Anita and Me

by Meera Syal

  Mr Ormerod’s face came back into view and he talked so slowly and carefully that I could lip-read what he was saying. ‘Do You Want A Bag, Love?’ and waved a sheet of brown paper at her. I ducked out of sight and busied myself with Sunil, who was now lying on his back, sucking his toes noisily. He was hungry. I had been left in charge of my family and failed miserably; my baby brother was starving before my eyes and my aged granny was a helpless mute in front of two people I had not the courage to face myself. Then the shop bell tinkled and Nanima was beside me, clutching her booty. I took the bag from her and quickly checked off the contents against the list. It was all there, and then Nanima handed me the change. I counted it, then recounted it and checked the list and bag again. There was no mistake. I knew the price of every item written down there by heart, as I always used the leftover coppers to buy sweets. Sixpence short! Six whole pence! Mr Ormerod had tried to cheat my Nanima!

  This is a test, I told myself over the hammering of my heart, these people have hurt you and now you can get them back, these lying pigs who took advantage of an old lady who could not speak English. I had never confronted an elder before on anything, but this time I had good reasons. I felt I had been waiting so long for this moment. ‘Wait here, Nanima…Thehro aider!’ I whispered to her, took a deep breath and entered the shop.

  Mr Ormerod looked up, confusion and, I thought, guilt creasing his features. ‘Hello Meena, love! Was that your nan who just came in?’

  ‘Yes, it was actually, Mr Ormerod,’ I said calmly, although my voice sounded high and forced to my ears.

  ‘I thought it was. I’d heard you had visitors. How’s she been with this weather? Must be cold for her, ey?’

  ‘Funny, you’re the tenth person to say that today, smartarse!’ I thought, but actually what I said was, ‘Yes, a bit.’

  There was a brief silence when we all looked at each other, waiting for someone to fill the gap with some polite social chit-chat. The Mean Man was now picking his teeth with the edge of a threepenny bit. Probably my money as well, I thought, and the idea of ferret-face cleaning his gob with my Nanima’s change made me suddenly burst out with, ‘You made a mistake! You cheated my Nanima!’

  The Mean Man stopped flossing, he raised his eyebrows at Mr Ormerod who looked at me kindly, which made me feel even angrier. ‘I don’t think …’

  ‘You thought just because she don’t speak English you could cheat her! Well she’s really clever actually, she knows lots of English, I bet you don’t speak any Punjabi do you?’

  I was breathing hard now, I could feel tears pricking my eyes which I blinked back furiously.

  Mr Ormerod came out from behind the counter, ‘Well I thought I’d totted up alright, but tell me anyway, what’s missing then?’

  ‘Sixpence,’ I stuttered. ‘You kept sixpence back for yourselves! I expect you’ll be giving it to buy that new church roof, won’t you?’

  Mr Ormerod’s face fell. I had him now. He cleared his throat uncomfortably. ‘Well now…I understand why you’re a bit upset, love…Awful business that, we was all really sorry …’

  ‘I don’t want your sorry,’ I said flatly. ‘I want my sixpence back.’

  Mr Ormerod coughed again and patted his pockets. ‘Well now, that sixpence must have been for the chocolate bar your nan bought, Meena.’

  ‘Chocolate bar?’ I said stupidly, forcing myself not to look round at the Mean Man who I was sure would be smiling now.

  ‘Look, hee-yaar …’ Mr Ormerod said breezily, as he dived into a box under the counter. ‘Have this on me. No charge, ey?’

  He was holding out a Curly Wurly, he knew they were my favourites. I shook my head and backed away, fumbling for the door handle. ‘No thanks,’ I said, and fell out of the shop.

  Nanima looked up as I approached; she swallowed something quickly so she could flash me a grin. Sunil was cooing noisily, his hands and face were smeared with chocolate, the last chunk enclosed tightly in his fist. He held it up to me proudly for inspection. ‘Nanima!’ I turned on her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Thusi kew …’ I was too tired to think of the translation, I wanted to lie down right now on the pavement and curl up into a very small ball. Instead, I yanked the pram towards me, making Sunil sway and clutch the sides nervously, and heaved myself up the road, not caring if Nanima caught up or not.

