In the Shadow of the Banyan

by Vaddey Ratner

  Yes, I understood. But I couldn’t speak.

  “Answer me! Where were you when you left your sister alone?”

  “Papa!” I heard myself cry when the spine of the coconut leaf slashed the small of my back.

  She whipped me harder. “He—can’t—hear—you.” A lash for every word. “It’s—no—use—crying.”

  But I wasn’t crying. I was only calling out to him. I saw him now through the open doorway. A luminous, fearless moon. He smiled, holding the world in his light. I wanted him to hold me, to caress my seared skin, to patch my broken love. I wanted him to hold Mama, make her gentle and lovely again, as he made the night seem gentle and lovely, despite the secret it shared with me.

  “It’s no use crying,” she said again, tears rolling down her cheeks in long, lustrous strokes, like the lashes she lavished on my body. “He can’t hear you, do you understand? He can’t! He’s gone!”

  Yes, I understood. Everything and nothing at all.

  “Gone!”

  “I’m sorry!” I cried as the coconut spine lacerated my shoulder. “I’m sorry I let them take him away!”

  She stopped, as if stunned by my words. She threw the whip away, fell to her knees, and broke. Like a beautiful and fragile dream she broke, and everything broke with her.

  • • •

  Later that night the sky wept. I opened my eyes and saw her sitting in the doorway. Outside, it was almost pitch-black, the moon now hidden behind a curtain of rain. Rain that came in the middle of the dry season, the last fall before the earth cracked open. Pliang kok. Borrowed rain, Mae called it. Borrowed from another night, another loss. Above us the roof was leaking again. Mae got up to place a pot under the leak. She went to Mama’s trembling form in the doorway. “Come, child, come,” she said, her arms around Mama’s shoulders. Mama shook her head vigorously, like a child refusing comfort. Mae sighed and came back to lie down beside me on the mat. A minute or two passed, then I heard Mama’s voice—“Countless times I ask myself, Raami, what I could’ve done to stop your papa from leaving. There was nothing. Nothing I could’ve done, or that you shouldn’t have done. I know you think I blame you. Maybe a part of me wanted you to believe it was your fault, because, knowing why your papa did what he did—to save us—I couldn’t be angry with him. But the truth is no one, none of us, could’ve stopped him. He was who he was—he did what he believed was right. He stuck to his convictions.” She gave an ironic laugh. “Your papa’s poetry took him to great heights, Raami. But he didn’t see that up there he was fully exposed. They would eventually spot him, even if you hadn’t said his name.” She let out a breath, as if letting go all she’d kept hidden. “Words, they are our rise and our fall, Raami. Perhaps this is why I prefer not to say too much.”

  I closed my eyes, counting the raindrops as they hit the metal pot, tdock, tdock, tdock . . .

  • • •

  In the morning, I found Mama outside stirring a pot of boiled lotus seeds over the cooking fire. The pot of rainwater was nearby. I walked to it, scooped some out with my hands, and drank, my parched throat remedied. She handed me a bowl of the lotus seeds. At first she was silent, wouldn’t even look at me. Then, as I sat down to eat, she said, “There was a mother . . .” Her voice was small, like the rustle of a leaf in an immense forest. “She loved her daughter so much that she’d give the child whatever the girl desired. One night while they were playing in the garden, the little daughter saw the full moon and wanted it. The mother tried to explain that the moon belongs up there. You can’t just pluck it from the sky like you would a fruit from a tree. But like any small child, the girl didn’t understand the moon isn’t something you possess. She cried and cried. So what could the mother do but give her daughter the moon? She brought a bucket of water, and pointing to the reflection, said, ‘Here’s your moon, my love.’ The little girl, delighted, plunged her arms into the bucket, and for hours she played with her moon, watching it dance and swirl.”

  It was the first time, I realized, Mama had ever told me a story. All the stories I knew came from Milk Mother or Papa. Why? I wanted to ask. Why had she never told me a story before? Words, they are our rise and our fall . . . Why now, when all that was broken could not be mended with words?

  “I’d give you anything,” she said. “Bring him back if only I could.”

