The Worlds Within Her (26 page)

REALLY, MY DEAR
, just what kind of a place
is
this?

They may have no standards beyond the professional — but must they take exception to those of us who understand there is more to life than plastic and Styrofoam?

They insist that I remove the china. I have explained that it is among the finest china in the world, but this has made no impression on them. The barbarian, you see, my dear, is never far from the gates.

You must understand that I tried. I even put up a bit of a fuss. They didn't like that. They prefer their old people obedient and docile. So they threatened to have me evicted. Well, I marched right up to the office of the Head Hun and as luck would have it ran right into him.

I saw him see me, saw his body express the wish I hadn't seen him, saw him reach for self-control. He drew himself up,
smiled. And I saw him assess me. He saw all that I had seen — only, he went a step further. He assumed — from my race, my age, from my manner of dressing — that I was of limited education and, so, of limited intelligence. I saw he believed he was dealing with a simple granny — much, I imagine, like the one he himself has.

And so I seized the initiative.
You
, sir, I said rather loudly but with great control,
are a bounder!
He was taken aback, he didn't know what to make of that, he may not even have known what a bounder was. But one thing was certain: My speech did not fit the image he had made of me — an image that led him to expect meekness or shrill anger. I saw him falter, saw him realize he would have to deal with me. He wasn't as canny as he thought. Besides, as you well know, my dear, age brings a kind of liberation — the right to speak one's mind without fear. It's a freedom we share with crazy people …

In any case, this young chap invited me into his office. I lost no time in explaining the problem. He was understanding, I'll say that for him. His breeding showed. But still he would not allow the china. He explained that should an emergency arise, many people would rush into the room with a great deal of equipment. The danger of breakage would be great. Not only would I lose my china, but his staff would run the risk of being cut. This made sense to me, and I agreed to his request to remove my china.

Then he attempted to engage me in conversation. I soon saw that word of my presence here had reached him. He complimented me on what he called my fidelity to you. His staff, he said, were impressed by my coming every day, by my sitting here and talking to you —
with
you, I corrected him — for hour after hour. And then he said, “But you realize she —”

I cut him off, my dear. His next words were of no interest to
me. I thanked him, but refused to discuss you further. He is responsible for ensuring your physical care. He has neither the expertise nor the right to hold opinions beyond that. I stood up and excused myself.

So you see, my dear, when you wake up I shall still serve you tea, just as you like it. Only I fear I have been reduced to Styrofoam.

IT IS THE
clutch of photographs in his hand, she believes, that prompts Cyril's question. Shakti, he says, her last days. Was she happy? How did she spend them?

With a friend, Yasmin says, in a private nursing home. Sitting beside her bed talking to her. “Once I went with her to visit Mrs. Livingston. I say visit, but it was more like paying final respects, you know? She was in a deep coma and as I stood there beside her bed, I was almost overwhelmed by a sense of visiting a funeral home. You know what I mean — the silence, the body on display. There was no sense of life in the room. Or it was more that life had been reduced to an idea. I couldn't stay long, and excused myself.

“Out in the corridor a man approached me. He introduced himself as the director and asked if he could have a word with me. Well, turned out Mom had developed quite the reputation. Seems the nurses had overheard her talking to Mrs. Livingston —”

Cyril says, “I read somewhere that in some places they does play music or
TV
for people in comas. Just in case, nuh.”

“Yes, but apparently the way Mom spoke, it was as if she was having a conversation with Mrs. Livingston. Not a monologue, if you see what I mean, but a dialogue. It was as if Mrs. Livingston were commenting and asking questions. They were kind of worried. The director wanted to know if Mom was all right, if she usually talked to herself.

“I asked whether she was disrupting the routine. He said no. Was she getting in the way? No. Was she disturbing anyone? No. So what was the problem? There was no problem. Just that, seeing I was there, he thought he'd let me know.

“I thanked him. Then he asked for a phone number where I could be reached, in case there was ever a problem. I gave him my home number.

“As it turned out, they called the number only once. You know. That night — When she — When the conversation stopped.”

“Ahh yes,” Cyril says. “Ahh, yes …” Then: “Shakti wouldn' have gone quiet-quiet in bed, you know. That wasn' her way. She was the leas' predictable person I ever knew.”

DEFYING EXPECTATION, BEING
an original, was her mother's way of defeating stereotype, her personal theatre a response to challenge: She would force others to see her image of herself and not their image of her.

Which was why she would sometimes, and for no apparent reason, go to some length to dress a banal thought in linguistic finery. Procrastination, she once said, was the lazy man's way
of getting nowhere — or at least of ensuring that it would take twice the time to get there. And Yasmin thought: A stitch in time, Mom.

Which was why Yasmin remembered the one cliché her mother never sought to adorn: “There are no guarantees in life.” The phrase was, to her mother, a truth so primary it had to be expressed plainly, and so innate — its tones as familiar to Yasmin as the sound of her own name — that Yasmin never thought to ask why it should be so.

It was one quiet evening, the lights low, her daughter asleep on her, chest rising and falling in seamless regularity, that she realized the extent to which she had absorbed the phrase. The thought came to her that this closeness was no harbinger of tomorrow. This bond that now seemed so unbreakable could with time become a distance unbridgeable.

No guarantees: Yasmin remained seated there for hours in what felt like a mild paralysis, determined to possess for now this yearning, this ache, this warmth and trust, this utter unconditionality which the future might yet expropriate.

FOR MY BIRTHDAY —

April, my dear, you know that — Why, yes, the same day —

Surely I must have. Or I may not have, come to think of it, after all, it's of no great importance, but it did make things easy when she was growing up. Yasmin and I shared a birthday cake, her candles on one side and mine — a symbolic number,
of course — on the other. Now, if you don't mind …

For my birthday my husband took me to one of London's fancy restaurants, the name of which escapes me now — not that it matters, you are unlikely to know of it and, besides, it probably no longer exists. In any case, it was one of those places where reservations had to be made weeks in advance, the tablecloth alone probably cost more than my dress, and the waiters seemed to have been spun from silk.

I couldn't tell you precisely what I ate, but I do remember we all agreed the food was delicious. My husband had invited some people from the delegation — it really couldn't be helped — so the conversation was lively, if not terribly intimate.

A highlight of the evening came, however, when it was time to pay the bill. You see, this restaurant had the tradition of presenting foreigners with their bill accompanied by a miniature flag of what they assumed to be the guests' country. Our bill arrived under the flag of India. My husband raised his eyebrows in amusement but said nothing, and interrupted a member of our party as he was about to protest. When the waiter left, my husband explained that if we were to tell them where we were from, it would just confuse the poor people. Then we'd have to explain not only where our island was, but also how we — evidently Indians — had ended up there. The history and geography lesson would hardly be worth the trouble. Besides, our flag wasn't official yet, the restaurant could hardly be expected to have one on hand. So he took out his wallet, counted out the bills and placed them under the Indian flag.

As we left the restaurant in a driving rain, my husband remarked that the gesture wasn't so inappropriate — which prompted a chorus of protests from the others. And that, Mrs. Livingston, was the first time I saw schism between my husband and those who thought the way he did.

SHE STEPPED ON
the ant, then gingerly inspected the sole of her shoe. The ant was splayed, flattened. “Mommy,” she called exultantly. “I can kill! I can kill!”

Yasmin took a deep breath. So this is growing up, she thought, this celebration of newly realized power. How had her daughter acquired such knowledge, and why so young? But did it really matter? She would have acquired it anyway; it was, after all, part of growing up human.

“Mommy! I can kill!”

“Yes, dear.”