Anita and Me

‘Have you seen this leaflet, Mr Kumar?’ he would enquire innocently, thrusting a flyer into papa’s hands with his change. ‘Lovely speaker we’ve got for the Harvest celebrations, Mr Delaney has just come back from Rhodesia. In Africa. We’re having a collection. They asked for a plough but we thought a few tins and preserves would tide them over for a bit.’ You could see it in his face, he’d made the connection, Africa was abroad, we were from abroad, how could we refuse to come along and embrace Jesus for the sake of our cousins? Papa always did refuse but with such grace that Mr Ormerod never lost hope; he just filed us away under ‘Waverers’, rearranged the pens in the breast pocket of his brown overall, and waited for next time.

‘Now,’ said papa. ‘For the last time, did Mr Ormerod give you those sweets for nothing? Or did you take that shilling from mummy’s bag and spend it on yourself?’ I was mute with shame and anger. I hated him for forcing me to stoop to such a grubby act; if he had listened to me in the first place and just given me the sodding money, I would not have had to steal anything. I lifted up my head slightly, saw the ice in his expression and felt doomed. If papa was so angry now, what would he be like when he found out what had happened to me at school only last week?

I had been publicly beaten in front of all my class mates whom I now hated without exception. It had been during a Modern History lesson, when our bullfrog-faced teacher, Mrs Blakey, asked us if we knew why the area we lived in was called the Black Country. Peter Bradley, who had a stammer and a predictable habit of deliberately dropping pencils so he could peer up the girls’ dresses, raised a sleeve covered in snail trails of snot and said, ‘B…b…because so m…many darkies…live here, miss?’ I laughed along with everyone else but the next time I heard Peter snuffling around under the desk, pencil in hand, peering optimistically past reinforced gussets and woolly tights, I aimed a quick kick and was surprised to see him emerge with a fist clamped over a bloody nose. As Mrs Blakey karate-chopped the back of my legs with a splintered wooden ruler, I tried to explain that we were the only Indians that had ever lived in Tollington and that the country looked green if anything to me.

My humiliation had been compounded by the fact that mama was an infants’ teacher in the adjoining school; we were separated by a mere strip of playground, and I knew it would only be a matter of time before she got to hear of my behaviour. I knew I should tell papa everything now, Confess said the Lord and Ye Shall Be Saved. Papa’s expression made me wonder if this only ever worked with English people, but I had to say something because if we entered Mr Ormerod’s shop, my crime would become public shame as opposed to personal failure and that, I knew, was something papa hated more than anything.

Somewhere a front door slammed shut. It seemed to reverberate along the terrace, houses nudging each other to wake up and listen in on us, net curtains and scalloped lace drapes all a-flutter now. Everyone must have been watching, they always did, what else was there to do?

‘Right then. We’ll ask Mr Ormerod what happened.’

Papa pushed open the door of the shop, the brass bell perched on its top rang jauntily. Its clapper looked like a quivering tonsil in a golden throat and it vibrated to the beat of my heart.

‘I was lying,’ I said in a whisper.

Papa’s face sagged, he looked down and then up at me, disappointment dimming his eyes. He let go of my hand and walked back towards our house without looking back.

2

I sat on the front step and finished the rest of my sweets, feeling the bile rise as I chewed with the pace and rumination of a sulky cow. I knew I would end up feeling ill but I had already paid for my haul in shame and saw no point in wasting good food. It would serve them right if I did choke on a raspberry poppet and had foaming convulsions right here on the step. As I tried to unstick my jaw, I remembered the mad dog that had wandered into our communal yard some years ago, whose drunken walk and white-flecked muzzle had sent the mothers screaming for cover, clutching their protesting children to them. I managed to find an airhole in the folds of mama’s trousers and had gazed on the object of all this terror, a mottled, scrappy mutt of a dog who seemed proud of his madness, freed by it, whose expression was one of unconcerned, off-the-planet bliss. I really envied him, or rather the effect he was having on the local harpies who, in normal circumstances, would arm wrestle each other for a parking space. If what that dog had was madness, I wanted some of it. Even then, I felt I spent most of life saying sorry.

