Tell It to the Trees

by Anita Rau Badami

  I could see the roof of the car glinting in the sun, beside our mailbox painted a bright green by Varsha and Hemant. They change the colour every year depending on Varsha’s current colour obsession. Hemant goes along with whatever she decrees. It bothers me sometimes, how much control my stepdaughter has over my son. Hemant told me once that he belonged to his sister because she saw him first. I don’t know what he meant, though he’s an imaginative little boy, given to strange thoughts. Besides, I am an only child, so I don’t really understand the pacts that siblings make, their secret world which excludes all adults.

  I suppose I should be pleased that Varsha is so close to him. I am fond of her—but I am not entirely comfortable in her presence. She doesn’t resent me, I don’t think she ever has, and she’s ever eager to please. But she always seems to be watching me—I can feel those large black eyes all the time, even when she isn’t in the same room. When she was younger she would be glued to me, and on weekends, when she was home, I couldn’t leave the house for even a moment without her following me or calling for me.

  “Mama?” she used to shout, her voice panicky. “Mama? Where are you? Where are you?”

  And what a fuss she would create over going to school! “Don’t want to go today,” she whined every morning. Or: “I feel sick.” She would vomit out her cereal to prove she was ill. At school, her teachers said she fidgeted and fought with other children, tilted her chair back so far that it crashed over, and then she would cry that she had a headache from the fall, was feeling dizzy, needed to go home. The teachers complained to me—or anyway they complained to Vikram—but I was as helpless as they were—she was not my child and I had little idea how to handle her. But when I asked Vikram what to do about her, he said in that cold, frightening voice he uses with me, “You are her mother, you have to deal with it. That’s why you are here.”

  She will grow out of it, I told myself, trying hard to be a mother to the girl whose strange ways I could not understand. Her mother died, she is so young, she must still be feeling so insecure about it—as if that explained everything. And perhaps it did. I remembered how alone I had felt when my mother died. And how glad I had felt to have my Madhu Kaki. Perhaps the teachers thought so too. I think they worked hard to be kind to Varsha even though she must have tried their patience as thoroughly as she did mine. If I scolded her, she would complain to her father, who would in turn shout at me for ill-treating her. Or he would smack her instead, depending on his mood.

  Then one day I had had all that I could take from her and with some of my old spirit told her firmly that if she did not stop her nonsense immediately, I would go away. “You will not find me waiting for you at the bus stop, you will not find me at home,” I threatened. She turned white, the blood draining from her little face.

  “Don’t you dare go away from us,” she shouted at me. “If you do, I will kill you, I promise, Mama, I will, I will.”

  I laughed. “How can you kill me if I am already gone, Varsha?” I asked her, making her even more enraged.

  “I will kill you before you go,” she said fiercely. I looked at her grim, tense face and was almost willing to believe her.

  “What a thing to say, Varsha!” I was startled by her expression—so adult and a bit frightening, I have to admit. “If you kill me, you will still not have me here. I will be gone, so don’t say such silly things.”

  “I’ll have your photograph on the wall next to my grandpa and we will still be a family,” she said.

  I stared at my stepdaughter, baffled by her bizarre reasoning, which allowed her to think that a dead stepmother was better than one who had abandoned her. I thought it was Vikram’s fault. He had twisted the child’s mind. Then she smiled at me, radiantly, like the sun breaking through cloud gloom, and running to me, wrapped her arms around my legs so my momentary unease disappeared. A childish outburst, I told myself, nothing more, I should be glad she cannot bear the thought of a life without me, that she has actually come to love me.

  After that, though, Varsha stopped misbehaving. Her tantrums ceased, and except for her insistence on following me around—which is, after all, quite harmless—she is the perfect child.

  The woman held out her hand and smiled at me. “Hello! I am Anu Krishnan. And you must be Mrs. Dharma?”

  “Yes, but please to call me Suman.” I was suddenly conscious of my pronounced Indian accent which I have never managed to lose despite Vikram’s best efforts. Why do you insist on talking like a village idiot? Make an effort, if you please.

  She had a chipped front tooth, I noticed. Olive skin, sweep of hair falling across a wide forehead, brown eyes, not much taller than me. She was smartly dressed in a summery shirt and tight jeans and had an air of confident strength about her.

  I nodded towards her car. “Why did you leave that there? You can bring it in.”

  “The wretched thing broke down. Probably ran out of gas. I suppose it is safe to leave it there? My bags are in the trunk.”

  “Oh yes.” I nodded reassuringly. “Nobody comes here, so don’t worry.”

  “Then I’ll go back when it’s a little cooler and get my things.”

  “Vikram will help you.” I prayed that he wouldn’t be angry with me for offering on his behalf. Even after eight years with him, I feel on shifting sands, fearful of his reactions to everything, anything.

  We walked towards the house in silence and then she turned and smiled happily at me. “This is so lovely.”

  She was very pretty, I realized. Her thick short hair was beautifully cut. Her skin glowed with health, her mouth shiny with a pale-coloured lipstick. I wondered what it was like to be her.

  “I hope it will not be too boring for you,” I said self-consciously.

