The Hungry Ghosts

by Shyam Selvadurai

  “Yes, yes.” My mother’s voice was impatient.

  “Tomorrow, then.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  She put the phone down.

  When I came upstairs, my mother was standing by the patio door, looking out through the sheers at our garden, which was revealing its shapes in the dawn light. She was remote and spectral, the bones of her face sharp, hair tousled, lips greyish brown without makeup. Renu sat on the sofa, dressing gown trussed tightly, eyes narrowed with worry as she watched our mother, wondering what this news would do to her. She glanced at me to communicate her concern, but I would not meet her eye. I sat on the stairs that led to the second floor, my hands clasped, dread mounting within me.

  Over the next few days, as we waited to hear if my grandmother would pull through, I could hardly swallow sometimes for the dryness in my throat. She had seemed so indomitable, so enduring a presence in my life. But now I was understanding I might never hear her voice again, never feel her touch on my arm, never have anyone call me “Puthey” in that loving tone.

  One afternoon, I was working at the bookstore when it started to rain. I stood at the counter, chin on knuckles, gazing out through the mud-flecked window. The world outside—pedestrians hurrying by, half-human, half-umbrella; slowly passing vehicles sending up graceful fans of muddy water; blurred neon store signs—all appeared insubstantial.

  I was at the end of my university career, with a degree in English literature. A few days before we got the call from Sunil Maama, I had visited a government employment office and seen how unqualified I was for most postings on the boards. Even the majority of summer jobs were beyond me. I did not have experience as a waiter or camp counsellor, did not have a lifeguard’s certificate; and I knew better than to apply for jobs in light construction or with the Parks and Rec department, because these jobs, which paid the best, went to white men. As I looked at the other young people taking down contact information, I felt how much I was still an outsider in this country.

  University had provided a rhythm to my life, and I had drifted through, reading textbook after textbook, typing paper after paper, swotting for exams at the end of each term. In the summer I would work at the bookstore and whatever other retail jobs I could scramble for. Now, beyond the summer, there was the void of fall and winter, and beyond that the void of all the years to come.

  Then there was the troubling fact that since the beginning of winter, for a reason I did not understand, I was going through a sexual dry spell. Despite adding Sunday tea dances to my weekend visits to bars, I could find no one who wanted to sleep with me who wasn’t completely unpalatable. Many nights I took a bus home, long after the subway closed, surrounded by immigrants coming off late shifts, smelling like dusty cardboard boxes.

  I had a frequent dream about love, inspired by some story my grandmother must have told me. In the dream, I lived in a cave, my clothes suggesting medieval Sri Lanka—chest bare, a white dhoti wrapped around my lower body, hair pulled into a topknot. I had a beautiful lover, though I could never remember his face when I awoke. His dhoti was green silk with gold stars, and he had a large emerald in the middle of his topknot. My dream comprised three moments of leave-taking. In each, my lover repeated the same line with great sorrow: “My food and drink I get by the power of this jewel. You ask too much. I cannot part with it.” The first time he said this, he was in my cave; the second, he was farther away from me, at the foot of the steps leading up to my grotto. In the final, and most strange moment, he stood in the middle of a flowing river. After he spoke, he dove in. There was a flash of a shimmering green snake’s body, then he was gone. I would wake up from this dream filled with sexual desire and a bewildering sense of loss.

  My sister was doing much better than me. In her final year, her social life had picked up again after she got a part-time job at a women’s shelter that catered to an immigrant and non-white clientele. “We women of colour,” was her new catchphrase, which she said with a toss of her head to encompass friends she’d made among the employees. These friends came home periodically, when it was Renu’s turn to host the Ngame Reading Group, named after the African goddess who gave human beings their souls. The women were fierce and intense like Renu, and would take over my basement to have their discussions. They used terms I did not understand, like “voice appropriation,” “Orientalism,” “liminality” and the “subaltern.” The women discussed writers I had never heard of, despite four years of English literature—bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Gayatri Spivak, and, in softer tones of pleasure, the novels of Toni Morrison, Anita Desai and Maxine Hong Kingston.

