Rachel noticed. “Priya, you cannot fall sick. You said you’d wear a dress with me tomorrow, right?”
I nodded, grateful she was at least paying peripheral attention to me. I kept up the act for the rest of the day, sprinkling light coughs throughout the Lit test we had in the last period, so that when I said after school that I was going to skip Drama and go home to rest so I’d feel better by tomorrow, even Lena looked sympathetic. “Will you be penalised for missing today?” she asked.
“I don’t think so. I haven’t missed practice yet this year and I think my mother can write a letter,” I told her. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I made sure to croak on the last word.
Char caught up with me as I got to the school gate, and I realised I hadn’t thought to wait for her since I don’t usually leave right after school on Thursdays. “Oh hey! I forgot what day it was,” I said, but her face told me this wasn’t going to be an especially enjoyable shared bus ride. “What’s wrong?”
“You know just now how we all passed our tests to Lena to collect them for our table and bring them to Mr Lim?” Char said, her eyes flashing with anger. “I just went back into the classroom to check if I’d left my water bottle, and saw my essay still on the table. She handed in everyone’s but mine. I had to run to the staff room to find Mr Lim, and he was really suspicious of me, like I had purposely not handed it in to get more time. But if I hadn’t gone back and seen it, I would have gotten a zero on it.”
“It was probably just a mistake. It must have slipped out,” I said, keeping my voice weak to disguise how unconvincing I sounded.
“It wasn’t. I know it wasn’t, and I hope you know too,” she said.
I thought about it, but I couldn’t decide. It could have been intentional, but taking a risk on Char’s grades was a bigger act of aggression than just ignoring her or being cold to her in class. I wasn’t sure that Lena had really meant to step up her bullying right before kicking Char out. On the other hand, if it were a mistake, then it was a really badly timed one.
We walked the rest of the way and waited for the bus in silence, before I decided I had to change the mood before it affected my long-awaited movie outing tomorrow. I started telling her about how I was learning Chinese from one of the PRC scholars in class, who sometimes rode 105 with me, but that all I had learned so far was “ni mei you tou fa”. She laughed hard and we tried to puzzle out why the girl would have possibly tried to teach me that, and I worried it was a comment on my hairline. She started telling me about her brother’s new girlfriend, who really did have a receding hairline, and who was constantly trying to bond with her by talking about fashion and music that Char had no interest in. “She even bought me this small bottle of perfume,” she said. “I don’t know what to do with it. I mean, who wears perfume?”
*
On the day of the movie, not even the showdown at the end of the day could stop me from waking up feeling excited. I made sure to temper my enthusiasm, loading up on tissues for the sniffles I would have throughout the day and packing over-the-counter flu medications in the front pocket of my school bag, where I knew they could be spotted every time I opened the compartment to take my wallet out.
“Are you still going to the movie after school?” my mother asked as I ate breakfast at breakneck speed and started shovelling my things into my bag. “I thought you might not be feeling up to it.”
“I’ll come home if I get worse,” I promised, knowing exactly at what point I would get worse. “But I think I can still watch it.”
“Okay, have fun,” said my mother. “I’m worried it’s a little adult…”
At school, predictably, we couldn’t stay on other topics of conversations for long. We checked and re-checked that we all had our ICs. Rachel had brought three outfits and over the course of the day changed her mind three times about which one she would wear. After our last period, we all surreptitiously double-checked our Bunsen burners before we rushed to the big bathroom on the third floor to change out of our uniforms, enduring Rachel secondguessing her outfit again as we did so. I felt self-conscious about exiting the bathroom in my own clothes while in school, but being part of the pack made it better. We got a mixture of curious and envious looks as we walked out, almost skipping, giddy with excitement. The mall with the cinema was fewer than two bus stops away, but we decided to take the bus anyway, because we didn’t want to get sweaty. “We look childish enough as is,” Rachel said, a pointed dig at some of the group’s outfits she didn’t approve of.
