‘Roanoke, Virginia.’ He wiped his mouth with a napkin, then picked up another piece of food. ‘We knew I’d always be moving around, working on development projects. Ally was a baby, and it made sense to move back to Virginia so we could be near Cindy’s family. Then she got the job at the college.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘When the girls were really little we went to Mexico for a year, and that was great. But it was before Cin got tenure, and the girls were more adaptable, I guess, at that age.’ He raised his glass, frowned at the wine, and toasted himself. ‘It was a disaster bringing them out here.’
My mother tutted, but Mr Lawrence only reached for more food from one of the boxes. No one asked the question, but as if she were returning the favour, my mother started speaking, not looking at anyone, her eyes on her bangles.
‘My parents couldn’t afford to send me to university, but my father’s employer paid for my fees. I had finished my final exams and when I arrived back at my home with my suitcase, I saw we had a visitor.’
Both men were now watching her, listening, their chopsticks in mid-air.
‘My father had placed a matrimonial notice for me in a newspaper without telling me. It must have been very expensive to do that. Maybe his employer paid for that as well. I arrived home and there was this man sitting with my father. Very handsome, very clever.’ She smiled now, glancing at me briefly before returning her gaze to her bangles. ‘I was twenty-one when we married and then Sissy arrived nine months later.’ She flushed before continuing: ‘Then soon after we heard about the jobs in Roma.’
Now she looked up, her eyes darting around the table, at both men, ‘I wonder who George would have married if he hadn’t found me suitable.’
There was a silence, into which my mother gave a self-conscious laugh.
‘Well, there was never any danger of that,’ this from Mr Lawrence.
‘I don’t mean that,’ my mother said, with a shake of her head. ‘You see, I was very young—’
Mr Lawrence interrupted: ‘You’re still very young.’
She shook her head again, almost impatiently, and then pushed her chair back, her plate forgotten now, placed her forearms on the table, the bangles at her wrists tinkling, her hair framing her face and falling down to her chest. Her collarbones shone, and her bare arms and shoulders gleamed. She looked beautiful and knowledgeable of the power she wielded, my mother, sitting at this table with the two men on either side of her riveted by her words, to her.
‘What I mean is, George came from a very educated family. His father was an advocate and worked at the high courts. His mother was a doctor, one of the first female doctors of her generation. They had both passed away by the time we got married, but his older brothers felt that George should have married someone from a better family. Someone who was better educated, more polished . . .’
Both men now made a sound of rebuttal, but she waved them away.
‘But he married me. I think he treated it like an adoption.’ She laughed, and now her eyes sparkled with sudden tears. ‘He wanted to improve my life, improve me. He didn’t ask for a dowry, he said my degree was my dowry. And he taught me so much. About politics and history. I knew nothing of the Mughals, for example, the Communists or of the kingdoms that became Kerala. He taught me about the world.’
It was only then that I realised my mother was speaking as if about a faded past, as if she knew then that she would not see my father again. I glanced at Mr Cooper, who had laid his chopsticks down and had leant back a little as if to better regard my mother. Mr Lawrence was chewing his food thoughtfully, and as I glanced at him he looked up and caught my eye, gave me a small smile. Then he cleared his throat. ‘I think I might try out one of those – what did you call it, Laila, a matrimonial notice? How should I describe myself?’
‘Very handsome, very clever,’ said Mr Cooper, folding his arms, and we all laughed as he grinned, still leaning back in his chair, still regarding my mother.
‘Adventurous,’ my mother continued, smiling, and swiped at her eyes with the heel of her hand, ‘and generous . . .’
‘Well, I’m flattered.’ Mr Lawrence bowed. Then, ‘Your turn, Sissy.’
‘Um. Kind and honest.’
‘Don’t overdo it, honey,’ said Mr Cooper.
‘Why, thank you, Sissy,’ Mr Lawrence said at the same time, and we all laughed again.
Then Mr Lawrence turned to Mr Cooper. ‘Maybe I should head off to India, Sam. Leave a message for Fee for when she gets back?’
‘Gone fishin’,’ was Mr Cooper’s lazy response.
