As Sweet as Honey

18




Then, just like that, Meterling retreated into sadness. The fire quenched in her eyes. Give her time, said Grandmother. We did, and the day Meterling woke up from her darkness, it was as if the moon came out. For two weeks, she had been veiled in absolute despair. (“Like Absolut vodka!” cried Sanjay, still trying to make jokes, in near-equal despair to see our favorite aunt all choked and clouded and alone like this—but no vodka was involved, sad the luck and more the pity, we’d later think.) She would not speak to us, keeping to her bed, not even letting Grandmother minister to her. She stopped bathing, which made Grandmother mad, because that was one of the top ten don’ts in the household. On the fifteenth day of relentless grief, Meterling emerged, not as bright as a full moon, but more like a half-moon on the way to becoming whole again. The darkness, her hunger moon, her moon madness, her mood shift, her mad moon passed, and we all breathed a collective sigh of relief. The half-moon remains a beautiful moon. It is a midpoint moon, best viewed after twilight, but really even better when dawn is a few hours away, surprising you with its presence.

At the same time Meterling emerged from her darkness, Rasi found her transistor. She had felt lost without it. No one had taken it. It was where she had forgotten she put it.

“Now,” said Auntie Pa, “I once lost a hat that was precious to me.”

“A hat?” We tried to picture Aunt with a hat and couldn’t.

“I had a hat like that,” said another aunt. “A party hat given to me by a friend.”

“A party hat!”

“A straw hat with a grosgrain ribbon—”

“What kind of ribbon?”

“You know, those ribbons that are striated.”

We stared, but Rasi shook her head. “They’re talking about ribbons, and I’m talking about my radio.”

“Hats, ribbons, radios, all the same,” chirped in a third aunt, who we didn’t even know was listening.

“No—” said Rasi.

“Child—” said an aunt.

But we ran away before they could impart even more wisdom.


One day, Meterling turned to us and said, “You know, being tall was never an impediment in my life.”

We stared at her. We all knew that Meterling was accustomed to shrink a bit when she encountered other people, feeling her gait awkward and out of place. She’d hunch her shoulders; wear only flat-heeled sandals, hiding her strength.

“No, I never did feel bad. If I did, I tended to look at all there is in the world that goes right. The world is a strange and marvelous place. And there might be much that is wrong with it, or with how you are feeling, how this might hurt, or that … Anyway, I don’t know what I’m trying to say …”

We waited.

“What I’m trying to say is that being tall never stopped me for too long. It’s who I am, after all. When I was little, I didn’t like being the tallest and the biggest, while everyone else—all the other children—were so little and cute. And children can be mean if they want to, make fun.”

We looked at her. I suddenly felt my heart grip a bit as I imagined her longing to be like everyone else, the teasing she must have received for her height. She squinted a bit and continued.

“The thing is, the thing is that at some time I accepted who I was and started to grow into myself. I mean, I knew I was unusual for this town—and you know, children, we are really just talking about Madhupur itself, and not the whole island of Pi—but I knew that in this whole world there are lots like me, and in fact, probably in the whole wide world there were so many like me that I wasn’t even the tallest anymore for my age, and possibly, in some places, the smallest. Do you see what I am telling you?”

We nodded—except, of course, we weren’t quite sure.

“What I am saying is that we just grow to like ourselves and become who we are.” She stopped here and looked at us, vigorously nodding, and shrugged her shoulders.

“Auntie. Would you like some water?”

Her sanguinity did not last long. Again, a mood appeared: Meterling with her anger. Sitting day after day, swallowing it all. So painful her throat ached. Until one day she exploded, and let out a scream. Then she quietly put herself back together again. Sometimes you can see the cracks where a shell or a pot has been mended. Some value the cracks even more and paint them gold to honor the impermanence of the world. Or perhaps because the gold makes the cracks striking. Meterling, when she cracked, just a little, patched up fairly quickly, no scar. But how could there not be scars? To lose so much: parents, husband; then to gain so quickly: a child.