She stops at a cart piled high with green coconuts, the tops shaved white and looking like ice cream cones. She watches as the man deftly cuts the top off one revealing the creamy skin and cloudy water inside. He sticks a straw in and hands it to her.
Heaven. Cool on her parched tongue, like drinking liquid jelly. Afterwards, the man shaves off a part of the outside of the coconut to make a spoon with which he scoops the creamy insides and hands to her. Soft, yet crunchy, and deliciously sweet. I could get used to this, she thinks. She presses twenty rupees into the man’s hand and he grins wide, displaying yellow teeth with yawning gaps, gums stained scarlet. She shows the tender coconut man the address, but he shakes his head, manages to say something which sounds like, ‘Don’t know,’ and points her to the shop opposite, which, from what she can see, sells shoes.
The shop is stacked floor to ceiling with cardboard shoeboxes and has a small triangular space in the middle which houses a worn, wooden bench, presumably for customers to sit and try on shoes. More cardboard boxes are strewn around this tatty bench, open and spilling their wares. A man stands just outside the shop and looks at her feet as she crosses the road, narrowly missing a bicycle whizzing past at breakneck speed, the rider frantically ringing his bike and yelling, ‘Lo… lo…’ A motorbike growls in his wake, housing not one, not two but a family of four—the little girl sitting squashed in front of her father, almost on top of the handlebars; the dad, who is driving, peering around her head of neatly oiled hair worn in two plaits behind her ears and tied with yellow ribbon, to squint at the road. His son squats behind him, straddling the seat like his father, and the wife brings up the tail, sitting demurely sideways, facing Nisha, almost on top of the exhaust, covering her mouth with the pallu of the sari to prevent choking on the fumes, the other hand clutching on to the back of the bike for dear life. The motorbike trundles over a pothole and all of them jump into the air a little before falling back onto their seats. The woman’s eyes, wide and tranquil, the only part of her face visible above her patterned red sari pallu, meet Nisha’s for a brief moment.
The man in front of the shoe shop is still staring pointedly at her feet as she reaches him, so she looks down as well. Her feet are covered in red dust, her beautiful silver sandals barely visible. The nail varnish she had applied before she left, the pale pink of perfectly cooked tiger prawns, is chipped and one of her nails has clipped and is hanging off the toe. As she steps into the shop, the man executes an about turn without speaking or looking at her and enters the shop ahead of her. He walks up to one of the stacks, pulls the bench towards him, stands on it on tiptoe and, reaching up as far as his hand can go, pulls one of the cardboard boxes out as if at random. The stack teeters, makes to fall. He rights it and then steps down. He lays the box down in front of her feet like an offering, kneels down right in front of her so she cannot move forward without stepping on his head, opens the box and then yanks her sandal off. She is speechless with shock. She cannot believe the cheek of the man! He has not said a word to her, or even looked at her, and now he is down on one knee in front of her, cradling her dusty foot on his lap, and as she watches, slipping on the gaudiest sandal she has ever had the misfortune of beholding onto her foot. A be-sequinned, shiny gold creation twinkles up at her from her right foot. The man looks at her for the first time and smiles, displaying rotting paan-stained teeth. An epidemic infecting Indian men, she thinks, at least the ones she’s seen here. ‘Perfect fit,’ he says in perfectly adequate English.
She has no choice but to buy the sandals and he insists she wear them. ‘Very comfortable, perfect fit,’ he keeps repeating. How does he know they are comfortable? He is not wearing them. In actual fact, they bloody well aren’t. And how he managed to pick a box containing a pair of sandals her size —well, sort of —from a pile of identical boxes, she will never know. She pays up and hands the slip of paper containing the address of the convent over to him. ‘Do you know where it is?’ she asks him in English, and he nods, flashing another paan-stained smile.
Afterwards, with her dust-stained silver sandals tucked under her arm (she aims to change out of the monstrosities adorning her legs—which are already pinching the back and sides of her feet —at the earliest opportunity), she walks beside the man, trying to keep pace with his long strides, retracing the way she has come. The man selling coconuts grins at her and holds out another coconut for her to try. She is tempted but the shoe seller is already way ahead. She hobbles to catch up—the sandals are really very uncomfortable—and is arrested by the sight of the family on the motorbike milling in a ditch beside the road. The woman is sitting down on a boulder fanning her face. The motorbike is sprawled ahead, on its side, and the kids and the dad are pointing at the woman and laughing.
