by Ru Freeman
The Herath children arrayed themselves in front of their mother, who rested her palms on the shoulders of the two in each corner, the older ones. They looked like a flock of angels to the Bolling twins, whose smiles rose to the surface and then retreated several times in awe. Rose and Dolly would come to believe that their lives were graced once and only once and that the grace they remembered came from these four children, but for now they were simply dumbstruck.
“Come inside,” Rashmi said, walking over to Rose and taking her hand. Dolly felt her own being held in another hand, the smaller one, Devi. For the first time in their lives, the twins felt shy. They climbed reverently up the five steps to the veranda of the Heraths’ house and wiped their feet with gusto on the coir mat at the front door.
“We can play outside if you like, Aunty,” Rose said to Mrs. Herath, gratitude flowing through her body.
“No, that’s okay,” Mrs. Herath said. “You can go inside.” Her heart swelled as she uttered these words. She felt good. She was good. She would do good. She would turn those children around. She watched until the last of the children had disappeared inside and then turned back to her garden.
Telling Secrets
Inside the house, in the girls’ bedroom, the children regarded each other, the Heraths seated on Rashmi’s bed, the twins on Devi’s. Rose breathed deeply, inhaling the scent of the room, a mix of sandalwood soap, a floral powder, and the outdoors. Dolly simply stared at everything: the almirah with its double doors and inlaid full-length mirror, the dressing table with two combs and a small array of Pears products, powders, and cologne, the one desk and two chairs that sat near the window, one half of it pristine, the other a tumble of books and papers, and not a single cobweb or bit of dust in sight, not even in the highest corners of the ceiling. She looked at the Herath girls. It seemed fitting that the room was meant for girls like them, girls who wore skirts and blouses designed to match, with cotton lace edgings at hems and necklines, their feet scrubbed clean and tucked into slippers.
To the twins, the Herath children seemed beautiful if for no other reason than the degree to which they were different from themselves in the most apparent ways: cleanliness and order. Rashmi and Devi had neatly trimmed hair that lifted in waves off their foreheads, offsetting their faces, and the boys wore shirts whose collars were ironed flat, and in which they seemed perfectly at ease with themselves and the world. When they discussed the children later, the twins would diverge. To Dolly, Nihil and Rashmi were the handsome and pretty ones, respectively. Such nice eyes, she’d say, did you see how long their eye lashes were? To Rose it was Suren and Devi. Never seen smiles like that, she’d say, like the whole world is good.
The Heraths saw scruffy girls, unpolished, unwashed, their fingernails gnawed, their toenails caked with dirt. But they also felt, even though they could not name it, the innocence before them. They saw friends. If she washes herself better, Dolly would be quite pretty, Rashmi would say later. Rose has a nice voice, if only someone could teach her how to sing, Suren would say.
At last Devi stood up, unable to contain her curiosity, walked over to the girls, climbed onto the bed beside them, and examined Dolly’s hair, which, unlike her own short style, hung down to Dolly’s waist in a brown-tinged matte. She picked up Rose’s hair in her other hand to compare the two. They were both the same, she decided, the same color, the same weight. She ran her fingers through her hair and then tried to do the same to the two heads in front of her. It didn’t work. Her fingers got stuck and the girls winced.
“Can I comb your hair?” Devi asked Rose, who seemed the less intimidating of the two.
“If you wan’,” Rose said, “but even Mummy hates to comb. Always full of knots, my hair.”
Devi hopped off her bed, got her comb, and then, thinking better of it, took her sister’s comb instead; it was bigger and had wider teeth and, in any case, anything belonging to Rashmi was more efficient. She started at the ends of Rose’s hair and worked her way up just as she had watched her mother do when she unwrapped her hair from its bun and let it fall down, down, down to the backs of her knees. Once, when her mother wasn’t home, she had climbed up on the last shelf of her mother’s almirah to gaze at the sad Jesus face on the postcard wedged at the back of the top shelf, and her fingers had caught the fold of one of her mother’s “good” saris and the whole stack had come sliding out and knocked her to the ground. Devi had decided then and there that what she had felt was the sensation of luxury as silk after silk slid out, unfolded like lotuses, and poured over her head and body. She planned to grow her hair long like her mother’s so she could keep that feeling with her and take it wherever she went, cascading and shimmering around her like a special shield. As soon as she turned nine that is, which is when the growing of hair would be permitted by her mother.
