Sugarbread

by Balli Kaur Jaswal

  “Because my friend saw a ghost in the school toilets the other day, that’s why I want to know,” I finally said. This was true, although it wasn’t my reason. One of my classmates whose mother went to our school said that a nun’s ghost haunted the toilets. It was why we always went there in pairs and held in our pee if the lights were broken.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts and neither should you. You’ll scare yourself silly for nothing,” Daddy said with a frown. He looked disappointed, and I knew what I had to do to make him smile again.

  “Three-five-nine-nine,” I said. They were numbers from Kristen’s address, which she had printed in my autograph book that afternoon. “What if you win?”

  “I’ll buy you something really nice,” he promised as always. I grinned at him. I didn’t care any more that I didn’t believe in the lottery. I was going to school every day, Ma was going to the market, Daddy was working his shifts at the hotel and God was sitting in the storeroom. Everything was back to the way it had been before Nani-ji came along and it was about time. I looked out of the window, expecting to see the shadow again but there was nobody in the corridor. It was probably nothing, I told myself, just some trick of light outside in the dark. It was daytime now anyway and I couldn’t even think about ghosts without scoffing at myself for being a scared baby.

  Monday morning at school, Mrs Parasuram reminded all of us that it was the last Monday of the month. Girls whose parents could afford to pay the full fees at First Christian didn’t pay attention when Mrs Parasuram made the announcement. But for Bursary Girls, the last Monday of the month meant that we had to queue in the canteen during recess and get the special forms for our parents to sign. “Please don’t forget,” she said. Farizah twisted in her seat and mouthed something to me while pointing outside. I knew she was telling me to meet her in our usual spot in the tuck shop near the drinks stall so we could queue up together. I nodded at her and widened my eyes to warn her that Mrs Parasuram was dangerously close to her desk. Farizah got the message and whipped back around.

  “What forms? Do I have to get one?” Kristen asked me.

  “Financial forms,” I said. “For the girls who are getting help from the school with their fees.”

  Kristen giggled. “Help? With the school fees? It doesn’t cost that much to go here, does it?”

  I was surprised at myself for what I did next. I laughed along with Kristen and shrugged. “Yeah, it doesn’t cost that much at all.” Inside, I felt the pinch of my words.

  To make things worse, Mrs Parasuram told us to take out our social studies textbooks. We covered a chapter on Singapore in the 1960s and I thought of Ma as a girl, surveying the bare cupboards in her dimly lit kitchen. Her words echoed in my mind: Don’t become like me, Pin. I forced the heavy feeling of guilt out of my stomach by telling myself that pretending to be somebody else was better. After all, wasn’t this what Ma wanted for me?

  • • •

  I came home from school that afternoon to find Ma searching frantically through my room. She had turned over the mattress on the bed and all of the drawers were open. Even the curtains were tied at each end of the window as if whatever she was looking for might have been wedged in the window grilles. My first thought was that the shadow I had seen outside was a thief but then it dawned on me that Ma was looking for her jewellery.

  “Pin! You’re home. Oh, thank goodness. I need you to help me find something.”

  “Your gold?”

  “Yes!” Ma said. She stopped moving around the room. I saw that her eyes were darting all over the place and stray hairs had sprung from her head, making it look like she had just gotten out of bed. “Your Nani-ji took it for a while when she was staying here and I just realised that she never gave it back. I don’t know how I could have missed it but I guess I was just so busy…” Her voice trailed off. She sat down on the chair and surveyed the room. “Do you have any idea where it is?”

  “Fat Auntie took it.”

  Ma’s eyes were closed and she was rubbing her temples but at the mention of Fat Auntie’s name, they flew open. “She did what?”

  “Fat Auntie came over one day while you were at the hospital with Nani-ji…and she took all of the jewellery.”

  There was a tremor in Ma’s hand as she brought it to her lips. “That’s my jewellery, not hers,” she said. She sounded like a child fighting over a toy.

  “She’s probably just keeping it for you,” I offered. Ma shook her head and waved my suggestion away like it was a cloud of dust. Even I knew it wasn’t true. Why would Fat Auntie do such a nice thing for Ma?

