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But not yet. Mehroo has reached the end of the
lane. She stops, turns back and waves. She even blows me some flying
kisses. I wave back frantically, standing on my toes to make sure she
can see me. Then, she turns the corner and is gone.

But my heart doesn't dip yet because I know
what is coming.

This, too, is part of the ritual. And yet, for all
its familiarity, it still feels like a miracle when I spot Mehroo
again. She has walked a few paces onto the main road and then
returned to the corner. She waves some more. My heart singing, I wave
back.

Three times. Four times. She disappears and
returns. Is gone and comes back. My love feels so thick and heavy, it
tastes like blood. Or grief. For the rest of my life, they will feel
the same, this thick love, this thick grief.

I never know which will be the last time that
Mehroo will come back and wave, before the adult in her remembers she
has a bus to catch, that she's needed at the factory where she
does the book-keeping for my dad. So I stand on the balcony and wait
and with every passing second, the sting of her absence, of her
really being gone, gets sharper. Somedays, I wait there an entire
five minutes, hoping against hope for her return, scarcely believing
that she has really left me. Somedays, I wait several full minutes
and am on the verge of moving away from the balcony, when her
familiar small figure appears in the distance, as miraculous as the
sun on the horizon. That evening, she will tell me of how she was at
the nearby bus-stop and when she was convinced the bus was nowhere
close, she asked the next person to keep her place in line and darted
to the corner to wave to me one last time. Because she knew that,
like the dog on the recording label of His Master's Voice, I
would be waiting.

This is how I come to know love, from my sad-eyed,
excessively sentimental, self-sacrificing, hypersensitive, spinster
aunt, who raises me as if I had been born of her small hips, as if I
had fed on her tiny breasts. So that I never think of motherhood as a
biological concept; so that I understand that the bonds of motherhood
are formed daily, by acts of kindness and affection and devotion.
This is Mehroo's legacy to me and despite her straight-arrowed,
unwavering devotion, it is a mixed legacy, filled with yearning and
ambiguity and loss and longing. In some ways, it would scar me for
life, make me old at sixteen, unable to trust the simplistic
declarations and easy, glib depictions of love that I saw all around
me. No easy promises for me, because I had experienced a love as
brilliant and pure and sharp as a diamond. Forever more, love would
be something to be fought for and won, something exalted to reach
for, something hard but promising, like religion, like talking to
God.

I head back into the house and a feeling of dread
trails behind me. Mummy is in her room, going through things in her
closet and I can tell by the way she mutters to herself that she is
in a bad mood. I head directly for the bathroom, intending to stay in
there for as long as I can. It is only when the latch clicks in place
that I feel safe.

My respite is short-lived. Mummy bangs on the
bathroom door and tells me to come out immediately. ‘I know all
your tricks, you lazy girl,' she says. ‘Trying to avoid
your studies at all costs. If you're not out in two minutes
flat, you see what I'll do to you.' She hits the door
with her switch for good effect.

My mother has long, thin, crooked fingers and most
of the time they are curled around one of her many switches.
Sometimes, after a cane has worn away, she makes me accompany her to
the small shop where she buys her supply. I watch while she handles
different canes, some long, thin and tapering, others that are
shorter, thicker and blunter. I hold my breath while she picks them
out, testing them with one hand on the open palm of the other. The
longer ones make more of a swishing sound than the others.

My mother tutors many of the kids in the
neighbourhood and most of them are older than me. During summer
vacations, instead of going to the hill-stations or the beach, they
gather at our house to study to get a jump-start on the following
term.

I love having them over because it takes the focus
off me and because many of the savvy older kids kiss up to me because
I am the teacher's daughter.

