The Hungry Ghosts

by Shyam Selvadurai

  “Your family, they’re very nice,” he whispered, but his face was pensive.

  “Charming but fucked up.” I placed a hand on his stomach. “Thank you for making them feel so much at home. I really appreciate it, Michael.”

  He nodded, then turned away to face the balcony door. Beyond it we could see the faint twinkle of ships along the horizon. I pressed hard into him, putting my arms around from behind, and he grasped my hands fiercely and pulled me tight.

  My family had come on a Friday and so the weekend was taken up with sightseeing. We went on Saturday to the Museum of Anthropology, which gave me a chance to take them through UBC and show off my office which was in the oldest building on campus, explaining to my impressed family how the 1920s building was in the “collegiate Gothic” style. On Sunday we went to Galiano Island for a picnic. All of this kept us busy, and it was only at night that Michael and I were alone. His mood would turn pensive then, as if he had been holding in his melancholy all day and it flooded him in the dark. I would lie next to him, concerned about his mood but too overwhelmed by my own worries to address his emotions.

  On Monday, Renu’s conference started and Michael went back to work. I took my mother to the Capilano Park, as Michael had told her about the ancient Douglas firs and she was keen to see them. On the way there, my mother chatted about her life in Toronto and described a trip she and David had made to McGill University in Montreal, where his son was in third year. She did not get involved in his children’s lives—“I’ve raised two of my own, that’s more than enough, thank you”—but had gone, nonetheless, to help the son find new accommodation, as he was not happy in his current digs. My mother also told me about her new friendships among fellow students at York. Some of them were older single women with whom she went for dinners and films, but she also had a coterie of young friends—mostly children of immigrants who saw her as a liberated woman, since dating a white man was more than many of them would have dared. Though she pretended to find their image of her droll, I could tell she enjoyed acting as a mentor and advisor. Her hectic chatter filled me with dread. This was our first time alone without Michael, and I could sense we were heading for that conversation she had come all this way to have.

  Finally, we were in the park, and my mother grew silent as we followed the wooden boardwalk from fir to fir and stared up at the massive trees, many of which were hundreds of years old. We soon came to a fir that had stairs leading up its side to a deck built into the trunk. A sign at the bottom told us we could get a “squirrel’s view” over the landscape. By the time we reached the deck, my mother was panting, and she sat down on a bench to recover her breath.

  I was reading an interpretive sign about the surrounding scenery when my mother declared, “Shivan, I am so pleased to see you have a happy life here.” She patted the bench, but I leant back against the deck rail, arms folded. “I think you are healed enough to begin some reconciliation with Aachi. It’s important you do so. She won’t live forever.”

  I went back to studying the sign, lightheaded with relief. So this was the reason for her visit, not something unimaginably terrible.

  “Has she accepted responsibility for what happened?”

  “Whether she accepts responsibility or not isn’t the issue. The issue is—”

  “Only time will heal what happened, and as you see, it is already doing that.” I held out my arms to show proof.

  “Time isn’t enough, you must also forgive.”

  “How can you forgive someone who hasn’t taken responsibility for their actions?”

  “You start by forgiving yourself, that’s where you start.”

  “What should I forgive myself for? Did I kill Mili? Did I? Is that what you think?”

  “I want you to know,” my mother continued, ignoring my anger, “that your aachi gave me power of attorney and I sold our share in those flats to that wretched thug of hers. I am looking for the Tamil family who lived there to give them their proper dues, and I have a lead in Australia. Aachi, of course, doesn’t know this.”

  “It doesn’t fix what happened.” I went to the top of the stairs. “Nothing can fix that, nothing can reverse her actions. It’s too late to make any—”

  “No, no, enough of your anger.” She stood up. “I won’t pander to it anymore.”

  I started to go down the steps and she yelled at me in that old way of hers. “Come back here. I haven’t finished with you.”

  I stopped and turned in surprise.

  My mother ran a hand over her forehead and gave a frustrated gasp. Then she straightened the shoulders of her blouse and smoothed down the front of her trousers. “The thing is, son,” she said quietly, “the thing is, you need to consider letting Aachi into your life again, because she is coming back into it.” She grimaced at my questioning look. “Perhaps I should have told you this before. I applied last year to bring her over to Canada.”

  I was silent, waiting for some emotion to well up in me, but instead it seemed as if a void had opened within.

  “The application has to be considered by the Immigration Appeal Division, because Amma is too old and ill to be a productive member of society. Anyway, our lawyer tells us we should hear back soon, and it looks promising.”

  “I wish you hadn’t come here.”

  She leaned over the interpretive sign, pretending to read it. When she had gained control of herself, she turned back to me. “And I am guessing that Michael doesn’t know anything about what happened, probably doesn’t even know you have a grandmother. You have kept it all from that poor man.”

  I fiddled in my pockets as if looking for something.

  She sat down and clasped her hands, staring at me. “It’s not fair, Shivan. He deserves better.”

  “Just keep out of my relationship,” I snarled.

  “We should have stayed on campus,” she said wretchedly.

