A Sister's Promise

by Renita D'Silva

  ‘There was a letter beside her. Some sort of threat,’ someone says.

  ‘Why would they go for Kushi?’ someone else wails. ‘That girl is a saint. After all she has done for this village, for us . . . ’

  I picture my daughter’s face when she got the first threat, the colour draining from it like water evaporating from mown fields leaving furrowed earth behind.

  ‘It is nothing,’ I had said to Kushi. ‘Ignore them. They are cowards.’

  My fault. All mine. Why didn’t I take the threats seriously? Why didn’t I watch over her?

  ‘Take me to her,’ I manage to mouth, grabbing hold of the person next to me. ‘Take me to my daughter.’

  I see huge, slightly squint, gram-flour-hued eyes widen with worry; glistening specks of perspiration dot an upper lip; pitted skin like a much tacked, well-worn map; the curvy groove of double chin like the ripe interior of a juicy yellow papaya; a mustard seed mole on a left nostril; a chilli-coloured bindi awry on a forehead; wiry hair, like coconut coir, glued to a head with perspiration and terror. I do not see the face I want to, the face whose features I have traced a million times. Kushi . . .

  Then there is the spicy, sweat-infused smell of fear, the taste of a thousand panicked entreaties dying on my lips, as insubstantial as the air I fail to breathe in, as I give in to the stranglehold on my heart.

  PUJA

  CAULDRON OF SECRETS

  LONDON, UK

  Puja sits in the living room, laptop balanced on her lap, seeing to her backlog of work-related emails: one from her accountant which needs attention, five from the chairman of the residents’ association in one of her buildings, increasing in urgency and tone, the last one all in capitals.

  As always, as she looks at the figures her accountant has sent across, she allows herself a flash of pride, a brief glow of accomplishment. How far she has come! After everything that has happened, here she is. Successful businesswoman. Owner of several properties across London.

  She looks at the clock blinking in the corner of her screen and falls back to earth, her good mood evaporating like bubbles from a flute of champagne. Almost midnight. Where is her son? She tries to shrug off the prickle of unease, the blaze of anger, the bitter purple taste of regret and failure in her mouth. Raj is punishing her for this morning’s argument, she knows. He’ll be with his unsavoury gang of friends, haunting that estate by the school.

  The first time it happened, when she had come home to find that he wasn’t in bed as usual, she’d driven everywhere looking for him. She’d found him at the estate, smoking and drinking and laughing in a way she hadn’t seen him do for a very long time. She had confronted him but he had ignored her, playing up all the more for her benefit. In the end she’d had no choice but to drive home and wait for him. He’d stumbled home very late that night trailing a miasma of cigarette smoke that permeated the house with its pungent smell. They’d had a huge fight.

  She exhales deeply as she pictures what will happen when he does deign to come home. They’ll have another spat. She’ll cut his allowance. He’ll yell and fume and sulk for days.

  Sighing, she goes back to her emails, rubbing the back of her neck with a weary hand as she tackles the escalating complaint from the residents’ association.

  Fragments of the vivid dream that had plagued her the previous night, the dream that she could not remember on waking, leaving only a lingering unease in its wake, are suddenly vivid before her tired eyes . . .

  A woman, her hair wild: a bushy silvery tangle framing a face crocheted by delicate threads spun from the weary loom of a long life. Her stride purposeful, her sari in tatters. The shawl she has wrapped around her shoulders is grey as a drowsy sea in the wake of a storm, glints of dull green thread visible, perhaps relics from an earlier era when the shawl was new and shiny, full of promise.

  She has changed over the years, folded into herself. Her eyes, though, are still the same: intense shards of steel grey. Her voice when it comes is high pitched, nasal, as if she is speaking from the pits of her soul: ‘The cauldron of secrets is bubbling. It is set to overflow. You need to come clean. Release the confidences, flush out all the lies. It is time . . .’

  Puja blinks; the email she’s trying to compose and failing, blurs before her eyes. It’s been a while since she’s had these dreams.

