Tell It to the Trees (15 page)

She was vague and guarded. “We did. And then Vikram’s friend, Gopal, who knows about these things, said this is the best way.”

The best way? To keep an old woman bound to her chair, sitting for days on end? I’m not sure what to do—I feel I have to speak to Suman and Vikram about it again. I of all people understand how terrifying it is for an immigrant family to release their elderly parent into care in a strange home with food and customs frighteningly foreign to her at that age. But she needs better care. It’s all wrong. This Gopal sounds like a quack to me, and I said as much.

Suman gave me a blank look. “I don’t know, you must ask Vikram about it. He took Akka to the hospital and they said there wasn’t anything they could do for her at her age without causing other problems. Forty-sixty percent chance she might be healed—or become a vegetable, they said. So Vikram says this is the best decision. Vikram knows.”

I hear these phrases at every turn—
Vikram knows, Papa knows, Papa says, Vikram says
. He seems to be god around these parts, my classmate Vikram. I’m beginning to think that everybody in the house is terrified of him. If I want to be spiteful and childish—as I confess I’m
tempted to be when those brats are around—all I need to do to get them to behave is threaten to complain to their father. All the bluster leaves them and they turn into a pair of frightened little kids. Which makes me feel like shit.

Hemant

My baby brother would’ve been five years younger than me if he’d got born. He was very tiny. He died because he was a PREEMIE. Varsha told me. Mama was going to call him Vasanth which means Spring. I would have liked to be an older brother.
My
brother.
Ours
, Varsha said.

After school one day Mama showed us X-ray photos of our brother. He was like a ghost floating in white stuff, sucking his thumb. The stuff is called an AMNIOTIC SAC and contains water. It protects the baby. I was the one who spotted the baby’s ear shaped like a shell and I asked if he could hear things from this side. Could he hear the yelling? Or the songs Mama sang to him? Could he hear me? Or Varsha? Could he hear the woman who Mama says sings in the moon when it’s round and full? “Yes, he can,” Mama said. “He can hear every single thing, so be careful what you say, Hem. Your little brother is listening to you and learning from you.” She was sure the baby was a boy. She said she could
feel
it in her heart.

I believe mostly everything my mother tells me. I will be an astronaut. Varsha will own a circus. Butterflies are spirits of good people. Moths are the souls of the wicked. Papa will always love me and Varsha. The way he does when he’s in a good mood. When he drives us for ice creams and makes us giggle. When he says he’s sorry.

But I don’t believe Mama when she said she fell down the stairs and broke her arm. Or bumped into the furniture in the dark, or that she gave herself a black eye when she was pulling out a STUBBORN root in the garden. Even though Varsha twists my arm hard and says I’m a naughty little liar and Papa and Mama are the happiest people in the world and we’re the happiest family in the world. If I have any lies to tell, Varsha says, I have to whisper them to Tree and nobody else or one of the six hundred and seventy-three ghosts who live between our house and the sky will come and drag me away by the ears into the black lake and I will be trapped like the fish that float under the ice in winter.

Varsha said especially I was not to lie when we had to call 911, and the ambulance people came to take Mama away to the hospital because the baby was slipping out of her tummy too soon. She said if the ambulance people asked I was to tell them Mama fell down the stairs by accident. So I told them. When Mama came back home without my brother I went to Tree and told it everything. I told how Mama had fallen out of her room when Papa was being a wicked giant. I told how I wasn’t lying even though Varsha said I was. Tree listened quietly and then it
said
shhh, shhh, shhh
and then it was okay for a while. So I was not so scared.

After my baby brother died Mama wept for six days and seven nights. I counted. Then she went quiet. Then she began to search, search, search. I was at home sick. I saw her. Varsha told me she was looking for her passport, so she could leave us in Merrit’s Point and go away to India. That scared me. What would we do without our Mama? But Varsha said she couldn’t leave because she’d hidden the passport. She showed me where she hid it behind Grandpa’s photograph.

“But if you tell her, she will go away without us. And I will be very angry and call a slimy ghost to eat your brains.”

