Tell It to the Trees

by Anita Rau Badami

  “Keeps him busy, otherwise these retired men are problem,” Chanchal informed me when I remarked on how neat everything looked.

  “Gopal, we are going in. You will bring the groceries,” she commanded as we passed the silent Gopal, who had got in just ahead of us.

  “Yes, Memsahib,” he murmured. His small eyes met mine and he smiled slightly. “Her wish is my command.”

  “Talk, talk, talk,” complained Chanchal, dragging me up the path to the front door. “He never does anything unless he wants to. All show for your benefit.”

  Like the Dharmas’, her house was spotlessly clean and very neat.

  “Sit, sit, be comfortable, I will make some hot tea for us.”

  While I waited, I looked around at the walls. There were several framed family photographs, a large print of a kitten with a pink ribbon round its neck, and at least a dozen garish prints of the god Krishna. Gopal entered with the groceries and I got up to help him.

  “Oh, no, no, Memsahib will scold me for making our guest work. Please sit.” He smiled his ironic little smile again.

  I sat back in my cushiony armchair and a few minutes later Chanchal strode in like an ungainly goddess bearing a tray loaded with tea things and several bowls of snacks.

  “Your children are good-looking,” I said. “Take after you.”

  “Thank you, so kind you are.” She looked pleased. “You are also very pretty. Gopal, isn’t she pretty? Looks like your sister’s daughter, no?”

  “Yes, yes,” Gopal agreed with his wife. It was becoming apparent that he never disagrees with her.

  “He likes you,” Chanchal informed me. “If you have any health problems, you ask him for advice. He is very good.”

  “Yes, yes,” said the ever-amiable Gopal.

  I thought of Akka and wondered about saying something, but controlled myself. I pointed to the pictures of Krishna instead. “Your favourite god?”

  Chanchal assumed a look of deep piety. “I love him. Without him I would be lost. He tells me where to go, holds me up in my hour of sorrow. I can see him. Gopal, tell her how I can see our Lord Krishna.”

  “Yes, she can see him.”

  “This morning I woke up feeling sad and when I came down he was sitting right there.” She pointed to my chair. “So sweet and calm he looked. He raised his hand and blessed me and then he was gone. Right there he was.” She sighed. I shifted nervously at the idea that the god might reappear and I might be sitting on his lap.

  “So, tell me about yourself, Anu. Are you liking our town?”

  “Yes, it’s very interesting.”

  “And you are happy in the back-house? I gave Suman some pictures to hang on the walls there, to make you feel cheerful. You like it?”

  I nodded noncommittally. There were no pictures on my walls. Suman had obviously decided not to hang them up.

  “Which one you like better? The cat or the dog?”

  “The dog,” I lied. I hope she won’t decide to come over and visit me in the back-house. I’ll have to think of some reason for not having her pictures up on my walls. I must remember to ask Suman about them.

  “See, Gopal, I told you, didn’t I say she would like the dog better?”

  From Gopal’s corner came the sound of a gentle snore that sounded oddly like a yesyes. I rather like these people.

  November 22. Winter has arrived without much notice. It is dark by four o’clock and the sun rises late. I am colder than I have ever been and Suman tells me it will only get worse. The first snow fell today, fat flakes that clung to the bare branches of trees, capping the tightly clenched last buds and falling off the roof of my cabin with thick, soft thumps. I don’t mind winter, especially not the beginning, but I’ve always lived in crowded places. Perhaps I’ve always been too busy to notice the weather. I wonder how I will like it here in winter in this lonely place where I can actually hear a snowflake fall.

  A couple of days ago Suman came over with an armload of comforters, just in case I needed them. When I asked her how she liked winter, she shook her head. “Terrible, it is terrible, Anu. I feel like I might die in this cold. And nothing is growing, oh, that is what kills me.” She shuddered. “You must be careful when you go out. I will give you a flashlight to carry with you, and make sure you are always dressed warmly. Also keep a bottle of water and some bars of chocolate.”

