Nisha looks up, this time unable to hide the naked anticipation she knows is shining out of her eyes.
‘Mother Rose, who used to run the convent then, passed on three years ago, but Sister Shanthi is at a parish in North India, in Shimla.’
Sister Shanthi hoisting her up, propping her on the stone kitchen counter, giving her onions to peel, potatoes to chop, calling her ‘my wonderful little helper’, talking through the recipes with her: ‘That’s hot oil, it will splash, don’t come close, Nisha, stay right there. That’s a good girl. Now I will scoop up some batter, like this, and throw it in and look how it firms up into the bhajis you like. Magic!’ Robust, always smiling Sister Shanthi who smelled of bubbling oil, chilli powder and sweat.
‘I called her and she said…’
Nisha leans forward, she cannot help it. The cat cocks open one eye, regards her coolly, a dare.
‘She said that yes, the convent did allow unwed mothers refuge, that they did give up their babies for adoption… But they did not keep babies here, not ever.’
‘Oh.’ Disappointment bitter in her mouth.
‘Except the once.’
The ball of rice and sambar sticks in her throat.
‘You were not born at the convent, and not really a baby when you got here either. You were two and a half.’
My parents kept me until I was two and a half years old and then deemed me not suitable? Why? What did I do wrong? She washes the rice down with the water the nun has placed next to her. The cat emits a contented purr from within the recesses of the nun’s lap. ‘My sister. Was she with me?’
‘No, child. No.’
Disappointment. Crushing. Warring with anger. My parents gave me away but kept her. Because I was flawed and she was perfect? ‘You said… that I would be surprised. By what? What have you found?’
The nun’s expression is as tender as Matt’s when he read the letter that changed everything. Matt. She wishes he was here. ‘You are a miracle child.’
She gives up all pretence of eating. ‘A miracle child?’
The nun smiles. ‘Yes, Sister Shanthi said that you are a living, breathing miracle. That she always knew you would come back here. That it was inevitable seeing as you owe your life to the Mother Mary of Miracles for whom the church here in Dhonikatte is named. She knew that Mother Mary would call you back, especially now that Sister Priya is ill.’
What nonsense, she thinks, but says out loud, ‘What happened?’
‘You were desperately ill. The parishioners, the nuns and the priest had been keeping vigil and praying for days. Your fever was not shifting, the medicines not working. You went from delirious to comatose. In the end they carried you into the church, it seems you weighed so little by then. They carried you to the church of the Mother Mary of Miracles and laid you at the altar like a sacrifice.’
That altar where she spent many happy hours helping Sister Priya with the cleaning and polishing duties, the altar where she ran amok. A picture arrives in her head perfectly formed. A slip of a girl, lying at the altar, speckled light reflecting off the stained-glass windows, painting rainbows on her unresponsive face.
‘The priest prayed; he asked the Lord for his help, he asked Mother Mary to intervene. “Mother, you were the force behind Jesus Christ’s first miracle in Canaan where he turned water to wine. Please intervene to our Lord Jesus on this little girl’s behalf.” A hushed peace descended on the church, a strange calm and then, it seems the Mother Mary smiled, she actually smiled—everybody in the church witnessed it. And then…’ The nun pauses, smiles benevolently at her. The cat stirs.
‘Yes?’ Her voice comes out as a whisper.
‘And then you blinked and sat up and said in a clear voice that you were very hungry and was there any food. And the priest went inside and gave you some un-consecrated communion bread.’
The conviction the little girl that she had once been had had that she was special. The dreams she has had of watching prayers make their way heavenward. Of God’s hand opening, of God’s munificence toward her. The taste of Eucharist bread in her mouth even though she was not old enough to receive communion. She blinks. Nonsense, Nisha. What nonsense.
‘After you have seen Sister Priya, you should visit the church, child. She will be waiting for you.’
‘Who?’
