Insects Are Just Like You and Me Except Some of Them Have Wings
Page 10
Kayalvizhi frowned, then suddenly held her tongue out as her eyes flared wide open.
“Doesn’t really fit for some reason,” I said.
“Thought not. I don’t feel like I should be doing the tongue thing.”
She got up and began pacing the room with a slight spring in her step. I shrugged my shoulders to see if extra arms would fold out but nothing happened.
“It’s us? You’re sure?” I asked.
“Yes. I mean just look at these arms.”
“So who’s the good one?”
“Oh I don’t know. We can both be the good one.”
“How come I don’t have any extra arms?”
“Maybe they’re growing. Or maybe you’re supposed to do the tongue thing.”
She began humming an old Hindi tune, kicking her feet out, jumping to the left, then the right. One set of her arms hung limply at her side, like they didn’t want to be a part of anything that was happening. I looked down at my hands, listening for some sort of magic that might be humming at my fingertips.
“Mera naam Chin Chin Choo,” sang Kayalvizhi.
“Chin Chin Choo Baba Chin Chin Choo,” I mumbled.
“Raat chandini mein aur tu, Hello Mister how do you do?”
Kayalvizhi began spinning faster, stamping the ground with her feet. “Second verse, same as the first!” she shouted, her arms whipping above her head. A premonition of bad things was slowly soaking into me. If we were goddesses then we were supposed to be quiet and wise. We were supposed make sure that the sun rose and people who were sexually immoral got genital warts.
“Stop it Kayal,” I said.
“What?”
“Stop it, you’ll break something.”
“How?”
“A goddess isn’t supposed to move so quickly. It’ll make black holes or something.”
“Mera naam Chin Chin Choo.”
“You’re going to make children get born with horses’ heads. Everyone’s knees will disappear.”
“Chin Chin Choo Baba Chin Chin Choo.”
The room felt like it was being stretched like a rubber band, just waiting to split. I closed my eyes and saw splotches of dirty orange seeping into the frozen silhouette of Kayalvizhi’s spinning body.
“Fuck,” said Kayalvizhi.
I opened my eyes and saw her standing in front of me, shaking her head. Blood was running from my lips and down my chin in thick rivulets.
“Is this cancer or something? Is the world bleeding?” I asked.
“Did you try the tongue thing?” asked Kayalvizhi.
I shook my head, holding my hands over my mouth. Kayalvizhi wandered to the other side of the room, singing under her breath Mera naam Chin Chin Choo, Chin Chin Choo Baba Chin Chin Choo.
•
When I woke up the sun was in my face and the sound of a drill was hammering away somewhere in the distance. Kayalvizhi was standing beside the sofa, frowning down at me.
“You puked all over yourself,” she said.
A sticky chain of vomit trailed across my face and into my hair. I put my hands over my eyes, trying to block out the sun.
“All you had was the paracetamol? You’re sure?” said Kayalvizhi.
I nodded. Kayalvizhi shrugged and sat on the floor.
“That’s funny. You’ve never done that on paracetamol before. Don’t you think that’s funny?”
I wanted to shake my head but I ended up nodding again.
“Asha mailed,” she said. “We missed the deadline for the sister goddesses thing so she wrote something herself about some temple at her grandmother’s place. Which I think is a bit like stealing because that was what we were going to do. Haunted temples, remember?”
My body felt heavy and sour like a rotten lime. I realized that I couldn’t feel my tongue and wondered if I had swallowed it.
“We better figure out something else or we’re going to be in trouble,” said Kayalvizhi, stretching out on the mat. “There has to be something we can do.”
I tried to think of things we had done, things we were capable of doing. I wondered if I should try and be sick again but I had a feeling I would only cough up lost children and bags filled with dead kittens.
I closed my eyes and watched as the sun slowly ground its heels into my eyelids.
1 I feel compelled to say a few words about the phrase “plucking pubic hairs”, which is a rough translation of the Tamil phrase mayir pudingrathu. The word mayir means hair and in certain places I’ve heard it used in an ordinary sense—mayir alavu, for example, is used to say “a hair’s breadth”. But in other areas, particularly in the city, mayir means pubic hair. So mayir pudingrathu usually means “plucking pubic hairs”—it’s not something nice people are supposed to say. I want to mention that I believe that the meaning may differ, depending on how people use it. In my limited scope of experience, the phrase is meant to imply that state of being where someone is so jobless or useless that they were actually spending their time pulling out their pubic hairs one by one. Some people drop the mayir completely and just say pudingrathu. Sometimes the term pudingi is used, which means “a person who plucks”. Physical gestures are also commonly used. Generally, people pretend to be plucking the hair on their head or arm, though I've seen the more risqué mimic the act of plucking the hair on their upper thighs. I’ve also seen the phrase translated into English, as literally and shoddily as possible, like “Bloody plucker why you are sitting and simply plucking?”
Also, due to a strange quirk of the Tamil accent, the English p and f sounds are often interchanged, the result being that “plucker” becomes “flucker”, which is one of those great words which sounds like fucker but isn’t because it’s flucker.