  I laughed. “You make it sound like I’m going on an expedition to the North Pole. Should I take a tent and a stove too?”

  She shook her head. “It’s not a joke, Anu. Winter here is very cruel.”

  Part Four

  ALL OF THEM

  Varsha

  December 5th, Hem’s birthday! I tiptoed to his room and shook him awake. “Happy Birthday! Look what I have for you.”

  “What?” Hem stuck his hand out of his warm nest of blankets pretending like he didn’t care, but I knew he’d been waiting for my present.

  “You have to wake up properly, otherwise you don’t get it.” I dragged his sheets off completely, leaving him curled up and shivering like an earthworm. “And it’s getting late for school. The bus won’t wait and Papa will be mad at us.”

  Hem sat up fast at that. The smell of baking drifted up from the kitchen. A cake, from Mrs. Cooper’s recipe, Suman’s usual birthday present. She’s got no money of her own with which to buy us anything, except for her secret money hidden in her sari. I think she’s keeping that to surprise me on my sixteenth birthday. So I pretend I don’t know anything about it.

  “Open it, Hem, stop being a lazybones.” I shook my parcel under his nose. Hem tore the wrapping. “Careful!” I said.

  He opened it more carefully then and unwrapped the notebook. It’s not like Anu’s, which is a plain old ruled thing, but the kind you might get in a fancy store, with paper that has bits of hayseed and dried flowers in it, stitched together with wool from Suman’s mending box. On the cover I’d written in my best script: For the Snowking. And below it: Hem’s Book of Snow——From Varsha (his big sister).

  “I made it,” I told him. “Every bit of it—the paper too. The flowers are from our own garden. I collected them in the summer and pressed them. I thought of your birthday months ago. Do you like it?”

  I always make his presents. Once it was a flight of paper butterflies that floated down on thin strings from the fan in his room right over his bed. I would blow up at them and they would dance for him. For his sixth birthday last year I made windmills and attached them to sticks. Then we raced down the driveway to the gate at the far end, the windmills churning faster and faster.

  “It’s great!” Hem kissed me all over my face.

  “Open it, silly.” I pulled it out of his hands and opened it to a pale brown page. “Look—Aniuk, Aput, Auviq … the Inuit have different names for snow.”

  “For different forms of snow,” Hem corrected. He likes to think he knows snow better than anyone in the world.

  “Do you like it or not?”

  “I love it. It’s my favourite present.”

  I didn’t point out that it was probably the only present he would get. Other than something weird from Nick Hutch, that he’s found lying around his house—a rusty penknife that can’t cut, a set of dentures, some sticky old candy fuzzy with lint from his pocket. And occasionally, I admit, something nice for me: a stone with speckles in different colours, an eagle feather that he had found for us. He, like us, has no money.

  But I thought maybe Papa would be in a splendid mood. He might take us for an ice cream treat and buy Hem new clothes too. He is very particular about our clothes. Nothing torn or with holes. No patches or repaired stuff. Only new. “They look at your face and put a price on you,” he says. “Clothes make a man.” Or, “Beauty lies in the beholder’s eye, so make sure you look good.”

  Akka gave Hem a quarter last night, so he would have it when he woke up this morning. One year she gave him a coin from India, which was kind of useless. On my birthday she gave me a yellowed handkerchief from
her suitcase—one she had embroidered herself when she was a girl in India.

  Hem took his Snow Book from me and opened another page. This one had a few threads of grass woven into the texture of the paper and a black-and-white picture of blowing snow. My handwriting, black and curly as the hair that hangs down my shoulders, crawled across the top of the page: Piqsiq. And below the picture I’d written: i.e. Snow lifted by the wind i.e. a Blizzard.

  I love using short forms for words like i.e., etc., &, @. They make me feel as worldly as the school secretary Jean-Ann who wears high heels and short skirts that she keeps pulling down over her legs, and who types rapidly on school letterhead, using i.e. & etc. Sometimes I think I would like to be a secretary instead of a doctor or a scientist or a writer. In a city office, one of the tall ones with big shining windows, where my desk will be right in the middle so people can see me as soon as they walk in. There will be a carpet and potted plants all around.