‘The Mother Mary of Miracles of course,’ the nun says as if it is the most natural thing in the world. ‘Anyway, to tell you what I know, Sister Shanthi said you were a delight, loved by everyone. You brought laughter and happiness to the convent. Everyone had a spring to their step when you were around. But they knew you couldn’t be there forever; the convent was not the place for a little girl. And one day a letter arrived, from your adoptive parents. They had heard about you. Who hadn’t? Your fame had spread far and wide—the miracle child. Initially they wanted you for some sort of project, but when they saw you… they fell in love. They wanted to adopt you, take you to England. They promised to fix your cleft palate. Mother Superior Rose prayed and all the nuns prayed and your mother was consulted and in the end a decision was made. You would have a better life in England. And you said you’ve had one.’ The nun’s eyes settle briefly on the ridged skin above Nisha’s upper lip. Nisha’s hand goes there as if of its own accord, strokes the scar.
‘Yes. Yes I have…’ she says, softly. A life based on dry facts, not blind faith. On miracles of the scientific kind. Numbers, not Catholicism, my religion.
The nun looks at Nisha’s plate, ‘Not up to eating?’
‘Not really. Um… you mentioned my mother. Do you know who she is, where she lives?’ Once more she tries and fails to keep the hope from her voice. Why is there no mention of my father?
The nun sighs, wrings her hands. The cat mewls in complaint. ‘Sister Shanthi couldn’t remember her name. She said she’ll call as soon as it came to her. None of us are getting any younger, child; our memory is not like it used to be.’ A rueful smile directed at her.
Nisha swallows down the crushing disappointment with another handful of rice. ‘Surely there must be some documentation somewhere?’
The nun sighs deeply once more. ‘Documentation wasn’t and still isn’t the top priority here, child.’
The organised, methodical part of her is outraged. How can it not be? How can these nuns, this convent blithely rely on people’s fallible memories?
‘…Serving the Lord God’s people is.’ The nun continues. ‘You will find your parents and sister, if that is the Lord’s plan for you.’
She might be changing, becoming more open to things other than science and numbers, but she will still take the solid proof of documentation over God’s plan any day. ‘Is there anyone else who might know the whereabouts of my parents?’ she asks.
‘I asked Sister Shanthi that. She’s promised to try and remember which sisters were here at the time and ask around.’ She looks at Nisha’s plate, ‘Come, I’ll take you to Sister Priya. Be warned, she’s not always in the here and now.’
‘Yes.’
‘And she may not be precisely as you recall her.’
Nisha smiles at that, a watery smile, and the nun beams.
The room is small, dark, with a tiny window that looks out onto the garden at the back, billowing banana trees, overgrown grass and thorny bushes. The bimbli tree with its clusters of tart fruit is at the back right where she remembers but the guava tree is not there anymore. A banana-scented breeze drifts in every so often. Sister Priya lies on a little cot by the window, a wisp of a woman clad in the customary white habit, gaunt face, frail hands folded as if in prayer upon the tray of her chest. Her eyes flutter as they come in, as the nun beside her says cheerily, ‘Sister Priya, look who’s here to see you.’
Sister Priya’s eyes fluster open, and her myopic gaze wanders and then settles softly on Nisha. Her gaunt face relaxes into a parody of a smile sending the lines on her face into a flap. ‘You came,’ she says and Nisha lets the tears fall as she kneels down beside this w
oman she adored, her childhood rescuer and friend. She puts her hand in Sister Priya’s. She looks at the face, the eyes that are smiling at her, the thin lips, now blanched of colour, the mole on the side of the slightly too long nose with the two thick hairs growing out of it that she had tried to pluck once, startling Sister Priya out of slumber. This face so familiar and yet, lost to her until now. And it is as if she always knew this woman, as if she was waiting for this moment. ‘I did.’
‘The jasmine tree died,’ Sister Priya says softly, each word a trial. ‘Went to heaven. I will follow soon.’ A hand reaches out, strokes Nisha’s hair. ‘Look at you, turned into a beauty. Did they look after you well?’
Nisha nods, unable to speak past the lump in her throat, the well of tears that are making their tortured way down her eyes. ‘We all prayed, asked the Saviour’s, the Mother Mary’s direction on what to do. They were Hindus, see and you… a Catholic miracle even though you had been born a Hindu. But He spoke. Every time any of us prayed about you and referred to the Bible, it always opened to Luke 6:46 —“Why do you call me Lord, Lord and do not do what I say?”’ Sister Priya’s feeble hand flutters on Nisha’s cheek. ‘The Lord wanted you to go to them. It was His wish...’ A pause as she gathers breath. ‘I missed you so after. Couldn’t make the jasmine garlands, couldn’t help out in church. But I knew you would be looked after, loved. You couldn’t have stayed here forever.’
