Tell It to the Trees

by Anita Rau Badami

  A year, I told her, not six months. A whole, blissful year off from my high-octane, frenetic Wall Street life. Write. See if I can do it. Finally. What I’ve always wanted to do, and if I don’t try now I never will.

  Most mornings, at around eleven-thirty, Suman arrives at my door, bearing a tray loaded with bowls of food. It’s become a habit with her, sneaking to my place with samples of her cooking. I’ve stopped protesting against such generosity. I understand that the food is an excuse to talk. She’s lonely with nobody other than the old lady for company. She never seems to leave the house except to drop off or meet the children at the bus stop every weekday at exactly the same time, or on Saturdays when her husband takes her to the stores in town. The children stay at home then to keep the old lady company. I’ve hardly seen Vikram yet—he appears to be a controlling sort of guy. His family tiptoe around him like a bunch of mice. I never see anyone visiting them.

  She was here again today as usual, fresh in a white and yellow sari, bright against the silent greenery. “Hello?” She peered around the open door. “I can come in? Something for your lunch. I am disturbing you?” She held out a tray covered with a tea cloth.

  “Well, I was working …” I started, jumping up to help her with the tray, feeling only slightly guilty about accepting her generosity with such ease, wondering whether there is anything I can do to return the favour.

  Her face fell into lines of anxiety. “Sorry! I am sorry to interrupt. I will go now. Bye-bye!” She brushed past me, placed the tray on my crowded table and turned away.

  “No, no, please don’t leave.” I caught her arm and pulled her back. “I was about to take a break anyway. Stay! Shall I make us some tea?”

  Suman’s face brightened up immediately—she is quite pretty when she smiles. “I will make tea, you see if you like the food I brought for you. Special recipe from my Madhu Kaki.”

  “No, you sit.” I pushed her gently into my chair. “You are in my house, as my guest, so I get to make the tea. Maybe not as good as the chai you make, but not bad either.”

  Her forehead creased into the worried frown it so often wears. “Sorry, yes of course it is your house. I am sorry.”

  “Suman, stop apologizing all the time!” I exclaimed. “You can say anything you want—I won’t be upset, I promise.”

  She gave me a doubtful look, and then lifted the cloth off the tray with a flourish, like a magician, revealing three bowls of food, colourful and fragrant. She looked at me eagerly, a child waiting for praise. “Taste and see if everything is okay?”

  I put a spoonful of food from each of the bowls in my mouth and said, honestly, “Mmm, amazing, really, you shouldn’t spoil me like this!”

  I don’t mean it, I’m afraid. Thanks to Suman’s daily supply of food, I am saving quite a bit of money as well as eating far better than I deserve or could have imagined. Vikram isn’t aware of her generosity, I know. Last Saturday, I bumped into the two of them just as they were heading out on their weekly trip into town. Vikram asked if I had settled in. “If there is anything you require, you can ask my wife.”

  “I’m fine, thank you,” I said. “Suman has been extraordinarily generous already!”

  “Oh yes?” Vikram looked at her. “And how has my wife been generous?”

  Before I could reply, Suman rushed in. “Nothing, it was really nothing. I only gave her some green chilies she forgot to buy in town. Isn’t that so?” She turned. I was startled by her pleading look. I nodded, wondering what was going on.

  June 25. I haven’t seen Suman today, although I was out for a while by the house, picking some flowers from the unkempt but pretty front garden in which plants have seeded themselves with abandon. It’s a mayhem of colour there. At some point in time there was a garden which was loved, obviously—even my untrained eye can pick out domestic favourites such as peonies, roses, day lilies. I assume it was Akka’s doing.

  June 27. At around noon, a few hours after everybody had left for work or school, Suman was at my door again, bearing a tray of food. She waited, fidgeting, while I tasted the dishes, unable to persuade her to eat with me. I was exclaiming over the delicate procession of flavours when she said in a nervous burst, “Please don’t mention to Vikram about this. He might get upset, you know?”

  I tried to reassure her quickly. “Suman, you don’t need to bring all this food for me. Honestly. And if it gets you in trouble with your husband, all the more reason not to.”