  “How do you know what your office will be like before you have an office?” Hem had asked.

  “I have my methods,” I had said, assuming a mysterious expression.

  “What methods?” he’d said.

  “Do I have to tell you everything about me and my life?”

  “Okay, which city is this office in, then?”

  I had shrugged. I wasn’t sure. Vancouver, maybe, or Toronto or London or Paris. Paris it would be. “You can come and live with me,” I had offered, feeling magnanimous. “I’ll get a special car with extra-big doors to drive you around, the kind with a television screen and music system and a bar.”

  Hem was turning the pages of the journal. He found a drawing of a snow crystal.

  “I drew that one. And made the book and coloured stuff and wrote things. All for the best little boy in the world.”

  My brother turned another page and found Aniuk: Snow for drinking water accompanied by my sketch of an Eskimo woman chopping at a block of ice. Behind her boiled a pot of water.

  “She’s too close to the fire.” Hem pointed at the woman’s elaborate winter jacket decorated with tiny patterns of birds and flowers, and which, I must admit, appeared to trail into the flames behind her. “In fact I think her butt is on fire.”

  “Is that all you can think of to say, you little brat?” I demanded. “And after all the trouble I took? Well then, give it back!”

  “No, I’m sorry, I was teasing!” Hem held the book against his chest and grinned at me. “It’s the best present anyone in the whole world has ever given me. And your drawing is as good as Vinci’s.”

  “Da Vinci, dumbbell!” I hit him on the shoulder, but I was pleased.

  Hem pushed back the blankets and cuddled up to me. “Really truly the best present in the whole wide world. Thank you, Varsha. Where did you find the other pictures?”

  “I cut them out from a book.”

  “One of Papa’s books?” Hem squeaked.

  I put a finger to my lips. “Shhh! It’s our secret, okay?”

  “But if he finds out?” Hem was terrified.

  “Are you going to tell him? Because I’m not.”

  “No, no, I won’t either.” Hem shook his head.

  “Now hurry up and get ready for school.”

  “Can I take it to school and look at it there? For show and tell?”

  “Yes, but don’t let anyone else touch it, and make sure you give it back to me when we get home so I can hide it.”

  “Does Mama know?”

  “No, silly, it’s our secret, yours and mine.”

  “Can I tell Tree?”

  “If you desperately need to, yes.”

  Bathed and polished in ten and a half minutes flat, Hem put the book into his backpack and we ran down the stairs. Papa was at the table, dressed in a crisp shirt that Suman had ironed exactly the way he likes it, his hair sharply parted on the left side and slick like a seal’s skin fresh out of water, his face dark and shining and perfectly shaved. Papa says he approves of neatness and hygiene. He gave me and Hem a critical look each. Clean shirt. Check. Ironed pants. Check. Hair combed. Check. Shoes polished. Check.

  “Good morning, children.” He smiled. “You both look smart today.” I released my pent-up breath in a gasp. I felt taller with pride—praise from Papa is like a piece of jaggery feels in the mouth: delicious and sweet.

  “Goodness, Hemu, today you are a whole year smarter.” Suman came out of the kitchen with a cake on a blue plate. “I didn’t have time to ice it,” she said.

  Papa clapped and smiled and said in a jolly voice, “Happy, happy birthday, Hem. And here’s something from me.” He pushed a box towards Hem, who opened it super fast. It was a new pair of woollen gloves and a matching red toque.

  “Thank you, Papa!” Hem put his arms around him where he sat beaming at us and kissed him. Then he was jumping up and down from the excitement of having cake for breakfast.

  “I’ll get the candles,” I offered, pulling open the drawer where Suman keeps candles and sewing thread and scissors and other stuff that’s used only once in a while.

  “So, son, what is your resolution for the year?” Papa asked, still in a good mood, after Hem had blown out his seven candles

  “I’ve decided to get the topmost grades in my class,” Hem said, barely lifting his head, “so I can become a doctor. And also to be the best hockey player and the best in my singing class.”