She pats Nisha’s cheek, her touch like very soft paper, stroking, caressing. ‘Your mother came often, asking after you.’
Nisha startles, looks up at the nun standing by the bed, wondering if she has heard what she just did. Yes, her eyes are as wide, as surprised as Nisha’s.
That woman at the gate, eyes showering tears, face segmented by rusting bars, populating her dreams—her mother? Yes, her heart declares. That glimmer of recognition, the child she once was opening her mouth, she remembers now—with a clarity that tells that deep down she had known all along—what she was going to call out: ‘Ma.’ Not ‘Mum’ as she would later call a different woman, but ‘Ma.’ Her heart knew the word, but her memory had failed her… Even when she finally remembered the dream, she had suppressed the memory that she had recognised the woman, had been going to call her ‘Ma’—it was only triggered just now. Why? Because the woman had disappeared before Nisha gave voice to the call of her heart, and hurt and bewilderment had settled like fog in Nisha’s chest, had squeezed sobs of loss, of the pain of abandonment out of her.
If her mother had given her away, why had she come to see her—and then why had she disappeared when Nisha recognised her, was about to call out to her…?
‘Do you know who she is?’ Nisha asks, her voice a naked whisper.
‘Shilpa. Her name is Shilpa. Lives in Sompur. Go find her, child. Make your peace.’ Sister Priya’s eyes flutter closed, her breath flapping like a distressed bird. Nisha places a kiss on the flimsy cheek which smells of mildew and Vicks, whispers in her ear, ‘I will come back soon.’ The lips lift upwards in a ghost of a smile. The eyes remain closed.
Chapter 20
Devi
Burst of Bougainvillea
Ma,
The horror you had to endure!
I sit here, rubbing my stomach where my baby nestles, jiggling and jumping, saying hello to me from within the safe harbour of my womb, and I think of you, trapped under the mango tree, having to choose between the husband you loved and the child you had waited for all your life. I think of the person my Da was, the person I am only just getting to know through your diary entries, of the mango tree slowly draining the life out of him, and I close my eyes. If I had been in your position, Ma, God forbid, if I had to choose between Rohan and this new life burgeoning within me, what would I have done? It doesn’t bear thinking about and I cannot begin to imagine what you went through. But… it happened and you chose me, and for that I am grateful. You chose me and you tried to hold me close but I rebelled, I retaliated, I ran away. I went to England…
I understand fully now what you meant when you said, ‘You are all I have, Devi.’ Now that my baby is growing inside, I desperately want connections, family ties. I want you here, Ma, to partake in the joy of my child. But I have Rohan to share this with and, even if I can’t stand them, his parents. You had no one except the madwoman and me. I realise now, Ma, why your love felt so heavy, like a burden almost too weighty to carry.
Ma, the doctors called me aside today. ‘She is not getting better,’ they said. ‘She is in danger of slipping into a coma,’ they murmured.
‘She moves; she’s come out of her unconscious state several times now,’ I countered, indignant.
‘It doesn’t look good for her,’ they said, clearly dismissing my words as delusions of a loved one. ‘You must think about saying goodbye.’
Well, it was like waving a red flag in front of a raging bull. You know how I get, Ma; I was spoiling for a fight anyway. ‘I am sorry you think that,’ I snapped. ‘I will have to get a second opinion and a third,’ I barked. ‘I have no intention of saying goodbye and I am not giving up on my mother!’ I yelled. ‘She is getting better, I have witnessed it!’ I screamed.
I refuse to give up on you, Ma. I refuse to give the doctors the satisfaction of saying ‘I told you so’. I am going to make you come back to me. We had some good times together, Ma, and I will jot them down here. And I will read them to you and convince you to come back, so we can make more memories, more good times: you, me and my child.
