Thrity Umrigar Read online

  However, even this simple pleasure—which I knew was my mother’s way of loving me, of letting me know she felt bad that I have to go through this torture at the doctor’s office—came with a price tag. It was well known that my mother demanded her monthly allowance from my dad regardless of the state of his finances. Money was often tight at home but my mother would scream and fight with dad to make sure she got her money, which she insisted was for basic provisions.

  For this reason, my mother felt it necessary to keep our restaurant visits a secret from the rest of the family, especially from Mehroo, who, she told me, would consider this to be a frivolous expense. I found it hard to believe that Mehroo would be-grudge me a snack in a restaurant but I was not up to challenging my mother. So I promised her not to reveal these outings but somehow, the secrecy took the joy out of them.

  The legacy of that year lingers. It has made my mother think of me as a frail and sickly child and I have obliged her by regularly falling ill ever since. As I am now.

  I know that the instant I am better—the day the fever does not spike after sundown, as it usually does; as soon as I can sleep through the night without coughing—all this tenderness and demonstrated affection will vanish, will be pulled away from me like a retractable arm. In fact, that is how I will actually know for sure that I have indeed recovered, by the first harsh word that my mother will say to me. Usually, it plays out like this: her relief at my recovery takes the form of berating me for getting sick in the first place (by not swallowing my daily egg/by walking slowly in the rain without a raincoat/by not eating well/by eating an orange or sweet lime despite doctor’s orders to the contrary/by not having any stamina). Knowing that things have gone back to normal, I further aggravate the situation by asking to be moved back to my bed in Mehroo’s room.

  My mom calls me ungrateful, matlabi, a snake, reminds me how she hasn’t slept in four whole nights while attending to my fever and implies that my father and Mehroo are only available during the good times while she has sacrificed sleep and rest for my sake. ‘We all know how much he is around when you’re sick,’ she says. ‘He’s so worried about you, ask him why he didn’t even come home till nine o’clock day before yesterday.’

  My father overhears this and feels compelled to point out that one, she has only done what every mother in the history of the world has done for her child and two, he was in a business meeting and someone has to work to keep the house running. My mother waits for my dad to rush out of the room after his little speech and then she looks at me. ‘It’s all your fault,’ she says bitterly. ‘Always coming in the way, between the two of us.’

  Two days after I’ve recovered, Babu comes home from the factory with a gift for Roshan and me. It is a little baby bunny.

  A few months ago, one of the timber merchants had presented Babu with two female rabbits, one black and one white. My soft-hearted uncle had taken one look at the creatures and fallen in love with them. He would raise them at the factory, he decided. The next day, dad drove the entire family to see them. Growing up in Bombay, I had never seen a real rabbit. At the factory, the foreman, who for some mysterious reason was resentful of the animals, declared that Roshan and I should not stand too close to the rabbits because everybody knew that if a rabbit blew into your eyes, you’d go blind. We ignored him. Babu put an arm around Roshan and me and told us that we could each name and adopt one of the two. Everybody went gaga over the white one, which prompted me to declare that I wanted to adopt the black one. I was the one who ended up giving them their brilliantly creative names—Blackey and Whitey.

  I was utterly in love with my new pets. ‘Happy?’ Babu asked me and I nodded vigorously. The rabbits were the first pets I’d ever had and I went to school the next day with stories about how Blackey and Whitey had eaten lettuce out of my hands and how they’d slept in the wooden cage my dad had built for them. Even Mehnaz, whose brother used to pick her up from school in his Jeep with his pet monkey sitting on his shoulder, was quiet and looked suitably envious.

  Babu, too, established an immediate bond with the animals.

  Even the foreman marvelled at how they soon recognized his footsteps so that they came racing to the door as soon as Babu walked into the factory each morning. ‘Hello, hello, my babies,’ he’d coo and head straight for the lettuce to feed them.

  ‘Dammit, Pesi, at least get settled at your desk first,’ dad grinned but Babu just fixed a stern look at his younger brother and told him that these poor creatures had been waiting all night for him to feed them.

