaughter she would always be there to protect her, all that drained from her face with the blood, and she, too, shivered slightly where she stood. When she spoke, her voice was little more than a hoarse whisper.

  "All of you, go to bed," she said. "This is no time for all this tamasha." Then, before anyone could speak to her, ask her anything, or force her to see more than she'd already seen, she retreated and shut her door behind her. She sank slowly onto her bed. She lay down on her side, her thin hips sticking out like a village cow's, and pressed five fingertips into her eyes, though already her cataracts blocked out what little light there was in her room. Outside her door she heard both her sons walk away down the corridor, Raju in front, quick and unapologetic, Balu shuffling wearily. She wasn't sure what had happened, but it was Raju who'd been caught, not Balu, and Uma who had been—what? Rescued? Caught being a willing accomplice? I don't know, I don't know, Paati thought. I'm too old for all this.

  The next morning, Uma rose before anyone else, ate her breakfast standing up in the kitchen, and told Lourdesmary to inform the rest of the family that she'd taken the early bus to school for a prefects' meeting.

  At twenty to ten, Appa sat down at the Formica table, forked down his throat the mucilaginous scrambled eggs Lourdesmary had served up at his usual breakfast time of seven-thirty, and hurried off to work.

  Uncle Ballroom stayed in bed till noon, then dressed and left the house without a meal.

  Paati crept out of her room after he left, took a slow and difficult bucket bath, and limped cautiously down the stairs.

  Aasha had surrendered herself to the distracted babysitting s
ervices of Lourdesmary and Vellamma and Letchumi, helping Lourdesmary roll out chapattis and Vellamma hang up the washing.

  That night, only Suresh cracked jokes at dinner. Aasha sat stiff in her chair, watching Uma's face for the slightest breath or ripple of good humor, shoveling her food so forcefully into her mouth that she gagged twice, and Uma had to chide her. That, in fact, was the only time Uma spoke. Afterwards there were no games. "Getting old, getting old," Paati said when Suresh protested, and Uncle Ballroom cited a nascent cold. Appa wasn't home.

  Upstairs in his room Uncle Ballroom waited for the sound of Appa's car on the gravel driveway, and when he heard it, at two-thirty in the morning, he rushed down to meet Appa at the front door. This time Appa had, indeed, been drinking. His breath was heavy with whiskey; his smile was crooked.

  "Hah!" he said upon seeing Uncle Ballroom standing at the door in his stockinged feet. "Waited up for me? Want to chaperone me to my room?"

  "No," said Uncle Ballroom, "no, of course not—"

  "What then? Going out for a walk in the dew in your socks?"

  "I—no, Brother, I just—look, I'm not standing here for my own sake, I only—if it's the first time it happened—it's not, I know you love your children, Brother, I know it's not so simple, but there are things one can do, and there's no need to—"

  For once, Appa only waited and listened, because he had no clever repartee, because he was tired and sick at heart and drunk, but most of all because, at that moment, he hated his brother and refused to make his finger-pointing any easier. Appa's silence was unyielding and imperious, and faced with it, Uncle Ballroom gabbled and garbled his words—as though, once again, his position were the more awkward—until Appa finally cut him short.

  "How dare you?" he said. "How dare you come into my house and accuse me of these sick things your sick mind dreams up?" But already—his defense just begun—he was tempted to sit down in an armchair and say Yes, yes, my God, yes, please do something. Fix what I've done. Erase it. Erase it all and take me back to the beginning, Balu, can you do that? Can you take care of me and chart my fate? Instead, he heard himself say: "I was helping the girl with an essay, that's all. But now I know. Now I know what kind of person you are, what's on your mind. You're the one looking at her like that, dancing lessons it seems, tango it seems, cha-cha-cha, oh sure, and all this time I've closed one eye and let you carry on because I thought you were harmless, you were just playing the glamorous uncle. Now I realize Aasha was the only one who got it right. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings indeed. Well, enough, Balu. Enough is enough. In the morning you can start packing your bags, and if you have any respect for yourself you'll never come back."

  Uncle Ballroom stared unblinking at his brother. Did Raju believe his speech to be true? Some of it? All of it? Uncle Ballroom couldn't tell, and he couldn't decide which would cast the speech in a worse light: for Appa to believe or not believe what he was saying.

  Either way, by morning, Appa had slept off his whiskey, but not his manufactured self-righteousness.

  "Suresh, Aasha," he said, "you can start saying goodbye to your Uncle Ballroom. His visit's been cut short."

  Suresh and Aasha sat speechless, acutely aware that something they didn't understand had just changed all their lives.

  "Hah!" Appa said. "Got nothing to say to him? After all this time?"

  And Uncle Ballroom could have told him to leave the children out of this, but was not moved to do so after the results of his previous intervention.

  "Your Uncle Ballroom," Appa went on, "has crossed a line, that's all. After this it's a slippery slope. After cigarettes, is he going to give her ganja? After the tango and the cha-cha, what do you think he's going to teach her, hanh?"

  At this Paati looked up sharply, and Suresh and Aasha, seeing her press her lips together, concluded that there had indeed been some truth in Aasha's fears (A smaaaaall seed of truth, conceded Suresh; I was right, thought Aasha). They could not know what Paati was really thinking: Shut up, please shut up, I don't want to hear any of this, I don't want to know what happened between you two, please go away and settle it between yourselves and leave us all out of it.

