Tell It to the Trees

by Anita Rau Badami

  There was a long silence and then Papa moved away from my Mama. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

  And then Mama had to go down to make dinner and we had to go to our rooms to do our homework and later still, when the house was quiet, I could hear Varsha crying in her room. It was my fault. I wished I was not a blabbermouth, I wished I had not eaten a purple lollipop. Good thing it was winter and our legs would be covered up. And Mama would say to us as we walked to the bus stop, don’t tell anyone, okay? No one at all. On my head, promise on my head, or I will die and you will not have me with you any longer. Nobody must know what happens inside our house. It’s like hanging out your dirty underwear in the public square Mama says. In summer when she hangs out our underwear to dry she covers them with towels so nobody, not even the sparrows, can see them sitting there quiet as mice, like us. Promise, Mama. Promise, Varsha. I won’t tell. Otherwise I’ll go to hell. Otherwise people will think bad things about us.

  Anu’s Notebook

  January 24. Yesterday evening, trudging back to my cottage after a trip to town, I heard an almighty racket going on in the Dharma house again—crying, shouting, the works. Somebody, it sounded like Suman, was pleading or wailing, I couldn’t be sure. I hesitated—was it any of my business to interfere? Decided to check anyway, in case something was really wrong, like maybe Akka was dead. The house was sparsely lit as usual. Suman tells me Vikram doesn’t like wasting electricity. If there’s nobody in a room, the lights are turned off. The light over the front door stays on all night. I pulled my jacket about me and walked through ankle-deep snow and rang the bell. Silence descended abruptly. I waited, shivering as the frigid wind bit at my face, making my eyes water, and rang again. This time I heard footsteps approaching and Vikram opened the door, plainly annoyed.

  “Anu. What can I do for you?” he asked, wedging his body in the doorway so that I couldn’t see inside.

  “Nothing, I just heard some noises, and was wondering … Is everything okay?”

  “Yes, why shouldn’t it be?”

  “Well, it sounded like someone was crying and shouting and, well, I got worried. I thought maybe Akka …”

  “Probably the radio. Didn’t realize it was so loud, sorry.” Vikram smiled. “Is there anything else?”

  “No, no, I should be apologizing for disturbing you.” I backed away, feeling stupid.

  Another cordial smile from Vikram and then the door was shut. I walked slowly back to my cottage, thinking, he’s lying, it was definitely not the radio I heard. Stop it, Anu. Stop poking your nose into everything. None of your business. You are just a tenant. Nevertheless, the feeling of unease stays with me. I can’t in all conscience do nothing if Vikram is bashing up his family. But I am not sure what I should be doing. Would things turn worse for Suman if I interfered?

  Then, this morning, I bumped into the three of them—Suman, Varsha and Hemant—on their way to the bus stop. Varsha’s face was all puffy and bruised.

  “Hello! What on earth happened to you?” I was genuinely concerned. She looked terrible.

  “Nothing,” they all said in unison, mother and two kids.

  “Doesn’t look like nothing to me,” I remarked.

  They went quiet, all of them. Suman looked positively terrified. Then Varsha found her voice and said, “I got into a fight with a guy at school yesterday. That’s all.”

  “You got beaten by somebody at school? Bloody bullies! Did you complain?”

  Varsha shrugged. “I can deal with it. Bye, we’re going to miss the bus.”

  I don’t believe a word of it. Now I think about it, in the six months I’ve been here, I’ve noticed bruises on the children—mostly on their legs. I just assumed they were normal scrapes and bumps. Now I’m beginning to connect the dots: the shouting, the bruises, the fear. Does he hit Suman too? Or is it only the kids? Does Akka know? How can she not? She lives in the same house. My respect for the old woman descends several notches. How does she sit there and watch her son beat up his wife and kids? The more I think about it, the more agitated I get. I might not like Varsha or Hemant very much, but they are children. Maybe I should report Vikram to the police.

  “He hits them, doesn’t he?” I asked Suman. I was waiting for her at the gate, when she got back from dropping the kids off at the bus stop. “And you? Does he do it to you too?”

