Sugarbread

by Balli Kaur Jaswal

  Daddy poked his head into my room. “How are you, Pin?” he asked.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “How was school?”

  I shrugged. “Boring. Miss Yoon didn’t come to school today.”

  Daddy raised an eyebrow. “Things have changed. When I was in school, if a teacher didn’t come to school, we had fun.”

  “We got an old man relief teacher. Like an uncle.” I said.

  Daddy nodded sympathetically. “I see,” he said. I noticed he was wearing his work uniform—the starched greyish-blue shirt, a pair of navy blue pants. The pants were not properly ironed. There were wrinkles near his ankles. He followed my eyes and looked embarrassed. “Yeah, I know. I’m not very good at ironing,” he said. “Your Ma usually does all of these things, you know? But she’s so busy.” We both looked down when he said, “busy”. Ma practically lived in the hospital now. I had not seen her in three days, and only heard her hoarse voice over the telephone. One night, I picked up my phone extension when she called. “Pin, please pass the phone to your father.”

  “Okay,” I said. I called out for Daddy, who picked up the extension in the living room. I lingered on the line and decided only to hang up when either one of them told me to, but as soon as Daddy’s voice came on, Ma’s stern voice broke down into sniffles and sobs, and neither of them noticed that I was still listening. “My mother is dying,” she wailed. “And she’s going to die thinking I caused Bilu’s death.”

  Daddy tried to console Ma. “Now is the time to put aside all of your petty differences, the two of you. Just forget about the whole incident—your mother is not going to change her mind.”

  “She thinks I went to Pra-ji’s house that day and I…”

  “I know what she thinks. I know what Pra-ji said. But you know the truth, don’t you? And if you just explain it all to Pin, she’ll know too. That’s the important thing. Forget about what your mother wants to believe.”

  Ma sniffled, then she said she had to go. Daddy hung up the phone and came into my room. I quickly put down the receiver and pretended to be looking for something on my desk. “Have you had your dinner?” Daddy asked me. It was what Miss Yoon would call a silly question. Of course I hadn’t eaten my dinner. We relied solely on hawker food these days. We didn’t even enter the kitchen unless we were passing through it to get to the toilet or the washing machine.

  “No,” I said.

  “Hungry?”

  “Not really. You?”

  “Not really.” Daddy stepped out of the room, then came back, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration as if he was remembering that I was supposed to eat, whether I was hungry or not. “You have to have something for dinner. I can go down and buy you a packet of food. What do you want?”

  It had been raining all day. Clouds slid over the moon like a blanket and the wind sighed against our windows. Monsoon weather always called for something mild and soothing, like hot dumplings in chicken soup or glass noodles with stir-fried vegetables. But I was feeling guilty and I wanted to eat something doused in red chilli to cover up the queasiness in my stomach. “Nasi biryani,” I said.

  Daddy chuckled. “I thought you said you weren’t hungry.” Nasi biryani was very filling. One chicken thigh covered in curry paste and basmati rice was enough to keep a person from eating for the rest of the day. The man who ran the Indian stall downstairs was generous with his papadums and yoghurt as well. I thought of saving the food for two or three days because Daddy had almost forgotten about dinner tonight.

  “I’ll come with you,” I said, scrambling to get up.

  “No, Pin. You finish your homework. I’ll just take a few minutes.”

  I frowned. Outside, it began to pour again. It was better to be indoors during the monsoon season but I did not like being alone in the flat with God. It was during these times that I could hear Him clicking His tongue inside his mouth like the tick-tock of hands on a clock. If I closed my eyes and stood with my back facing His portrait, I still saw Him shaking His head in disappointment. If I continued to shut my eyes, I saw Nani-ji wheezing and convulsing in my room, her eyes bulging out as she gasped for Ma to take her to the hospital. “I’ll go, I’ll go,” she kept saying, clawing at the sheets. I felt her breath lingering in the still air of my room. I smelled her musky clothes and the minty smell of minyak kapak medicated oil that she dabbed on her temples for headaches. I always waited for my mind to go blank and for Nani-ji to exit my thoughts but stubbornly, she stayed. She was there even after I opened my eyes.