  This is why I was tossing and turning last night.

  The past that she foolishly assumed she had subjugated and flushed away, is suddenly there, right in front of her, this woman has taken her back to the day it all ended: the ripe reek of manure and agony; swaying marrows; leering, yellow smiles. The woman’s calm eyes: a sea of tranquillity in the panic-scented murk, an anchor amongst the confusion, the iron and ammonia taste of trepidation.

  * * *

  Flashing blue beams swoop and dive across the gloom of her living room, briefly illuminating it, and jerking her back into the present. She has been working in darkness, she realises, having forgotten to switch on the lamp or pull the curtains closed. The only light in the room stems from her computer and the images flickering on the muted television screen, desolate in their silence.

  The doorbell rings, startling Puja into action, making her shut the computer screen and pull her cardigan close around her.

  Ah, finally. Raj must have forgotten his key as usual.

  She plasters a smile on her face as a peace offering for driving off that morning without him and opens the door, only to find her son sandwiched between two policemen on her doorstep. Shock robs her of breath, of voice.

  Of course, she thinks inconsequentially. The flashing blue lights in the living room; they were coming up our drive.

  She breathes her son in, every inch of him. He seems fine, nothing broken. Thank you, God.

  Raj is biting his lower lip as he does when he’s anxious. His eyes are swollen, the expression in them vulnerable, reminding her of the shy little boy who used to look up at her, holding out his arms, a plea for affection.

  A pang in her heart. Why didn’t I indulge him? I couldn’t. God help me, I just couldn’t. I still can’t, not that he craves my love anymore.

  He had learnt, in time, to not ask, the naked need in his eyes being replaced by a surly, sullen, glare; although glimpses of the little lost boy shine through the dour barrier he has constructed every once in a while, stabbing her.

  My fault. I have failed him. In so many ways.

  ‘Raj, are you okay, son? What happened?’ she manages, her voice a pitiful squeak.

  Raj’s face is green. He is swaying on his feet. He looks like he might be sick any minute. The policemen let him go with a warning that his behaviour will not be tolerated again, that he’s lucky the can he chucked did not mark the car, that the next time, Puja will be picking him up from the station. Raj nods meekly and rushes upstairs without a word to any of them.

  Puja shifts her weight from foot to foot, her larynx clogged with residual fear, with thoughts of what might have been. What is the etiquette in this situation? Does she invite the police in?

  They do not stay, thank goodness, and she closes the door after them and leans against it, the wood cool against the back of her head which is throbbing, sore.

  She hears her son retching in the bathroom, and wishes she were a different woman, one who would go to her son and hold him, ease his pain, soothe his turmoil. Puja stays there like that until the pulsing blue lights from the departing police car draw an arc on the walls of her dark living room and then, she closes the curtains, switches off the TV and goes upstairs.

  Raj is in bed, his long adult body sheathing the defenceless boy within, turned away from her.

  ‘This cannot continue, Raj,’ she says.

  No response.

  ‘What were you thinking?’ she asks. ‘What next? I’ll be hauling you from the station? I thought you were just playing up, harmless teenage fun; a phase you’re going through. But it keeps getting worse. I am so busy, I don’t need this on top of everything else . . .
’

  He turns towards her and his face is knotted with rage. ‘Work, work, work! That is all you bloody care about. If I am an inconvenience getting in the way of your success, why on earth did you have me?’

  The yeasty vapours of alcohol, stale cigarettes and vomit swarm in the closed air of his room, making her want to gag.

  ‘Look about you, Raj. Do you realise how lucky you are, with your PlayStation and Xbox, your TV and your designer clothes? Where do you think they come from?’

  ‘All you care about is material things, making more money,’ Raj yells, eyes flashing, ‘I don’t care about all this, I could live without . . . ’

  ‘Really? Then why do you complain when I cut your allowance? What do you know about hunger? Have you experienced the tortured seizures of an emaciated stomach, the anxious tremors of not knowing where the next meal is coming from? You spoilt brat. Your room alone could house two of the huts I grew up in. I keep making allowances for you, thinking you’re a teenager, that you’re going through so much, but do you know what I was doing when I was your age? Have you any idea?’