  She gave me an evasive look and pushed past me, refusing to look at me again or say anything. I trailed after her. When we got to the house, she wouldn’t let me in.

  “Please, I have many things to do today. Very busy. I cannot talk now.”

  “Does he hit you too, Suman? You can tell me, you know. We can report it, it’s not right. I could help if you need. Or maybe I could speak to Vikram? He might stop whatever it is he’s doing if he realizes I know.”

  A look of horror crept across her face. “No, no, please don’t say anything to him. He will …” She stopped and composed herself. “There is nothing wrong. Please leave. I am busy. Varsha was rushing down the stairs and fell, that is all. Why are you making a big drama about it all?”

  “She said she was in a fight, Suman. You guys need to get your lies straight if you want me to believe you.”

  “I am not lying. She was in a fight and they pushed her down the stairs. I have forgotten. There are bad children in her school.”

  She didn’t bring me any lunch this afternoon. Am I being punished or is she avoiding me? I think it’s the latter—Suman does not seem the kind of person who could punish anybody. Then, just before supper, she showed up with an invitation from Vikram to join them for dinner on Saturday next week. She was all excited about it; the events of this morning seemed all forgotten.

  “You must dress nicely,” she said. “We are inviting Gopal and Chanchal. Remember, I told you about them?”

  I was taken aback. Wonder why Vikram is turning so cordial all of a sudden. Does it have anything to do with my knock on their door last night or my questions this morning?

  “You can come? Yes? Vikram insisted that we must have you over. We wanted to do this before, but somehow …” She tailed off and gave me one of her imploring looks.

  “Yes, yes, of course, that would be lovely. I’ll be there. It isn’t as if I have an appointment book full of things to do, either!” I was trying to make her smile her sweet smile but wasn’t successful. “By the way, I meant to tell you, I met Chanchal and Gopal in town yesterday and they kindly invited me home for tea and some yummy cookie thing—naan khatai, I think it was called. Characters, both of them. But really nice, I thought.”

  I’ve never seen Vikram interacting with his family or any friends, and I’m curious. It’s so odd that I never even bump into him, although I know he’s at home on Fridays as well as weekends lately. Akka told me it was because of cutbacks at the lumber mill.

  “Dress nicely? But I don’t have any fancy clothes. Will a pair of clean trousers and a shirt do?”

  “You don’t wear saris?” Suman asked. “You are from India, no?”

  “Well, my parents are. And yes, I do wear saris occasionally and not very comfortably, but right now I don’t have any with me. So it will have to be trousers and a blouse, I’m afraid. I promise to look good, not to worry.”

  “It’s okay. It’s a family dinner and family friends. Do you want me to make anything special? Vikram said to ask.”

  He’s really laying it on, I thought. I must have stirred things up. I assured Suman that anything she made was manna from heaven as far as I was concerned. Even her plain rice tasted better than the fancy stuff you can eat in posh restaurants. She smiled, pleased, and hurried away as fast as she could through the snow which had started falling again.

  January 25. I had more visitors today—the children this time. I was outside, smoking peacefully, enjoying the crisp air, the brilliant sunshine, when I heard footsteps crunching towards me.

  “Hi, Anu Aunty, how are you?” Varsha called, waving.

  I almost swallowed my cigarette fr
om shock. Anu Aunty! And smiles instead of scowls! What is going on?

  “Oh, you startled me,” I remarked. The bruises on Varsha’s face have faded a bit. They aren’t as bad as they were yesterday.

  “Sorry, we just came by to apologize for our rudeness,” she said.

  “Yes, apologize,” the little echo added.

  “Nothing to apologize for. You weren’t rude at all. Your face looks pretty beaten up. Are you better now?”

  “Yes, yes I am. I had a really bad fall down the stairs, you know, three guys pushed me. Big guys,” Varsha said.

  “Oh really?” It looks like the entire family has closed ranks and is insisting on the same fib.

  “You don’t believe me?” she said challengingly, more like her usual self. “What do you think happened to me then?”

  I thought it might be an opening. “You tell me. I wouldn’t know what goes on inside your house. Would you like to tell me?”

  “Inside our house? I got hurt at school.”