  “Oh no! Just what I need. No distractions, oodles of space, and all this silence. I already feel I could live here forever. Perfect—complete isolation.”

  I smiled politely. “You are taking some leave from work?” I asked. Was it possible to take an entire year off?

  “I resigned. I need to think about where I am going. And to vegetate a bit. If it doesn’t work out, I can always pick up where I left off.”

  Vegetate. What an odd word. Why would anyone wish to turn into a vegetable, I thought, be stuck in one place until somebody pulls you out or chops you up for the cooking pot? Although it’s true the woman couldn’t have found a better place in which to become a rooted vegetable—in Merrit’s Point, or Jehannum as Akka calls this town—the Urdu word for Hell, a place so deep that if a stone were to be thrown in, it would travel for seventy years to reach the bottom, with walls so thick it would take the equal of forty long years to cut through them.

  “I am hoping to work on some stories,” Anu continued. “And this is the perfect place for it. No interruptions, nobody I know, nothing going on that I want to be a part of. Heaven!”

  “That must be a nice thing to do,” I said vaguely. “What kind of stories? I mean, what will you write about?”

  “I don’t know yet.” She shrugged. “That’s why I am here. To find material.”

  “Here?” I laughed. “You think you will find a story in Merrit’s Point? Nothing happens here.”

  “You live here, so it’s harder to recognize the stories even if they’re standing right in front of you. But I’m an outsider, everything is grist for the mill for me. All that I don’t know, or find strange, anything I wonder about, will turn into a story. At least, I hope it will. We’ll see.”

  “What does your family think of this? Your husband? Are you married? Children?” I had not seen any markers of marriage—no rings, necklaces, bangles, nothing. But Anu was a Westerner, she had grown up here, in this country, not India, even if her ancestors came from there. I would discover that her signs and symbols were different, that she didn’t believe in any of those markers.

  “Hah, the great Indian questions. I got asked them all the time when I went to India!” Anu gave a small, sarcastic laugh. “I was married for a year and a h
alf but am not any longer, he was a jerk, and if you asked him, he’d tell you I was a bitch. No children, thank goodness, not that I have anything against them. I couldn’t be bothered with the diapers and breastfeeding and puking and all that mothering stuff. I have one brother who doesn’t approve of me, but to his credit he doesn’t stop me from spoiling his kids—two boys who love and adore Aunty Anu. My mother is very old and kind of senile and in a nursing home. My father died a couple of years ago. I am forty-three years of age, and not looking for attachments for the time being. And yes, I admit, I must be crazy to have left a job with a fabulous salary, but I’ve always dreamed of writing stories, and so here I am, your tenant, hoping to have a book at the end of her stay. Or at least a draft.” She stopped, drew a deep breath, raised an eyebrow at me and said, “Anything else?”

  “So sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you,” I stammered, feeling foolish, feeling like I do when I say something that annoys Vikram, makes him look at me as if I am ridiculous.

  “No, no, I’m not offended at all!” Anu stopped in her tracks and caught my arm. “Why should I be? I apologize for sounding like I did. It’s just that, for a moment there, I thought I was back in India, all those ammas and aunties checking me out as a prospective bride. You know what I mean, right?”

  I smiled and nodded. “Yes, I do. They grab you by the chin and turn your face this way and that, ask you all kinds of things about private matters, as if you are for sale or something. They used to do that to me all the time.” And then Vikram came along, asked nothing, and like a fool I married him. Of course I don’t say this to the bright, sparkling woman who has arrived at our door.

  “Checking to see if you have grown an extra ear or are hiding a mole.” Anu chuckled. “So, tell me, Suman, where in India do you come from? Village, tribe, caste, sub-caste, etc, etc.”

  “I am from Madras, down south, near the sea.” I was silent for a few minutes, thinking of a narrow gully, the shadow of an ancient temple that was still, always, superimposed on my dreams. “And you? You are also hailing from the south, I think?” I couldn’t catch the little Indianism before it slipped out of my mouth. “I mean, you come from the south? From your name it seems so.”

  “Hailing from is much more interesting, I think,” Anu said. “I hail from Tamil Nadu on my father’s side and Bengal on my mother’s. They met at university and I am told it was love at first sight. I think my poor mother died a little bit when my father did and she’s gone rapidly downhill since then. Now she hardly knows who we are. She is waiting to end.”

  “I am sorry to hear that,” I said. “It must be very difficult for you.”

  We had stopped at the front door. “Would you like to come in and have some juice or cold water? Then I can take you to the back-house.”

  “Juice would be lovely, thanks.” Anu trailed after me into the kitchen. She peered out of the window at the green wilderness outside. “No kitchen garden?”

  “We had a very nice one before. My mother-in-law, you know. She has green fingers, everything she put in the ground grew. Such huge zucchini and tomatoes—even after squirrels and the birds got their share, we had so much. I tried to keep it going for a while, but I am not very good at it. Now I have given up. Only some herbs and chilies I plant.”

  “Does your mother-in-law live here with you?”

