The Hungry Ghosts (12 page)

It took my mother a couple of days to make her decision. One evening after my grandmother had gone for pooja, she summoned my sister and me to her room. She was sitting at her dressing table, the form laid out on it, all filled in. She looked at us for a long moment. “What would you think about immigrating to Canada?”

She spoke as if it was her idea; she had taken the burden off me.

“Canada?” Renu said. She grabbed the form and scowled at it. “Why?”

“What do you mean
why
, Renu?” my mother cried. “Are you not aware of what has happened in this country?”

“But I’m in university. I like it here.”

“Sri Lanka is finished. It’s time to get out. If so much rioting was caused by the death of thirteen soldiers, what is going to happen when twenty are killed?” My mother moved a ring up and down her finger. “And many more will be killed. This riot has only made the Tigers more powerful, more determined to get what they want. There is going to be a lot more violence. And Colombo Tamils are sitting ducks.” She caressed my sister’s arm. “Just think, Renu, you can go to a better university. One that isn’t constantly shutting down because of student hartals.”

My sister glared at the form and left the room.

Yet by the next evening, Renu had come around to the idea of immigration. Sriyani Karunaratne, her history professor, had told her that there were programs on feminism in the West called “women’s studies.” My sister could pursue this interest with greater focus in Canada and Professor Karunaratne had urged her to seize this opportunity.

The man who interviewed us at the Canadian embassy was plump and spoke with a wheeze. His bald crown was sun-reddened and peeling, and he had gathered his remaining hair into a thin ponytail that hung wetly down his back. Despite the office air-conditioning, he constantly rubbed his face and neck with a handkerchief, great bruises of perspiration in the armpits of his shirt. As he looked over our papers, I studied the posters of snow-capped
mountains and sparkling rivers running through mint-green valleys. In odd contrast to these images were other posters of children and adults from the nations of the earth, decked out in their exotic national costumes and posed before the same gothic building, which I would later learn housed the Parliament of Canada. These immigrants seemed to smile down at us prospective applicants in a smug and distancing way, as if we had to prove ourselves worthy before their smiles would become genuine.

The official asked my mother a few questions about her work and looked at her qualifications. When he found out my sister and I planned to attend university, he inquired about what we wished to study and recommended some colleges. He kept saying, “When you are in Canada,” until finally my mother leaned forward, fingers knitted. “Sir, you keep saying
when
we are in Canada. Have we … already passed?”

“Oh, yes,” the man said, as if surprised we did not know. Then he smiled. “This is just a formality. Of course, you have to get through your medicals and security checks.” He peered at us over the top of his glasses. “I may safely assume that none of you have TB or have engaged in criminal activity?”

“Oh, no, of course not.” My mother let out a bark of amusement at his lame joke and my sister and I tittered, faces locked in grins.

The official asked where we wanted to settle, and my mother said Toronto, because that was where other Tamils were planning to go. He half-heartedly suggested Winnipeg, Saskatoon or Calgary, as if he knew we would never go there but considered it his duty to push other parts of Canada.

We were soon done. The official walked us to the door and shook our hands, his palm cushiony and damp.

The moment we were outside the gates of the High Commission, my mother let out a shout of happiness and hugged us. Seeing the pleasure on my mother’s and sister’s faces, I felt that the thing I had set in motion was real. It became even more real when our taxi pulled up to the house and I saw my grandmother sitting on the front verandah, reading a newspaper. We glanced at our mother, knowing that because we were in our good clothes our grandmother might ask where we had been.

“Children,” our mother murmured. There was a new twitch of energy to her. She stepped out of the taxi first and held the door open for us. As I
climbed out, I glanced at my grandmother. She had lowered her paper and was studying us, eyes unblinking, face inscrutable.

My mother led the way up the front steps, head raised, handbag tucked under her arm, high heels castanets against the floor. As we followed her, I jerked at my collar to loosen my tie, frowning with concentration.

“Shivan,” my grandmother snapped, “come. I want to go and look at a property.”