‘What happened?’ she asks her companion who speaks to the family in a rapid-fire exchange in a language she later learns is Tulu.
‘She fell off it seems, when the motorbike went over the stone there.’ He points with a very dirty fingernail at a rock sitting innocuously in the middle of the road, beside a pothole the size of Wales half filled with dirty blond water. The woman looks shell-shocked. The dad can’t take his eyes off Nisha’s breasts. Nisha runs to catch up with the shoe seller, who has walked off again. At least all he has been transfixed by are the sandals on her feet, which twinkle up at her, reflecting the sun from their sequinned depths.
She catches up with him at the wall where the taxi driver had dropped her off. The man walks round it and, to her surprise, Nisha spies an alleyway which widens into a busy street, at the far end of which stands a building from which young people, mostly boys, mill. They wolf-whistle when they see her.
Beyond this is a high wall, green-tinged orange bricks obscured by a riot of pink and orange bougainvillea, bursting down the wall, singing in colour. Sharp slivers of broken glass dot the top of the wall, reflecting cloudy blue and amber light, defying any burglar brave enough to try and scale it. She knows this place. She knows this place.
She rests her hand on the wall, to try and still her wayward heart, and jade yellow moss caresses her palm. Her knees give way suddenly, as a memory, startlingly vivid, snakes in. Touching the wall, asking Sister Priya, ‘Does God make all the walls velvet?’ Sister Priya laughing her deep-throated guffaw, like a man’s, which Nisha has always fancied sounds like God’s voice, ‘No child; that is moss. But yes, God created that. How clever you are.’ And bending down to brush her cheek with her lips, her spiced breath hot in Nisha’s ear as she whispers, a secret imparted, shared, ‘You make me see the wonder in God’s creation, child. I thank you.’
She could bet the inside of this wall—on the other side, the convent side—is also carpeted with moss.
Kind eyes, the deep brown of strong tea with just a dash of milk, peering at her. The shoe seller, finally looking at her face instead of her feet. ‘Are you okay?’
She takes a deep breath, smiles at him. ‘I am fine.’ She thanks him and presses fifty rupees into his palm.
‘No, no,’ he says holding up his palms facing outward, a refusal.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Please.’
He accepts the note with a flash of rotting teeth. ‘Good shoes,’ he says. ‘When they wear out, you know where I am.’ That grin again, displaying that cave of a mouth. He turns to go and she watches him, his gangly long-legged stride, blending with the group of boys who are still eyeing her, curious.
She walks along the wall, holding on to it, on teetering legs which are nothing to do with the new sandals. Smells, memories assaulting her… Melodious voices raised in song, reverberating up to the ceiling. The exquisite pain of candle wax searing her hand and then solidifying while Father’s sermon on the caprices of sinners droned on and on. Sunday mornings yawning endlessly, as she and the rest of the children of the parish were herded into airless, sweltering classrooms for Catechism after mass, breakfast a distant memory rumbling in her stomach. The sharp hot tang of envy when she first realised she could never be an a
ltar boy. The smell of sandalwood incense, prayer, sweat. The forbidden taste of communion wafer dipped in wine, sweet, melt in the mouth.
She walks along the wall and then she is at the gate. Rusting iron bars, topped with spikes. She places her face where the woman with the straggly hair must have placed hers that drowsy jasmine-scented afternoon. The smell of iron and rust and the faint tang of lime. The lime tree, the dusty courtyard around which she danced, displacing red mud which painted orange patterns on her clothes, stained her feet amber. No jasmine bush. The bench, now broken. Dilapidated. Tired looking.
The entrance to the convent up ahead, a squat little building of red brick, smaller than she remembers, the entrance which she knows will lead into an anteroom and then the corridor with rooms off either side and which culminates in the chapel. She rests her head against the cool bars. Breathes in the smell of iron and rust and tastes salt as the tears pool around her mouth.
