Motherland (19 page)

I opened them and the nurse was standing there with a mirror.

Dr. Murugan was washing his hands as he talked to me, “Don't worry, child, the hair will grow back. Not right where the scar is, but all around it. And until then, you can use hairpins to pin your hair over it. You can wash your hair but be very careful—have your grandmother help you. Keep the splints on your arm for another two weeks and then we'll see.”

In the mirror, I saw a small, pale clearing at the top right side of my head. 1 touched it tentatively, and there were raised scars in the center of the clearing. 1 closed my eyes.

W
E WERE HOME
. Vasani carried hot bathwater to my bathroom. Ammamma said, “Look what Ram brought you.” He had brought five different kinds of shampoo from the city, afraid of choosing the wrong one. I didn't recognize any of them.

“You pick,” 1 said. Ammamma picked one and put it on the window ledge in the bathroom.

She filled a bucket with cold water, and then poured hot and cold water together in a third bucket. She swirled the water inside the bucket to mix the water from bottom to top, hot and cold melding into warm.

“Are you ready?” she said. I took the robe off, keeping my arm stiffly in place. I remembered Ammamma giving me baths when I was little, I would clutch her sari-covered leg at the knee. I would reach out and try to grab her gold wedding necklace, which would be fluttering just out of reach as she bent to pour water over me. She would keep a hand as a brim over my forehead, to keep the soap from my eyes. Her sari would be soggy and bedraggled by the end.

Now I was taller than she was, by two inches. 1 sat on the bench, and she poured water over me. She kept a hand as a brim over my forehead, to keep the soap from my eyes. I felt a shiver travel over my spine, my arms bristling with goosepimples, my breasts rising up under her touch. She moved quickly, smoothly, soaping, then rinsing, shampooing, then rinsing. She worked her fingers through my hair, massaging gently, pouring pitchers of water at a slant to fall away from my face. And then, wrapping a thorthu deftly around me, avoiding my limp right arm, she applied another towel to my hair, not rubbing, but sponging, pressing lightly.

Afterward, I sat on my bed, and held a mirror up as she combed my hair. We parted the hair on the side, and clipped it over the pale white empty patch. It looked unnatural, lopsided.

“Let's try something,” Ammamma said. Rather than pushing hair from one side over to the other, she pulled all the hair upwards into a ponytail on the top of my head. It did cover the white spot more naturally. But because my hair was short, there was no nice ponytail at the end, just a true pig's tail, a stubby, bumpy knot of a tail. Ammamma opened and closed different drawers in her dresser, and then she came back to the bed with one of her British cookie tins. She opened it, and inside was red tissue paper, and inside that was a coil of hair.

“Your mother's hair,” Ammamma said. “Extensions were the fashion when she was your age.”

She undid the ponytail and braided my mother's hair into mine, starting at the nape of my neck. She braided it halfway and swept up the end into a ponytail, and rubberbanded it in place. A sleek shiny ponytail nodded at me in the mirror when I moved my head.

“I've never worn fake hair before,” I said. “But it does look better than without it.”

“In another two weeks, the hair will grow back enough to cover the whiteness, then it won't be that noticeable. But for now, if you want, we can do your hair up like this, it's easy.”

A new thought occurred to me. “Maybe we don't have to tell Reema auntie and Sanjay uncle this all happened. They'll make such a fuss, and their friends and everyone will ask about it.”

“It's impossible not to tell them—the servants know, and everyone at the infirmary, and probably some people at the factory, fust tell what happened, and how you've been taken care of.”

