Anita and Me (9 page)

I always watched them from a safe distance, hiding in the
hollyhocks and nettles around the old pigsties at the far end of the yard. Their intimacies unsettled me. I knew that nice girls should not behave in this way. (I got scolded for showing my knickers when I did handstands, and sitting between a boy’s legs was presumably much worse.) But despite the fuzzy commas of bumblebees hovering around my ears, and the tall nettles pricking my bare legs, I always had to watch Sam’s gang and their girls. They looked so complete, in on a secret which I worried I might never discover.

I got this same feeling looking at the photographs of mama and papa when they were first married, and living in Indian government quarters in New Delhi. Papa had completed a college degree in Liberal Arts and Philosophy (when I asked him what these were exactly, he had said, ‘A damn waste of time in this country as it happens’ and I did not ask again), and was doing something clerical for the government. Mama had just begun her first teaching job and they lived in a whitewashed single-storey flat-roofed house. I knew this from one of the photos, where they are sitting on a bed in a courtyard, a low bed strung across with hessian mesh which bends under their weight. Just visible on the stone courtyard floor is a dull stain the size of an orange, which papa told me happened when he squashed a passing scorpion under his
chappal.
Papa sits behind mama, has his arms around her just like Sam Lowbridge with his ‘wenches’ in the park. They are both in white cotton which catches the sunlight and emphasises the nutty brown of their skin. They are laughing, they are at that moment exactly where they want to be.

What I did not understand was why this yearning had not worn off yet. Other parents did not behave like they did; if any of the Uncles attempted to put their arms around their wives in public, this always provoked a chorus of shrieks and mock-naughty-boy slaps from the Aunties. ‘
Sharam Tainu Nahin Andi hai
?’ the women would laugh, demanding to know why their men had no shame and were admitting in public that they sometimes touched, despite the fact that all of them had
at least two kids each and therefore must have touched a few times before, even if it was in the dark. They contacted each other through their children, their hands met as they hugged their sons, tickled their daughters, their fingers intertwined as they ate chapatti from the same plate. But I never saw any of them volunteer kisses and hugs like my parents did, contact which I knew had nothing to do with me.

As for our married English neighbours, I sometimes had difficulty matching up the husbands to the wives as their lives seemed so separate. They were the women, like the Yard women, who stayed home whilst their menfolk slipped out to work, too early for me to catch them. And then the others like the Ballbearings Committee, whose men waved them off to work and then gathered together in the evenings in the local pub, the Mitre, or the Working Men’s Club, leaving their wives to create havoc together at the rival female venues, the bingo hall, or the Flamingo Nightclub near their factory.

The Flamingo was a converted chapel with tinted windows and screaming pink paintwork, which I had occasionally glimpsed through the car window on my way to school. A big neon sign above the door declaimed, ‘Ladies Only Nites, Free Cocktail Before Ten O’Clock!’ You’d always know when the women had been ‘down the ‘mingo’, because you would hear them piling off the night bus on the corner of the crossroads, shrieking with laughter and cursing as they negotiated the potholes in their slingbacks. ‘Yow dirty cow, Maisie! I seen ya eyeing that fella up!’ ‘I never! He was gagging for it any road, he had his hands in his pockets all bloody night!’ ‘Oh me head…Malibu’s a bloody killer, innit?’ ‘Don’t yow chuck up near me, Edie! This wet-look top ain’t waterproof, ya know …’ ‘I wonder if my Stan’s up…probably not. Our chaps are never up when yow need em up, know wharr-I mean, girls!’

I gladly woke up for these nocturnal dramas, their fun was infectious and laced with Sin. I knew if I could hear them, so could most of the Yard, and I wondered what their husbands
made of these public dissections of their capabilities. But there was no way of knowing as I hardly ever saw them together, and as for the Yard couples, I only managed to put husbands to wives on Saturday mornings when couples piled into their cars to go shopping.

What mama and papa had was special maybe, certainly different to the other couples I observed. But with the English people, Sam and his wenches, the Ballbearings Committee, there was something that intrigued me, the brazenness of their behaviour, an absence of sentiment and a boldness of self which I could not see in my parents’ almost claustrophobic connection. As I looked over at them now, exchanging whispers on the settee, I could not imagine how I might one day be capable of such sweetness. I could only see myself tripping up in a pothole, clutching my shoes and laughing to the moon.

Papa had stopped discussing his parents; mama was sitting quietly next to him, darting glances at his brooding face. I turned back to the TV screen, ears on radar, waiting for the outburst or the apology, with papa it could go either way for no apparent reason. Papa always got into these moods whenever mortality flitted near our doorstep. The loss of a distant parent would be the final proof, that they had left them and would not be returning. Mama shook herself visibly, snapping into her practical mode. She plumped up the cushions behind papa’s back, he did not move to make it easier for her, and then she snuggled closer to him, a girlish smile playing on her lips.