  “We love our Papa,” little Hem piped up, without any prompting from Big Sister, and apropos nothing.

  She gave him a quick nudge and laughed. “He’s such a silly-billy. Of course we love Papa and Mama and Akka—they are our family. Just like you love your family, I suppose. Mama said you have a brother and two nephews around my age. Do you love them?”

  “I guess, most of the time, when they’re behaving themselves,” I said, blowing smoke into the cold air. Where are we going with this conversation? I wondered.

  “You shouldn’t smoke, it’s bad for your health,” Varsha said. “You can get lung cancer.”

  “Yeah, I know, Miss Smarty-pants.” I grinned at her.

  She grinned back, her whole face lightening. I think she could be nice if she tried. “Then why are you doing it?”

  “Because I enjoy it, that’s why,” I said. “Don’t you ever do anything because it makes you feel good?”

  “Not if it’s bad. My Papa would be upset.” Her voice was prim again, her frown back.

  I tried again. “Hey, Hemant, did you like the T-shirt I gave you for your birthday? You never said anything. Did it fit?”

  “Yes, he loved it,” Varsha said.

  “Doesn’t your brother have a voice? Hmm?”

  Varsha nudged Hem. “Tell her how much you loved it, Hem.”

  “I loved it,” the boy repeated obediently. “Thank you very much, Aunty Anu.” But then he surprised me. “What are you writing about? Mama said you were looking for stories. Have you found any?”

  “Maybe, I’m not sure,” I said cautiously. Have they been reading my notebook in my absence? I must remember to carry it with me when I leave the cottage. “I’m just making notes at the moment. Nothing definite.”

  “Are you writing about us?” he piped up. No prompting from his sister. Perhaps the little man is developing a mind of his own.

  “Do you want me to write about you?” I asked, smiling at him.

  Before he could respond, his sister had decided our little meeting was done. She was probably exhausted from being nice to me. She took his arm and started back to the house, which looked warm and inviting with golden light filling the windows.

  “See you then, Anu,” she said. “Make sure you don’t drop your cigarette butt on the ground. It will look horrid in the spring when the snow melts.”

  “Hey! What happened to Anu Aunty?” I called after them, but they didn’t look back, either of them, and I was left alone in the gathering dusk.

  I am still mulling over this unexpected visit and sudden short burst of pleasantry. What did they really want to find out?

  January 30. Met Chanchal again, minus Gopal. He was apparently busy building a bird feeder back at the house. “Very kind man,” Chanchal explained. “It breaks his heart that poor birdies have no food in winter. So.”

  This time I dragged her to Bradford’s café for a chat. I needed to talk to her about the Dharmas. She’s known them far longer than me; she would have a better sense of what, if anything, is going on there.

  “So, I hear you’re coming over to dinner next week?” I started.

  “Yes, it is a long time. Vikram is very busy. I will be happy to see them all.”

  I decided to get to the point. “Chanchal, I want to ask you. You know them well. Is there something wrong in that house?”

  Chanchal’s expressive face looked uncomfortable. “Wrong? What do you mean?”

  “I mean, does Vikram beat his kids?”

  Chanchal shrugged. “I don’t know all this. Sometimes children can be bad. A spanking won’t hurt them. Your mother-father never got angry with you?”

  “And how about Suman? Does he hit her too?”

  She stared at me. Her face became shuttered. “These matters are between husband and wife.”

  “But sometimes it is your job as a friend to intervene.”

  She was silent.

  “Have you heard anything about this? You’ve been in this town a long time. You’ve known this family for years. Gopal is an old friend of Vikram’s.”

  Chanchal shook her head. “Nobody is saying anything to me. I don’t know. Now I must leave. No time for tea. Gopal will be worried if I don’t come home on time.” She gathered up her bags and hesitated. “What if it is true? Can you do anything? Nobody has complained, no? How to do anything if nobody complains? What to do?”

  Hemant

  Varsha and me read Anu’s notebook a little bit when she was in town. She wrote mean things about us. She called me REPULSIVE which means yukky as a dead frog. Varsha said. I am not a dead frog. I am a person.

