One Hundred Shades of White. Preethi Nair

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СКАЧАТЬ that my Achan would do, but he wouldn’t die. There was some mistake.

      We gripped her hand firmly, more so that she would not run and leave us, and we walked home in silence, not stopping once to jump and scrunch the leaves on the ground as we normally did.

      The house was in a mess. Where were his pictures? They couldn’t have gone with him. I ran into the bathroom to see if his toothbrush had come back but it wasn’t there either. Did Amma think that she could put his pictures away and that we would forget about him? I went into his closet to look for them and saw his clothes weren’t there either. They were packed away in a big cardboard box. How could she pack him up like that? In just one day, like he never existed. I told Satchin but he made no response.

      ‘Why are Achan’s clothes packed away, Amma?’ ‘Mol, he’s not coming back. Come, eat something.’ Eat? Is that all she ever thought about? How could we eat? She had cooked an elaborate dinner and placed some chicken drumsticks coated with breadcrumbs on a side plate (more as an afterthought that we might not like the rest). We ate none of it and went to bed. The three of us slept together in my Amma’s bed. I wanted to cry but I remembered that Ammamma said that crying would indicate that the person would not come back and this was clearly not the case so I couldn’t cry. Amma lay in bed with us and Satchin whimpered as she held us. I contained my sadness and desperately wanted to hold both of them but then I decided not to get too attached to either of them. Everyone I ever really loved seemed to disappear.

      Death precipitated events, just like the astrologer said it would. With no income and no way of getting back to India, Amma began packing things. The grocery man, Tom, came most evenings to help her. He had a sister who lived in the East End of London and he thought perhaps we could rent one of her bedsits. Tom helped us sell most of the furniture, Amma sold her jewellery and our toys, and she put down the deposit for two months’ rent on a shabby room. Satchin and I didn’t want to leave and we were sad but Satchin said that we had to be strong and not make any fuss. We did not say goodbye to our teachers or school friends. We left like thieves with the three suitcases, all tied with string, and as we climbed into Tom’s van, our childhood effectively ended.

      I can’t remember much of that journey, except that it was raining hard and that the rain began to fall inside of me, suffocating me and taking with it any hope that I had of Achan’s return. The sea predator could not get me so it sent the rain. My heart beat faster and the rain fell harder: the rest, I cannot remember.

      The flat was a semi-furnished bedsit off Green Street in the East End of London. We had to share an outside toilet with the man on the same landing as us. He was Polish and he dressed in an old black pinstriped suit every day of the week and rarely left the house, except on Sunday when he went to Church. Tom’s sister, Maggie, was the Irish landlady and she lived above us with her two cats, Arthur and One Eye. She was the one that came over to us as Tom parked the van.

      Maggie was a fiery lady with bright red curly hair and a big bust that she emphasised with a light sweater. She wore a black pencil skirt which was obviously too tight. Miss Davies would say that she was having her last fling with youth, that’s what I heard her say to another teacher about Catherine Hunter’s mother who dressed in those type of short skirts. Maggie also had long nails and her fingertips were stained the colour of dried henna, like her teeth. She showed us into our new home. Amma thanked her. Maggie looked down at our three suitcases and smiled at us, a smile that pretended to look reassuring. She ruffled Satchin’s hair, which was the wrong thing to do because he only let Amma do that. He stepped back from her and clung to Amma who held onto him. Maggie smiled at me and I smiled back.

      ‘What’s your name, darling?’

      ‘Maya, Maya Kathi, and I’m six and my brother’s called Satchin and he’s eight.’

      ‘Well, Maya Kathi, if you ever need anything, I live upstairs,’ she said as she left.

      The room had horrific orange psychedelic wallpaper, a decorative attempt to distract us from what it really was; damp, cold and sparse. It had dripping taps, a hob ring for a cooker, and a greasy, thick green curtain to divide the kitchen from the sleeping/sitting area. Tom showed us how to insert the ten pence pieces in the electric meter under the sink. He looked at my mother and he told her that it would not be forever, it was just a start. When he said that, I could tell Amma wanted to cry, but she didn’t. He left and we unpacked our things.

      Maggie and Tom came back a few hours later with an old iron bed for the three of us to sleep in and a few other bits and pieces which Maggie said she didn’t need. ‘Tom said you’ll need a job,’ Maggie said to Amma. We translated and Amma nodded. ‘There’s a factory a bus ride away from here that is always looking for people. Can you sew?’ Maggie waited for us to relay what she had said and Amma shook her head. ‘It’s not difficult, it’ll take a day or two to get into it. I’ve a machine upstairs. I’ll teach you.’

      That is how we spent the next two days, in Maggie’s warm room with an electric bar heater and a Singer sewing machine buzzing away. One Eye and Arthur were jumping about and playing with us, whilst the television was on in the background. Maggie said Amma was a natural and would have no problems in finding work. We, in the meantime, she said, would have to be good for her and go to school. On Monday, she would take us to enrol at the local primary school and she would then accompany my mother to the factory. I thought that Maggie was another sign and that my father had sent her to show us that he hadn’t forgotten us. I could tell, though, that Amma was very cautious of her. I don’t know what exactly it was about Maggie but Amma wasn’t herself when she was around her. Maybe she didn’t understand her.

      That Sunday evening, before we went to bed, I wrote a letter to my Ammamma telling her all that had happened to us. I hadn’t written religiously like I had promised because we had been so busy, but that Friday, I began my first letter, not something that I told Amma to write for me. I really missed her and I tried to remember the things she taught me but I couldn’t, so I told her things that we did and how it was now. I asked Satchin if he wanted to write anything to her on my letter. He took it from me and began laughing. He read from the beginning: ‘Dear Ammamma, Who are you?’

      ‘You mean how, Maya, not who.’

      That was the first time he had laughed since that day. It was worth saying ‘who’ if it made him laugh. How/who, it didn’t really matter, because Ammamma didn’t read English anyway. It was just so that she would get something from me to let her know that I hadn’t forgotten her and I wanted to send it because I needed her now. Amma lit a candle and burnt an incense stick and placed it near her bronze figurine of a little Goddess with many arms and thanked Her for whatever she had sent. Momentarily, the scent masked the dampness and put us to sleep. It took me back to the veranda, waiting for my Achan, who would scoop me up and tickle me, or back to the big house when he came in late at night, kissing me and saying, ‘Who is my best little Mol?’ As morning approached, I had fragments of dreams of my Ammamma, the smell of the sea vividly invading my senses as we were running along the beach, or as I sat on the side, watching her swimming with all her clothes on. Occasionally, it didn’t make any sense, like when she appeared in a red telephone box. I promised whoever was listening out there that I would never complain if I could have those days back with the two people that I loved most. I awoke to the smell of that urine-stained mattress.

      Amma got up early that morning and insisted on washing and oiling our hair. ‘You want to look good for your new school don’t you, makkale?’

      I thought it was best not to make a fuss because she seemed sad at the prospect that it was the last time she would be able to do that for us. ‘If I get work at the factory, I will have to be up very early and go before you wake up, so I won’t have time to do this for you every day, not for a little while anyway.’

      She helped us get СКАЧАТЬ