‘Darling, no more of this, huh? We will have someone else to think about soon. We should not get so upset,
jaanoo…
We should also tell Meena.’

My ears pricked up at this, I turned round expectantly, accusingly, waiting to hear this secret, another secret, they had added to the list of things they had kept from me. Papa cleared his throat and smiled at me reassuringly. ‘Meena beti…er…your mama is having a baby soon, a little
brother or sister for you to play with. Would you like that?’

A loud cracking sound filled my head, my vision blurred and I turned away hastily, fixing my eyes on Troy Tempest, willing him to steady my voice. It came out hard and distant. ‘No,’ I replied, without turning around.

Mama’s belly was a proud high football by the time I bumped into Anita Rutter again. It was late October and Tollington had discarded its usual duffle coat of red brick and dirt, and was prancing around in its ostentatious autumnal cloak. Huge fat leaves of blood red and burnt gold covered every available surface, the pavements, the small neat gardens, the hedges and fields were clogged and carpeted with a blazing crunchy floor which we kids jumped and stamped through, snorting with effort through our assorted layers of woollies.

Anita and I seemed to have avoided each other through unspoken mutual understanding since the Christmas’ demise. I had seen her from afar, strolling up to the tadpole pools near the Mitre pub at the north end of the village, arm in arm with Sherrie as Fat Sally waddled after them pathetically trying to keep up, snuffling and wiping her nose on her cardigan sleeve. I noticed Anita often did this, played off one girlfriend against the other, so it was rare that all three girls walked together, in the same harmonious pace. Whatever the scenario, it was always Anita leading the way with Sherrie or Fat Sally at her side, favoured and blessed, whilst the scapegoat of the hour sulked and straggled behind. I wondered what would happen if I joined the group, if the foursome would split off into twos who would then declare all-out war. But it would be hard to imagine any of us having the courage to actually take sides against Anita, even the thought felt uncomfortably close to sacrilege.

I had seen Tracey, Anita’s skinny sister, gambolling about
the yard with the family’s newest acquisition, a stringy black poodle who yapped and widdled excitedly around her knees. Hairy Neddy had already warned Tracey to keep that ‘runty rat’ away from his motor, whose wheels were already becoming the official toilet area for the various mutts in the vicinity. But as Tracey’s dog seemed to keep up a constant stream of pee, regardless of where it happened to be standing, this was not really a problem.

I disliked the animal on first sight; compared to the other neighbourhood dogs – Blaze, the mad collie who raced alongside cars as they passed the park, only just missing their wheels, Patch, Karl and Kevin’s ancient retainer mongrel who did nothing much but sit in a corner and drool and Shandy, the Mad Mitchells’ perky white hound—Tracey’s dog was a characterless apology for an animal, no personality, no menace and no fun. ‘Mum got it!’ Tracey told me, trying to kiss its ratty muzzle. I stepped back slightly, even though I was in my red wellies, not wanting to get sprayed, and wished that Butch had been around to see off this canine catastrophe. Butch, that was the name we had given him, had been a psychotic stray who had wandered into the yard just as the new school term had started. It had been a mad blissful few weeks when Butch had run havoc, tearing down washing, crapping on Mrs Lowbridge’s step and finally biting Sam Lowbridge on the leg when he’d tried to kick Butch ‘into the bloody middle of next week.’ As Mrs Povey had put it, ‘Any dog that takes a chunk out of that bugger is alright by me.’

From that point on, Sam had waged a ruthless vendetta against the dog who had torn a hole in his new black leather motorbike trousers, and spent most days chasing Butch out of the yard on his moped, whooping like a cowboy, until one day, Butch had simply not returned and we mourned him deeply.

‘He’s nice,’ I said, half-heartedly, not wanting to dim the love shining in Tracey’s eyes. ‘What’s his name?’

As if on cue, Deirdre appeared on her stoop and leaned over, patting her hands on her chubby knees to beckon the dog. ‘Nigger! Nigger! Here, darling! Come to mummy!’

My mummy nearly choked when I told her what the Rutters’ new pet was called. She told papa and he laughed uproariously. ‘It is not amusing,
Shyam
! These no good ignorant English, what kind of a name is that to say in front of your children, anybody’s children?’

‘They don’t know it is an insult!’ papa replied. ‘You remember when we went into that paint shop, they had a colour called Nigger Brown and you complained? The shopkeeper was most apologetic …’

‘Black, brown, what does it matter?’ mama continued. ‘Just because we are not black, it is still an insult! Have you seen any white paint called Honky With a Hint of White, heh?’