We went to the box office first to buy tickets, nervous that a 3pm movie on a weekday might somehow be
popular, but the bored box office clerk told us the theatre was completely empty. She was about to issue the tickets, and then noticed the movie’s rating and asked to see proof that we were all 13 or older. We tried very hard to contain our excitement as we produced our little pink cards and pushed them over the counter, one by one. I felt inordinately proud of myself, and I could tell the others did too. The clerk was not as impressed as we would have liked, and pushed our cards back with the tickets.
We were too early for the movie, so we went to the McDonald’s on the same floor as the cinema to pass the time. Tina, Shu-en, Char and I started the laborious process of counting out our coins to see how much we could spend on lunch, now that $7 of our precious allowances had gone towards the movie. Rachel refused to eat anything except a $2 Filet-O-Fish, which someone had told her was the McDonald’s sandwich lowest in calories. After a few minutes, Lena got tired of waiting for us. “Guys, it’s fine. I have money. You all just get a burger each, and I’ll get a few large fries for us to share.”
This was an appealing prospect and I looked up quickly to see if I would be the only freeloader wanting to take her up on it. “Really?” said Tina. “That would be great.”
I nodded. “If you’re sure…thanks so much, Lena.” Shu-en echoed it and we got up to go order at the counter, but Char kept counting.
“Char,” I said. “Lena’s buying fries. Do you want me to order for you?”
She shook her head. “It’s okay, thanks,” she said into the air, to no one in particular, but of course it was particular. She stood, scooping her coins into her cupped palm. “I have enough here to buy my own meal.”
Lena stared. “Don’t be stupid. I’m buying, we can all share.”
“It’s okay,” Char said, her voice sweet. “You guys can share. More for you all.”
The others were no longer interested, so it was only I who noticed that when we all sat down with our food, Char touched not one of the communal fries, even though we had plenty left over, and she didn’t even dip her fries into our mayonnaise or curry sauce when hers ran out. Lena watched her like a hawk, her mouth a straight line and her eyes somehow harder.
We were asked to show our ICs again just before entering the cinema. Rachel groaned as though this was such a hassle and obviously we were old enough. We followed her lead and acted like it was a bore, but I was still smiling as I handed my card over.
The movie was a comedy about an adulterous couple who cheated prolifically on each other and then fell dramatically back in love at the end. When the one actress whose name we recognised dropped her pants in the back shed with her much younger lover, revealing her perfectly rounded buttocks, we pretended to be cool with it. “It’s just a butt,” said Shu-en. “Not like a PENIS or anything.” We all laughed more uproariously than we needed to, which was okay since no one else was in the theatre. We have all seen butts! And we are not uncomfortable at all with you saying “penis”!
Three-quarters of the way into the movie, I suddenly remembered the confrontation scheduled for directly afterward. I had let up on my pretence of illness. I panicked and then gave a small cough. I waited a while to sniffle, and then coughed again. I made sure to obviously shiver. I reminded myself not to overdo it.
As the credits rolled at the end of the movie, we stood up feeling slightly uncomfortable but very g
rown-up. “I thought the directing was great,” said Tina. Shu-en added: “The cinematography was spectacular.” We all agreed that the casting could have been better, and that there was barely a need for a PG-13 rating, really.
As we headed down on the escalators, Lena started talking about how the meaning of the movie was really about honesty and truth and being a good person. We all exchanged meaningful looks about what was about to happen next, which was how we realised that Char was no longer with the group.
We looked around wildly for her, wondering if she could have gone ahead of us on the escalators, or if we had left her behind. We tried calling for her but we only attracted curious looks from passers-by. Rachel and Tina stayed on the lower floor in case she came down while the rest of us went back up to look for her. Shu-en went to check the toilets, while Lena and I went back to the cinema, which was as empty as when we had first walked into it.