  6

  “WE ARE NOT allowed to celebrate anything now,” Ma told me gravely as she stood tiptoe on a wooden stool and reached up to unhook the curtains from the window. “Do you understand? So stop asking me what we’re doing for Deepavali this year. It’s not even our holiday anyway.” I listened, but my heart was making too much noise as it beat frantically in my chest. Ma could fall now. She could slip off the stool and break her neck, and God would just shake his head and remind me that it was all my fault.

  Ma was at home because the doctors at the hospital had told her to go home and rest. I overheard Daddy telling her to go to bed, but she stayed awake and close to the phone. She did not enter the kitchen. In the afternoon, she began cleaning the flat as if preparing for a visitor. “Is somebody coming over?” I asked cautiously.

  “Can’t I keep my home clean?” Ma snapped. I tried to avoid her for the rest of the day but it was a challenge. Our flat was small and it was a Saturday. I had finished my homework and all of my revisions already. Ma jumped off the stool, leaving the curtains half unhooked and dangling slanted from the windows. She went outside to water the plants. Then she came back inside again and began spraying Windex on the glass top of the coffee table. Her arms and legs were all raw patches now, and in some spots there were small dots of blood where she had scratched too hard.

  I opened the fridge. There was a plastic container with a small stick of butter, a water pitcher, a carrot and an eggplant in the vegetable rack, and a few small bottles of ground spices. I spotted a loaf of bread on one shelf and checked to see if it was mouldy, relieved to discover that it wasn’t. I took out the butter and switched on the toaster. We had learnt in science class that humans could go for days with just water, so I could do just fine on bread and butter until Daddy came home with some food from the hawker centre. I wondered about Ma. How did she go all day without eating? She was getting thinner. I saw for the first time today that her bangle could almost slip off her wrist if she shook it a little.

  Then I had an idea. I opened the closet door again and pulled out a packet of sugar. Tiny black ants scrambled away as I unwound the rubber band that was tied over the mouth of the packet. I spread the butter over the bread, then sprinkled sugar over it. Then I sprinkled a bit more. I wasn’t sure how to turn on the stove but I had seen Ma do it tonnes of times. I pushed then twisted the knob and heard the short clicks before the flames appeared with a gasp.

  “Pin? What are you doing?” Ma called from the living room.

  “Making lunch,” I replied. “Sugarbread.”

  “Making what?”

  “Sugarbread,” I repeated. Ma was not the only person around here who could make up recipes. I placed the bread on the pan and pressed it down with a fork, watching as smoke curled up from the browning edges. Ma did not say anything after that. She continued cleaning. “Do you want some?” I asked. There was a pause and again, I panicked, fearing that Ma had fainted from hunger. I could not push these horrible thoughts from my mind. God was bound to punish me again soon.

  “Yeah, leave one for me.” Ma’s voice brought me some relief.

  I made three slices and there was only one slice of bread left in the packet. I placed it on the table to remind Ma of our food shortage in the flat and it worked. “Is this all we have in the house? Butter, bread and sugar?” she asked me. I nodded.

  “I’ve been very busy with your grandmother,” she said defensively.

  I pushed the plate of
sugarbread towards Ma as a peace offering before we began an argument. “Try it,” I said. The kitchen smelled like smoke and caramel. I had made sure to turn off the stove and soak the pan so the crusty bits of burnt sugar wouldn’t cling to the surface.

  “Who taught you to make this?” Ma asked. She gave the bread a wary look.

  “Nobody. I thought of it on my own.”

  Ma took a bite and chewed. She looked like she was thinking or concentrating on something. “Nice,” she finally said.

  I took a slice of my own and bit down on it. It was sweet and crunchy. I took another bite. Although I didn’t dare say it out loud, this was better than any dish Ma had ever cooked because I had invented it. I had made it on my own. I felt smart and satisfied, like I had done something right for once, even if it was a small thing like making sugarbread. After I finished my slice, I offered Ma the last one. “Let’s split it,” she said, tearing the bread in half. When she was done, she said, “You know, my younger brother Bilu would have loved this. He loved anything sweet. There was a point when the only way to get him to eat was to give him something with sugar on it.” She smiled and shook her head. I stopped chewing and waited for her to continue, but then she dusted the crumbs off her hands and took the plates to the sink without uttering another word.