  There was also much berating of “this racist, parochial country stolen from the First Nations.” “Racist” and “parochial” were part of Renu’s new insignia of belonging. She used them to describe everything from York University to the Toronto Transit Commission. Since I was, in her estimation, also a “victim of the patriarchal order,” she would often corner me for a confidential chat. “There is so much work to be done in this racist, parochial country, Shivan,” she would say. “Things have to change. These bloody whites must be forced to take their heels off our throats.”

  The previous fall, Renu had applied to do her master’s at Cornell University, where a famous Indian feminist professor taught. So singular was her desire for this placement, she would not apply anywhere else. Even her new friends worried about this decision and pressed her to try other universities, but Renu would reply in a quiet, sad tone, “If I can’t get what I want, I’ll keep working at the shelter.”

  During the late fall and early winter, while she waited to hear from Cornell, Renu went on a diet of grapefruit and bran cereal. My untidy sister became fanatically neat, folded clothes in her closet in rigid columns, book spines aligned on shelves. After I’d sat on her bed and held a pillow while talking to her, Renu would plump the pillow to some specification and lay it carefully beside the other even as I was walking towards the door. She would rage if I borrowed a book or pencil without asking.

  It was a relief when she got into Cornell in February with a full scholarship.

  We had seen our mother even less than usual over the past year. She had, by now, secured permanent employment in a lawyer’s office as a secretary and was adequately paid. Yet she’d taken a second job at a doughnut shop in the Bridlewood Mall, where she worked evening and weekend shifts. The franchise was owned by an Iranian woman named Azita, who was erratic and constantly changed the demands she made on employees. The only people who stayed working for her were middle-aged immigrant women. Their tyrannical boss united the employees. They would call my mother at home to tell her of Azita’s latest outrageous demand. My mother called these women too, and even went out with them sometimes before or after a shift. And for the first time in her life, my mother claimed she was suffering from migraines. She would occasionally lie in bed for a day or two, curtains drawn, refusing all our offers of food.

  As the weeks progressed, my grandmother remained stable but unchanging. I often took out her letters (which I could never bring myself to throw away) and flipped through them, aware now that the feeling of suffocation her advice and gossip used to evoke had faded. My mind would return again and again to a trip she and I took once to Negombo, where she had rented a bungalow on the beach. My grandmother had grown up in a coastal village and knew the lives of fisher people well. They would often come to talk with us as she sat ensconced in a planter’s chair on the verandah. Using colloquial village Sinhala, she’d argue with them about weather predictions and what the sea offered at this time of year. My grandmother and I would go down at dawn to the beach and she’d haggle with the fishermen until she got prawns and seer fish cheap. In the evenings, after our dinner, we sat on the dark verandah, I on the floor beside my grandmother’s chair, both of us looking out to the boat lights twinkling on the horizon. I had never seen my grandmother’s face so placid with contentment.

  As I went about my daily tasks of looking for a job and working in the
bookstore, I savoured details of that memory—the salty sea breeze that blew through the verandah, the sweet taste of fresh prawns, the smell of my grandmother’s talcum powder and lavender perfume as she sat next to me, the feel of her rough dry hand on my head.

  Then after weeks of stasis, my grandmother suddenly improved and within days was moved out of intensive care and into a private room, secured by Chandralal. According to Sunil Maama, my grandmother’s thug, now greatly moved up in the world, visited her daily, consulting with doctors, threatening staff if my grandmother complained of anything.

  She was soon well enough to talk on the phone and requested I call her. The hospital switchboard operator was expecting my call and put me through to her room immediately.

  “Puthey,” my grandmother shouted down the phone, her voice slightly slurred, “Puthey, how are you?”

  I could not speak for the lump in my throat. “I … I am fine, Aacho,” I finally blurted out. “How are you?”

