No Trespassing

by Brinda S Narayan

  ‘She wants to play, Vedika. You can leave her here and fetch her later.’

  ‘No,’ I said, rising from my seat. ‘She has to eat dinner, she needs to come home.’

  ‘I am not hungry, please Ma.’ Joanne must have seen the beseeching look in her eyes and wondered at my firmness. This was exactly the sort of mother I had sworn not to become.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘only ten minutes.’ I seated myself again on the cane chair and turned to Michael. ‘What do you plan to play?’

  ‘Dark room,’ Mike said, grinning. Dark room? This was worse than I thought. And why was Mike grinning as he said that?

  ‘Not dark room,’ I said. ‘Rhea’s afraid of the dark.’ The skies had already darkened and I couldn’t think of Rhea romping around a pitch-black space with those boys.

  ‘Mama, I want to play dark room, please.’

  ‘We can drop her off later,’ Joanne said. ‘I’m going to be home, she’ll be fine.’

  ‘Please, Mama, please, let me play.’ Her voice, piping in with a desperate plea, brought back memories of my own childhood appeals: ‘Please Ma, I want to play, not read.’

  ‘We’ll drop her.’ Joanne’s voice tautened with mild exasperation.

  ‘No, Joanne, I’ll wait here.’ I turned to Rhea.’Fine, you can play for ten minutes, but there has to be a night light on. And the door has to be open, not locked.’ Despite my promises to myself, why did I sound like my controlling mother?

  Joanne was too gracious to show her displeasure. But even she seemed chafed as I lingered on her porch, after our conversation had petered out. What choice did I have? I couldn’t abandon another child inside the maws of an unknown monster. As velvety shadows crept over the porch and the moon flashed between thickening clouds, my eyes constantly flitted towards the upstairs section where the kids scampered about. Mosquitos started alighting on my feet and bare arms, but the stinging insects seemed to pierce Joanne’s white skin more keenly. As she scratched and slapped, she asked, in an exasperated tone, if I wanted to move to the living room for just a bit. She seemed to emphasise the ‘just a bit’ as if I would only heed unsubtle messages. The upstairs window was still ominously dark. I said, ‘sure.’

  Joanne’s living room wasn’t done up in the typical Fantasia manner. It was almost like the person who had directed the décor had an Indian middle-class sensibility. For instance, the glass show-case was stuffed with pink-faced dolls wearing bell-shaped foam gowns studded with silver beads. The center table and the sofas were covered by circular and rectangular swatches of crochet. Oil paintings on the wall were brightly-hued, depicting the kind of realistic landscapes that featured on insurance company calendars. There was something unconsciously kitschy about the room, something that reminded me of small-town homes inhabited by Bengali relatives. It almost felt like Subbu’s mother, who resided in Chennai, must have guided the aesthetics.

  ‘Who designed this room?’ I asked.

  ‘I did,’ said Joanne, her voice throbbing with pride and jarring me again with the shocking sense that her Indiannness was not just a superficial veneer but went deeper than we thought. I knew Subbu worked as a consultant to medium-sized enterprises and I had always assumed his business was booming. How else could they afford the Fantasia lifestyle? But suddenly this room and its décor made it seem like they were pretenders, just like Manas and I were: people who lived elitist lives but lacked real wealth. At what point would the world discover how tenuous this was?

  Her mantelpiece held an assortment of family photographs, some of Joel and Michael in younger, plumper forms; of a time when Joel’s demeanour held an infantile innocence that no longer featured on his face. By them, on a small plastic stand, rested a black-and-white picture of two middle-aged white people. The stocky man had a prominent double chin, while the woman had the same magnificent shock of curls that Joanne possessed. Joanne’s parents, no doubt. But there was something about that picture that seemed to evoke a visceral fear and shock in me, so much so that as I lifted it up to to hold it closer, it fell from my arms and the glass on the front cracked slightly as it hit the floor.

  The picture still lay on the marble when Joel appeared on the dimly lit landing that was visible from the living space, and flashed his metallic teeth. ‘Are you done?’ asked Joanne, turning her face to him. ‘I think auntie needs to go home.’

  A few seconds ago, I would have vociferously echoed Joanne’s words. After all, I had wanted nothing more than to take my daughter home. But something about that picture compelled me to momentarily shut out the images of Rhea in that dark room. ‘Do we really need to, Mom? We’re just starting to have so much fun. I came to get my Batman mask.’