  All the anxiety, the dread she experienced when she saw Raj flanked by policemen, bursts out of her in one furious tirade. She just wanted to let Raj know that he had crossed a line, and that she would not entertain the law escorting him home on a regular basis. But instead of getting her point across calmly, she’s lost her rag . . .

  Why is she like this with her son? Why can’t she tell him what she’s really thinking, hold him like she wants to, show him she cares?

  Because I am afraid. So afraid to love him in case . . . in case he gets hurt. In case I lose him.

  Instead she rails at him, driving him further and further away.

  He is hurt. And I am losing him anyway.

  And why bring up her past? Why now? Because of that dream. So real. Bringing it all back . . .

  Raj sits up, long legs bunching, staring a challenge at her. ‘No mum, I don’t know what you were doing when you were my age. I don’t know anything about your past, because you haven’t cared enough, or you haven’t had the time to tell me. Maybe, it’s because you’re always fucking working.’

  That does it. Something inside her breaks. She strides up to her son, lifts her hand and slaps him, hard, across his cheek.

  SHARDA

  SEETHING SILENCE

  Dearest Ma,

  I sit by Kushi’s bedside and I write to you like I have over the years. These letters are my lifeline, and keep me tethered to the here and now. I want to be strong for my daughter, be there for her when she wakes.

  I don’t want to collapse again like I did when I found out what had happened —I have jotted that down in my previous letter. I am keeping a record of exactly what took place so I can produce it when we take the people who did this to my beloved Kushi to court.

  Beside other beds along this long, illness-infused, grief-infected room, loved ones keep vigil like I am doing. We do not meet each other’s eyes, preferring to keep our blame and our self-flagellation, our what-ifs and if-onlys to ourselves.

  I look at Kushi, hitched to the bed, the myriad tubes keeping her alive sticking out of her like pins in a voodoo doll, her face ashen as clouds bereft of rain, and I will her back into my life. My vital girl, full of life, now just a shadow.

  My fault.

  Why did I ignore those threats?

  How could I have wilfully let my perfect girl, naïve in the ways of the world, out of my sight when I, of all people, know the true, monstrous nature people hide behind false smiles and cloying grins?

  I want to find the people who did this and hack them to bits, squeeze the heinous breath out of them. But I dare not leave my daughter’s bedside, be lax in safeguarding her yet again.

  I’d had a premonition all day, that sense of unease burdening my chest. Why didn’t I act on it instead of ignoring it, tamping it down, and hoping it would go away? Granted I didn’t know what exactly was going to happen—nevertheless, I should have gone in search of Kushi, found her and brought her home with me, and kept her safe. Or I should not have let her go out at all that day.

  Now, here she is, my treasured child, her pale face motionless as the moon suspended in a nest of clouds in those tormented hours just prior to dawn’s emergence from behind the stuffy curtain of night.

  Does she know how very proud I am of her? How much she has taught me? How she has changed me, made me grow, own up to my mistakes, come into my own?

  I want a chance to tell her. Please God, please Ma. I want her back. She is my life, my reason for living.

  What will I do without her?

  Ma, when the doctor’s eyes shied away from my needy gaze, desperate for a flicker of hope, when I noted the slump of his shoulders, I knew that it was not good news.

  ‘Both her kidneys were destroyed in the accident,’ he said. ‘She needs a transplant or she’ll be on dialysis for life.’

  I jumped up. ‘What are you waiting for?’ I said.

  I have been tested. Now it’s just a question of transplanting my kidney into Kushi’s body and, hopefully, she’ll be fine and back with me sooner rather than later.

  My beloved girl.

  He’s here, the doctor. And once again the darting eyes like a thief avoiding capture. The defeated stoop. What could possibly be wrong? How much more can I take?

  Please God. Please.

  He shakes his head. ‘I am so sorry.’

  ‘What . . . what do you mean?’ I ask.