  “It’s mine,” Ma said. She marched over to the phone and made a call. I followed her outside, nervousness making my stomach churn. “Hello, Bhabi-ji. It’s me,” she said. She used the term of respect for sister-in-law but her voice was still curt. “Oh, I’m doing fine. And you…? Good. I actually can’t speak for very long. But I just noticed that my wedding jewellery has been taken from my house and I was wondering if you knew… yes. Yes, Pin told me you came over. No, she just told me. I assumed the jewellery was always in her room where Mother had left it. I can come over tomorrow to pick it up. I was thinking of renting a safe deposit box in town so I can keep it there.”

  This was when Ma’s face changed. Her eyes widened and became full of fire. I braced myself for a shout. Her lips became thinner and every word shot out of her mouth like a bullet. “It’s my jewellery. I wore it on my wedding day and I intend to keep it. What I do with it is none of your business, is it? No, no, I don’t care what my mother told you, I don’t care what she thought. I want my gold back and I’m coming over tomorrow to get it.” The slamming of the receiver shook the flat like a clap of lightning. “Can you believe that woman?” Ma said into the air. “After all these years, she’s still going on about it.” She marched over to the storeroom and kicked the door. I flinched in shock—she might as well have given God a kick because He was in there.

  Ma smoothened out a wrinkle in the cotton blouse she was wearing. It was light blue, the colour of the afternoon sky and it looked strange on somebody who looked as worn out as she did—too bright and cheery. She ran her fingers through her hair, flattening the wisps that had come undone.

  “Hungry?” she asked quietly.

  “Yes.”

  She left the mess in the room and went into the kitchen. I followed her. I watched her take out ingredients from the fridge. Flat noodles; broccoli garlic cloves; black spicy sauce; minced pork and onions. We were going to be in the kitchen for a while. She peeled the flaky skin off the onions first and only spoke to instruct me to cover my eyes so I wouldn’t start crying. Then, as she chopped rapidly, the onions crunching under the blade of her knife, she told me everything.

  10

  1970

  JINI STANDS AMONG the dusty rows of gunnysacks and tinned food. A woman’s operatic wail crackles through a radio on the highest shelf behind the counter where Shop Uncle keeps Tiger Balm, Axe oil and small bottles of colourful pills. One row down, there are jars containing roots of plants and odd spices suspended in a thick liquid that resembles glue. Shop Uncle’s abacus beads click rapidly. He pauses and notices Jini. “Girl, what you want?” he asks.

  “Just deciding.”

  Shop Uncle returns to his calculations. Jini doesn’t have to look at the coins in her hands to know what she can afford. There is just enough for a tin of powdered milk, a small bag of salt and some canned sardines.

  The abacus beads stop clicking. Shop Uncle shuffles to the back. While his back is turned, Jini briefly considers stealing the sardines. She could fit two cans in each pocket and have enough money left over to buy some polish for her shoes. But the thought of stealing makes her stomach churn. She couldn’t do that to Shop Uncle, who has kindly continued to sell her sugar and cooking oil in small portions.

  Jini selects her groceries and approaches the counter. “Hello, Uncle,” she calls. He emerges from the back of the shop. She unfolds a few bills and places t
hem in front of him. As Shop Uncle counts the money, Jini hopes he will offer a discount. Every saved cent now counts. He mutters to himself and puts her items in a bag. Then he pauses and sniffs the air. Jini takes a step away from the counter, shame burning her face. He has caught a whiff of her shoes. When Shop Uncle has packed her groceries, she grabs the bag and walks briskly towards the door.

  “Girl,” Shop Uncle calls. “Come back.”

  Jini turns around. “I have to go. My mother—”

  Shop Uncle steps out from behind the counter. “Girl,” he says. “Your shoes.”

  Jini peers at her feet as if it’s the first time she’s looking at them but of course, she has known all day. This morning, while rushing to school, she stepped in a muddy patch. She scraped her soles against the grass to clean them only to discover that she had actually stepped in dog droppings. Although she did her best to clean her shoes with leaves, a foul-smelling streak remained on the canvas sides. It was her bad luck that the school inspector was present at assembly, checking the tidiness of the students. He had singled her out in front of everybody and said, “This is disgraceful.”

