The Hungry Ghosts

by Shyam Selvadurai

  In those first few days, we hardly saw my grandmother, as she was always out on errands. When she was home, she stayed in her bedroom and ran the household from there. Though she had taken us in, she remained obdurate towards her daughter and refused to have meals with us. Yet I had noticed that whenever our paths crossed, my grandmother gazed at me as if I were something fragile she was frightened to touch. One afternoon, returning from an errand, she stopped in front of my sister and me as we sat cross-legged on the verandah floor playing cards. A squall of emotions passed over her face before she flapped on to her bedroom with a little “humph.” Renu giggled. She gripped my arm and hissed, “The grandson is the most important. So you better be nice to Aachi, otherwise we will get thrown into the street. If that happens, I will always hate you.”

  I shook my arm free and glared down the driveway. I could not deny I was the favoured one.

  Renu, either to punish me for being preferred or to secure our place in this house, decided to make our grandmother a bouquet from the garden. When she was done, she thrust it into my hand and declared, “Shivan, you must take it to Aachi.”

  “No!” I dropped the flowers on the ground and folded my arms over my chest. “No, I won’t.”

  “Yes, you will.”

  I was no match for Renu. She grasped me by the arm, marched me into the saleya and pushed me through the curtained doorway. My grandmother was seated in her bed reading a newspaper, and she lowered it, startled.

  “Thank you very much for allowing us to be in your house,” I said, my throat dry. “For … for you, Aachi.”

  I held out the bouquet. My grandmother frowned at it and then at me. A tremor slackened the corners of her mouth. I put the flowers on her bed and bolted.

  Renu and I crept around the side of the house to our grandmother’s bedroom window. We carefully lifted the bottom edge of the half-curtain and peered in. She had picked up the bouquet and was smelling it, the look on her face like someone convalescing after a long illness.

  We grinned at each other. I was delighted with myself, as if I alone had thought up and executed this feat of daring.

  The next morning, my grandmother paid Renu and me a visit. We were seated at a table on the back verandah, writing out some exercises our mother had set to prepare us for entrance into one of the more prestigious Colombo schools, exercises also intended to keep us out of trouble while she was visiting principals, begging to have us taken on as charity students. She was also looking up old school friends who might help her find employment through their fathers or husbands.

  Though it was a short walk from her room, my grandmother was panting slightly when she came out onto the verandah. I grinned at her and kicked my foot against the chair leg, feeling that I had won a new status with her. She gave me a frosty stare and I hurriedly returned to my work.

  After a moment, I felt her standing behind me and her shadow wavered across the page. My mother had instructed me to copy out sentences from the Grade One Radiant Way primer. My writing was ill-formed and I had made numerous errors. With my grandmother looming over me, my hand began to shake and my scrawl grew worse. She clamped her fingers on my shoulder, nails digging into my flesh. “Erase that. Start again.”

  I rubbed out the words I had written. In doing so, I erased the line above, which was correct.

  My grandmother sucked her tongue against her teeth in a prolonged “ttttch.” “Look at this child,” she declared to no one in particular, “cow dung in his head.”

  I glanced at my sister, but she hunched over her work, dreading she might be next. Rosalind glanced over as she grated a coconut in the kitchen. The coconut flesh rasping and tearing on the scraper was like a warning from her. I began to write my line again, but this time, in my nervousness, I pressed too hard and the pencil point broke.

  “You did that on purpose, nah?” my grandmother cried, as if it was a personal insult to her. “Think you can make a fool of me?” She slapped the side of my head.

  I whimpered and rubbed my nose, a heat swelling up under my scalp.

  My grandmother snatched my pencil away. “Where is the cutter?”

  Renu held it out to her, keeping her head bent. My grandmother grabbed it and sharpened the pencil. Her grinding fractured the silence. She thrust the pencil at me and flung the sharpener on the table.

  I began to write the line again. My grandmother had over-sharpened the pencil and the point was wobbly. I wrote cautiously, but there was only so far I could go before the tip broke again.