There is this one girl, Pervin, who is several
years older than the others. She is a bit slow and it is rumoured
that she has repeated several grades, which makes her an object of
pity and silent derision. ‘Stupid Pervin' I hear my
mother call her behind her back. But she makes up for her slowness by
her good-nature and perpetual cheerfulness. Pervin's face is
covered with acne and it is my particular misfortune that Pervin has
taken to making public displays of hugging and kissing me every
chance she gets. Part of it is genuine affection but surely part of
it is mere posturing, trying to get in the teacher's good books
by sucking up to her only child. I run and hide from Pervin every
chance I get because I am repulsed by her rough, acne-filled face as
it brushes my smooth cheek. One day, I am eating porridge for
breakfast when I glance in the bowl and realize that it looks and
feels like Pervin's face. I stop eating porridge after that.

Most of the students my mother tutors are children
of parents who are lower middle-class and who are grateful that my
mother does not charge them much. Also, my mother is known throughout
the neighbourhood for her dedication as a teacher.

Unlike other tutors, she never looks at the clock
while teaching, so that during the summer months, her students spend
nearly the whole day at our place. The grateful parents never
question my mother's teaching methods, just as they never
question the red welts on their children's hands and legs when
they return home. The smarter male students start wearing long pants
to protect their legs from the sting of the cane but my mother
complains about this lack of free access to their legs and their
parents make them wear short pants again.

But today, it is just me and mummy at home. I want
to ask where the others are but mummy has threatened to beat me if I
look up from my textbook. I am sitting on the black velvet chair in
her room with my left leg tied to the leg of the chair.

She is forced to do this because I have a short
attention span and get up too many times to go to the bathroom.

The day wears on. Finally, at one p.m., the
doorbell rings.

It is one of our neighbours, a woman who always
moves at lightning speed and talks so fast I have trouble keeping up
with her. Her son, Bomi, is with her. Bomi is a nervous looking boy
who is one of my mother's students. He is short, chubby and he
smells faintly of the coconut oil that his mother uses to slick down
his black hair. The oil runs down his forehead, so that it is always
shiny. He is just a little younger than me and my mother loves him
because he is so obviously terrified of her. My mother claims to love
children and she does because they don't fight back, because on
their smooth, tender bodies she can leave her signature—the red
welts that proclaim, ‘I was here.' Because on their blank
psyches she can leave her thumbprint, like black smudges that
proclaim, ‘I exist.' Unlike the adults in her life, the
children she can control, manipulate and dominate. I can't
articulate any of this but I know it somewhere deep down within me.

the neighbour is saying. ‘My mother-in-law
has taken ill and I just got a call asking if I can spend the day
with her. He would just be in the way. Besides, he needs help with
his schoolwork.'

‘Oh sure, sure,' mummy replies. ‘You
go without a second thought. You know he will be safe here. We were
just going to eat lunch. He can eat with us.'

The grateful woman gives mummy a quick hug and
leaves.

After lunch, we sit down with our books again.
Mummy begins to grill us on our spelling. We both do well until Bomi
stumbles on a word. Mummy smiles benevolently and gives him a second
chance. She throws him another word. But Bomi is now scared, and as
often happens with him, his brain shuts down. He stares at my mother,
a faint line of saliva trickling out of his open mouth.

There is a bathroom attached to my parents'
bedroom and in a deceptively quiet voice, my mother asks Bomi to
please step into it. His punishment is to stand in a corner of the
bathroom on one leg.

Bomi tries but after a few minutes, begins to
shift his weight from one stocky leg to another. My mother notices
immediately. ‘Do you have to do soo-soo?' she asks in a
kindly way.

Bomi's eyes widen. ‘No, aunty,'
he says, the weight of his body frozen on one leg.

Her voice changes, becomes sharper. ‘Because
if you have to do soo-soo, do it in your pants. That's why you
are in the bathroom. Otherwise, stand still.'

Several minutes pass. I sit on the black velvet
chair in her bedroom and pretend to read my book. I want to leave the
room but don't want to make any move that will draw attention
to myself. I set my face in a sympathetic expression that I hope Bomi
notices and my mother doesn't.

Finally, Bomi begins to cry softly to himself. I
feel bad for him but another part of me is relieved that it is him
and not me, who is the focus of this humiliation.