  Jini keeps her gaze lowered while Shop Uncle clicks his tongue and shakes his head. He must think that she is filthy, that she doesn’t bathe. Finally, she breaks the silence. “Uncle, maybe I can buy some shoe polish? About twenty cents worth?”

  Shop Uncle shakes his head again and walks away. Jini’s face burns. How embarrassing to have to ask, to practically be a beggar. Shop Uncle returns with a can of bleach. “You must clean your shoes with this,” he says. The can looks heavy and too costly for Jini. She has some savings but they’re being put towards fees to see Pra-ji about her skin problem. She shakes her head at Shop Uncle and steps out of the shop. Moments later, she hears Shop Uncle calling out. “Girl, wait,” he says. “I can give you some.” He waves an empty Coke bottle at her.

  “How much is it?” Jini asks, but he waves her away and turns his face slightly so he doesn’t have to smell her shoes. “Thank you,” she says, watching him fill the bottle. “Thank you so much.”

  • • •

  Neighbourhood noises drift through the open windows, along with smoke from the kitchens and a light breeze that makes the loose hairs from Jini’s plait dance around her shoulders. She is alone in the house. Sarjit is at work, her sister-in-law is at the temple and her mother is working on the other side of town again. It’s the perfect day to go to Pra-ji’s house, but she has to make sure Bilu doesn’t follow her. When she’s the only person at home, he can barely stand to be away from her. He is sitting in the kitchen now, squatting among tin cans of kerosene and an old gunnysack they use for rubbish, watching her.

  “I’m making you lunch,” she tells him. “You have to eat.”

  He shakes his head. She ignores him. Lunch takes a long time to prepare because the itching of her arms and legs distracts her. After she scratches, she has to wash her hands. She wishes her sister-in-law were around to deal with Bilu but Bhabi-ji has been going to the temple every afternoon, probably just to escape from him. He doesn’t mind when she leaves because he doesn’t like her. When she ties his hair in the morning, he bites and screams. “It’s so embarrassing. The neighbours think I’m torturing him,” Jini heard her telling Sarjit one night. Jini was furious to hear Sarjit agreeing with her. “Just go to the temple during the day then. I know how difficult he is.” She wanted to tell her mother about what they’d said but she had a feeling that her mother already knew.

  Jini only knows how to make dhal and roti, so she pours the lentils in a bowl and starts to sort through them, looking for stones. She finds three and tosses them out the window. Bilu’s eyes follow them.

  “Don’t go outside,” she instructs, as she notices him rising slowly from his corner. She’s afraid that he might race into the road one day and get hit by a car. His movements are unpredictable like that and she finds herself consumed by worry now that it’s harder to stop him.

  To take her mind off her worries, Jini focuses on cooking. She turns on the stove and puts a pot of water on it. She washes the lentils and pours them into the pot, then covers the pot with a lid. She opens the cupboards and rummages through them for spices to add. There is a container full of cardamom, some coriander leaves and a few small tins of powders—red, yellow, brown, orange. She could do what her mother does and just start adding and mixing. She doesn’t know what each spice is, or what they taste like, but the colours have to have some meaning. Red for anger, love. Yellow for a hot afternoon. Brown for relaxing, forgetting. Orange for excitement.

  “Sugar?” Bilu asks her.

  “No. No sugar.”

  “Sugar,” he insists.

  “Mother said no more sugar for you. We don’t have enough for tea because I keep putting it in all of your food. One day your teeth will fall out,” she tells him. He seems unfazed by this. He pops a thumb in his mouth and begins to suck on it.

  Jini is about to tell Bilu to take his dirty hand out of his mouth, that nine-year-olds don’t suck their thumbs, when she hears her gate creaking. She glances out the window to see a shadow. Before she can call for help, she recognises the person walking into her yard. The curly-haired boy makes cautious steps towards the back door. When he catches her eye, he waves. She runs out into the yard and shouts, “Get out!” She hopes the neighbours hear her. “You can’t come here!”

