The Things We Thought We Knew Page 12

  The only other time I’ve seen Amma look that severe was when I decided I didn’t want to be your friend any more. You won’t know about this because Amma got to me before I said anything, but if I’m unearthing our past I’ll have to tell you everything.

  Slugs and all.

  Ever since your victory at Bobby’s Hideout you’d kept Stanley Slug in a large jam jar lined with leaves and twigs. He sat proudly in the corner of your bedroom while I had to keep Sangerine III in an old biscuit tin, holes punched in the top, beneath my bed. I was afraid that Amma might find her and, thinking her a pest, squash my breed slug underneath the sole of her white trainer. I’d already lost two slugs and couldn’t face losing a third.

  The first Sangerine went missing in action after one of our slug races was interrupted by Jonathan falling backwards off a log and hitting his head. He sobbed all the way back to Bosworth House as though his brain was spilling out. When Amma told him he had a graze that required no stitches, he demanded that his head be wrapped in layer upon layer of bandages. By the time we returned to the hideout, Stanley was once again sitting proudly in the finishing zone of our umbrella tripod. Sangerine, on the other hand, was nowhere to be seen.

  Sangerine II had a less mysterious departure. We’d decided to have a picnic in the woods and, while you were sensible and kept Stanley tucked away under the safety of a jam-jar lid, I’d opened my biscuit tin with the idea of giving Sangerine II some fresh air. As we were halfway through eating marmalade sandwiches and salt-’n’-vinegar crisps, a crow – so large it was big enough to eat me – flew down by the biscuit tin and gobbled Sangerine in one. The swiftness of its landing, the quick peck and tilting back of its feathered neck before it flitted off into the trees, was enough evidence for me that the crow had circled our innocent picnic and planned its attack beforehand. You can’t trust anyone, not even the birds.

  Sangerine III was found beneath the soggy bottom of a drinks carton and was so small and grey you could have mistaken her for a woodlouse. I had an affinity with small things but on reflection it would have been wiser to pick a gigantic creature somewhere close to Stanley’s size so that it would at least have had a chance of winning. As it was, your slug had a four-centimetre head start before we’d even said ‘GO!’

  It was that winter, upon noticing Stanley was distinctly slimmer than usual, that you became convinced he’d caught a cold. You wrapped an old scarf around his jar and dropped cough sweets inside until you realized he was beginning to turn the same plum purple as the lozenges. You had to use tweezers to pull them out of the jar, trying your best not to stab the fat creature in its bulbous sides. You loved that slug like it was a baby; it was ridiculous. And, with the feelings of a first child, I resented the attention you gave it because it meant there was less attention for me.

  When your birthday came I decided I’d punish you for your lack of attention by giving you none in return. I sat on the sofa in my pyjamas and, when Amma told me it was time to get dressed in my whipped-cream party dress, I refused to budge.

  ‘I’m not Marianne’s friend any more,’ I said.

  Amma’s cheek twitched. If she’d been a different type of parent she would have picked me up and thwacked me across the backside. She let the brutality of her glare smack me instead.

  ‘Give me one good reason why this is the case,’ she said.

  I crossed my arms. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘One good reason!’

  It’s a credit to you that Amma didn’t, for one second, consider you the cause of our break-up. Girls of our age were constantly falling out but you were made of sturdier stuff and my mother knew it. As she looked down at me I frantically began to consider my reasons. Amma knew nothing about our races in the woods but even if she had, I could never admit that I was jealous of a slug. So instead I sighed dramatically.

  ‘It’s confidential,’ I said.

  Amma placed her hands on her hips, the folds of her sari billowing in and out. Behind her the birds on the wallpaper were frozen in mid-flap as they sat between repeat-print thistles. When she eventually spoke, Amma’s voice was low and growling.

  ‘You only have one life, Ravine,’ she told me. ‘And you don’t know how long people will stay in it. They can disappear. Poof! Out of the air!’ She spread her fingers out to demonstrate the ‘poof’.

  It took years for me to realize how right she was. I thought you’d stick around for ever. I thought our friendship was guaranteed. Then, one day you were gone. Poof! Out of the air.

  Amma bent over me with piercing eyes.

