Malar watches the Entomologist swing back and forth and tells herself that some people are like accidents. They are like sprained ankles and stains—they just happen.
“I am a saint and a blessing,” Malar says and the words squirm inside her mouth like dying fish.
Every morning I have breakfast with Annie. Annie doesn’t like me but she insists we have our meals together because there is no one else here. All the normal people have gone home for the study holidays. The only ones left are the slackers and the poor students.
“Why are you still here?” I asked her one evening at tea. “You don’t look poor to me.”
“Why are you still here? Don’t tell me you’re planning on studying.” She collapsed into a string of laughter that sounded like it was being hacked to pieces.
“Why would I do that?” I asked.
“That’s what I meant. That’s what I was trying to say.”
Annie’s laughter suddenly fell away and she sat staring at the table, her mouth angled awkwardly on her face.
This morning we’re having bread—large, sticky loaves of sweet bakery bread with watery jam and silver cubes of butter. Above the food counter is a picture of Jesus Christ which is in a perennial state of almost falling over.
“Won’t you get in trouble if you fail?” says Annie.
“Why are you so sure I’m going to fail?”
“Because you’re not studying.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Annie frowned and tapped the table thoughtfully.
“You should memorize quotes on success,” she says. “They will keep you focused on your goals. Like this one: They can because they think they can.”
“They can what? Who are you talking about?”
“If you had a good quote, maybe you would take your studies a little more seriously.”
“How about Jam That Bread of Life?”
“What?”
“It’s on the bottom of that Jesus picture. See?”
“That says I Am That Bread of Life.”
“No it doesn’t.”
“Yes it does.”
I pick apart the bread until I have a small, sticky mountain of crumbs. I think of giving this to the birds but there are no birds here. There are abnormally large red beetles that keep dying in the sun but no birds.
•
After breakfast, I start writing my Letter of Explanation to T.S. Eliot. I have already written one to Philip Larkin and I have made a paper tree for Samuel Beckett because I feel he would appreciate the tree more than the explanation. I have also written a note on the power of positive thinking for Sylvia Plath. I pull out a piece of yellow paper and a black fountain pen.
Dear Mr. Eliot,
I am writing to tell you that I am going to fail my paper on 20th century literature because I plan on answering all questions concerning The Waste Land in a made-up language that will only consist of the letters y and p. I want you to know that it’s not you, it’s me. I’m sure you were a nice man, even though you worked in a bank. If I had known you, I promise I would have loved you.
Annie doesn’t call me for lunch and I forget about it completely until it is too late for lunch and too early for tea. I walk to Annie’s room and open the door without knocking. She is sitting at her table, stabbing a pen into her desk as she mutters softly to herself. On the wall beside her is a poster that says If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
“I think we missed lunch,” I say.
“I had my lunch.”
“Where was I?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t call me. Why didn’t you call me?”
“I did call you. I mean I didn’t know where you were.”
The textbooks on Annie’s study table are stacked in two piles. Between them lie a pen, a pencil and a bundle of scrap paper for Annie to practice writing out her answers. On her bed is a thin book called Quotes for a Successful Life.
“How’s the studying going?” I ask.
She shakes her head, punctuating each shake with a stab to the table.
“But you’ve studied, right? You studied today?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve been studying every day, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“So what’s the problem? I don’t understand.”
She shrugs and continues to shake her head. Her stabbing has gouged a small hole in the table.
“You won’t fail,” I say. “How can you study like this and fail? I mean imagine studying as much as you have and then failing anyway. Just imagine that.”
Annie stops shaking her head. After a few seconds, she stops stabbing the table.
•
I decide to make Annie a motivational poster. It will be on glossy black paper with bright orange handwriting and a picture of a German castle on a rock. Since I don’t have a picture of a German castle on a rock, I make the poster using the back of an old receipt and a pencil.
“Knock!” says Annie when I enter her room. “Knock, knock, knock!”
“What?”
“Why can’t you knock before you come in?”
“Here,” I say thrusting the paper under her nose.
“What is this?” she says.
“It’s to make sure you don’t fail.”
“Don’t say that!”
“Stick it on your wall somewhere. Put it where you can see it.”
“Jam That Bread of Lif,” she says.
“What?”
“That’s what you’ve written here, Jam That Bread of Lif.”
“Well, it will stop you from failing.”
“Don’t say that! Why do you keep saying that?” says Annie as I leave.
•
After tea, Annie starts throwing up. She keeps throwing up and has to be taken to the hospital. The warden says she will have to be put on drips because she has thrown up absolutely everything. There is nothing left inside her.
I have dinner alone and after that, I write a special Letter of Motivation and Explanation for Annie. I use white paper this time and a blue ballpoint pen. I bite the end of the pen and think. Then I walk to the window and think. I look at the moths slowly killing themselves against the porch light and I think. Then I sit down.