Working hard on Rose’s head, Devi realized that some hair could be considered the opposite of silk. Kohu, she thought. Yes, that was a good approximation for the strands that lay inert, spiky, and without character in her hand just like the strands that Kamala plucked from the sides of half-bald coconuts or that fell out from the bottom of her kitchen broom. If Rose washed it, though, like she and Rashmi did, using Sunsilk Egg Protein or, sometimes, the special bottle of Finesse that one of her mother’s students had brought back from America, maybe then their hair would be lovely too. She was just about to suggest this course of action, believing as she did in the power of determination to transform the unpleasant into the better, when Rose spoke.
“Y’all don’ talk much, no?” Rose said, smiling good-naturedly at the other three Herath children. “In our house of course, talkin’ all the time. My god, no Dolly? Mummy and Daddy talk talk talk and then they fight. Your parents fight?”
This was not a question that Nihil, for one, could answer honestly. It was not that his parents did not fight, it was the fact that their fights were complicated by alternating and often self-contradicting narratives the following morning. According to their mother, their father was always one of two things: a misguided fool or anyway-a-good-man. As far as his father was concerned, no fight had ever taken place, or if it had, it was merely an exchange of ideas the essence of which led back, always, like some ancient river rediscovering its true path, to the doings of the government, and, after swirling there in furious concentric circles to gather its strength, flowed on to the root of all evil: the CIA. Such evenings were also often punctuated by his mother bursting into “God Bless America,” “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” “God Save the Queen,” and sometimes, for variation, Nihil felt, “The Maple Leaf Forever,” all of which were songs that Mrs. Herath had faithfully strung on the vocal cords of each of her musically gifted children. Could arguments filled with singing be called fighting? Nihil did not have an answer.
Next to Nihil, Suren began humming, and then, softly, to sing:
“In Days of yore,
From Britain’s shore
Wolfe the dauntless hero came
And planted firm Britannia’s flag
On Canada’s fair domain.
Here may it wave,
Our boast, our pride
And joined in love together,
The thistle, shamrock, rose entwined,
The Maple Leaf Forever.”
“Nice voice!” Dolly said, not smiling, which, in the Bolling twins’ case, bespoke awe. “Down our lane only Kala Niles has music. They’re Tamil people. Her father doesn’t go anywhere, but Raju says he can hear even better because he can’ move. Kala Niles gives lessons. Children come from other places to their house to learn. And the Sansonis’ son, Tony Sansoni, at the top of the lane? Suppose’ to have a guitar but we have never heard him play. We only hear Kala Niles.”
“Every day she practices and we listen,” Rose added. “We don’ go too near. They don’ like that. Have you heard her playing?”
Suren nodded. Kala Niles’s piano playing had been the first thing that had reassured him that their move had been a good one, and
though he had not met Kala Niles yet, he had divined in the arrangements she favored—Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata, for instance, with its repeated dissonance and resolutions—a keen ear and a complex personality.
Dolly asked him to sing another song, and Suren obliged with a few bars of “Hey Jude” and “Yesterday,” two songs that Nihil and he had learned by listening to the radio during the Beatles Hour, for one entire week.
“So nice. Makes me feel sad.” Dolly said, sighing. “With that voice must ’ave won prizes an’ everythin’, no? Can be on the radio even. You tried? Mus’ tell your parents to try, no. They can probably send you there. To the radio people. To the SLBC.”