They were bantering with each other now, the two men, so that my mother and I were suddenly on the periphery, and we took this opportunity to look at each other. I felt as if my mother had retold the story that I had heard many times before, deliberately, in a different way, one that I was now old enough to hear. We gazed at each other and I remembered her words on my birthday – I wanted more for you, mol – and while part of my heart still burned at the thought of my confiscated necklace, the other part was filled with a love for my mother, and an ache at the thought of the young woman returning with her suitcase from college. Then she broke our gaze, murmured, ‘I’ll just check on Danny,’ while the men carried on, until Mr Lawrence turned to me. ‘So, shall we say Saturday, Sissy? Do we have a swimming date?’
‘Thank you, Mr Lawrence,’ I said as my mother re-entered the room, and her step was so silent that, conversely, we all turned to look at her. Her lips were parted, her eyes glazed, and her face was ashen. Mr Cooper half-rose in his chair. ‘Laila, what is it?’
She dropped into her seat and laid something on the table. ‘I found this under the bed. Under Danny’s side.’
It was a twist of materials, ring-shaped, made of twigs, giving off a strong smell as if from a scented bark. Interspersed in the mass were scraps of paper, seeds, some dried berries and human hair entwined amongst the wood: different colours of hair. Long blonde strands, like the Cooper girls had, and the wavy black strands that my mother and I shared. We all fell silent, staring at the centrepiece. I raised my eyes and looked at my mother, but she did not meet mine, did not return my gaze. Her eyes were transfixed on the object she had laid down.
Mr Cooper broke the silence. Scraping his chair back, he stood up and moved to the side cabinet. He waved the bottle at my mother, who shook her head, and then to Mr Lawrence, who gave a small nod. We listened to the sound of the liquid being poured, the glass being pushed across the table.
Then Mr Lawrence spoke. ‘It looks benign,’ he began and glanced at me, then back to my mother, but she said nothing. ‘I mean,’ Mr Lawrence continued, his voice gentle, ‘it looks maternal, doesn’t it? A little nest, for a mother bird to look after her eggs, you know? The other stuff,’ he picked at the strands of hair, ‘all this, it might not mean much. This is for protection, isn’t it?’
‘But why?’ My mother’s voice was even, her words were clipped. Not her teaching voice, another voice she used with these men. ‘Why would Grace think that my son needs protection?’
Mr Cooper lowered his glass. ‘We don’t know that it hasn’t been there a while, Laila. She could have put it there when Ally was sleeping in the bed—’
But my mother swatted his words away, biting her lip. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No. Grace knows.’ And then she looked up at me and her eyes were my eyes, and as if the nest had the facility to transport me into my mother’s body, I felt that gnawing, aching sadness that she must have had lodged inside her, so real that I made a sound – a gasp or a rasp – and she said quickly, in Malayalam, ‘Manassilakunnuthe?’ Do you understand?
I nodded.
The silence was heavy and the two men watched us, not asking for a translation, and while Mr Cooper’s eyes were fixed on my mother, Mr Lawrence turned his from my mother to me, from me to her.
‘There was another child,’ my mother suddenly said. ‘A baby girl.’
Both men were quiet, their hands unmoving on the table, watching as tears gathered in my mother
’s eyes, spilled out and ran down her cheeks, fell off her chin and onto the table.
‘She died inside me, and we lost her,’ she whispered, and perhaps it was the use of the word ‘we’, a reminder of my father, but she stopped speaking, pressed her lips together.
Mr Cooper reached forward, and I thought he would take her hand, but he grasped her upper arm, his fingers almost inside her armpit, his thumb pressing into her flesh, and I looked away, to see Mr Lawrence watching me. I stared at the table, for a long time, then back up, at the nest, and in the corner of my eye I could see Mr Cooper release my mother’s arm. Then she was standing up, her face flushed, her hands smoothing down her kurta. Come, Sissy, help me clear the plates. The men stood up as well, and we all took the crockery and glasses into the kitchen.
