The Covenant of Water

Odat Kochamma is the tonic Parambil needs. The old lady is ceaseless in her toil. Within a week, Big Ammachi comes to rely on being fussed at, told to sit down and rest, or made to laugh so hard she has to pee. The only thing she doesn’t like is that Odat Kochamma always puts on the same turmeric-spattered mundu after her bath, even though she hotly denies it. “But I just changed it yesterday!” In the middle of the night, Big Ammachi understands and is furious with herself: Odat Kochamma has only one change of clothes. The next day she presents her with two brand-new sets, saying, “I didn’t see you last Onam, so these have been waiting for you.”

Odat Kochamma acts indignant, her brow furrowed, fingering the white cloth that will never again be as white as it is just now. But her eyes betray her. “Oho! What’s this? Are you scheming to marry me off, at my age? Aah, aah. If I’d known I’d never have come to visit. Send my suitor away! I won’t see him. Something’s wrong with him that you’re not telling me. Is he blind? Does he have fits? I’m done with men. This pot has more intelligence than a man!” All the while, she keeps thrusting the clothing back at Big Ammachi yet retains a firm grip.

Baby Mol runs to her father whenever she sees him. He’s more patient with her than he was with JoJo, who was in any case awed by his size and his silence; Baby Mol is not. She shows her Big Appachen her ribbons and her dolls. One rainy afternoon when he’s imprisoned by the downpour, Baby Mol interrupts her father’s anxious pacing on the verandah and pulls him down to what has become her bench. “Sit here!” He lowers himself obediently. “Why does the rain fall to the ground and not go up to the sky? Why—” He listens, befuddled, to the barrage of questions. Baby Mol doesn’t wait for answers. She stands on the bench to crown her father with a hat she wove out of green coconut fronds with Odat Kochamma’s help. Pleased by the effect, she claps her hands. Then she wraps her stubby arms around her father’s neck and presses her cheek to his, squashing both their faces. “You can go now,” she says. “You’ll stay dry with this hat.” He wags his head in gratitude. Big Ammachi bites her lips to keep from laughing at the sight of her giant of a husband, burnished by decades of sun, crowned by a comically small, misshapen hat. Once he’s out of his daughter’s sight she sees him remove it and examine it.

“I never thought I’d live to see such a thing,” Big Ammachi says to Odat Kochamma.

“Aah. Why not? A daughter has an open door into a father’s heart.”

I’ll take some credit too, she thinks. I helped to soften him. I helped unburden him of his secrets.

The chemachen who comes calling for a subscription one morning is no more than a boy, the growth on his upper lip so sparse that each hair could be named after an apostle. His voice has just broken. In his white cassock, which is far too big for him, and a black cap that swallows his forehead, he looks dressed for the priest part in a school play. No doubt his family “dedicated” him to the church when he was in shorts, to be raised (and fed) by the seminary, a boon when paddy is scarce. All such boys go on to be ordained, but Big Ammachi wonders about their true conviction.

The silly chemachen had spent minutes observing Damo, till Unni chased him away. Now he’s too busy gawking at Baby Mol to recall why he’s there, until Big Ammachi asks him about the ledger. His childlike eyes turn uncomprehendingly to her.

“That thing under your sweaty armpit,” she says, pointing.

He hands it over. “What’s wrong with the little one?” he asks solicitously.

She jerks up, following his gaze to where Baby Mol sits on her bench, as she does for hours each day, her legs keeping time.

“What do you mean, what’s wrong? Nothing’s wrong with her!”

Several seconds elapse before he understands he’s said something terribly stupid. He walks backward, but then remembers his ledger, reaching warily for it, worried she will clout him with it before he escapes.

A furious Big Ammachi studies her smiling daughter. What did the stupid boy see? Was it her daughter’s tongue? The family is used to Baby Mol’s habit of parking her tongue on her lower lip, as though there’s no room in her mouth. Her face is broad, or perhaps her prominent forehead just makes it seem so. The soft diamond that babies have in the front of their heads remains visible under Baby Mol’s skin, though she’s going on six. Her features are blunt, that’s true. Unlike her parents, she has a snub nose, and it sits on her face like a berry on a saucer.

Big Ammachi feels the muttam sinking beneath her and reaches for a verandah pillar for support. Baby Mol was three before she could walk without clinging to something, and four before she put words together. Big Ammachi was too relieved to have a child who didn’t wish to swing from vines to make much of these things.

She seeks out Odat Kochamma. “Be honest—what do you think?” The old lady studies Baby Mol for a while. “Could be something isn’t right. Her voice is so hoarse. And her skin is different, puffy.” It pains the old lady to say this, but Big Ammachi knows she’s right. “But what does it matter?” Odat Kochamma adds. “She’s an angel!”

Big Ammachi summons the vaidyan, who pulls out a bottle of tonic after a cursory glance at the patient. “Give her this,” he says, in his priestly manner, “three times a day, followed by warm water.”

“Wait! What do you think is wrong with her?” she says, ignoring the proffered bottle.

“Aah, aah, this should work,” he says, looking at neither of them, still holding out the bottle.

“That’s the same tonic you gave her when she had whooping cough.”

“Why not? Cough is gone, is it not?”

Big Ammachi dismisses him and speaks urgently to her husband. He becomes very still. After a long while he nods.

That evening, the patriarch of Parambil summons Ranjan and asks him to escort Big Ammachi and Baby Mol to Cochin; he is the better traveled of the twins and knows Cochin. Dolly reports that Decency Kochamma has had a fit, because of her husband’s obvious pleasure in an assignment where she won’t be monitoring him. She makes him kneel, prays over him, anoints him with holy oil, and threatens to skin him alive if he misbehaves.

Big Ammachi asks her mother to come with them, hoping the excursion might shake her out of her lethargy. They set out before dawn, the women dressed in their finest, carrying umbrellas and packed lunches. Baby Mol’s excitement keeps them all in good spirits. A boatman takes them down the river and then weaving through canals and backwaters until they arrive at Vembanad Lake, one edge of which Big Ammachi last saw as a twelve-year-old bride on the second-saddest day of her life. A bigger boat carries them across the lake.

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