  • • •

  I was trying very hard to get on God’s good side. I stopped cutting my hair and I began doing good deeds again. I hoped that He was watching when I returned school library books to their correct places on the shelves instead of just cramming them in with the encyclopaedias like the other girls did. I wanted His eyes on me all the time now. I wanted Him to see me holding doors open for my teachers, picking up rubbish, feeding the crusts of my bread to the birds downstairs.

  But it wasn’t enough for Him. Ma stayed at the hospital for two days straight. She called home to say that she couldn’t leave Nani-ji’s side. I asked if I could visit and Ma said, “No, Pin. There are lots of sick people here. You’ll have bad dreams.”

  At school, Farizah asked me why I had grown so quiet during recess lately and when I told her that my grandmother was sick, her eyes widened.

  “I’ll ask my parents to pray for her,” she assured me.

  I did not know how to pray but it was a good idea. God might stop taking out his anger on Nani-ji if I spoke directly to Him in the language He knew best. I knew a few scattered words and phrases that I’d picked up from all of Nani-ji’s routine evening prayers, but none of them made much sense to me. I was afraid of offending God even more than I already had.

  Then one afternoon after school, I went to Ma’s room and got a gutka, a Sikh prayer book, from her dresser drawer. She had three of them, and each one was wrapped in a handkerchief. The oldest one had a tattered cover and pages that spilt out the minute I tried to turn them. I tucked them back in and picked out the newer edition. The prayers were all written in Punjabi script that curled and hung from a long bar across the page. Some of the alphabet looked like teapots, snails, squatting men and wide-branched trees. At the temple, these letters were responsible for all of the low chanting, the steady hums that came out of the old ladies’ mouths. I traced my finger over them, half-expecting to feel them rise and squirm under my touch.

  At the back of the newer book, there was an English translation of all of the prayers. God is everywhere and in everyone. He is the Truth—Immortal, Creator, Without-Fear, Without-Enmity, Unborn and Self-Created. I didn’t quite understand this bit but I kept on reading. I looked at God in His portrait and tried to read to Him. He looked disinterested. I kept on reading and the more pages I turned, the less I looked at God. I began to notice that the Sikh prayers were very similar to the Christian hymns we’d learnt at school. The Gods were different and the people were different, but we were saying the same thing. I shut the book and looked at God. I noticed His eyes roaming from mine to the space above my head. A breeze entered the flat and cooled the top of my head—my bare head.

  “I forgot,” I said, flattening my palms out over my head. “I’m so sorry!” I ran into Ma’s room to get a scarf. Now I’d have to start all over. Nani-ji always said there was no use in trying to pray to God if you couldn’t show Him basic respect. I figured He’d seen me speaking but couldn’t hear me unless my head was covered and my feet were tucked away from his view.

  While I was searching Ma’s closet for a scarf, I heard the doorbell ring. I went out to the living room and looked through the peephole. Fat Auntie’s face stretched out so she looked even wider than usual. “What does she want?” I muttered to myself, forgetting for a moment about my plan to score points with God.

  “Hello, Pin,” Fat Auntie said as I opened the gate with the spare key.

  “Hello,” I said. We greeted each other with the same sideways hug she exchanged with Ma. “Ma’s not here.”

  “I know. I just came to pick up some of your grandmother’s things.”

  “Nani-ji took everything to the hospital with her,” I told Fat Auntie. She pushed past me impatiently and entered my room. Suddenly, I longed for Ma to be there. She didn’t care how big Fat Auntie was or how much older she was. She’d tell her off for just barging in like that.

  It turned out that I was wrong about Nani-ji bringing everything to the hospital with her. Fat Auntie went straight for the closet and knew exactly which shelf to search. “What are you looking for?” I asked innocently, but I had a feeling I knew what Nani-ji had instructed her to take. Fat Auntie dug and muttered until she retrieved the small velvet pouch. It jingled lightly as she opened it and inspected each piece of jewellery inside. “All here,” she said smugly. I hoped God was watching. I hoped He could read my mind and see how hard it was for me to keep from grabbing the jewellery back from Fat Auntie’s sausage fingers and putting it back where it belonged. She had no right to take things like that, whether Nani-ji had told her to or not.