‘You ask any man on the street to tell the difference between us and a Jamaican fellow, he will still see us as the same colour, Daljit,’ papa finished off, returning to his paper.

From that day on, mama decided that Deirdre would not be one of the many beneficiaries of her impeccable manners and warm social chit-chat. Of course, to the untrained eye, mama did not treat Deirdre any differently, she still smiled and nodded when they passed each other in the yard to hang out washing, or when we were returning from parking our Mini in the garages near the old pigsties, but I knew what mama’s polite smile meant, what the layers of subtext beneath it were.

Not that Deirdre seemed to notice or care that she and mama hardly exchanged five sentences per month, a minuscule amount for neighbours in Tollington, she always seemed very busy for a woman who claimed not to have a job. Every morning she would leave the house around ten o’clock and not return until early afternoon, just before Anita and Tracey came back from the village school. Sometimes she carried shopping, but most of the time she was empty-handed and flushed, bustling with secrets and self importance.

There was an air about Deirdre that prevented the gossips
from asking her outright what she was up to, a haughty, menacing defensiveness that stopped even Mrs Lowbridge and Mrs Povey from launching their usual two-pronged verbal assault. However, whenever Deirdre strutted past them in her stilettos, boobs like two heat-seeking missiles guiding her forward, they would shake their heads conspiratorially and whisper, ‘She’s got it coming to her, that one. Mark my words …’

Unfortunately, my information about Deirdre’s dog had now put my relationship, if that was what it was, with Anita into question, at least in mama’s eyes. The day the autumn fair arrived in the village, a convoy of swaying caravans and belching trucks pulling heavy metal equipment barnacled with light bulbs, dead as fish eyes, Anita knocked on my front door to ask, ‘Coming to see the men unload then?’

Mama looked up from dusting and her eyes narrowed slightly on seeing Anita. She straightened up with difficulty, her hands instinctively resting on her heavy, low stomach, straining the material of her old cotton
salwar kameez.
‘Why do you want to see that? Nothing much to see, you’ll just be in the way.’ I knew if I pestered her, she would say yes, I could hear fatigue and defeat in her voice.

Mama had been cooking and cleaning for weeks it seemed because today was Diwali – ‘Our Christmas, Mrs Worrall,’ mama had told her, not wanting to go into huge detail about the Hindu Festival of Light and why the date changed each year, being a lunar festival, and how we did not give presents but put on all the lights in the house and gambled instead to welcome the goddess Lakshmi into our lives, hoping she would bring luck and wealth with her. Christmas was not the best comparison to use in front of me because I naturally expected a carload of presents and the generally festive, communal atmosphere that overtook the village somewhere around late November and continued into January.

But no one else in the world seemed to care that today was our Christmas. There was no holiday, except it happened to
be a weekend so mama and I were off school and papa was only working a half-day, no tinsel or holly or blinking Christmas trees adorning the sitting room windows in Tollington, no James Bond films or Disney spectaculars on the telly, and nobody, not one person, had wished me a happy Diwali, despite the fact I had hung around the yard all morning with what I hoped was a general expression of celebration.

Everyone’s indifference had stunned me, and I now understood why my parents made an effort to mark Jesus’ birthday, despite the remarks made by some of my Aunties and Uncles. ‘Meena would feel left out…It is not fair, when all the other children are getting presents. Besides, we all get the day off, so why not?’ This was a typical example of Hindu tolerance, the reason, my mama told me, why so many religions happily coexisted in India – Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Sikhism and especially Islam. ‘There are more Muslims in India than there are in Pakistan!’ mama told me proudly. ‘Every path leads to the same god, that is what we believe, beti …’

Papa would have to repeat these arguments to my Auntie Shaila who held her ears and whispered, ‘
Thoba
!’ when he once told her that I was a regular visitor to Uncle Alan’s Sunday School at the Wesleyan church. ‘They just read and play, nothing much religious really …’ he offered. ‘All the kids go there, it keeps them out of the cold and out of mischief.’

‘But really, Shyam-saab, you want your daughter to come home reciting hymns and what not?’ Auntie Shaila cried. ‘All that boring sitting around and amen this and that, no joy and those damn hard seats and that awful organ music, like a donkey in pain. Besides, you will confuse the girl.’

Papa did not let on that he was as confused as I was about Hinduism; because of Dadaji’s beliefs, religion had never been an integral part of his upbringing, and his experiences around Partition had removed any lingering religious instincts he might have kept through suspicion or habit. ‘I have seen what we do in the name of religion,’ he once told mama. ‘What I do,
how I behave, I will do in the name of humanity. And that is that.’ All the same, I continually mourned the fact that we did not have a shrine.

