‘I’m glad Danny’s all right,’ I said.
‘I know.’ She smiled. ‘He just made me worried. He’s usually not so grumpy, is he?’
She picked up the book on my bedside table, turned it over and looked at the blurb. ‘This is the one Fee gave you?’
I nodded.
‘What’s it about?’
‘This family of sisters and their mother. The dad is away in the American Civil War.’
I remembered talking about the same book with Jonah, and wondering whether he knew of the war. I found myself wondering the same about my mother, whom I had never seen reading a book – magazines, often – but never a book.
As if she could read my mind, she said, ‘Between the North and the South?’
I nodded.
‘Abraham Lincoln, wasn’t it?’
I nodded again, and she started laughing. ‘You’re surprised I know, mol, aren’t you?’
I started to protest, but she tapped the book on my nose and said, ‘You know more about these things than I do, Sissy. You’re like Papa in that way. He was the one who told me about it all.’
I found I was amazed by the mention of my father. I had begun to believe she would never speak of him again after talking about him in that way, at the table with the two American men on either side of her, listening to her.
I said nothing, and she continued smiling, opened the book. ‘Maybe I should read it.’
I shifted onto my side. ‘I’d recommend it.’
I watched as her eyes skirted over the first page, before she turned to the next. It was true what she had said of my father. There had always been a book on his side of the bed. He borrowed constantly from the school library. He had ploughed through Dostoevksy’s Crime and Punishment a while ago, not something he found an easy read. When he had caught me looking through it once, he had laughed, saying: I’m looking forward to when you can read it and explain it to me.
Now my mother put the book on her lap. ‘And this one?’ She tapped the novel in my hand.
‘A Nancy Drew,’ I replied. ‘Ally left it behind. She must have finished with it.’
‘That’s fine,’ she said quickly, as if remembering that she had told me not touch their things.
I watched my mother as she smoothed the cover of the book on her lap with her palm. I needn’t have worried about my mother’s awkwardness at dinner in Mr Cooper’s presence. She was wearing her night-time wear – her cream-coloured sleeveless nightdress, her hair loose around her, a shawl over her shoulders – even though I knew it was too early for her to go to bed, as if to prove how at home she felt by now in the Coopers’ house. The shawl was one I remember her cousin had given her, when Danny was born: in soft cashmere, a blue so dark as to appear black with a spray of gold leaves. I fingered it, and she smiled. ‘You can borrow this whenever you want.’
‘How is Thresiammaaunty?’
‘Oh, fine. She wrote a few months ago.’
I had seen the aerogramme, I wanted to tell her; it had fallen onto my face like a sheet, the same day that Jonah had presented us with the swing. How easy it was, I thought, to collect my own memories, my own stash of treasured moments, beyond her knowledge.
She stroked my hair. ‘Anything you want to talk about?’ she asked. Her tone was light but her eyes were soft. Too late, I thought. By now we had each gathered too many things that should have been brought into the open. On her side, she had still not mentioned the letter from my father. On mine, well, there was a list: Jonah’s visit today, the music at the end of the phone line, the gold chain lying under my pyjama top.
I shook my head.
‘Sleep well, mol,’ she said, and bent forward to kiss my cheek. Then she leant against me, forehead to forehead. It was a reconciliation, I understood that much. Perhaps the twist of bark and hair had scared her so that now she worried about my wellbeing as much as Danny’s. And then, a sudden memory, perhaps elicited by the feel of her skin on mine: that same day, we were swimming in the lake, my father was watching us from the bank. My mother was swimming ahead and I was following, with that mixture of doggy paddle and breast stroke that had been my speciality, and she had turned around, ducked under and then appeared in front of me. Not too far out, mol, she had said. Sometimes there are weeds that can trap you, and she had slipped my arms around her neck, so I was riding on her back. We swam back towards my father like this, like dolphins, together through the water, I was giggling. I was small then; now I was not far off her height and she would not be able to do the same so easily.