Dear Annie,
I hope that by the time you get this you will no longer be throwing up. My grandfather always said that throwing up was a good thing, along with diarrhea. It meant that the body was taking an active interest in clearing out things it didn’t need. Tomorrow morning is your first exam and considering that you are probably on drips right now, you might be thinking that you won’t be able to write your paper and you will fail and everyone will point fingers at you and you will kill yourself. This simply isn’t true. I remember when I was in 9th standard there was a girl whose name was Thenmozhi and during our quarterly exams she had a bad case of dysentery which actually made her cry a little before the paper started. But she still wrote her exam and she still got the most marks. Now she has two kids and she is very fat.
The point is that you did not plan to fail. So even if you do, it’s not really your fault.
Jam that bread of life. Always.
I fold the note into four and go to her room. I realize that like the other rooms in this corridor, Annie’s room is empty but it’s the only one that isn’t locked. In fact, the door is slightly ajar, like the room is catching its breath. The white porch light has made everything look pale—the study table, the bed, the book of quotes. It’s very still, except for a cricket that sounds like it’s stuck somewhere under the bed. By tomorrow morning it will be dead and lying on its side. There must be something drastic, some life and death difference between the inside and outside that makes insects die like that.
I place Annie’s letter inside her book of quotes, right between “Death” and “Dreams”.
Muhil was born during a legendary thunderstorm that uprooted every banana tree in the village and sent a legion o
f white crabs to die on the highway. She was wrinkled, ordinary and unremarkable save for the fact that she had a spongy knob on each shoulder and she didn’t cry. Her father Ilango peered at her and had a premonition of dark, heavy things.
“What’s wrong with her?” he asked.
“Some babies don’t cry,” said the doctor.
“What’s that on her shoulders?”
“They’ll probably fall off.”
When she was awake, Muhil seemed to be measuring the ceiling with her eyes, ticking off invisible numbers with her tiny fists and feet. When she slept, she reminded Ilango of a stone at the bottom of a river. She never made a sound. On the rare occasions that she cried, she shut her eyes and opened her mouth so wide that Ilango thought her jaw might snap.
When she could sit upright, Muhil started to rub her back against anything she could get next to—the wall, the side of the well, her mother’s arm. Soon the skin on her back hung in saggy, red bags beneath her tiny shoulder blades.
“Do you know what happens to girls who rub their backs raw like that? Their backs fall off, that’s what,” said Ilango.
He took her to a doctor who peered at the folds of skin and tapped the knobs on her shoulder with a ballpoint pen.
“What’s wrong with her?” asked Ilango.
“Nothing,” said the doctor.
•
Soon people began to accost Ilango and his wife on the road and tell them stories of children that drank water from puddles and barked like wild dogs. These children had gone on to become doctors or lawyers in foreign countries. Surely Muhil would do the same. But a few months later, Muhil began to clamber onto small stools and throw herself to the ground. When stools were placed out of reach, Muhil began throwing herself off people’s laps.
“Why are you doing this to me?” said Ilango. “No other child does this. I never did this to my father.”
Muhil did not seem concerned. She kept tipping herself over any ledge she could find and Ilango stopped going out, because nobody could find anything heartening to say about children who seemed hell-bent on suicide so early in life.
•
A few nights later Ilango dreamed he was lying on the roof of his house, watching the afternoon sky. Even though the sun was out he could see clutches of green and orange stars blinking above him. He stretched out his hand and something circled down and landed on his palm. It was Muhil. Two tiny wings had sprouted from the knobs on her shoulders. They looked like dried leaves.
“So it’s you!” said Ilango. “Those are very pretty wings you have.”
Muhil looked up at him and bared her teeth; they were round and white.
“Why won’t you talk to me,” he asked. “Why won’t you say anything?”
She stood up and began to walk across his palm, her wings rustling behind her like paper.
“Everyone thinks I’m a terrible father, because you keep trying to break your head open. I wish you would stop doing that.”
Muhil teetered forward, the edges of her wings stabbing awkwardly at the sky. They reminded him of a dead tree.
“You will be the world’s first flying doctor,” mused Ilango. “Or flying lawyer. Or maybe you could do both. What do you think?”
Ilango watched as she tipped over the edge of his hand and spun out into the sky like a dying moth.
“That’s all right,” he said. “You can tell me later.”
•
By the age of four, Muhil was crooked, stunted and more wrinkled than she was at birth. When she wasn’t skinning her back against something she was tipping herself off anything she could climb. Her very existence had become uncomfortable to anyone who saw her. Well-meaning neighbors and friends began bringing pamphlets and newspaper clippings of places that kept children who couldn’t be kept.
One evening Ilango sat with her on the back porch. Muhil kept pedaling against his arm, her breath coming in tiny, silent puffs as she tried to throw herself over the edge.