  I searched her eyes, and in their watery depths thought I saw his face. She turned away, wiping the side of her cheek with the base of her palm. Then, taking the bottle of iodine, which she’d obtained in exchange for one of Papa’s shirts, she colored the welts on my back, her touch as gentle and tentative, I imagined, as a brush on canvas.

  I let her caress me, as she’d whipped me. One stroke at a time.

  • • •

  One afternoon, some days later, while we were cutting rice, Pok’s silhouette appeared like a mirage in the midday sun. He hurried across the rice fields toward us. Mama abandoned her sickle on the ground and rushed to meet him. Malaria, he told her. Radana had malaria.

  Back at the hut, Mama sat hugging Radana to her chest, a blanket around both their bodies, and I couldn’t tell who was shaking, she or my sister. Mae came in, lugging a basket of heated stones she’d wrapped in some rags. Mama looked up, pleading, “I can’t stop her from shaking! Please, tell me what to do.” Mae took Radana from Mama and, swaddling the blanket tightly around my sister’s tiny body, put her down on the straw mat. Then, one by one, she placed the heated stones around Radana, pressing them against the blanket. Still Radana shook, her teeth banging against one another—a horrible sound, like an animal chewing on its bones.

  She’d been attacked with bouts of chills since the morning. The first one started soon after we’d left for work, Pok said, but since it was mild he and Mae thought it was a cold. Radana had had no fever, so they weren’t too concerned. Still, they kept a careful eye on her. The chills became more severe, each attack lasting longer than the one before, until there was no doubt in their minds this was malaria, which they themselves had suffered, as had countless others in the village. They knew the course of attacks well—first the chills, then the high fever, finally the pouring sweat and pounding headache. The chills Radana was having at the moment seemed to reach a peak. The whole hut shook with her.

  Mae used the last two stones, balancing one on Radana’s chest and another on her stomach. Holding the stones in place, she draped her body over my sister’s like a mother hen warming her hatchling. For a long time she stayed like this, until the violent shaking subsided and only a tremor rose from beneath her. She sat up, but seeing Mama paralyzed with fear said to me instead, “Your sister will want some water.” She nodded toward the doorway. “Go out and see if it’s ready.”

  Outside Pok was tending the kettle. The water had boiled. He lifted the lid from the kettle and fanned the water vigorously with a palm fan. I squatted down opposite him and, unable to look him in the eye, said, “I gave it to her, didn’t I? I gave Radana malaria.”

  Pok stopped his fanning. After a moment he said, “A mosquito gave your sister the malaria. A mosquito. It isn’t your fault.”

  As soon as he said it, I knew without a doubt it was. Why else would he try to convince me it wasn’t? No, I didn’t give Radana malaria, but all the same I failed to protect her from it.

  We took the kettle of water up to the hut, and as Mae had said, Radana emerged from the bone-rattling chills wanting only water. She screamed for it, pulling her hair, scratching her throat, biting down on her lower lip until it bled. Then, as soon as she’d had enough, the chills returned, along with the bone-rattling shakes, followed by the high fever. On and on it went, as I watched helpless with dread and guilt, unable to escape the feeling that I was once again somehow to blame.

  • • •

  When I was as little as two or three I became aware that my right leg was shorter and smaller than my left, just as I was aware I had wavy hair instead of straight, a round birthmark on my right shoulder instead of my left. Wh
en I got older I noticed all the other children had two legs of equal size and length, and I realized what I had was not only not As-It-Should-Be but that it had a name. Polio. When I asked the grown-ups what it was and where it came from and, most curiously, why I got it and other children didn’t, no one could really give me a satisfactory answer. “For everything taken away,” Papa once tried to explain, “something even more special is given back.” Love was that Something-Even-More-Special. It was the glittering package, the silk bow and satin paper wrappings that came with the gift I didn’t want, the polio I hadn’t asked for, and because it was so dazzlingly beautiful, I held on to it and cherished it more than I did the gift itself. Love was my consolation prize, and as a child I received it in abundance from those who cared for me, from all the adults who shaped my world. First, love cushioned me against the realization that I walked with a limp while other children didn’t. Then, love cushioned me against all things big and small—the disappointment of discovering polio wasn’t a gift at all but was in fact an illness that had left me handicapped, the hurt of seeing my moving reflection in a mirror or glass wall, the resentment of being told by complete strangers that I had a lovely face but too bad about my leg—and except for the sadness I sometimes glimpsed in Mama’s eyes when she watched me walk, I’d learned not to care much whether or not I’d had polio. Love, in all its manifestations, in the care and affection and tenderness I received, in the safety and comfort and beauty of my physical surroundings, would cushion me, I believed, against all maladies.

