by Kamala Nair
I didn’t know what the word Sardarji meant, but I knew that it had something to do with Aba, and I didn’t like the sound of it.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Amma, glancing down at her hands.
“Well, she must have gotten her bad eyes from him at least. Nobody in the Varma family has ever needed specs before old age.” Nalini Aunty peeled a banana and chewed it with her mouth open. I could see a lump of pale, doughy flesh creased with stretch marks jutting out from the space between her blouse and the waist of her sari.
“I’m going to go heat some water for Rakhee’s bath,” said Amma, pushing her chair back and leaving the room.
It annoyed me that Amma would just walk away like that without defending me.
I finished eating and went into the bathroom, where Amma was standing over a plastic bucket with her skirt hitched up around her calves.
“Where’s the shower?” I asked.
“There isn’t one,” said Amma. “You must use this bucket and a cup to bathe.”
Amma offered to stay and help me, but I rejected this idea, and found myself alone in the bathroom once again, struggling with the bucket and the cup, and keeping my petrified eyes upon a palm-sized spider basking on the wall near the window.
When I finally emerged, unsure of how clean I actually was, Krishna came up to me and said: “Would you like to play now?”
“Sure.”
Both my cousins’ English was shaky, as was my Malayalam, so we developed a system early on in our acquaintance where they spoke to me in Malayalam and I replied in English.
The sun was already burning the sand in the yard outside, so we sat under the shade of the verandah, on the swinging bench that hung by a rusty chain from the ceiling. I could hear the impatient grunts of cows and goats mixed with the rustle of wild creatures in the tangled greenery that boiled over the dilapidated stone wall encircling the house. The air seemed thicker here, more palpable somehow, swirling in and out of the drum of my ear like the ocean churning inside a shell.
I brought out my colored pencils and a sheaf of paper. I decided to draw Hari, the workman, who was pulling a cow by a frayed rope out of its pen. Amma told me that Hari had been with the family since he was a little boy; she said his mind was “not all there,” so he had never gone far in school. Instead, he had devoted himself to working for my grandfather. His black chest was slick with sweat, and his muscles strained and flexed against the stubborn cow. Krishna peeked over my shoulder.
“That is very good,” she said, and I beamed.
Amma came out to check on us, carrying two glasses of cold lime juice. She set the glasses down on a side table and handed Krishna a bottle of red nail polish. “Just a little something from America. Have fun, girls, I’m going in for a nap,” she said. Amma had spent a harried day at the mall just before our trip and had packed an entire suitcase full of gifts, ranging from expensive electronics to scented lotions to candy, which she parceled out to various members of the household.
We put down our drawings and began painting each other’s nails.
“Everybody is always just sleeping around here. It’s so boring. I’m very happy you are here,” Krishna told me.
“What about your sisters, and—your father?”
“My father is dead. He died when I was just a baby. And my sisters are not very good company. Meenu Chechi just bosses me around all the time, and Gitanjali Chechi thinks she’s too old to play with me.”
“Chechi?” I asked.
“Oh, that is the word for older sister,” responded Krishna. “Anyway, Vijay Uncle talks to me from time to time.”
“Doesn’t he work at the hospital?”
“He’s supposed to but he never does. He just sits around and chews paan all day and daydreams. Nalini Aunty calls him lazy. So now Dev practically runs the hospital.”
“Who’s Dev?”
Krishna stuck out her bottom lip, “He is just a man from the village. Do not tell anybody, but I don’t like him.”
I was curious, but something about the way she knitted her brow at the mention of his name prevented me from pursuing the subject of Dev right then.
Meenu sauntered out onto the verandah and interrupted our conversation, her face stretched into a languid yawn.
“What are the two of you doing?” she asked, nudging Krishna to make room on the swing.
“Look at what Rakhee drew, it is very good, isn’t it?” said Krishna, handing Meenu my drawing. I liked the lilting way in which she pronounced my name, effortlessly rolling the r, emphasizing the h. Not like the kids at school, who called me “Rocky.”
Meenu glanced at the picture and sniffed: “It’s all right, I suppose. For a little girl. Come, let’s do something—you want to walk around and see the place?”