  “How am I, Puthey? Why, I’m being robbed blind by these rascals. This hospital is run by a bunch of rogues. Last night, I am sure, somebody took my gold necklace, because I do remember bringing it with me.”

  I found myself smiling at her fierce tone, her familiar distrust of other people. “But are you eating well, Aacho, are you resting a lot? I worry about you.”

  “Well, I eat the food that isn’t stolen from my tray. And what else is there to do but sleep in this place?”

  She went on to praise Chandralal. “Like a son, Puthey, he has been like a son to me.”

  I felt jealous, and changed the subject. “Now, tell me, what do the doctors say?”

  “Aiyo, Puthey, I’ll never recover all my strength again. For the rest of my life I will have to use a walking stick. And my face, Puthey, the left side is partly paralyzed. That is why I am talking as if I am slurping tea at the same time.”

  “Ah, I am so sad for you, Aacho.”

  “What is to be done, Puthey? It is my karma.”

  We were silent. I could hear her breath across the line as we each waited for the other to put forward what we wanted.

  “Aacho,” I finally said, “I think I should come and visit you. My university is over and I feel—”

  “Ah, yes, Puthey,” she said, voice hoarse with relief, “it is a very good idea. I will have Sunil make a deposit into your mother’s account for the ticket. Today itself he will do it.”

  “Aacho, Aacho,” I said, overwhelmed by what I was committing to, “do you want to say hello to Amma or Renu?”

  “No, no, don’t worry. This call is already too expensive. No point wasting money and making the phone company rich.”

  As we said our goodbyes, my grandmother reiterated that Sunil Maama would send the money for my ticket that very day.

  I put the phone down, shrugged at my family’s astonishment and sauntered towards the basement stairs. My mother followed, Renu trailing behind.

  “Shivan, son, you’re not serious about going back, are you? Why do you want to return?” she pleaded.

  “She is family. Despite everything, she has been good to us. Without her hospitality, we would have been poor. Even this house, we are living here rent-free, and—”

  “I forbid it. I knew that woman would use her illness to pull something like this. There is no need to go. She is fine now. Yes, yes, I forbid it. Wasting time and money—”

  “Who are you to forbid anything?” I yelled, all the pent-up rage I had felt in the last few years, all my disappointments, pouring out of me. “Why shouldn’t I go back? What is there for me in this shit of a country? I hate being here. Do you know how much I hate it? Have you any idea of the misery I am living in here?”

  My mother turned to Renu in appeal, but my sister was regarding her with raised eyebrows. “Are you surprised he wants to escape, given the hell hole we live in?” She drew out the word hell so my mother understood it referred to her. Renu walked away upstairs, her voice rising as she went, shrill and plaintive. “I don’t care, it’s none of my business. That woman never had a moment for me. I hope she dies, frankly. Yes, I really hope she just dies. That would put us all out of our misery. Bloody nuisance that woman is, clinging to life.”

  “Shivan,” my mother pleaded, but I slammed the basement door and went down to my room.

  I sat on the edge of my mattress and stared at my fractured image in the mirrored squares on the wall.

  In the following weeks, as I prepared to go back, my mother’s face became even more gaunt and deep circles appeared under her eyes. I would catch her sometimes looking at Renu and me in a haunted way, lips slightly parted, as if she wanted to say something and was waiting for us to notice her. Yet when she caught my glance, she would turn away to busily scrub the counter or do some other chore. Once, she actually had dinner with her children, but all of us were so awkward she went back to her old routine.

  I was often awakened in the early hours of the morning by my mother walking the length of the house from the kitchen window to the patio doors, where she stood for a moment before retracing her steps. I would lie, arms pressed by my sides, and listen to her go back and forth, that pause at the patio doors the most unbearable thing for some reason. My basement window would change from black to cloudy dawn, this greyness seeming, to my sleep-deprived mind, like fog against the window. Once she had returned to bed, I would fall into a sleep that was full of nightmares I could never remember when I woke, a few hours later, my throat dry and aching from lack of sleep, my forehead heavy.

