Tamarind Mem by Anita Rau Badami Page B

disintegrating a little more every time monsoon winds smashed against the fragile bamboo. Sometimes the darkness lying like a pool of ink beyond this room seemed to speak.
    I woke suddenly one night, my eyes trying to find Ma’s body in the bed beside me, and felt cool, flower-filled breezes drifting through the verandah door, carrying the sound of voices. In the dim moon-radiance, I couldn’t see Ma beside me, only Roopa’s small shape, and my throatclosed with panic. I pulled the sheet over my head and waited trembling for a
bhooth
to carry me away, out beyond the verandah where trees reared up like giants and the wild cry of night birds shattered the silence. After many hours, it seemed, in which I squeezed my eyes shut and clamped my legs together to stop the urgent pee from sliding out, the bed undulated slightly. Ma was there again, her smell filling my nostrils with crushed
darbha
grass and mango leaves washed by rain. Different from her morning smell. Was it really Ma?
    In the morning, I asked her about the voices in the breeze and Ma laughed. “You were having a dream,” she said, stroking my hair, her brilliant eyes mirroring my face.
    “The dream took you away,” I said, remembering the crushed-grass smell, so different from the pale drift of lavender powder clouding Ma now.
    Linda Ayah glanced up from the coconut that she was scraping and shook her head. “You be careful, Memsahib, careful-careful,” she said, looking like an angry owl.
    I had no idea what Linda Ayah meant. Was she telling Ma to be careful about the ghost? Why only Ma? There were times when I felt that every single person in the house was talking about something different. Hidden rivers of meaning flowed across the room, sliding beneath and above each other, intersecting to create a savage whirlpool. When we moved from Bhusaval to Ratnapura, our train had crossed a bridge, a huge iron skeleton hovering over a river still and molten in the afternoon sun. Beneath that stretched and shining calm lay dangerous eddies and crocodiles, said Dadda. He pressed a rupee coin in my hand. “Give that to the river. She will be pleased with you.”
    But in this house full of unexpected currents, I knew that a rupee coin was useless. I would have to move silently, carefully, make sure I did not wake the sleeping crocodiles. So I tiptoed around my room, unwilling to touch my stainless-steel cooking set, the Minoo doll that squeaked, anything that might make a noise. Through the verandah without my Hawaii sandals and into the kitchen, whisper to Ganesh Peon for biscuits from the green Dalda tin. Don’t flush the pee-water in the toilet, don’t spit too loud in the sink, don’t open the black squeaky cupboard door. No noise, no noise, no noise.
    “What is wrong with that child?” muttered Linda Ayah, irritated with my whispering, gliding, crazynonsenserub-bish.“What she is trying to do, Jesu only knows!”
    I went to school thinking of nothing but when I was going to be back. And when Linda Ayah brought me home I rushed straight to Ma, crawled into her lap and stayed there even when Ayah called me for a glass of Bournvita, frothy and sweet.
    Ayah, who had been with me since the day I was born practically, was scary these days. She threw anxious glances at Ma when Dadda was in the house, as if she was also afraid that my mother would run away like she threatened. And when my father went away and Ma began to sing, Linda Ayah sat, malevolent as a toad, in the corner of the verandah.
    “Why you are so pleased when Sahib leaves the house?” she demanded.
    “Are you my servant or are you Lord Vishnu keeping an eye on me?” snapped Ma. “I can’t be happy in my own home?”
    Linda didn’t dare to say anything more to Ma and instead took out her anxieties on me and Roopa, frightening us with stories of the ghosts and goblins that hovered about us. Over the years, the number of supernatural creatures grew and became more horrible and threatening. In