Sugarbread

by Balli Kaur Jaswal

  “What? Why?” I asked. I gave God a glance. He looked quite pleased.

  “Because it’s not proper to go to the temple with your hair in a ponytail if you can tie it up neatly,” Ma said. But I had seen girls there with long ponytails. I’d even seen short-haired girls with their hair untied. They got dirty looks from the women and the more daring boys gave low whistles as they passed but God didn’t do anything. I protested to Ma and looked to God for support. His expression was blank again. Nothing.

  “Sit down, Pin,” Ma said. She sounded exasperated, as though she’d been asking me to sit down all day. She pulled the brush through my hair a few times first, making my hair a fluffy cloud. Then she opened the oil bottle and rubbed it in her hands. She ran her fingers through my hair, making it slick.

  “Hold still,” Ma said, and this meant that she was going to do something that would make me want to jump up and run away. I heard a small ripping noise before I felt the sharp pain on my scalp.

  “Ow! Why are you pulling my hair out?” I squealed, trying to wiggle away from Ma. But she had my hair in her hands and the more I resisted, the more it hurt.

  “I’m not,” Ma said grimly. In her voice, a struggle was evident. She drove the comb through my hair again. When it got stuck on my tangles, she lifted the comb and used it to pick at the knots until they came loose. “Stop moving,” she said in a raised voice.

  “It hurts!” I replied, my voice almost as loud. Ma’s hands dropped.

  “You do not talk to me like that,” she said in English. “Especially not in front of that person.”

  At first, I thought she was talking about God because she gave a quick nod in the direction of the wall. But then I noticed Nani-ji shuffling from the kitchen to the living room. It seemed that all she did was drift from one room to another to stir up trouble. And Ma had been in a good mood that morning as well. Usually, temple Sundays were the worst days. She was always anxious in the mornings, and she changed her outfit several times and snapped at me for not being ready on time even if she was the reason we were running late. On the bus, she always wrung her hands the same way she did that time I thought we were leaving the temple for good. Nani-ji lowered herself onto a chair that creaked under her weight. Ma separated my hair into three sections and began to plait tightly.

  “You should do this every morning,” Nani-ji said to Ma. “She shouldn’t be leaving the house with her hair all over the place. A Sikh girl should look respectable.”

  I scowled. Ma did not say anything. She tied the end of the plait with a rubber band. I scrambled onto my feet and looked in the mirror. My head glistened and my ears stuck out too much. I looked funny and I told Ma so in English.

  “Just be quiet,” Ma said under her breath. She wrapped my shawl around my neck, picked up her keys and motioned for Nani-ji to step out the door with us. On the bus ride to the temple, she only spoke when the bus conductor asked her where she was going. The people on the bus gave us odd looks for our sequins, our bright patterns, the decorations hanging from Nani-ji’s ears. I didn’t say much either, but I leant close to watch Ma. I couldn’t decide if what she said was meant for me, Nani-ji or God peering from the wall, his arms crossed over his chest as we left our home to go to his.

  • • •

  It was a long service. At the temple, God was not supposed to see our feet. Everybody sat cross-legged or with their feet tucked under their bottoms. The older ladies sat with their backs against the walls and pillars. I had to keep shifting. Every time I moved, Nani-ji looked up sharply from her prayer book. Ma also had a prayer book but she had trouble keeping up. She paid less attention to me and more to the barbed-wire letters, trying to read along with the mumbles of the rest of the crowd. I knew that she wasn’t good at reading Punjabi, but in front of Nani-ji, she had to at least pretend.

  “Ma,” I whispered. “I have to go to the toilet.”

  Ma shook her head. “The programme will be over soon,” she said. “Wait.” Nani-ji looked up at us again.

  I was bored. I thought about how I would draw the temple if I had a pencil and a piece of paper. Large ceiling fans stirring dust from the old carpets. High square windows with dark green shutters. A podium at the front, covered in gold sheets and sheltered by a white canopy. It was surrounded by flowers, coins and dollar notes strewn everywhere. The priest sat behind the podium and he waved something that looked like a wand over the large holy book. A bigger portrait of God, framed in heavy gold, sat on the wall. I had never paid much attention to it before, but now I focused on Him. Had He followed me from the flat, or was this just His picture? I searched His face for a long time until I remembered what I wanted to ask Ma. I tugged on her blouse.

