We went downstairs and Anu was waiting for us with chocolate milk and a fake smile. Inside, I knew she was plotting and plotting to break up my family.
The phone rang and she picked it up. I ran and grabbed it from her.
“Hi Papa, it’s me, Varsha,” I said. “How is Akka?”
Another stroke, Papa said. She is deteriorating fast. “We’ll be staying here overnight. Be good. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Tomorrow. It seemed such a long way off.
“Is Akka dead?” Hem asked tearfully.
“No, no she isn’t,” I told him. I pulled him into my arms, glad of his baby warmth. “But she might be, pretty soon. She’s very old and very sick, you know.”
Hem nodded solemnly.
Our tenant stood there looking at us, her face shadowed and creepy, like a mask. She turned on the living room light and became real again.
“Don’t,” I said to her.
“Don’t what?”
“Take away our Mama,” I said. “I don’t want you to.”
She looked stunned. Aha! She thought I didn’t hear. She looked away. Then she turned back to me and said gently, as if I was a moron or something, “I am not taking her away, Varsha. If she leaves, she will do it because she wants to. It’s her decision. Not mine or, for that matter, yours either.”
“I’ll tell my father,” I threatened.
“And I’ll tell the police what he’s been doing to all of you,” she snapped back.
I didn’t know what to say to that. I was so angry. I didn’t know what to do. I had to stop her. I had to.
Hemant
I did a sin and I’m scared. I can’t sleep. They took Anu away in the dead people’s ambulance six days ago. But last night I heard something tapping at my window. Varsha said it’s Anu’s ghost. Tap-tappety-tap, open up, let me in, let me in. She shook up the ice ferns and crystal flowers growing across the glass. I’m scared but Varsha says to ignore her. Like she does. She can see ghosts, all of them, everywhere, crowding into our room, outside near the gate, on the road, at school, in the ice cream shop, they can go everywhere, no passport required. They whisper things but she doesn’t look and doesn’t hear. That’s the trick, she says. To make them go away you need to ignore them. Otherwise they’ll grow real and they’ll grow strong. So don’t look. Another Don’t. Must remember. Don’t tell, don’t look, don’t hear.
Varsha came into my room and told me I better keep my mouth shut if I don’t want any trouble.
“If you say anything I will tell them the truth. I will tell them what you did,” she said.
“But I didn’t do it!” I was scared of her face close to mine. Her breath was all hot on my face. “You did.”
“It was you, I saw, you little wuss, it was an accident but it was you. I might have to tell Papa, you know.” She kissed my cheek. “Only if you open your mouth. But you won’t, will you, Hemu?”
“No, I won’t, Varsha, promise, cross my heart and hope to die, hand on your head, in the name of Jesus and Gandhi and Mary and Ganesh, I promise, I won’t, I promise.”
“If you do, you will go to jail and rot there your whole life. And if you are a wuss and a blabbermouth and if you tell, you will break my heart. And if my heart breaks I will be dead and I won’t be able to help you,” Varsha said.
“Promise, I won’t break your heart, Varsha. I promise.”
“You can’t tell anybody. Promise?”
I can’t tell how Anu went out the front door with only her jacket and toque and shoes because she would be back in five minutes.
I can’t tell how the cigarette looked just like a red bead in the blizzard night.
I can’t tell how we locked the door. I leaned against it so the wind wouldn’t push it open and Varsha turned the key.
I can’t tell how we switched off the outside light and the lights in the kitchen and on the landing, too, so it was all dark like inside the belly of the whale in Pinocchio.
I can’t tell how she banged and cried and howled louder than the wind and still we didn’t open the door. And we didn’t open the door. And we didn’t and it was so cold.
I can’t tell, otherwise I’ll be in trouble and go to jail and my sister will die of a broken heart and turn into a ghost and come and eat my brains.