  ‘If you do things, you do them with good reason. Give me your reason to be a bad friend to Marianne or go put on that dress and eat birthday cake!’

  Suffice to say, I went and put the dress on.

  Later, when we were playing Twister in your living room, Jonathan sitting with bandages still wrapped around his ‘injury’, I forgot about my reasons for not wanting to be your friend. We laughed and drank cherry pop as we watched Pokémon: The First Movie. Not once did you mention Stanley.

  After this morning’s hair-dyeing debacle I don’t hear very much from Amma. A faint rustling of material filters through the hallway along with the smell of vinegar and lemon as she buffs her trainers. When she comes back an hour later she’s dressed in a new sari covered in elaborate paisley swirls. Amma hasn’t bought a new sari for ten years and I have to admit, the yellows and purples look dazzling against the sparkling white of her trainers and her newly dyed hair. She has kohl pencilled around her eyelids, a purse clasped in her hand and her mackintosh draped over her arm. Even though it isn’t a cash-and-carry day or feed the ducks day or doctor day, I don’t ask her where she’s going or tell her how good she looks.

  ‘I don’t feel well,’ I say instead.

  Her face twitches with alarm, wrinkles rippling, eyes blinking. I regret the words instantly, though not enough to take them back.

  ‘Is it the pain?’ she asks.

  I tense my body, grimacing the way I used to on the worst days. I nod.

  ‘Out of ten?’

  I keep my body tight.

  ‘Eight and a half.’

  She instantly drops her bag and throws her mackintosh on the chair.

  ‘Don’t worry, my dear shona,’ she tells me, feeling my forehead with the back of her hand. ‘I shall get a cold flannel.’

  As my muscles relax, I feel a weight in my stomach as though it’s filling with rocks. Downstairs I hear Amma muttering to herself. She paces up and down the hallway before picking up the phone.

  ‘No, no,’ I hear her say. ‘I shall take care of her. We can meet another time.’

  The wallpaper birds look at me with beady eyes. They know all my secrets, see all my lies. They laugh at me, scorn me, judge and hate me.

  I lie flat on the bed and close my eyes. Do I feel guilty? Yes. Am I expecting the pain to come back twice as hard for the lie I’ve just told? Yes. But more than that I feel relieved. You only have one life, Marianne, and you don’t know how long people will stay in it. I plan to cling on to my mother for as long as my strength will let me.

  She’s the only person I’ve got left.

  Before the illness, Amma and I had a ritual. On Fridays, after a busy day of cleaning other people’s toilets, she would sit on the sofa with feet outstretched and I would treat her like she was the great Maharani of Westhill. I would bring her fruits and biscuits, putting them on flowery plates before spreading them out on our coffee table. The table, bought in a clearance sale, was far too fancy for us: thick legs with curved feet, elaborate carvings in the drawers and edging. It looked ridiculous in our small, mediocre living room. But on the nights when I set out her mini banquet, Amma would look at that table like it was a piece of art.

  ‘This is most splendid,’ she’d say in her most regal maharani voice.

  After spoiling her for approximately half an hour, she’d let me come and sit on her lap so we could watch game shows together. It’s only now
when I look back on it that I realize how, on those nights, Amma only ever ate the fruits on the table, leaving all the biscuits for me.

  ‘Ravine.’

  The voice comes hissing through the wall. At first I pretend it’s the kettle boiling, or the pipes rattling, but then it comes again.

  ‘Raviiine.’

  My body stiffens. It’s the same voice that woke me from my sleep, the same sing-song tune that made me think I was going crazy.

  ‘Here it is,’ says Amma as she strolls into the room. She places the cold flannel straight on my forehead and squeezes her body tight beside me. With the feel of her warm cushion of a body squashing into mine I relax but still the voice bounces around my head.

  I inhale the scent of Amma’s perfume. The whiff of rose and incense is so strong my vision blurs and for a moment I feel the sting of fresh tears in my eyes.

  ‘Have I told you about the time that I ran barefoot over a snake?’ she says as she strokes the back of my head.

  I blink the tears from my eyes and, even though she’s told me this tale so often I could recite it, I shake my head.

