By the time I was twenty and out of college, I had developed a ringing in my ears and a buzzing in my head from all this talk. It drove me mad.
I still wanted other things then—to study some more, to find a job like those women who sprawled confidently inside the glossy covers of magazines in Lalli’s father’s shop, to travel to strange places with names like New York, Trafalgar Square, Down Under, the Arctic and the Antarctic. I wanted and wanted and wanted everything that was out of reach. I was like a donkey, chasing a carrot dangled before its greedy nose, like Tantalus, that man in a Greek story that our English teacher Miss Shanti told us. This man was punished by the gods, who, it seemed, were like the angry sages in our myths who forbade women to look directly at the new moon.
On that night of the new moon, though, I, along with all those women who stood around us on the terrace in distant Agra muttering prayers for the health of their husbands to Shiva the Lord of the dark and of all the ghastly hordes who roared through the mysterious place between waking and sleep, between night and dawn, real and unreal—I too sent up a prayer to the wild-haired, ash-clothed God to send me a husband who would carry me away from my small life in one of the back alleys of the world. Shiva the eternal bachelor had been pierced awake from cosmic slumber by an arrow from the God of Love and had fallen fiercely in love with Parvati. I too imagined myself a Parvati, or a Mumtaz Mahal, a Juliet or a Laila, the object of a hero’s undying love. I too wished to be borne away on horseback, in a train, or a plane, even in an ox-drawn cart if nothing else was available, by a man who would allow me to expand beyond my boundaries, beyond that stick-insect of an I, who would show me the world, who would love me into being more than what I was. It did not occur to me that I needed no one to take me to my ambitions, to fulfill my desires. I could do it on my own, like Chandra did, and the women in those magazines in Lalli’s father’s shop. All I needed was the will and a little bit of courage.
My excuse was the world in which I was raised. Even though my own childhood and youth was far less constrained than Lalli’s, I was part of a tight-knit, contained universe where everybody lived within an unwritten code of conduct the knowledge of which came to us with our mother’s milk, was dinned into our skulls at every opportunity by our elders, inhaled from the virtuous, dusty air we breathed. In this world secrets could never be kept. Homes were set so close that young boys jumped from one rooftop to the next without fear of falling in between. You could look into your neighbours’ windows, stretch a leg and an arm and climb in. When windows were shut, everyone knew it was because on the other side a couple was making love or they were quarrelling or somebody was dying and wanted a little bit of quiet darkness in which to slip away from the world they had inhabited for this while.
If it wasn’t the closeness of one house to another that kept us all within the unwritten code of conduct that nobody dared to break, then there was the fear of alienation from the community. Forgiveness was not part of our vocabulary and to be cast out of our close-knit community was akin to being disowned by your own mother, or, in my case, my father—an unbearable thing. It was like being exiled from the world, sent out alone into the unknowing silence of outer space. It filled me with fear.
There were, of course, the occasional transgressors, bold creatures like Chandra Raman who went around with a swing of her round hips and her nose in the air seemingly unaware of her disgrace, or if she knew, careless of the whispers following her. Somebody had seen her on the beach with her cousin Shekhar, holding his hand no less, so close to him that you could not even pass a blade of grass between them. That was enough to destroy her reputation, although Shekhar, the cousin, had got away scot-free. Chandra became a pariah on our street, and even though she continued to live there, she might have been a ghost the way people looked right through her.
I was a girl of thirteen when Chandra was cast out, and even at that age, when my prudish moral compass was set by my elders and the people in my neighbourhood, even then I had smarted at the unfairness of it all. She had been like an older sister to me, had taken care of me innumerable times when my mother was ill and Madhu Kaki, who had moved in by then, was busy with housework. Chandra had held my small, shivering body when my mother had finally died, insisted on walking me to school every day for nearly a year until I got somewhat accustomed to the idea of death’s permanence, to the notion that my mother was not coming back, that I would never again hear her weak little voice calling me to her except in my memory or in dreams.
