Don't Let Him Know (16 page)

‘I remember right here we used to have your mother’s prayer room with all her gods and over there was your father’s library,’ said Meena-pishi. ‘Isn’t that right, Avinash?’

‘You remember,’ replied his father with a chuckle. ‘We couldn’t touch anything as long as Grandmother was alive. After she died, we got rid of some stuff. Then, after Ma went soon after, Romola sold off everything to the bikriwala.’

‘It’s not like you ever touched those books,’ protested Romola. ‘They were just a breeding ground for termites. And Amit needed a place to study.’

‘But those pictures? What happened to the pictures on the wall?’ said Meena-pishi. ‘I remember there were pictures of our parents on a holiday in the hills. And one of my grandmother on her wedding day.’

‘And there was one of all of us in the park for a picnic. That’s when my father had just got the new camera from England,’ said Avinash excitedly.

Amit stared at him curiously. His father was a quiet man, rarely demonstrative with either affection or reprimand. He seemed to live in his own world. He had rarely seen him so alive and voluble.

‘I am sure they are in the storeroom somewhere,’ said Romola with a slight smile. ‘You know, Meena, I can hardly get your brother to say five words when we are alone. And now look at him – just on a non-stop memory train ever since you stepped off that plane. Remember this, Meena, remember that? But we can’t always live in the past, can we? We have to go on with our lives. Now, come along, let me show you your room. Otherwise you brother and sister will spend all night talking right here.’

The next afternoon after lunch his aunt called Amit to her room. Amit stood at the door transfixed. His mother sat on the bed next to his aunt. Her suitcase was open and the contents were spread out everywhere. Clothes, biscuits, soaps.

‘Oh,’ said his mother inhaling a box of soaps. ‘You know, Meena, that’s what I missed the most after I came back from America with your brother. The soaps. They smelled so divine. I remembered my aunt coming from England and all the lovely soaps she had brought. Foreign always meant soap to me.’

‘Well, make sure you use them and don’t just stash them away for a special occasion, I know how you Indians are,’ teased Meena-pishi. ‘I hope this shirt fits Avinash. I got it in Doctor Basu’s size.’

‘Look what your aunt got you,’ said Romola holding out a box of Lego and a T-shirt.

Amit smiled and took them carefully from her hands. ‘Thank you,’ he said politely.

But there was more. Meena-pishi looked at him and said, ‘Come here, Amit. Show me your hand.’

He held his hand out and she reached into her handbag and brought out a watch. As she strapped it on Amit’s eyes grew wider. It had a Mickey Mouse on the dial.

‘Oh, how did you know? He is such a Mickey Mouse fan,’ laughed his mother. ‘When he was younger, his father’s friend Sumit once got him a packet of Mickey Mouse colouring pens. My goodness, I could not get him to throw away that packet even after the ink had dried and nothing came out of those pens any more.’

‘You know this Mickey’s eyes move with the hours. And when it is dark Mickey glows green,’ laughed Meena-pishi.

‘Really?’ said Amit. ‘Can I try it?’

‘Just wait till night,’ said his mother.

But Amit was already crawling under the bed where it was dark.

‘Oof oh, what are you doing among all the dust and spiders?’ scolded Romola. His aunt was right: Mickey glowed like a ghostly mouse in the dark.

Above him he heard his aunt say, ‘I didn’t know Mangala’s granddaughter was here. I didn’t really bring anything for her. Should I give her some money?’

‘That’s okay,’ said his mother. ‘We’ll give her one of these KitKat chocolates. She’ll be happy enough.’

But when Meena-pishi gave Durga the chocolate she slipped in some money with it as well. ‘Don’t tell anyone,’ she said conspiratorially. ‘Buy yourself something nice.’ When she saw Amit looking she winked at him as if it was their secret. ‘Do you like your watch? You know your cousin in America had one like that as well. Except his was Goofy the dog. We gave it to him after he did very well in arithmetic.’