  ‘You’ve cracked it,’ Joanne said, her voice irked and accusatory.

  ‘Where’s my mask?’ Joel said, his voice filled with vicious urgency. Why did he need that mask so desperately? What new mission was he embarking on?

  In a voice that wasn’t mine, I said, ‘You can have a few more minutes, Joel. Just a few more minutes.’ Something inside me was stalling our exit, some strangely curious force that propelled me to take a closer look at Joanne’s parents’ picture. Or at something else in that picture that was awakening the horror of my sometimes nightmares. Even as Joanne bent to pick it up, I wrested it away from her fingers and held it up to the muted living room light.

  ‘My mask?’ Joel said, and Joanne obediently slid a drawer open and handed over a black plastic mask to her son, whose grin widened fleetingly with an unnerving pleasure. For a second or two, I froze. Did I need to follow him? Or could I briefly linger over the image that was evoking those weird jitters? I watched Joel scramble back upstairs, and then turned towards whatever was visible in the picture behind the spidery crack. Joanne’s parents were holding hands, and looking grim, but there was nothing in their unsmiling faces or stocky frames that seemed particularly striking. They stood on a curved stony bridge that spanned a sunlit, watery expanse that shimmered like Joel’s teeth. ‘Where’s this?’ I asked, my fingers lightly tracing the cracked glass.

  ‘Give that to me,’ Joanne said, trying to grab it back with a fierce possessiveness. But I held on to it like a child with a new toy, tightly gripping it with my fingers. The cracked glass pierced my skin slightly, and a few dots of blood appeared on the surface.

  ‘Sorry it cracked,’ I said, ‘I can get it reframed.’

  Just then I heard the muffled scream I had been dreading. My daughter’s voice, sounding strangulated. I didn’t wait to seek Joanne’s permission, but promptly dashed up their stairs, my fist tightening around the picture. I was filled with remorse and fear. Why had I started obsessing about some foolish portrait when my daughter’s life was at stake? The upstairs was unlit. I fumbled frantically towards a door from which the sounds of a scuffle seemed to emerge. What were those boys doing to my little girl, my precious Rhea? I twisted the handle with my slightly bloodied fingers, but the barrier did not yield. It was locked from the inside. I banged the door. ‘JOEL, please open the door. Rhea, baby, I’m here. Mama’s here.’ As Mama wasn’t, when Sajan was locked into the generator room.

  Joanne had pounded up the stairs just then. I continued banging on the door. ‘Joanne, tell your son to open it. Why has he locked it?’

  In a distinctly steely voice, Joanne said: ‘Relax, Vedika. You’ve been so jittery all evening. These are kids playing as kids always do.’

  I didn’t need a lesson on what kids did or didn’t do. I could still hear muffled screams like some child’s voice was being suppressed.

  ‘Can’t you hear? They’re doing something to her. Can you get them to open the door?’ I pounded on the wooden surface with my free fist while my other hand absurdly clung to the picture.

  Just then, the inside bolt was slid open and the door suddenly gave way. Since I had been leaning my weight against it. I almost fell into the dark void. As I tottered briefly on the threshold and regained my balance, I could discern two silhouettes. My little kid on
the bed was being pummelled viciously by pillows, held by Michael. ‘Stop it,’ I said. ‘You’re hurting her.’ Just then, Joanne turned on a tubelight and the walls glowed bluish-white. It was their master bedroom, done up in the same over-decorated manner of their living room. But the prone form on the bed wasn’t Rhea, but Michael, whose muffled screams were surprisingly effeminate. The ruthless pummeler was Rhea, whose face was masked in black plastic.

  Joanne turned to me with a triumphant and slightly piteous expression, before turning back to the kids. ‘Mikey, you okay? Is she hurting you?’

  ‘Rhea, what are you doing? Stop it.’ I said, tugging her off the bed and holding her arm in a tight grip. When I ripped her mask off, I was unsettled by the rapture on her face. Had Rhea enjoyed inflicting those blows on Michael? What was happening to my child? And where was Joel? Wasn’t he the mastermind, turning my gentle daughter into a vicious creature I no longer recognised?