“Why?” said Ilango. “Why are you doing this? Look at your face. You know what people will think? They’ll think I’m beating you up.”
Muhil kept pedaling against his arm, her head lurching to the side as she tried to break free.
“Fine,” said Ilango. “Go on. Break your head open.”
He loosened his grip and Muhil pitched forward. Her tiny back curled and something shifted beneath her shoulders. Instead of falling, Muhil hovered in mid-air like a tiny hummingbird. Ilango saw the entire world swing from her shoulders as green and orange stars dripped from the sky. Then she crashed to the ground and split her lip open.
•
Ilango reeled under an overwhelming sense of understanding and purpose. Everything suddenly made sense and fit perfectly. He wondered how he hadn’t seen it before. He arranged pillows around the wooden cot and held Muhil at the very edge.
“Try that again, what you did on the porch.”
Muhil tipped over and landed face down in the pillows.
“Again,” said Ilango. “Roll your shoulders, curl your back.”
He tried the cot, the porch and the lower branches of the mango tree but nothing happened. He tried to catch her off guard, pushing her off the bed when she was napping but she still landed face down on the floor. He finally decided to take Muhil to the roof and his wife decided it was time to summon the police and all the neighbors. By the time Ilango was ready, a crowd of familiar heads and pointing fingers surged around his house.
“Ilango, put the girl down,” called out his neighbor Pandian.
“Not yet.”
“You’re scaring her, Ilango, put her down.”
“No.”
“What? What did you say?”
“Not now, I need to try something.”
Someone came from behind and grabbed Muhil from him. Ilango turned and saw her lurch against a tangle of arms, trying to throw herself over the edge.
•
Ilango spent the night in jail, staring at the floor. He held his hand out and thought, this is how she floated. Roll your shoulders. Curl your back. This is how it’s done.
The next morning he came home to a house that was silent and empty. Pandian appeared at the door with a tumbler of coffee.
“Are they with you?” asked Ilango.
“They’re fine,” said Pandian. “What will you do for food? Shall I bring you something?”
“She isn’t coming back?”
“Not right now.”
Ilango watched the shadows spill across the walls and ceiling. He listened for the sound of a small body hitting the floor somewhere or the rustle of wings but he couldn’t hear anything.
“We’ll try again, that’s all,” said Ilango. “We’ll just try again.”
•
A week later Muhil and his wife were back home. Pandian came over in the evenings to make sure everything was all right. He also made half-hearted attempts at inspirational speeches.
“We’ve all made mistakes in the past,” he said. “Important to look forward. Don’t worry.”
“Why should I be worried?” said Ilango.
“You need to be a good husband and father now. You need to remember that Muhil is sick.”
“She’s not sick. What makes you think she’s sick?”
“You have to be responsible.”
“Fine.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
After supper Ilango would watch as Muhil clambered onto the cot and tipped herself onto a pile of pillows below. He felt a rustling in his brain telling him of flying doctors or flying lawyers or maybe both. Whichever she liked.
“We’ll try again,” said Ilango.
•
A few nights later Ilango took Muhil to an abandoned bridge at the outskirts of the village.
“Roll your shoulders, curl your back,” he chanted as he carried her. “Say it with me, roll your shoulders, curl your back.”
He turned her chin to the sky and made her look at the
stars and the tops of the trees.
“You can go up there if you like. You can see nests and birds sleeping. Maybe you can see our house.”
When they reached the bridge he held her on the edge of the railing and looked down. It was darker than he had thought it would be.
“Don’t go far,” he said as he slowly loosened his grip. “And come back quickly, do you understand?”
Muhil teetered for a second on the railing. Then she tipped sideways into the darkness like a bundle of old clothes.
Ilango stretched his hand into the darkness and waited.
There are devastations inside Annamika’s mouth, fluttering against her teeth like black butterflies. She tries to crush them with a jawbreaker.
“We’re going to JasperAndBanff,” says Andrea. “My Uncle Arby’s got a cabin on Lake Louise. What’s in Drumheller?”
“Dinosaurs,” says Annamika. She doesn’t like the word hoodoos so she doesn’t mention them.
“I didn’t know you were into dinosaurs.”
“I’m not.”
The jawbreaker rolls over Annamika’s bottom lip and falls to the ground. Andrea doesn’t give her another one.
•
The motel room has orange curtains that make it look like they are trapped inside a giant pumpkin. When the pizza comes, the delivery man smiles at her father and says “Salaam Aleikum.”
“Why did he say that to you?” Annamika asks.
“Probably thought I was Muslim.”
“Why would he think that?”
“The beard.”
That night Annamika dreams of butterflies with beards. They line up outside the motel and demand to see the hoodoos. Her father brings them inside and points at the orange curtains. He points to Annamika and waves. The butterflies shake their wings and ask for their money back.
Insects Are Just Like You and Me Except Some of Them Have Wings Page 7