  I was pushing hard, concentrating on the bumps and cracks in the pavement, when my ears pricked up at a familiar voice. Uncle Alan was in the middle of one of his jocular moral chats, ‘…understand why, but just think if you could use all that energy to do some good. Find out who the real enemies are, the rich, the privileged, not the other people trying to make a living like you, not people like …’

  As I rounded the corner, he stopped, and I looked up from my pram handles. Uncle Alan was standing next to Sam Lowbridge, who was sitting on the low wall surrounding the patch of wild ground where we hunted for blackberries in the autumn. The rest of his gang slouched in the long grass, propped up on elbows and swigging from plastic bottles of cider. I had an impression of a cluster of shaven heads, downy and vulnerable as dandelion clocks, peeking out at me from the hollyhocks and yarrow stalks. A slight breeze seemed to catch their faces, as they swung as one to face me.

  I pinned myself to Uncle Alan’s calm, dimpled face. I clung to it mentally like a drowning swimmer onto a buoy. I would not look at Sam Lowbridge. I would never look at him again.

  ‘Well here’s Meena! And little Sunil too! What a super chappie he’s turning into, ey?’

  I pitied Uncle Alan then, if you’re waiting for a hallelujah chorus from that lot, I thought, you really do need help.

  ‘He’s teething,’ I said uselessly, wanting to keep up this pretence that this was a cosy meet and greet chat, the kind that went on hundreds of times a day in this village. I felt a sudden pang of regret, that this small custom would be denied me from now on, that I would never be able to walk the streets without wondering if I was going to bump into Sam and his cronies, and suffer the impotent fury that was knotting my stomach muscles into cramps. In that one moment at the fete, when Sam had opened his mouth and let the cider and his single brain cell do the talking, he had taken away my innocence. There was nothing in the world I could do to him that would have the same impact, that would affect him so deeply and for so long.

  Sunil yawned languorously, a cat’s yawn full of indolence and self satisfaction. I was glad his eyelids were drooping and rocked the pram gently to encourage him to sleep. I did not want him awake for this.

  ‘Sam and me were having a very interesting talk about blame and responsibility. About how easy it is to get angry with others for what’s going wrong in your own life. Have you got any thoughts on this, Meena?’

  Uncle Alan’s eagerness was beginning to grate. I shifted my gaze slightly so I could see the metal toecaps of Sam’s boots; he was bouncing his heels against the wall, I knew if I just raised my eyes a little, I would see that lopsided beam and the black pupils floating like planets in the blue sky of his eyes. I felt sharp and bright as a knife. I cut carefully. ‘If I was Sam’s mum, I’d feel bloody responsible. But it ain’t her fault her son’s a prat.’

  Sam’s heels stopped kicking suddenly. There was an exaggerated ‘Whooo!’ from the gang members who shifted onto their haunches to get a better view.

  ‘Now then Meena,’ broke in Uncle Alan. ‘That’s not the way we settle disputes, is it?’

  ‘Who’s we?’ Sam’s voice almost made me jerk my head up towards him but I resisted the impulse, although I could already feel a slow throbbing headache playing bongos on my temples. ‘Are yow angry with me, Meena?’ He asked me like he was asking me to dance. He was soft, yielding, teasing. I stared steadily at Sunil who was now fast asleep and tucked the cot blanket round his bare legs. ‘Meena? Ain’t we friends any more then?’ Someone in the gang shouted out something, I could not make out what it was, but Sam rounded on them with a sharp ‘Shuttit, Baz!’

  What was the mat
ter with him? Didn’t he understand what he had done? Just when I thought I would faint with the heat and pain in my head and effort of looking anywhere except where I wanted to look, I felt Nanima’s hand on my arm. She felt my cheek and prised the pram handle out of my fingers. I noticed that my knuckles were white.

  ‘This your Nan, Meena?’ said Uncle Alan with relief, and shook Nanima’s free hand vigorously. ‘Lovely to meet you. Welcome to England!’

  He sounded like he was speaking underwater. I thought I heard hissing, like the geese in the pub courtyard, but louder, more stinging. The sibilance made the bongos beat faster, the pavement looked transparent and rose slightly towards me. I had to look up then, but not at Sam, I looked straight at the gang members who were on the verge of having a huge laugh at Nanima’s expense. Their lips were pursed, ready to hoot or chant or gob or giggle and I was not having it.