  Uncle Ballroom, impoverished though he was, had too much dignity to stay on at the Big House. And not just dignity: he was tired and deflated, his leather belt perceptibly looser than it was yesterday morning, his chest softly hissing like a punctured beach ball. I'm weak, he thought. I'm a bloody coward. But I tried, didn't I? And self-preservation prevailed: What else am I supposed to do? At least I've got the principles to leave. That much was true: he didn't prostrate himself before Appa's might, didn't apologize any more than he had, didn't promise to shut up in exchange for free meals and a roof over his head. His bags were already packed; at the front door he said his awkward goodbyes to each member of the family in turn.

  Except for Uma, who hadn't come downstairs. But she wasn't where everyone thought she was, behind the closed door of her bedroom; she stood in front of Paati's wedding photograph on the landing, from which spot she had committed to memory every word of Uncle Ballroom's expulsion. Just as he sallied forth down the driveway, she appeared at the doorway in her school pinafore, her hair wet and loose down her back, her feet bare. "Uncle Ballroom's going," he heard Aasha say to her. He looked over his shoulder and waved at her with his free hand. "Study hard, Uma," he said.

  Not until he had disappeared from their view did Aasha turn to Uma and ask tremulously, "Why, Uma, why? Why you must study hard?"

  "Of course I should study hard," said Uma. "Everybody should."

  "It's because you're going to go to New York and live with Uncle Ballroom, isn't it? Isn't that why?"

  "No," said Uma, and turned away.

  "It is," said Aasha, "it is, and that's why Appa banished Uncle Ballroom, because it was true he wanted to marry you, and Appa won't let him."

  Slowly, Uma turned around and looked at her. "Aasha," she said, and her voice was as soft as Amma's was at dangerous times, "shut up. You're not a baby anymore."

  And at that moment, just as the minute hand on the hall clock touched the six, Aasha ceased to be a baby. The dimples in her knees smoothed themselves out. The creases in her thighs sizzled and melted. Her knuckles turned bony. Her forehead flattened.

  Uma, too, grew up over the following months. Deprived of her dancing lessons, she taught herself some lessons of her own:

  1) Paati was her protector no longer; she was just a selfish old lady who would never do anything to endanger the cushy life she led in her rich son's house, the morning tea, the afternoon coffee, the tea-time treats, the servants and the nice soft bed. Two days after Uncle Ballroom's departure, she'd asked Appa to move her bed to a spare room downstairs, after all those years of refusing when he suggested it. "I think you were right after all," she said. "My bones are not getting any younger. Such a chore for Uma to practically carry me up and down those stairs every day." Uma knew what Paati really feared; Appa knew it too, but each bore the weight of that knowledge separately as, together, they heaved Paati's bed down the stairs.

  2) Aasha's adoration came at a price Uma no longer wished to pay. It was the adoration of a newborn for its mother, not love—certainly not what Uma would call love—but a black hole of need. The thought of sharing terrified Aasha; she'd tattled (in her own mind) and lied (in Uma's) to keep Uma for herself. If an equal need ever arose, she would once again do anything, tell any lie, bite and scratch and pull any below-the-belt trick she could think of, to get what she wanted.

  But come on, Uma found herself pleading unprompted, all children make up stories.

  Look at you, she chided herself at once, you can't stop yourself from taking her side, even at your own expense. That's what's so insidious about them. Children make up stories all right, for whatever reason suits them, or for no reason at all. They're both selfish and capricious. The world is black and white for them: Appa banished Uncle Ballroom because Uncle Ballroom wanted to marry you it seems. Simple as tha
t, hanh? Like one plus one equals two.

  Selfishness, capriciousness, reductionism: a treacherous combination indeed. Uma wanted no part of it.

  3) There was only one part of the lesson Uma taught herself about Appa that she could put into words: he had lied. In the lowest, most unscrupulous way, to protect himself. She'd always laughed with, for him, when he'd used his clever words against those she, too, had scorned: Amma, her Ladies, the government. But today, in fear, he had taken that cruel wit and thrust it into Uncle Ballroom's belly, and the sight of it—no, the mere sound of it, from where she'd stood on the landing—had knocked the wind out of her.

  What had come before those lies she could not verbalize even to herself; it existed only in pictures, in the chill that woke her night after night to lie in the dark and watch the streetlight across the lane. For years now, onstage, she'd been praised for letting her emotions run away with her, and now they ran all right, first at a steady trot, by the end of the week at a canter, working themselves up to a fullblown gallop within a month, though Appa never again entered her bedroom or so much as paused outside her door. And though neither Appa's clothes nor her own had come off that night—though, in fact, Appa's hands had not ventured under the white cotton of Uma's nightgown—Uma had looked up incest in the OED, that reliable old chum, that stalwart sidekick of Appa's, and then moved on to a thorough investigation of the topic in literature and in history, which investigation she allowed to color her thoughts and steal her dreams.

  In the shower she scrubbed and scrubbed herself; at night she locked her door, which had the added advantage of teaching Aasha to fend for herself after nightmares.

  But if it was true that all this was typical teenage melodrama, could Uma, of all guilty teenagers, be judged for it? Wouldn't anyone have permitted her these small exaggerations in partial compensation for the far greater crimes—of violation, of willful blindness—that had been committed against her?

  Anyone might have, if he'd understood the equation, but the equation was neither obvious nor neat. Uma's descent into an invented hell compensated for nothing, of course; it only churned the regret Appa had already felt that night into a mad froth, forever obviating any retracing of steps or cleaning of slates.