Silk Tether

by Minal Khan

  “Yes, and I’m sure you foresaw me getting severe burns during an experiment when you gave me that advice.” I grinned and continued, “Next time I’d like some warning, Ma. A heads-up would be nice.”

  I was relieved that her mood had restored to normal. She wasn’t driving with quite the same aggressiveness as she had been. I could sense her muscles and shoulders easing themselves into the seat. She even ran a red light in her calm state of mind.

  “And you’re not getting any helper if that’s what you imagined, missy.” She broke the silence in a smooth tone. “You’re spoilt out of your wits as it is. Maybe the non-functioning of your hands will teach you a good thing or two about independence.” She then paused, which I could have sworn was intended for drama. I could feel the onslaught of an adage. It was something about the way she took a deep breath and acquired that learned look about her. Adages were what my mother usually resorted to when she was at a loss for words but still fired up to make an impact. “If you are drowning and unsupplied with a rope, only then will you learn to swim to safety.” She breathed out slowly.

  I sighed. “Okay. I’ll deal. Just don’t let me drown, please?” With that, we laughed and rode home in high spirits.

  4

  My first few days as an inert vegetable were not easy. How could they be? Once I couldn’t turn knobs or open doors by myself, I realized how reliant I had always been on other people. A cleaning lady came to my house daily and did the laundry, changed my bedsheets. The natural state of my room was usually a mess; clothes flung about, plates lying with rotting take-away food in every corner of the room. My dressing table was home to a horde of lotions and potions and perfumes and brushes that came together in one big, mighty muddle. However, I’d always arrive home from school to a sparkling room, no matter what a shambles it might have been just a few hours before. The natural state of my room, with its decomposing food and strewn bed sheets, fortunately never persisted for more than a few hours.

  Alia called it “gratuitous pampering.” She was right. Unlike me, Alia was self-made, self-subsisting. She did everything for herself, from her dry-cleaning to her shoe-polishing.

  “I’d hate to be dependent,” she had declared when I asked her how she could manage all these tasks alone. “If I’m reliant on people now, I will be reliant for the rest of my life.” It was a weighty statement that I could have learnt a lot from had I really comprehended it. Frankly, I was too tied up in my vision of blissful, chore and mold-free days to try to follow her grave resolution. I’m sure if her parents hadn’t forcefully resisted, Alia might have even taken a day job to pay for her school tuition.

  Things were different now that I had no hands. The list of things that I “couldn’t do” now included button-pressing, doorknob twisting, sleeping on my side, eating independently, opening mail, washing my hair, biting my nails (I tried through the thick of bandages but failed), bread-toasting, smacking my little brother when he taunted me, spoon-lifting, and so on.

  Not having the power to perform these everyday tasks that one never usually thought about—just not being able—was terrifying. I appreciated that if nothing else, I would, from then on, value every time I opened the lid of a jam jar with my two hands; my God-gifted, divine two hands!

  Fortunately, Alia arrived the second she heard about my accident and eagerly grabbed the reigns of my life. She became my surrogate nanny. I felt like an orphaned baby who had just been picked up by a luminous, wonderful new mother. I would be taken care of now. Alia just about declared as much, and she delivered nothing short of her promise. She painstakingly washed my unruly long hair, fed me cream of chicken soup, packed my backpack and wrote my homework out for me as I dictated. She even slathered on my daily acne lotion every night.

  “You can’t let this hurdle get to you,” she instructed, as she worked through my hair. “Don’t stop doing the things that you’d normally do; eat as much as you like and play as much you did. Just don’t feel afraid to ask anyone to help you do these things. I’ll pick your nose for you if that’s what you really have to do, just ask when you—”

  “Oh God,” I interjected, wrinkling my face. “Would you really do that, Alia?”

  “Yes! I’d pick your cuticles off your toes if you asked me to. You know I’ve a high tolerance for gross things.”