  The boy looks confused. “Why?”

  “Your kind isn’t allowed around my house.”

  The boy looks surprised, like a strong gust of wind has just pushed him back. But he recovers quickly. “Okay,” he says. His voice is a tiny whisper, but Jini can read the movement of his lips. “Okay.” He turns and runs out of the yard into the street. She stands there for a long time with her hands on her hips, feeling so guilty that she is frozen to the ground. But this is what the neighbours and her mother want. They would be proud of her. She wishes the boy hadn’t come over. She has been avoiding him for some time now. Each time he waves, she ducks away. Each time she sees him walking up the road, she turns around and goes in the opposite direction. You can’t afford to get into any trouble, she reminds herself.

  When she returns, too much water has boiled and the lentils are stuck to the bottom of the pot, burnt. “Wasted!” Jini cries as she turns off the stove and scrapes away the burnt dhal. Bilu would never eat this. His nose is already wrinkled in disgust. She looks at him and sighs. The dough for roti has already been made, but he’d never eat it plain. She takes out the rolling pin and makes two uneven rotis, lumpy in the middle, but Bilu wouldn’t know the difference. Then she throws them onto a hot plate and watches them bloat with steam and turn a nice golden brown. Bilu gets up to watch.

  “Sugar?” he asks.

  “Yeah, okay, sugar,” Jini says. She turns off the fire and puts both pieces of roti on a plate. She takes the sugar from the container she has hidden at the back of the cupboard and pours it onto the hot roti. It melts instantly into the dark pockets on the bread. She hands the plate to Bilu and makes two more for herself, sprinkling a generous amount of sugar over the bread. She needs something sweet to forget what she just said and did to that poor boy outside. The sugar cancels out the sour taste in her mouth, the bitterness of her words.

  “Don’t tell anybody,” Jini says. “Mother will kill me.”

  But Bilu doesn’t know the meaning of secrets. Jini realises then that this is why she loves him so much.

  • • •

  It is early evening when Jini sneaks out of the house.

  She leaves Bilu in the living room with a plate of sugary roti. He has been eating it every day for a week now. Thank goodness her mother has hardly been home this whole week between her work and the temple, or she’d surely be furious that they’ve used up all of the sugar. Wrapped in a handkerchief in one of Jini’s pockets is a pile of notes and coins for Pra-ji. Jini counted $10.65. This will be enough for one session with Pra-ji—her problems might require more, then she’ll have
to save up for another few months to keep paying him for his help. Jini closes the door behind her, leaving it unlocked in case there’s a fire and Bilu has to get out. Just two months ago, in a house on the other side of the island, a little girl had died in a house fire when her mother left her alone at home with the door locked. Jini shudders to think of Bilu trapped in a burning house. She vows to hurry home from Pra-ji’s place.

  “Where are you going?” Two voices in unison startle Jini. The sisters who live next door are peering over the fence, watching her tiptoe across the lawn.

  “The shops,” she lies.

  “You’re dressed too nicely to go to the shops,” Jasbir Kaur says bluntly. She exchanges a glance with her sister, Amanpreet.

  “Not the nearby shops. The shops in town. My mother wants me to buy something from there,” Jini says. She looks past the two girls as she talks. The girls are not satisfied but at least they leave her alone. They wander away, whispering to each other and glancing at the house. Jini thinks she hears one of them saying Bilu’s name and now she wonders if she should go back to the house. He’ll be fine. He eats slowly and when he finishes, he usually falls asleep on the spot. If her mother comes home to find him sitting there alone, she can always lie and tell her she had to go back to school to collect some things.

  Last week at the temple, Pra-ji told Mother that he spoke to God and found out that their father had another family in India. A wife and twin baby boys. Her mother’s knees buckled a bit and Jini had to hold her shoulders to make sure she didn’t collapse right there in front of all of the temple women, who were watching. They always watch when Mother has something to ask Pra-ji, which is why she waits for them to leave before she speaks.