Frog Totem
Gitanjali Joshua
Madhu-amma’s fingers wrinkled like raisins in the water, as she knelt beside the faded red bucket in the garden, meticulously scrubbing the ceramic frogs. Tendrils of her soft wavy hair escaped her loose bun and framed her face.
Samaira yawned and stretched down to her tippy-toes, watching from her patch of winter sun on the verandah. Madhu-amma’s smooth face was expressionless as she cleaned the ceramic frogs.
Samaira waved at her. Her expression didn’t change. There was an emptiness. It was almost as if she wasn’t really there, behind her eyes.
There were seven ceramic frogs. One for each month that Madhu-amma’s marriage had lasted.
*
Amma came out on to the verandah in her maroon kaftan. She glanced at Madhu-amma and her frogs and sighed. She turned to Samaira, ‘She’s going to be a while, darling. You know how Saturdays are. Why don’t I make you breakfast?’
Samaira shook her head, ‘Let’s wait and eat with Madhu-amma.’
‘Okay. Suit yourself,’ said Amma, and turned to go back inside the house. The door slammed behind her startling a pair of squirrels in the garden. They ran up the tamarind tree, their paths tracing out a miraculously collision-free double-helix around the trunk.
The morning air was cool and crisp. Samaira knew that if you inhaled too fast, you could get a headache, but if you exhaled slowly through your mouth, you could see a Puff-the-Magic-Dragon. A breath-mist dragon. Insubstantial and magical. She exhaled slowly, squinting at her breath-mist, as she wandered among the cosmos beds. The flowers were roughly the same height as her, so she could pretend to be a spy, hiding among them. Madhu-amma had planted them the year Samaira and Amma had moved into the University campus with her.
Madhu-amma was drying the frogs now. It was the same every Saturday morning. Madhu-amma, always so calm and serene…. Perpetually patient Madhu-amma who made Samaira laugh about mean classmates or nasty teachers…. Madhu-amma who listened quietly to Amma’s intense political tirades and made wry jokes that set them both off laughing…. Every Saturday morning, Madhu-amma went away in her head.
It was like a ritual. She washed and dried the ceramic frogs, then returned them to their places around the garden. The layout of the garden changed as the years went by but the frogs stayed where they were. Strange totems of doom marking the limits of Madhu-amma’s brittle sanity.
Samaira had found the word totem a week ago in the Encyclopaedia of Great Civilizations that Madhu-amma had given her for her eighth birthday, complete with a handwritten note about not taking the ‘Great’ too seriously. Samaira liked being eight and having an encyclopaedia. It felt important. She chanted the word under her breath in between Puff-the-Magic-Dragons. Totem, totem, totem….
Once when she and Amma had just moved in, Samaira picked up the frog in the ceramic military uniform and ran around the garden carrying it. Madhu-amma had frozen where she was, looking helplessly at Amma, as though her world was crumbling. And Amma had run after Samaira with angry eyes, scolding her, saying she should know better and that the frogs were precious to Madhurima. Samaira had dropped it in fear. Luckily, it didn’t break. Amma had picked it up and put it back in its allotted spot. Only then did Madhu-amma lose that look of fear and helplessness and come back to herself. Samaira had been three then.
Samaira didn’t quite understand about the frogs. But there were bits and pieces that she knew were connected. When Madhu-amma had been very young and hadn’t become Samaira’s other amma yet, she had been called Madhurima. She was married to a handsome young up-and-coming Army officer. Her father’s cousin’s son, who needed a wife to ground him.
It turned out that some nightmares come in handsome-husband shapes. No one believes they are nightmares at all. Not even the shy hopeful wife with repeatedly fractured fingers from having an iron rod threaded between them and stood on.
Madhurima had never cried out. She tried in vain to mould herself to what he wanted her to be. She didn’t understand that he didn’t want her to be. At all. He already had what he wanted. The handsome forty-year-old Colonel who called urgent midnight strategic meetings.
Madhurima didn’t like ceramic frogs but he bought her one every month, smiling his too wide smile without crinkling his eyes. Other officers watched him indulge his pretty young wife’s apparent childish fancy for ceramic frogs.
At his memorial, they hoisted a flag and spoke of his bravery. He had died saving his Colonel. It was only seven months into their marriage. His body was in too many pieces to bring back. Madhurima didn’t cry. The Colonel sobbed with abandon.
She went home and collected every single photograph of the two of them. Images of herself as a shy picture-perfect stranger smiling too wide, next to a dashing husband. She set fire to the lot. And watched them burn. Then she left. The only things she took with her were the ceramic frogs.