Rose, who had been alternately tapping and caressing the green cotton sheet on Devi’s bed, joined in. “Velona Hit Parade has all the hit songs. All from pop stars in America. But you can sing nicely. When you get big an’ all you can start a group. You can sing, we can dance,” she pushed her sister as she said this. “Yes, she can dance. I can too. Like this, see?” Rose stood up and began moving her hips in a circle, her hands raised in the air.
Rashmi did not care for the look of this dance. It was far too something. Far too vulgar, she decided. That was the word for it. Of the Herath children, Rashmi excelled in the pursuit of perfection; her fingers curved just so on the piano, her voice rose but only as much as was required by each note, and when she danced, as she did in her Oriental dancing classes, her steps moved precisely to the drums. But, as perfection usually goes, her performances lacked joy. For their part, Rose and Dolly had an excess of free spiritedness and moved like reeds in the wind, dipping and swiveling to a completely tuneless rendition of “Ra Ra Rasputin,” by Boney M., which was currently dominating the Velona Hit Parade.
“I don’t think our parents want me to be in a band,” Suren said now, in his soft voice. He had always spoken that way, having figured out at a very young age that the softer his own voice, the greater the attention he commanded from his siblings and even, sometimes, his parents.
Rose stopped dancing. “Then don’ wait for parents!” she declared. “Our sister, Sophia, she din’ wait for our parents. She got a boyfriend, not even Burgher, a Tamil Hindu boy, and ran away in the middle of the night. An’ she was only fifteen.” Rose flopped down onto Devi’s bed as she said this and began cooling herself by flapping the front of her top. She sagged her shoulders, and the part of her belly that protruded over the waistband of Rashmi’s old skirt rested gently in her lap like a comfort-seeking mammal. “You heard? That’s what Sophia did. You can too. With a voice like that, sky would be the limit for me. Right, Dolly? I would be in the films. I would be in Hollywood!” She flung herself back on the bed, cackling with laughter.
Devi reached around Rose to rearrange her tank top properly over her belly, then pushed her up to a sitting position so she could resume combing her hair. Once again, however, she was thwarted in her recommendation of the use of shampoo by an interruption, this time from her older sister.
“Did Sophia come back?” Rashmi asked, her voice betraying her shock.
“Sophia came back all right,” Dolly said. “She is always comin’ back. Whenever she fights with the man, she’s back but she won’ stay. Comes for the day and goes before night. They are madly in love. Can tell. All the marks on her arms. She says he’s always grabbin’ an’ tellin’ her not to go. Three kids even already. An’ another one comin’. We’re hopin’ twins. Like us.”
The curtain to their doorway fluttered and all the children looked up. Kamala poked her head in. Her eyes washed over the six faces, but her question was directed to Rashmi: “Baba, shall I bring some tea for them?”
“Yes, Kamala. Bring some tea and . . . are there any biscuits?”
Kamala shook her head from side to side in agreement and left. The tea had already been made, the question being simply a courtesy, and she returned almost immediately with six cups of tea and Maliban biscuits arranged in a pretty circle on a pale-blue plate. Rashmi noted with the satisfaction of a true lady of the house that there were six each of every kind, chocolate biscuits, cream wafers, lemon puffs, and plain milk.
The twins looked at each other. They had never had a proper servant, and had never served anybody tea in matching cups and saucers or bothered to place biscuits on a plate, and they certainly did not own a tray. Furthermore, at their house, food was always a problem because there was never enough of one thing to be shared equally among all, which meant that, as their parents insisted, they were left to sort it out among themselves. Now, arrayed before them, was an equal part of everything. They sat up straight and crossed their legs the way Rashmi had been doing until she had risen to hand the cups to each of them and her siblings before taking her own.
“If you use some shampoo like Sunsilk Egg Protein, then your hair will be much nicer!” Devi burst out, only to be shushed by her three siblings.
“That’s not a nice thing to say, Devi,” Rashmi said. “You should apologize to Rose. At once.”