  I grinned to myself. She wasn’t lying. Last year, her little cousins arrived for holiday and, unfortunately, none of them knew how to wash themselves in the bathroom. Alia had effortlessly done it for them throughout that summer. She did it as carelessly as flipping the page of a book. Cleaning my cuticles, then, wasn’t exactly a giant leap for Alia.

  “Alia, when you were little, did your parents ever spoil you?”

  Alia returned a puzzled look. “Spoil me? In what way?”

  “Well, you know,” I tried to elaborate with my bandaged paws, waving them around weakly. “Doing your homework for you, getting your chores done for you … well, just taking burdens off your shoulders.”

  She didn’t seem to understand where my questions were heading. Eventually she said, “My father really spoilt me growing up. A lot more than my mother. When I was younger, he bought me German truffles every day after work. They were these yummy raspberry truffles that you couldn’t buy easily anywhere around. But he got me at least five different-flavored ones every week. He’d even save me from trouble with my mother. I loved it at the time. Who wouldn’t?”

  “So you were spoilt! I’d never guess!”

  She smiled shortly. “It was well and good in the beginning. I didn’t really even think about it as spoiling. No need to feel guilty, right, if you’re being treated like a princess?” She continued, “Then one day I heard my parents fighting. They had been at each other’s throats for the past few days, but I never knew what it was over. I was walking towards my room when I heard my father suddenly erupt, ‘Do you consider yourself a queen parading about her palace? Remember, you will be nowhere without me! You and the children will go around with a begging bowl once I am gone.’”

  I was stunned into silence. She had stopped massaging my scalp.

  “It’s nothing.” She dismissed. And I believed her. I knew that if it had genuinely troubled her, Alia would have said as much.

  “And it wasn’t a life-changing experience or anything.” She continued. “It just made me realize that even if your parents spoil you, it’s your choice to object. You can get the groceries once in a while, cook meals, clean dishes. My father kept buying me those truffles but I stopped accepting them. It just felt like an unnecessary favor. It made me feel weird that I only mattered because someone else mattered. Money and gifts, they just stopped meaning as much. I wanted more: I wanted attention and respect.”

  I stared down at the unfamiliar bandages, my hands throbbing with sensation underneath. A stunning realization sunk in: I hadn’t been reduced to a handicapped victim after the burns because, really, I had always been a cripple.

  5

  It was Monday now, two weeks later. My hands had healed completely, and were bandage-free. That meant I could get back to my artwork.

  My art teacher wasn’t happy at all about giving me the extra-long extension due to my little accident. But now the day had come. The day my art assignment—my ant painting—was due. My hands were sweating as I handed my painting to my art teacher. What if she hates it? My art teacher took a look at my ant painting and raised an eyebrow.

  “Not bad.” She said. I sighed with relief.

  But it wasn’t over. She then said, “I will thstill need another painting from you, though.” She handed it back to me without a further look.

  “Why?” I asked, my lips already quivering.

  “This ant drawing is not a realisthhic portrayal,” she said, twitching her nose at my queen insect. “The colors are bland. The poses are too cartoon-like. Ants don’t mount their food like greedy vultures.”

  I looked down at my work. So maybe I had exaggerated the stance of the Queen. Her po
sture had been more passive in the picture. I had extended her hind legs and proboscis, and given her an over-stylized aggression as she triumphed over her crumb.

  “But I’m not looking to make it realistic,” I weakly protested. “I want to try to bring out the paradox of the ant here. The ‘feeble’ little insect loaded with a ton of power …” I faded out, like a bad-tuned radio, crackling before I lost frequency. It was like trying to explain road directions in English to a Chinese tourist; my art teacher feigned understanding; she even nodded her head occasionally, but we both knew my words may as well have been a different language.

  “Yessth, you can interpret it in any way you want,” she said dismissively. “My concern is that it’s too, well, how do I put this …” She closed her beady eyes and pinched the center of her forehead, in concentration. “Yes,” she lit up, having found the right word. “It’s too flat.”

  I blurted, “Well, I don’t know if I can do anything about that. The paper is flat.”