Here’s what we’ll do when you are better, Ma. First, we’ll eat your favourite meal: boiled rice with the baby mango ‘midi’ pickle that you so adore. Picture it, Ma: that first bite of tart mango steeped in rock salt, seasoned with spices—the bitterness mixed in with crunchy saltiness exploding in sweetness at the very end. After, we’ll lie side by side on a mat under the guava tree, breathing in the smell of mango leaves swirling in the breeze, sharp, tangy with a hint of the sugariness to come, revelling in the lethargy of the endless honey-tinted, sugarcane-scented afternoon, beneath the cloudless blue sky ringed with white just visible through a canopy of dappled green, guavas and cashews falling around us every once in a while with a thud and a squelch, the air syrupy, tasting of overripe fruit and composting leaves; a pitcher of freshly squeezed lime juice with extra sugar and disintegrating ice cubes—the power having not been on long enough for them to form fully in Sumitranna’s freezer—beside us, shiny droplets of condensation twinkling silvery blue on the aluminium surface.
After, we’ll go to the shops, Ma, admiring the burst of bougainvillea climbing up the compound of the crematorium, shocking pink against a backdrop of orange bricks velvet green with moss, graves nestling grey and forlorn amongst overgrown weeds the emerald hue of a placid sea just after a thunderstorm.
In the evening, as dusk tints the sky the ghostly grey of unrequited yearning, you will massage my hair with warm coconut oil and the nutty smell will inveigle into my dreams as I drowse on the stoop, Bobby a warm heft on my lap.
This season there have been so many mangoes, alphonso and thothapuri varieties, and I will save them all for you. When Jalajakka comes back from looking after her mother, she and I will pickle some in brine and store others in straw in the roof next to the coconut frond mats so you can feast on them when you come home.
Ma, do you remember how you always had a tumbler of tea ready when I came home from college, spiced with elaichi and cardamom and plenty of sugar and milk, and a snack with it—onion bhaji, aloo paratha? You would sit and watch me eat hungrily, waiting until I was full before eating yourself. You would have come from a full day’s work cleaning other people’s houses and then make this for me. You must have been so tired. Yet I never appreciated it, getting annoyed when you wanted to hear about my day, when you said, ‘Talk to me, Devi.’ Annoyed with that hangdog expression of need, of love writ large on your face.
Afterwards, after I had eaten my fill, you would say, ‘So, what shall we cook today?’ And we would stand s
ide by side, chopping onions, tomatoes, chicken and once in a rare while, mutton—a smidgen of meat clinging to a profusion of bones, which you cooked with plenty of potatoes to bulk it up. ‘The mutton infuses the curry with such flavour,’ you’d say as you added chilli powder and chopped tomatoes to the bubbling concoction, emanating a potpourri of wonderful smells. I would watch over your shoulder as you cooked, and Bobby would dribble at the kitchen doorway, his tongue hanging out, drool pooling onto the steps leading down from the kitchen. You would laugh, ‘Look at the both of you, hungry for your dinner.’
Ma, remember those lazy Sunday afternoons, lying on the cool stone floor in the front room, door open, jasmine-infused breeze drifting in, Bobby fast asleep in the courtyard, the wind teasing the leaves on the trees, the fields draped in a summer haze, the smell of chicken curry mixed in with the phenyl used to mop the floor lingering? You would open the newspaper to read and in a couple of moments, you would be snoring, an arm flung across your eyes, hair and sari awry, cocooned in a newspaper blanket that flapped in the barley-scented air that wafted in, bringing various sounds with it: Sumitranna’s cat screeching as she was chased by his dog for trying to steal the fish bones from his bowl; the neighbourhood children yelling hello as they walked past on their way to school after lunch, in between dissecting the previous day’s India-Sri Lanka test cricket match; snatches of the song Somu hummed as he bathed his buffalo in the stream below and, very faintly, Nagappa’s screams as his wife whipped him with a hibiscus branch for spending the previous day’s earnings on arrack, sleeping in the gutter and staggering home in time for lunch. You would jolt awake, and I would smile, reaching across to pat your cheek crisscrossed with lines, shadowy imprints of the patterns gracing the worn cane mat you were lying on, and you would lay your hand on mine and smile right along with me.
The Forgotten Daughter Page 22