Devi hung her head, hiding her eyes behind waves of hair. “I’m just trying to help her to be like us,” she said.
Rose laughed, “My god, can’ be like you all even in a million years! No need for sorry. My hair is like this all the time. Don’ have shampoo, got to use soap even that only if we’re lucky, Rexona. Otherwise, Lifebuoy.”
All the Heraths grew quiet in the face of this information. Not having shampoo was one thing, but to have to use what their mother referred to as laborers’ soap on one’s hair, this was out of the realm of imagination. Devi resolved to give the twins the two special packets of Sunsilk that had come with the bottle her mother had bought for them and that Devi had been saving just for the sheer delight of feeling the soft-bellied pouches between her palms. It didn’t matter what Rashmi said, if she were Rose or Dolly she’d want someone to give her some Sunsilk too. She arranged her treats in a circle in her saucer and separated the two halves of the chocolate biscuit. She brought it to her mouth to scrape the cream off with her teeth, but Rashmi touched her arm and shook her head, no, and Devi obeyed, pasting the biscuit together again and taking a well-mannered bite off one edge.
“Do you have brothers or just Sophia?” Nihil asked after a long silence during which he, too, put his chocolate biscuit back together again before Rashmi could catch him misbehaving.
“Have one brother. Sonna. But he’s rotten.” Dolly said.
“Rotten? How?” Suren asked.
Dolly shrugged.
“Is he the tall boy who was standing with Uncle Raju?” Devi asked.
“If he was shoutin’ or looked angry, then that’s him,” Dolly said. “Was he shoutin’?”
“No, he wasn’t shouting,” Rashmi said, thinking about the boy she had seen staring at them during the late morning and part of the afternoon too. She wanted to say she had thought he was handsome but that seemed inappropriate in the presence of the boy’s sisters. So she simply mentioned the other thing she had noticed. “He looked sad.”
At this the twins broke into a gale of laughter so fierce that the Herath children too began to grin. “Our Sonna sad? You mus’ be crazy!” Rose said through her laughter.
“Two things for him,” Dolly added, “bullyin’ us and fightin’ with our father.”
“An’ hittin’ Raju, don’ forget that!” Rose said.
Their conversation drifted on to other things and before long they fell into the pattern of all children, sharing secrets unabashedly, secure in the knowledge that what was told would remain confidential.
Rose revealed that her greatest fear was that Sonna would pick a fight with their father and be beaten to death, and that her big dream was to break the Guinness World Record for standing on one foot on a stage in Viharamahadevi Park, a task that she felt was well within her sights.
Dolly said: “I don’ like the Silvas nex’ door, but I like Jith. But I never get to talk to him because Mrs. Silva won’ let him come and play with us. An’ Mohan too, he won’ let Jith
talk to us either. I like Jith. I like him a lot.” Rose giggled at this “secret,” with which she was obviously very familiar, and Dolly pinched her arm and told her to stop it. “Also, I wish Sophia would come back to stay,” Dolly continued, “but since she’s not there I’m happy to be a twin,” for she did not like her brother, no, she did not like him at all.
Suren’s statement was so clear that nobody asked him to explain: he wanted his life to begin and end each day with music and nothing else, and not maths not chess in between but more music.
Rashmi said with great confidence that she intended to rise to the rank of head prefect at her convent, go to university to become a doctor, then get married and raise a family of two boys and two girls with her engineer husband, who would make sure her house would be big enough to include her aging parents, whose senility and deaths she would nurse and mourn accordingly.
“Someday, I’m going to play cricket for the first eleven at Royal,” Nihil said into the silence that followed Rashmi’s words, which were more revelation than aspiration. “Also, I want Devi to grow up to be fifty soon so I can stop worrying about her.” And as he said this he avoided looking at either Suren or Rashmi, but he put his arm around Devi, who was now seated next to him, and those words and that gesture made the Bolling twins feel as though they had been let into a very private club and so they said they, too, would look after Devi since she obviously needed it, being the youngest and all.