The topknot falls forward as the young man bends and tries to lift the stone, grimacing, veins popping out like snakes on his forehead. When he gets it upright, his muscles fail him and his friends rush forward to keep it from crushing him. When he tries to ease it onto his shoulder it sways wildly. They restore the beam, but all three look ruffled and bruised, and the tall one’s shoulder bleeds. Her husband sees none of this, arriving beside her, his face thick with anger, terrifying her. With a quick tilt of his head he conveys his thanks for lunch and his need to get back to work. She runs home.
Thankamma takes one look at her face and sits her down. “Those boys are lucky that he controlled his temper,” Thankamma says after hearing what happened. Her words are hardly reassuring, and the cup of water in the bride’s hands shakes. “Molay, don’t worry. He’ll never be angry without cause. And never at you. He would never mistreat you.” Thankamma puts an arm around her. “I know this is all new and frightening. When I got married, my husband and I were only ten. He was a naughty brat. We ignored each other. We were just children in a big house, and there were so many of us. The boys were all mean. One time I saw him sitting on a log looking at the stream. I came up quietly and I pushed him into the water!” Her laugh is infectious and the bride cannot help but smile. “He likes to remind me of that day even now! Yes, we disliked each other. But see, things don’t stay the same. Don’t you worry.” Thankamma looks at her and adds earnestly, “What I’m trying to say is that my brother is like a coconut. The hardness is all on the outside. You’re his wife, and he cares for you as Thankamma cares for you. You understand?” She tries to. Thankamma, who’s never at a loss for words, seems uncomfortable saying even this much. “There’s nothing you have to do. Don’t worry. It’ll all unfold in its own time.”
CHAPTER 5
Husbandry
1900, Parambil
In the wake of Thankamma’s departure, silence descends on the house, a feeling of being underwater with too little light filtering through. JoJo, unsettled, doesn’t let his stepmother out of his sight; even in sleep his small fingers are curled in her hair. Their first night alone, she’s awake, not because of her husband’s snores from the adjacent bedroom but because she has never slept without an adult beside her. His snores, though distant, are reassuring; they are punctuated occasionally by a cough and then a disgruntled rasp, as if someone prodded a slumbering tiger. He talks in his sleep, more words than he’s said to her since her arrival. Seeing him be so playful with Damodaran, who has left as mysteriously as he came, she knows there’s a childlike side to him. Still, she only dares speak to him to tell him dinner is ready.
Shamuel comes by several times during the day to ask if she needs anything and is disappointed if she doesn’t. She’s touched by his concern.
“Shamuel, there is something I need.”
“Ooh-aah, anything!”
“Paper, envelope, and a pen to write to my mother.”
The eager smile on his face fades. “Aah.” He clearly has no experience with those commodities. Still, he surprises her when he returns from the market, proudly retrieving envelopes, paper, and a pen from the collapsed sack on his head.
My Dear Ammachi,
May this letter find you in good health. Thankamma was here all this time. I manage well. I cook several dishes.
Not long after her father died, her mother lost her dominion in the kitchen; she bemoaned the fact that she hadn’t taught her daughter to cook before her wedding.
It’s just me and JoJo now. He is my shadow. Without him I think I would miss you so much more. The only trouble he gives me is when I want to bathe him.
When she first tried it, JoJo fought her. Still, she poured water over his head, but then he turned pale, his eyelids fluttering like a moth’s wings and his eyeballs rolling in their sockets. She was terrified, thinking he was about to have a convulsion. She never poured water on his head again, resorting instead to a washcloth for his hair and face. Even so, it’s a daily battle. There’s a war, she now sees, between the men of Parambil and the waters of Travancore. She won’t share this with her poor mother. Maybe she already knows?
How can I be a better householder, a better mistress of the house?
She wishes she could erase that sentence, because her mother is no longer the householder or the mistress of the house. Her trials in the joint family home began soon after she became a widow, her brother’s and sister-in-law’s characters changing. Her mother likely sleeps on the verandah now and is bullied and treated like a maid. Meanwhile, at Parambil, her daughter lacks for nothing; grain threatens to spill out of the ara, and the lockbox is never short of coins.
When I pray in the evening, I say to myself, “My Ammachi is also praying right now.” That way I feel close to you. I miss you so much, but I cry only at night when JoJo can’t see me. I wish I’d brought my Bible. There isn’t one here. I know Parambil is far, but please, Ammachi, come visit me. Come stay a few nights. My husband doesn’t like to travel by boat. If you can’t come, maybe I will try to come. I’ll have to bring JoJo . . .
She pictures her mother reading the letter, her mother’s tears staining the page just as hers do. She imagines her folding the letter under her pillow, then keeping it with her few possessions in her bedroll. Then, in her thoughts she sees a hand—her aunt’s—probing in the bedroll while her mother bathes. It keeps her from asking her mother if she’s eating better now that there’s one less mouth to feed. A part of her wants those prying eyes to read those words and recognize the injustice in their souls. But it would only make things more difficult for her mother.
A reply comes in three weeks through the achen who performed the marriage and who travels to the diocese office in Kottayam every two weeks; there he mails and collects letters if there are any. A boy brings it over to the house. In her letter her mother showers her with love and kisses and says she’s proud to imagine her daughter stepping into the role of householder thanks to Thankamma’s coaching. At the end of the letter, her mother uncharacteristically and strongly dissuades her daughter from coming back to visit, giving no explanation. And she doesn’t respond to her daughter’s impassioned request that she please visit Parambil. The letter only makes her worry more about her mother’s welfare.
Thankamma’s homilies run wild in her head like braids that have come unraveled. The bottom tier of a banana bunch always has an even number and the tier above is odd. If someone tried to sneak off with just one, Thankamma would know; to maintain the pattern, they would have to remove a banana from each row and that would be obvious. But then again, who would steal? Be observant—that must have been Thankamma’s lesson. Yet that morning, she isn’t. She ignores a speckled hen’s urgent clucking and its repeated and determined forays into the kitchen, shooing it away.
“She’s ready to lay an egg, Ammachi!” JoJo says.
Did JoJo just call her “Ammachi”? Little Mother? Her chest swells with pride. She hugs him. “What would I do without you, little man?”
She grabs the hen and sets it on a sack in the pantry, then inverts a wicker basket over it. The hen fusses indignantly at her from the dark. “Forgive me. I’ll be listening for when you’re done, I promise.”