There is no bell. The sun bakes her head, sweat pools between her thighs, making them sticky, slippery like wet gum; it collects under her arms like stagnant rainwater after a summer storm and courses down her back; but she is unaware, caught in a strange limbo, watching her childhood self. The little girl, a gaping hole for a mouth, a gash where the lips should be, hair bathed in sweet-smelling amla oil and tied in neat plaits behind her ears by eager novitiate nuns who all fight to comb it, though she prefers Sister Latha as she is the most gentle, her touch like the comfort of a favourite pillow. Now she is the woman peeking through the gates, her hair escaping in wiry curls, her eyes raining rusty tears. The child opens her mouth and the woman disappears. Nisha shakes her head to rid herself of this vision, this peek into the past, and rattles the gate.
A nun appears from the cool darkness within, walking straight out of her dreams and into the harsh, searing afternoon —the white habit: pleated white skirt, long-sleeved blouse with black collar and black buttons down the front, cinched with a black belt at the waist, the black headdress with the white band circling the front, the rosary dangling from the neck, dancing pendulum fashion every time the nun takes a step forward: the self-same outfit that Nisha has seen countless times in the past week pirouetting beneath her closed lids. The nun’s feet, clad in sensible open-toed sandals, stomp across parched earth littered with yellowing patches of grass, and the twirling girl that Nisha once was vanishes into the ether of memory. The nun is chunky and as she comes closer, Nisha catches a whiff of cat, notices the grey whiskers marring the pristine white of the nun’s habit. She has thick glasses that obscure her eyes, a mushroom-shaped nose that takes up most of her face and a moustache. She smiles and Nisha is instantly comforted. It is a kind smile, a giving smile. ‘How may I help you?’ she asks in perfect English and Nisha recognises the dulcet voice.
‘We spoke on the phone?’ she says softly, willing her breaths to steady, her wayward heart to calm down.
The nun draws her eyebrows together, giving her the appearance of a strict matron.
‘I...’ Nisha soldiers on, ‘I called about Sister Priya and the fact that I was adopted.’
The furrowed brows clear, the smile reappears. ‘Oh, yes.’ She untangles a bunch of keys from the belt around her waist, unlocks the gate, which whines and complains as it creaks open reluctantly like a very old person. ‘Come in, child.’ And then, Nisha is squashed against the nun’s surprisingly soft body which seems to spill out of her habit and enfold Nisha on all sides—a warm, sheltered feeling. This close she smells musty, sour—like those mouldy onions that used to fester at the very bottom of her mother’s vegetable basket. The surprise of the hug knocks the breath out of Nisha. She wishes she could stay here forever, in this moment in this woman’s warm pliant embrace. She wishes she was back in England and everything was okay, no surprises sprung on her, no lies. She wishes her sister was the one holding her like this and it were this easy to be with her, the lost years folding away like a Japanese fan.
Gently, the nun disentangles herself. ‘Come,’ she says, ‘I will take you to Sister Priya.’ And then, squinting up at her, ‘Have you eaten?’
‘I…’
‘You should eat first and while you do, I will tell you what I know.’ And, entering the doorway ahead of Nisha, ‘You will be surprised.’
‘In what way?’ she asks, but the nun is up ahead and doesn’t hear.
Have you found my birth parents? Did my sister live here once, with me? Was she given up for adoption too? She wants to shout but she reins herself in. She has waited this long; she can wait a few minutes more.
She walks inside, into the dark, mildew-scented corridor, and her past welcomes her with open arms, her memories swoop, they dive, they clamour for attention. I haven’t lived here in twenty-odd years and yet this is so familiar, so right, as if I am coming home. The rotting beams overhead, the chipped orange Mangalore tiles that she used to count when she was bored while praying the rosary. The crumbly, woodlice-ridden doorways. The cement floor, cool after the heat of the ground outside, burning through sandals that pinch and wink. The soothing, awe-inspiring hush of prayer. The smell of spices and pews, of sweat and entreaties. Familiar. Overwhelming. She closes her eyes, breathes it all in.
This is the hour the nuns are sleeping, or praying. That drowsy hour after lunch and before chapel. The hour that she used to while away lying on the naked cement floor and staring up at the ceiling, tracing the path of the prayers making their way heavenward while she waited for the nuns to fall asleep. The hour she spent exploring, hiding under the pews, opening the altar—something she was forbidden to do, stealing a communion wafer from the chalice, waiting for God to strike her down while the white wafer melted on her pink tongue. Emboldened when God didn’t strike her down, deciding, knowing that she was special.