  “I need a new kara,” I told her. I showed her my bangle. It did look small on my wrist now.

  Ma shook her head. “That one is fine,” she said. “You don’t need a new one yet.”

  “It’s too small!” I tried to twist it off my wrist to show her.

  “It’s supposed to be small so it doesn’t slip off while you’re at school,” Ma whispered back.

  Nani-ji leant over and told us to stop talking. “Have some respect,” she hissed. Ma drew away from me and lowered her head into the book again. All around me, I could hear the soft buzz of chatter. The women, in their clusters, were sharing gossip. The teenagers had formed their own corner from which giggles rose then subsided quickly. The men on the other side of the room talked in serious tones; they were so unlike Daddy with his goofy grins. On the rare occasion that he came to the temple with us, he did not talk to the other men just as Ma did not talk to the women. He was polite but he sat in his own corner and looked straight ahead. On the way home, he’d mention details I never noticed, like how many times the priest cleared his throat or a black crow that had spent the entire time crouched on the window sill, ready to swoop into the room.

  At the end of the service, we waited for the priests to come around to give us dheg. It was soft sweet dough fried in butter and oil. To receive it the proper way, we had to hold out our palms and turn them into small bowls. Ma searched her purse for a piece of tissue to blot the oil off my fingers. I wiped my hands and followed her into the dining hall. Nani-ji lingered behind us but she stopped to talk to the other old ladies, other Nanis and Dadis. I wondered what my Dadi-ji, Daddy’s mother, would have been like if she were alive. Would she be as grumpy? Would she warn me about Daddy the way Nani-ji had warned me about Ma? I grabbed Ma’s hand and pulled, hoping to lose Nani-ji in the crowd. Ma winced and shrugged me away. Then she glanced in both directions as if we were crossing a street, and pulled her sleeve up a bit to reveal her skin. It was a deep, screaming red, like the inside of a mouth.

  “Why is it so bad?” I asked.

  Pulling her sleeve back down, Ma replied, “It’s been like that since your Nani-ji moved in.” It wasn’t an explanation but it was all she said.

  We shuffled into the dining hall with the crowd. My bare feet slid slightly on a puddle of water. “Careful,” said a woman next to me. All around me, arms reached for steel plates and spoons and forks. People were talking excitedly, greeting their friends, pushing to get in the queue, rushing for open seats. Ma grimaced as the crowd jostled us along. When she grabbed my hand and pulled me towards her, I was grateful. At the front of the queue, I got the usual—one piece of roti and a scoop of yoghurt. I shook my head when the man serving dhal held out his ladle. “Are you sure?” he asked me, eyeing my colourless meal.

  “Yes,” I said and my scarf slipped off my head. I let it dangle on my shoulders until I reached an empty seat between Ma and Nani-ji. I quickly adjusted it before Nani-ji noticed. She always kept her scarf pinned to her hair, even if she was nowhere close to a temple.

  Nani-ji chewed her food slowly. Ma ate in small, quick bites and she was halfway through her food when she realised that I was waiting for her.

  “Oh,” she said, remembering. She unzipped her purse and pulled out a small pepper shaker. Looking a
round her first, she sprinkled the sugar onto my plate. “You’re getting too old for this, Pin,” she whispered. I pretended I didn’t hear her. I was sure I would never grow into liking temple food.

  “What are you doing?” Nani-ji asked, leaning over. Ma quickly shoved the pepper shaker back into her purse.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “What was that?” Nani-ji demanded to know. Why are you so nosy? I would have asked her if I had dared to.

  “Nothing,” Ma insisted.

  Nani-ji reached over and inspected my plate. The grains of sugar glittered. She looked back and forth between Ma and me. We both looked down at our plates.

  “Learn how to eat God’s food the way it is prepared for you,” she said sternly. “You are too big to have your mother putting sugar on everything to make you eat it.”

  “She doesn’t put sugar on everything,” I protested.

  Nani-ji looked at Ma. “You used to put sugar on everything,” she said. Ma cleared her throat.

  “I only put it on the food Pin doesn’t like to eat,” Ma said.