Amit, whose mathematics results were often poor, looked down a little guiltily at his watch as if it might vanish from his wrist.

That night when his father came home from work, Amit showed him his watch. His father said, ‘But the time is wrong.’

‘It’s still American time,’ said Amit sheepishly hiding his hand behind his back. ‘Meena-pishi will show me how to change it soon.’

‘Now remember,’ said his father. ‘This is your first real watch. You must look after it well. It’s not a pen or a book that we can easily replace.’

In the morning when Amit woke the sun was already shining. He could see the motes of dust dancing in the bar of sunlight streaming through the window. Outside, the clamour of the day had begun. He could hear the crows cawing in the tree in front of his window and cars honking on the street. Someone was shouting for a cup of tea; somewhere a clock struck eight. Amit reached under his pillow and felt for his watch. There was a little knob to press to change the time. He started jabbing at the knob with great concentration and did not notice Durga come into the room.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

He looked up. ‘Fixing my watch,’ he replied.

‘Why? Is it broken?’ she asked.

‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘But where it came from in America, it’s a different time than here.’

‘What time is it over there?’ she asked

‘Yesterday evening,’ he answered.

She stared at him for a moment and then grinned showing her crooked front teeth. ‘How silly,’ she said, shaking her head ‘Now go and have your breakfast. Your eggs are getting cold. Your mother sent me to ask you to get up and brush your teeth.’

After lunch his mother and aunt settled down in the big bed that had belonged to his great-grandmother. His mother was reading a Bengali women’s magazine. She chewed paan as she read, her mouth moving slowly and methodically. Periodically she reached out to push her glasses up her nose.

Meena-pishi sighed and stretched. ‘I tell you, Romola,’ she said. ‘It is quite a luxury to have some rice for lunch and lie here quietly under the fan and take a nap. Over there – you eat some sandwiches or some leftovers and then you have to run to something or the other. Either the supermarket or soccer game or clarinet practice. There is always something. And Doctor Basu has so many social engagements especially after he became president of that cardiologists’ association.’

‘And it’s not the same, is it,’ said his mother, ‘taking a nap by yourself?’

‘So true,’ agreed his aunt.

Amit watched his mother place the magazine on her breast and shut her eyes and settle down, one arm over her head. A little strand of greying hair trailed over her forehead. She raised her hand to push it back, smudging the red of the bindi. It left a streak but she did not bother to fix it.

‘Tell me, Meena,’ said his mother. ‘Does it feel very different coming back?’

‘Some things are still the same. Just older and shabbier. The city seems dirtier. That garbage dump from the market next door seems to be twice as big. It’s a health hazard, if you ask me.’

‘We complain and complain to the authorities. But nothing changes,’ sighed his mother.

‘I miss Calcutta terribly but I don’t know if I can live here any more,’ Meena-pishi continued. ‘That garbage dump, the pollution. Nothing seems to work at all. It’s getting too much.’ His aunt closed her eyes. ‘And the heat. I guess I am becoming American.’

‘What will I do now, Ma?’ asked Amit.

‘What do you mean – what will you do now? It’s the middle of the afternoon. There is nothing to do. Take a nap.’

‘But I’m not sleepy.’

‘Just close your eyes and lie still.’

‘But Ma,’ protested Amit.

His mother said, ‘Read a magazine or something.’

Amit lay quietly for a minute watching the fan blades go round and round.

‘Ma,’ he said.

‘What now?’ grumbled his mother sleepily.

‘I am not sleepy.’

‘Try harder,’ she retorted.

His aunt smiled and said, ‘Amit, when you grow up, do you want to come to America?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘Do you ever wish you had stayed on after Avinash’s PhD?’ his aunt asked looking at his mother.

Romola didn’t respond for a minute. Amit could see the vein twitch on his mother’s forehead.

‘That’s so long ago. At that time we needed to come back,’ said his mother. ‘We had to take care of his mother and grandmother. If Amit studies hard maybe he will go on his own some day.’