  She also wrote that Papa is a bad man who beats us. She wrote that Akka killed our grandpa. “She is lying,” I said to Varsha. “Akka is good.” I didn’t know what I should say about Papa, I get mixed up when I think about him so I kept quiet. “Our Akka would never do such a thing, would she Varsha? Would she?”

  But Varsha shook her head and said our grandfather was a drunkard. He had hurt our Akka and disgraced our family, and he deserved to die. She said if Akka did kill him she was a real smarty-pants the way she got rid of him. She said it was murder without any EVIDENCE and she will be a lawyer one day so she knows all about crime and stuff. Anu wrote that our grandfather became a pillar of ice. Which is what Akka tells us, but she laughs when she tells us.

  “How do you become a pillar of ice?” I asked Varsha.

  “It’s a figure of speech, stupid.” She slapped the side of my head, not gently like she does when she loves me but hard so it stung.

  I know my sister is annoyed with me because I’m beginning to like Anu. She bought me a brand new T-shirt for my birthday. She brings cakes from the bakery in town and she doesn’t mind sitting with Akka when Mama fetches us from the bus stop. I think she’s nice. She asked my sister when her birthday was, but Varsha said it was none of her business. The T-shirt was a cheap way to buy my affections, she said. Her Snow Book was much harder to make. Plus she’d SUFFERED a beating from Papa for my sake. She would do anything for my sake. Would I?

  “Yes, yes!” I said, hugging my sister. I felt bad about hurting her feelings. Also I didn’t like Anu anymore because she called me REPULSIVE.

  “Then you must cut up the T-shirt Anu gave you and throw it away.”

  I didn’t want to. I liked it.

  “You said you would do anything for my sake. Do you want to break my heart?”

  I wanted wanted wanted to keep my T-shirt.

  “If you break my heart I will be dead,” Varsha said. “Then my ghost will come and cry in your room every night. What will you do then, Hem? What will you do?”

  So I threw my birthday present in the garbage like my sister said because I didn’t want her to die of a broken heart and come back as a ghost to haunt me. I was not to smile or be friends with Anu either, Varsha said. She was a crook and she was going to steal our Mama from under our noses and then where would we be?

  “How do you know she is going to?” I asked
Varsha.

  “She wrote it in her book, silly. Don’t you remember?”

  “Yes, but she told Mama she was writing a story, not real things. Maybe it was only a story. Mama would never leave us. She loves us more than the whole wide world.”

  “It was real. It’s called an autobiographical story.”

  I still didn’t believe her, but I kept quiet because I didn’t want her to get mad at me.

  Anu’s Notebook

  February 1. Today I decided to corner Suman in her own territory—the kitchen of the main house. Through the bare trees and rattling branches, the main house is more visible now and it looks very pretty, hunkered down in the whiteness, small icicles dripping down from the rim of the roof. Snow is heaped up all around except for a narrow path that Vikram has cleared from my door to the house, around the house, and on to the gate. Yet even as I walked, it began to snow again and the path became less and less distinct. Vikram is fastidious about clearing that pathway most of the time, but it’s hard for him to keep up. I watch him sometimes with the snow blower, in his blue jacket, ploughing through the snow, pausing now and again to swipe a mittened paw across his nose, and wonder how he looks so harmless.

  The wind groaned in the trees. A branch cracked and fell just ahead of me. My heart jumped—I appreciate nature in all its naked glory, but lately, especially after that last snowstorm, it’s starting to get to me. If I fell, how long before I am found lying in the snow? I am beginning to understand why Suman carries all kinds of emergency supplies in her bag on that walk to the bus stop to pick up her kids. I now understand her winter paranoia. The solitude, the isolation, the silence—it’s all nerve-racking, especially at night alone in my cottage, which is more or less roof-deep in the white stuff. Far overhead the sun struggles to make its presence felt, casting a pallid yellow light over the landscape. Yesterday morning when I forced myself to head off for my daily walk, to keep my energy levels up, to avoid being swallowed up by this beast called winter, I could barely make out where anything was—the field turning into the road into the lake into the shrubs and distant mountains, all outlines erased by the descending whiteness.