But to my everlasting shame, I had done nothing. I did not even wave back when Chandra fluttered her hand at me as she went past our house, her bangles shining in the morning sun, their jingle abnormally loud in the dusty, watchful silence of the street. Instead I ducked inside and hid there until Chandra had turned into a bright blur of sari at the other end of the street.
This is my weakness, I know that now. I am a follower of rules. I do not have the courage to break them. I cannot bring myself to fight back against the things I know are wrong or to stand up for things that are right. I let Chandra go. I watch as Vikram beats the children and I do nothing. I am that scrawny little stick-insect of an I that fell into a mirror on a crescent-moon night many years ago on a terrace in Agra. I am still there, unable to climb out.
I moved away from the window and glanced at the children again. They were huddled together, whispering. Hem appeared to be crying.
I walked across to them and they shrank closer to each other. “Come away from that window, both of you,” I said.
They nodded and moved away. Varsha had her usual pleasant expression, polite but guarded. I have no reason to complain about her behaviour—she has always been the perfect child, young girl now, no longer the five-year-old I met when I first set foot in this house.
“You shouldn’t be watching such things,” I said. “I should have stopped you. Hem, come here, bayboo.” I held out my arms. Hem hesitated, glanced at his sister. I caught the edge of something odd in the look that he received from Varsha. What was it they were hiding? Some childish secret, perhaps? I have to catch Hem alone—he will never tell me anything when his sister is around.
Varsha looked back at me with her fathomless black eyes and said quietly, “Hem is scared of dead people. He hasn’t seen any, that’s why. But I told him it’s okay, I’m here for him.”
Where does the girl get her self-assurance from? It’s not as if she has seen dozens of dead bodies herself! I held out my arms and insisted, “Come here, Hem.”
He didn’t come to me. He shrank against his sister. “I was asleep,” he whispered.
What was he talking about? I felt like pulling him away from Varsha and holding him against me. But before I could do anything, as if she had read my thoughts—and perhaps she had, the odd girl that she is—she pushed Hem towards me. “Go to Mama, Hem. She will make you feel better. And I could do with a hug as well, Mama. I am scared too. To think poor Anu was right here, so near our house …” And her eyes brimmed with tears.
I was surprised by the sudden display of vulnerability from a girl who hardly ever weeps, not even when Vikram whips her. Then they were wrapped around me, both of them, the girl as tall as I am, her freshly shampooed hair soft and sweet-smelling, and I was ashamed of my suspicions. She is still a child at thirteen, she has done everything since I came to this house to make me feel a part of her family.
“Mama,” she whispered, her breath tickling my ear. “Our Mama, we’ve nothing to be scared of as long as you’re here, right, Mama?”
I nodded silently and thought of a morning a few years ago when she was eight years old. Hemant was a toddler. Vikram had left for work after scolding me for something I had done or not done, I don’t recall. I couldn’t stop crying that day although I did make an attempt to control myself when I was in Akka’s room, making up her bed, folding her clothes.
“Why do you stay, Suman?” the old lady had asked me unexpectedly. She was in her chair, her legs stretched out on a stool, a
nd I was massaging some warm oil into her wrinkled old feet. “Go, leave today. Run. Run.”
I stared up at her and the tears started up again. “How? I have no money, how can I leave? Where do I go?” I asked. “And my son, I can’t leave him.”
Akka leaned forward and touched my cheek and said, “Take your jewellery to a pawnbroker, sell it. And here, this is to get you to a city with pawnbrokers.” She dug around beneath the seat of her chair and fished out a handful of dollar bills which she thrust at me.
I looked down at the money—not more than a hundred dollars. And my meagre collection of jewellery would get me no more than two hundred. That was barely enough for a flight back to India, definitely not enough for me and my son to survive on. Akka had no idea how much anything cost, Vikram took care of all her financial needs like he did mine, doling out money to me when I wanted something, insisting on a full accounting afterwards, driving me to town to do our weekly shop together.