The crying upsets my mother who is sitting on her
bed. ‘Stop your crying,' she says, reaching for the
ever-present cane and bringing it down on the bed for emphasis.

Bomi tries to swallow his sobs. ‘Come out of
the bathroom,' she orders him but Bomi is paralysed, his eyes
wide with fear.

‘Are you disobeying me? Chal, come out right
now,' she repeats and this time there is a menace in her voice
that I recognize.

As if in slow motion, Bomi lifts his leg over the
threshold of the bathroom and walks around the bed to face her. I
hold my breath.

Whoosh! The cane leaves an angry outline where it
touches his bare leg. And another. For a moment, Bomi looks too
stunned to cry. Then he bursts into tears, his chest moving up and
down.

‘No crying.
No crying
,' she
orders and his lower lip moves like blubber as he tries to swallow
his tears.

‘Hold out your hand.'

I cannot watch. The cane to the legs I can handle
but this voluntary holding out of an open palm, is the worst
punishment. To do this you have to screw up all your courage, will
your entire body into the gesture, enlist the help of every muscle,
and then focus on the effort of not pulling your hand away at the
last minute. Because it is understood that if she misses, if the cane
hits open air instead of soft flesh, then there's more
punishment. Then, the original crime may be forgotten and the crime
of insubordination must first be dealt with.

If you do not pull your hand away, if you shut
your eyes and hold your hand out steadily, if you prepare yourself
for the current of pain that will run through your body at any
second, still, the first whack comes as an insult, a shock to the
system. Or worse, she will sometimes first tap the cane against your
palm, as if to steady her hand, and just as you relax and let down
your guard, the cane slices through the air and finds its deadly
mark.

So I shut my eyes as poor Bomi stands there
flinching, his open palm ready to meet the landing of the cane. Then,
at the last minute, as if I cannot avert my eyes from the train wreck
about to happen, my eyes fly open of their own volition and I am in
time to see the cane make an arc in the air. I wince but at the last
minute my mother pulls back, like a fisherman deciding to uncast a
line, so that the cane gently grazes Bomi's fingertips.

‘No punishment today,' my mother says
but Bomi acts as if he has not heard her, his body still tense, his
hand still outstretched.

‘No punishment,' she repeats.
‘Instead, we will just talk.'

She flashes me a quick look and her left eye
closes in a half-wink.

‘Tell me,' she says, in a pleasant
voice, ‘did you eat dinner yesterday?'

Bomi stares at her wordlessly, as surprised as I
am by this sudden turn of events.

‘Answer.'

‘Y-yes, aunty.'

‘What did you eat?'

Bomi thinks. ‘Sali boti.' A meat dish.

My mother licks her lips quickly. ‘Was the
sali boti tasty?

Did you like it?'

‘Y-yes, aunty.' The voice is thin, as
if he is about to faint.

‘What kind of meat did your mummy use?'

Bomi looks at her inquiringly, confused. ‘I
don't know,' he mumbles at last.

‘You don't know? I'll tell you.
It was rat meat. Your mummy cooks dead rats for dinner.'

‘No she doesn't.' Bomi's
indignant voice is loud, as if parental loyalty has vanquished his
fear.

My mother grins. ‘Rat meat,' she
repeats. ‘Tell me, where does your mother catch the rats from?'

‘We don't eat rat meat,' Bomi
mumbles crossly.

Whoosh. The cane lands across his fleshy thighs.
‘Tell me,'

she says again. ‘Where does your mother
catch the rats?' And before he can answer, she hits him again.

Bomi suddenly starts wailing, a sound so loud and
hair-raising, I can't believe that none of the neighbours ring
the doorbell. I gaze desperately at the clock but I don't quite
know how to tell the time. But I know it's too early for my
aunt to be home from work. Nobody will come in time to rescue this
boy.

Suddenly, he stops wailing, as if something inside
him has abruptly pulled a plug. ‘From the top of the water
tank,' he blubbers. ‘That's where the rats live, in
a nest.'