  “You should have. Instead of which you’ve come and shat all over my happiness. Yes, shat,” I cried, at my mother’s shock. “I was happy. Why did you have to come and ruin everything? Haven’t you done enough damage to my life?”

  Emotions struggled with each other across my mother’s face, then it became impassive. She stood up. “Let’s go on and do the suspension bridge.”

  I followed her down the steps, frightened and furious.

  We spent the rest of our day visiting the Vancouver Museum and then seeing a film, avoiding further intimate conversation. When we got back to the apartment, Michael and Renu had already returned and were seated on the sofa looking at albums from Michael’s time in Dublin. He came to greet us at the door. “Did you have a nice day, Hema? Were the firs impressive?”

  “Yes-yes, they were wonderful.” She touched his elbow. “Thank you, Michael, for everything you have done to make this visit so pleasant.”

  He laughed, taken aback by the fervency of her gratitude. “It’s a pleasure, Hema.”

  “You’re a good man, son.” She kissed him on the cheek and went to her bedroom.

  Michael frowned at me and I shrugged. “What happened?” he whispered.

  “Why should anything happen?”

  Ignoring Renu’s appraising stare, I turned away to take off my shoes, fumbling with the laces. I went into the washroom, locked the door and sat on the closed toilet seat, leaning back against the cistern. “How dare she,” I whispered, “how dare she.”

  I heard my mother come out of the bedroom and go towards the kitchen. We were having more Sri Lankan food that night, and Michael offered to help. “No, son,” she replied, “I can manage. All I need is that steamer again.”

  There was a clatter of pots as Michael moved things around in the cupboard. “Hema,” he said, “I ran into my mother today, and she would love to meet you.”

  “Oh, how nice, Michael. But your mother is a very busy person and I don’t want to inconvenience her.”

  “No inconvenience at all.”

  “Well, then, we must try and arrange it.”

&n
bsp; Yet I knew that my mother would avoid meeting his parents.

  I splashed my face and dried off, then stood with hands pressed on the edge of the sink, staring at myself until I felt ready to go out. I could have joined Michael and Renu on the sofa, where he had returned to show my sister more photos. Instead, I went to the kitchen, determined to wrest back my home, which my family had transformed into a perilous place.

  My mother had laid out various plastic containers on the table, lids open. “Oh, very nice,” I said, not looking at her as I examined the dishes. “Shrimp curry, ala thel dala, kiri hodi and coconut sambol.” She ignored me and went about the kitchen, stern and harried, putting batches of string hoppers in the steamer.

  “I can’t believe you took such trouble for us, Amma. Polos cutlets! I haven’t had them in years.”

  She grunted in reply.

  I began to take down serving dishes and empty curries into them.

  Something about our exchange, the clatter of dishes, alerted Michael, because he came to hover in the doorway.

  “Shivan,” my mother said, “leave it. I would like to manage on my own.” I continued with my task and she added in Sinhalese, “I make a meal and bring it across the country, and all you do is irritate me. Is that my reward?”

  I slammed down my spoon. “Have you no manners? Talking Sinhala in front of Michael. You’re so rude.”

  “I’m sorry, Michael—” my mother began to apologize, but I interrupted her.

  “See, Michael? Do you see now what we had to put up with? This is how she drove me all the way across the country and her daughter to the US.”

  My mother turned off the burner. She removed her apron and laid it on the counter. Then, she left the kitchen. After a moment, the bedroom door clicked shut. By now, Renu had also come to the kitchen doorway, frowning at me questioningly. I avoided her gaze and bustled around, putting food into dishes.

  Michael grabbed my arm as I passed him and indicated sternly towards the bedroom. “Shivan, talk to her.” He would not release me, and I didn’t struggle, because now I felt weak with fear. In exposing our conflict, I had alerted Michael to the fact that there was something he was not privy to. I went to apologize, desperate to have normalcy restored.

  My mother was sitting on the bed. She got up, blew her nose, placed her carry-on bag on the duvet and began to pack some of the things she had bought at the museum. “What a lovely apartment you have, Shivan. How did you come to afford it?”

  “A … a down payment from Michael’s parents.”

  “Some people have all the luck,” she said mildly. “Canadians like Michael and his parents are blessed to have lived without seeing their world erupting around them. It is our good fortune if we can tie our lives to theirs, as you have been able to, Shivan. It is something to value.” She gave me a beseeching look. I dropped my gaze, and she went back to her task. “You can go. I will be out soon.”

  Michael was heating the food, and Renu was on the balcony, pretending to be absorbed in the street life below. I took placemats and serviettes from the buffet and laid the table, aware Michael was watching me. When I came into the kitchen to get plates and cutlery, he said in a sad, defeated way, “Shivan, what happened when you were out today?”

  “Nothing, nothing.” I took down plates with a furious clatter.

  My mother came out of the bedroom only when Renu went to tell her the meal was ready and we were waiting for her. She smiled at us politely as she sat down, eyes veined from crying. “I’m sorry, Michael, all this has made you uncomfortable in your own home.”

  “No need to apologize, Hema.” He passed her the string hoppers. “Would you like some wine?”

