Two
She bakes cakes; she sings songs. She sews clothes for herself and for me and my dolls on her Singer. Matching outfits in the same fabric—a long yellow maxi for her, a mini for me, and a tiny replica for my doll. She is bright; she is beaming. She is just like the mother in my English storybooks.
But some mornings I wake to muffled shouting across the hall. I pull the single sheet over my head and pretend it is only the roar of the ocean, which I have seen on trips to Colombo.
Later my father tells Samson, “Keep an eye on Madame today. Okay, Samson? She’s resting.”
“Yes sir.”
He drives me to school. Hours later, I come back in a trishaw with my friend Puime, who lives nearby. Samson greets me at the gate, takes my bag. I say, “Did Amma come out?”
He says, “No, Baby Madame, not today.”
I go and sit against her door, my knees folded under me, an ear pressed to the wood. I hear nothing. No rustling of clothes, no whisper of pages, not even the sound of a body turning in bed. For hours I wait to hear the slightest sound, the merest whisper of evidence that she is inside. Crying, shouting, raging—anything rather than this haunted silence.
Later I open the door and go in as quietly as I can, moving as sly as a cat. She lies in the bed, her eyes following the spokes of sunlight that move across the wall. I climb onto the bed, take the hand that lies clenched over the coverlet, ease open the fingers. She clutches my hand like she is drowning, won’t look at me.
We stay like this for a long time and then her head whips across the pillow, her gaze narrowing on me. “Why do you always look at me like that?”
My heart racing, I shrug.
“Honestly, child, what is wrong with you? Sometimes I feel like you will eat me up. It’s frightening.”
I look away. How do tell her I am afraid she will disappear? That one day I will push against the door, come in on my cat feet, and find no sign of her. They will tell me that she never existed. That I never had a mother. It is the most terrifying thing I can think.
*
On good days she leaves her room as soon as my father’s car has pulled away and goes down to the garden with Samson. When I don’t have to go to school, I follow along, quiet as a shadow. I listen to them speaking in Sinhala, a language she never uses with my father. Samson says, “Look, Madame, the double-petaled hibiscus has flowered.” Her face dips to the blossoms, deep red and frilled like one of her dresses. The stamens leave golden stains on her nose. They stay there because he cannot reach out and dust them off as I can, or as my father can.
She sits on the wicker chair under the shade of spreading trees and arranges lush bouquets of frangipani, jasmine, and orchids, giant crab claws curving over the other blossoms. Samson brings her a silver tray of tea and sandwiches and waits to hear her instructions: the new flowers she wants planted, the number of coconuts he must scale the trees for.
She waves her slender arm and says, “Samson, don’t you see? There, in the guava tree. The birds are eating all the fruit.” Samson says, “Yes, Madame,” and runs to chase the birds away while she watches keen as a hawk.
*
She does not believe in safety. Catastrophe is always around the corner. It is clear in the sharpness with which she looks at me if I sneeze or cough. The sudden fear sparking in her voice like a match lit in a dark room. “Are you getting sick? Are you feeling hot? Come here.” The back of her cool hand against my throat, her palm cupping my forehead. If I go to the toilet at night, I creep silent along the wall, afraid to turn on the light, feeling my way with my bare toes. She calls out in the dark: “Is that you? Where are you going?” Her voice urgent, afraid, wide awake.
She is afraid of as vaha, evil eye. As meaning eye and vaha meaning poison. The poison that drips from covetous eyes. She believes that people envy the good fortune that has brought her to this house, saved her from whatever horrors there were before. The as vaha can bring ill fortune, sickness, and death, so once a year she takes me to a temple where a Hindu priest sits bare-chested, ash on his forehead. He takes the small green limes we have brought and holds each one up to my forehead one by one. He slices them in two with his silver lime cutter. Fifty limes, cut one by one. He intones the verses that will splash acid juice in the eyes of all those who envy our good luck.
We don’t tell Thatha about these trips. He is Buddhist in a lazy way, but he will not like this. He will say that she is polluting her Buddhism with these Hindu rituals and superstitions. So the lime-cutting trips are a secret held tight between Amma and me.
*