The Hungry Ghosts (5 page)

My mother recently told me that she still dreams of her husband, the same dream she has had since his death. In it, she encounters him at my grandmother’s gate or standing by a pillar on the verandah or sometimes outside the market. He is reborn as a peréthaya, a hungry ghost, with stork-like limbs and an enormous belly that he must prop up with his hands. The yellowed flesh of his face is seared to the skull, his mouth no larger than the eye of a needle, so he can never satisfy his hunger. He just stands, staring at her, caught between worlds. For years, the anguish of that dream would continue into her day, because my mother believed she had caused his death by her anger and there was no way to beg his forgiveness, or at least reach some companionable peace with him.

In Sri Lankan myth, a person is reborn a peréthaya because, during his human life, he desired too much—hence the large stomach that can never be
filled through the tiny mouth. The peréthayas that appear to us are always our ancestors, and it is our duty to free them from their suffering by feeding Buddhist monks and transferring the merit of that deed to our dead relatives.

My grandmother had her peréthaya stories too. In one of them, a king, Nandaka, has been away at war and is riding back to the capital with his troops, victorious. He reaches a crossroads, and seeing that one of the avenues is smoothly paved and shaded with trees, he takes it, not realizing it leads to the haunt of peréthayas. Soon his men grow fearful, as an odour of rotting flesh blooms around them and wailing shimmers the air. Looking back, they see that the road they travelled has disappeared. “In front of us the way is seen,” they cry, “but behind us the road is gone.” King Nandaka spies a great banyan tree ahead, and when he reaches it he finds a feast spread out by the roots. A man, who has the luminescent beauty of a deva, bedecked in jewels and gold-threaded silks, appears and welcomes the king, inviting him and his followers to eat and drink. Once they are sated, the king asks the man if he is indeed a deva. “I am not, your majesty,” the man replies, “I am a peréthaya.” The king is shocked and demands to know by what virtuous deeds he, a peréthaya, has acquired such splendour. The man explains that he was miserly in his past life, but he left behind a daughter who delighted in doing good deeds and being generous. A few months after her father’s death, when a monk, famed for his piety, came to her village, she invited him to her house, fed him and offered him a saffron robe, asking him to transfer the merit of these actions to her dead father. “It is thus that I live in such splendour, your majesty,” the peréthaya concludes, “through the fruit of my daughter’s good deeds.”

In front of us the way is seen, but behind us the road is gone.

Soon that house of my childhood will be no more. Once we have left Sri Lanka and brought my grandmother back here to Canada, it will be torn down to build a block of flats. For a moment, an image arises in my mind of the bulldozers crashing into the verandah, those carved teak pillars and lattice panels splintering, the turquoise-and-grey mosaic on the floor shattered, the intricately wrought antique doors, with their images of lotuses and peacocks, smashed to smithereens. A sigh that is almost a cry rises out of me.

3
 

L
IKE RAIN SOAKING A PARCHED LAND
. That was how my grandmother described our first encounter when she told me her life story years later. “I looked up from my unhappy life, Puthey, and there you were. And my heart broke then, broke with happiness.” There are many times when I have raged inside at that phrase of hers, at that malformed thing she calls love. Yet I know, more than anyone else, that love always comes with its dark twin—the spectre of loss, which drives us to do such terrible things.

In those first few days, we hardly saw my grandmother, as she was always out on errands. When she was home, she stayed in her bedroom and ran the household from there. Though she had taken us in, she remained obdurate towards her daughter and refused to have meals with us. Yet I had noticed that whenever our paths crossed, my grandmother gazed at me as if I were something fragile she was frightened to touch. One afternoon, returning from an errand, she stopped in front of my sister and me as we sat cross-legged on the verandah floor playing cards. A squall of emotions passed over her face before she flapped on to her bedroom with a little “humph.” Renu giggled. She gripped my arm and hissed, “The grandson is the most important. So you better be nice to Aachi, otherwise we will get thrown into the street. If that happens, I will always hate you.”

I shook my arm free and glared down the driveway. I could not deny I was the favoured one.

Renu, either to punish me for being preferred or to secure our place in this house, decided to make our grandmother a bouquet from the garden. When she was done, she thrust it into my hand and declared, “Shivan, you must take it to Aachi.”

“No!” I dropped the flowers on the ground and folded my arms over my chest. “No, I won’t.”

“Yes, you will.”

I was no match for Renu. She grasped me by the arm, marched me into the saleya and pushed me through the curtained doorway. My grandmother was seated in her bed reading a newspaper, and she lowered it, startled.

“Thank you very much for allowing us to be in your house,” I said, my throat dry. “For … for you, Aachi.”

I held out the bouquet. My grandmother frowned at it and then at me. A tremor slackened the corners of her mouth. I put the flowers on her bed and bolted.

Renu and I crept around the side of the house to our grandmother’s bedroom window. We carefully lifted the bottom edge of the half-curtain and peered in. She had picked up the bouquet and was smelling it, the look on her face like someone convalescing after a long illness.

We grinned at each other. I was delighted with myself, as if I alone had thought up and executed this feat of daring.

The next morning, my grandmother paid Renu and me a visit. We were seated at a table on the back verandah, writing out some exercises our mother had set to prepare us for entrance into one of the more prestigious Colombo schools, exercises also intended to keep us out of trouble while she was visiting principals, begging to have us taken on as charity students. She was also looking up old school friends who might help her find employment through their fathers or husbands.

