I have an older brother I don’t really know how to talk to. I also have six first cousins I grew up with. Their parents live in two different wings of my grandmother’s house, which is two hundred meters away from mine. Three cousins per family, four girls and two boys. Our names rhyme and our thoughts are collective. We have fought each other and fought for each other. We have whispered secrets about our changing bodies, assuring ourselves that we are normal. We know each other like other people know themselves. The spaces between us are thick with memories.
Two hours after I found out, I tell my cousins about the brown paper envelope, about my father’s words, about leaving. They are quiet. We sit on the cool rocks under the mango trees in the grove my grandfather built. The wind makes music out of the day. Perhaps they, like me, cannot understand what leaving means. Perhaps, they cannot comprehend, either, the nature of distance and what it will do to us. I don’t know how to be myself without them. Do they know how to be themselves without me?
My eldest cousin is angry. “Do you know how big your goodbye is?” She spits out the question. Pauses. Then answers it herself. “It is the size of forever.”
“Then I won’t say goodbye,” I reply stubbornly. It is not as if I am leaving because I want to.
“Some goodbyes do not need to be spoken,” she replies.
“You will come back, won’t you?” my youngest cousin asks anxiously. She’s only seven. There are ten years between us.
Even if I do come back, the home right now and the people right now will no longer be as they are. As I change, so will they and so will this place. When I leave, I will lose this place and these people. I will lose myself. Who will I be without the mountains, the mango trees, and the hibiscus around me? I do not want to know.
At the bottom of the garden in front of my house is a field. In the far-right corner of this field are a breadfruit tree, a well, a saijan bhaji tree, and my mother’s precious collection of chilli plants. When the chillies are ripe, every breath feels like a storm. My grandmother and I harvest the chillies because, for some reason, she and I are not affected by the heat that makes everyone else cry. Our fingers pluck the red, yellow, orange, and green fruit without burning for days afterwards. I stand in that green corner that is bordered on two sides by sugarcane fields and smell the deep brown of the soil in which the chilli plants grow. The water in the well reflects the afternoon sky. I pick a ripe breadfruit hanging heavily on the branch and leave my goodbye stamped on the soft bark of the saijan tree.
Our family of four sits around cups of chai during teatime. The silence is full of the things we don’t know how to say to each other. The afternoon outside tempts with its golden light and a breeze that will make silk of your hair. I can feel my father’s gaze on me like little weights on my skin but I am too busy looking at my brother, memorizing him, learning all of him in the smile he no longer smiles and the sadness that has found a recent home in his star-bright eyes.
You see, the people who decide who gets to go say he is too old to be considered a dependent of the family, as if age determines the bond a person has with their relatives. The government of this new country we are moving to won’t let him come with us, so my parents decided that he is old enough to be left alone. I wonder what conversation my parents had with my brother. I wonder what words they used to let him know that we are leaving. That he is not coming with us. I asked my father why we are going if my brother can’t come with us. My father had no answer, so he told me not to be impertinent.
Our days have become finite. The sun rises daily anyway. Except for one day when it rains. I seize the chance and say goodbye to the silver raindrops dancing on the ground under the mango trees. For a while, I try to dance along with them, but their grace pronounces my lack of it so I stop and let the warm rain wash me through. Perhaps I cry, but the rain keeps its secrets.
Because