  My grandmother drew in her breath. I put down my pencil and clasped my hands tightly in my lap. “You are deliberately trying to mock an old woman and make a fool of her, aren’t you?” Her breath was hot on the top of my head.

  Renu slid the sharpener over. My grandmother snatched it and flung it into the backyard. “You think that because I’m an old woman you can hoodwink me?” she shrilled. “You think you can make a laughingstock out of me?” She dragged me up, my chair squealing along the floor.

  “No, Aachi, no,” I pleaded. “I’m sorry. I promise I won’t do it again.”

  My grandmother grabbed my ear and pulled me into the saleya and through to her room. She shoved me away, went to an almirah in a corner and slid her foot under, feeling around until she kicked out a dusty old leather slipper. She brushed it against the side of her housecoat. My grandmother crooked a shaking finger and pointed for me to bend over the bed. I stayed where I was, gawping at the slipper. “Come,” my grandmother ordered, using the pejorative “vareng.”

  “No, I won’t. You’re not my ammi. I hate you, you old woman.”

  I had used “gaani,” the rudest form of “woman,” and my grandmother’s face flushed. “You wicked boy,” she wailed, and rushed at me, slipper raised. I made to dart away, but she gripped my elbow. I writhed and twisted, my arm burning from her grip, but she held on. I could smell the scorched odour of her sweat under the rose talcum powder. The noise outside of crows cawing, traffic rumbling by and vendors calling seemed magnified in the room as we grappled to gain mastery in desperate silence. Finally, my grandmother felt me weaken. She let out a cry and brought the slipper hissing through the air against my arm. I yelled at the hot sting and broke from her, stumbling sideways just as my grandmother brought the slipper down again. She was aiming for my back, but instead the slipper hit me across the face. I screamed and cradled my cheek. For a moment we were still, then my grandmother sat down on her bed, head in her hands, and I turned and rushed out the door.

  Rosalind and my sister had been listening outside, too afraid to intervene, and they followed me to my room. The ayah led me through into my bathroom and made me sit on the closed toilet teat. She took a bottle of gentian violet from the medicine cabinet, knelt in front of me and, pouring some of the liquid on cotton wool, dabbed my bruises, which were bleeding where the nailheads on the slipper sole had punctured my skin. I yelped at the smart.

  Rosalind tucked me in and knelt by the bed, stroking my hair. As I lay under the coverlet, the shock of what had happened wore off, and I began to stutter hiccupping sobs. Renu paced the room, her face stern.

  Once I was sufficiently calmed down, Rosalind sat back on her haunches and looked at us gravely. “Your amma must never find out about this.”

  “But why?” Renu cried, then added, “I’m definitely telling Ammi.”

  Rosalind sighed. “Your amma has enough hardships. I don’t think she could bear anything else.” She took my hand in hers. “This is difficult for you to understand, but what your grandmother did to you, she did out of love. She has singled you out, her grandson.

  “Yes,” she nodded, to our glares of disbelief. “She is just a woman who life has made different. This is her strange way of trying to love you. So,” she raised her eyebrows, “can we make a pact not to tell your mother?”

  After a moment my sister half nodded, but I ducked my head.

  I lay in bed for the rest of the day, and in the late afternoon I heard my mother
come into the house, calling to us. My sister rushed into the saleya to greet her, Rosalind following.

  “Ammi,” I bawled, “Amm-i!”

  “What’s going on?” my mother asked Rosalind.

  “Oh, nothing, baba, he just fell and hurt himself.”

  My mother’s heels clicked. She pulled aside the curtain and came into my room.

  I thrust out my arm, offering up my bruises, and tilted my cheek so she could see the purple welt. She dropped her handbag on a table. “What happened, son, what did you do?” She held my wrist and examined the bruise.

  My sister and Rosalind were also in the room now.

  I began to sniffle. I suddenly wanted justice. “Aachi did this to me. With a slipper.”

  My mother became very still. Her grip tightened on my wrist, then she let go of my arm and straightened up.