On a hunch, I walked to the row we had been sitting in. A McDonald’s fries packet, turned inside out and neatly folded into a rectangle, was perched on top of the folded seat Char had been sitting in. As I got closer I could see on it a crude but clear sketch of a Bunsen burner. I wondered if it would be too late now for me to feign a fainting spell and fall upon the seat, blocking it from Lena’s view. I heard her sharp inhalation of breath behind me and still I wanted to protest that it didn’t mean anything, that Char would never be so devious as to betray us when she knew we would all be occupied and then leave a malicious clue, but I found I had lost my voice.
TENALI RAMAN REDUX
RAMAN’S MOTHER HAD known he was of aboveaverage intelligence even when he was only the age of two. Amutha’s hunch was further confirmed as he grew older—precociousness in speech and an absurdly early ability to read was followed by an inappropriately wide vocabulary, a propensity for wildly complex mischief, and an uncanny knack for never getting caught in it. Everyone in Tenali turned a blind eye to it because Raman was top in his form every year at the local school, and then became the first boy from the village to win a scholarship to go to university in Singapore. Raman was extraordinarily intelligent, his mother knew, which is why it came as no surprise to her when he landed himself in prison.
Her friends rallied around her after it happened, coming round to her house every evening after they had farmed and cooked for the day, bringing her little titbits—Indian sweets, nuts, fruit, whatever they still had saved from the last time someone in their family had gone into the city. They would awkwardly pat her on the back, look away when her tears fell and comfort her by talking about the decided flaws in the Singaporean police force. Sundari Mami, who could read a little, somehow got a hold of Tamil newspapers from Singapore, and told Amutha that they were calling Raman “the smartest swindler in decades”. This was some small comfort to Amutha, who did not doubt the platitude for a second, and didn’t even feel she could have prevented the boy’s fate in any way—his brain just worked too quickly. She thanked her friends with small smiles and hot tea, and tried after a while to turn the conversation to more ordinary topics—the new style of saris they had seen in magazine scraps from the city, the Americans who had come to the village a few months ago to install a new water pump and sprinkler system for each farm, the village mailman’s wife who had run off with one of them, the impossibility of actually working the pumps.
Her husband, however, was not as resilient as Amutha, and retreated into a seething silence upon receiving the news about their son. His daily routine—unchanged in forty-three years—was abandoned in favour of sitting on the house’s shaky veranda, smoking occasionally, shaking his head often, speaking to no one, and refusing all food offered to him by the alarmed Amutha. For her part, she tried to keep up with his daily chores in addition to her own—tilling the fields, plucking weeds, irrigating their small farm in the old way. Amutha was not a sophisticated farmer, and after scrutinising the new pumps on the first day and trying unsuccessfully to work them, she had resorted to her husband’s usual method of flooding the farm with water from the well and hoping the crops would absorb what they needed.
The city police, who had first brought them news of Raman’s arrest and conviction, came back a month later to conduct a search of Amutha’s small house, explaining nothing but making vague references to money, linked to Raman’s misdeeds, that was still unaccounted for. Amutha asked the youngest-looking officer—chubby, baby-faced, with a moustache struggling to grow—if there was any word from Raman. When he said no, she implored him to find a way for her to correspond with him. The police officer, perhaps caught off-guard, perhaps reminded by Amutha of his own mother two villages away, agreed, and returned a week later with a scrap of paper bearing a hastily scribbled address in Singapore.
Her triumph in procuring an address for correspondence was quickly squelched by her husband’s flat refusal to write to their son.
“But he’s all alone, in jail in a foreign country,” she pleaded. “He’s probably wondering why he hasn’t heard from us, wondering if we are too angry to write or receive his letters if he were to write to us. It doesn’t have to be long—just a few lines?”
Her husband didn’t even turn his eyes towards her, but exhaled heavily and scratched intently at a mosquito bite on his leg, which she took to be an unfavourable response. She didn’t give up, and would plead with him at every possible opportunity—when they woke up, before they went to bed, when she brought him food he wouldn’t touch, when she asked him to lift his feet so she could sweep the veranda.