I nodded. We got up off the swing and skipped down the steps.
“First, the cows,” said Meenu, leading us across the lawn toward a wide, wooden pen. Hibiscus curled in a neon pink tangle above the roof, and the odor of fresh dung hung in the air. “This is where we get our milk from every day,” she said, motioning to the stoic brown and white spotted creatures.
Beside the cows were a mother goat and her kid, both kept together in a small cage made of splintered wooden planks. The mother goat fixed her wide-set, disoriented eyes upon me and gave a loud bleat, which made me leap. Krishna and Meenu laughed hysterically.
Around the back of the house steam billowed out from the kitchen and women crouched over earthen vessels, peeling vegetables with large, curving blades and chatting amongst themselves, their voices blending with the birdcalls issuing from the trees. A few chickens clucked and paced back and forth across the yard, bobbing their heads. The women grew silent as we approached. One of their group was sitting apart from the others, muttering to herself and shaking her head back and forth. The deep lines in her face hinted at a hard life spent under the scorching sun, but her hair was snow white and surprisingly luxuriant. Her eyes were milky and unfocused.
“Who’s that?” I asked, nodding in the woman’s direction.
“Oh, that’s Hema—she’s the servant Hari’s sister. She works for our neighbors, but sometimes she hangs about here too. She’s—” Meenu whirled her finger around the side of her head and crossed her eyes. “She’s been there for a long time, though, so they keep her around even though she’s useless. I think she used to work at Ashoka, but then our grandfather loaned her to the neighbors because they needed someone, and she just kind of stayed after that. She likes to come over here a lot, though.”
“What does she keep saying?”
“Nobody knows. All I know is that she’s always muttering about something or other. Anyway, who cares about crazy old Hema?”
Meenu sauntered off toward a nearby tree brimming with round green fruit. She plucked one off a low-hanging branch. “These are the best guavas in Kerala,” she said, rubbing the dusty skin against her skirt.
“Let’s go in and ask someone to cut it for us,” said Krishna.
“Wait, what’s back there, beyond that stone wall?” I asked, squinting out into the trees behind the house, the same trees I could see from my bedroom window.
“Oh, we never go into the forest,” said Krishna, shivering.
“Our mother forbids us to go beyond the stone barrier. She says a Rakshasi lives there, and that she’ll eat us if we invade her territory,” Meenu said.
“A Rakshasi?” The word sounded familiar—I remembered hearing it in the Ramayana, the Hindu epic that Amma used to read to me at bedtime.
“A hideous she-demon who feeds off the flesh of children,” said Meenu, widening her eyes for dramatic effect. I wanted to laugh, but I could see that she was genuinely scared. “Only adults are allowed to go back there. Our mother brings the Rakshasi offerings so that she doesn’t come out of the forest and eat us in our sleep.”
I laughed. “Come on, there’s no such thing!” How could they really believe a flesh-eating she-demon lived in the forest behind
their house?
Meenu and Krishna shrugged.
“Don’t you even want to go and find out what’s really there?” I continued, incredulous.
They both shook their heads emphatically. “If the Rakshasi doesn’t kill us, then our mother certainly will. Come, let’s go play cricket—we’ll teach you,” said Meenu, tucking the fruit into her dress pockets and tossing her plump braids.
I didn’t believe them. I couldn’t. I was too old to believe in witches and monsters. But still, when I looked over my shoulder as we went back toward the front of the house, I remembered the light I had seen through the trees the night before, and felt a chill, like a strand of cold silk, rustle up and down my spine.
Dev was not a tall man; in fact, he was slight of stature. But somehow when he entered the room he seemed to control, to possess, everything inside—the furniture, the walls, the inhabitants. He came to the house for dinner that night, and when I stumbled in with Krishna and Meenu, our hands and feet dirty from playing cricket in the front yard, I instantly knew it was the man whom Krishna disliked.
“Ah Ch-Ch-Ch-Chitra, so this is your daughter. H-hh-how are you, molay?” He spoke with a stutter and his voice, though gentle, still made all the fine hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand at attention.
