All Alone Together
Hema Raman
Another day and not a word out of my lips. I run my tongue
all over the inside of my mouth, feeling the grooves and the smoothness. I open
and close it but no sound escapes. My caged voice box croaks in protest
whenever my only visitor, the delivery boy, arrives. Embarrassed, I have
resorted to sign language with him. I give my orders for the next week in
strips of paper. He faithfully delivers the items along with the bill and the
crumpled damp paper strip, pitying the dumb lady in the big house. I have long
ceased to care what others think of me.
I settle down for my mid-morning nap on the sofa with the tv
on the travel channel. Within a matter of minutes my husband wakes me, his
fingers continuing to drum on my arm long after I sit up.
‘I am hungry,’ he says. I shrug him off like a petulant
mother. I want to hide for a while in a place where he can’t find me. Some
days, he eats every hour, finishing off what I had made for the entire day in a
matter of minutes, shovelling it rapidly into his mouth.
On good days, he closes the door and leaves me alone for a
few hours.
While I serve him food he signals for more and more, until
the rice spoon scrapes the bottom of the vessel sharply. He stops with his
spoon in mid-air, our eyes meet and I feel a spark of something familiar. He
gets up and leaves before I can say anything.
Later, I hear him fill water for his bath when he has
already finished two baths. I step into his room wanting to call out but don’t.
Sometimes I make him so angry that he resorts to breaking things. On the bed is
his diary. I flip it open. Here and there on the pages are half formed
alphabets strewn around looking lost. As if he had wanted to put them together
but they had turned hostile and refused to co-operate. I hear the bathroom door
shut and turn around. He stands naked. His grey chest hair is a tangled mess as
his stomach sags heavily below his down turned nipples. He is sixty but his
face looks much younger.
He smiles. I smile hesitantly at first and then wider,
glad that we are sharing something. He steps forward and still smiling,
snatches the diary away in one swift stroke. His sharp nails scratch my dry
skin making me suck my breath in. His stranger’s eyes become mere slits though
his lips are curved up.
I run away. For the first time I am scared of him.
Avoiding the neglected brownish grey patch that was once a lawn, I stand under
the rain tree that is waiting for sunset in order to fall asleep. I rented a
beach house as I assumed that the sea would be a soothing distraction, but the
house is too large. Now everything around me is dusty and dead or dying. With
my right big toe I write our names together without any space, merging the As –
Adithyanitadithyanita. Then I strike it out with a big ‘X’. I trace my toe on
it again and again. My sandy digit moves in fluid motion, smoothing the sharp
edges of the alphabet. However, nothing can blunt the fact that we can never be
together like we were before.
Adithya’s hippocampus is on strike. Visits to the doctor
only ensured tests of humiliation. I cannot fathom that an organ named
hippocampus, that tiny purple thing, can be entrusted with so much
responsibility in the brain. A hippocampus just brings images of chubby hippos
going to school.
It was then, right there in the doctor’s office, that I
made the decision to move back to India. I had been scared that in America they
would take him away from me under the pretext that it was best for all. Here,
we no longer have anyone who cares enough.
Back in my room, I look at my furrowed forehead and pursed
lips in the full-length mirror and bend to pick up an unused red lipstick. I
draw the outline of my reflection on the mirror and move sideways to observe
the red ghost face devoid of all expression. I uncoil my waist length hair that
falls like a black cascade suddenly let loose. I am fifty but there is not a
single grey in it, a lucky genetic trait that no longer makes a difference. I
brush the strands, divide and bunch them with clips, before picking up the
scissors. The steady sound of the blades as they sever each bunch from the
roots does not stop until all of my hair lies tangled on the ground.
Moving to the bathroom, I soap my scalp, pick up the razor
and shave in steady strokes before stepping into the shower. The cold water sloughs
all that lingers. I walk back to the room and with my index finger wipe away
the outline of the hair that I had drawn, leaving a smudge of red on my finger.
I rub it on my smooth head and think of the shaving as a kind of reverse
penance to do something about the situation I am in. Already, I feel light-headed,
different.
The door of Adithya’s room is wide open. It is empty and
smells musty from being closed all the time. Clothes from the cupboard are
heaped in mounds on the bed as if he was searching for something. Then I see
that his formal grey suit is missing. The only suit that we had brought along
for this trip. I cannot imagine why I packed it but I had, just like I had
taken a silk sari for myself. Wistful silliness.
Had he seen me shaving my hair? Sometimes he lurks outside
the bathroom window. A wretched anxiety takes root in the pit of my stomach
after I check the rest of the house and the garden. He has not once stepped out
of the gate in the two months we have been here. I hurry to the terrace to
locate him. The late afternoon sun burns my freshly shaved head and I cover it
with my scarf, knotting it securely under my chin.