I also knew what it was like to almost choke to death. It had happened two years ago, we had celebrated my seventh birthday with a trip to Wolverhampton, where we saw Bedknobs and Broomsticks and then went for a rum baba in the nearby Stanton’s cake shop. I had been promised a party but at the last minute, my mother had been taken ill. Papa found her lying on her bed, crying. He’d said it was a migraine and then talked softly to her in Punjabi, which I knew was a sign that something was a secret and therefore, probably bad news. I still recognised a few words in between mummy’s sobs – mother, money, and then a furious invective in Punjabi with ‘bloody fed up’ stuck in the middle of it. (Swearing in English was considered more genteel than any of the Punjabi expletives which always mentioned the bodily parts of one’s mothers or sisters, too taboo to sit on a woman’s lips.)

But I was relieved; I did not want a party as I would not have had anyone to invite, anyone interesting anyway. In the village I was stuck in between the various gangs, too young for Anita’s consideration, too old to hang around the cloud of toddlers that would settle on me like a rash every time I set foot outside my front door. Going out with the grown-ups was much more exciting, although lately, mama’s moods had begun to intrude upon every family outing like a fourth silent guest, whom I saw as an overweight sweaty auntie with lipstick-stained teeth and an unforgiving expression.

In Stanton’s, after the film, I could tell that whatever had been upsetting my mother was still going on. She sat silent and moist-eyed, looking down into her cup of weak tea, running her finger round and round the edge of its rim. She was dressed in a dusty pink sari with small silver lotus blossoms on its borders, whilst my father wore his blue serge suit and a tie striped like a humbug. Whenever we went ‘out’, out meaning wherever English people were, as opposed to Indian friends’ houses which in any case was always ‘in’ as all we would do was sit in each others’ lounges, eat each others’ food and watch each others’ televisions, my parents always wore their smartest clothes.

My mother knew from experience that she would get fewer stares and whispers if she had donned any of the sensible teacher’s trouser suits she would wear for school, but for her, looking glamorous in saris and formal Indian suits was part of the English people’s education. It was her duty to show them that we could wear discreet gold jewellery, dress in tasteful silks and speak English without an accent. During our very special shopping outings to Birmingham, she would often pass other Indian women in the street and they would stare at each other in that innocent, direct way of two rare species who have just found out they are vaguely related. These other Indian women would inevitably be dressed in embroidered salwar kametz suits screaming with green and pinks and yellows (incongruous with thick woolly socks squeezed into open-toed sandals and men’s cardies over their vibrating thin silks, evil necessities in this damn cold country), with bright make-up and showy gold-plated jewellery which made them look like ambulating Christmas trees. Mama would acknowledge them with a respectful nod and then turn away and shake her head. ‘In the village, they would look beautiful. But not here. There is no sun to light them up. Under clouds, they look like they are dressed for a discotheque.’

But she was quiet now, no light in her face. Papa said, ‘Have something to eat. A cake. Have one of those…what you like…those meringue things.’ ‘She won’t,’ I chipped in, scraping my fork into the spongy belly of my rum baba. ‘You know what she will say, I can make this cheaper at home.’ My mother never ate out, never, always affronted by paying for some over-boiled, under-seasoned dish of slop when she knew she could rustle up a hot, heartwarming meal from a few leftover vegetables and a handful of spices. ‘I bet you couldn’t make this at home,’ I continued. ‘How would you make a cake? How would you get it round and get the cream to stand up and the cherry to balance like this? You have to buy some things, you can’t do everything you know …’

‘That’s enough!’ barked papa. ‘Mind your manners now or we’re going home!’

My mother shook her head at him and put her hand over mine. I snatched it away and finished my cake in silence.

My father showed he was sorry by buying me a hot dog on the way home. I sat in the back of the Mini and concentrated on licking the tomato sauce off my fingertips whilst singing ‘Bobbing Along on the Bottom of the Beautiful Briney Sea’ in between slurps. Mummy and papa were talking again, soft whispers, sss sss sss, my mother’s bracelets jingled as she seemed to wipe something from her face. This was my birthday and they were leaving me out again. I squeezed my hot dog and suddenly the sausage shot into my mouth and lodged firmly in my windpipe. I was too shocked to move, my fingers curled uselessly into my fists. They were still talking, engrossed, I could see papa’s eyes in the mirror, darting from my mother’s face to the unfolding road. I thought of writing SAUSAGE STUCK on the windscreen and then realised I could not spell sausage. I was going to die in the back of the car and somewhere inside me, I felt thrilled. It was so dramatic. This was by far the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me.