  “He is already doing so well,” Suman said eagerly. “Hem, did you show your Papa your social science test? If Papa has five minutes to see it, of course?”

  “Yes, yes. I always have time for my family, Suman, you know that.”

  “Yes, of course,” Suman agreed. She twisted her sari pallu just like I twirl my hair when I’m nervous.

  Hem leapt to his feet and pulled his books hastily out of his backpack. No, no, no, stop, stop, stop. But Hem was in a hurry. He pulled out his books, quick, quick, quick, before Papa changed his mood, before things exploded, hurry-hurryhurry, show Papa the gold star from Mr. Phillips, that would make him smile, that would make him stroke his moustache and give Hem a hug and a kiss. Out came an English reader, a pencil case, social science book and the Snow Book. Out it fell, flat on its back, the pages open to a large black-and-white photograph of a close-up of a snow crystal on glass. Clumsyclumsyclumsy Hem. I might have known. He is a baby, he never thinks. He can’t keep things in. Words spill out of his mouth, secrets spill out of his bag. I might have known.

  “What’s this?” Papa leaned down to pick up the book. Eagle-eyed Papa, nothing gets past him. His mouth stretched so wide a hundred horses could come galloping out.

  “Where did you get these pictures from?” he roared. His arm went up like a railway signal and I knew it was about to land on Hem’s head, his face, anywhere that hurt. My brother was standing still, terrified, he turned into a pillar like the salt woman in the Bible. Then he was on the floor, I’d pushed him down, and I stood there yelling. “It was me, Papa, I did it. I am sorry. I wanted to give him a special birthday present.”

  Papa twisted my arm so hard I was sure it would crack in half, but I didn’t cry, I didn’t make a sound. It would show I am as weak as Suman and that would make Papa even madder than he was.

  “I’m sorry, Papa, I am very truly sorry. I will never do such a bad thing again.”

  He hit me twice across my cheeks and it was as if his hand exploded, hot so hot, right through my skin and into my mouth.

  “It’s his birthday,” Suman moaned, trying to pull me away. “Leave them alone for god’s sake. God’s sake, please, leave them alone!”

  From her room Akka set up a cry as well. “Sumaaan, Sumaaan, Sumaaan. What is going on there? Oh, Sumaaan?” She sounded like a sad bird.

  Papa dropped my arm and held his head in his hands. He was sweating. He shook his head. “Why do you make me?”

  Suman pushed me away and rushed to Papa’s side. She stroked his face as if he was the one who had just been hurt. “It’s okay,” she murmured. “It’s okay
.” She shook her head at me. “Your poor father is upset, can’t you see? Come on, touch his feet and ask for his forgiveness. Come, Varsha.” She was giving that look that says I must help her. “Your father is waiting.”

  “Sorry, Papa,” I said again. I bent down and touched his feet, his big, bony feet, ugly, sharp-nailed devil’s hooves. I wanted to vomit. I heard Papa sob big tears above my bent head. Then he gathered me into his arms and hugged me close. He smelled of aftershave and hair oil and the camphor from his prayers. I love my Papa and am truly sorry for tearing his book.

  “Why do you make your poor Papa so angry, girl?” he asked. “Is this the way a good daughter should behave? Hanh?” He turned to Suman and snapped, “What are you standing there like a fool for? Go get some ice for the child’s face.” He examined my face anxiously, holding it between his palms and turning it this way and that. “Poor child, poor child. Suman, stupid woman, how long does it take you to get ice? This girl is going to be scarred for life and you slow as a turtle, stupid woman.”

  Suman returned with the ice tray in one hand and a towel in the other, and Papa handed me to her and wiped his face. He combed his hair in front of the hallway mirror and then he was gone. Thanks to god—not those sly-eyed snickering ones lined up in Papa’s prayer room, but the other god, the one who gave me my brother and Suman and Akka.

  We assembled silently at the window of the living room and watched him walk down the driveway. He turned and lifted his arm. We waved back.