I didn’t answer, just frowned up into his face, and he chuckled: “She’s a g-g-g-grumpy girl, eh?” He came around the table toward me, and I felt Krishna and Meenu shrink away, leaving me standing alone, framed by the doorway. Bending down, he patted my head with his hand. A sparse mustache prickled his upper lip, and his plentiful hair, parted on one side, looked wet, even though I knew it was dry.
“Rakhee, say hello to Dev Uncle,” Vijay Uncle said. I looked at Amma, but her eyes were cast downward, and she was knotting her fingers together. I turned to my cousins, but they, too, had their heads bowed.
“Hello,” I mumbled, and went to wash my soiled hands.
Sadhana Aunty had let the servant women go early after they had finished preparing an elaborate meal. That night she, Amma, Nalini Aunty, and Gitanjali served the food. I noticed that Sadhana Aunty was extremely attentive to Dev, always giving him the largest portions before everyone else. He even sat at the head of the table, although Vijay Uncle was technically the head of the household. I watched Dev eat, shoveling the food into his mouth, then running his flat palm across the leaf, and licking off the remaining curry. Dev reminded me of a raccoon that used to steal food from our backyard bird feeder, with his rummaging paws, his long, pink tongue darting in and out, and his face expressionless. He ordered the women around in a sleepy yet demanding voice: “M-m-m-more yogurt,” “M-m-more dal,” “Another pap-pap-pap-papa-d-dam,” he would say, and Sadhana Aunty would immediately fetch it for him, though her mouth was compressed into a lipless line. When he had eaten three helpings and polished off the banana leaf so that it gleamed, he folded it over and belched. I eyed him in shock and disgust, but no one else seemed to react.
We ate in two rounds; first the men, children, and Muthashi, while the women stood around supervising the distribution of food; then the women ate, while the men retired into the sitting room, closing the door behind them.
Tired out from the day’s activities, I slept well that night, and the next morning Krishna and Meenu showed me all around the village, from the marketplace, where we used our pocket money to buy chocolates from the sweets stall, to the river, which was swollen from the torrential monsoon rains. When we walked down the main road, people came out of their stores to stare at me, whispering amongst themselves, and grinning. “It’s because you’re from America,” said Meenu. “And because you are a Varma. We are the most important family in this village.” Normally this kind of attention would have made me selfconscious, but the presence of my cousins on my either side, who seemed to accept me without any question, gave me strength.
“What’s going on with Dev?” I asked them at one point. “Why does everyone treat him like a king?”
Krishna was silent, but Meenu screwed her face up into a ball of resentment.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I can’t stand him. And I hate the way the grown-ups are always fawning over him. It makes no sense, but if I ever say anything I get smacked.”
In the afternoon we sat on the verandah listening to the thrum of bees in the banana leaves. Muthashi rocked back and forth in her chair, watching us. She still had that vacant look that made me afraid to go near her. I felt ashamed because my cousins would dutifully hug and kiss her, and when they did, I would see a flash of joy in her eyes, but somehow I could not bring myself to do the same. That look and the way she kept repeating her sentences filled me with dread.
Meenu came over to me. “Want me to show you something I learned from a girl at school?”
Taking my hands, she folded them together, lining up each of my fingers. Then she opened them up and examined my palms. “Do you see how these two lines connect? That means you are going to have a love marriage.”
Krishna squealed. “My turn! My turn!”
Meenu did the same thing to Krishna’s hands. “You’re going to have a love marriage, too!”
We all erupted into delighted, embarrassed laughter.
“Chechi, let me see your hands,” said Meenu, going over to Gitanjali, who was sitting on the rail with a book in her lap. But she wasn’t reading, she was just staring off into space.
Meenu looked at her older sister’s hands and pronounced solemnly, “Chechi, your lines don’t connect—you are going to have an arranged marriage.”
Krishna and Meenu danced around Gitanjali in a wild circle, giggling and pointing their fingers at her. Gitanjali rolled her eyes, swung her legs off the rail, and went into her room. I watched my laughing cousins and felt warm inside, as if for the first time I was part of something.