  “Yes, that would be very nice, thank you, son.”

  The way my mother called Michael “son” made me want to cry.

  Later that night, when we were alone on our air mattress, I dreaded that Michael would probe further, but instead he grasped my chin, searched my face, then let me go. He turned on his side, legs drawn up to stomach, hands under one cheek, looking out at the night. I closed my eyes, vertiginous.

  After that, my mother and I spent our remaining days like two strangers finding themselves thrown together in a foreign land and deciding to make the best of it. Renu stayed away in the evenings, as she had done all our years in Canada, socializing with colleagues. I could tell from her hard, bright manner with me that my mother had shared our conversation in the park. She too was uneasy being in our apartment and enjoying my partner’s hospitality.

  Michael began to come back later from work. Once, he called to say he had to dine at his parents’; a forgotten commitment, an old family friend visiting from England. At night, when we were alone, he would reply tersely when I asked about his day. Before he kissed me goodnight, he would examine me sternly, and my eyes slid away, unable to return his gaze. I knew he was waiting until my family left before confronting me. Yet instead of fear at the prospect, all I felt was numbness, as if everything was out of my control and I could only watch as events unfolded.

  My mother and sister were to leave on Sunday afternoon. After their bags were packed and by the door, they still had a couple of hours before the airport bus. My mother asked me to walk her down to English Bay for one last look at the ocean.

  We were silent all the way there, and she rested her hand on my elbow as if needing support. When we were on the beach, she let go and we walked in tandem, a little apart. Finally, she overtook me and blocked my path.

  “The reason you haven’t told Michael about the past is because you want to put all that behind and start a new life. He is that new life. So, Michael will forgive you.”

  I scuffed the toe of my shoe against a log.

  She shook my elbow. “What you went through was terrible, Shivan. Anyone will understand you didn’t want to revisit it. Anyone will understand.”

  I moved away, not daring to look at her, for I didn’t want to see the desperation in her face.

  Yet my mother wouldn’t give up so easily on me. She went to sit on a nearby log, hands clasped in front of her, waiting, and when I came at last and sat by her, she said, quoting the Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, “When the mind burns with anger, immediately cast aside those angry thoughts or they will spread the way an unchecked fire travels from house to house.”

  And so she told me the story of her early life and mistakes, then told me how it had been for her in the months after I left for Vancouver; how, during her trip back to Sri Lanka, she had learnt to love and forgive my grandmother, despite her faults and failures. By offering me her stories I could tell she was hoping I would start to forgive, and not let acrimony ruin my life as it had hers; hoping also that opening her secrets to me would give me courage to do the same with Michael. But I could only listen dully, overwhelmed, carried along as if caught in a current out at sea.

  Before my mother boarded the airport bus, she took my face in her hands. “Son, you are to me like rain soaking a parched land.” I knew that by redeeming this expression of love from its history, she was trying to put me on the path to doing the right thing.

  28

  I HAVE COME OUT TO THE GARDEN AGAIN, come past the back gate to stand at the edge of the gully. The water below has taken on an infinite depth, as if it, rather than the sky, will catch the first light of morning, dawn blooming from within. In the apartment towers across the way, lights are switching on like fireflies in the dark. I glance at my watch. Three thirty. The night workers have returned. I think about the smell of them, like dusty cardboard boxes, in that bus I’d sometimes take home after the bars downtown had closed, their odour of defeat and resignation.

  As I gaze at the apartment buildings, a dark flotilla out at sea, the line from one of my grandmother’s stories is with me again: “They stand at crossroads or even outside the walls of their own homes, these silent peréthayas. They are standing at their own gates, wanting to be let in.”

  After the airport bus that took my mother and si
ster away had rounded the corner, Michael and I stood gazing into the absence it had left behind. The familiar landmarks around me, the other apartment buildings I passed every day, the concrete planters, the fire hydrant, seemed to have swelled with some greater physicality. We returned to the apartment and, avoiding looking at each other, went about restoring it to ourselves: we deflated the mattress, changed the bed linen, cleaned the washroom and kitchen, vacuumed and dusted, as if to get rid of my family’s presence.

  I was in the middle of my final task, watering the living room plants, when I heard the closet door open and turned to find Michael putting on his shoes. “We need something for dinner,” he said, busy with the laces.

  “Shall I come with you?”

  He gave me a haunted look and left.

  When Michael didn’t return after forty-five minutes, I went out on the balcony and looked up the street, craning my neck every time I thought a person might be him. But he had gone for a long walk, and when he returned, he came in at the back of our building. I did not hear him enter the apartment, but at some point I glanced inside and saw him through the glass door, seated on the sofa, watching me, feet cocked on the coffee table, hands clasped between his thighs.

  I took my time shutting the balcony door, then stood against it.

  He closed his eyes. “Shivan, if you love me, if you value the life we have built together, I beg you to tell me the truth. The truth that you have, I know now, hidden from me for as long as we’ve known each other.” It had taken all his courage to ask this, and he kept his eyes closed, as if fearful his gaze would weaken my own resolve.