“Well, what is the matter? What’s going on in that head of yours?” Akka asked.
“This is not enough for anything, I can’t leave,” I said.
She fumbled around her neck, removed a gold chain that she always wore and pressed it into my hand. “Then take this too, I don’t need it.”
Still not enough, I thought. I stood there mutely, terrified of leaving, terrified of what might happen if I stayed. And Akka pushed me with all the strength left in her withered arms and said, “Are you a sheep, are you a brainless ninny, what are you doing standing there like that? Go, I say, go!”
“Mama is going away?” Varsha had entered the room unnoticed and stood there, a tiny girl with large, frightened eyes. “Akka, you are sending Mama away? Why? I don’t want her to leave. She is mine. She is mine. She is mine.”
The girl hurled herself at me and wrapped her arms around my legs. “I won’t let you go!” she screamed. “I won’t. I’ll tell Papa! I will, I will!”
It took an hour to convince her that I was not leaving and after that Akka never again brought up the subject, at least not when the girl was around.
A few days after that, my passport vanished. I assumed Varsha had told Vikram about my conversation with Akka and he had taken away my passport to prevent me from leaving. I didn’t dare to ask him for it. Who knew how he would react?
Was Varsha aware of my renewed plan to leave? With Hem and without her? I would like to take her with me, but I can’t, she’s not mine to take anyway and she wouldn’t leave her father. He comes first in her affections along with Hem and Akka. Had she sensed it somehow, like an animal smells unheard, unseen things?
Now, with Anu gone, I wondered if I would have the courage to go after all. I held the two children close. My ear filled with the sound of Varsha’s quiet breathing and I felt guilty that I do not entirely like her.
She pulled away from me and stared into my eyes. “I love you, Mama,” she said. “Please don’t leave me.”
I was silent. She shook me and insisted, “Don’t leave me. Promise you won’t?”
“I promise,” I said, the lie tripping easily off my tongue. “I promise.”
Varsha
I was already in a bad mood thanks to Nick Hutch, who’d gone on and on about me and Hem being POCs.
“What’s that?” Hem asked.
“A Person of Colour,” Nick said.
“As if you aren’t, Nick Hutch,” I retorted from my usual spot in the bus, the rear window seat right at the back, far away from all the dumb kids from our school. Nobody ever takes that seat, or the one for Hem beside it, even when I’m late getting out of class. Everybody who has any sense knows it’s my seat. Everybody remembers how I nearly killed Warthog a couple of years ago, even though he’s three times my size and could have pulverized me. Warthog had called me a dirty name so I stuck his face in the snow and sat on his head until his legs stopped kicking and he nearly suffocated. Of course I got in trouble with the principal who called Papa to school and told him that I had anger management issues and would be expelled if I attacked anybody else. Warthog’s mother was there too, all teary and accusing. I cried and told them what Warthog had called me and added that he’d tried to molest Hem, which was why I reacted the way I did. It was a whopping big lie but it worked. Nobody was very fond of Warthog—he doesn’t wash and he smells bad, so it was not difficult to convince Mr. Russell that he was a pervert.
I stared Nick down. “You’re a POC too,” I said. “You’re pink as your Mom’s bum, Nick Hutch, so watch what you say about others.” But I wasn’t really in the mood to pick on Nick. He says dumb things but he isn’t a bad guy.
“Oh look, what’s that thing there?” Nick turned away and pretended to be engrossed in something outside the window. He can’t bear it when I make fun of him. He would like me to be his girlfriend, but I am not his girlfriend and will never be. He wiped his hand across the foggy window, jammed shut forever, cloudy with old dust and layers of child-breath, jammy hands and spit, and pointed to a small heap of flowers glowing like red coals against the new green of the field we were passing. There was a cross too, sticking up like a raised hand.
“Look,” Nick insisted. I peered out of the window, my hair blowing into my eyes. The bus created a wind and stirred up dead leaves that flew like butterflies. Then the sad little cross was invisible, and the road behind was just a long stretch of emptiness, not even another car on it, not even a bird.
