Funny Boy

by Selvadurai, Shyam

  “Aha, me hearties!” the groom cried on seeing us. She opened her hands expansively. “Bring me my fair maiden, for I must be off to my castle before the sun setest.”

  We looked at the groom, aghast at the change in her behaviour. She sauntered towards us, then stopped in front of me, winked expansively and, with her hand under my chin, tilted back my head.

  “Ahh!” she exclaimed. “A bonny lass, a bonny lass indeed.”

  “Stop it!” I cried, and slapped her hand. “The groom is not supposed to make a noise.”

  “Why not?” Her Fatness replied angrily, dropping her hearty voice and accent. “Why can’t the groom make a noise?”

  “Because.”

  “Because of what?”

  “Because the game is called bride-bride, not groom-groom.”

  Her Fatness seized her moustache and flung it to the ground dramatically. “Well I don’t want to be the groom any more. I want to be the bride.”

  We stared at her in disbelief, amazed by her impudent challenge to my position.

  “You can’t,” I finally said.

  “Why not?” Her Fatness demanded. “Why should you always be the bride? Why can’t someone else have a chance too?”

  “Because …” Sonali said, joining in. “Because Arjie is the bestest bride of all.”

  “But he’s not even a girl,” Her Fatness said, closing in on the lameness of Sonali’s argument. “A bride is a girl, not a boy.” She looked around at the other cousins and then at me. “A boy cannot be the bride,” she said with deep conviction. “A girl must be the bride.”

  I stared at her, defenceless in the face of her logic.

  Fortunately, Sonali, loyal to me as always, came to my rescue. She stepped in between us and said to Her Fatness, “If you can’t play properly, go away. We don’t need you.”

  “Yes!” Lakshmi, another of my supporters, cried.

  The other cousins, emboldened by Sonali’s fearlessness, murmured in agreement.

  Her Fatness looked at all of us for a moment and then her gaze rested on me.

  “You’re a pansy,” she said, her lips curling in disgust.

  We looked at her blankly.

  “A faggot,” she said, her voice rising against our uncomprehending stares.

  “A sissy!” she shouted in desperation.

  It was clear by this time that these were insults.

  “Give me that jacket,” Sonali said. She stepped up to Her Fatness and began to pull at it. “We don’t like you any more.”

  “Yes!” Lakshmi cried. “Go away you fatty-boom-boom!”

  This was an insult we all understood, and we burst out laughing. Someone even began to chant, “Hey fatty-boom-boom. Hey fatty-boom-boom.”

  Her Fatness pulled off her coat and trousers. “I hate you all,” she cried. “I wish you were all dead.” She flung the groom’s clothes on the ground, stalked out of the back garden, and went around the side of the house.

  We returned to our bridal preparations, chuckling to ourselves over the new nickname we had found for our cousin.

  When the bride was finally dressed, Lakshmi, the maid of honour, went out of Janaki’s room to make sure that everything was in place. Then she gave the signal and the priest and choirboys began to sing, with a certain want of harmony and correct lyrics, “The voice that breathed oh Eeeden, the first and glorious day.…” Solemnly, I made my way down the steps towards the altar that had been set up at one end of the back garden. When I reached the altar, however, I heard the kitchen door open. I turned to see Her Fatness with Kanthi Aunty. The discordant singing died out.

  Kanthi Aunty’s benevolent smile had completely disappeared and her eyes were narrowed with anger.

  “Who’s calling my daughter fatty?” Kanthi Aunty said. She came to the edge of the porch.

  We stared at her, no one daring to own up.

  Her gaze fell on me and her eyes widened for a moment. Then a smile spread across her face.

  “What’s this?” she said, the honey seeping back into her voice. She came down a few steps and crooked her finger at me. I looked down at my feet and refused to go to her.

  “Come here, come here,” she said.

  Unable to disobey her command any longer, I went to her. She looked me up and down for a moment, and then gingerly, as if she were examining raw meat at the market, turned me around.