  “It’s my mother’s jewellery,” I informed her. “Why are you taking it?”

  “It was your grandmother’s jewellery first,” Fat Auntie replied. “And she doesn’t think your mother deserves to keep it.” She spun clumsily on her heels and trotted out of my room. I followed her.

  “So who gets it?” I asked.

  Fat Auntie shrugged. “That’s really up to your Nani,” she said. She made a solemn face and dipped her head to God, tugging her shawl over her head. When she placed the jewellery pouch into her purse and snapped it shut, I felt my good senses coming back and with them a rush of dread. Nani-ji had already made up her mind about where the jewellery was going. Fat Auntie had just come to collect it.

  • • •

  Sugarbread was dinner for two nights in a row. Daddy asked me if I wanted food from the hawker centre, but I waved him away. “I like this better,” I told him. I made him a slice.

  “Very nice,” he said. “Not very nutritious though. Let me go down and buy you some Point-Point Rice. Do you want crabsticks? Some spicy rendang?” I shook my head. I didn’t want to trouble him or anybody. It was part of my plan to get on God’s good side and I had to work harder at it because of Fat Auntie’s visit.

  I wasn’t going to reveal to Daddy that Fat Auntie had come over and taken Ma’s jewellery, but it slipped out. Daddy mentioned that he saw Fat Auntie at the hospital and that she looked like she had gained a few more kilos, if that were possible. “She’s as big as a truck, Pin,” he marvelled. “We’ll have to start calling her Fatter Auntie.”

  I giggled and told him that she had nearly knocked over our television when she entered the living room. It wasn’t true but it was a funny image.

  Daddy snorted and took a big bite out of his sugarbread. The grains of sugar tumbled from his mouth and scattered onto the table. He pressed his thumb into each grain and placed them neatly on his plate. Then he looked up. “Wait—when was Fat Auntie here?”

  I took a large gulp of my unchewed bread by accident and began to choke. Daddy leant over and patted my back awkwardly but his eyes still dem
anded an answer. “When?” he asked.

  “Just once.”

  “When?”

  “Tuesday. In the afternoon. I guess she knew Ma would be gone.”

  “What did she want?”

  “She went to my room and she took Ma’s jewellery from the closet,” I said. “Nani-ji says it’s not for Ma to keep. She doesn’t deserve it.”

  Daddy groaned and buried his head in his hands. “Oh, that’s very bad,” he said when he finally looked up. The fluorescent light buzzed above us and small flying ants flickered around the bulb. “She took all of it?”

  I nodded guiltily. It felt as if I had stolen from Ma even though Fat Auntie was the real thief. Suddenly, that familiar rush of anger that used to surge through my body every time I thought of Nani-ji taking up space in our flat returned. She was in the hospital, she was ill and attached to tubes and machines, but she was still causing trouble. Then I remembered that God was observing my behaviour, and I took a deep breath and calmed down. I took another bite of the sugarbread. It filled my mouth with sweetness and made me forget Nani-ji for a moment. When I was finished, I made two more slices.

  “Could you buy more bread on your way home?” I asked Daddy as he left for his evening shift. He looked over his shoulder doubtfully. “I still don’t think you should be eating sugar on toast for dinner,” he said. I noticed that his voice was weighed with sadness and I knew it had nothing to do with what I was eating. He was still thinking about the jewellery, about how he would have to explain it to Ma. “Do me a favour and keep it a secret, okay?” he said. “Your Ma will have a fit when she finds out your grandmother has given it to your Auntie. It’s a very sensitive issue.”

  “Why did she do it?” I asked Daddy, hoping that he would sit down, remove his shoes and tell me the rest of Ma’s story. There was still so much that I didn’t know and Ma was prone to talking only when the mood struck her. I knew I was supposed to be patient, but I was making so many mistakes with God that maybe it was better that I found out now. But Daddy would not say a word. He gave me an apologetic look, then left the flat without saying goodbye. And I was left alone with God on the wall and the burning caramel smell wafting from the kitchen to fill the space between us.