  One evening my mother came down to the basement. I was on my knees folding laundry from a mound on the mattress. She had a copy of the Sri Lankan Sunday Times in her hand.

  “Are you aware of what is going on in Sri Lanka?” She rustled the paper at me. “Have you any sense of the madness you are committing yourself to?”

  I continued to fold my laundry. She knew I had not kept up with the news on Sri Lanka, just as she suspected my continued ignorance was wilful. I did not want anything to spoil my joy at returning.

  Still, it was impossible to avoid all news, given that Renu talked regularly to her new friends about the situation on the phone or when they visited. My mother also got the Sunday Times every week and left it lying around, and I couldn’t help but see bits of news. So I knew that, as in those Buddhist tales, the karmic crime of hatred between the Sinhalese and Tamils had taken on a new incarnation. A new actor had entered the maelstrom. India, under pressure from its massive Tamil population in the sub-continent’s south, had intervened. About a year ago, Sri Lanka and India had signed an agreement which brought Indian troops to the Tamil areas to take charge of the situation there. The Tigers, who had enjoyed support from India, had agreed reluctantly to the truce. For a few months peace reigned and the country looked like it would shed its bloody past, its hatreds, and move towards a new era. However, within three months the Tigers had broken the truce, killing five Indian para-commandos by strapping burning tires around their necks. In retaliation the Indian Army launched a month-long campaign to win control of the north and their ruthlessness turned the Tamils against them.

  My mother was not really concerned about this fighting between the Tigers and the Indians, which was taking place far from Colombo. Her concern was with yet another actor who had entered into the frenzy—the JVP, a Marxist group that had led a failed insurrection in the early 1970s. The JVP had taken advantage of the unemployment in the country and the massive rise in the cost of living, along with the increasing anti-Tamil, anti-Indian hostility among the Sinhalese, who by now feared that Sri Lanka was on track to become another of India’s states. Soon the JVP was leading attacks on security force camps, staging daring robberies, declaring strikes no one dared disobey. They banned women from wearing Indian saris, shops from selling Indian goods and even Sri Lankan business men from importing Indian pharmaceuticals. Their power was so universally acknowledged that they were known as the Government of the Night or the Little Government.

 
Though Colombo had remained unaffected for a long time, the effects of the JVP’s actions were beginning to be felt in the capital now. The JVP had led an unsuccessful assassination attempt on the prime minister and president within the parliamentary complex itself, killing a minister in the process. But their most notorious crime in Colombo was the recent killing of the beloved actor turned politician Vijaya Kumaratunga, whom the JVP had declared a traitor because he was sympathetic to the Tamils. Half a million mourners had turned out for his funeral and his widow, Chandrika Kumaratunga, had fled the country with her two children, fearing for their lives.

  After my mother had elaborated all this, she came farther into my room and stood over me. “I suppose you are too young to remember the JVP rebellion in the early 1970s. Thank God it failed, otherwise all of us Cinnamon Gardens types would have been murdered and you children sent to labour camps for re-education.” She lifted her hands, then let them fall in disgust when I didn’t react. “Shivan, they are murdering people all the time in the south. When they call for a work stoppage no one dares to go out. Between them and the Tigers, not to mention the Indians, you will have to deal with curfews and blackouts and bombs and God only knows what else.”

  I took a pile of clothes to a drawer, brushing past her. By not responding I was daring her to command me again to stay.

  To put some distance between us, I began to refer to my mother, when speaking to Renu, as “Our Lady of Angoda,” and make biting comments about her madness. Renu found this funny and appalling and would say, “Chee, Shivan, how can you joke about Amma belonging in that asylum? It’s a vile place.”

  I was certain the reason behind our mother’s new anxiety was my return to Sri Lanka, but Renu disagreed, insisting it was delayed shock at our grandmother’s illness. She patted my shoulder and advised me to ignore our mother’s behaviour. “You are doing the right thing. You need closure with Aachi. You need to take charge of your own life, to shrug off the burden of Amma. She must learn to move forward on her own.”