Auntie Shaila’s shrine took up all of the top of her fridge, where Lord Rama and Shri Krishna and Ganesha, the plump, smiling elephant-headed god, my favourite, sat in miniature splendour, surrounded by incense sticks,
diyas
, fruit offerings and photographs of departed loved ones. I never saw mama or papa bow their heads in prayer or sing one of the haunting, minor key
aarlis
that Auntie Shaila would regularly perform with closed eyes and a long-suffering, beatific look, I suspect, for my benefit. After the prayer, she would bring the
diya
to me, holding my hands above the flame, showing me how to waft a blessing over my head. ‘The fire will purify you, beti. Go ahead, have another go.’ I wafted furiously, trying to accrue enough good karma to last me until the next visit.

‘You know,’ Auntie Shaila confided, ‘that we believe whatever you do in this life will come back to you in the next. If you are good, you will come back as a good-hearted, rich person. If you are not, you will have to pay, at some point. Like with the bank, you know?’ I thought back on my lying and murderous thoughts and knew I would be booked in to reappear as a slug in my next reincarnation unless I did some serious damage repair. As soon as we got back from Auntie Shaila’s, I burst into tears and flung myself at papa, sobbing, ‘Why haven’t you taught me any prayers? I want to go to a temple! I want to come back as somebody famous!’

Once I had managed to blurt out what Auntie Shaila had said, papa transferred me to mama’s lap where I sat sniffling whilst he went and phoned somebody. I could only hear fragments of the conversation, which was polite, serene even, ‘…don’t scare her, she is very imaginative…Well, that is our choice, Shaila…Of course, I know you were only trying to help…We will …’ Afterwards, he sat me on his lap and said, ‘Beti, do you know what a conscience is?’ I shook my head; whatever it was, it sounded like I should have one. ‘You
know when you do something wrong, when you upset someone, or break something, or even if you are thinking about doing something wrong and you hear a little voice in your head that says, “Meena, you should not do this…”’

I stiffened, alert now. Had he been reading my mind? How did papa know about this irritating other me that sat on my brain and kept confusing me at points of crisis? ‘Well, that voice is your conscience and God gave you that voice to help you…be good. And it will always be there, no matter how many temples you go to. Do you understand?’ I nodded, a sinking sensation overtaking me. So it would always be there, that’s what he said. I was stuck with it. ‘As long as you listen to this voice, it will lead you to God. Even if you do something wrong, if you feel sorry, God knows that too. So don’t worry about being punished. That is what we are here for …’ he added, as an afterthought.

Later on, mama, who had been very quiet during this early crisis of faith, declared that she was taking me to the
gurudwara
in Birmingham the very next day. This was something of a major announcement on two counts; firstly, because mama also had never shown signs of being overtly religious. Of course, she invoked the name of Bhagwan in times of pain or exasperation, and had often praised the virtues of Sikhism to me, how it was a very fair religion that believed totally in equality. ‘We Sikhs do not believe in the caste system at all,’ she said proudly, and then muttered, ‘Of course, now we have different snobberies, who has the biggest Mercedes and the fattest gold necklace, as if the biggest show-off is the most holy …’

And secondly, (the most worrying aspect of this planned pilgrimage) because the only
gurudwara
in the Midlands was at least twenty miles away, and that therefore meant that mama intended to drive us there. We had acquired our first car, a green Austin Mini, a few months back and mama had passed her test a week before Auntie Shaila’s attempted exorcism. I knew very well that papa was working the next day, and
therefore I was to be the guinea pig on my mother’s first journey as a solo driver.

Mama tried to be a careful motorist, but drove so slowly that the amount of blood pressure she provoked in anyone unlucky enough to be stuck behind her, cancelled out all her good intentions. I had seen her having lessons from papa around the village, caught glimpses of her crawling around a gentle corner or tackling a minor slope as if it were the north face of the Eiger, whilst papa sat impassively next to her, his fingers gripping the dashboard in a parody of a fighter pilot bracing himself for a blast of G-force.

The journey started off pretty much to plan; papa had drawn a detailed map which mama taped to the dashboard, and she packed a thermos of
haichi
tea and a few parathas wrapped in silver foil in case we became delirious with hunger or thirst along the way. My job was to read out from the other list of instructions which complemented the visual map with precise details of landmarks we would be passing. ‘After this roundabout, which should see a betting shop and a petrol station, the one we filled up at last time we went to Uncle Trivedi’s place for his daughter’s first birthday …’