Mama was turning things upside down. She checked under my mattress. She looked inside all my drawers and inside my cupboard. When we had lunch she checked inside the rice tin and the sugar tin. So I asked, “What are you searching for Mama?” even though I knew but I pretended.

She pressed a finger to her lips. “I am looking for my happiness, Hemu. Can you help me find it?” But then she gave a huge sigh. “My passport, Hem, have you seen it anywhere?”

So I said, “What’s a passport Mama?” even though I knew.

“A magic book that will let us go all the way to India,” Mama said. Then she placed a finger against her mouth again. “But this is our secret, okay Hem?
Don’t tell anybody. Not Papa. Or your sister. Promise?”

“Yes Mama, I promise.”

“On my head Hem, promise on my
head.”
Mama knelt down and put my hand on her head. “Now if you tell anyone, I will die. You don’t want that, do you bayboo?”

I promised and I promised. Mama’s secret felt very heavy inside me. “But what if I
have
to tell somebody? What if the secret just wants to come out? Then what do I do? Sometimes my face hurts from not telling.”

Mama looked around and around the room, like we were being followed by monsters. Then she smiled at me and hugged me hard. “Do as Akka told you—tell it to the trees. They know how to keep secrets.”

So I told Tree how Mama was looking for her passport. I told it that she wanted to run far away to India. But Varsha saw me.

“I hope you’ve told me what you’re telling Tree, Hem.” She crossed her arms and her eyebrows met across her forehead. I knew she was mad at me. She owns me because she saw me first in the whole wide world and I’m not to keep secrets from her. “You know what will happen if you haven’t, don’t you?”

I nodded. She would call the demons from the other side of our gate and they would carry me away. So I told her Mama was looking for her passport and she wanted to go all the way back to India so she could be happy like she was when she was a girl.

“Silly Mama,” Varsha said. “How can she think of doing such a shameful thing? It will bring our name down
to dust, and what will happen to us if she leaves? Good thing you told me, Hem. Now we will have to watch Mama extra carefully, won’t we?”

“Are you going to tell Papa?”

Varsha thought about that for two seconds and then she shook her head. “No, not right now.”

“What if she finds her passport when we’re in school and runs away without us?”

“She will never find her passport. I know for sure.” Varsha gave me a mysterious sort of smile.

After some time Mama stopped searching for her passport. My baby brother’s ghost went away. Varsha said. Everything was okay, Varsha wasn’t mad at me for a long time, Papa was nice to Mama, and I stopped feeling scared.

Then one morning Anu came to be our back-house tenant.

I think she’s pretty. Varsha doesn’t like her. Beauty is as Beauty does. Varsha says. But I like Anu. Not as much as I love Mama. I love Mama so much I can’t breathe sometimes. Not as much as I love Varsha and Akka. I like Anu more than Papa. Which makes me feel like I’m a wicked boy. Varsha says I am
not
to like Anu. She is an INTERLOPER my sister says. She’s an evil spirit who has come to our house to steal our Mama and it’s our duty to make sure she doesn’t.

I whisper my secrets to Tree and feel better.

So all of us will be safe for ever and ever.

But still.

Should I tell Mama?

Anu’s Notebook

September 15
. Glad to report the kids are back at school and my lunch service has resumed. I am growing chubby but have no regrets at all. There are some days when Suman doesn’t show up at my cottage. When she does, she never talks about what has kept her away, and even though I am tempted to ask, I feel uncertain about prying. I know for sure now that there is something not quite right about the state of affairs in the Dharma household. But I am not clear what it is.

October 3
. The light is low and golden and the shadows long. The leaves have turned and it’s nippy. There is an air of regret hanging over everything. I find myself heaving great big sighs all the time. I think I need a break from this writing solitude to reconnect with my own life for a bit. Perhaps over the Christmas break a visit with my brothers and my nephews—nice, uncomplicated kids would be a pleasant change. I need to see Mummy, too—not that she has any idea
who
I
am. It hurts me to see her like that—so frail and lost.

October 16
. Today, along with my daily lunch, Suman brought a request from Akka. She wanted to see me at three-thirty, for tea and snacks. “If it is not too much trouble,” she added.