During that first week I loved Amma’s village. I wanted to stay in Malanad forever. I loved having friends to play and explore with, and I was surprised to realize I did not want summer to end. But I knew that I could never stay there forever. I knew it when I lay in my narrow bed at night under my grandfather’s stern gaze and ached for home. I missed my cozy bed, hot showers, movies, ice cream, Merlin with his floppy ears. But most of all, I missed Aba. Even when I barely saw him at home, when he spent hours and hours at the lab or in his study, just knowing he was nearby gave me a feeling of warmth and security. In India he was so far away and it felt as if a piece of myself was missing. The longer we remained apart, the more broken our family would become.
I wanted to hear his voice, to know that he was all right. I remembered Amma had told me that Minnesota was about twelve hours behind India. That meant it was a Sunday morning, so Aba would surely be at home, and maybe I could call him. It wasn’t an emergency, but surely missing him was a good enough excuse. I took from the bedside table the little keychain flashlight Amma had given me so that I could find my way to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I switched it on, crept barefoot into the hallway, and knocked on Amma’s door. There was no answer.
“Amma,” I said in a loud whisper.
Still no answer.
I opened the door and went inside, but Amma was not there. Her bed was still made up.
I went back into my own room, climbed into bed, turned off the flashlight, and stared up at the ceiling. Where could she be? I knew no one was still awake, since all the lights in the house were turned off. A mosquito whined in my ear; I slapped at it and settled back into the silence.
That’s when I heard it—the snap of a twig under soft footsteps, and the sound of a whisper. I sat up in bed and peeked out the window, my heart drumming against my chest. I saw two figures moving across the yard and climbing over the stone wall behind the house. I just made out the blue and pink saris of Sadhana Aunty and Amma before the shapes receded and disappeared into the forest.
Chapter 6
It was late afternoon and Amma was lying in bed with the curtains drawn.
“Please, I can’t deal with this right now,” she said to me. “My head is splitting.”
“But Amma, why can’t you tell me what’s back there?” I pleaded. “Meenu and Krishna say a Rakshasi lives there, and that she eats children for breakfast.”
“Listen to me.” Amma heaved herself up with a sigh and her hair fell over one side of her face, shielding it. “It’s nothing that you need to worry about, all right? This isn’t like back home. It’s dangerous to wander too far. Please, just leave it be—this is not the time or place to let curiosity get the better of you. If you love me, promise you’ll obey me and stay out of it.”
“Fine.”
“Promise me, Rakhee.” She cupped my shoulders with her hands and gave me a slight shake. “This is very important to me. If you love me.”
“I promise,” I said.
“Okay, I’m trusting you. Now you need to trust me.” Amma gave me a firm look before she lay down again and let her head loll back onto the pillow. “Close the door behind you, please.”
I wandered out onto the verandah, bored. Meenu and Krishna were having their weekly music lesson. I could hear their voices—Krishna’s high-pitched and a bit sharp, and Meenu’s surprisingly melodious—rising up the scale in time with the jarring rhythm of the harmonium. Sa-rega-ma-pa-tha-nee-saaa, I heard them sing, up and down, up and down. I stretched my body out on the swing, rubbing my hand over the dull throb low down in my belly. The ache had followed me around since breakfast. It must be all the new foods I was eating, I thought.
I could not get my mind off Amma’s nocturnal journey. Was there really something living in the forest behind the house, and if so, was Amma helping Sadhana Aunty bring it offerings?
I was never superstitious; Aba always scoffed at any explanation that eluded logic. Once I saved up my allowance and bought a Chinese yin-yang necklace from a trinket store at the mall—all the girls at school were wearing them, and I did not want to be left out. When I came home Amma ordered me to take it off and throw it away. “Where I come from, that symbol is bad luck,” she said. Aba intervened when he returned from work and found me sulking. He told Amma she was being silly, that it was only a harmless trinket; he dug it out of the trash for me and refastened it around my neck. The next day I fell on the driveway and skinned my knee. The day after that, Amma was driving to the grocery store when she skidded on the ice in the middle of a busy intersection, and the car spun around and around like a compass needle until it finally smacked into a telephone pole, leaving a dime-sized bump on her forehead. “It’s that necklace,” she said later that night, sitting in bed propped up by pillows. “No, Chitra. Sometimes people just have bad days. It’s part of life,” said Aba, as he stroked her forehead with a wet cloth.