I can see his familiar stooped figure on the beach. There
is no one else in this isolated stretch of sand. But my relief is short lived
as I see him move steadily towards the water, taking measured steps as if he
had practised earlier.
His footsteps sink into the wet sand, making deep troughs
that are filled in by the waves, before being slowly wiped clean, leaving no
trace of him. The brisk wind plasters the suit onto him as the rough waves of
the choppy sea thrash his legs. I worry, thinking of the wind, filled with fine
sand, blurring his eyes. Soon it will be sunset and the tide will rise, wetting
parched sands further up the beach. Even now the water line on the sand is
rising.
Instead of going to him, I watch, spellbound, as the water
licks his ankles. The waves recede and his feet are buried in sand. The next
wave, he bends to pick up something dark from the water. Someone’s lost rubber
slipper. He throws it back into the sea.
He shuffles forward, freeing his feet from the sand
holding him back.
I sit on the floor and cover my face, hoping to escape
into the hidden folds of my warm memory blanket, from my part in what is
unfolding in front of me. I rotate and ration my memories in a way that I do
not revisit any too often and periodically sort through a suitcase full of old
photographs, hoping to remember something new.
I remember thirty-year old Adithya from America coming to
see me. I was the prospective bride. His handsome and cheerful persona had
bowled over everyone. In between all those people, he gave me a glossy paper
with jagged edges that looked like it had been hurriedly torn off a magazine.
‘This is from a women’s magazine that I saw after coming
back to India. Please read it … if you don’t mind.’
The elders looked on. His father a bit stern. My parents
wanting to please, but at the same time anxious that their daughter would have
to go so far away if accepted. Other relatives, curious at what was written on
the paper, waited to pounce. I blushed and looked down to read with all eyes upon
me.
Wanted Bride.
Wanted coy, presentable, educated, caring woman with communication and
household skills, having city home (no re-location). Long hair, thick lips,
clean teeth, expressive face, sweet voice, lapped neck, divergent-fat-arms with
invisible veins, long mani/ pedicured fingers, tiered flanks, wide seat for no
bar 33, fair, 168 cm, MBA, transferable central government officer.
I was giggling. Divergent-fat-arms with invisible veins, pedicured fingers, wide seat for
no bar 33! I burst out
laughing, amidst surprised relatives and others, who probably thought this was
some serious test to check my vision or my English reading skills. I just could
not stop laughing. Adithya too joined in. Then, he took the paper, winked and
put it into his pocket, as if it was our private joke amongst the entire crowd
there. Later, he confessed that he had fallen for that spontaneous burst of
laughter from me. I loved his sense of humour.
Through the holes in the parapet wall I can see the water and,
if I bend a little, Adithya. Knee deep, he stands still. A fat man with his
hands held high above his head. The tide advances, greedily reclaiming all it
can. A sudden wave makes him stumble and I panic, but at the same time reassure
myself that swimming is an instinctive skill. Adithya is a strong swimmer.
His coat and pant pockets sag. My legs are leaden. All I
feel is a wrenching weariness. He struggles to stay upright but falls with his
hands still up. He is dragged in by the water but is up again, waist deep
against the waves, refusing to swim. He is drowning. It is those stupid hands
of his. Always up like that, instead of pushing the water away. Maybe something
really heavy is weighing him down. He must have planned in his rare moments of
clarity.
I stand up, undo my scarf and let the wind carry it. It
falls on the beach and dances away, until it is just a speck and then no more.
His right hand disappears and then reappears making a slow
arc twice.
I wait until night, walking up and down the terrace. I
could have chosen to call for help but I loved him enough to let him drown. My
eyes are dry and a strange calm takes over as I smile and climb the low-lying
parapet wall. I stand straight under the half moon, hands stretching into the
night towards the sea and let my voice out to whisper to the wind that now
caresses me, ‘Darling, let us be one again.’
Hema S Raman is an award winning writer. Her novel Fear the
Hero was shortlisted for the inaugural Tibor Jones South Asia
Pre-publication Prize. The first chapter and synopsis of the novel were
commended by The Literary Consultancy in the contest held during the 2008
Jaipur Literary Festival. Her stories have won the regional prize (Asia) in
2007 Commonwealth Broadcasting Association short story contest, first prize in
2010 Katha India Currents short story contest, first prize in 2010
Sampad-British Council international writing contest and first prize in 2011
Indian Women’s Press Corps short story contest. Her stories have also been
published in several anthologies and magazines. She is a British Council
certified creative writing trainer.
fantastically good.
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