Though it was a short walk from her room, my grandmother was panting slightly when she came out onto the verandah. I grinned at her and kicked my foot against the chair leg, feeling that I had won a new status with her. She gave me a frosty stare and I hurriedly returned to my work.

After a moment, I felt her standing behind me and her shadow wavered across the page. My mother had instructed me to copy out sentences from the Grade One
Radiant Way
primer. My writing was ill-formed and I had made numerous errors. With my grandmother looming over me, my hand began to shake and my scrawl grew worse. She clamped her fingers on my shoulder, nails digging into my flesh. “Erase that. Start again.”

I rubbed out the words I had written. In doing so, I erased the line above, which was correct.

My grandmother sucked her tongue against her teeth in a prolonged “
ttttch
.” “Look at this child,” she declared to no one in particular, “cow dung in his head.”

I glanced at my sister, but she hunched over her work, dreading she might be next. Rosalind glanced over as she grated a coconut in the kitchen. The coconut flesh rasping and tearing on the scraper was like a warning from her. I began to write my line again, but this time, in my nervousness, I pressed too hard and the pencil point broke.

“You did that on purpose, nah?” my grandmother cried, as if it was a personal insult to her. “Think you can make a fool of me?” She slapped the side of my head.

I whimpered and rubbed my nose, a heat swelling up under my scalp.

My grandmother snatched my pencil away. “Where is the cutter?”

Renu held it out to her, keeping her head bent. My grandmother grabbed it and sharpened the pencil. Her grinding fractured the silence. She thrust the pencil at me and flung the sharpener on the table.

I began to write the line again. My grandmother had over-sharpened the pencil and the point was wobbly. I wrote cautiously, but there was only so far I could go before the tip broke again.

My grandmother drew in her breath. I put down my pencil and clasped my hands tightly in my lap. “You are deliberately trying to mock an old woman and make a fool of her, aren’t you?” Her breath was hot on the top of my head.

Renu slid the sharpener over. My grandmother snatched it and flung it into the backyard. “You think that because I’m an old woman you can hoodwink me?” she shrilled. “You think you can make a laughingstock out of me?” She dragged me up, my chair squealing along the floor.

“No, Aachi, no,” I pleaded. “I’m sorry. I promise I won’t do it again.”

My grandmother grabbed my ear and pulled me into the saleya and through to her room. She shoved me away, went to an almirah in a corner and slid her foot under, feeling around until she kicked out a dusty old leather slipper. She brushed it against the side of her housecoat. My grandmother crooked a shaking finger and pointed for me to bend over the bed. I stayed where I was, gawping at the slipper. “Come,” my grandmother ordered, using the pejorative “
vareng
.”

“No, I won’t. You’re not my ammi. I hate you, you old woman.”

I had used “
gaani
,” the rudest form of “woman,” and my grandmother’s face flushed. “You wicked boy,” she wailed, and rushed at me, slipper raised. I made to dart away, but she gripped my elbow. I writhed and twisted, my arm burning from her grip, but she held on. I could smell the scorched odour of her sweat under the rose talcum powder. The noise outside of crows cawing, traffic rumbling by and vendors calling seemed magnified in the room as we grappled to gain mastery in desperate silence. Finally, my grandmother felt me weaken. She let out a cry and brought the slipper hissing through the air against my arm. I yelled at the hot sting and broke from her, stumbling sideways just as my grandmother brought the slipper down again. She was aiming for my back, but instead the slipper hit me across the face. I screamed and cradled my cheek. For a moment we were still, then my grandmother sat down on her bed, head in her hands, and I turned and rushed out the door.

Rosalind and my sister had been listening outside, too afraid to intervene, and they followed me to my room. The ayah led me through into my bathroom and made me sit on the closed toilet teat. She took a bottle of gentian violet from the medicine cabinet, knelt in front of me and, pouring some of the liquid on cotton wool, dabbed my bruises, which were bleeding where the nailheads on the slipper sole had punctured my skin. I yelped at the smart.

Rosalind tucked me in and knelt by the bed, stroking my hair. As I lay under the coverlet, the shock of what had happened wore off, and I began to stutter hiccupping sobs. Renu paced the room, her face stern.

Once I was sufficiently calmed down, Rosalind sat back on her haunches and looked at us gravely. “Your amma must never find out about this.”

“But why?” Renu cried, then added, “I’m definitely telling Ammi.”

Rosalind sighed. “Your amma has enough hardships. I don’t think she could bear anything else.” She took my hand in hers. “This is difficult for you to understand, but what your grandmother did to you, she did out of love. She has singled you out, her grandson.

“Yes,” she nodded, to our glares of disbelief. “She is just a woman who life has made different. This is her strange way of trying to love you. So,” she raised her eyebrows, “can we make a pact not to tell your mother?”

After a moment my sister half nodded, but I ducked my head.

I lay in bed for the rest of the day, and in the late afternoon I heard my mother come into the house, calling to us. My sister rushed into the saleya to greet her, Rosalind following.

“Ammi,” I bawled, “Amm-i!”

“What’s going on?” my mother asked Rosalind.

“Oh, nothing, baba, he just fell and hurt himself.”

My mother’s heels clicked. She pulled aside the curtain and came into my room.