Yesterday night there were lots of ghosts in my room. Varsha said. Grandfather was fuzzy and quiet and he sat on top of my cupboard. He was dressed in a suit and a toque and didn’t say anything. He just coughed and coughed and wouldn’t stop. And then Varsha saw our baby brother who looked like a tadpole and drowned inside Mama before he was born because she fell on her stomach one night and did something bad to her insides. He crawled out from under the rocking chair. He is harmless and doesn’t want to come alive and eat me. Varsha said. Then Anu’s ghost came to the window and went tap-tap-tap. Varsha said she was asking to be let into the room and should we let her in? I clutched my sister and said NO. NO. NO. She was all white and mean-looking. Varsha said. She had snow on her head and her lips were blue.
“She’s talking to you,” my sister said. “Can you hear her? You can, tell me you can.”
I could, I could. Whispering silly, silly, stupid, blabbermouth, REPULSIVE. I pulled the blanket up over my head and screamed for Mama.
She rushed in. “Oh my poor baby, come here, come here.” She hugged me to her and I felt a bit better. But from the corner of my eye I could still see Anu outside the window. She was going to burst through the glass and drown us all in melting snow.
“What’s the matter with this stupid boy?” Papa was glaring at me from the door. “Little fool, always blubbering. Are you a boy or a girl?”
“He is only a baby,” Mama said. I love the warm feel of her against my face. “Let him be.”
“He is a boy,” Papa said. “Not a baby.”
“What happened, bayboo?” Mama asked, rocking me.
“I saw her,” I said. I didn’t look at Varsha. I knew she would be mad at me for talking about Anu. I am a blabbermouth and who knows what I will spill by accident.
“Saw who? What’s the boy going on about?” Papa said.
“Anu, I saw her.” I peeked at Varsha. She was glaring so hard I could feel her eyes digging holes in my head. I know she’s going to kill me. She’s going to tell Papa that it was me who did it. Then Papa will hit me and I will break my head and it will hurt.
“Oh my poor baby,” Mama said. “I shouldn’t have let him watch the searchers.” She started to cry too and Papa went out of the room. Then Varsha touched Mama on the shoulder and said in her older-child-responsible-person voice, “Mama, don’t feel so bad, Mama. Go take a Tylenol and lie down otherwise you will get a headache. I’ll take care of Hem.”
“No, no, no,” I wailed, clinging to Mama. Now I was terrified of my sister. She was mad at me for talking about Anu. She’d pinch me and summon evil spirits to creep into my ear and torture me.
“It’s okay, Hemu, Mama needs to go lie down.” Varsha pulled my arms away from Mama and pushed her out of the room. She shut the door and turned to me. “What on earth’s wrong with you, Hem? Are you soft in the head or what?”
“But she was here, I promise on Mama’s head. I saw her. There, there she is again. She’s an iceberg. She’s coming to drown us, she’ll melt and drown us …”
Varsha slapped my face hard so it really hurt. “STOP IT, HEMANT!” she said, her voice sharp but calm like Mrs. Norma’s at school. “There is no Anu. She’s dead. Remember? Dead dead dead.”
“Her ghost, you said we saw her ghost,” I cried.
Varsha marched to the window and tapped on it. “Get lost,” she said. “Don’t bother my brother, you hear me? She’s gone now. Look, nothing there.”
I stared at the dark window and she was really gone. My sister is stronger than ghosts. It’s true. “What if she comes back?”
“She won’t, trust me. Do you trust me?”
I nodded.
“Then shut up and stop being a dor
k, okay?”
“Can I sleep in your room with you tonight?”
“Yes, you can.”
“What if she comes to your room?”
“She won’t, Hemu.” Varsha stroked my damp hair off my forehead.
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
“But how do you know?”
“Because I’ll draw a magic circle around my bed and that will stop all bad spirits from coming near us. Just like the ring that Lakshman drew around Sita to keep the demons away from her.”
“Can the other ghosts come into the ring?”
“Nobody can come in.” Varsha gave me a shake. “If you don’t shut up now I won’t let you sleep in my room and I won’t draw a magic ring for you.”
I stopped crying. My sister is smart and strong. She knows everything. But now I’m afraid of the ghosts and her.
“But remember, you must always listen to me and do what I say. Otherwise I can’t be responsible for what happens to you. So are you going to tell?”