She stood up and left the room and I could hear her enter the living room, not her bedroom. Perhaps she would make herself comfortable on the sofa I had lain on not long ago with the borrowed novel; Mr Cooper would finish his paperwork at the same desk where Mr Lawrence set up his typewriter. A companionable evening spent in the golden light of the lamps. I turned the pages of the book in my hand, but the story no longer interested me. My eyes felt heavy and I felt shivery. I turned off my lamp and turned over to my other side, my hand inside my top, clutching Jonah’s amulet, which felt warm against me. I fell asleep and then woke again, as I had done on the night of the raid. I had gone then to check if my mother had left us, I remembered, and found her sleeping on my father’s side of the bed. It felt like a different lifetime, our circumstances seemed much altered.
My chest was wet with perspiration, and outside the rain had come and was falling in sheets of heavy water, smacking against the windowpanes. And just as on the night of the raid, I had a similar urge to leave the bed, enter the bedroom she slept in. But this time I was not concerned about her. I was concerned for Jonah, who was sleeping somewhere without his gold chain, and I felt a pull, a tug, urging me to retrieve what was mine, which had been given to me in good faith, without any sinister ulterior motives, and which I had every right to reclaim. Before I had fully dissected the merits or not of thwarting my mother, I found I was already out of my bed, moving down the hall, and pushing open the door to her bedroom.
I felt my way through the gloom, my fingers touching the edge of the door, the bedstead, then the chest of drawers, and the chair standing near it, all the while my eyes adjusting to the light, so that by the time I looked under the chair and pulled out the suitcase, I could see my hands opening the zip, ferreting in its depths. I did not turn around, did not risk making eye contact with my mother in case she opened her eyes drowsily, avoided that meeting of eyes just as one does with a snake, just as I had done with Ezekiel that day on the campus. I slipped the leather cord out of the compartment and over my head. The tiny hand slipped down my chest to rest just above its gold twin so there was a hand with its fingertips brushing against another hand. I felt my heartbeat slow down as if the talisman had calmed me. I risked breathing out. There was nothing to fear. This was right, the pendant belonged with me and it did not feel like disobedience to claim it back. I was ready, in fact anticipating my mother’s ire, so that I could speak eloquently and make my case. It was only after I had straightened up, pushed the suitcase back into position with my foot, and perhaps because the double hamsa had given me double courage, that I glanced at the bed to see the mound made by my brother’s small body under his blanket, his fortress of cushions. And next to it, nothing.
So, she had left after all. I stood still for many minutes. My mother was slender, and would not be cumbersome in the bed, but nothing could rationalise what I saw. Her side of the bed was not even open; she was not at this minute making a nighttime visit to the bathroom. She had not disturbed the covers because she had not got into the bed this evening. She was gone, like my father was gone, perhaps to join him in some universe made of memory, some lustreless past where parents went when they tired of their children.
I stared at Danny’s sleeping form, clueless, unconsulted. I could not shake my brother, waken him, interrogate him: Danny, where did she go? Did you see when she left? What did she take with her? After some minutes of not moving, hardly breathing, I turned, left
the room. I moved slowly as if in a dream, down the hall to Mr Cooper’s bedroom. And it was only then, as I stood breathless outside the door, my knuckles raised to knock – to raise the alarm, to call a search party to comb the area as we had done for the missing girls – breathless, even though I had only walked, not run, and only covered a distance of a few yards no more, it was only then that I realised that my mother was on the other side, with him.
Some part of the bed – the headboard, or one of the legs – was banging against the wall behind it. For a moment, I wondered if he was hurting my mother, for there was a violence to the sounds, a frightening persistence, as if he was pushing her again and again against something – her will or her memory of my father or an image of his wife – as if to break it. But then there was a pause and I heard his voice, filled with desire not anger – Laila, Christ – and my mother’s response – don’t stop, don’t stop – both breathing into each other, and the bed began its hypnotic rhythm again, but now from a different place, with a slower tempo, as if they had melted into each other’s arms.
I turned and fled, my hand on the pendants, my heart pounding. This time I knew I could not run to find my mother. She was finding herself, behind that door. Finding herself with the man with whom she would spend the rest of her life, who would one day sign a paper so that Sissy Olikara disappeared. I knew I could run to only one person, I only wanted to be with one another person, and that person was Jonah.