And later I heard him speaking to Mr Lawrence by the gate, where the younger man stood in a half-slouch, looking uncomfortable, his car door open, and one foot inside the vehicle. But he was still talking, even though it was clear that Mr Lawrence wanted to leave. His voice carried up the path and into my window: it’s a mess, Charlie. The whole thing is a goddamn fucking mess.
21
THE talk from town was that there would be other strikes, other raids, more retribution for the fallen bird of a plane – an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth – but not necessarily in Lusaka. The curfew had not been reinstated because few believed that the Rhodesians would target Nkomo’s camp and risk such a deep infiltration into a country’s airspace again. Indeed, reports had been heard of a similar raid on a camp in Mozambique a few days ago, where Mugabe’s men were stationed. The Rhodesians were flailing, lashing out without discernment at any perceived threat.
My latest purveyor of news was not a circle of Malayalees, or a group of Americans, but Tembe, who drove me to school without my mother’s guardianship the following morning. Danny was out of sorts, and she was worried he would be sick in the car. While Tembe apprised me of the developments in the world around us, I tried to dim the hope that was blossoming in my heart. Today, the day that mother was not my gatekeeper, today Jonah would come to meet me at school. I was willing to brazen out the curious stares from my peers and the coterie of nuns and teachers. I was willing to risk my mother learning of a clandestine encounter. I was willing to lie and reprise my skill as teller of tales to explain or disguise what would be the only thing I wished for. But when I arrived at the school gates, there was no sign of him, and at the end of the school day Tembe arrived, alone, in the pick-up. No one stepped out from a group calling, Sissy, how are you? There was no sign of Jonah.
‘For you, from your mother,’ Tembe said as he passed me a note. I looked up at him, and he said, ‘Don’t worry, I don’t think it’s serious.’ His words were echoed in the message my mother had written: We are taking Danny to the hospital. I don’t think it’s anything serious so don’t worry. But I want him to have a check-up. I will phone you later. She did not sign off ‘love, Mama’, ‘yours, Mama’, or even just ‘Mama’ – we were unused to writing to each other. I stared at the word ‘we’. But while I contemplated her use of this pronoun, I also felt a deep misgiving slide into me, alongside a vision of the bark and matted hair lying on the dining table just the evening before, and the thought of how it had idled below my brother as he slept, without any of us knowing, whispering into his ear at night. ‘Will you be all right?’ Tembe asked before speeding off.
I walked around the house to enter through the back door for which, since Grace’s disappearance, I had a key, and stepped into a kitchen and a house which was empty and quiet. There was the faint aroma of pine-scented cleaning fluid; my mother must have washed the floors. I ate a biscuit while standing by the window, not bothering with a plate, then brushed up the crumbs guiltily. It was hot; my head hurt. I touched my forehead and was surprised to find it sticky. I went back to my room and threw my satchel on the floor, pulled off my uniform and slipped into the striped T-shirt and blue shorts outfit that had become my go-to daywear. Then I knelt on the floor and looked under the bed, wondering as I did so if my mother had done the same earlier in the day. It was empty, save for a small ball of fluff which I did not remove, as if it were a talisman of good fortune.
I was about to lie on the bed and open my book when I found myself leaving the room, my feet pulling me forward as if by a magnetic field, through to Ally’s old room where my mother and Danny now slept. The bed was made, with the blanket that covered Danny at night placed on top of the bedcover. It was larger than a single bed, probably a queen-size, but my mother was clearly worried about him falling off when she was not in it with him, and she had pushed the bed up against the wall, and arranged some cushions to pen him in.
I opened the wardrobe and saw a row of empty hangers, next to the few which held my mother’s nightdresses, and two kurtas. A pile of saris lay neatly folded at the bottom. I opened the top drawer of the chest and saw my mother’s sari blouses and underwear, a collection of hair slides in a bag. The next drawer was empty, save for her hairbrush and face creams; she seemed not to want to display her toiletries on the top of the chest. I looked around the room and saw the suitcase we had arrived with, pushed under a chair. In the inside zipped compartment, alongside some documents in an envelope – our passports and what looked like a contract of employment – I found, stuffed into a corner, the leather cord holding the tiny wooden hand.