  All the pain in my head crystallised into two beams of pure energy which shot out of my eyes and which I turned on Sam’s gang, expecting to see them shrivel like slugs under salt, like metal under Superman’s laser x-ray gaze. I was ten feet tall, I had a hundred arms, like the goddess on top of the fridge in Auntie Shaila’s house, I was swathed in red and gold silk like a new bride. I felt myself floating above them all, just like Nanima had risen up to the ceiling that first night with Sunil in her arms.

  The gang fell silent. I let Nanima lead me away. I did not look back. As we reached our front door, I heard snatches of a chant that they were singing at my back, ‘De de dah de, de de dah de, de dah dah dah de …’ I dimly recognised it as the theme tune to Laurel and Hardy before I sank into the farty settee and gave in to darkness.

  Mama said I had a very high temperature. ‘She’s burning up! My God!’ I heard her whisper to papa who must have arrived home by this point. I let them sponge me down with warm water which felt icy cold to my skin, and opened my mouth at obedient intervals for the glass thermometer, which mama would consult and then ‘tch tch’ loudly at. When I finally dared to lift an eyelid, it was not Nanima lying next to me but papa. It was that strange time when night is about to bleed into morning, when the shadows look textured and grainy and you keep thinking you hear birdsong.

  Papa was sleeping in his characteristic pose, head resting on his right elbow which was tucked under him. As usual, he had discarded his pillow which lay at the end of the bed like another sleeping body. I prodded his chest and he awoke with a grunt and automatically felt my forehead.

  ‘Okay beti?’

  ‘Water,’ I croaked. My throat seemed coated with sand. Papa heaved himself out of bed, tiptoeing past Sunil who was flat on his back, legs and arms akimbo, sleeping the blessed expansive sleep of a baby. A minute later papa returned with a plastic cup which he held to my lips whilst I carefully slurped. It was warm and pungent, with a bitter-sweet aftertaste.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Hilachi tea. Nanima made it. Drink. It’s good.’

  I finished off the whole cup and my stomach felt bloated, as if I had inhaled a four course meal.

  ‘Where’s Nanima?’

  ‘Sleeping with your mama. Rest now.’

  I lay back and fitted my head into papa’s armpit, enjoying his scent of tobacco and aftershave.

  ‘Papa?’

  ‘Hah beti?’

  ‘I want to play with…I mean, hang round with Anita tomorrow. I want to go and ride Sherrie’s pony. Can I?’

  ‘If you’re better. We’ll see.’

  I persisted. ‘Mama spoke to Anita’s mum today. They’ve made it up now. You can ask her.’

  I did not tell him the real reason why I needed to see Anita, that image that kept coming back to me, of her thin shoulders shaking with sobs as she ran away into the night. Papa smoothed my hair from my face, a few wet strands clung to my temples.

  ‘There was nothing to make up. Why do you worry about such tiny things, eh? That is our job. Your job is to enjoy yourself, enjoy your studies, and leave the rest to us.’

  ‘So does that mean yes,’ I yawned, hoping the sympathy factor of me being ill and emotionally insecure would swing it.

  ‘Okay,’ papa sighed. ‘Now sleep.’

  Later on, I could not tell exactly when, I felt Nanima sidle into bed beside me and pull my head onto her mountainous chest, which she fluffed up for me like a pair of pillows. And then she talked, and the strange thing was, although I am almost sure that she spoke in Punjabi, I understood every word. At first she did not make sense, but her broad vowel sounds and earthy consonants knitted themselves into a cradle which rocked me half asleep, then out of the rhythm came words, one or two I recognised, then phrases, then sentences, then all the stories I had been waiting to hear, the stories I knew Nanima owned and kept to herself, but I had never owned enough Punjabi myself to ever ask her if she would share them with me. And now she was, and I did not even need to open my eyes.