I took Ammamma's hand from my hair where she was still smoothing the ponytail, wrapping my fingers over her soft wrinkled hands, feeling the skin and the bone of her hand as distinctly discrete things. Her eyes looked tired and shadowed; she had not slept through a whole night since I'd been injured. I felt sleepy from the exertions at the infirmary, the bath. I drew Ammamma down next to me on my bed, and we slept the afternoon away.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Harvest

T
HE HOUSE WAS
full of sound again once Reema auntie and Sanjay uncle returned from Bombay. Sanjay uncle was frustrated with the factory mechanics whom he'd summoned to repair the phone line to the house. He asked us how long it had been out of order, and we shrugged. At least the last two weeks, we weren't sure—we hadn't needed to phone anyone. Reema auntie wanted the furniture in the drawing room rearranged to make space for the inlaid marble table she had bought from a Bombay antiques dealer. Neighbors came to ask for news of Bombay movies and restaurants and sari emporiums.

Ammamma and I sat in our room and made faces at each other. We'd both been put to bed the second Reema auntie and Sanjay uncle spotted my artfully arranged hair and found out what had happened. Neither of us felt like we needed to be in bed, but we took our punishment quietly. They were furious that we hadn't called them in Bombay. They would have come home earlier, sent friends and company people to look in on us, and consulted all their doctors in Coimbatore.

Ammamma bore the brunt of both their reproaches and their concern. I looked healthy enough now, sounded good-humored about my injury; I was surely getting better. But Ammamma should have been responsible and called them, and she should have arranged full-time help to take care of me, a nurse or an ayah or both, rather than doing it herself. They were worried that she looked tired, that she hadn't been eating properly, that she hadn't even reordered some of her medicines when she had run out. As soon as the phones were fixed, they were calling their doctors in Coimbatore to come up the mountain to look at both of us.

By the second day of their return, I was restless. Ammamma and I weren't allowed anywhere near the kitchen, nor in the drawing room with the visitors, and certainly not outside where we couldn't be watched over. They didn't want us to exert ourselves or have undue excitement. Even our food had no excitement, just rice and yogurt and dal, even though Ammamma in the days just before their return had let me graduate to eating the vegetable curries we cooked together.

I tossed my book aside and disentangled myself from the bedcovers. “Shall I go protest our confinement?” I said to Ammamma.

“I don't know if it will do much good,” she said, looking at me over her book.

“The doctors aren't coming for another two days and we can't just lie here until then,” I said. “We can at least try to campaign for more rights.”

“You go then, you'll be more effective. I'm in more trouble than you are,” she said, smiling.

I slipped my feet into my sandals, saluted her, and walked down the hall toward my aunt and uncle's bedroom.

They weren't there, but I heard voices in the drawing room. As I crossed the dining room to join them, I caught a glimpse of my aunt on a sofa, with blue letter paper strewn across her lap. 1 stopped in my tracks in the dining room, hearing my aunt crying. I stood outside their view, listening.

“Reema, she'll manage, she will. She is growing up, and she will learn how to be on her own.”

“Sanjay, I can't bear leaving her there with those children. They sound cruel and awful. She's the first one to get her period, she's still a child. She writes that they taunt her, and say that she is polluted and dirty,” my aunt covered her face with her hands. “They're calling our daughter dirty, Sanjay.”

My uncle reached out to her on the sofa. “Reema, what can we do? She has to go to school, and it's a good school. Do you want me to call the headmistress and say something?”

“Don't call. If she reprimands any of the children, they'll take it out on Brindha.”

“We'll go see her, in three more weeks is the Visiting Weekend. I've booked the company bungalow, and we'll have a nice stay.”

“I don't want to wait three weeks. She didn't even know what was happening to her. I never thought to tell her—ten is so early.”

“She was making friends, wasn't she, this year? That letter we got before we went to Bombay said she was trying to choose between two girls for who would be her new best friend.”

“But these letters that came while we were away, she sounds lonely. And the letters 1 wrote her from Bombay were about stupid films and parties. I couldn't even write her about these things she's upset about. I didn't even know.”

“It's not your fault, Reema. These things happen. You can't sit here like you did when she first went to boarding last year, you can't spend the whole day waiting for the boy to bring the mail. That's not the answer.”

“Then what's the answer? Maybe I'll go stay at my parents' house in Palgaat, and she can go to school there.”