  “What’s this you’re playing?” she asked.

  “It’s bride-bride, Aunty,” Sonali said.

  “Bride-bride,” she murmured.

  Her hand closed on my arm in a tight grip.

  “Come with me,” she said.

  I resisted, but her grip tightened, her nails digging into my elbow. She pulled me up the porch steps and towards the kitchen door.

  “No,” I cried. “No, I don’t want to.”

  Something about the look in her eyes terrified me so much I did the unthinkable and I hit out at her. This made her hold my arm even more firmly. She dragged me through the kitchen, past Janaki, who looked up, curious, and into the corridor and towards the drawing room. I felt a heaviness begin to build in my stomach. Instinctively I knew that Kanthi Aunty had something terrible in mind.

  As we entered the drawing room, Kanthi Aunty cried out, her voice brimming over with laughter, “See what I found!”

  The other aunts and uncles looked up from their papers or bestirred themselves from their sleep. They gazed at me in amazement as if I had suddenly made myself visible, like a spirit. I glanced at them and then at Amma’s face. Seeing her expression, I felt my dread deepen. I lowered my eyes. The sari suddenly felt suffocating around my body, and the hairpins, which held the veil in place, pricked at my scalp.

  Then the silence was broken by the booming laugh of Cyril Uncle, Kanthi Aunty’s husband. As if she had been hit, Amma swung around in his direction. The other aunts and uncles began to laugh too, and I watched as Amma looked from one to the other like a trapped animal. Her gaze finally came to rest on my father and for the first time I noticed that he was the only one not laughing. Seeing the way he kept his eyes fixed on his paper, I felt the heaviness in my stomach begin to push its way up my throat.

  “Ey, Chelva,” Cyril Uncle cried out jovially to my father, “looks like you have a funny one here.”

  My father pretended he had not heard and, with an inclination of his head, indicated to Amma to get rid of me.

  She waved her hand in my direction and I picked up the edges of my veil and fled to the back of the house.

  That evening, on the way home, both my parents kept their eyes averted from me. Amma glanced at my father occasionally, but he refused to meet her gaze. Sonali, sensing my unease, held my hand tightly in hers.

  Later, I heard my parents fighting in their room.

  “How long has this been going on?” my father demanded.

  “I don’t know,” Amma cried defensively. “It was as new to me as it was to you.”

  “You should have known. You should have kept an eye on him.”

  “What should I have done? Stood over him while he was playing?”

  “If he turns out funny like that Rankotwera boy, if he turns out to be the laughing-stock of Colombo, it’ll be your fault,” my father said in a tone of finality. “You always spoil him and encourage all his nonsense.”

  “What do I encourage?” Amma demanded.

  “You are the one who allows him to come in here while you’re dressing and play with your jewellery.”

  Amma was silent in the face of the truth.

  Of the three of us, I alone was allowed to enter Amma’s bedroom and watch her get dressed for special occasions. It was an experience I considered almost religious, for, even though I adored the goddesses of the local cinema, Amma was the final statement in female beauty for me.

  When I knew Amma was getting dressed for a special occasion, I always positioned myself outside her door. Once she had put on her underskirt and blouse, she would ring for our servant, Anula, to bring
her sari, and then, while taking it from her, hold the door open so I could go in as well. Entering that room was, for me, a greater boon than that granted by any god to a mortal. There were two reasons for this. The first was the jewellery box which lay open on the dressing table. With a joy akin to ecstasy, I would lean over and gaze inside, the faint smell of perfume rising out of the box each time I picked up a piece of jewellery and held it against my nose or ears or throat. The second was the pleasure of watching Amma drape her sari, watching her shake open the yards of material, which, like a Chinese banner caught by the wind, would linger in the air for a moment before drifting gently to the floor; watching her pick up one end of it, tuck it into the waistband of her skirt, make the pleats, and then with a flick of her wrists invert the pleats and tuck them into her waistband; and finally watching her drape the palu across her breasts and pin it into place with a brooch.