  ‘It was back in Sylhet in the dried-up reservoir by the village shops,’ she says. ‘It was so dry that just walking on it covered your clothes in red dust, but we raced all the same. I was a good racer, a lot better than those loudmouth neighbours of mine, and a lot of the other children were jealous. Jealousy is an evil thing, Ravine; make sure it never takes hold of you.’

  I think of Stanley, your scarf wrapped around his jam-jar home.

  ‘They would tease me, the other children,’ Amma says, ‘because I tucked my shalwar kameez into the waist of my trouser bottoms.’

  ‘Baggy Bum Rekha,’ I mutter.

  My mother clicks her tongue at the memory. She adjusts the pillows around her, sinking in their fatness as she tells me how the children jeered at her right through the first two races. Still she went on, qualifying for the next race and then the next, until it came to the end of the day and there was only her and two other boys left. They combed their greased hair and congratulated themselves on their excellent running abilities as Amma carried out her stretches. Workmen arriving home were circling the edge of the reservoir. They sat down with legs crossed and lungis tucked behind their ankles, drinking chai as though watching a cricket match. When Amma looked up to see her father watching from the crowd, she began to feel the pressure. His grim face had an expression that said: how will my wayward daughter disgrace me this time?

  The two other finalists continued to mock Amma as they stood at the starting line. They pulled at the long plait dangling from the back of her head, laughed loudly in her ear as they ran around her, swapping sides and stepping on her toes. But my mother was steadfast in her focus. She looked straight ahead to the end of the reservoir, ignoring the smell of mangoes and bhelpuri as street vendors saw their chance to feed the ever-developing crowd. She held her racing pose even as the girls giggled, telling each other how foolish she looked. But when the starting cry beckoned, Amma was ready, pounding her feet into the red dust.

  Even with her speedy start, the boys were quick to catch up. No matter how fast she pummelled her feet she couldn’t regain her lead, and as they neared the end of the reservoir and the crowd cheered louder and louder she thought she was done for.

  That was when she saw the snake.

  ‘No grass snake, I tell you,’ Amma says. ‘It was a naja kaouthia. Pale and poisonous with a long body, lying across the dust in front of us.’

  One of the boys screamed when he saw it, stopping dead in his tracks before running in the opposite direction. The other boy looked back at him in confusion, continuing to run until he too saw the long body lying across his path. Amma could feel the boy looking over at her in panic but she wasn’t stopping for any creature, man or beast. As her last opponent fled back in defeat, my mother’s foot trod on the body of the serpent. It jumped and contorted, but her ankles were too quick for its venomous fangs as she continued her run to victory.

  ‘What did it feel like?’ I ask as Amma sits erect on the bed, the pride rippling across her face even after all these decades.

  She contemplates this for a moment. ‘Squishy,’ she says.

  ‘And your father?’

  She exhales loudly. ‘He thought I had spooked the boys with some kind of voodoo,’ she says. ‘Even when the others told him about the snake, he said I was phagol for running over it.’

  ‘Phagol,’ I repeat, a smile creeping to my lips.

  ‘Crazy,’ my mother says.

  ‘I know,’ I say, nudging her in the hip. ‘You used to call me that all the time.’

  My mother smiles as she pats me on the cheek.

  Some of the villagers thought that she was crazy too; others that she was blessed. To step on a snake and not be bitten was truly the act of a god or at least (for the Muslim contingent) the hallowed-by-God. She was treated with both reverence and fear from that day forth and became famous throughout all the neighbouring villages.

  ‘Your father had even heard the story,’ Amma tells me. ‘When I told him about it he said they had nicknamed me at his school as the crazy Bengali girl who ran over a snake.’

  Again she grins, the title hanging round her neck like a medal.

  I repeat the words my mother used to chastise me with. ‘Phagol betty,’ I say.

  Loosely translated as ‘crazy woman’.

  Amma looks down at me with raised eyebrows. After I developed a distinct disinterest in my mother tongue, Amma too found she used the language less and less. At first, when her companion came to visit, she spoke very little Bengali but as time has passed she’s eased back into it. There’s a fluidity in her voice that she’s unable to conjure in English; a speed far more suited to her character. When I hear her speak Bengali it’s akin to watching someone swim in water after trying to trudge through mud for thirty miles. A part of me is happy to see the sudden freedom of her tongue, while another part of me is afraid that it will swim off, along with her body, all the way back to the land of her birth.