  ‘You have only one kidney.’

  ‘B-but . . . how?’

  He twists his lower lip as if the words he is uttering hurt him. ‘Having only one kidney is more common than people think.’

  ‘So I can’t. . . ’

  We look at my prone daughter, at her washed out face, at her machine reinforced body.

  ‘No.’ A deep sigh. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Punishment, I think, for failing to protect Kushi. I quickly make calculations in my head. Even after selling the factory and our cottage and taking out a loan, I will not be able to afford to keep Kushi on dialysis for long. Each treatment is frighteningly expensive. I have never coveted money, Ma, have always given it away to the more needy, but at this moment, I wish with all my heart that I was rich, that money was no object.

  ‘We cannot afford dialysis for long,’ I whisper.

  I wish I could give her my one kidney. I don’t mind dying so she can live unhindered.

  But I know no doctor would agree to such a thing.

  What kind of a cruel God are you, Lord? Why should my innocent girl who has not a bad bone in her body, who has fought to make life better for her fellow villagers, who loves so fiercely, lives so truly, pay for my mistakes?

  The doctor sighs again, runs a hand across his drained face, and spreads the sweat beading on his upper lip all over it. ‘Then it’s imperative that we do a transplant, the sooner the better. Kushi’s blood type is rare and trawling through donors to find a match will take a lot of time.’

  Please God, Kushi deserves a lifetime of time. Please. Take me instead.

  The doctor’s voice cuts into my prayers, my fraught pleas. ‘Does she have any other relatives?’

  I stand there dumbstruck.

  Is this your doing, Ma? or Da’s? Is all this part of a big joke God is playing on us?

  I know of course, what I have to do.

  I looked her up long ago, Ma, found her number. I carry it everywhere with me, tucked into my sari blouse, along with my letters to you. I just haven’t had the nerve to call. I have never been the bravest, Ma. You know that. But now, I have to.

  I look at Kushi and find my absconding courage right there. I plant a kiss like an offering, a blessing, an entreaty, a wish, on my daughter’s soft, young, but impassive cheek and then go in search of the international phone booth in this vast hospital that houses the ailing and their petrified relatives in this impersonal town miles away from Dhoompur and Bhoomihalli.

  The little cl
inic in Dhoompur was not equipped to deal with Kushi’s injuries. They said this hospital was our only hope. And now, she, this woman whose number I have carried around close to my heart, is our only hope.

  I take a deep breath and dial her number. I hate the fact that I cannot give my daughter the gift of life, that I have to ask her.

  Will she make me grovel?

  A beat that lasts a lifetime. Then the phone rings, once, twice.

  ‘Hello?’ Her voice, a British slant to her Indian vowels, bridges nearly two decades of seething silence.

  PUJA

  RAW WEDGE OF LIME

  Puja’s son looks at her with stunned eyes that reflect her shocked face; startled tears sprout as he lifts a palm to his cheek that now bears the imprint of her palm.

  Raj scrutinises Puja as if seeing her for the first time, his face, with the exception of the reddened cheek, the pale, dazed cream of a newly whitewashed room.

  In the traumatised silence, smelling of old secrets and new misgivings, an echo from the past she has kept hidden for years, resonates through the layer upon layer of armour that encompasses her heart: the scent of shock, the taste of tears, pink-tinged brine.

  I am no better than my da, she thinks.

  Her phone rings, shrill, puncturing the wounded atmosphere, colouring it with burnished sound, and she whips it out of her pocket, hand shaking, the offending palm stinging.

  ‘Hello?’

  A bruised heartbeat of static and then, ‘Puja?’

  * * *

  You spend almost twenty years building a wall, she thinks, swaying on her feet. You layer it, brick by brick with the silence of each month that passes with no communication with the past and then, like moss that creeps over the wall and travels to the other side, like ants that find the chinks in the age worn bricks and make their arduous way across from one side of the wall to the other, one voice leaps across the gap and bridges it—that cadence, that tone, as familiar as your own—capable of rousing so much love and so much hurt.