  Joel wasn’t anywhere to be seen. ‘Where’s Joel?’ My eyes roved all over their room, under the bed, behind the door, across the locked wardrobe. Joanne who seemed unbothered by her son’s absence or by their crazy game, seized the photograph from me. She held it behind her back, as if she were protecting it from my covetous grasp. I opened the toilet door and peered inside. I hurriedly tugged at the plastic shower curtain drawn across their tub, and the rod crashed to the floor. Why did everything in this house seem so fragile and why was I so clumsy? ‘Not there,’ I said, still gripping Rhea’s arm. ‘Where’s –’

  Just then I heard a soft murmur from inside their darkened wardrobe. I tugged at the door, and was led into a narrow wooden passageway. It was a walk-in wardrobe. Seated on a top shelf, with his legs splayed across a silken heap of Joanne’s kurtis and saris, Joel wore an uncharacteristically wide grin. At first all I could see were his teeth, his flashy metallic teeth. Then a thick red smudge on the upper lip, like a smear of blood. In one hand, a silver-framed, oval-shaped handheld mirror, in the other Joanne’s Body Shop red lipstick. To heighten the comic silliness of their game, he wore a paper party hat, topped with a red woollen ball.

  ‘What game is this?’ I asked. With his grin suddenly retreating into his steely face, Joel said: ‘Her idea.’

  ‘Why did you ask her to hit –’

  ‘They didn’t Mama, Mike was the Ventriloquist. I needed to hit him –’

  ‘Relax, Vedika, it’s a game.’ Joanne’s tone was scolding.

  The curtains billowed in the evening breeze. My daughter squirmed from my tight grip and sprang to the floor on all fours, like little Thambi. ‘I’m Catwoman,’ she said. Outside the bedroom window, there was an overgrown, thorny creeper. I sucked at the blood dotting my finger and asked, ‘What plant is that?’

  ‘Bougainvillea,’ Joanne said.

  ‘Doesn’t have any flowers?’

  ‘Our gardener prunes it,’ she said. ‘He leaves the thorns,’ Joel added, grinning again, baring his spiky teeth. I shivered, thinking about the thorn in Thambi’s neck.

  ‘There was a thorn in our cat’s –’

  Just then Joanne seemed to have had enough. As if affixing an emphatic full-stop to our conversation, she said, ‘Vedika, Joel needs to get to his homework.’

  On the way home, Rhea said: ‘Liked it so much, can I play with them again –’

  ‘But they made you hit Michael. Why did --?’

  ‘Ma, it was a game –’

  ‘But that was violent Rhea, you can’t hit anyone like –’

  ‘We were playing the same game that Sajan played. First I beat up Clayface, then the Ventriloquist. Then --’

  ‘Did Joel say that?’

  She turned to me with the excited glee she’d displayed earlier: ‘Next thing was going to be the last –’

  ‘Last what?’ My hand holding Rhea’s trusting fist turned clammy. Was Joel going to repeat what he did to Sajan? Was that bloody lipstick smudge a warning?

  ‘Last villain. But you came, so we didn’t –’ If I had waited for a few more seconds, would Rhea have known something significant? But would that wait have also turned fatal, as it did with my son?

  ‘I can play with them again, Ma.’

  ‘No, you won’t Rhea. You’re not to play with those boys again. Hear me?’

  My daughter stayed obstinately and chillingly quiet.

  That night, the nightmare returned, more fiercely than usual. And three of us, Mira, the fat boy and me were cavorting over the bridge that Joanne’s parents stood on. As I twisted about the sheets, I opened my startled eyes when I heard a sound in the room. There was a silhouette there, of a little girl, Mira, calling out to me with a bloodcurdling cry. I screamed but the sound stayed frozen inside my parched throat. Just then Manas turned on the bedside lamp, and I realised it wasn’t Mira, but Rhea. My daughter was crying silently, not screaming. ‘What happened baby?’ I said, shaking off the dream.

  ‘I’m scared Mama, I want to sleep here.’

  I flung my arms out to cuddle her, as Manas lifted her onto the bed and tucked her between us. For the rest of that night, I watched shadows scuttle across the walls as I wondered again about Rhea’s time with those boys. Had they frightened her? Why did she want to play with them again?

  The next week when Rhea was at school, I dropped in at Asma’s villa, where I was rebuffed strongly—that too from the living room window. ‘I’m sorry, I’m really busy now,’ she said, from behind the sheer curtain, watching me walk down her pebbled pathway.