Anyway, that’s all I have to say about that.
Every Sunday afternoon my roommate ascends the crumbly stairs to our rooms, her overnight bag filled with misgivings, dirty underwear and papayas. The misgivings are for what she has done over the weekend. The papayas are for dissolving her eggs.
“Why don’t you just use a condom?” I ask as she hacks the fruit into large uneven pieces that will not fit into her mouth.
“We didn’t have one.”
Hack hack.
“We never have one.”
Sunday afternoons remind her that before there was Population Control and social workers with bulging bags of contraceptives, there was the papaya. If she eats too many she ends up with a bad stomach or heat boils. Sometimes she ends up with both.
•
James the Office Genius is a man with no earlobes and long, pale fingers like church candles. He wears an army vest with four pockets because he doesn’t use the pockets in his pants.
“A mouse?” I ask.
“Yes. You want to see it?”
“Does it have two heads?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t want to see it.”
James takes the mouse out anyway.
“Found it a week ago on my way home. Totally dead but it hasn’t decayed or anything. Cool, nah? Named him Miraculous.”
James gently touches its tiny pink nose before putting it back in his pocket.
“I don’t get it,” I say, “How come you never use the pockets in your pants?”
•
Once upon a time on a Sunday my roommate moved in with three black suitcases. She lined her cupboards with newspaper and arranged her clothes in uneven piles, strewing naphthalene pellets around them to keep the bugs away. She had a bowl of cut papaya beside her which she periodically dipped into.
“Best fruit. Clears your skin, pumps you up with vitamins. This is a good one, sweet. You want?” she said.
“No, I don’t like the smell,” I said.
“You just take if you want. So what do you do again?”
“Nothing much.”
“You’re working right?”
“Right.”
“Me too. So is it like tight work or you get like some time for yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing… much.”
“Oh hey there’s some extra papaya in the kitchen also, you can have if you want. Or just take from here, there’s lots.”
By the time she settled in, it was clear that she was the Queen of Papayas and I was the Queen of NothingMuch.
•
One day Miraculous the Mouse falls under the table and lands beside a five rupee coin. The five rupee coin buys James one watery tea and one samosa which contains an oily cockroach. The tea stall owner apologizes and offers to give James a free tea and samosa every day if he promises not to tell anyone.
“Miraculous,” says James as he shoves the mouse into my palm. I hold it too tightly, feeling its skin and muscle slip between my fingers. It is neither cold nor warm. There is no electric shiver, no desire to break out into song. It feels exactly like a mouse, filled with bones that mysteriously click and slide.
“Isn’t he amazing?” asks James.
“No,” I say and hand it back.
•
My roommate licks her butter-chicken-stained fingers and contemplates her empty plate.
“He’s lying,” she says.
“He’s not lying, I saw it.”
“Then it’s not real. Probably a fake mouse.”
“It wasn’t fake, I held it. It’s real.”
“Then it’s not dead.”
“It’s dead, it’s just not decaying.”
“What rubbish, how can it not decay? I remember once a lizard got caught in the hinges of my cupboard, couldn’t have been more than an hour, fucker started stinking up the whole room. Small fucker, such a bad smell you wouldn’t believe. Everything decays in Chennai, even if it isn’t dead.”
“Exactly.”
“Mm.”
And she begins to crack the sopping chicken bones between her teeth.
•
With the arrival of a new cigarette case and a tin of caustic foreign mints, there is less room in James’s pockets for the mouse. He starts to leave it on his table like a paperweight and it is no longer referred to as Miraculous. I stuff it into my bag and James doesn’t notice it is gone until the end of the day.
“Oh well…” he shrugs. “Hey there’s this new guy down the street, he’s got chili beef. Ten rupees.” The thought of the chili beef makes James’s fingers stretch and snap like pale, hungry birds.
“What about your mouse?” I ask. James shrugs and wiggles his fingers as he disappears through the door.
•
In the evening I watch my roommate pack her overnight bag. I don’t tell her about Miraculous because weekends make her fluttery and she can’t hear anything when she is fluttery. She disappears like a moth into the smoky, sulphurous Saturday night. I place Miraculous on the table and wait for it to say something.
“Were you sent by someone?” I ask. “Are you the apocalypse or are you just sleeping?”
The mouse remains silent. My hands begin to feel heavy and useless, as if they have begun to rust.
•
My roommate returns on Sunday morning with a deflated overnight bag and no papayas.
“You are looking at the stupidest girl in the world,” she says and locks herself in her bathroom. She flushes the toilet from time to time to let me know she is still alive.
“He dumped me,” she says. “Just like that. You know why?”
“No.”
“He’s getting married. Do you know who he’s marrying?”
“No.”
“Some chick from Mysore. His Papa picked her out for him and he said yes. I hope his balls fall off.”
I pick up Miraculous and a chunk of its skin comes away in my fingers. My roommate bangs on her side of the bathroom door.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
“Don’t lie.”
“It’s the mouse.”
“What mouse? You brought a mouse inside? Are you mad?”
“It’s that one I told you about, the one—”
“Don’t sit in my room if you’re holding a mouse, are you holding it?”
