Insects Are Just Like You and Me Except Some of Them Have Wings (4 page)

“You didn’t even look.”

“Yes I did.”

“And?”

“It’s a wasp.”

•

That evening Stalin Rani sat on her bed and tried to remember what her uncle’s voice used to sound like when she was younger. She couldn’t remember if it was a muffled, sour bread voice or a thin, cracked one that dripped down the walls like a broken egg. She couldn’t remember what colour it was either.

She pulled her suitcase out from under her bed and took out all the postcards she had written to him. Their edges were soft and fuzzy—some were already dividing into two or three sheets at the corners. One had separated into five pieces, each curled back and waiting for something to happen.

Stalin Rani opened her window and felt the sunset and purple diesel fumes colour her lips. The evening was settling in a cloak of incense, burning oil and songs that wove in and out of a broken radio. She realized that she had never given Shoebox Uncle’s voice a colour at all. Maybe it was something she never got around to.

The postcards fell from the window in soft, jagged pieces, scattering onto the road like flowers on a dirty river.

The ice cubes are fuzzy with frost—they were made with monsoon rain which is supposed to be better than ordinary rain.

“Look what I found,” I say, holding out the ice tray. Kumar stares at it as if he is looking over the edge of a cliff.

“Those’ll make us sick,” he says.

“No they won’t, they’re made out of rainwater.”

We spend the morning eating ice and watching tiny green finches spear moths on the window sill.

“I always thought finches ate berries,” I say. “They seem too delicate to be carnivorous.”

“Is there anything else?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is there anything else to eat besides ice?”

“No.”

Kumar puts his glass down and I wonder if he thinks I’m lying.

•

The ice cubes put an edge on the day, making it glow with faint possibilities.

“We should go for a walk,” says Kumar. “Or start a garden or something.”

I remember how my mother buried fish bones and grocery bills in the backyard because she was scared something would happen if she didn’t. Whenever it rained, little bones would poke through the mud like pointing fingers.

“You really want to go for a walk?” I ask. Kumar rubs his face and sighs.

“No, I guess not.”

•

Kumar’s ice cubes are melting into a scummy pool of water that smells like an old toothbrush. He says there’s something crawling along the bottom of his glass but I can’t see anything.

“Why didn’t you eat them?” I ask. “I ate all mine.”

“You’re going to get sick.”

“I won’t get sick, they were rainwater ice cubes.”

“Does your tongue burn?”

“A little.”

“You’re going to get sick.”

Kumar gets up, leaving behind a space that hums like angry bees. I watch the last of his ice melt and hear the bones settle into the folds of my skin, the blood crunching in my veins.

Mira has streamlined down to the shape of a pin. We watch her and wince, muttering about migraines while our eyes click and hum inside our heads.

Did you know, says one of us, that Mira was big-boned as a child? She always had to turn sideways-—

you know what I mean, don’t you?

She must have taken
extraordinary
measures.

We imagine her shaving down her shoulders and ankles, breaking off what was extra and hiding it in suitcases under her bed.

Later on, someone brought up the possibility of staples.

Are you serious, we grin. What is she holding in?

Well some girls naturally turn into pockets—

it’s storage space, really.

Old teeth, pieces of broken soap, people who’ve whispered to you in a cloud of halitosis.

Things like that.

She’s still big-boned then. If you take out the staples. If you look at it logically.

Yes. If you look at it logically, says someone.

We nod and carefully bare our teeth.

We were sure that we knew each other; we both had photographs to prove it. But beyond the pictures, it was hard to figure out where or how we had actually met. “Weren’t you with that fat fellow—glasses, goatee?” she said. “Always wore a black kurta and jeans?”

“You mean the restaurant chap? The one with the glasses?”

“Restaurant, don’t know. Did he have a restaurant? I know he had these glasses, porno-type, thick black frames.”

“Right, he brought that Polish girl once, what was her name? Anya? Anoushka? She laughed like she was hiccoughing, remember?”

“Oh you mean that one who stole Amritha’s sari.”

“She stole Amritha’s sari? Really?”

“There was that wedding, remember? Senthil’s? And she wanted to go for an Indian wedding in a sari so she borrowed Amritha’s and never returned it. That dark blue silk one, Kancheepuram you know.”

“Right. Actually I don’t think I know Amritha.”

“Oh that’s a shame, sweet girl. Lovely sari.”

“Senthil… that’s the stocks chap, right?”