“No, Amma, Shivan has just been out,” my mother called over her shoulder as she bustled into the saleya. “I want him to take off his good clothes, have a shower and do his homework.”

“Come, Shivan, come.” My grandmother gripped my wrist as I made to go by her.

“Shivan, I want you to come inside and do as I say.” My mother’s voice punched out each word.

I looked from one to the other, then gently freed myself and continued into the house.

When I got to my room, I slumped down on my bed, pulse throbbing at the base of my throat. Then, before I knew it, I was clutching my head, whispering, “What have I done? What have I done?”

My grandmother did not ask where we had been that afternoon. She did not comment on the contest with her daughter and the decision I had made. She acted as if nothing had changed. Over the next days and weeks, as I looked at leaking cisterns and holes in roofs and rotting floors, or sat with her and Sunil Maama going through documents on the verandah, I felt a constant terror. I wanted, for a reason I could not explain, to stop what I had begun.

Three months later, we received our landed papers. It was my mother who led the way across the saleya to impart the news, eyes sparkling with triumph. My sister and I followed, not looking at each other but our shoulders touching for comfort. My mother, as always, stood before the curtain and called out, “Amma?”

“Yes? What is it?” my grandmother replied.

We found her in bed, bolstered by pillows, going through a bank statement. She glared at my mother over her spectacles, rustling the statement to indicate she wished this meeting to be brief. Then she saw my sister and me
hovering in the doorway and a stitch plucked its way across her forehead. She sat up a little straighter, hands folded in lap, her face emptied of any emotion. Sweat prickled the back of my neck.

“Amma,” my mother said, her voice resonant with gloating. “I have some news for you. I want you to know that we, the children and I, have been passed for immigration. To Canada.”

After a long moment, my grandmother picked up the bank statement again and examined it.

“We will be leaving in a few weeks, Amma.” My grandmother still did not respond. “Is that alright?”

“Why do you ask me?” The statement fluttered as if my grandmother had palsy. “It seems I have nothing to do with your decision at all.”

“Very well.” My mother walked towards the doorway, then stopped, remembering something. “If you wish for us to leave your house, Amma, I have arranged—”

My grandmother flung down her paper and cried, as if pleading with an invisible person, “Look at the way she talks to me? All these years I have allowed her to live under my roof, all these years I have been a good mother, and see, just see, the way she repays me. Aiyo! What did I do in my past life, to deserve this … this wild bitch of a daughter?”

My mother’s face flushed. “Eleven years I have lived under your roof, and in all that time you have never sat at the table and had a meal with me.” Her right hand sliced out a rhythm on her left palm. “You call that being a good mother? I have hated every minute in this house and so have my children. Never mind your past life, you will pay for this cruelty in your future life. And no amount of bana and danas and donations for bells and robes at the temple will make up for what you have done.”

“Get out,” my grandmother whispered through gritted teeth. “Get out.”

“Are you saying you want me to take the children and leave your house? You only need say the word.”

My grandmother yelped. She looked around, picked up a paperweight from her side table and flung it at my mother. We cried out as my mother ducked. The paperweight crashed into the wall and shards of glass spattered across the floor.

Renu rushed to protect our mother, putting an arm around her shoulder,
glaring at our grandmother. My mother let out a shuddering breath, and allowed herself be led out by my sister. I made to follow.

“Stay.”

My grandmother beckoned me forward and I went to stand by her bed.

“Ah, Puthey,” she said, her voice sad, “I know you had nothing to do with your mother’s actions.” She held out her hand. I took it, and she pulled me down on the bed beside her. “This must have been so hard to keep to yourself.”

I gritted my teeth to hold in gulping sobs, but they came.

“Ah, Puthey, Puthey.” She held my head against her bony chest and I clung to her, crying freely. Soon I felt her chest heaving as she sobbed too. “I am cursed by my karma,” she whispered more to herself than me. “I
am
that Naked Peréthi. Am I to have no happiness in this life? Is everything I love to be taken from me?”