This was your life once, Nisha. These familiar, crumbling walls, the silence so heavy you feel that if you poked it with your finger it would explode into noise, nuns like the wimple-clad woman walking ahead of you with her swollen ankles, her gentle smile and her soothing voice, the coconut trees basking in the somnolent honey-gold haze, the fronds waving like welcoming hands opening for a hug, the mosquitoes buzzing, the air thick with dust, the smell of rain-sodden earth, of incense. This was what you knew. And you were happy. It was enough.
Memories, assaulting her, tasting of Eucharist bread dipped in wine: the sweetness tinged with guilt, spiced with sin and fear of retribution. Running barefoot down the corridors, stealing leftover vadai and idlis from the kitchen, scattering morsels to the crows. Exploring the back garden—something she was prohibited from doing on her own; spying on the rat snake lounging in the aboli bushes from a safe distance, marvelling at the sheen of its gold-green skin, the grace of its long coiled body; teasing a millipede with a twig and watching it curl up into a tight little ball; running riot amongst forget-me-nots which closed softly with a wistful sigh as she passed and opened again soon after, a map of scratches navigating sun-warmed skin punctuated here and there with coagulating drops of red, breathing in the smell of earth, grass and something minty; snacking on fat sour bimblis and raw mangoes; following the circuitous path of a colony of ants heaving grains of fat red rice twice their size on their backs all the way to their ant hill at the base of the ambade tree, confusing them by teasing them out of their way with a gentle flick of the tamarind twig in her palm and watching them stumble but set right somehow and weave their arduous way back home.
That is how I feel. Like I was veered off path by a giant hand but am now back on track.
The dining room is empty. The smell of phenyl and curry. The neat lines of tables and benches where the nuns filed in silently, bowing their heads to give thanks. Rows of black wimple-clad heads and one oiled-plaited one. She used to always sit at the end of the first bench, nearest the kitchen. She sits there now, wondering if humans leave an imprint of themselves everywhere they live, thinking that if so, her adult self is sitting on the small imprint left by her younger self.
The nun shuff
les in, carrying a stainless-steel plate overflowing with rice, chapatti, sambar, potato with peas, coconut and coriander chutney, mango pickle, and followed by a very fat tabby which mewls plaintively and rubs itself against Nisha’s legs. The nun places the plate in front of Nisha. The smell reminds her of Sister Shanthi slapping chapatti rounds straight onto the gas fire, flipping them over, watching them rise, the aroma of charred dough making her stomach rumble.
‘Eat,’ the nun says, settling herself into the bench opposite with a little sigh and a swish of her skirts. The tabby immediately jumps up onto her lap, and pinions Nisha in its cool green gaze. The nun smiles indulgently and strokes the cat’s fur. ‘Don’t mind Kitty,’ she says. The cat purrs contentedly and settles deeper into the nun’s substantial lap.
Nisha breaks off a piece of chapatti, wraps it round a smidgen of potato, watches the nun watch her, her gentle eyes warm. ‘Did you find the documents of my adoption?’ She tries to keep the desperate hope out of her voice.
‘Not really.’
Her heart dips. ‘Oh.’
‘Don’t be disheartened, child. And eat. Do.’ The nun waits until Nisha scoops some rice and sambar into her mouth. ‘I didn’t want you coming all this way for nothing. So I called around.’
A crinkle of paper as the nun pulls something out of her habit, smoothes it out on the table. The tabby’s head pops up, whiskers twitching. It eyes the piece of paper, then settles back onto the nun’s lap, deeming the paper not worth its attention, the loss of a few minutes of sleep in its human’s comfortable lap.
Nisha cranes her neck, the syrupiness of rice and sambar and hope in her mouth. She spies voluptuous letters in a neat script dancing across the page. ‘The list of questions you wanted answers for,’ the nun says. From another pocket, the nun pulls out a pair of spectacles, one of the arms held in place by masking tape. ‘Now, let me see. You wanted to know… how old you were when you were adopted from the convent, how your adoptive parents found you, when you arrived at the convent, who your parents were, where they lived. And… if there was another little girl with you.’
The Forgotten Daughter Page 21
