One Hundred Shades of White. Preethi Nair
maybe Ammamma could come and live with us. If she came, I knew she would like England too. I didn’t tell Amma that, or that I secretly willed Achan’s contract to go on forever.
Dundee cakes came and went to celebrate all the special occasions. Everyone got a cake for their birthday and I was about to have my third one with six big candles. Somebody should have told my Achan that we absolutely hated them and that these cakes only served in joining my brother and I in a perverse friendship. The only time we teamed up was when we threw those chunks of cake behind the sitting-room cabinet. The fear of our father finding this Dundee cake wall behind a hideous mahogany cabinet united us in a way that had never seemed possible. Achan came back for my sixth birthday but he could only stay for two weeks because he had to go back to America again for business. Secretly, I liked it when he went there and came back because he would buy us things that you couldn’t even get in England. Once he bought me an air hostess doll that talked and even the teachers were so impressed that they allowed me to take her into assembly to do a demonstration for the other children. I also loved it when Achan was home because he played with us; piggyback rides; hide and seek. He’d understand the games and play what we wanted.
Satchin and I didn’t really play together, not even after school. I tried to be his friend but he never let me because he thought I was too messy and chaotic. So after school we did our own thing. He had this endless obsession for colouring with his felt-tip pens, which he guarded with his life. My scrawny colouring pencils were not of the same standard so I didn’t relish the prospect of colouring as much as he did. On several occasions, I offered to swap the whole set of my pencils for just his pink and blue pens. His refusal was categorical. So the day these very same pens went missing, all hell broke loose in our house. The only way I survived the neck lock he held me in was by signalling with my eyes at the Dundee cake wall that we had built together. But I suppose that if we knew what was going to happen, then the Dundee cake wall hardly would have mattered. When the cabinet was eventually removed and all the old bricks of cake lay there, nobody said anything. My Achan never got to see it.
Achan’s trips abroad became longer and my Amma really missed him because at night we could hear her cry a lot: not a loud inconsolable cry, more of a whimper, a bit like when the school hamster was trapped in his wheel. Amma started learning English, annoying us by interrupting the television programmes we were watching with questions every five minutes as to who was saying what, but she did make a big effort to learn. Maybe this was a sign that we were going to stay in England for longer. She would even venture out to get some of the groceries herself and collect us from school. Achan didn’t see any of this or he would have been proud of her; he was always telling her to be a bit more independent. When he did return it was always to a hero’s welcome and his gifts became more ostentatious. Satchin and I could have whatever we asked for; a new bicycle, games, toys, anything. Our only preoccupation at this time was whether we should stay in and watch Blue Peter and learn how to make what they had made earlier. That was until the death of Fluffy.
We hadn’t really seen death before. The calf’s death was different because we never saw her die but Satchin actually witnessed Fluffy’s death. Fluffy was my brother’s class hamster. To my astonishment, he asked me to come along and attend Fluffy’s burial. All the children held hands and prayed as Miss Turnbull said a few words. She said that Fluffy had gone so peacefully and was happy in heaven, playing with his friends, but the truth, confided in a moment of frenzied grief, was that my brother had accidentally murdered him. Dropped from a great height because he had had a fight with Jessica Thomas and didn’t want her to take him home for the holiday, Fluffy’s death was instantaneous. Nobody saw. So how he could have played in heaven in that state I really don’t know. Not unless God had fixed up his tiny legs along the way.
For weeks, Satchin was terrorised by Fluffy’s face coming to him in his dreams. I could hear him from my room, crying, shouting and jumping around like a fish in his bed. A truce descended between us when I offered to move into his room and sleep on the top bunk bed. I managed to convince him that just in case Fluffy decided to come down and get him, he would find me lying on the top bed instead.
Ammamma would say that we should have read the signs, but we lived in a big city and the pace didn’t allow it. Three weeks after that, my Achan died and life would never, ever be the same.
Amma picked us up from school. She had a bandage wrapped around her hand, her hair was unbraided and she was wearing a pair of trousers and a light green pullover. She never dressed like that and was always wrapped like a mummy from head to toe in a sari, even covering her head with the final piece of material that remained. So instantly we knew something was wrong.
‘What’s happened to your hand, Ma? Are you all right?’ we asked.
‘My hand will be fine, I had a little accident.’ There was a long silent pause and then she told us. ‘Makkale, Achan had an accident too.’
Was Achan’s hand damaged? I thought, but before I had a chance to ask, she blurted it out.
‘He died.’
Satchin started to cry.
No, he couldn’t have died, my father would never die, he went away but he always came back. There must have been some mistake; you can’t die from a hand injury.
‘He’s not coming back, Mol,’ she said again, crying.
I watched her lips move and the only other thing I heard was that, ‘He died a hero and there was no pain.’
He was rerouted on one of his business trips and he went to heaven instead as he saved a boy from having a horrific accident. He would save a little boy, that was the kind of thing that my Achan would do, but he wouldn’t die. There was some mistake.
We gripped her hand firmly, more so that she would not run and leave us, and we walked home in silence, not stopping once to jump and scrunch the leaves on the ground as we normally did.
The house was in a mess. Where were his pictures? They couldn’t have gone with him. I ran into the bathroom to see if his toothbrush had come back but it wasn’t there either. Did Amma think that she could put his pictures away and that we would forget about him? I went into his closet to look for them and saw his clothes weren’t there either. They were packed away in a big cardboard box. How could she pack him up like that? In just one day, like he never existed. I told Satchin but he made no response.
‘Why are Achan’s clothes packed away, Amma?’ ‘Mol, he’s not coming back. Come, eat something.’ Eat? Is that all she ever thought about? How could we eat? She had cooked an elaborate dinner and placed some chicken drumsticks coated with breadcrumbs on a side plate (more as an afterthought that we might not like the rest). We ate none of it and went to bed. The three of us slept together in my Amma’s bed. I wanted to cry but I remembered that Ammamma said that crying would indicate that the person would not come back and this was clearly not the case so I couldn’t cry. Amma lay in bed with us and Satchin whimpered as she held us. I contained my sadness and desperately wanted to hold both of them but then I decided not to get too attached to either of them. Everyone I ever really loved seemed to disappear.
Death precipitated events, just like the astrologer said it would. With no income and no way of getting back to India, Amma began packing things. The grocery man, Tom, came most evenings to help her. He had a sister who lived in the East End of London and he thought perhaps we could rent one of her bedsits. Tom helped us sell most of the furniture, Amma sold her jewellery and our toys, and she put down the deposit for two months’ rent on a shabby room. Satchin and I didn’t want to leave and we were sad but Satchin said that we had to be strong and not make any fuss. We did not say goodbye to our teachers or school friends. We left like thieves with the three suitcases, all tied with string, and as we climbed into Tom’s van, our childhood effectively ended.
I can’t remember much of that journey, except that it was raining hard and that the rain began to fall inside of me, suffocating me and taking with it any hope that I had of Achan’s return. The sea predator could not get me so it sent the rain. My heart beat faster and the rain fell harder: the rest, I cannot remember.
The flat was a semi-furnished bedsit off Green Street in the East