  Now there was malaria. I didn’t know if it was a minor illness that would go away quickly or if, like polio, it would leave a lasting mark, impair my sister in some way.

  For the next several days malaria attacked Radana, like a spirit that had entered her body and was doing its wild crazy dance. One moment she would shake and rattle, sounding like a train coming off the tracks. The next she would burn with a fever so high her skin felt like fire, her eyes dull with delirium, rolling into her skull. Then, after the fever had peaked, her body would drop in temperature, so much that she turned from flushed red to ghostly white right before our eyes, as sweat leaked through her skin, soaking her clothes and blanket and anything else that touched her, at which point she would shiver and shake so hard I thought her bones would break into pieces and her teeth would fall out like an old person’s. Sometimes in between attacks she’d call out insanely, “Ice cream, Mama! Ice cream!” But, of course, there was no ice cream, or even ice. There was only boiled river water that we kept giving her as if it were some sort of magical cure. After the fever and chills came an array of pains and cramps, so severe that watching her suffer them drove us mad with grief.

  Again, Radana had just had one of her attacks, and the effect of it made her cheeks look and feel like embers, and her eyes become glassy like a fish’s. Mama cradled her, rocking her gently, chin pressed to her forehead. Beside her Mae sat crushing two tiny yellow pills in a teaspoon. Mama had found the pills wrapped in a piece of paper inside the breast pocket of one of Papa’s shirts. At first I thought maybe they were aspirins, but the paper said “Tetracycline,” in what was unmistakably Papa’s handwriting, each sound and syllable spelled out in Khmer under what I assumed was its foreign name. Round yellow moonlets, I told myself. Little tokens of himself he’d left behind.

  Mae mixed the crushed pills with some boiled water from the kettle. She nodded, indicating she was ready. Mama clamped her fingers on Radana’s nose as Mae quickly shoved the spoon into my sister’s mouth. Radana struggled, gasped for breath, and swallowed the medicine. Mae took the spoon out, Mama released her fingers, and that instant Radana let out an angry wail. I didn’t know what she hated more—having her nose squeezed shut or the taste of the medicine. Furious, she tried pushing Mama away. Mama held her tighter, rocking her until she settled down, until her scream became only a whimper. Then, looking down at Radana, Mama said, “She’s always been a healthy baby. She was never sick. She was perfect when she was born.”

  I wasn’t sure who she was telling this to, Mae or me, or what she meant by it. Was she comparing me to Radana, or was she trying to say that I’d ruined my little sister, made her imperfect like me? I turned to Mae, but she only sighed. She got up and left us to ourselves.

  Mama put Radana down on the straw mat. She stared at my sister, who looked so pale I thought the ghosts might mistake her for one of their own. Radana breathed softly as she slept, eyeballs gliding back and forth under her lids, the corners of her lips curled into a grimace. I didn’t understand a disease such as malaria, or any disease for that matter. Still, I thought, I had the antidote for it—I’d love my sister more than I had ever loved her. I would no longer allow myself to feel jealous that she was perfect while I was marred by polio. I would love her completely, selflessly.

  Mama looked up and faced me. “When you were sick with polio, your papa was with me, and I could hardly bear it, the agony of having to watch my own child suffer. I don’t know how to bear it now. I need you to be strong for both of us.”

  Tetracycline. I repeated Papa’s one-word poem silently to myself, casting its moon-like aura around Radana’s body against the tricks of malaria. Tetracycline. This, and my love, in all its selfless manifestations, would bring Radana back to health.