I drew it out, pressed it to my mouth, where it slid like silk over my lips. I let my teeth bite on the leather cord, and then watched as the teeth marks slowly faded away as if I had written a message in the sand that would survive only a finite amount of time before being washed away by the sea. Then I looked at the amulet, lying in my palm, for an age, as time swirled around me, taking me forward, to womanhood when I could stand opposite Jonah not as a child. I was wearing one of my mother’s saris, my midriff and navel discernible through the thin material, a cleft where my spine dissected my back, a waist that spanned out into a hip, and my hair falling down my shoulder.
The phone rang in the other room, and I jumped to my feet, catching sight of my face – childish, abashed – in the mirror on top of the chest of drawers. I quickly stuffed the necklace back into its pocket, zipped the compartment, pushed the suitcase back under the chair, and hurried to the hall, where one of the handsets lay on a small table. I picked it up, held it to my ear, ready with a suitable lie for my mother to explain my delay in answering – I was outside, I was just clearing up in the kitchen, I was in the bathroom – but a burst of music greeted me. A horn, a crescendo of notes, the plucking of a sitar, and in the background the percussive beat of a tabla. Papa? I whispered, then cleared my throat so that I could speak louder. Papa? I repeated.
The music continued, a high-pitched woman’s voice arrived, and the notes behind her voice soared upward.
‘Papa?’ And then the music disappeared, to be replaced by the dialling tone.
My hand was trembling, and I held the phone to my ear for many minutes, expecting the burr to be replaced by a song again, expecting the door of the house to be opened and someone tall and dark to walk inside. My throat felt dry and my head swam. The hollow of my neck was damp when I placed the receiver in its holder and touched my throat.
And then the phone rang again. I was standing so close to it and the ring was so shrill I knocked over the table in fright, then clutched at the handset again.
‘Sissy?’
My mother.
When I did not reply, she repeated: ‘Sissy?’
‘Mama.’
‘We’re leaving the hospital soon. The doctor thinks it’s just indigestion.’
‘Oh, good,’ I whispered.
‘Could you bring the washing inside from the line? They’re predicting a storm. And look in the freezer. There’s some soup we can have for dinner. Can you take it out to defrost?’
‘Yes, Mama.’
‘We’ll be back soon.’
I put the phone down and went outside, desperate suddenly f
or fresh air, and it was as if the landscape had changed as much as I had in those few minutes that had elapsed. The sky was covered in grey clouds, the light was in turns honeyed and harsh, and there was a wind: a swirling unquiet wind. It blew hot and damp. Not a pleasant breeze, but one that lifted the clothes we wore to expose our frail blemished bodies. Stirred the people buried in the ground so that they turned over from one side to the other, fingers splayed against their coffins. I shook the macabre vision from my head and struggled to bring the clothes back into the house. My mother’s sari kept whipping around me, clothing me like a shroud, as if readying me for burial, returning my thoughts to the images I was trying to discard, as if the wind was indeed ushering me to my death. After it had insistently wrapped itself around me several times, I decided to walk back to the kitchen door as I was, to unravel myself inside the house. But as I neared the door, which I could make out through the thin material, I saw another figure enter my vision. Tall and dark, and then a hand reached towards me and I screamed.
‘Sissy? It’s me.’
His voice had started with amusement, but then became concerned when he realised that I was paralysed with fear. He patted me down, trying to find the end of the sari which clung to me, my nose, my chin, and lifted it off me with a tug.
‘Jonah.’
He was smiling now, folding the sari under his arm, and then he asked, ‘Are you all right?’
I was embarrassed. I must have been a spectacle, wrapped in my mother’s cream-coloured sari like a ghost, and then squealing like a piglet. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Are you sure? You look . . .’ He reached forward and touched my forehead with the back of his hand.
‘I’m fine.’
He nodded, but his eyes remained concerned.
‘Did you come to see me, Jonah?’
‘Of course.’ He smiled. ‘How is school?’
I hesitated. ‘It’s fine.’
‘What did you learn today?’
‘I had to write an essay . . .’ He waited. ‘And we had geography today as well.’
The Wild Wind Page 23