  Then, a surprise. The merchant had lied to Babu. It turned out that Blackey was a male and one day, as sudden as a meteor shower, there was a litter of baby rabbits. ‘Saala liar,’ Babu yelled at the merchant but the man simply grinned and shrugged and said who knew with rabbits? But the baby rabbits were too cute for Babu to stay angry for long. He decided to raise them until they were old enough to be adopted out. He even made the merchant promise to take one. ‘After all, you are the bloody grandfather, head of the household,’ he said and the man acquiesced.

  I was in ecstasy. I went to the factory as often as I could and if the thought occurred to me that one of these days these babies would be gone, I didn’t linger on it. I was just happy to stroke and play with the tiny creatures while their parents hovered nearby and kept an eye on things.

  In our excitement, none of us had thought about the stray cats that roamed around the timber market. But one day a subdued foreman met Babu at the entrance of the factory and said he had some bad news. A cat had killed several of the babies. Babu let out a cry of pain and indignation.

  When Blackey and Whitey came up to greet him that day, he imagined that they moved slower and heavier than usual and that Whitey looked grief-stricken. Babu could not look her in the eye.

  A few days later, despite everybody’s best efforts, the cat struck again. As it turned out, only the runt of the litter had been spared. The baby rabbit was almost all white with a big patch of black on its back. To Babu, its colouring was a sign that this rabbit, the only one that survived, was destined to carry on the family line. This baby rabbit bore the mark of both its parents and it was Babu’s duty to see that it lived. So he brought it home with him that evening. He presented the rabbit to Roshan and me and told us how the cat had struck again killing all of the little baby’s brothers and sisters and that it was up to us to take perfect care of this little one.

  We put the rabbit on the dining room table and crowd around him. Mummy has the brilliant idea of telling our neighbours and soon the doorbell is ringing and different people come in to coo at the rabbit and stroke its little head. I am bursting with pride and happiness. I can’t wait to go to school the next day and tell my friends that we now have a petat home . I am even allowed to carry him but knowing my reputation for clumsiness, all the adults are tense while I have him in my arms. ‘Careful, careful,’ Mehroo murmurs. But I am as tender as Mother Mary with Jesus. After a few minutes, Babu takes him from my hands and sets him on the table. ‘He must be tired. They need a lot of sleep,’ he says. ‘We should let him rest.’

  ‘But we haven’t named him yet,’ I exclaim. It seems preposterous to have a pet retire for the night without naming him first. But when Babu asks me to come up with a name, my mind goes blank. ‘Blackey-Whitey?’ I say but even to my ears, it sounds so lame that I don’t wait for the adults to respond.

  ‘Come on, the name-fame can wait until tomorrow morning,’

  Mehroo says. ‘The poor thing will be sleeping tonight anyway, so he doesn’t need a name. Now, let’s let him rest.’

  We set the nameless, siblingless baby rabbit into a small cardboard box that Freny has lined with rags. He falls asleep almost immediately. I feel something move in my chest, a feeling of such tenderness that it is a physical sensation. Perhaps I will name him Angel. All of us take turns wishing him good night. ‘Good night, God Bless You and welcome to your home sweet home,’ Mehroo says when it is her turn.

 
I wake up early the next morning and my first thought is for the rabbit. Everybody else is still asleep, the sound of their breathing and snoring filling the house. I head directly for the cardboard box and peer in, hoping that the rabbit is awake.

  I look and all I see are the covers. I lift the corners, even while I realize the impossibility of the rabbit having slipped between them. My hands grow more impatient as I run them all across the box. The rabbit is not in there.

  I head toward Babu’s room and wake him up. He gazes at me sleepily. ‘The rabbit,’ I say urgently. ‘He’s not in his box.’

  Babu leaps out of bed. ‘Did you disturb him during the night?’ he asks me sternly.

  ‘No, I swear. I went to see him two minutes ago, only.’

  Babu checks the box, too. No rabbit.

  By now, the entire household is awake. Lights go on in each room as we rub our eyes sleepily and begin searching for the missing rabbit.

