A Sister's Promise (7 page)

‘The woman who phoned is Sharda—my sister.’ Puja puts her head in her hands. Her body slumps, a small brown comma punctuating his cream carpet.

Her words perforate the stifling, vinegary fug pervading his room, leaking shock, and the mothball odour of mystery. Countless, baffled questions trip over one another in their haste to slip from his tongue.

‘What!’ is all he can manage. He cannot believe it. All these years his mother has made not one mention of a sister.

But then his mother does not mention much of anything at all, really, except for her work. And his failings. His mother is a world unto herself, a world to which he has always been denied entry. He shouldn’t be surprised that she has kept her sister from him. Come to think of it, he
can
believe it. He wouldn’t be too shocked if he were to discover she has a brother too, or heck, a whole other family. Who knows what else she is hiding, or what else he will find out.

‘Kushi her . . . her daughter is very ill. Her kidneys are destroyed and she’s on dialysis. My sister . . . she wants me there. I . . . I have agreed to go . . . ’

The rage that erupts, blazes a trail through his alcohol-lined innards. ‘Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. You’re willing to put your precious work on hold and cross an ocean to go to visit this girl, your niece, who’s in a hospital five thousand miles away—a girl you barely know, the child of a sister you’ve never mentioned—when you did not even stay with me that one time I was in hospital, when I desperately needed you?’ he spits out and his mother’s face crumples before she turns away from him to hide it.

It was just after his father had departed for India. Raj had been dreadfully ill, a spiking fever which refused to relinquish its hold on him, and stayed in the hundreds no matter how much Calpol and Neurofen his nanny administered. He was hospitalised and was being subjected to various tests to try and find out the cause.

Raj had been terrified, scared and lonely after his nanny left that evening. He had wanted his mother, had begged her to stay with him in that strange room with its whirring machines and wailing children. But his mother had abandoned him to the blue-smocked nurses with their well-meaning smiles that did not quite reach their tired eyes. Even then,
especially
then, she had chosen her work over him, not willing to give it up for a few hours to stay at her sick son’s side.

That night the boy in the next bed had convulsed, and all the nurses and doctors in the hospital had converged on him, it seemed to Raj. He can still recall the strident panic in the air, the rasping sounds of curtains being drawn to shield the other children, the staccato clip of feet urgently slapping against the tiles, the frantic beep, beep of the machines, and the boy’s face, pale and lifeless, as he was wheeled away. . .

Raj had sat up most of the night, terrified, shivering, and afraid to call out for the nurses. A nurse had found him rocking, and whispering, ‘Mum, Dad,’ over and over, as his sobs shuddered through his fevered body, the tears making slippery, wet tracks on his face, and his eyelashes crusted in salty clumps.

He has hated hospitals with a passion ever since. He looks at his mother now, and sees the memory of that hospital, of him begging her to stay, reflected in her eyes.

He had launched himself at her, his hot body trembling with relief and disbelief, when she visited the next morning, unable to trust the evidence of his sickly eyes, having convinced himself that this was it, that he would be wheeled away like that other boy, that he would never see his mum or his dad again. He had breathed her in—she smelled as always of a dewy, sun sprinkled, spring morning—had revelled in the unfamiliar luxury of her arms for all of a minute before she’d untangled him, gently backing away, patting her hair in place, smoothing her skirt, perching delicately at the edge of his bed, keeping him, as always, at arms’ length.

‘I’ve promised my sister,’ she says now, her voice low, hesitant.

‘You haven’t spoken to her, or of her, that I know of. And now she calls and you pack up your life, your work, which you’ve always maintained is so very important and will fall to pieces if you’re not around, to embark on this trip to India . . . ’

Why is this unknown sister so important and I am not? Why don’t I matter? Why have I never mattered?

She sighs, fiddles with a thread on the carpet, not meeting his eye. ‘Raj, she wants me there. I said I’d go . . . her daughter . . . Raj, we need to go to India. I’ll book the first flight out.’

‘
We
don’t need to go to India. Dad’s invited me there so many times. And I’ve always refused. If I didn’t go for him, what makes you think I’ll go now? For some aunt and cousin I haven’t even heard of up until now. I’m not going.
You
go if you want to so desperately.’