  I wished I had kept my mouth shut the minute I let slip that wisecrack out.

  She pursed her lips into a thin slit. Her whole demeanor suddenly exuded frost. She grabbed my paint brush from my hand and in an equally chilly tone muttered, “Let me fix thisthh.” I watched in silent horror as she dipped my brush, a dagger, into the water and mercilessly jabbed at the Queen’s antennae. I was watching my baby being massacred in front of my eyes while I stood, dumb and mute. I suddenly felt as tiny as the feeble ant I was trying to depict.

  My teacher prodded the ant’s silhouette with new strokes of black blotches, transforming her taut curves into a shapeless lump. And that still didn’t satisfy her. After working in her treachery, she gave my painting a long look and shook her head. She then dropped the paintbrush from her thin fingers and said dismissively, “No. It’s beyond repair. Start something elssthe, perhaps the thsunset or a lake.” She then stood up and marched away to correct someone else’s work.

  I walked after her. “The what??” Panic rose in my throat.

  “The thssunset. Right as it sets over the ocean. Two days. You have two days. No excuses.”

  Two days. I just stood there. And let her go. I wanted to tell her I had stayed up long nights working on this painting. Neglecting my other homework for days to get this done. That I wasn’t ready to throw my work away and start on a brand new project! But I didn’t say a word. That was me—never wanting to question authority or get into trouble. A people-pleaser. I was also a simmering kind of angry person. I let rage build inside me. Carried it around with me, from one place to the next. My face would turn red and people would ask me what was wrong and I’d say, “nothing.” Not a word from my lips. What was that cliché? Bottled up inside. Yes, that’s what I did, I kept it bottled up. I internalized my angst until it gave me a palpable swelling in my throat.

  So I emerged in that same way, like a steaming kettle, from my art room and went to my next class. The good that came about from this whole disaster was that my hands no longer felt quite so numb. They were itching to inflict some serious damage, to crush something. They felt more alive and functioning than they had in weeks. The silver lining in the tempest, I’d say.

  ~

  The color of sunset can never be depicted. That’s not to say many haven’t tried, though.

  Drawing a ball of hot lava is easy. But the residue of deep orange and magenta that surround that fiery ball are impossible to capture. The edges of the sun are marked with rich copper, the copper of baked skin when it has been in the sun too long. It even has the same folds as the texture of baked skin: smooth and solid, with deep corrugations like the edges of smoldering rocks. The copper then delves into an almost invisible, tender orange, like the skin of a newborn infant. This timid orange hue meshes into a creamy whale-blue sky: the last vestiges of the day before it recedes into pitch-darkness.

  The sun depresses gradually into the ocean, sucking the glorious blue day along with it. It swallows the sky and the birds voraciously, leaving us stumbling about in the dark, unaided, like twitching blind bats.

  I had never dared to reproduce the sun in my work. How could you? Is it possible to compress a trembling source of energy onto a flat, empty piece of A6-sized paper? And with my mere paints and my feeble brush, how could I attempt to replicate an already stunning masterpiece painted by the careful strokes of God?

  6

  “We have guests coming,” my mother announced as she walked into my room, with the same pride as if she were declaring the arrival of the Queen of England.

  “Ok, Ma.” I tried to sound enthusiastic. “Just give me the signal and I’ll be on my way when they arrive.”

  The TV was on in the room. The headlines: Wheat shortage in Pakistan. Thousands starve. The heavy summer monsoon rain had wiped out scores of crops. The camera panned to pictures of children lined up in the street, muddied with dirt, their small palms hanging out, begging for food. No tears in their eyes. Just blank, waiting expressions. Another shot of tiny children swarming around a garbage can, picking out dirty orange peels and then loading them into a plastic bag. I recognized the faded gray streets in the background and knew this area was only a fifteen-minute drive from our house.

  “I’m going to send the chauffeur to pick up salmon and turkey to serve to the guests; also those special pastries from the Bombay Sweets Bakery. Maybe he can get some pie as well? What do you think?”