  I can see Amma is encouraged by my simple use of ‘phagol betty’. Her eyes twinkle in the light of the bedroom lamp and soon she’s singing the Bengali national anthem.

  She told me the translation once.

  My golden Bengal, I like you lots and lots …

  I listen to the softness of her singing and, remembering the squatter next door can hear us as clearly as I could hear him hissing my name, I begin to join in. As my eyes blink slowly to sleep, I wonder if he’s covering his head with a pillow.

  Your brother was never a fan of my singing.

  The Constellation of Sandwiches

  After Uncle Walter arrived at Bosworth House the two of you became much cleaner. Not that you’d been filthy before, but things had changed from when Mrs Dickerson was in charge. On days when Amma combed my hair into elaborate plaits that weaved over and behind my head, yours remained so wild and unkempt that spiders could have lived in there. Jonathan often came to school in the same clothes he’d worn all week, large splash stains multiplying with each day. On PE days you both had to pull stinking items out of the spare-kit box – mismatching plimsolls, shirts so big they covered your knees – because Mrs Dickerson never washed your own. When Uncle Walter came, your clothes began to match, your faces were scrubbed clean, you handed homework in on time and had your reading records signed every day. On parents’ evening Mrs Jenkins leant in to talk to Uncle Walter with such enthusiasm it looked like she might grab him round the neck and kiss him.

  Yet this wasn’t enough for Jonathan. At the time I thought he was being a brat, but on reflection I suppose it was his mother’s absence that made him such a miserable sod. He never smiled at Uncle Walter, never laughed at his jokes. When your uncle made up elaborate names for meals – Penguin Stew, Butterfly Salad, Unicorn Stroganoff – Jonathan would shove them away, saying no name was going to stop them looking weird or smelling funny. Sometimes he was out-and-out spiteful,
‘accidentally’ drenching your uncle’s favourite recipe book with sticky cola, pulling a chair away as he was about to sit down. But I’d also seen his fingers clinging to his knees the day Uncle Walter had an attack, and once caught him peering over the top of his weather book as your uncle taught us how to survive killer bees. His hatred of Uncle Walter was as put on as his insistence on blood and guts in our emergency-room games. Or at least I thought so until the incident with the sandwich.

  Jonathan came over to my flat that morning particularly disgruntled. Uncle Walter was teaching you Italian and Jonathan had found the drone of foreign words unbearable. When Amma opened the door, he wore his sulking expression with his bottom lip sticking out, arms knotted at the very top of his chest.

  ‘Raviiine!’ Amma cried at a volume that was completely unnecessary as I was standing right behind her.

  She’d grown edgy during that time due to a string of heavy-breathing nuisance phone calls. We suspected Bradley Patterson, but without evidence Amma was growing fraught. She’d gone so far as to place a foghorn next to the phone.

  ‘I don’t want Ravine,’ your brother was quick to interject.

  I felt a small stabbing pain as he said that, but I didn’t let it show. Jonathan lifted his chin as he looked at Amma.

  ‘I want chilli powder.’

  Amma put her hands on top of each other neatly, placing them on her midriff with a look you never want to be given by my mother. Jonathan gulped, the muscles bobbing up and down his throat.

  ‘I mean, can I have some chilli powder, please, Mrs Roy?’

  Amma lifted her chin but only a fraction. ‘What for, young man?’

  ‘I’m doing an experiment and I need hot chilli powder,’ he told her. ‘The really hot stuff. You know, the one that makes us all choke like we’re about to die.’

  I could tell Amma was reluctant because she didn’t move from her position for a good few seconds. But after nights of disturbed sleep from nuisance calls, she soon caved in and walked into the kitchen. She measured out a teaspoon of chilli powder (far more than anybody could need) then delivered it to Jonathan in a sandwich bag. The vibrant orange of the powder shone through the plastic. He stood, holding it to the light as though examining a precious jewel.