undecided about what to call me, looks carefully at the murals depicting
the Buddha’s life and pronounces with so much certainty that she cannot be contradicted,
“Yasodhara.”
five
Shiva and I grow up, twinned from birth, in some strange fashion, repeating the pattern
of my father and Mala, the male and female twins that floated in our family history.
In those early years our mothers take pleasure in each other. Who else can understand
Visaka’s bloated breasts, her ripped innards, her strange and unaccountable moods
better than another woman who has just performed the same impossible feat? We are
breastfed at the same time, our mothers nodding over our tiny heads, chatting in a
mixture of Tamil, Sinhala, and English that makes them laugh often. We are patted
to sleep, encouraged to burp, held and loved by two mothers. The strange timing of
our birth allows us entry into each other’s families in the most intimate ways since
the two women, previously rivals, now seek out the comfort of each other’s company.
The result being that as a child I knew the contours of the upstairs as well as Shiva
knew our rooms downstairs.
Three years after my birth, my mother swells again. When Lanka is born and brought
home, Shiva and I gaze over the edge of the bassinet at this strange, alien creature
and claim her as our own. We are a threesome from then on. Joined at the hip. A pyramid.
A triangle. It is only in later years that she and I are taught the insurmountable
differences between him and us.
Decades later and on a colder continent, I am fishing in my mother’s desk for a recipe
when a photograph tumbles across my hands. Wellawatte beach. Our delicate mother in
oversized sunglasses and a minidress hefts a baby on her hip, grasps another child
by the hand. Nothing physically maternal in her except the authority with which she
holds my outstretched hand, pulls me to face the camera. Beside her, Alice, her hunch
silhouetted by the setting sun, and then Sylvia Sunethra. In the corner a streak of
motion, Shiva. I recognize him only because I remember the day. He had come with us,
holding my hand, but tentative in the presence of our grandmother. We had been talking
in our own shared language, that particular blur of Sinhala, Tamil, and English much
like what our mothers used in the early days, when suddenly my grandmother, her attention
telescoped on us, pins him like an insect. Her iced voice, incredulous, “Are you teaching
my granddaughter Tamil?” Her hand smashing hard across his cheek. He rips his hand
from mine, turns to run. The camera in my father’s hand clicks shut.
I pass my hands over my face. I remember that moment so vividly. It was the first
time we knew without question that we were different, separate, and that this difference
was as wide as the ocean. In the other room my mother calls, have I found that recipe
yet? She is waiting. I hide the photo back in the drawer, shut it resolutely. That
was a lifetime ago. What came between us later was so much more painful, I have no
desire to remember any more.
* * *
Our mother and our father then. She is cruel to him in ways we cannot understand.
It is a subtle cruelty of unkind looks, pauses, and a way of undercutting his opinions
in public so that he, the more educated, is easily rendered the fool. As children,
we often resent her for it. It is only later that I understand her ferocious rage
at the idea of being bought, of being wed despite the dictates of her own wildly beating
heart.
But as children we are our father’s pets. He takes us down to the beach, each of us
grasping one of his fingers. Me and La, as we called Lanka almost from the beginning—that
simple musical note that was exactly her, on one hand, Shiva on the other. My father
liked it, I think, when people on the beach assumed he was the father of not just
the two little girls, but also that
the Buddha’s life and pronounces with so much certainty that she cannot be contradicted,
“Yasodhara.”
five
Shiva and I grow up, twinned from birth, in some strange fashion, repeating the pattern
of my father and Mala, the male and female twins that floated in our family history.
In those early years our mothers take pleasure in each other. Who else can understand
Visaka’s bloated breasts, her ripped innards, her strange and unaccountable moods
better than another woman who has just performed the same impossible feat? We are
breastfed at the same time, our mothers nodding over our tiny heads, chatting in a
mixture of Tamil, Sinhala, and English that makes them laugh often. We are patted
to sleep, encouraged to burp, held and loved by two mothers. The strange timing of
our birth allows us entry into each other’s families in the most intimate ways since
the two women, previously rivals, now seek out the comfort of each other’s company.
The result being that as a child I knew the contours of the upstairs as well as Shiva
knew our rooms downstairs.
Three years after my birth, my mother swells again. When Lanka is born and brought
home, Shiva and I gaze over the edge of the bassinet at this strange, alien creature
and claim her as our own. We are a threesome from then on. Joined at the hip. A pyramid.
A triangle. It is only in later years that she and I are taught the insurmountable
differences between him and us.
Decades later and on a colder continent, I am fishing in my mother’s desk for a recipe
when a photograph tumbles across my hands. Wellawatte beach. Our delicate mother in
oversized sunglasses and a minidress hefts a baby on her hip, grasps another child
by the hand. Nothing physically maternal in her except the authority with which she
holds my outstretched hand, pulls me to face the camera. Beside her, Alice, her hunch
silhouetted by the setting sun, and then Sylvia Sunethra. In the corner a streak of
motion, Shiva. I recognize him only because I remember the day. He had come with us,
holding my hand, but tentative in the presence of our grandmother. We had been talking
in our own shared language, that particular blur of Sinhala, Tamil, and English much
like what our mothers used in the early days, when suddenly my grandmother, her attention
telescoped on us, pins him like an insect. Her iced voice, incredulous, “Are you teaching
my granddaughter Tamil?” Her hand smashing hard across his cheek. He rips his hand
from mine, turns to run. The camera in my father’s hand clicks shut.
I pass my hands over my face. I remember that moment so vividly. It was the first
time we knew without question that we were different, separate, and that this difference
was as wide as the ocean. In the other room my mother calls, have I found that recipe
yet? She is waiting. I hide the photo back in the drawer, shut it resolutely. That
was a lifetime ago. What came between us later was so much more painful, I have no
desire to remember any more.
* * *
Our mother and our father then. She is cruel to him in ways we cannot understand.
It is a subtle cruelty of unkind looks, pauses, and a way of undercutting his opinions
in public so that he, the more educated, is easily rendered the fool. As children,
we often resent her for it. It is only later that I understand her ferocious rage
at the idea of being bought, of being wed despite the dictates of her own wildly beating
heart.
But as children we are our father’s pets. He takes us down to the beach, each of us
grasping one of his fingers. Me and La, as we called Lanka almost from the beginning—that
simple musical note that was exactly her, on one hand, Shiva on the other. My father
liked it, I think, when people on the beach assumed he was the father of not just
the two little girls, but also that
Similar Books