I was glad of an excuse to get away from my own company and I am curious about the old woman, so naturally I went. As soon as I showed up, Akka said, apropos of nothing, “Do you know I can speak six languages?”

By now I am used to these odd openings to conversations that depend on Akka’s moods or on the memories she wants to mine that afternoon. If I am patient and ask the right questions, we might meander into interesting territory. Sometimes, though, she is not entirely there, and doesn’t make much sense, referring erratically to events, people, places I do not know, a hodgepodge of information all wrapped up in stories and songs which she delivers in various languages. So this afternoon, I was relieved to see, she was full of beans and completely lucid.

“That’s amazing!” I exclaimed, genuinely impressed.

Akka snorted. “What is amazing is that I used none of my talents. My knowledge has rotted from disuse. What use all that knowledge, tell me? I ended up in this Jehannum where nobody cares about my past or my abilities.” She brooded in silence for a few seconds while Suman poured out the tea. She never contributes
anything to these conversations. I wonder what the two women speak about when I’m not there. They are obviously close.

“I should have been like you,” Akka started off again. “Free bird, comes and goes as she pleases, does what she wants, eh, Suman? Wouldn’t you like Anu’s life?”

Suman held her mug of tea tight between her two small hands.

“Come, come, Sumana, you can say what you want here in this room. Nothing will happen to you, you know that!” Akka urged, looking kindly at her daughter-in-law.

Suman gave me a quick glance, full of subtleties I cannot understand, but said nothing. The conversation threatened to wind down.

“I’ll bet your son is proud of you, Akka.” I tried to start things up again. “And your husband too, when he was alive. No?”

Akka turned her head to look out of the window. It is unlike her to have no ready, sharp retort. Finally she turned back to me. “We hated each other, my husband and I. His opinion mattered nothing to me, he was a drunkard and he deserved to die.” She clasped her wrinkled hands on her chest and shut her eyes. She was sitting on that chair of hers, which is padded with pillows, bolsters, sheets and so many other things that it looks like a bag lady’s stash.

I stared at her, surprised at the venom in her voice. “I’m sure you don’t really mean that, do you, Akka? Nobody deserves to die, do they?”

“He
did. And good riddance to bad rubbish is what I say.”

Silence again. This time I didn’t try to bridge it with any comment. This house is so full of odd currents. I am no angel and my brother and I don’t always see eye to eye over many things, and my husband thought I was a fucking bitch, as he was fond of calling me in the last year of our marriage. But this family takes the prize for dysfunctional.

Akka called Suman over to adjust her pillows and once she was comfortable again turned and smiled at me. “He was a bastard,” she said pleasantly this time. “He had bad genes. My karma and poor Suman’s that he passed these on to my son. I am delighted he is no longer with us.” She dusted her hands together emphatically. Then she looked at the clock and said, “Ayyo! Suman, go and fetch the children, otherwise we’ll have another drama here.

“This America is getting too big for its boots,” she said after Suman left. She loves politics, enjoys arguing with me about current events. “One of these days they will learn their lesson!”

“Who will teach it to them? They’re too powerful.” I am always mildly defensive about the U.S. I like that country, the energy with which it approaches everything. I think their cultural life, the arts, literature, dance, music, is youthful and dynamic. I had loved living in New York, and the cutthroat atmosphere on Wall Street suited my own ambitious nature at first. I thrived on competition.

“Haven’t you heard the story of the ant and the elephant?” Akka smiled slyly at me. “Let me tell you.”

I settled down, feeling like a small child waiting for her granny to tell bedtime stories—a lovely feeling.

“Once, a long time ago, when the sky was green and the ground was blue, an arrogant rogue of an elephant went about wreaking havoc in the jungle. He started to tear down the branches of a tree on which a sparrow had built her nest.

“ ‘Please, sir, your highness, your majesty,’ she pleaded as the elephant shook and ripped the tree with his mighty trunk. ‘My babies are in the nest, please leave this tree alone or they will fall and die. Wait until they have learned to fly and then do what you will with my house.’

“The elephant laughed and continued to destroy the tree until the nest collapsed, killing the baby sparrows.