  “It’s nothing, baba,” Rosalind began. “You know how your mother is, she—”

  “Aah, that wretched witch,” my mother whispered. She strode out of the room, and we all followed. I, in particular, wanted to see my grandmother worsted.

  The pistol shots of my mother’s high heels echoed across the cavernous saleya. When she got to my grandmother’s doorway, she ripped back the curtain and went in. “How dare you touch my child!”

  My grandmother was getting dressed for temple. She turned from the mirror and examined my mother. “Get out of my room.” Then she went back to pinning the sari palu to the shoulder of her blouse.

  The slipper was lying on a side table. My mother grabbed it and flung it in the wastepaper basket, much to my delight. “You will not ruin my children’s life like you did mine.”

  My grandmother had finished pinning her palu. She wound it around her waist in preparation for the battle, then turned to my mother. “Remember your place. This is my house. I have allowed you to stay. You are lucky.”

  “You allow me to stay because you don’t want to lose face with your friends and our relatives.”

  “You’re wrong. I let you stay because I shudder to think what disgrace you would bring on our family name if I allowed you to live on your own. What horrible mistakes you would make.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” My mother crossed her arms over her chest.

  My grandmother let out a bark of a laugh. She leaned towards my mother. “Look at where your mistakes have brought your children. Look at them! Tamil, poor and undereducated! You’re a disgraceful mother. A failure!”

  My mother gripped her chest tighter, eyes filling with tears.

  Renu glared at me. I was the one who had brought this humiliation on our mother.

  “I wish you were not my daughter.” My grandmother’s voice was melodious with longing. “Every day I wish it was so. But I accept that this is my karma, that I must have done something terrible in my previous life to deserve you. Through meritorious deeds at the temple, I am trying hard to work off the ill effects of that karma.” She pushed past my mother and left.

  My mother began to weep.

  “See what you have done,” Renu hissed. She rapped a tokka on my head. “Now we will be forced to leave and live on the road because of you. We will become beggars.”

  I rushed out of the room. My grandmother was hurrying across the saleya. When I caught up with her on the verandah, she quickly scoured her cheeks with the heel of her palm then glared at me. “Go away, you wretched child.”

  “Aachi, I … I promise I will be a good boy.” My voice was husky with fear. “Please don’t put us out on the road, please don’t let us become beggars.”

  Her lips thinned in astonishment. Then a change came over her face, a readjustment. “All I want is your welfare,” she declared in a tone both haughty and injured. “That is all I want. The very best for you.”

  “Yes, I know, I know.”

  “Is it right for you to call me a gaani like I am some woman selling bananas at the corner? Is it right to say you hate me when I have shown you nothing but love?”

  “No, no.”

  “If you had done your homework well, if you hadn’t played around with your pencil, breaking that point on purpose, none of this would have happened.”

  “Yes, I was wrong, Aachi, I am sorry.” I massaged my right elbow as if it were tender.

  “And what is a few strokes with a slipper? You had better get used to it, because in the school you are going to, there will be a lot more of those. And not from a frail old woman like me.”

  I nodded vigorously, as if agreeing the punishment had been light.

  “Hmm, anyway, you seem to have learnt your lesson. Which is a good thing. It shows you are an intelligent boy underneath this wildness you have brought with you.” She turned and went down to her waiting Bentley T in the carport.

  I crept back to my room and curled up in bed.

  My window opened onto the back verandah, and I could hear my mother seated at the opposite end, still crying. Rosalind clicked her tongue soothingly, as if she were feeding hens.

  “I was wrong to return, Rosalind,” my mother said when she had quieted down. “This is a mistake. I must take the children away.”

  “And live on what, baba? Loku Nona will not give you an allowance now. She has chosen him.”

  “But it’s unbearable, Shivan being in this position.”

  “Whatever punishment the poor child has to endure, his future is secure. Think carefully, Hema-baba. After all …,” the ayah was silent for a long moment, “she is not entirely to blame.”

  “Rosalind! How can you say that?” My mother’s voice trilled with insincerity.

  “There are children involved now. You cannot afford to make another mistake.”