The car went over a bump in the road and the offending chipolata slipped out of my mouth and into my lap, leaving a red stripe across my yellow satin dress. When my mother looked round, my face was wet with tears and I was panting and pointing the sausage at her like a gun. ‘Just look what you’ve done to your dress! Can’t you be careful?’ I did not tell her what had happened. This was my near death experience and I would make damn sure I’d use it on her one day.

Mama rarely raised her voice but when she did get angry, she looked like one of the ornamental statues I had seen on my Auntie Shaila’s shrine. The goddess she resembled most when in a strop, the one that both terrified and fascinated me, was Kali, a black-faced snarling woman with alarming canines and six waving arms. Every hand contained a bloody weapon and she wore a bracelet of skulls around her powerful naked thighs. And her eyes, sooty O’s of disbelief and also amusement that someone insignificant had dared to step on her shadow.

Mama could look like that at me sometimes, when she had caught me tearing carefully sewn ribbons off my dresses, cutting up earthworms in our back yard with her favourite vegetable knife, and most usually, when I was lying. The size of lie never made a difference to her reaction; it could have been one of my harmless fabrications (telling a group of visiting kids in the park that I was a Punjabi princess and owned an elephant called Jason King), or one of my major whoppers – telling my teacher I hadn’t completed my homework because of an obscure religious festival involving fire eating…She was always furious at the pointlessness of it all; stealing was understandable if distressing, violence antisocial yet sometimes unavoidable, but lying? ‘Why do you do this, Meena?’ she would wail, wringing her hands unconvincingly, a parody of a Hindi movie mama. ‘You are only four/seven/nine…Isn’t your life exciting enough without all these stories?’

Well naturally the answer was no, but I did not want to make mama feel that this was her fault. Besides, I enjoyed her anger, the snapping eyes, the shrieking voice, the glimpse of monster beneath the mother; it was one of the times I felt we understood each other perfectly.

Of course, no one else outside our small family ever saw this dark side of mama; to everyone else, she was the epitome of grace, dignity and unthreatening charm. She attracted admirers effortlessly, maybe because her soft round face, large limpid eyes and fragile, feminine frame brought out their protective instincts. Tragedy, amusement and bewilderment would wash across her face like sea changes, flowing to suit the story of whoever she was listening to, giving them the illusion that they could control the tides. She was as constant as the moon and just as remote, so the admiration of the villagers was always tempered with a deferential respect, as if in the company of minor royalty.

‘Oh Mrs K,’ Sandy, the divorcee two doors down, would sigh, running her fingers through her hennaed hair, cocking her head to one side whilst widening her bright blue eyes, giving her the air of a startled parrot, ‘you are a duck.’

This was after my mother had lent her butter or given her a lift down to the shops or taken her son, Mikey, in for some pop and crisps when Sandy missed her bus back from work.

‘You’re so lovely. You know, I never think of you as, you know, foreign. You’re just like one of us.’

My mother would smile and graciously accept this as a compliment. And yet afterwards, in front of the Aunties, she would reduce them to tears of laughter by gently poking fun at the habits of her English friends. It was only much later on that I realised in the thirteen years we lived there, during which every weekend was taken up with visiting Indian families or being invaded by them, only once had any of our neighbours been invited in further than the step of our back door.

The Aunties all had individual names and distinct personalities, but fell into the role of Greek chorus to mama’s epic solo role in my life. Although none of them, nor their husbands, the uncles, were actually related to me by blood, Auntie and Uncle were the natural respectful terms given to them, to any Asian person old enough to boss me around. This was an endless source of confusion to our English neighbours, who would watch tight-lipped as mama and papa’s friends would phut-phut into the communal dirt yard and heave themselves and their several kids out of their hatchbacks, unfurling shimmering saris and clinking with jewellery, holding up their embroidered hemlines from the dirt floor. As I dutifully kissed every powdered or stubbly cheek with a ‘Namaste Auntie, Namaste Uncle’ and led them towards our back door, I could see our neighbours shift uncomfortably, contemplating the apparent size of my family and the fact we had somehow managed to bring every one of them over here.