  “I’m not talking about Pin,” Nani-ji said. “I’m talking about Bilu. You put sugar in everything he ate.”

  Ma looked at Nani-ji in shock. I was surprised too—who was Bilu?

  Then Nani-ji went back to eating, but Ma’s hands were caught in mid-air. When Nani-ji was finished with her meal, she turned to Ma. “What? You think I didn’t know you used to do that? No wonder he was always looking for you when you weren’t there.”

  Ma didn’t say a word. She adjusted her scarf again, this time so it fell over the side of her face, concealing it from view. She finished her meal quickly and I did the same, stuffing the sweetened roti into my mouth, scooping up the yoghurt until there was nothing left on the plate. It hardly tasted like anything. We didn’t stay for tea. Ma pulled me out of the door with Nani-ji trailing behind. She seemed to want to get out of the temple as quickly as possible.

  “What was Nani-ji talking about?” I asked Ma as we searched the piles of shoes outside for my sandals. I found them and squatted on the floor to pull on the straps. When I stood up, Ma had disappeared. I spotted her talking to a man sitting near the entrance on a sheet. He had a spread of karas—gold, silver, thick and thin. I recognised him as the man who had sold Ma all of the pictures of God for our flat. Ma handed him some money and came back to the shoe rack with a plastic bag.

  “Here,” she said cheerily. “This is for you.” She handed me a thin but slightly bigger kara, one that I could easily slip on and off whenever I wanted to. “I’ll ask your Daddy to saw off the other one when we get home, okay?” Her voice was strangely high-pitched and her smile looked like it was hurting her face.

  “Thanks, Ma!” I said. It slipped over the other kara as I put it on.

  Nani-ji trudged out from the dining hall and joined us to look for her shoes. Ma and I stepped back and watched her. Both of us could see her brown sandals but neither of us offered to help. We just watched.

  • • •

  At home, Ma entered her room and did not emerge until evening. I had planned on cornering her in the kitchen, but then she drifted from room to room like a ghost and it was hard to make eye contact with her, let alone have her listen to me. I wanted to ask her who Bilu was, why Nani-ji had said what she said, why she was suddenly so unhappy. The list of questions went on and on. I could not stop thinking about them; they floated into my mind like Daddy’s lottery numbers on a rare day when I felt confident we would win.

  We had left the kitchen windows open all afternoon. “Thank goodness it did not rain,” I said, following Ma into the kitchen. “Or everything would be soaking wet. It started raining earlier this year.” She cast me a sideways glance and began rummaging through the fridge. There was nothing in there that satisfied her. She threw the door shut and walked over to the window. The songs of remaining songbirds from that week’s contest trailed into our flat like a fine mist. “I think it sounds peaceful,” I volunteered. My mouth was dry. Questions screamed inside my head but somehow, I could not force them out.

  “Can you hear the individual birds?” Ma asked me. “Or is it just one loud noise to you?”

  “I…I guess it’s just one loud noise. But there are fewer now so I think it’s easier to tell which song belongs to each bird,” I said. She sounded so matter-of-fact, like this was what she had been contemplating all afternoon in her room.

  “Listen carefully,” Ma said. She leant closer out of the window. “Come here and listen.”

  I obeyed. Both of us strained to hear the calls of the birds in their wooden cages. Sometimes I thought I could follow the tune of just one bird but then another song intersected it and I wasn’t sure which I was listening to.

  “Everything overlaps in this city,” Ma said. “Do you see that? Everything merges together.” I did see it. Concrete pavements over grass, flats over hawker centres, Malay food over Indian food over Chinese food over McDonald’s. Leaves pointing towards the sky in every possible shade of green—jade; emerald; a deep sea green; a sickly yellowish-green. Beneath them, spotted branches spread in crooked lines across the sky. Behind them, buildings. Underneath those, the MRT snaked across the city. A city; an island; a state; a country. Everything overlapping.

  “The trick, Pin, is to be able to see everything on its own,” Daddy had always said when I told him I was lousy at my drawing assignments in school. “Just think about what you’re drawing one bit at a time and you’ll get it.” It sounded like Ma was trying to tell me the same thing but she was struggling to find the words.

  “Who was Bilu?” I asked her.