  “He’s a boy,” my mother pleaded, “a little boy.”

  And so I understood that my mother would not defend me anymore. She was no longer in control of our destiny. I was.

  That night, as we ate dinner on the back verandah under a dim naked bulb that cast a pallid glow, I found myself observing my mother and thinking for the first time about how she must look to an outside eye, cheekbones stretching her skin, lips dry and chapped, blackish-purple hollows at her temples. She had always been thin, but now I saw that she had grown even more so since my father’s death.

  The next morning, instead of sitting with my sister, I took my copybook and The Radiant Way to my grandmother’s bedroom. She lowered the bank statement she was reading and her eyes followed me as I went to sit on the mat by her bed and begin my work. Even though she frowned sternly as she went back to the statement, I could tell she was glad I had come to her.

  After some time had passed, my grandmother folded up her glasses, gathered her bills and accounts and put them on the side table. She glared to warn me against any mischief, but there was no real rancour in her gaze now. She lay back and closed her eyes. The laundry basket was not far from where I sat. The smell of lavender perfume and rose talcum powder seemed to deepen the sweat and damp of unwashed clothing. The fan whirled sluggish air about. I could feel the perspiration gathering in the crook of my arms and knees.

  When I was sure my grandmother was asleep, I crept to the window and looked out through its thick bars. Renu was playing batta. She stopped, her feet planted on two squares, the batta stone in her hand, then continued with the game as if she had not seen me.

  Two days later, my mother came home with a box from Perera and Sons. She gathered us together around the back verandah table, and once Rosalind had brought cake plates and a knife, she announced she had been offered a job as an apprentice editor at the Lanka News, a paper owned by a friend’s father. My sister and I had also been accepted into the schools she wanted.

  The ribbon cake had hard vanilla icing and sugar flowers, the sort we only ever had at birthdays. My mother beamed at us. “Happy?”

  We nodded, but there was a troubling new vivacity to her manner, a harsh glitter in her eyes. As she began to cut slices, she said, not looking at us, “Children, how was your day, what did you do?”
/>   “I had a tea party,” Renu replied.

  “Alone?” My mother passed the first slice of cake to Rosalind, who was standing behind her. “You know, you must look after your brother. He is, after all, the youngest. You should include him in your games.”

  “He couldn’t play,” Renu started to say, “he had to—” I kicked her in the shin.

  My mother continued to pass out slices as if she had not heard, the knife sighing as it cut through the hard icing. She kept my piece beside her, and once she was seated she beckoned me forward and hoisted me into her lap. She kissed the back of my neck, her teeth grating briefly against my flesh. “But you are still my baby boy, my best, darling boy, aren’t you?” Her arms were tight around me.

  “Yes, Amma,” I whispered. Sitting there in her hot embrace, breathing in her cheap perfume that smelt vaguely of chlorine, I glanced down at the slice of cake and was repelled. Yet when she held out the first forkful, I forced myself to take it, the crumbs prickling my throat.

  “Yes, children,” she said, “a bright future is before us. Indeed it is.”

  Another of my grandmother’s favourite stories begins with the line, Like a leopard stalking its prey through tall grass, a man’s past life pursues him, waiting for the right moment to pounce. It is the tale of a monk named Chakkupala, who, at the moment of achieving enlightenment, becomes blind. The other monks are puzzled by this and they appeal to the Lord Buddha for an explanation. The Tathagata, who can see both into the future and past, narrates an earlier life of Chakkupala’s, when he was an eye doctor. During that time, a poor woman asked him to cure her eye disease. In return, she said, she would put herself in bondage to him. Once cured, however, the woman pretended she was still afflicted to avoid becoming his slave. Angered, the doctor gave the woman another potion which permanently blinded her. Her blindness, the Tathagata tells his monks, was the result of bad karma from her past lives. But the laws of karma are such that, once the negative effect of a bad karma is played out, it drops from a person. The doctor by his evil deed took on the burden of that bad karma, which was coming to fruition now in the monk Chakkupala.