‘I still remember the day Avinash called to say you were going back. Romola doesn’t like it here. Give her time, I said. She will settle down. Everyone is like that in the beginning. But your bags were already packed. You said you didn’t want to stay one day after his PhD was done.’

‘Why didn’t you like it there, Ma?’ asked Amit, curling up against his mother.

‘It wasn’t home. I thought if I had a child like you, he needed to grow up among his cousins and grandparents,’ said his mother stroking his hair.

‘That’s all very well,’ said Meena-pishi. ‘But you could have tried to adjust a little, no? I mean Avinash could have done so much more research. He was always so academically inclined. And he would have been earning in dollars.’

‘Well, we are getting by fine here, Meena,’ replied his mother stiffly.

‘Of course, of course. I didn’t mean it that way,’ Meena-pishi said hurriedly. ‘I just mean it would have been nice to have you all in America as well. Maybe we would see each other more than once in seven years.’

Romola pursed her lips but didn’t say anything. She turned to Amit instead. ‘Why don’t you go downstairs and see what Durga is doing? But don’t play up on the roof. The afternoon sun will burn you to a crisp.’

Durga was sitting under the stairs eating rice. Her grandmother was washing the kitchen floor. As Amit came down the stairs he heard her call out to Durga, ‘Come and put away these dishes when you are done eating. Then I can sit down and get a bite.’

Durga did not answer. She was busy pouring dal on her plate. Amit watched it pool amid the snowy mountain of rice that she had piled high on her plate. Rice mounded so high a cat cannot jump over it, his mother was prone to grumble. She looked up at him with a frown, her hand poised midway. He could see the little dal-smeared grains of rice clinging to her fingers.

‘What’s the matter now?’ she asked.

‘Nothing. Mother said I could come down and play with you instead of sleeping.’

Durga put some rice in her mouth and chewed it reflect-ively. Still chewing, she said, ‘Well, I’m not done eating.’

‘After you finish eating then,’ said Amit settling down on the last step.

‘After that I have to wash the kitchen floor and do the dishes,’ she said. Then she stopped, looked at him and cried out to her grandmother.

‘What is it?’ said Mangala peeping out from the kitchen.

‘I need to take care of Amit. His mother said so. I can’t wash your kitchen for you,’ Durga announced triumphantly.

‘What?’ said Mangala stepping out, her hands still wet from washing dishes.

‘See,’ said Durga gesturing at Amit. ‘There he is.’

‘But—’ said Mangala and then stopped. ‘Well, hurry up and eat then and my goodness leave some rice for me. What an appetite this girl has – like a monster.’

‘Monster,’ grinned Amit. ‘You’re a monster.’

Durga stuck out her tongue at him.

Amit grew to love the afternoons best of all. Upstairs his mother and aunt would lie in bed, reading magazines, their conversations slowly losing steam and trickling away into nothingness as they fell asleep. All over the house the windows would be shut against the heat. Skinny drips of sunlight would leak in through cracks in the shutters and puddle on the floor.

Mangala would unroll her mat and lie down, her greying hair still wet from her bath. She would tell Durga, ‘Now play quietly. If you wake me up, I’ll wring your neck.’ Then she would turn on her little tinny radio and listen to film songs till she too fell asleep.

Durga and Amit would go and sit in the cool dark living room and play ludo or snakes and ladders. Sometimes she would want to play dress-up but that bored him. She had a small worn-down crimson lipstick. When she got tired of painting her own lips, she would, much to his horror, want to colour his. Then he would try and distract her with his watch.

‘Let me wear it,’ she said once.

‘No,’ he replied instantly.

‘Why not?’ she said pouting.

‘Because you might break it and my father won’t give me a new one,’ he replied.

‘I’ll be careful,’ she promised. ‘I am not going anywhere with it. I just want to see how it looks on my wrist. I have never had a watch.’

So he gave it to her. He watched her put it on. He had never seen it on anyone else’s wrist but his own. It looked funny on her.

‘That’s enough. Give it back,’ he said stretching out his hand.