She sighs again. ‘I’m sorry son, you don’t have a choice. Not this time.’ She is referring to his dad and his pleas for Raj to come visit. Her voice is brisk, all emotion wiped out of it. ‘Good job you only have a week left of school before you break up. I’ll call the school, get special dispensation.’

‘I am not travelling five thousand miles to a country I’ve never wanted to visit, to see a girl I do not know, who is in a hospital at that. I loathe hospitals.’

And whose fault is that?

‘You are coming. You have no choice.’ His mother’s voice has morphed back into that efficient, no-nonsense tone he knows.

‘I can stay here on my own.’ He is so tired; he just wants to sleep. Can’t she just leave him alone?

‘You’re coming with me.’

‘You can’t make me go.’ Why does he behave like a toddler having a tantrum in his dealings with his mother?

‘I can. I’m booking a flight now and I’ll get leave of absence from your school.’ Her voice softens suddenly, ‘I know this is all very confusing, especially after the evening you’ve had. I’m . . . I’m so sorry for hitting you.’ She hesitates and looks at him as if to say more, but then she rubs at her eyes wearily. ‘Try and get some sleep. Good night.’

She leaves the room, closing the door softly behind her.

I hate you,
he thinks.
A girl you barely know is ill halfway across the world and you are prepared to drag me over there, blithely making the decision for both of us, callously usurping my life without a thought as to how I might feel, what I might want, not caring that I’m leaving my life and everything I know, all that is familiar, behind.

A picture forms in his mind of Ellie mouthing, ‘Hi’ through the bus window, and gesturing ‘I heart you’. Ellie—the one good thing in his life at the moment.

It is instantly chased away by another wave of loathing toward his mother.

I want to go to school tomorrow, see if Ellie meant what she said, not come with you to a country I don’t know and never meant to visit. And all this upheaval to travel to the other side of the globe, to visit a hospital of all places . . . and yet, when I was ill, you didn’t even stay. You didn’t stay. How can I forgive you?

Sleep, so desperately craved just minutes ago, eludes him. India—the country he’s always hated, because it took his father from him. A provocative country full of surprises, now extending the consolation prize of aunt and cousin, in return for snatching his father. India, now showing him a different side to his mother. His mother, who has refused to give him anything of herself—except material things, certainly nothing like the love he has so craved—is now preparing to travel five-thousand miles to the hospital bedside of an unknown niece, jumping to obey the summons of an unknown sister and in doing so, uprooting his life and hers. His mother, who has always been a closed book, is now marginally opening and promising pages full of secrets. What more will he find? And does he really want to?

Raj pulls the duvet over his head the way he did as a child. Breathing in the familiar smell of his sweat, alcohol fumes and stale cigarette smoke, he is assailed by new fears, clandestine worries and a vulnerability that he only unmasks privately, in the fusty dark.

KUSHI

THE BITTER TANG OF MEDICINE AND MALAISE

I am trapped, I cannot move. My hands and upper body feel trussed like the mutton carcasses suspended in Abdul’s meat shack in Dhoompur. I cannot feel my legs. There’s something sitting on my chest, seizing it in a stranglehold.

Where am I?

I feel tiredness like an ache deep in my bones, a weariness so heavy it weighs down my eyelids. There is a harsh taste of nails in my mouth as if I have swallowed whole, one of the tumbledown rust buckets that pass for buses in Bhoomihalli.

When the rush of blood whooshing in my ears dies down, I make out other sounds. The clatter of trolleys, the beep of machines, the smell of anaesthetic, the humming of electricity, sobs and moans and agonised entreaties.

The bitter tang of medicine and malaise.

I am in hospital.

Why?

Something scratches at the edges of memory, elusive, fluttering. I drag my sore eyes open, resisting an intense urge to close them immediately. The first thing I see is the framework of ugly apparatus surrounding me, contraptions holding me in place like the yoke on a bullock’s back. No wonder I feel imprisoned.

My eyelids heavy, I move my throbbing eyes past the machinery hemming me in. Beside my bed, a chair and folded into it, is my ma, clutching a sheaf of papers, her mouth open, her eyes closed. Streaky grey hair escapes her bun. She looks as if she has aged ten years since I saw her last.