  But she looked miserable, as if I had criticized her. “You don’t like my cooking?” she asked, dismayed.

  “No, it’s not that. Your food is exquisite—I’ve never even tasted some of these dishes, and we come from the same part of India! It’s just that I don’t want any unpleasantness between you and Vikram because of this.”

  “If he doesn’t know, he won’t get angry.” She threw me a look of childlike cunning. “So if you like what I make, you must not tell him. Or my children. They might tell their father by mistake, especially Hem. He can never keep a secret.”

  “And your mother-in-law? Akka? She doesn’t mind?”

  “No, no, she will not let me down, she is good to me.”

  I can’t help wondering about Vikram. He seems to be quite a little tyrant although he’s polite and nice enough the few times I’ve met him so far. He had seemed such an ordinary fellow at university. I suppose you never really know a person until you live with them.

  June 29. Alas, no more free gourmet lunches. The summer vacations have begun and the children are home all day now. Suman told me apologetically that she wouldn’t be able to come over for a while. She makes up for this by plying me with snacks when I visit Akka. The old lady insists on seeing me almost every day. She likes a good chat and I’ve made it a habit to visit in the afternoons.

  August 13. I decided to take pastries from the bakery in town over for tea—small return for all the meals I’ve eaten. Hemant was thrilled with the treat and even his odd sister smiled at me. Akka was delighted and gobbled one with groans of pleasure. Suman watched her with an expression of concern and finally protested. “You shouldn’t eat such a big piece, Akka, not good for you.”

  “They might not be good for my stomach, but they make me happy, and at my age that is more important than the health of my body.” Akka gave me a naughty look. “Don’t listen to a word Suman says, Anu. I can eat anything I want, the doctor told me so.”

  “No he didn’t, she is lying”—laughed Suman—“she will be awake all night complaining of heartburn.”

  “Come, come, Sumana,” Akka said. “Allow me a few last pleasures before I die!”

  Suman covered her ears at this and said angrily—if she is capable of anger at all—“Don’t talk of dying, Akka, please.” She is genuinely fond of the old lady, sees her as some sort of ally in this house, I believe, and can’t bear to think of her as an absence.

  Part Three

  HEMANT AND ANU

  Hemant

  I am Snowking. I was born outside Mrs. Cooper’s house and nearly got eaten by the snow-monster but my mother gave me my name—Hemant—which was my good-luck charm and snatched me away from the jaws of death. Now everybody calls me Hem.

  My parents are Suman and Vikram Dharma. They fight a lot. My Papa makes Mama cry every day. Sometimes he pinches her. Varsha says Mama is always looking for her passport to run away from us all. But Varsha says she’s hidden it somewhere safe so Mama won’t leave us. She says Papa told her a long time ago before I was born that it was her Duty to make sure Mama doesn’t go away like her First Mother. She says Mama is delicate and doesn’t really know what she’s doing and would never be able to survive without us, her family, if she ran away. I don’t think Mama is delicate I think she’s strong but Varsha says I’m a silly-billy and wouldn’t see anything even if it jumped up and bit me on the nose.

  Mama has no money except a hundred and two dollars which she hides inside the green and gold sari made of shiny silk given to her by her old aunty Madhu K
aki who looked after her like a mother. The gold in the sari is actually real silver covered with gold. It is a family Heirloom which Varsha will get when she is married. But Varsha says she will never get married and go away and leave me. Mama tells me lots of stories about when she was small like me in India. She says she wants to go back there and live forever and ever and she wants to take me with her. When I tell Varsha, she gets mad and says I don’t know anything and shouldn’t spread lies and I should shut up. I don’t tell lies or make things up. But Varsha can be scary mad even though I love her and she loves me. So I shut up but here is what I remember from what happened last year when I was six. Mama had a dead baby that looked like a fish with hands and no eyes. I am good at remembering things everyone else wants to forget.