I once tried explaining to our next door neighbour, Mrs Worrall, why my parents seemed to have so many siblings. ‘It’s just being polite, see,’ I said. ‘Like saying sir or madam, to call them Auntie and Uncle. ‘Cos we have different words for proper relatives, like my dad’s younger brother is called a Chacha, his elder brother is called a Thaya. But me mom’s sister is called a Masee, and my dad’s sister a Buaji…So you know the difference between pretend ones and real ones.’

It was a litany I knew well, from being sat down in front of photos from India and forced to memorise my parents’ many brothers and sisters by name, occupation, and personality quirks. ‘This is your Thaya,’ papa would say. ‘Clerk, sweet tooth, married, prone to crying over nothing in particular as if committing them to memory would make up for not being with them.

Mrs Worrall listened carefully to my monologue and then said, ‘Yow must be mad. What do yow want more relatives for? Yow want extra, tek a few of mine. Selfish sods, all of em,’ and lumbered back into her kitchen.

But I could not imagine existing without them, although I hated the way they continually interfered in my upbringing, inevitably backing up my parents’ complaints. ‘Look at you, like a “jamardani!”’ mama would exclaim when I tumbled into the lounge smelling of pig dung after a good rambling session. ‘Hah, a sweeper!’ the Aunties would mutter in stereophonic sound. ‘Spoiled your lovely smock and all …’ But it would never end there. This was a moral marathon, and they took up the baton with pride, passing it amongst themselves long after mama and papa had run out of breath and were having a cold drink on the sidelines.

‘Why behave like a boy all the time?…Stand with your legs together…Are those nose drippings on your sleeve?…Why don’t you grow your hair, do you want to be a boy, Meena?’ And so in a few short phrases I had progressed from a slightly messy girl into a potential sex change candidate, all done in this jocular caring way, as they showed how much they loved my parents by having a go at me on their behalf. And then suddenly the session would be over and I would be enveloped in crackling silk bosoms and rough clumsy hands, fed morsels off over-loaded plates and shunted away to sit in the Kids’ Room, which was wherever the television was, all recriminations forgotten.

I rarely rebelled openly against this communal policing, firstly because it somehow made me feel safe and wanted, and secondly, because I knew how intensely my parents valued these people they so readily renamed as family, faced with the loss of their own blood relations. I understood this because of the snippets of stories I would hear when the grown-ups would sit around on the floor, replete and sleepy, exchanging anecdotes that reinforced their shared histories, confirming that they were not the only ones who were living out this unfolding adventure. ‘I got off the train at Paddington,’ papa would begin, stifling a satisfied burp, ‘sick as a dog from that damn boat, twenty-five pounds in my pocket, and I looked up across the platform and I saw …’ ‘Me!’ my Uncle Amman would say proudly. ‘Va, you looked like a film star, Kumarsaab, that Jimmy Cagney suit and all.’ ‘So, naturally, I go up and introduce myself, and …’ ‘And we found out our cousins had gone to the same college! So we went back to my home and that was that!’ Uncle Amman would finish with a flourish, as if it were perfectly natural to meet a total stranger and within ten minutes, find him a meal, a home and a list of Situations Vacant.

During this particular story, mama would always listen with a patient, fond look, absorbing the history she had not been around to witness. Papa had left her in Delhi whilst he tried his luck in England, promising to send for her as soon as he had discovered the promised gold beneath the dog shit on the streets. We have the photograph taken on the day of his departure, it looks like a still from one of the old black and white movies I used to watch on Saturday afternoons (after the football and before the wrestling). Papa is leaning out of a steam train window in a brilliant white shirt, an overcoat slung over his waving arm. The smoke rises like cold-morning breath around his face and he is backlit by a rising sun. He is smiling his gap-toothed smile, though his eyes are intense. Mama stands on the platform, the fingers of one hand slightly raised, as if she is afraid to wave him goodbye. She is impossibly young and utterly bereft, her long chiffon dupatta is frozen in mid-curl, lifted by the wind. Even in such a small photograph her longing is palpable, the way her fingers say what her mouth cannot.