I obey my sinking eyelids and give in to the exhaustion that holds my body captive. I close my eyes.

Is this a dream? A strange, disorientating nightmare?

I could open my mouth and ask Ma but what if no words come? Can I even speak or have I lost my voice too, in this strange state that I find myself? Why does my body feel alien? Why do I have no control over it? What are all these machines? What has happened to me? The last thing I remember is talking with Asha’s mother in the sari shop . . .

The sari shop . . .

Roaring sounds bear down upon me. The car . . . is coming right at me . . .

Glass splinters in a shower of dagger-edged crystal. The blazing burgundy stench of fear, the pungent smell of ammonia, the iron taste of rust . . . red letters on faded yellow . . .

The rush of urine slick on my thighs. Bright crimson droplets stain silvery shards glinting vulgarly in the sunshine . . .

Screams, laments, and then silence . . .

No, please, no . . .

My heart is jumping fit to escape the confines of my ribcage. I want to scream this nightmare away. I want to run, to rid my prone, unresponsive body of its mechanical cage—outpace this outlandish fantasy that feels so incredibly real.

‘Kushi,’ Ma’s strangled voice utters my name as if it is a prayer she is offering to the gods. ‘It’s okay, my darling . . .’ She consoles me as she used to when I was ill as a child. Her calloused hand, a legacy of years of chopping and stirring, cooking and cleaning, rests on mine.

My mother’s touch—so familiar and reassuring, now signals the beginning of a waking nightmare, as the implications of feeling her hand on mine sink in.

This is real.

My eyes are still shut tight, but I must have displayed some agitation for Ma to soothe me in the way she used to when I awoke in the thick of night tormented by vivid dreams.

‘You have too intense an imagination,’ she used to say, smiling fondly at me as she brushed the sweat-slicked hair away from my forehead.

I am not imagining this.

I want Ma to lie, to tell me I’m dreaming.

I want to talk to Ma, make sense of this, but I do not want to open my eyes again, acknowledge this world I find myself in, this horror I have woken up to. I cannot afford to be here, like this, helpless, dependent on others, unable to move.

I have so many things I need to do. I have my causes to crusade, I have a rally scheduled. I don’t want to be a victim, like the women I arrange counselling for on a daily basis, although it is gradually sinking in that I am.

I want to cry, rail, shout.

I can do nothing. I keep my eyes closed and wish, like a deluded child, that when I open them again, my world will be back to normal.

I yearn for the dreamy numbness I was experiencing before I regained consciousness, the gentle balm of nothingness.

‘We will fix this,’ Ma is saying softly, as if she can read my mind, sense my turmoil. She’s always been able to tell what’s going on in my head even before I have voiced it. And now, here in the midst of this nightmare, broken as I am, eyes shut tight in denial of what is happening to me, she is still able to tune in to what I am feeling and offer comfort.

How, Ma? How can you sort this out for me?

I have always fixed other people’s problems for them secure in the knowledge that if ever I was in trouble, Ma would be there for me. She is
my
problem solver. But now . . .

My faith in Ma is immense, but how can she get me out of this?

A male voice, right beside me, startles me. If I wasn’t hemmed in by medical equipment, I would have jumped. ‘How has she been?’

Something is yanked and pulled, one of the tubes feeding into my body causes a pinprick of discomfort to register in my left hand.

‘She was restless just now. Thrashing about.’ Ma’s voice, distressed.

‘It happens. She’s not in any pain, I promise.’ The doctor’s—I assume he is my doctor—voice tries for assurance. It brings to mind the deep indigo of a summer’s night settling over golden fields. It is threaded through with tiredness.

What is the hollowness I feel then?
I want to ask.
This all-encompassing exhaustion.

‘She’s doing fine in the circumstances. Her stats have stabilised. The dialysis is doing its job for now.’

Dialysis? Is that what the machines are for?
I have heard that word before. What does it mean? I rack my brains to remember, but my head feels sluggish, it will not cooperate.

‘Doctor, I have done the calculations and even if I sell the factory and the cottage, I can only afford to keep her on dialysis for another month or so. What are the chances of finding a donor before then?’ Ma’s voice throbs with pain and worry.