“Yes.”
“Well go outside and hold it then.”
•
I sit on the crumbly stairs and watch as a large patch of skin falls away from the mouse’s back, revealing a tiny backbone. It is the saddest backbone I have ever seen. I feel like I should glue him back together or hold a funeral service.
The tail and paws begin to shrivel into thin, grey flakes that slither along my fingers and disappear. Something falls away from the ribcage, crumbling into dust. I think of how heavy my bones are, how they bend and pull from the inside as if they are moist with decay. I wonder if they will burn completely on my funeral pyre or whether they will simply blacken as a token gesture.
Soon all that is left of Miraculous is a skeleton that looks like a lizard, poised and ready to run. I dig my hand into the soil of a nearby neem tree, feeling sand and pebbles surge under my fingernails. Before placing it in I snap off one of the paws—it looks like a tiny white glove. I will probably lose it by the end of the week. My roommate appears at the door and yawns.
“I’m going to make coffee, you want?” she asks.
My roommate is yellow and beautiful with the afternoon sun on her face.
She looks just like a papaya.
On the way here, he found a beer cap that said Marco Polo Premium Lager so today his name is Marco Polo. He makes it very clear that tomorrow it will probably be something else.
“How does that work?” I ask.
“Nothing extraordinary. Yesterday I called myself Periyar.”
“Ok. After... Periyar.”
“No, after the bus service.”
We are sitting in the worn and shabby India Coffee House, discussing the purchase of Chellam, the talking cat.
“So what does he say?” asks Marco Polo.
“Wow,” I say.
“Really? Like how? How does he say it?”
“Like I ask him Chellam how do I look today and he goes wow.”
“Every time?”
“Yes.”
“Awesome. He probably has a mouse bone stuck in his throat or something.”
“He doesn’t eat mice.”
“Sure he does. Everyone does. What about fuckle?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Fuckle, would he say that?”
“Fuck who?”
“Fuckle, fuckle. It’s my new word. Guess what it means.”
“No idea.”
“Come on, just guess.”
“I don’t know. A tiny fuck.”
“Close. It’s what fairies do behind mushrooms.”
I think of a girl called Caroline, who refused to speak in English even though we all thought she should because her name was Caroline. One day I had heard her scream at a rickshaw driver “You jes’ fuggawf min. Fuggawf!” I was going to ask what was wrong but I was scared she would tell me to fuggawf too.
Marco Polo places the beer cap on the table, which is scratched and splotched with tiny islands of water. I’m surprised at how clean the bottle cap is. I wonder where he got it from.
“Think he would say it?” he asks.
“You mean like right now? Right now, no.”
“I could train him.”
“You could train him.”
“How much?”
“Five hundred bucks,” I say.
“Not for free then.”
“No. It’s a talking cat.”
Marco Polo nods and smiles. After he leaves I notice he’s left behind the beer cap. I pick it up, feeling the crimped edges bite into my skin like tiny teeth. You jes’ fuggawf min. Jes’ fuggawf, I say to myself. I drag out the final ‘f’ sound, lazily biting my lip. I wonder if someone is watching me, if they think I look preoccupied and sexy. I spin the bottle cap on the table
and watch as it rolls onto the floor and disappears under the cash counter.
Senthil had two wallets. One was for receipts, business cards and on some occasions, money. The other one was for Amala’s suicide notes. The first one she ever gave him was wrapped around his watch and said:
Why stay alive at such a cost
When nothing’s gained
And nothing’s lost
And there’s a lump on my elbow
That looks like cancer
Goodbye.
He found her a few minutes later making tea in his kitchen.
“Well that’s lucky,” said Senthil. “I thought you were going to kill yourself.”
“No,” Amala said. “It’s just a habit. I tried writing poetry instead but it didn’t work.”
Amala placed these notes in important but insignificant places like the bottom of his coffee cup. Sometimes she would mail them to him, giving him the envelopes to drop in the mailbox for her.
“Why don’t I just open it now? It’s for me anyway,” he said.
“Don’t you like getting mail? I love getting mail,” said Amala.
Senthil kept every note she gave him. When he was on a long bus ride, he read them in chronological order and then backwards. On a good day, he liked to think they were love letters. On a bad day, he was sure she was already floating face down in the Cooum River.
•
Amala took him to her ancestral village because she felt it was important for him to see how decayed her history was.
“There are two reasons why nobody there will like you,” she told him on the bus. “One, we’re not married but we’re sleeping together.”
“How do they know that?”
“Two, you’re a low-caste…what are you again?”
“Nadar.”
“Right, you’re a low-caste Nadar. My grandfather had low-castes working in our fields but they weren’t allowed inside the house.”
“So I’m not allowed inside?”
“Ordinarily, no. But my grandfather’s dying so it doesn’t matter.”
Senthil fell asleep and dreamed that he was standing outside Amala’s ancestral home. It looked like a mouth crammed with broken teeth. An old man was standing in front of him, a thick, handlebar moustache writhing on his upper lip like a black snake. He started to poke holes into Senthil’s chest with a dusty umbrella.