“What if it comes out by itself?”
“It won’t. Okay, you can tell Tree if you want. I don’t mind that. You can say it was a mistake. You can say you’re sorry.”
I nodded, but I don’t want to tell Tree. I want to tell Mama. She’s my Mama, not Varsha’s, and she’ll believe me. She’ll take care of me. I’ll CONFESS. Nicky Hutch’s mother who is a Catholic person goes to church and confesses her sins and god forgives her. I’ll confess otherwise I’ll go to hell and hang upside down and get boils on my penis and my eardrums will burst and blood will come out from everywhere and I will be in great pain forever.
Mama won’t tell Varsha, but Varsha will find out—she always finds out. If I don’t tell Mama, I’ll burst into pieces like the fat lady full of secrets whose story Akka told us a long time ago when I was little.
Suman
Then came the sad business of informing Anu’s family. There is a brother in Vancouver and an elderly mother. What an awful responsibility, what a miserable task. I pulled open the dresser drawer in the kitchen to look for phone numbers. Should I call, or should I leave it to Vikram?
An envelope surfaced from the mess of string and keys and pieces of paper stuffed into the drawer. It had Anu’s writing on it. I remembered her bringing it over a couple of weeks ago, when she arrived for her usual afternoon tea and a chat, to show Akka and me some photographs. She had forgotten to take them back, and I had tucked the envelope into the drawer meaning to return them to her the following morning. Then Akka fell ill and the envelope slipped from my mind.
I opened it expecting to find Anu’s photographs, but instead there was a single picture of us—Akka, Vikram, Hem, Varsha and me—and on the back, in a childish scrawl, the legend Our Family. It was Hem’s writing, but surely not his idea to take away Anu’s photographs? Must have been Varsha, but I can never tell, they seem to be one brain in two bodies.
“What did you do with Anu’s photographs?” I asked, catching them on their way out into the yard.
“We threw them away, Mama,” Varsha said. Her face was flushed and innocent, her dark hair had strayed out of her bright pink toque which I knitted for her and which she always wears to show me how much she likes it.
“Why? Why did you do that? They were hers, you had no business.” I was so upset. I tried to keep the anger out of my voice.
“But she is dead, Mama,” Varsha replied. “She won’t care anyway.”
“And she wasn’t part of our family,” Hem added, and received one of those quick nudges from Varsha, after which he didn’t open his mouth again.
“Yes, she wasn’t family, but she has a brother and a mother and other people who might have wanted the pictures—they are her most recent photographs. How would you feel if somebody took your things?” I wanted to slap them both.
“I would hate them forever,” Varsha said, glowering at me. Then, in that way she has that can change the mood in the room suddenly, she smiled. “We can get the photographs back if you want, Mama. We haven’t thrown them away yet, not properly, that is. Right, Hem?”
He shook his head.
“Yes, I would like that. I have to pack her things for her family,” I said.
Varsha beamed at me again. “Is there anything to eat, Mama? I am starving!”
“Yeah, starving!” Hem echoed, grinning too. But he is still uneasy. I can smell his fear.
Later still, looking out of the kitchen window, I saw them both at the far end of the backyard, their faces pressed against the tree, spilling out their hearts to it. I wonder what they were whispering to it.
They turned suddenly as if they could feel my gaze on them, stood there poised like the deer that wander out of the woods. Hemant waved to me. Then Varsha caught his arm and pulled him behind her, around the house, and they disappeared from sight. I know Hem is concealing something. I have to catch him alone, and quickly, before Varsha works on him, convinces him not to tell me. The influence that girl has on my son is not healthy. I am beginning to feel Anu was right—I have to take him away from here.