“Right.”

“Ok, I—”

“Actually I don’t know about the stocks thing but he’s in China now. I think. He always came around with the fat fellow, kurta—glasses—don’t you remember? He had some firangi name…Michael…Mark…”

“When did Senthil go to China?”

“Maurice! That’s the one, Maurice.”

“Oh Maurice! Sure, everyone knows Maurice.”

“Black kurta.”

“Glasses, sure. Crazy bugger.”

“I
know
!”

“His name wasn’t Maurice though.”

“Matthew then.”

“No…”

“I heard him say ‘Some people call me Maurice’ once. I remember we were all just sitting there—I think you were there, I’m pretty sure—and he suddenly said that, for no reason. And nobody said anything so I thought he was talking to me.”

“Right. Okay, but that’s from a song though, isn’t it?”

“Really? Is it Rammstein?”

“It’s some old band. The Doors. The Jokers…or something.”

“I love Rammstein. Don’t you?
Büch Dich
.”

“Or maybe it was The Beatles. Sounds like something they would sing, no?”

“I know.
Du Hast
.”

“I know.”

She began rummaging through her purse and I looked at the photograph again. I didn’t know who any of them were, not even the one who was supposed to be me.

Today’s Pavement Piece is crumpled against a bus stop, dying like a freshly-pinned dragonfly. Her mouth is speckled with broken teeth and waves of dust. I never keep my mouth open in the daytime—the heat makes it difficult to swallow.

“Are you hungry?” I ask and wait for a bloodstained finger to crawl out from under her jaw. Perhaps there are moths hanging in silver clusters from the roof of her mouth.

Perhaps she will say something.

•

My grandmother died without saying a word, when nobody was looking. A dog howled and her paper gods fluttered with sorrow inside their makeshift frames. When we lifted her out of her corner, her bones snapped and crumbled like exhausted twigs. Her sari fell away revealing breasts that had collected in sagging puddles of discontent inside her blouse. There was nothing to do except watch the wailing women who passed the time by beating their chests.

•

Today’s Pavement Piece stares into the white sky like a freshly-pinned dragonfly. I slip a coin between her broken lips, careful not to touch her.

Perhaps now, she will say something.

Blue is the most important. It’s not a peacock or turquoise blue. This blue is smoky and dark with whitish-pink flecks in it. It leaves a telltale smudge on the tongue to prove that you’ve swallowed. It is like the trail of some dark blue fish that has been sent into my stomach to fix my head.

•

I swallow one blue every morning and look defiantly at the upper right hand corner of the room, cheering the little pill on as it tumbles and turns inside me. It’s being sent in to straighten things out. Sometimes I hear things being moved into their proper places; I hear the quiet shuffle of thoughts and words being sorted and thrown away. Sometimes I don’t hear anything and I have to make up the sounds for myself.

•

I believe this should be a group effort. My elbows, eyelids and fingers need to help too, even if it’s just holding a spool of blue thread or collecting blue flakes of paint under my fingernails. I need to absorb all the blue I can get.

Unfortunately I have found that if the blue is smoky it’s not dark or if it’s dark it’s not smoky. If it’s smoky and dark it’s something like a car or somebody’s earring, which I can’t touch. However, I have been lucky enough to find a glossy magazine page and a single glove that are a perfect match. My plan is to coordinate the pills, the glove and the paper to work together at the same time. I haven’t tried it yet because soaking in all that blue at once might make me explode. Sometimes that thought scares me but usually it doesn’t.

•

I cut the magazine page into tiny squares and arrange them in groups of seven. The plan is to eat one square a day, right after the pill. This is nothing like eating paper because I will be placing the squares
under
my tongue. I read somewhere that things are absorbed better that way and even if you put it on your tongue, it’s just going to run over the sides and collect on the bottom anyway.

I realize that I haven’t figured out what to do with the glove yet—I turn it inside out and notice that it’s dirty white inside. I feel cheated and stupid at the same time. Overcome with despair, I eat all the blue squares at once. Nothing happens or maybe something does happen but I don’t notice.

•

In the dream there is a bench. Stretching over the bench in an immense arch is a crumbly, blue rainbow. On some occasions it doesn’t crumble at all and I tell myself that the blue is definitely working. But usually the rainbow will fall in clouds of blue dust, gently tracing the outline of my feet on the ground.

One day this rainbow will fall down completely.

It is inevitable, like sand castles being eaten by the sea.