  When Amma was finished, she would check to make sure that the back of the sari had not risen up with the pinning of the palu, then move back and look at herself in the mirror. Standing next to her or seated on the edge of the bed, I, too, would look at her reflection in the mirror, and, with the contented sigh of an artist who has finally captured the exact effect he wants, I would say, “You should have been a film star, Amma.”

  “A film star?” she would cry and lightly smack the side my head. “What kind of a low-class-type person do you think I am?”

  One day, about a week after the incident at my grandparents’, I positioned myself outside my parents’ bedroom door. When Anula arrived with the sari, Amma took it and quickly shut the door. I waited patiently, thinking Amma had not yet put on her blouse and skirt, but the door never opened. Finally, perplexed that Amma had forgotten, I knocked timidly on the door. She did not answer, but I could hear her moving around inside. I knocked a little louder and called out “Amma” through the keyhole. Still no response, and I was about to call her name again when she replied gruffly, “Go away. Can’t you see I am busy?”

  I stared disbelievingly at the door. Inside I could hear the rustle of the sari as it brushed along the floor. I lifted my hand to knock again when suddenly I remembered the quarrel I had heard on the night of that last spend-the-day. My hand fell limply by my side.

  I crept away quietly to my bedroom, sat down on the edge of my bed, and stared at my feet for a long time. It was clear to me that I had done something wrong, but what it was I couldn’t comprehend. I thought of what my father had said about turning out “funny.” The word “funny” as I understood it meant either humorous or strange, as in the expression, “that’s funny.” Neither of these fitted the sense in which my father had used the word, for there had been a hint of disgust in his tone.

  Later, Amma came out of her room and called Anula to give her instructions for the evening. As I listened to the sound of her voice, I realized that something had changed forever between us.

  A little while after my parents had left for their dinner party, Sonali came looking for me. Seeing my downcast expression, she sat next to me, and, though unaware of anything that had passed, slipped her hand in mine. I pushed it away roughly, afraid that if I let her squeeze my hand I would start to cry.

  The next morning Amma and I were like two people who had had a terrible fight the night before. I found it hard to look her in the eye and she seemed in an unusually gay mood.

  The following spend-the-day, when Amma came to awaken us, I was already seated in bed and folding my bride-bride sari. Something in her expression, however, made me hurriedly return the sari to the bag.

  “What’s that?” she said, coming towards me, her hand outstretched. After a moment I gave her the bag. She glanced at its contents briefly. “Get up, it’s spend-the-day,” she said. Then, with the bag in her hand, she went to the window and looked out into the driveway. The seriousness of her expression, as if I had done something so awful that even the usual punishment of a caning would not suffice, frightened me.

  I was brushing my teeth after breakfast when Anula came to the bathroom door, peered inside, and said with a sort of grim pleasure, “Missie wants to talk to you in her room.” Seeing the alarm in my face, she nodded and said sagely, “Up to some kind of mischief as usual. Good-for-nothing child.”

  My brother, Diggy, was standing in the doorway of our parents’ room, one foot scratching impatiently against the other. Amma was putting on her lipstick. My father had already gone for his Sunday squash game, and, as usual, she would pick him up after she had dropped us off at our grandparents’.

  Amma looked up from the mirror, saw me, and indicated with her tube of lipstick for both of us to come inside and sit down on the edge of the bed. Diggy gave me a baleful look, as if it was my fault that Amma was taking such a long time to get ready. He followed me into the room, his slippers dragging along the floor.

  Finally Amma closed her lipstick, pressed her lips together to even out the colour, then turned to us.

  “Okay, mister,” she said to Diggy, “I am going to tell you something and this is an order.”

  We watched her carefully.

  “I want you to include your younger brother on your cricket team.”

  Diggy and I looked at her in shocked silence, then he cried, “Ah! Come on, Amma!”

  And I, too, cried out, “I don’t want to play with them. I hate cricket!”

