Thrity Umrigar Read online

  ‘No punishment,’ she repeats. ‘Instead, we will just talk.’

  She flashes me a quick look and her left eye closes in a half-wink.

  ‘Tell me,’ she says, in a pleasant voice, ‘did you eat dinner yesterday?’

  Bomi stares at her wordlessly, as surprised as I am by this sudden turn of events.

  ‘Answer.’

  ‘Y-yes, aunty.’

  ‘What did you eat?’

  Bomi thinks. ‘Sali boti.’ A meat dish.

  My mother licks her lips quickly. ‘Was the sali boti tasty?

  Did you like it?’

  ‘Y-yes, aunty.’ The voice is thin, as if he is about to faint.

  ‘What kind of meat did your mummy use?’

  Bomi looks at her inquiringly, confused. ‘I don’t know,’ he mumbles at last.

  ‘You don’t know? I’ll tell you. It was rat meat. Your mummy cooks dead rats for dinner.’

  ‘No she doesn’t.’ Bomi’s indignant voice is loud, as if parental loyalty has vanquished his fear.

  My mother grins. ‘Rat meat,’ she repeats. ‘Tell me, where does your mother catch the rats from?’

  ‘We don’t eat rat meat,’ Bomi mumbles crossly.

  Whoosh. The cane lands across his fleshy thighs. ‘Tell me,’

  she says again. ‘Where does your mother catch the rats?’ And before he can answer, she hits him again.

  Bomi suddenly starts wailing, a sound so loud and hair-raising, I can’t believe that none of the neighbours ring the doorbell. I gaze desperately at the clock but I don’t quite know how to tell the time. But I know it’s too early for my aunt to be home from work. Nobody will come in time to rescue this boy.

  Suddenly, he stops wailing, as if something inside him has abruptly pulled a plug. ‘From the top of the water tank,’ he blubbers. ‘That’s where the rats live, in a nest.’

  My mother looks delighted at this unexpected bonanza. ‘Top of the water tank? In the bathroom?’

  He nods.

  ‘And how does she get there?’

  ‘A stool. She puts the stool in the bathroom and stands on it and catches the rats.’

  ‘And then she feeds them to you for dinner?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Feeds me rats for dinner. From the tank, yes.’ And the chest heaves again.

  My mother suddenly looks exhausted. She lifts the top end of the mattress and tucks the cane underneath it. Tenderly, she pulls Bomi toward her and kisses the top of his greasy head.

  ‘Come here, you stupid boy. Now tomorrow, come here knowing all your spellings, understand? And if someone asks you what you ate for dinner, say you ate rat meat, okay?’

  For the rest of the afternoon she is in a good mood, laughing even when Bomi makes a careless mistake in a math problem.

  When Bomi’s dad comes to pick him up later in the day, she kisses the boy again. Bomi smiles his open smile. ‘Thank you for the tuition lesson, aunty. Bye.’

  That evening, as she is pulling me alongside her as we go on our daily visit to her mother’s house, we run into Bomi’s mother. As always, the woman looks haggard and rushed.

  ‘Did some maja-maasti with your son today,’ my mother says with a wink. ‘He told me you force him to eat rat’s meat for dinner every night. Said you catch the rats from the top of the water tank.’

  The woman looks shocked and embarrassed. ‘Such a dhaap-master he is becoming. God knows where he’s learning such tall-tall stories. Probably at that school of his. I’ll go home and give him a pasting for telling such lies.’

  My mother looks solicitous. ‘No, no, no beatings. Poor chap, I already gave him some caning today for not doing his homework. Besides, all children tell lies at this age. Look at this one here. Same problem.’

  I look at my shoes while the woman pinches my cheeks and tells me I should be a good girl and make my mummy proud and didn’t I know how much my mummy loves me?

  My mummy loves me, she loves me. Everybody tells me so.

  I know about my mother’s blinding, all-encompassing, all-sacrificing love because the neighbours tell me so. And all my mother’s friends tell me so. And the grocer who owns the little shop down the street. And the old woman bent with osteoporosis who lives a few streets away and whose name I never learned. I know because everybody pulls me into private corners, because everybody’s hands, bony or strong, pull at my shirt sleeves, everybody’s eyes are sad and accusing, everybody’s mouth opens to speak the same words: Why do you treat your mother so? Why are you just like your dad and the rest of them? Why don’t you go out alone with your mummy the way you do with your aunts? Don’t you know what a sad life she has, the poor thing?