She was starting to waver and her husband seemed to grow more stubborn each day, until she broke his resolve unexpectedly by breaking her hip.
It happened quite unceremoniously, not in the midst of any chores or act of heroism, but simply on the way to Sundari Mami’s house to discuss her despair of ever hearing from her son again, and intending to plead with the good woman to use her limited literacy to help in some way. She was climbing up the three stairs to Sundari Mami’s front porch, unaware that her friend’s least favourite daughter-in-law had scrubbed them moments earlier with a new mixture that contained, among other things, a large quantity of used cooking oil.
She slipped so quickly that she found herself surprised to be lying on her right side and gasped as the first sudden spasm of pain shot through her body. She stayed there, trying to process what had happened, trying to figure out what to do, wondering if she should just lie there until morning when she might summon up the energy to roll over and walk home. She was spotted by Sundari Mami fifteen minutes later as she glanced out the window by chance, and who immediately ordered her least favourite daughter-in-law to step gingerly down the stairs and carry Amutha home.
*
Two months after his arrest, prisoner #2398—known to the wardens as that quiet Indian boy, known to most prisoners as that damn-smart Indian guy, known to his cellmate as that arrogant Indian fucker who doesn’t talk or share his shit, known to his parents as Raman— received a letter in an envelope with blue and red trim and a telltale AIR MAIL stamp that was very familiar to him but that he hadn’t ever expected to see again.
Inside the envelope was a single sheet of thin paper, written on one side with ink that seeped through to the other. In messy, impatient Tamil script, it read:
Raman,
I hope you are happy. You are a criminal. Your mother and I cannot show our faces anywhere. Everyone in the village says you have an excellent brain. Actually, you are an idiot. Because of you, we are dying. Your mother has broken her hip. The doctor from the city (600 rupees but I could only find 450 and he said okay) said she must have bed rest for six months. Now who will water the farm? I am too old. Also I am paralysed. By the shame of having you for a son. The crops are dying. And then we will have no food. So we will die. We thought we had a son who would make some money and send it back and then maybe one day we could move to the city. Unfortunately we do not have this son anymore. I am writing to you to tell you that you are an idiot. And also if your excellent brai
n can think of how to keep us from dying, this would be a good time to share with us. But I am not expecting much.
Father
Anyone watching Raman read the letter (such as the disgruntled cellmate, already upset that his own parents had not written to him, jealous of the books and snacks the wardens sometimes slipped Raman, resentful of Raman’s unspoken status among the inmates) would infer, from the slow smile that spread over his thin lips and momentarily lit up his scrawny, dark face, that he had received immeasurably pleasing news, good tidings of great joy, and unmitigated forgiveness of all sins past and future.
Raman let out a laugh (a shockingly high-pitched, alien sound that startled the cellmate) and proceeded to fold up the letter neatly. He took out a writing pad of his own—a present from a warden—and began his own reply.
Dear Father,
How good to hear from you! I am very distressed to hear of Mother’s injuries and your own troubles. I know that my words will sound empty to you, but I am very sorry for the trouble that you and Mother have been through. As ashamed as this makes me, I may have a solution to your dire circumstances. I pray you will not judge me too harshly, as I was only thinking of you and Mother, and this may be a way out of your hardship for the moment. Some of the money that I was alleged to have “embezzled” may or may not be locked in a watertight chest at the bottom of the well. I lowered it in there myself when I was back in Tenali last year. It may take a few weeks of drawing water to get to it, but I suggest that you get a trusted friend to help you, since both you and Mother are sadly incapable of such strenuous work. I again hope that you will not judge me for this, and instead view this kindly as a reconciliatory and (hopefully) atoning act of mine.
Regrettable Things That Happened Yesterday Page 10