  ‘My village was very modern, top class roads, electricity, fresh water, BBC on the radio. Our family home was one of the largest – tiles in the courtyard, carvings on the shutters, we only ate what we grew in our fields. Your fields do nothing. You waste them.’ Maybe I told Nanima about the blackberry bushes at the far end of the park at that point. Or maybe not. ‘My childhood was good but short. It was always this way for girls. I was the plump one, the beautiful one. I never went out without covering my head, I knew my beauty would bring the dogs running if I did not.’ Nanima did not like dogs, maybe this explained why. ‘I went to school, my father insisted. I was lucky, to read and write and learn to recite from the Granth Sabib. Never did I think I was less than a man. More than a man sometimes, this I was. To cook and clean and carry and fetch and soothe and smile and climb and fall.’ My Nanima climbing trees, I grinned into the darkness. ‘At sixteen years of age, two brothers were married to two sisters. I was one of those sisters. The other is your Nani Masi. We lived together the four of us. At twenty, we had four children between us.’ I knew about mama’s brother, the one who had died as a baby. I thought I heard tears in Nanima’s voice. Then I thought about Anita who would be sixteen in three years’ time, the same age as Nanima when she got married. I could not imagine Anita ever getting married. Nor myself for that matter. Ever.

  ‘Then only stones fell from the sky; the fields were given over to English soldiers, the cattle too, the most dignified people had to eat dust when they passed, nothing we owned was ours anymore, not even our names, our breath.’ I knew this feeling, I had felt it too, but did not know why. ‘You know about your Dada, being taken to prison. I lived as a widow until he returned and he returned to nothing. Even the pots and pans we ate from had been sold, or taken. But after a death, what can you do but be born again? We lived. In five years, Dada owned trucks, I had gold earrings. But then came the accident …’ Dada trapped in one of his own trucks, his own brother taking over the business assuming he would die, Dada having a goat’s bone forced into his leg. Now I really wanted to wake up, the rocking became a seasickness, an ocean of heaving cinnamon-scented bosom. ‘Again we lost everything and this time we were reborn in Delhi. What is there to fear when you have already lived two whole lives? And how many more to come? Your mama is on her second one, here, over here. And you Meena …’ I forced my eyelids apart and it was morning. There was no sign of Nanima except a slight depression in the mattress and a few strands of silver hair on the pillow, caught in the cotton mesh like fine slivers of glass.

  9

  I did not mind leaving Nanima the next day; I knew mama was now on holiday for two weeks—the great advantage, maybe the only one, of having a parent who was a teacher. It was a hard process, convincing mama that I was now fully recovered and was not about to keel over, foaming at the mouth. I forced myself to eat two aloo rotis which came sizzling straight from the griddle onto my plate, I broke off tiny morsels for Sunil which I blew on loudly, making him laugh. I also asked for a glass of milk, which Nanima prepared by warming up in a pan, adding crushed almonds and sugar till it foamed l
ike a choppy sea.

  Then I began an exaggerated routine of tidying up my comic pile and chirpily whistling the White Horses’ theme tune around the kitchen until mama said, ‘Go on then, you’re giving me a headache now. But be back for dinner, okay?’

  ‘Nighttime dinner?’ I called, grabbing my cardigan.

  ‘No! Daytime dinner! Two o’clock or else I will come looking for you and you will get embarrassed!’

  I did not get as far as Anita’s yard door before being mobbed by the rest of our now defunct gang. Karl and Kevin, Susan, Natasha, Nathan and Nicky, all crowded round me like the prodigal returned and I was touched. ‘Where yow been? On holidays, yeah? We cor get in the pigsty den, someone’s put a lock on it. How come yow don’t play out anymore?’ ‘Me nan’s come to visit,’ I told them, straining my neck to see if there was any sign of life in Anita’s back yard. The curtains both upstairs and downstairs were drawn and a half-eaten bowl of very old dog food sat on the step. ‘She’s dead old, so I’ve been cooking for her, washing her and that…I’ve got a lot of responsibilities,’ I continued, enjoying the open-mouthed wonder and admiration that encircled me. They all seemed so small, I felt like I was wading knee deep in a sea of midgets, Nathan was still in nappies for God’s sake. How did I ever think this motley collection of toddlers and bedwetters constituted a gang?

  It was Tracey who answered the door, still in her pink flannelette nightie with her finger on her lips. ‘Gorra be quiet! Me mom’s gorra headache!’ I was momentarily wrong-footed. Tracey was at least six inches taller than when I had last seen her – the day of the Peeing Competition – and the pinched, wan features had rearranged themselves into a compact heart-shaped face of such sweetness and sorrow that I felt like gathering her up from the kitchen lino and feeding her something hot.