Six
What happened in those last few weeks? It was the season of waiting for water. The monsoon clouds gathered like a herd of elephants, they stamped with sporadic, faraway thunder, they split the sky with light, but they did not break. The earth was parched and dusty. There was a snapping static in the air; the birds, too exhausted to flit through the relentlessly burning skies, stayed hidden in the trees. We could hear them, but they did not show themselves. The dogs lay in the shade, their great pink tongues hanging out. The pond had shrunk so that what water was left gathered still and stagnant, the fish clustered thickly together. The lotuses that had floated on the surface kissing the mirrored sky now stood high and lifeless in the heated air. The river was at a crawl, the high banks exposed like gums in a rotted mouth. We waited—people, animals, the earth itself. Everything held its breath for the deluge.
*
The heat is so oppressive that I sleepwalk to school and back home. It is a few weeks to my fourteenth birthday, but no one has talked about what will happen. Amma has always thrown me a party. There has always been a cake with my name on it flooded with pink-and white-icing roses. The quietness around this birthday can only mean that big plans are being made. I’m thinking about who she might have invited when Samson grabs my wrist, takes me stumbling along the side wall to his room, pushes his bulk against me, pinning me against the wall. I float up and into the sky with the wheeling, calling birds as he fumbles at my uniform. A noise, a movement at the door. Over his shoulder, my mother’s eyes. I break past her, run. Behind me, her shattered cry, the sound of her palms landing on his skin, his begging voice.
I run into my room, every artery and capillary of my body full of jagged ice. I close the door and sit shaking on my bed. They will throw me out. I will be without family, without people. I see it over and over: my mother instantly understanding, shame and pain crumpling her face. She must have suspected; that’s why she came to his room. I lie on my back, staring at the ceiling, my fingers clutching and releasing the sheets. A beast sits on my chest pushing out all the air, making it impossible to inhale. I will choke here alone.
I reach under my pillow. I push the shining edge against my wrist. A line of red on my skin, blood welling onto the fabric of a white handkerchief. Outside, the blinding sunshine is choked, darkness drops, the elephantine clouds open, and water falls in torrents. The day is vanquished; it is suddenly monsoon-created midnight. I can hear the river’s answering roar. Instantly it has gone from a slow crawl to a frothing, boiling cauldron. I run to the window and open it; the monsoon drenches my face. I watch the garden being punished, the trees whipped like cowering dogs.
And then with a sickening drop in my stomach I realize I have left my small black Bata slippers that fit only me in his room when I ran. If they are found there, there will be no way to protest, no way to say that it didn’t happen, it never happened, my mother did not see what she saw. I stop with my ear to the door, hear nothing but the thunder. I open it gently, glide down the dark staircase. In the living room Amma and Thatha are at war.
Amma shouting, “I saw it! With my own eyes. How can you say I didn’t?”
“It didn’t happen. You’re crazy to even think such a thing.”
“Stop drinking! Stop hiding!” The sound of his glass dashed and broken on the ground.
I slip out into the garden and am immediately soaked, gusts of wind and rain battering me, sticking my clothes to my skin. I run, the mud pulling at my feet with every step. I stand outside his door and hear no trace of Samson. Maybe he is already gone. I walk inside. The single bulb is switched off, the darkness hanging like a curtain. My eyes adjust slowly.
The snuffling of a dog and Judy lopes into the room, licks my muddy calf, and looks up at me, questioning. I freeze as my father comes in, shines a light straight at me. My hands move up to shield my eyes. I can smell the arrack on his breath. In his other hand, a long and pointed shadow.
“What are you doing here?”
“Thatha.”
We sense some small movement in a corner of the dark room. My father’s eye is drawn away from me. He says, “Go back to the house.”
I stumble outside into the punishing rain. I stand there and I hear them shouting. Thatha’s voice. Samson’s voice. How similar they are. Barely distinguishable. And then the thunder shakes the earth, and under it something else, something almost as loud as I run back into the house.
I slip up the stairs, leaving puddles of water in my wake. In my room, I drop my clothes in a sodden pile, pull on my nightgown, crawl into bed. I pull the sheet over me and lay there, my arms around my knees, hugging myself as tight as I can, making myself as small as I can.
I wait for the light and what it might bring.