  It was at night, after Christmas time. It was very cold. If you went out the wind hurt you. Even the moon looked kind of frozen. There were a zillion stars in the sky, holding it tight. It looked like a black sheet over our town. Varsha said the more clear the sky, the more cold it is. Mama and Akka hate our town. Akka says it’s a nowhere place. She says it’s the armpit of hell fit only for cockroaches and stinkbugs. She says it loudly—my grandma isn’t afraid of anyone, not even Death. She says Death is her best friend and she doesn’t mind going away. Mama gets upset when she says that and starts to cry. Varsha, who likes big words, says it’s all RELATIVE and our town is no better no worse than anyone else’s town. And she doesn’t really care because a town is a town is a town and she isn’t planning on leaving. Varsha likes me to agree with everything she says because we’ll always be together, and if I don’t she’ll call on the Ghosts to teach me a lesson.

  The night before my baby brother died I was kneeling on my bed. I was looking out at the dark from the window. I blew on the cold black glass to make a fog circle and wrote my name on it. But I wiped it off quickly with the hem of my pyjama top, just in case, because you never know who’s watching. There are creatures out there who can steal my name and after that nobody would know who I was not even my own Mama, Varsha said.

  I knew she wasn’t asleep. She was lying in her bed beside mine, her eyes shut tight, her hands pressed against her ears, singing so we couldn’t hear the sounds coming from Mama and Papa’s bedroom down the corridor. Or maybe she was sending up one of her long prayers to Jesus Krishna Buddha and Martin Luther King. My sister taught me the names of all these gods and ghosts—she discovered them inside books in Papa’s book-room. She said they were good ghosts and would always help us in our time of need.

  All of a sudden we heard a small sound. I thought it was a puppy. Like the sound a puppy makes when someone kicks it. So Varsha jumped out of bed and ran to open our door. I saw Mama fall out of her room just like that, like she was leaning against the door and it suddenly opened so she fell out. One minute she was inside with Papa and the next moment she thumped out, with a hard sound. Papa’s feet looked like a giant’s. We ran to Mama. I tried to lift her up.

  “Are you okay, Mama?” I think Varsha was really scared too.

  “Yes, yes, I am.” Mama sounded like she was coughing and she pushed our hands away. “What are you both doing here? Go back to your room, go, go …”. She shoved us hard, making me nearly fall so I wanted to cry too.

  I could see inside Mama’s bedroom which has wallpaper of yellow and pink roses and a giant bed made of black wood. There are thick gold curtains for hiding behind when I am angry with Varsha or Papa is angry with me. There is a huge dresser where Mama sits in the morning after she has had a bath. She looks like a queen when she is combing out her long hair. Papa’s huge shadow climbed up the wall, his head became a big dark splash on the ceiling. He was shouting something but I don’t know what.

  He came out of the bedroom and his shadow climbed down and followed him. He glared at Mama lying in a pile. “Eh? I said why don’t you ever listen to me? Eh?”

  He kicked at her foot and Mama said, “Don’t, don’t, please don’t! The children are here.” She put one hand on her stomach and she used the other hand to push herself up and she got up and walked slowly back into the bedroom. “Vikram, think of the baby, he will be hurt, please don’t—”

  Then Varsha pulled me away and Papa shut the door in our faces so we stood there which made me feel very bad because Varsha was yanking yanking at her hair the way she does when she’s upset and we had to listen to sounds on the other side of the door, like Mama and Papa kept bumping into furniture. Varsha and me, we heard Mama start crying and then everything went creepy quiet.

  “Should we pray to Jesus and Martin Luther King?” I asked Varsha. Sometimes the gods and ghosts we prayed to were asleep or out helping other kids who were in trouble and couldn’t come to us. Varsha was holding my hand really hard but that was a good hand holding. Varsha said, “No, let’s go down see Akka. She’ll make it all okay.” So we went down the stairs to our grandmother who was almost a ghost herself but she was very good at making us feel safe and making it better.

  Akka was sleeping. She was wrapped tight in blankets like a mummy. Varsha leaned over and poked her cheek which was like a hole under her cheekbone and whispered, “Akka, wake up Akka.”

  “What? What happened? Is it you, God? Have you come for me at last?” Akka mumbled. Then she woke up suddenly and stared at us with her eyes white and big, which I could see because of the light of the night-lamp. Her hair was all wild and blowey around her face.