“Then what will I do? I have to stay on here. This job is important. In a few years, I have to think about sending Brindha to university, even abroad if necessary. And look at how my mother is, her health isn't so good—I can see a difference even in this short time we've been away. What if she needs to go to hospital or what if my sister wants me to send Amma to an American hospital? I have to think of these things. What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing. Nothing.” My aunt breathed heavily, her tears coming under control. “There's nothing we can do.”

“Look here in this letter, she doesn't sound so sad. Did you read this one? She's talking about the state education minister coming to the school assembly, and she was asked to do a recitation. She says the minister gave her a sandalwood letter opener.”

“Yes, I read that,” my aunt said.

“And see here, she is helping in a celebration of Onam. Reema, read this part, from here.”

My aunt cleared her throat, reading. “She says ‘the other Malayali girls here are “too Mallu” to be good actresses, so I am the only Malayali taking part. The other girls don't even know what Onam is but they are happy for any excuse for a party. I am going to play King Mahabali, and my Punjabi friend, Jyothi, is going to play God. I think Mahabali is a better role because I get to wear a lot of makeup and gold and silver robes, and God is only wearing a cotton kurta.'”

“See, she is getting through. I know the children can be cruel, but they seem to have short memories.”

“Brindha doesn't have a short memory,” Reema auntie said.

“Yes, but learning to live with insults, that's part of school.”

“Not for me. It wasn't like that at my school,” Reema auntie said.

Sanjay uncle said, “Then you were lucky. They were merciless to my sister—they said she would never marry because she was too busy studying and she didn't even know how to wear a sari properly or cook a payasam. There's always something.”

“What should we do about Onam? I don't feel like celebrating since Brindha's not here. “

“Yes, but Maya is here, and for us too, we have to have a full life, Reema, just like we tell Brindha to have at school.”

“They wanted me to run the Onam festival at the club, but I haven't given an answer yet.”

“Tell them you will. We'll have a big show of it—it will be good for you.”

I crept silently back down the hall to my room. Ammamma looked over at me as I slipped into bed.

“No success?” she said.

I shook my head no.

“That's okay, I'm a bit tired, anyway. I hope the doctors will soon release you from captivity.” Ammamma looked quite settled in her bed. Her thin gray hair was unpinned and smoothed out on the pillow behind her head. There was another pillow under her lower back so she could sit up at a slight incline to read, and another pillow under her knees, which she'd rubbed with herbal ointment to ease the arthritic aches. When I had been three or four, Ammamma used to have me walk on her legs and lower back to relieve her aches. Walking on uneven territory like that, 1 would slip and stumble in her sari folds and fall giggling on top of her.

The doctors came, one for me, one for Ammamma. They were both dour-faced, but they admitted we couldn't stay in bed forever. They told both of us to take bed rest whenever we felt the least bit tired. The doctor for Ammamma brought loads of pills for her, big, hard-to-swallow ones in pastel colors. He laid them out on a magazine cover and reminded her what each one was for and how many times a day to take them. Ammamma dumped the whole collection of jewels in her lap, and wrapped each color of pills in separate pieces of brown paper, and then tucked them snugly into the British biscuit tins where they belonged.

Reema auntie said to my doctor, “I am chairing an Onam festival at our club, and I was thinking Maya might take part if it's not too much for her.”

The doctor said, “A doctor doesn't like to say his patients know more than he does, but in a situation like this, only she knows what goes on inside her head. The external wound is healing correctly, so it's more a matter of headaches, continued dizziness. Maya's the best judge of what she can manage.”

Repacking his medical bag, Ammamma's doctor said, “So will you be having grand Onam celebrations this year in the hills?”

“I don't know about grand,” my aunt said. “But you must come join us if you can.”