  “Yes, she is old, and can’t move. She had a stroke a few years ago. But her mind is still very sharp—although after her stroke, sometimes she wanders. Poor thing, she has her good days and bad ones also.”

  As if she knew we were speaking about her, Akka called out from her room. “Suman, is she here? Our tenant?”

  I gave Anu an apologetic look. “She likes company. Is it okay? You will come in and say hello to her? If you don’t mind, of course.”

  “I would love to meet her,” Anu said enthusiastically. “I like old people. They have the most amazing stories, the rich material of a long life.”

  I nodded. This woman was determined to find stories under every stone, it seemed to me.

  Akka beamed at us and patted the bed beside her chair. “Come, sit, talk to me. It is a long time since one of Vikram’s friends visited.”

  I excused myself. “I have to hang the clothes, Akka. I left them lying outside in a bundle in the basin.”

  Akka waved impatiently at me. “Tchah! Sit for two minutes, nothing will happen that hasn’t happened already to those sheets.” She turned to Anu. “Did I hear you say something about stories? I could tell you plenty.”

  “In that case, I will be here every day,” Anu laughed.

  I made for the door. “Oh no! Look at the time! The children must be wondering why I am not there.”

  “Suman, Varsha is old enough to bring her brother home from the bus stop on her own,” Akka said firmly. “For goodness’ sake, she’s thirteen. I don’t know why you need to go every day all the way there and wait. It is not as if there are twenty confusing roads from there to here! Sit. They will be all right without you.”

  “They will be upset,” I insisted. “Hem expects me to be there. And Vikram is particular about it.”

  “He can stop expecting for one day. And we won’t tell Vikram. You spoil those children, give in too much to everything they want. Sit, I say, I will tell them it was my decision.” She turned back to Anu. “Now tell me about yourself and why you want to sit in a hut in this Jehannum all summer.”

  Anu did not complain about anything. Even when she entered our glorified shack—for that is what it really is—she was full of enthusiasm.

  “How pretty it looks,” she said, noticing the effort I’d taken to turn the place into a home of sorts with colourful cushions and good pots and pans, which I’d bought when Vikram took us all to town for our weekly groceries the Saturday before. I even found some ancient fashion magazines inside an unused cupboard, which I assume belonged to Vikram’s first wife.

  Anu was like that—never failed to say something kind about everything I did. In those warm summer months she would come over often, to chat or tease Akka, her voice bright and happy as she talked, or potter around in the back garden while I cooked in the kitchen. At first we never told Vikram about her visits—neither Akka nor I—we had a pact of silence about certain things. I don’t know why Akka kept quiet, but I did because I didn’t know how Vikram would react. He might have objected. It wasn’t included in her rental contract, he might have said, to be entertained by her landlady. And somehow Anu had understood that she was not to mention her visits either. I had worried about Varsha reporting to her father, the way she is given to doing, to get a pat on the head from him, his approval. We all do it. Anything to avoid his anger. All of us carrying tales to him about each other, falling over ourselves to be in his good books, I as childish as my stepdaughter.

  In the end it was Akka who came up with the idea of telling Vikram, if he asked, that she was responsible for Anu’s visits in the afternoon. “I’ll tell him I don’t feel very safe alone in the house when you go off to fetch the children,” my mother-in-law said, patting my arm one morning when I was helping her with her bath. “I’ll say it is comforting to have Anu here with me. He won’t object to that, you’ll see.” By the time the summer holidays began, everyone had gotten used to Anu’s frequent presence in the house, taking tea with Akka. In any case, even before that it never came up, and now it does not matter. Akka is in hospital, tethered to her bed by intravenous tubes, lost inside the ruined corridors of her brain, waiting for death which hovers over her, fills her lungs with rattling stones, her eyes with grey mist.

  And Anu is gone.

  Anu’s Notebook

  June 10. The Dharma house is truly isolated. The only inhabited building for miles around. The neighbour’s place, the abandoned-looking structure I passed on my way down Fir Tree Lane, has been lying vacant since its owner’s departure a few years ago. Suman is worried, I think, that the wilder local kids from Merrit’s Point come out to smoke and drink there—there are no
doubt some tough kids in this area.

  My cottage, or back-house as the Dharmas call it, is a small, bare studio with windows on one wall, a kitchenette with an ancient stove and a stained sink, a bathroom with an old-fashioned claw-footed tub, and a wooden table where I work. Fanning out in all directions around it are trees and shrubs and creeping undergrowth creating a cool, greenish-gold light which I find soothing. Suman tells me there is nothing beyond the surrounding trees except more of the same. I intend to explore farther as soon as possible.

  This morning I woke early, headed out for a walk down that bald lane and stopped by the lake. The dark green surface of the water was stretched tight, like skin on a drum. Insects hummed up in black swarms from the jumble of vegetation rimming it. Plip-plop—a fish or a frog leapt out of the water, was suspended in light for a moment, a scaly, shimmering angel, and fell back in. Rings of water pulsed away from that small movement and I expected a northern naiad to rise out dramatically.

  In the afternoon I bumped into the children Varsha and Hemant.

  “Hello, how are you?” The girl is always polite.