  “Do we really need that much, Ma?” My voice was low, my eyes on the TV screen. A girl with matted brown hair was dusting off flies from her clothes. She walked with a younger boy to a World Food Program Center.

  Meanwhile, we went overboard. Entertaining guests in my culture centered heavily on appearances. We must not appear cheap, or stingy. Better to go above and beyond than fall short of pleasing your guests. The seminal question always on everyone’s minds: What will they think? So we made sure they didn’t think. My mother used the finest silver china from Italy when guests arrived.

  In fact, Ma had an entire system. The food never arrived all at once. It was served in intermittent sessions. First arrived bite-sized hunter-beef and cherry pieces adorned with carrot slices, each neatly stabbed by a chiseled toothpick. After an intermediary ten minutes or so—after all, Ma didn’t want to distract guests from the purpose for which they had come—chicken strips with vinaigrette sauce were proffered. Another gap of twenty minutes followed—cue dessert; apple pie or ice cream, maybe some customary gulab jaman—small sugary balls of curdled milk, or jalebi—deep-fried wheat flour—dripping with sugary syrup. The kind of meal that took a working laborer a week’s full of wages to afford.

  A hearty, filling meal for a stranger whom we never met before. And Ma would always ask our guests for feedback. “How did you feel about the temperature of the salsa? I feared it was too warm,” so that you were reduced to a gourmet critic instead of a casual visitor. Apart from that inconvenience, it was a real pleasure.

  My role in the upheaval that accompanied a guest-visit was rather small. I was expected to dress well, welcome the arrivers at the doorstep, and seat them in the guest room. Be polite, courteous. Make an appearance.

  I knew that Ma just needed my assurance that I’d be present in time for the guests’ arrival. The sooner I agreed, the sooner she’d be able to attend to the more pressing things; light, air freshener, and food. I had no desire to stall her.

  “Hmm, ok, no apple pie then,” she said and turned to leave. “Oh,” she returned a second later. An afterthought. “And don’t wear anything too revealing,” she stressed. “We have a conservative lot over today.”

  “Of course,” I responded automatically. Humble clothes to please our humble guests. One must be sensitive to other’s reservations. I ignored the waging battle within me and robotically smiled. It even looked real.

  ~

  “They’re here!” My mother called out, flustered. She rapidly sprayed air freshener around the dining room and lounge. I coughed at the taste of the spicy flowers. “Gr
eet them while I finish up with the food.” And she scampered off into the kitchen.

  I stood positioned at the main door and realized that I didn’t even know who our guests were. My mother hadn’t told me, and I hadn’t really thought to ask. I knew that we weren’t related because as they walked toward me from our front gate, I didn’t recognize any of them. The visitors smiled. A rotund, pleasant-looking woman wearing a silk white sari gleamed at me. I was so caught up admiring the smooth flow of the silk as it fluttered against her feet that I quite forgot to smile at the other two guests. A man in a starched cream kurta shalwar—tunic and trousers—trotted in behind her. His deep-caramel skin matched that of the older, rotund woman. They had to be mother and son.

  And who was the third guest? A darker-skinned girl with alarmingly big eyes and feathery lashes. My gaze lingered on her. She looked like an owl—an attractive owl—with her tiny, round lips and humongous eyes. She was beautiful—so refreshingly different! Her lovely features would have stood out even more had she not decked on so much jewelry. There were heavy bracelets and bangles everywhere. It just seemed so, well, out of place. I don’t know if I was being presumptuous, but it just seemed like that girl did not want to wear that big, glaring necklace.

  And then there was something about her that was so familiar. I had seen those striking eyes before. Had I met her at a function, a wedding or get-together, where she had been introduced to me by Ma? Why was she smiling at me right now, knowingly, as if we had a shared secret?

  “Salam Alaykum (Peace be upon you),” I delivered the customary Arabic greeting. “How are you? Please come inside.” I held my hand out to the hall and guided them in.