“Somebody just got killed there,” Nick said. “And that’s a cross to show where the person died. That way god can come get his soul.”
“Could be her soul,” I pointed out.
“Could be,” agreed Nick.
I know he has a crush on me because a few months ago he offered to pay Hem four dollars and thirty-two cents, all the money he had in the world, to steal a pair of my hair clips, my socks, anything. My brother reported this to me, of course. He can’t hide anything from me.
“Tell him he would have to pay you twenty-five bucks,” I instructed Hem.
“Won’t Papa get mad at us for selling your stuff?”
“How would he know? Are you planning to carry tales to him? Hmmm?” I gave Hem my special LOOK which really scares him. Then I relented. “Think of the things we could buy with twenty-five dollars. You could get that book and kit on how to make your own snow, if you wanted to.”
But there was no way Nick could get so much money. Joe Hutch is always watching him. He caught him one Christmas pinching a dollar from his pants pocket. “My dad socked me for stealing, but I wasn’t really, it was to buy him his Christmas present,” he’d complained, nursing his sore ear.
I just had to laugh. “You stole money from your dad to get him a present? You are a moron, Nick Hutch!”
He gave me a pained look. “I was just borrowing it. And he would have got his rotten dollar back along with three of mine anyway—that’s how much his present was going to cost. But he didn’t even want to hear me.”
I’d laughed again. Nick can be an idiot, but he’s also funny and the only one who gives me birthday presents, even if they are kind of weird and useless. At least he remembers.
I hung halfway out of the bus window, and looked back, searching for those red flowers in the distance. I felt sad. We have no crosses or markers for our dead—we burn them. If we didn’t, there would be one for our grandfather, Mr. J.K. Dharma, and one for Vasant, Suman’s baby who died because he was born prematurely. Suman had named him for Spring, her favourite season, even though he was only the size of a tadpole when he died. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I think I can see him. I tell Hem this and he starts to cry. He is such a wuss. It is so easy to scare him. “Really? Really truly? You can see ghosts?” he asks. And I say, yes, yes I can. I can see my dead Mom and Grandpa and our baby brother. I tell him if he doesn’t listen to me and obey me and love me always, I will call the ghosts to take him away to the other side of our gate where they all live. Or to the bottom of the lake. Now when we pass the lake on our way to the bus-stop
, Hem always walks on the far side of the road. But I only scare him sometimes, when I want him to obey me and he doesn’t.
I think it would be nice to have a marker or something where I could place bunches of fire-red flowers—for my dead brother anyway. Instead of a cross, perhaps I could stick a statue of Papa’s favourite god Ganesha in the ground. How strange would that look, a dancing elephant-man in the middle of nowhere c/o Merrit’s Point? That’s what I would like when I die—a god stuck in the snow to look after me for all eternity.
“My baby brother died too,” Hemant said as if he had jumped into my head and stolen my thoughts. “But we didn’t put up any crosses.”
“That’s because we cremated him, Hem,” I said from my corner of the bus.
“I don’t know anyone who’s dead. What did your brother look like?” asked Nick.
“Like a dead baby. What d’you think?” But I didn’t actually see my dead brother, only pictures of fetuses about his age in a medical book I looked up in the library. He was ten weeks old, so he had dots for eyes and small hands and feet. I felt like crying when I saw the pictures, but I didn’t. Papa would have been ashamed of my weak nature. The baby died on my twelfth birthday, which came and went unnoticed because Suman fell and the baby started coming and the ambulance had to be called. And while we were waiting Suman kept telling us, “I fell down the stairs, silly me. I tripped over my slipper. If anyone asks, don’t forget, I fell down the stairs.”
Then Papa held her carefully like she was a piece of precious glass. He asked her if she was comfortable and she smiled at him even though her eyes were full of tears and nodded yes, I am fine, yes, I am fine. But I knew it really hurt.
Tell It to the Trees Page 4