  All my life I have heard about my mother’s sad life. All my life I have known that she is a Poor Thing, somebody to be pitied and felt sorry for. Everybody I know has told me so.

  Worse, I have seen it for myself, for haven’t I witnessed that abrupt bursting into tears, the open-mouthed gasping for air, the terrible, gulping sobs? And haven’t those sobs entered my heart like a needle, haven’t they floated like black balloons, like poison gas, into the very inner-most chambers of my heart where they have settled like soot, darkening my days, blackening my own feeble stabs at happiness? Haven’t I watched in wonder and dread as my all-powerful, strong mother with a tongue that can sting as hard as the cane she uses on me, haven’t I watched her face crumple like paper under the force of her animal grief? Haven’t the sounds of her unexpected and furious sobs made me want to slink away like a small animal, to lie down still and quiet and pretend to be dead? No, to crave death, oblivion, just to get away from the heart-breaking sound of her sobbing.

  My mother has had a sad life and somehow, I’m to blame.

  My mother has a bad marriage and somehow, I’m to blame. She tells me so herself, in a tirade of words that I hear over and over again but still they do not lose their ugly power to destroy me. You are the reason for my bad marriage, she says, and I believe her. You can’t stand to see me and him happy, she cries, and I believe her. I didn’t give birth to a daughter, I gave birth to a snake, she says, and I imagine myself with scales and fangs. I should’ve had an abortion instead of having you, she swears, and I think she’s right. All my life I will have a wish, bright and urgent as a freshly minted silver coin: that I had never been born. Not a death wish, not a suicidal wish but something lazier than that—just a desire to have never existed.

  Sometimes I have a sense that my mother is wrong in blaming me for her bad marriage. I remember how, when I come home from school, Mehroo often opens the door with the words, ‘Daddy is in a bad mood. Go cheer him up.’ Still in my green uniform, I go into the bedroom and rub dad’s head and kiss his broad forehead and tickle his ears and rack my brains to say something funny until he finally smiles. That small, faint smile is like a trickle of honey dripping from his lips and then I feel an insane, absurd sense of accomplishment.

  I want to tell my mother this, how I hate it when they have their silent fights, how hard I try to help them get along, but her assertion is stated so flatly it brooks no dissent. Also, I think, because she’s older maybe she knows something about me, about my secret desires and weaknesses, that I don’t. And so I say nothing.

  When the neighbours, family friends, relatives, teachers and strangers—all the people that my mother complains to—give me advice and wise counsel, I never say a word. I look away, I shuffle my feet, I focus all my energy on swallowing the blood clot that forms in my throat. I use every ounce of self-discipline to not let the betraying tears spill like the monsoon rains. It is very very important for me not to cry in front of other people.

  It is very important to be a smart- aleck, a wise ass, a clown. It is essential to be praised by the adults for being sharp and witty, essential to be the first one among my peers with a pun or a quip. Otherwise, the whole thing crumbles and falls apart. Self control, perfecting the art of keeping a blank face, is very important when you are a spy in someone else’s country. And I have secre
ts, oh yes, I have state secrets, I know things that could topple countries, that could destroy the established order. I play imaginary games, where I am a prisoner and bald-headed, faceless strangers are torturing me for what I know. And still I do not speak. To test my resolve, I pinch myself hard, bend my hand behind my back until it hurts, stand on one foot until it begins to ache.

  Finally, I am satisfied that I am up to the task of facing my adult interrogators.

  The hardest is when they say untrue and awful things about my dad. Then, my silence doesn’t feel brave and noble. Then, my throat gets red and raw from the lump that forms in it and I am ashamed of my silence, my cowardice. Then, I want to scream and claw at their pious, self-righteous faces because I know that an injustice is being done. I want to tell them the truth, about how I have seen my father cry silently, his shoulders shaking, after my mother has said something particularly cruel. I want to spill all the family secrets, but my spy’s code of honour will not let me. On these occasions I feel a self-loathing so strong, it has a taste and smell to it.