  ‘Let’s check under the beds,’ dad says. ‘He’s probably hiding. We should’ve not allowed so many people to visit last night. Probably scared the poor fellow.’

  Since I am the youngest member of the family and the most agile, I volunteer to slip under each bed to look. Freny gives me a flashlight so that I can see better. No rabbit.

  I am in the living room when I hear Babu let out a cry. He is on the balcony and is half-leaning over the railing. He has just spotted something white and black on the street, looking like a ball of crumpled paper. I begin to rush toward the balcony but Babu stops me. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Don’t come here.

  Just…stay in, that’s all.’ I halt in my tracks. A feeling of dread is climbing up my limbs and my heart suddenly feels as heavy as cement. Babu does not wait to put on his shirt. He goes down the stairs and into the street in his sadra and pyjamas.

  Minutes pass. Dad goes to the balcony and when he returns he flashes a quick, warning look at Mehroo that I know I’m not supposed to see but I do. Everybody has fallen quiet and the frenzied activity of the last few minutes has ceased completely as we wait for Babu to return.

  We hear his heavy footsteps climbing the stairs. When he walks in, his eyes are bloodshot and his shoulders sag. ‘It’s him,’ he says. ‘God knows how but he climbed out of the box and made his way to the balcony. In a million years, I didn’t think…’ He stops and shudders and we all know what he’s thinking, about the poor creature’s sickening flight down two storeys and the dreadful thud with which his flight had ended.

  I want to wail, to throw up, to beat on something until my hands bleed, to hurt myself in some way. I can still feel the rabbit’s softness under my fingers. Perhaps I had frightened him by carrying him, scared him so much that he looked to escape from my clutches by hurling his soft body into the un-trustworthy air. Perhaps it was my vanity, my plans to brag about him at school that had caused this to happen.

  As if reading my mind, Freny says, ‘It’s my fault. I should’ve picked a deeper box. If only he’d not been able to get out none of this would’ve happened.’

  ‘It’s nobody’s fault,’ dad says. ‘It just happened.’ But we can all tell his heart isn’t in it.

  Babu leaves the room and heads for his shower. When the garbage woman rings the doorbell, he gives her an extra five rupees for picking up the rabbit’s battered body from the street.

  ‘Pick it up gently,’ he tells her. ‘He was our pet. Treat him with dignity, understand?’ The woman nods, amazed at getting paid for something she would’ve done for free.

  Dad and Babu leave for the factory without breakfast. I am not so lucky. I am still made to swallow my eye and glass of milk before I head downstairs for the school-bus. I decide not to mention to my friends what has happened. I cannot risk one of them saying something mean or smart-alecky. If Olga or one of the others were to make a joke of it, I don’t know if I’d be able to control myself. Best not to say anything.

  When Babu gets to the factory, Blackey and Whitey do not rush up to greet him. Blackey makes his way toward Babu a little later but Whitey does not come even when he calls her to come get her lettuce. When he goes up to her, she stares at him for a moment and then closes her eyes. Babu is devastated.

  ‘She knows,’ he whispers to dad, who dismisses the notion and tells Babu to use his commonsense.

  ‘How could she know?’ he reasons. ‘She’s arabbit , for God’s sake. And anyway, it was an accident. You had the best of intentions.’

  But Babu is inconsolable. And the fact is indisputable—this is the first day that Whitey has not come up to the entrance to greet Babu. Her rejection cuts like a knife, making his guilt ten times stronger.

  By the afternoon, Babu has made up his mind. He calls Shantilal, another timber merchant whose ten-year-old son adores Blackey and Whitey, and makes a deal. If Shantilal wants the rabbits, he can have them. There are just two conditions. One, he would have to take them home, not raise them in the market. And two, he’d have to come for them right away.

  I am dumbfounded when Babu comes home that night and says he has given the rabbits away. ‘But they belonged to Roshan and me,’ I want to scream. ‘Whitey and Blackey were our pets, not yours. You should’ve asked us first.’