This was always one of my favourites, this image of my parents as epic, glamorous figures, touched by romantic tragedy. I knew there was plenty more where that came from too; I have heard the excited whispers between the Aunties whenever my parents’ marriage was mentioned, odd words from which I concocted a whole scenario – ‘…Saw her riding her bike round college…At first sight it was…Her parents, of course…Long negotiations…Such a love story!’ I was in a fever of excitement the first time I eavesdropped on these juicy morsels. My parents in a love story! I kept myself awake imagining them chasing each other around old Indian streets (which were basically English streets with a few cows lounging around on the corners), mama on a bicycle laughing loudly as papa tried to grab onto her saddle and haul himself beside her whilst various old people looked out of half-shuttered windows and tutted under their breath.

But when I confronted mama about her courtship adventures, her face closed up like a fan. ‘Don’t be so silly!’ she sniffed. ‘We were introduced by an uncle. It all was done through the proper channels. Listening to your elders’ conversation again …’ And that was that. I did not have the courage to ask her why there was only one single photograph of their wedding, when all the other Aunties each had a van load of nuptial albums, which they would whip out at the slightest excuse, and sigh over their eighteen-inch waists and demure demeanours, neither of which would ever return. In my parents’ album, this single photograph is given a page all on its own. Mama and papa are seated in the back of a car. Papa wears a turban with strings of pearls attached to the front which obscure his face, except for one guarded eye. Mama is in the foreground, her delicate neck seemingly bent under the weight of a heavily encrusted dupatta. She looks up into the camera lens with the expected posture of all new brides, a victim’s pose showing passivity and bewilderment, stressing the girl would much rather stay with her family than drive off to a bed with her new husband. But mama is not crying, although her head is bowed, her gaze is direct and calm, and there is a light in her pupils which papa said was the camera flash, but which I recognise as joy.

Individually, the Aunties were a powerful force, my mother was an Auntie to several kids in her own right too, but together they were a formidable mafia whose collective approval was a blessing, and whose communal contempt was a curse wrapped up in sweet sari-shaped packages. I found myself continually surprised at how these smiling women who would serve up their husband’s food first with such wifely devotion, could also be capable of such gentle malice.

For example, when I once confronted my mother about the Front Garden dilemma, I unwisely did this in front of the Aunties. Under their benevolent gaze, I tried to explain to her what a social embarrassment it was to have such a bare, ugly display in front of our house and could she not possibly consider buying an ornamental well, make some effort to fit in with the neighbourhood? Mama shot her posse a knowing look and explained that all this garden frippery, gnomes, wells and the like, was an English thing. ‘They have to mark out their territory …’ It was on the tip of her tongue to add ‘…like dogs’, but the Aunties recognised their cue and launched into their own collected proverbs on English behaviour. ‘They treat their dogs like children, no, better than their children …’ ‘They expect their kids to leave home at sixteen, and if they don’t, they ask for rent! Rent from your kids!’ ‘They don’t like bathing, and when they do, they sit in their own dirty water instead of showering …’ ‘The way they wash up, they never rinse the soap off the dishes …’ ‘You know that barmaid-type woman from up the hill has run away again, this time with the driving instructor. He is called Kenneth and wears tank tops…It’s the children I pity …’

At this point I would be sent on a non-existent errand so my mother could finish the latest piece of yard gossip whilst the Aunties would listen wide-eyed, ears flapping, moustaches quivering, glad they had made the perilous journey from the civilised side of Wolverhampton to catch up on the peculiar goings on of the ‘gores’. There was much affectionate laughter, but laughter all the same, tinged with something like revenge.

But mama was not laughing today. The sun was hot now and I felt sick with all the sugar I had consumed; every sweet had tasted only of one thing, Guilt. Through the open front door, I could hear my parents having what they called one of their ‘discussions’, which began as a stilted, almost embarrassed conversation as if two neighbours who barely knew each other had met on the steps of a VD clinic, progressed to a strangely musical monologue by my father, accompanied on percussion by mother banging down various pots and pans, and always ended with a male vocal explosion and a tangible female silence which invaded the house like a sad damp smell. I wondered vaguely if they were arguing about the house.