  ‘So will you be nicer to your mummy now, for my sake?’ some well-meaning neighbour asks me, after lecturing me for a half-hour. ‘Promise me you will side with your mummy against your daddy?’

  Somedays, I nod. Somedays I pretend not to hear them. All days, I mutter dark things about them to myself.

  Three

  AFTER DINNER, MEHROO AND I often go for a walk. Around eight p.m. we leave the house and walk up to the main road.

  Then, instead of the usual left turn, we hang a right. Dressed in their sleeveless white jerseys and plaid lungis, the waiters at the old Muslim restaurant at the corner exhale their bidi smoke and greet us as we walk by. This is the restaurant from which we sometimes order mutton biryani (despite the rumour that they use beef instead of goat meat). ‘Salaam wa’alaykum, memsahib,’ they say to Mehroo. ‘Hello, baby,’ they smile at me. ‘No biryani order in many-many days, what?’

  Nodding our heads in greeting, we walk by wordlessly without making eye contact. We are never sure if the men are being polite or overly familiar. So we treat them the way we treat all working-class males—we acknowledge their presence and act as if they don’t exist, in the same gesture. We show our indifference to them, we restrict our own greetings to a curt nod, lest they misunderstand our smiles or greetings.

  I want to tell Mehroo about the cruel things mummy said to me today but I am too scared. Even if I make Mehroo promise not to tell, I am afraid it will slip out the next time she quarrels with mummy. And then mummy will turn on me with that wild look that she gets when she feels betrayed or hurt. Or worse yet, maybe Mehroo won’t mention it to mummy at all but she will remember my story tomorrow morning when she gets ready to leave for the factory and just before leaving she will bend down to hug me and whisper,

  ‘I hate leaving you all alone like this.’ And then I will feel the sting of her abandonment even more deeply than I normally do. No, it is best not to ’tell.

  Then I forget all about this because we are moments away from the textile mill and my heart races in anticipation. The mill is an old stone building broken up by the tall, arched iron gates. A narrow, slanting stone ledge runs under the dark, grated windows. I turn to Mehroo with beseeching eyes and wordlessly, she helps me climb onto the ledge and then keeps her hand on the small of my back to keep me from sliding backward. Holding onto the window grates, I peer in to see a sight that never fails to enthral me. Dark-limbed men, many with their shirts off and their skin gleaming with sweat, work in a huge cavernous room. They look tiny before the large, ancient machines that churn out brightly-coloured fabric.

  Sometimes, one of the men looks up and sees me and sends a quick smile my way. Protected by the grated windows, I smile back. But mostly, I take in the busy scene and the smell of the dye. The sight of people working as a team makes me feel absurdly happy for no reason I understand. All I know is that it is the same feeling I get when I watch the workers at my dad’s wood factory lift the huge logs of timber and glide them through the various machines. Then, I breathe in the clean, scented smell of wood and sawdust (a smell I will forever associate with my dad) and feel the excitement of witnessing the birth of a product, something that will be of use in the world.

  Years later, as a journalist in the U.S., I will walk down to the newspaper’s press room and feel the same sense of joy—at breathing in the scent of printing ink, at watching a team of men working closely yet independently of each other, at seeing something being created—that I used to during my walks with Mehroo.

  Mehroo tugs at me. ‘Chalo, ma, time to go home. They will be worried.’

  ‘Two more minutes,’ I plead and invariably, she gives in.

  On the way home, she lectures me: ‘You’re getting too big now, to be watching those people everyday. People begin to get the wrong idea…’

  I’m unsure of what she means but her tone tells me that this is an embarrassing topic. Best not to ask too many questions.

  Besides, if I don’t know what she means, then I can request her again to let me watch. As we walk home I savour every moment of walking in the cool, breezy night, slowing down as we get closer to the house to make the walk last longer. I like how the world looks when the sky goes dark, I decide.

  When I am older, I will go for a walk every single night, I resolve.

  When we get home, I’m still wound up and not ready for bed. ‘Play a game with me, Mehroofui,’ I say.

  ‘No. Everybody’s getting ready to go to bed. Time to sleep.’

  ‘Please. There’s no school tomorrow. Just for five minutes, please.’

