A Sister's Promise by Renita D'Silva Page A

it is his dad who left? His dad finally gave up asking a couple of years previously when…
    Raj suddenly, desperately craves a cigarette.
    He knows, deep down that his mum is right in some ways, that he shouldn’t resent her working. It is because of her that they are able to live more comfortably than most of his classmates.
    What he begrudges is his mother not showing him an ounce of affection, always keeping him at a remove, treating him as if he is someone she has to put up with rather than someone she cares for. At least his dad used to be demonstrative, used to hug him, and kiss him goodnight.
    After his dad left, Raj used to go to his mum, yearning comfort, a cuddle, a pat, something . But she would smile at him, give him food, a toy and fob him off on his nanny, who was lovely, whose arms were expansive, but who never belonged to him, who went home to her own kids at the end of the day.
    But warring with the pangs of hurt when he hears his mum talking about going to India, there is a tiny blossom of hope—the first shoots budding after winter’s thaw.
    Perhaps his dad is trying again.
    ‘No, not your dad.’ Her voice brittle as old bones. And then it softens. ‘He cares for you, you do know that?’
    Raj turns away so she does not see the tears blistering in his eyes.
    Who is this woman? This is not the remote mother he knows. First the slap, which, although it hurt, made his mother seem more real, more flesh and blood than the remote sighing and tutting robot he has come to expect.
    And now this softer side he has never been party to . . .
    They should have had this conversation when his dad left, not now! Back then, when he was that much younger and lost without his dad and more in need of her sympathy, there was only silence.
    He’s had enough. ‘So who was it who called? Why did you say we had to go to India? Why are you speaking in riddles? What has happened to you?’
    His mother’s eyes are liquid—swirling pools of hurt. He cannot bear to look at her, so he worries the duvet instead.
    ‘The woman who phoned is Sharda—my sister.’ Puja puts her head in her hands. Her body slumps, a small brown comma punctuating his cream carpet.
    Her words perforate the stifling, vinegary fug pervading his room, leaking shock, and the mothball odour of mystery. Countless, baffled questions trip over one another in their haste to slip from his tongue.
    ‘What!’ is all he can manage. He cannot believe it. All these years his mother has made not one mention of a sister.
    But then his mother does not mention much of anything at all, really, except for her work. And his failings. His mother is a world unto herself, a world to which he has always been denied entry. He shouldn’t be surprised that she has kept her sister from him. Come to think of it, he can believe it. He wouldn’t be too shocked if he were to discover she has a brother too, or heck, a whole other family. Who knows what else she is hiding, or what else he will find out.
    ‘Kushi her . . . her daughter is very ill. Her kidneys are destroyed and she’s on dialysis. My sister . . . she wants me there. I . . . I have agreed to go . . . ’
    The rage that erupts, blazes a trail through his alcohol-lined innards. ‘Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. You’re willing to put your precious work on hold and cross an ocean to go to visit this girl, your niece, who’s in a hospital five thousand miles away—a girl you barely know, the child of a sister you’ve never mentioned—when you did not even stay with me that one time I was in hospital, when I desperately needed you?’ he spits out and his mother’s face crumples before she turns away from him to hide it.
    It was just after his father had departed for India. Raj had been dreadfully ill, a spiking fever which refused to relinquish its hold on him, and stayed in the hundreds no matter how much Calpol and Neurofen his nanny administered. He was hospitalised and was being subjected to various