  • • •

  The next day back at the fields, we moved through the rice with the speed of a hurricane. When the evening bell rang, we gathered our hats and tools and ran back home to Radana. Drained and in sore need of rest, we passed out next to my sister. Only later in the night did we get up again and, realizing we hadn’t washed, head for the river behind the hut.

  There, I quickly bathed, dried myself with a kroma, and changed into clean clothes, then went to wait by the torch we’d placed in the ground near the bamboo grove. Above me something—perhaps a lizard—leapt across the branches. It felt as if all the night creatures had come out to watch us. Frogs croaked, crickets hummed, and, once in a while from somewhere in the middle of the woods, an owl let out a deep, long hoot, silencing all with its mournful cry. I wished Mama would hurry up. She stood there at the edge of the river, tilting a coconut bowl of water over her head. She seemed immobile, bound by an unfathomable weight. As I watched her, it struck me again how odd that she, evanescent as a butterfly, was still here, while Papa, solid as a stone statue, had become only a vision in my dreams.

  She dropped the coconut bowl to the grass and squeezed water out of her hair. I walked over and handed her a dry kroma. She took it and wiped the water from her body, and wrapping the kroma around her, dropped the wet sarong to the ground as she slipped on a clean, dry one over her head. I decided to tell her the dream I’d had before we came to the river.

  “Papa came back,” I said, holding the torch out for her as she buttoned her shirt. “He brought me a pair of wings. But”—I proceeded cautiously—“but he took Radana with him.”

  Mama picked up the wet sarong from the ground and began rinsing it in the river.

  “Soon we can also go home,” I continued. “That’s what he said. Soon you and I can also go home. Now he’ll take only Radana because she’s sick.”

  Mama stood up, wringing the sarong dry, gripping it forcefully.

  “Radana’s going to get better, isn’t she?”

  Mama paused, her body rigid. “Of course,” she answered, her voice quivering like the surface of the water under the torch’s wavering light. “Of course she will. Why wouldn’t she?”

  I shrugged, then said, “It’s just that I dreamt—”

  “You and your dreams,” she said, cutting me off. “They’re like your stories—they’re not real.”

  I didn’t understand. Why was she upset? I only wanted to tell her that the reason Papa took Radana was to make her better again. “But—”

  She yanked the torch from my hand and, without saying another word, started walking as fast as she could, leaving me behind in the dark.

  I ran to catch up with her. “What’s yo
ur dream then?” I demanded, angry now at her sadness, her refusal to acknowledge my every attempt to make her happy. “What’s your dream?” I wanted her to explain why Radana wasn’t getting better, and if it was indeed my fault, I wanted her to tell me what I could do to make my sister better. If she couldn’t tell me that, then at least she should tell me something I could understand, a story where everything would turn out right. “Tell me! Even if it’s not true!”

  She stopped, her back to me, her entire posture erect.

  “A lotus opens at dawn, a bird is released and flies home to his family,” she said, not turning around to face me. “This is why I love an open lotus. It speaks to me of freedom and a new day—a new beginning, the possibility of everyone being together. But do you know the rest of the story? No, of course not, because I taught Milk Mother to tell you only the happy parts. Well, as you know, the male bird, smelling of beautiful fragrance, comes home to the rage of his mate. While he was shielded in that flower, a forest fire ignited, burning their nest, killing their children. In her grief, she accuses him of betraying her in the arms of another. No, your papa never betrayed me in that sense. But, all the same, he’s left me alone in the middle of a forest and I fear the fire will have no limit.”

  I wept, not understanding.

  “Yes, your papa may have brought you wings, Raami,” she said, whipping around to face me now. “But it is I who must teach you to fly. I want you to understand this. This is not a story.”

  • • •

  Before dawn several days later, Mama got up, slipped Papa’s silver fountain pen in her shirt pocket, and went off without a word of explanation. At sunrise she returned, with three ears of corn hidden in her shirt. “How’s Radana?” she asked, going up the steps.

  “The same,” I answered.

  “Did Mae give her the medicine?”

  “Yes.” I followed her up the steps.

  “And the rice porridge, did she eat much?”