  She relents. She always relents.

  Ah, the sound of the small, pink, hard rubber ball rolling across the smooth stone hallway as we sit on our haunches and roll it back and forth. I want to throw it, want to throw as hard as the street urchins who play cricket on the main road during the city-wide strikes, but Mehroo won’t let me. The thump of the ball may wake the other family members and anyway, the passageway is too narrow for rough play. I may break a light bulb or something. So I content myself with rolling the ball and soon I’m caught up in its mesmerizing rhythm. It rolls along the length of that long hallway, making a soft whirling sound. Given the repetitive, dull, singular nature of the game, I have to use my imagination to imbue it with whatever excitement or suspense I can. So I wait till the last possible moment before I let my hand touch the sweaty, sour-smelling rubber, trying to produce a fake lurch in my stomach by telling myself that it almost got away from me. Or I pretend that I am a prisoner and rolling this ball is a way to surreptitiously communicate with the prisoner in the adjoining cell, while all the guards stay sleeping.

  Finally, my imagination fails me and I see the game for what it is. For a second, I gain a startlingly clear picture of myself—a bored, lonely, only child making up stories to bring some legit-imacy to an embarrassingly tedious game. The minute I begin to think this, I yawn. Mehroo jumps on that yawn, taking full advantage of it. ‘Let’s get up, time for bed,’ she whispers.

  ‘Chalo, go do your business and let’s go to sleep.’ I grumble as any self-respecting child would but she can see my heart’s not in it.

  When I’m in bed, Mehroo comes and sits by the edge. She kisses my forehead, smoothens my brow, lightly runs her hand across my whole body. Then, she kisses me again.

  ‘Good night,’ she says. ‘Say a quick Ashem Vahu and then go to bed. God bless you and sweet dreams.’

  I go to sleep. But not for long.

  I feel Mehroo grabbing my shoulders and turning me around and I wake up for a few minutes before I fall back to sleep.

  You see, I am a bed-wetter. I wet my bed every night, sometimes several times a night.

  My family, in a desperate attempt to help me, has tried every cure anyone has suggested. There are ayurvedic powders to swallow and prayers to mumble. A few months ago, dad took me to Victoria Gardens, where he paid one of the zoo-keepers ten rupees for a tiny bit of came
l’s pee.

  Dad looked grim-faced as the dark-brown urine was brought to me in a small paper cup. In a soft voice, he asked me to smell the hot liquid. I refused indignantly. My embarrassed father cajoled and begged and finally, I agreed.

  I took a whiff and gagged immediately. ‘Okay, okay, that’s enough,’ my father said quickly. ‘Let’s hope it works. Desh-mukh told me it did wonders for his nephew.’

  There was much anticipation when I went to bed that night and much disappointment the next morning when the brown outline on the bundled sheets confirmed my nocturnal failure.

  I, too, was crestfallen until dad gathered me to his side. ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘So sorry I made you go through that yesterday.’

  I have been sleeping in Mehroo’s room for years. When I was younger, I used to sleep in my parents’ room but mummy was a heavy sleeper and resented having to wake up to the smell of urine and changing my soaking bedsheets in the middle of the night. Sometimes, she would sleep through the night and I would lie on the wet sheets all night long. On the nights that my mother did wake up, she’d grab my arm and yank me out of bed, her unspoken anger and resentment running like electricity through my arm. And if I refused to roll out of bed, she spoke harshly to me, thereby upsetting my father. All the anger in the room made me so nervous, I peed even more.

  Finally, Mehroo intervened and I moved into her room.

  Every night, Mehroo places a rubber sheet—blue on one side, red on the other—on the bed under my waist and then covers the rubber with a horizontal cotton sheet. She also sets the alarm to awaken her three to four times a night. Crossing the tiled floor silently in her white-and-blue Bata rubber chappals, she bends at my bed and feels the sheets for wetness.

  If they are wet, she lifts my body, heavy with sleep, props me up in my bed so that I sleep standing, somehow undresses me, cleans me, dresses me in new pyjamas and then carries me to her bed while she changes the sheets on mine. I don’t make this any easy for her, sleeping as I do through most of the exercise. When she does wake me up, I grumble and whine under my breath. A few hours later, the ritual starts again.