23
THE rain lashed down, quickly filling the shoes I had slipped on my feet, and when I reached the end of the drive I thought to turn back and retrieve a raincoat, for I had fled in my pyjamas. But I had not taken anything with me, not a bag, not a key, and I had no wish to knock on the door. I wanted never to return to that house again. I walked with my arms wrapped around me as if to stop my insides from blowing away in the swirling gusts around me, to keep my mind from sailing out of my body in fright at what I had heard. And just as I had mined the memories I had of my interactions with Ezekiel, pored over them to see if I could identify a moment, an instance that should have alerted me, I tried to sift through all the scenes which held my mother and Mr Cooper, searching for a clue that would lead me to an understanding of what was happening on the other side of that bedroom door. But my mind kept returning to another day, that afternoon, when my father and Mr Cooper had leant against my father’s green car, a memory which played out in bright sunshine as if to underline how untouched and innocent we all were then. What had they been talking about? There was the mention of Ezekiel, then the witchdoctor. I could recall how they had appeared. Both of an age, both with arms folded, completely at ease with each other, neither man dominating the other. Equals, clearly enjoying each other’s company. They had mentioned my mother, too, I was sure of it. The image disintegrated, as if on a faulty projector, to be replaced by a blackness and the sound still echoing in my ears of the bed thudding against the wall.
And now in front of me was a vision of the room in my great-uncle Monuchayan’s house in India, in which we all slept when we stayed. My father and I were opening the door, we were arriving late, just off the train from the boat races in Alleppey. It was dark outside, but inside the room there was a dim light coming from the lamp on the bedside table. My mother was lying on her side on the bed that she, my father and Danny shared – I slept on a mattress on the floor – and as often in moments of repose, all she wore was her sari-blouse and the underskirt. Her blouse was undone, and Danny was on one breast, his fist tucked under the flap of silk on her other breast. This, I knew, had been a point of much contention. The women in the household were suspicious of breast-feeding and berated my mother for not feeding him formula; this the reason, they claimed, that at a year old, he showed no interest in walking. My mother whispered her welcome, and asked to see my sketches, so I lay on the bed, facing her, Danny between us, and opened my book to show her; my father stretched out behind her, one hand stroking her waist. The bed was our boat, we were sailing a wave, the four of us – the only movement the gentle rocking motion when my father shifted his weight and the only sound, now that Danny had fallen asleep at my mother’s breast, the creak of the mattress. A gentle sound, not like that which I had heard just minutes before. I had not thought a bed could act in that way.
Now, I clapped my hand over my mouth, because I realised I was making a sound like an animal, a low howl, a keening, and so I tried to empty my mind and think of something beautiful and precious and good: Jonah. That walk in the rain, in the dark, my instincts leading me, sustaining me, and guiding me. The wind wild around me, whipping my hair into my face as if it were heavy wet ropes, my skin trembling from the cold and my throat raw, an open wound. It was only years later that I understood. Lost love, lost youth. I was walking away from my youth and my innocence. And even as I believed I was approaching him, I was walking away from my love.
I reached the cluster of tin-roofed houses, incredibly, without having met anyone, fallen over, taken the wrong turning, with water streaming down my face, my hair a wet sheet around my head and down my back, as if I had just dived into a lake, fully clothed, to swim in the water. And as before, just as I could make out where I had arrived, two hands grabbed my shoulders. Child, child. The same old woman, in the same place, who now seemed unsurprised to see me, even chuckled, showing yellow teeth. Despite the plastic sheeting she wore around her, a grotesque parody of a cloak giving her the air of a witch, I felt a surge of relief. I had arrived: Jonah was near. She grasped my arm, tightly, still chuckling, peered into my face as she had done before, but this time there was something else on her breath, and I had to stop myself from jerking my head back in revulsion. Can you take me to Jonah, please? She made a sound from her belly, like a growl, and I could see her eyes were bleary, but her yellow smile was still visible. Come, child. She gripped my shoulder, leaning her weight on me, the plastic sheeting whipping against my legs as she led me down the hill, past the houses, invisible this night through the rain, and then opened a door, not red, and steered me into the interior.