  Ma looked out of the window again. She asked me to listen to the birds again. I listened. I stared past Ma’s shoulders at the trees, slowly dissolving into dusk. As the sun began to set, the buildings and the trees would become bare frames. I strained to listen to the birds until it seemed like there was only one. Then I heard scattered applause. The winning songbird had been chosen.

  Ma left the window and pulled out a chair in the corner of the kitchen. She began to speak when I went to sit with her. “Bilu was my younger brother and I loved him more than anything in the world. He died when I was fifteen.”

  4

  1967

  FROM FAR AWAY, it resembles a house. It has a roof and a fence and gaping windows and a door that swings on its hinges at the slightest breeze. Up close, it is a series of angles and shadows, of uneven shades of white paint and a rusted tin roof that threatens to slide off. If you listen to it from any distance, you will hear three things: the deafening drumming of rain, the uncomfortable creak of floorboards, and voices from the neighbours that filter in through the rips in the mosquito nets of the windows.

  This is where Jini lives. She is twelve years old.

  It is a hot day. Beads of sweat roll down the back of her neck as she walks down the road. A man selling sweets and nuts in paper cups wobbles by on his bicycle, calling out his price. Two stray dogs with speckled fur and broad grins circle each other, their tails swaying. Her mother has given her a list of things to buy for dinner and has instructed Jini to bargain. “We cannot afford everything. If you can get Shop Uncle to give us half a dozen eggs for the price of three, do it. Tell him we’ll pay him back. We’re not going anywhere.”

  Jini finds haggling for eggs embarrassing. Every week, she stands among the housewives and argues with Shop Uncle. He speaks so rapidly that she doesn’t know what she is agreeing to pay most of the time. He can be nice sometimes, when business is good and there are several wives in the shop at the same time, babies propped on their hips and toddlers winding around their ankles. If the shop is empty, she is less likely to get a bargain. Just last week, he chased her out for demanding too much. “You think this is a free shop?” he barked at her once. “Indians always like that. Want everything for free.” She ran out of the shop without half of the groceries her mother had asked her to buy.

  Jini has not been allowed to buy groceries for
two weeks, but she begged to be let out of the house all week, to be able to do something, and this morning, her mother finally relented. School is closed for the holidays now and Jini is bored. Some of her girlfriends from school live in her neighbourhood but her mother has instructed her not to talk to too many Punjabis nowadays. She’s afraid that Jini will accidentally reveal that her father has been gone for weeks. Jini doesn’t have the heart to tell her mother that everyone already knows.

  As she carefully crosses the road, Jini thinks she hears a familiar voice but it might just be her imagination. On this stretch of road, the sound of birds calling to each other and the screeching of tyres are like human voices. Then she hears it again.

  “Big Sister!” She spins around. It is six-year-old Bilu, jumping and waving from the other side of the road.

  “Stay right there!” she shouts, holding up her hands. “You move, I’ll kill you.” Her brother’s eyes get big, then he suddenly sits down in the middle of the pavement, folding his legs neatly under his bottom. This makes Jini laugh as she dashes back across the road but she quickly grows cross again.

  “Does Mother know you’re out here?” she asks. He nods. She gives him a stern shake, a tug at his collar and he quickly changes his answer.

  “No-no-no-no-no-no-no,” he says. A man wearing a pair of paint-streaked shorts passes and gives Bilu a sideways glance.

  “Okay, then go home.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. Bilu, go home.” She points in the direction of their slanted house.

  “No-no-no-no-no-no-no!” he shrieks. The man stops in his tracks and stares at Bilu, startled.

  “Leave us alone,” Jini says to him. She is not usually this rude to her elders but this man is giving her a look she has seen before. With her eyes, he is asking her, what is wrong with your brother? If she knew, she would give an answer to each and every person who has given her that look. The best she can come up with is the reply her mother gives women at the temple: “He’s not right.” This gets them plenty of pity and clicks of the tongue. Nobody wants the burden of a child or a sibling who is not right. It is when they continue to ask questions that Jini grows impatient and wants to tell them all to mind their own business. Why do they care if he was fed properly as a baby or what will be done with him when he grows older and becomes more difficult to control? Her mother turns pale at such questions; Jini turns red.