  But there are many reasons I can’t say any of this. First, I am excruciatingly aware of how much pain Babu is in. I know how responsible he feels for the baby rabbit’s death and how deeply Whitey’s rejection has hurt him. I know that even the act of giving the two rabbits away is actually an act of love, although I’d be hard-pressed to untangle the whole messy web of betrayal and sacrifice and guilt that makes it so.

  Second, I know that Whitey and Blackey did not really belong to Roshan and me, that Babu was being generous when he allowed us to claim ownership to two creatures who depended on him for their survival. For the first time, I dimly understand the link between love and responsibility. We are responsible for those we love, I realize, and if we abdicate that responsibility, then we cannot lay a claim to love.

  And finally, I know that the world still belongs to the adults and although, in their kindness and mercy they may pretend to share it with us, ultimately it is still their world. It is they who decide when we are old enough to stop playing with dolls, when we should give away toys that they’ve decided we’ve outgrown, and when they should get rid of pets that we believed belonged to us.

  So I join the rest of the family in consoling Babu and agreeing that he did the best thing under the circumstances and that the rabbits are better off living in Shantilal’s home than at the factory where they always had to worry about stray cats.

  And I join the family in our conspiracy of silence. We never mention Blackey and Whitey again, though sometimes I see Babu standing at the balcony and staring at the spot that I imagine is where the baby rabbit landed. The next time I visit the factory, I notice that the pen has been dismantled. It is as if Blackey and Whitey never existed.

  Six

  IT IS A NIGHT IN May and the excitement in the house is fever-pitched. I am running around the house like a fire engine, knowing I’m making a nuisance of myself but unable to stop.

  Part of my excitement is pure performance, something to make Mehroo happy, to validate her own feelings of anticipation.

  Also, isn’t this what daughters are supposed to do when their fathers return after two months abroad? Isn’t this what the Von Trapp children were like, didn’t they burst into the room happily when their father returned from a trip?

  For some reason, we don’t go to the airport to pick up my father as he returns home after spending two months in Japan touring Expo ’70. I have fallen into an exhausted sleep when the doorbell finally rings at three a.m. but am awake and flying out of bed before it can ring a second time. So that I am by the door when someone opens it to reveal a tall, slim, serious-looking man in a dark brown suit and narrow tie. But as his eyes focus on the smiling faces of his relatives—Babu in his sadra and striped pyjama bottoms, my mom and my aunts in their cotton duster coats, my cousin Roshan
in her sleeveless pyjamas and me in my blue satin ones—his face lights up. For a second, he looks disoriented, not knowing whom to kiss and hug first but then we are all on him and spare him the decision, a multi-headed army of puckered lips and engulfing arms.

  ‘Bhai, family kem che? How is everyone?’ he manages to splutter out to his brother.

  I am sitting on my haunches and hugging his legs, waiting for him to acknowledge me when the lights in the adjacent apartment are turned on and the neighbour’s door flies open.

  Perviz aunty, the older lady who lives next door, swiftly crosses the common passageway and stands at the threshold of our apartment. ‘Come, come, Burjor,’ she says, ‘too many months you have been away. Welcome back to your loving family and your good home.’ Dad feels compelled to disentangle himself from our arms and briefly put his arm around Perviz, in acknowledgment of her greeting. I feel the adults around me tense at this intrusion into our ranks, at this aborted homecoming, even while their minds tell them to appreciate the fact that Perviz stayed awake long enough to greet my father upon his return.

  I am the lucky beneficiary of Perviz’s intrusion because the wave of adults has parted and finally dad can spot me. He drops on his haunches, so that his warm, sparkling eyes are level with mine. ‘Hello, Thrituma,’ he says to me softly. ‘I have missed you so much.’ I am suddenly filled with a terrible shyness, as if he is a stranger to me, so that when he pulls me closer to his chest, I feel my body getting stiff and I must resist the urge to pull away. But before he or any of the adults can notice, we hear the heaving sounds of the men who are carrying my dad’s heavy suitcases up the two flights of wooden stairs.