The sun was higher and the air warmer now. Samaira crept up behind the frog with the ceramic toadstool and shifted it slightly to face the guava tree. She glanced up, nervously. Nothing dramatic happened. Madhu-amma seemed surprisingly fine as she placed the last frog next to the hibiscus plant.
Amma came out onto the verandah with two mugs of coffee. She watched Madhu-amma straighten up and dust her hands. Samaira saw a strange look in her eyes. It was like longing and sadness and anger, but not quite. Amma blinked it away and walked over to Madhu-amma.
‘Coffee, Madhu?’ she asked softly.
Madhu-amma smiled. It was like she was suddenly back in her head. She took the coffee cup from Amma’s hand, her eyes crinkling, and took a sip. Samaira skipped up to them. Amma held her close, for a moment, between the two of them. The moment was warm. Complete.
‘Did you love him?’ Samaira looked straight up into Madhu-amma’s eyes. Love could be a strange thing, Samaira knew.
‘Who?’ asked Madhu-amma, momentarily confused. Her brow creased. Amma’s fingers dug into Samaira’s shoulder.
‘Your husband,’ insisted Samaira doggedly.
‘Oh ... I don’t know, darling,’ said Madhu-amma, crouching down to Samaira’s eye level and looking into her eyes. ‘I don’t think that’s what love should look like.’ She smiled suddenly, like a light had gone on inside her head, ‘I love Meena. And I love you.’
Amma’s grip on Samaira’s shoulder slowly relaxed. Samaira looked up at her, ‘Amma, how was I born?’
‘Again?’ sighed Amma, wearily.
Madhu-amma kissed Samaira on the top of her head and stood up. She grinned at Meena, ‘I guess it’s your turn, now.’
‘Tell me properly,’ whined Samaira.
Whenever Samaira asked Amma how she was born, Amma told her of a full-moon night. Of tree branches silhouetted against the moon. A night both magical and scary. Of dread which turned into wonder. In which Amma was handed a gift she had not asked for.
‘I know you love me. But…’ Samaira insisted, ‘If you never liked boys and I’m not adopted ... Where did I come from? What happened to my Appa?’ Her voice trailed off. Left unsaid and hovering was another question: Did he hurt you like Madhu-amma’s husband hurt her?
Sometimes Amma was calm, resigned. Sometimes her voice shook with emotions Samaira couldn’t yet name. Sometimes she just sounded tired. Sometimes she was angry and slammed the pressure cooker down on the kitchen counter and stood shaking for a long minute ... but always, she said the same cryptic thing.
‘You were a gift, Samaira. A gift I wasn’t looking for. A gift I fought against ... until the first time I saw you. And then, I fought to keep you.’ Today her voice shook and her eyes were liquid jewels.
This didn’t answer anything, but Samaira knew better than to push her Amma further.
In her dreams, Samaira was Schroedinger’s baby. A cardboard box wrapped with shiny red paper and a gold ribbon, in front of Amma. She wasn’t real until Amma opened the box and wanted her. Wanted her alive. Wanted to keep her. At least, she wasn’t really her. And even though she knew how it ended, there was always a thrill of uncertainty when Amma opened the box. Love could be a strange thing, Samaira knew.
‘Let’s play a game, Samaira,’ said Madhu-amma. ‘Pirates?’
‘Explorers.’ said Samaira, sullenly. They clearly wanted to distract her.
‘Okay ... How do we play Explorers?
‘You don’t,’ said Samaira running off towards the gate, ‘I explore by myself!’
Madhu sighed and turned to Meena, ‘Are you okay?’ she asked, her voice calm and soothing. She sounded strong. Reliable.
Meena shrugged helplessly, ‘I don’t know what to tell her.’ Abruptly, her shoulders sagged. Her voice shook. ‘I don’t want to relive it. I don’t want to associate it with her.’
Madhu-amma held Meena close. Meena’s tears soaked through her top.
Samaira-the-explorer came skipping back down the lane, her earlier mood forgotten
‘Nayana-aunty has come,’ she announced cheerfully. You couldn’t be angry and upset when Nayana-aunty dropped by. She always looked so beautiful and was so kind. Perhaps they could all have breakfast together.
Meena pulled away from Madhu, quickly and wiped her eyes. They turned to the gate to greet their friend. Nayana taught Gender Studies at the University.
Nayana-aunty lived next door with her mother. She took good care of her mother, despite how much they argued. Sometimes Samaira could hear their voices angry and restrained, in the evenings when she was out in the garden.