  “I don’t care what you want,” Amma said. “It’s good for you.”

  “Arjie’s useless,” Diggy said. “We’ll never win if he’s on our team.”

  Amma held up her hand to silence us. “That’s an order,” she said.

  “Why?” I asked, ignoring her gesture. “Why do I have to play with the boys?”

  “Why?” Amma said. “Because the sky is so high and pigs can’t fly, that’s why.”

  “Please, Amma! Please!” I held out my arms to her.

  Amma turned away quickly, picked up her handbag from the dressing table, and said, almost to herself, “If the child turns out wrong, it’s the mother they always blame, never the father.” She clicked the handbag shut.

  I put my head in my hands and began to cry. “Please, Amma, please,” I said through my sobs.

  She continued to face the window.

  I flung myself on the bed with a wail of anguish. I waited for her to come to me as she always did when I cried, waited for her to take me in her arms, rest my head against her breasts, and say in her special voice, “What’s this, now? Who’s the little man who’s crying?”

  But she didn’t heed my weeping any more than she had heeded my cries when I knocked on her door.

  Finally I stopped crying and rolled over on my back. Diggy had left the room. Amma turned to me, now that I had become quiet, and said cheerfully, “You’ll have a good time, just wait and see.”

  “Why can’t I play with the girls?” I replied.

  “You can’t, that’s all.”

  “But why?”

  She shifted uneasily.

  “You’re a big boy now. And big boys must play with other boys.”

  “That’s stupid.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Life is full of stupid things and sometimes we just have to do them.”

  “I won’t,” I said defiantly. “I won’t play with the boys.”

  Her face reddened with anger. She reached down, caught me by the shoulders, and shook me hard. Then she turned away and ran her hand through her hair. I watched her, gloating. I had broken her cheerful façade, forced her to show how much it pained her to do what she was doing, how little she actually believed in the justness of her actions.

  After a moment she turned back to me and said in an almost pleading tone, “You’ll have a good time.”

  I looked at her and said, “No I won’t.”

  Her back straightened. She crossed to the door and stopped. Without looking at me she said, stiffly, “The car leaves in five minutes. If you’re not in it by then, watch out.”

  I lay back on the bed and gaze
d at the mosquito net swinging gently in the breeze. In my mind’s eye, I saw the day that stretched ahead of me. At the thought of having to waste the most precious day of the month in that field in front of my grandparents’ house, the hot sun beating on my head, the perspiration running down the sides of my face, I felt a sense of despair begin to take hold of me. The picture of what would take place in the back garden became clear. I saw Her Fatness seizing my place as leader of the girls, claiming for herself the rituals I had so carefully invented and planned. I saw her standing in front of Janaki’s mirror as the other girls fixed her hair, pinned her veil, and draped her sari. The thought was terrible. Something had to be done. I could not give up that easily, could not let Her Fatness, whose sneaking to Kanthi Aunty had forced me into the position I was now in, so easily take my place. But what could I do?

  As if in answer, an object which rested just at the periphery of my vision claimed my attention. I turned my head slightly and saw my sling-bag. Then a thought came to me. I reached out, picked up the bag, and hugged it close to my chest. Without the sari in that bag, it was impossible for the girls to play bride-bride. I thought of Her Fatness with triumph. What would she drape around her body? A bedsheet like the bridesmaids? No! Without me and my sari she would not be able to play bride-bride properly.

  There was, I realized, an obstacle that had to be overcome first. I would have to get out of playing cricket. Amma had laid down an order and I knew Diggy well enough to know that, in spite of all his boldness, he would never dare to disobey an order from Amma.

  I heard the car start up, and its sound reminded me of another problem that I had not considered. How was I going to smuggle the sari into the car? Amma would be waiting in the car for me, and if I arrived with the sling-bag she would make me take it back. I could not slip it in without her noticing. I sat still, listening to the whir of the engine at counterpoint to the clatter of Anula clearing the breakfast table, and suddenly a plan revealed itself to me.