It was blessedly warm inside, and dry, even as the rain thundered on the corrugated-iron roof. There was a rich golden light from the paraffin lamps that encircled the room and from the small fire in the centre, on the earthen floor. The air was pungent, filled with an acridity that stung my eyes. The man who was sitting cross-legged at the centre was feeding the fire with seeds and sticks and leaves, and while the flames were not high they seemed to lick greedily at the offerings. I saw Grace, sitting on the floor, watching the man. She was not wearing her knitted cap, and her hair was uncombed, dull. Her eyes were unfocused and her head lolled in a way that reminded me of a broken doll. And she did look broken, not the Grace I had known for so many years, while sitting next to her, his legs drawn to his chest, his arms folded and balanced on his knees, with a frame like a skeleton so that his shirt hung off him, so that I could better see the dark, bruise-coloured marks on his neck and chest, was Ezekiel.
But of the people gathered in the room, his eyes were the brightest, the most alert, and when they turned to see me, his alone were vivid with an expression: dismay. Sissy, how are you? His voice, too, was warm, concerned, as if he was fully cognisant and had instantly read the situation. Perhaps because he could see how my teeth chattered and my face was wet from the rain, as well as the fear in my eyes at this gathering I had stumbled across, he had shaken his head slightly, gestured to the gathering: don’t worry, this will finish soon. And then he smiled to buoy my spirits, his distinctive crooked smile, but I saw his teeth were white and clean and straight as they had always been.
I remembered, and a warm feeling flooded into me. A memory of how Ezekiel had been my companion those long, dull and lonely afternoons, when I was so much younger, even though only a few months had passed by. A reminder of how I had been disloyal to him, finding him become ugly, fearful that his thoughts and intentions to me were impure. And I felt ashamed of how I had curved away from him, just as I felt re
lief that I had finally learned that I had not been wrong, not misjudged him, to count him as a friend.
Why are you out in this weather, Sissy? he asked. Where is your mother? I could not answer but only shook my head. When this is finished – and he gestured again to the centre – I will take you back to her. His words were punctuated now by the man in the centre, who was beating a stick against the earth, and I remembered the rhythm I had heard, of the bed against the wall. I shook my head again. Could you take me to Jonah? I asked, but my voice was drowned out by the high-pitched moan rising and rising from the man sitting by the fire. He called out, and Grace and the old woman ululated in response, and he did this again and again, each time eliciting a terrible groan from the women’s lips, of mangled words and an animal’s growl – a terrifying call and response, like a Mass that had been blackened – become unholy.
Ezekiel pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows, a furrow appearing on his brow, and I could see he was trying to mask his exasperation, just as Jonah had done that night in the face of the same old woman’s admonishments, and this almost made me laugh with relief that I could feel affection for Ezekiel again, despite the fear of how this evening would end. My throat was aching, and I knew that I had a fever: Jonah had been correct. Ezekiel, I don’t feel well, I whispered, but the noise in the hut was too loud now: the noise, however, only coming from the two women and the man, because, mercifully, it appeared the rain had abated to a steady drizzle. The wind, however, continued to blow. I felt the heaviness of my eyelids and the ache in my bones. My pyjamas clung to me but I felt no self-consciousness, only safety from the storm, and I could feel the two tiny hands, the cord and the chain, against my chest. I slid my hand into my top and moved the tiny hands from where they had rested just above my belly and placed them where I could feel my heart beating.
I must have dozed off because I found that I was back in India, on my father’s shoulders, his hands grasping my ankles, massaging them. Look there, he was pointing to the great lake, see the boats, Sissy. And I turned and looked at the flat grey expanse, and realised there was no need for me to be on his shoulders because there was no one around us, no crowds, no spectators. Just my father and me, tall as a totem pole. With the lake before us, with the boats, the beautiful black streaks, the men with their oars, silhouetted against water that was as clear as a mirror. But my father was jumping up and down now, shrieking, while I bumped against his head, clutching at his face, stop it, Papa. He was crying out – look at the boats, Sissy – and I saw what was upsetting him. One was sinking, slowly, in an exquisitely tender and graceful motion, surrendering to the water, so that all the men inside fell off one by one, like ants off a leaf, into the lake, and my father was weeping: look, look, Sissy. My chin bumped against my chest and I woke up, in the small dwelling, which was still warm, which still held the same occupants.
The Wild Wind Page 25