Finally, I tore myself away, ran into the saleya, past my mother and sister who stared at me, stricken, and into my room. I went into the bathroom, slammed the door, closed the commode lid and sat on it, sobbing into my hands, unable to stop, unable to understand why I was crying when everything had worked out as I desired.

My mother and sister did not speak to me about my outburst, but over the next few weeks I caught them observing me, frightened. I spent long hours reading in my bedroom or going for solitary bicycle rides. I was bloated with a new exhaustion and would sleep in the afternoon only to awaken heavy-headed and groggy.

My grandmother never mentioned our imminent departure and carried on as if nothing had happened. Yet her face was gaunt and empty. I could sense my mother begin to doubt what she had done. When we visited friends or my late grandfather’s relatives to say goodbye, she would insist, as if they had contradicted her, that this was the best decision she had ever made in her life, that she could not wait to wipe her feet of this “godforsaken shipwreck of a country.” Renu and I would often find her in the kitchen, seated on a stool beside Rosalind, peeling onions and garlic or sorting through kankong leaves. Every night, now, Rosalind lay her mat on the floor by my mother’s bed in the way ayahs do with their charges. The murmur of their voices through the wall prevented me from falling asleep.

When my mother purchased our tickets, she informed my grandmother of our date of departure. That evening, while we were having dinner, my grandmother came out and sat at the table. Rosalind made to bring a plate, but she waved her away. “I have reached a decision. I am going to buy a house in Canada.” She smiled wryly at our stunned faces.

“But how will you get the money to Canada,” my mother asked, “what with currency restrictions and everything?”

My grandmother rubbed her forehead. “I have been putting away money over the years, quietly-quietly, in a London account.” She sighed lightly. “Yes, I will buy this house.”

“I don’t need your house,” my mother said.

“I’m not buying the house for you. This house is for Shivan.” She looked at me with numb longing. “I need to know my grandson will have something in his new life that will help him.” She grimaced at my mother. “I know that I cannot trust you to take care of my grandson. I shudder to think what ruination you will come to, left to your own devices in a foreign land.”

My mother flushed and was about to retort, but Renu spoke up. “Take her damn house, Amma. It’s the least the woman owes you, after the terrible way she has treated us. Who cares if it’s in Shivan’s name.”

My mother turned to me. “Son?”

I did not know if I wanted this reminder of my grandmother in my new life. Yet, placed on the spot, I found myself nodding to say we would take her gift.

“Very well,” my mother said. “When I am in Canada, I will open an account and you can transfer the money there.”

After that, my grandmother contrived to spend as much time with me as possible, and we were frequently out on errands. As I looked at the various problems with her houses or visited banks or sat with her and Sunil Maama, going through documents on the verandah, my life seemed to pass before me as if I were watching it through a train window.

A few days before our departure, Sriyani Karunaratne, whose husband owned various hotels, invited all the people involved with Kantha to spend the day at a beach resort and bid farewell to Renu. My sister was flattered by the honour and delighted to have this last chance to be with her heroine. She
usually did not take much trouble with her appearance, wearing skirts that reached down to her shins, hair tugged back in a plait. Yet that morning of the farewell party she was in a great flurry about what to wear and even borrowed my blow-dryer to tease her hair in a new fashion.

Renu was not ready when her friends arrived, and much to my annoyance I was sent to tell them she would be a few more minutes. There was a convoy of vehicles waiting outside the gate, and when I stepped out, shielding my eyes against the glare, someone called my name. I peered towards a packed car. In the driver’s seat was a foreign man in his mid-twenties with pale skin reddened by the sun and whitish blond hair so fine his scalp was visible. Mili Jayasinghe sat beside him in the front passenger seat. He waved at me, yanked the door open and got out.

“Machan,” he cried, as he came up to me. He clapped me on the back. “So, you’re leaving our beloved island.”

I heard a slight accusation in his tone, and I was suddenly furious at him, standing there so handsome, so confident. “Well, I am sure we Tamils will be missed. After all, who are the Sinhalese going to kill now?” I said “the Sinhalese,” but it was clear I meant “
you
Sinhalese.”