Samaira felt bad for Nayana-aunty’s mother. She always gave Samaira sweets and told her stories of bygone times when the world had been simple. When men were men, women were women, children were obedient and everyone got married when they were supposed to. It seemed that all she wanted was her gentle-hearted son back from before.
Samaira also felt bad for Nayana-aunty, looking after a mother who kept reminding her of who she had been before. Nayana-aunty insisted that she had always been Nayana, but sometimes her voice cracked with the weariness of saying it and in the layers underneath, Samaira could almost hear the young Narayan from the before of her mother’s stories.
No matter how much they argued, Samaira knew Nayana aunty took good care of her mother and her mother never let anyone else criticise her daughter in front of her.
Love could be a strange thing, Samaira knew.
Today, as Nayana-aunty and Samaira’s Ammas got into conversation, Samaira wandered off to the guava tree. She wondered when they could all eat. She was beginning to get hungry. It was nice living on a campus where everyone knew each other, but sometimes it meant that you didn’t get time alone with your Ammas. So many people just came and went.
Samaira had just caught a grasshopper, near the guava tree when she heard the wheezy rattle of Nibin’s scooty turning into the lane. She grimaced. Nibin always stayed too long. And she certainly didn’t want him joining them for breakfast. He was Amma’s first PhD student, and entirely too familiar with Amma, for Samaira’s taste. He pretended to be smart but didn’t seem to understand simple words like lesbian. He always looked strangely at Samaira when Amma said it.
Samaira felt he didn’t seem to understand that he was the student. Amma and Madhu-amma laughed about this sometimes.
Nibin parked his scooty right in front of the house, like a scruffy university puppy trying to mark territory. It was a blue scooty which had seen better days. Some previous owner had pasted stickers of flowers on the front. The stickers had peeled off leaving sticky patches of dust in flower-shapes. Nibin was too pretentious to clean off these traces of previous ownership. He called them the ‘dust of the scooty’s history’.
‘Hi Samaira-kutty,’ he said in his whiny Malayalam accent, before turning to greet his professors. Samaira ignored him.
Samaira had a trick that her Ammas didn’t know about. She could listen to their convoluted conversations, letting the boring complicated words wash over her. She paid attention instead to the tones.
There were undercurrents to conversations that passed you by if you focused on the words.
She climbed the guava tree and listened as her Amma spoke in measured, confident tones. Nayana-aunty’s questions had a gentle curiosity to them. Madhu-amma listened and added wry comments, making the other two laugh.
Nibin’s tones were whiny and servile. He agreed fanatically with Amma and took offense at Nayana-aunty’s questions as though they were accusations. He laughed a little too long at Amma’s jokes and ignored Madhu-amma, except to dismiss her gentle humour.
Nibin added a discordant note to the gentle harmony. A spiky ego, yearning for recognition, competing where the others were not. Samaira grimaced in her tree. Amma tolerated far too much from him. She didn’t even bother to defend Madhu-amma, when he made fun of her and her frogs! Sometimes, it seemed to Samaira that Nibin couldn’t tell when Amma mocked him. It was because he paid attention to the words. Sometimes she even wondered if Amma knew that she was mocking him, or if she too was lost in her own words, glowing from her student’s attention.
After a while, Nayana-aunty bid them all good-bye. Samaira waved to her from the guava tree.
Madhu-amma went indoors for more coffee, leaving Nibin and Amma deep in conversation. Samaira wished she had had breakfast when Amma had offered. Nibin always stayed too long.
Down in the garden, Nibin was speaking to Amma in hushed tones. Amma laughed, but it was her warning laugh. It meant, don’t push me. I am pretending not to understand because that would be better for both of us.
Nibin put his arm around Amma’s waist. Amma froze. She looked at Nibin, her gaze steely. Samaira did not hear what Amma said next. She could not even hear the tone.
Nibin stepped aside quickly. In her guava tree, Samaira let out a sigh of incoherent relief.
Amma made a conciliatory forgiving sound, but he flinched as though she had slapped him. He got on to his blue scooty and rode off without saying goodbye. At the gate, he paused. He glanced back to see Amma watching him and then swerved to kick the ceramic frog squinting at the ceramic dragonfly on its nose.
Samaira held her breath.
The frog fell and smashed.
*
Gitanjali Joshua is a perennial student, currently exploring an intersection of law, religion and gender in her thesis on Marriage and Divorce under Religious Personal Law in India. She enjoys reading and writing, an assortment of crafts, long walks and swimming. She loves dinosaurs, fossils and things that give her sense of scale of how trivial she is. She somehow manages to find cats to befriend wherever she goes.
You can find some of her work here: https://linktr.ee/GitanjaliJ
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