Reema auntie was being modest with the doctors, she was planning a grand celebration. The harvest holiday of Onam would begin next week and it would last for ten days. We spent hours planning the feast, the flower decorations, the performances of song and dance. We talked about whether to have party favors, and whether to have place cards. We spent one morning writing up announcement cards—everyone at the club was invited, so this was more to remind them. Reema auntie was handpainting fleshy red anthuriums on each card, and I was writing in my best handwriting.

When Sanjay uncle came home from the factory at lunch, he brought with him a mousy girl who was a few years older than me. She looked at the floor shyly and twisted and retwisted the straps on the handbag she was carrying.

“I have a surprise for you both. Do you know who this is?” he said.

I didn't, so I waited for Reema auntie to answer. Reema auntie had a pleasant but blank smile on her face, and I think she was trying to decide whether to lie and pretend to recognize her.

“That's okay, auntie,” she said. “You might not remember, I was small then, I was in Maya's dance class that summer she was visiting her Ammamma and learning from my guru, Padmanabhan.”

“And you've come for touring up in the hills? It's good you missed the bulk of the rains—now that it's August, they're almost over.”

“Reema, she's not touring. I've brought Ajitha here for you, Padmanabhan of course can't leave his students, but I thought Ajitha could teach a dance to the ladies for the Onam performances.”

Reema auntie brightened with pleasure at her husband. Since I'd overheard their conversation about Brindha, I'd been noticing how valiantly Sanjay uncle was trying to keep Reema auntie happy. “I was going to teach them something simple myself, but this is much better. Ajitha, I'd love to do some kaikottikkali with a group of ladies, all dressed in white with gold coin necklaces, you know, the old way, very classic.”

“Of course, auntie, whatever you like. I'm eager to prove that I am worthy of being guru Padmanabhan's student.” She had twisted the straps of the bag so tightly that her right hand was now caught in it. She pulled at the straps to extricate herself, and then embarrassed, stopped struggling with it, and left the bag dangling awkwardly.

“The guest room is to the left. Maya, show her. We have twelve days to rehearse, we shouldn't waste any of it. I'll send a boy out to deliver a message to the ladies to come after tea today.”

I helped Ajitha unpack and put her clothes away in the guest room. She was stiff and shy, but I felt the glimmer of friendship beginning. It was nice having someone around who was young—like Rupa, who I wondered about often—but who spoke English, and would be able to join in things with everybody else.

The ladies came in the late afternoon, and we rolled the cotton dhurries off the floor in the guest bedroom. We took turns standing with our backs to each other to see what our heights were, and then arranged ourselves in a balanced circle of ten. The instructor and I were the youngest and smallest, so my place in the circle was exactly opposite her. It made it hard for me to remember to do exactly what she was doing, not mirror it looking at her. Her left was my right, left is right, right is left, 1 kept reciting to myself. At guru Padmanabhan's dance class, we would stand in rows behind the guru, and it was easy to trace his steps. Only the Onam dances were in a circle like this.

Everyone had heard about my injury; they asked lots of questions about how I was. Even Lalu sounded so empathetic that I decided to try to like her more. The oncologist, Vandana, peered at my head, and said that the doctor had done his stitching neatly, that there wouldn't be much scarring. In the circle, they were careful not to bump into me or step on me, and they would help me prop my bandaged arm in an approximation of the poses I would be able to make properly in two weeks' time, when the splints could come off. When I was out of breath from dancing, everyone promptly stopped and took a break with me and called for soft drinks and snacks to be brought. I basked in their attention, conscious of being somebody to them now beyond just my aunt and uncle's niece. I had my own distinct role.

When Matthew came to clear the dishes, I asked him to send Ammamma in. We ran through a step sequence three more times, and she still hadn't come. I went to her room.

“Ammamma, don't you want to see us practice? Why lie here by yourself?”

“I'm tired just now—I'll come watch maybe tomorrow. You know I'd love to see you dance. Onam is my favorite festival, I'm glad you'll be here for it this year.”

“Are you sure you don't want to come see right now?” I asked, as I edged toward the door. She shook her head and lay back on the pillow. 1 went back to the ladies.