  “No Akka, it’s us, me and Hem, we’re scared. There were noises upstairs.” Varsha climbed into Akka’s bed. I crawled under the blankets which were always there even in the middle of summer. I like the dried-up old smells of Vicks Vaporub and coconut oil that Mama massages on Akka’s chest and back, and medicines which she has to take for her heart and her blood pressure and to keep the sugar in her body low. I asked why she had to do that and Akka explained it was because she was getting too sweet and the ants would come and eat her up if she didn’t reduce her sweetness. I licked Akka’s hand but she didn’t taste of anything other than dry skin but I like that anyway.

  “Was this noise from your Papa’s room, my children?” Akka asked.

  “Yes Akka,” Varsha said.

  “Yes Akka,” I said too, because my sister knows everything in the world.

  “Was your mother okay, my children?” Akka asked, putting her arm around the two of us even though she could barely reach that far.

  “I don’t know for sure.” Varsha’s voice was shaky like she was still trying not to cry.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Akka said. Her voice was shivery too.

  That was when Varsha started to cry. Akka pulled us really close, as close as she could. “That’s all right my darling, don’t feel so bad. It’s only a dream, tomorrow it will be fine.” Then she pushed my sister away suddenly and held her nose and whispered, “Who did it? Which of you did it? Let loose a big one, a gas bomb, enh? Come on now, tell your Akka!”

  “Oh Akka, that’s not funny,” Varsha groaned.

  I giggled. “Not me Akka, not me, it must have been her”—holding my nose too to show I was not the one.

  “Unh-unh, wasn’t me,” Varsha said. I could hear a smiling in her voice now. She tickled Akka and said, “It must be you Akka, nobody else here in this room.”

  Akka cackled. “The loud fart makes the most noise, the medium one is neither here nor there, the quiet one it is that makes your life a stinking misery.” She tickled Varsha back and whispered, “Tell, tell the truth, who let it out? Not me, not me for sure. Aha! I know who it is, this little boy with a big stinky stomach.” It was an old joke that Akka said to make us laugh when we were sad. She’s told us a zillion times but I still like it. She waved the air with one hand and went hee-hee-hee like in the cartoons. She doesn’t have many teeth, Akka, and her mouth is gummy-pink open wide, and her gold bangles, she says two for my wife and two for Varsha when we grow up and get married, going chink-a-chink. Sometimes she got Mama to dress her up in the morning like she was going to a pa
rty, big shiny earrings, flowers in her white hair, and black stuff around her eyes to make them look big as a deer’s. She said it was fun and made us dress up too sometimes.

  There are lots of comforters on Akka’s bed because she’s always shivering. Our grandmother says she’s always cold because her bones are filled with ice from having lived for too many years in Canada. What would happen if Akka turned too warm and the ice in her bones melted? Or if her bones cracked from the pressure of the ice crick-crack like the hearts of trees in winter time? When I tell my secrets to Tree and then I put my ear against it, sometimes I can hear its heart bursting apart from the water inside turning into ice then melting and freezing again. I thought maybe the water would flow out of Akka like many rivers, wetting Varsha and me as we hugged her tight, soaking our nice warm bed, messing up the floor. Then our Papa would come thundering down, his eyes red, his hands raised to smack us. He would never touch Akka of course. She was his mama. But I was scared because he would blame Varsha and me for the water from our grandmother’s bones that dripped down and made a mighty flood.

  “He can’t help it because he has a demon in his blood, in his marrow,” Akka whispered. I could feel her old breath like a feather on my face. “Your father, from his own father he got it. It breaks my heart, it does it does.”

  “Is it the demon that lives on that side of the gate, Akka, the one Mama told us about?” I asked. We were never to wander out beyond the gate especially after dark because a demon lived there who ate children for breakfastlunchdinnertea.

  “No, this one is embroidered into the pattern of his skin, it is coiled in his intestines,” Akka said. “A demon laid a curse on Papa’s father’s head when he was a boy, just like the wicked fairy in Sleeping Beauty.” She scowled ferociously. She is always angry when she talks about my dead grandpa. Varsha says it’s because he was mean to her. “Then the same demon laid an evil eye on your Papa because he was so good and handsome.”