  ‘Can I meet you some other time, then?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll call you,’ she said, her tone chillier than Joanne’s, the lacy curtain almost a veil. Perhaps, my senses were still infused with what had transpired that evening, because as I exited Asma’s garden, I was sure I smelt something burning.

  FIFTEEN

  ASMA WASN’T WILLING TO meet me and Joanne wasn’t willing to gossip, but surely Manjushri, Fantasia’s biggest rumour-monger, would agree to spending tea-time together? She, more than all the others, would have the lowdown on the Villa 37 people.

  The next week, Manjushri and I spent an afternoon on our back porch. At first, I engaged in the usual chit-chat, to deflect her suspicions.

  ‘Asma’s so cagey, isn’t she? Is her husband just like her?’

  ‘You bet. Tushar’s from one of those old legal families. Heard his father used to be a high-court judge somewhere. He’s a hot-shot lawyer, but hardly talks to the rest of us.’

  ‘But Asma? Is she from some aristocratic family?’

  ‘Asma’s a very private person, don’t think anyone knows her well.’

  ‘Joanne’s a lot friendlier, don’t you think? I met her the other day, and she seems really worried about Joel, her son,’

  ‘Such a handsome boy, even I would be worried.’

  ‘But is he like other kids?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I just feel he’s a bit strange.’

  ‘In what way?’ Manjushri’s eyes had narrowed. I didn’t want to reveal too much, not yet.

  ‘I don’t know, something about his expression and behaviour. He and Suhel, I’ve seen them –’ Then I paused. I didn’t know Manjushri well enough to reveal my suspicions. Not yet, at least. I tried to unobtrusively shift topics, as I poured myself a fifth cup of tea. ‘Damini’s weird isn’t she? Funny thing is, I’ve never seen her husband or son?’

  ‘Now that you mention it, even I haven’t. Heard the husband’s always travelling. Do you think they’re separated?’

  ‘Maybe, but why would she hide it? She’s not conventional like other women. I like her, she really helped me after Sajan’s...’

  ‘She connects with people, doesn’t have her nose in the air, like Raj or Tushar.’ Manjushri was not the type to linger on tragedy, though she had, of course, been solicitous around the time of Sajan’s passing.

  ‘Does Raj keep bleating about Kusro, still?’ I switched subjects, too.

  ‘Raj might have built this place himself, he’s that at
tached to it. But don’t you think Raj and Hansika are so ill-matched? Someone like Kalpana would have been perfect for Raj. An alpha-male and alpha-female. Hansika’s always falling apart, and Vicky, well, he has no voice in that marriage.’

  ‘At least, they’ll stay married, unlike Jacob and Simi...’

  ‘Jacob’s really charming, but Simi’s so nervy all the time. She seems insecure, maybe being the fourth wife and all.’

  ‘Jacob’s charming to pretty women,’ I said.

  Manjushri blushed, as if I had paid her a personal compliment. ‘Heard Simi wants to get preg, too. They already have Ishan, but he’s Simi’s stepson. So I guess Simi wants her own kid.’

  Manjushri confided that she and Krish were trying for a baby. In our immaculate surroundings, their resolve to build a family had only grown stronger. ‘We have everything else, all we need are kids to fill the picture frames.’ I thought of our own mantelpiece that used to be filled with pictures of Sajan and Rhea, of the times before the void had taken over. Recently, Manas had even started hinting that we should try for a third child, but I absolutely wasn’t ready yet. Not till I had reached some kind of closure about the loss of my first. Still, I empathised with Manjushri’s trials. After reassuring her about the chances, I got to the point.

  ‘Do you know anything about the Villa 37 residents? I’ve hardly seen them around. Have you?’

  Predictably, Manjushri said she had bumped into them. ‘They had a baby soon after moving to Fantasia, and they also have an older child in kindergarten. Though the woman doesn’t work, she never interacts with us. I’ve seen the older kid, alone at the park, playing by himself in the sandpit, and assumed the mother would step out someday, with her baby in a pram, but she never does. When our Utopia kids tried to sell them raffle tickets, they were rudely turned away.’

  Manjushri’s tidings about Villa 37 stirred new questions: was the family just unfriendly or were they concealing something?