The rest of the morning passed in a haze. Vikram took the responsibility of phoning Anu’s brother, for which I was grateful. It was left to me to pack her belongings for her brother to take back with him. I dragged her empty suitcases out of the cupboard in Akka’s room where I’d stored them and headed out to the back-house. It looked small and lost in the snowy landscape. I thought, not for the first time, that there is too much unused land surrounding the house. It could accommodate, quite luxuriously, the entire street where I spent my childhood. I imagine it crowded with my old neighbours, their children and grandchildren, beggars and fruit vendors, cobblers and thieves, the oil merchants and cloth-shop owners, the candle-makers, bangle sellers, laundry women, idlers, rogues—they would create a warm, merry little scene here until this winter chill crept into their unwary bones. Oh yes, in this place winter is always lurking around the corner, a wicked creature roaming these lonely spaces, waiting to pounce on your bones, freeze your blood. But Anu did not understand winter the way we do—she had never really lived inside it, she did not know how cunning the cold can be. How I wish now that I had warned her more forcefully!
I unlocked the door with the keys Anu had left on our dining table—I couldn’t understand why she bothered to lock it—and waited for a few moments. I was ready to believe she was still around, that she hadn’t left in that ambulance. Everything was exactly the way it was the last time I had stopped by with my offering of hot lunch: the sofa bed piled high with pillows and comforters, the round table with her books neatly piled, the wooden armoire in the corner, and the kitchenette with a tea kettle poised on the stove, waiting.
I wandered around the small space collecting the things she had left behind:
—A pile of empty notebooks. I searched but could not find the one in which she was always scribbling her stories. Her family would like to have that, I felt sure. I wonder whether it too is somewhere out there, buried in the snow, whether it will surface in spring, a soggy tattered thing full of Anu’s thoughts.
—1,350 dollars in a pouch, eight dollars in coins in a jar. I hesitated and slipped it all into the pocket of my jacket. I feel ashamed and guilty about it. But then I believe she would have lent it to me anyway, she had offered her help so generously, so what is the harm in taking it now she’s gone? When I’m settled into a different life, I will send it back to her brother’s address.
—Some junk jewellery and a single heavy gold bangle which her mother gave her when she got married. Unlike the money, it had sentimental value, and I had no doubt it should return to her family.
—A wedding ring that she kept after she got divorced.
—Car keys, pens, books she loved, random items that litter our lives. I threw them all into the suitcase.
—Clothes: white blouse, red blouse, three skirts (one with pink flowers she liked a lot), four jeans, four trousers, underwear. Three pairs of shoes.
&
nbsp; —Photographs of her brother and his children and of her parents when they were young, a long time ago.
The old refrigerator started up suddenly with a groan and my heart jumped in alarm. I cleaned its contents out into a garbage bag, took one last look around the room and tramped back through the snow to my house.
I feel enormously sad. I have lost a friend. It will be two friends when Akka dies—which won’t be long now. It is time to make a decision. A long time ago, on the roof of an old house in Agra, I contemplated that thin little word—I. Can I fulfill its potential, I wonder, can I push it as tall and as wide as it can go, that slender word? It’s time now to find my lost self, that scrawny I that fell into a mirror that moonlit night. It’s time to drag myself out of this mirror in which I’ve trapped myself, time to let myself go.
It is now a week after Anu’s death. Her things have all gone, carried away by her brother, and the back-house is empty once more. I’m alone except for Hem, who has stayed home from school, complaining of a stomach ache. I don’t question him—her death has upset him deeply, I know. He wakes up screaming at night, insisting there are ghosts knocking at the windows. He’s outside playing now, and through the kitchen window I can see him, bright against the snow in his red winter jacket, his arms wrapped around the large tree a little to the left of the back-house. He looks a bit like he’s hanging on for dear life. I tap on the window to summon him back inside—he is sick, he shouldn’t be outside for too long. He turns around at the sound and stumbles frantically through the snow towards the house. I open the door to let him in and he falls into my arms.
“I heard her,” he sobs. “I heard her.”
I am bewildered. “Who did you hear, bayboo?”
“Anu. I heard her just now. Tap-tap, she was tapping on the window.”
I shake my head and pull him into the warmth of the kitchen. Hug him tight and rock him like I used to when he was a baby. “That was me, not Anu. It was me.”
He holds tight to me and sobs even louder. “Mama,” he says. “Mama, I have a secret, a bad secret.”
Tell It to the Trees Page 17
