I pad softly out of my bedroom. Ammuma and Mother Agnes are still well away with their gossip, ears and eyes closed to everything but the smack of scandal. They don’t hear as I creep out into Ammuma’s bedroom, placing my bare feet edge-down so the floorboards don’t creak.
Karthika’s swept the floors upstairs scrupulously clean, leaving a line of dust straight across Ammuma’s bedroom door. Underneath the smoke I can smell Tiger Balm and sandalwood, mixed with the antibiotic dressings from the hospital. The box-room door’s closed and the key is gone.
I push my hands up through my hair and step back to look around the room. The box room’s never been closed before, and I’ve no idea where Ammuma would put the key. Despite the fire damage, the room’s surprisingly neat. She’s got a place for everything: an almirah for cardigans, a dressing table for medicines, a bedside cupboard for things best kept hidden away.
I crouch down in front of the cupboard. It’s on the side of the room that was protected from the fire, and apart from a coating of ash it doesn’t look damaged at all. There was an identical cupboard in my room when I was younger. They’re cheap plywood drawers from the sundry store and the lock on mine broke after a few months. You could only open it by smacking it hard enough to dislodge the latch, and so I kept all my secrets in there. Diaries, detention slips, maths tests where I hadn’t topped the class. Ammuma had far too much respect for the furniture to break in.
I put my hands on Ammuma’s cupboard, rocking slightly, then clip the door sharply with the edge of my palm. The movement comes back to me. Once, twice and then the door swings open. Inside there are a few earrings without backs, a tube of hand cream, a watch strap half-rotted away in the humidity. And the box-room key, large and brass, on a leather thong.
The box-room door opens reluctantly, pushing against swollen floorboards. There’s a strange, filtered light in here as though oiled paper’s been laid over all the windows. The floor’s littered with curls of dried-up centipedes, and dust from years ago.
There are two large trunks in the far corner. I remember these: Ammuma kept my Christmas and Diwali presents in there because I wasn’t big enough to open the lids. I used to stand on the attic ladder and watch her over the partition wall as she knelt here with an armful of packages. Not yet, Durga, she’d say, without even bothering to look up. Have some patience, child. And then – on a good day – she’d take out the Amma-tin from the bottom of one of the trunks, and call me down.
The trunks are smaller than I remember, bound with iron and faced about with teak wood. Under my fingertips the wood feels spongy, as though it’s got old without anyone noticing. I kneel down, just as Ammuma used to do, and shove at the lid of the closest trunk. It opens smoothly. Perhaps it wasn’t ever as heavy as I thought.
It’s filled with bulging plastic bags. I pick one up at random and hold it up to the light. It’s been marked with thick black pen: Francesca Birthday. Inside are trinkets wrapped in cellophane: glass bangles, some pink hair slides and a feather clip. Another one’s labelled Francesca Christmas. There are dolls in this one, all dressed in silk and satin like princesses. The cross-legged Indian doll lies on top. Ammuma’s carefully mended it so you can barely see where the cracks were. I didn’t know she had the patience for such painstaking work any more. There are picture books, coloured pencils, costume jewellery wrapped in red-and-gold paper. To Francesca, read the gift tags taped to every package.
Francesca. For a second it feels as though there’s somebody else here; someone who’s been walking a pace behind me ever since I came to Pahang. I’d thought she would be Peony, but it’s never that simple. She’s Peony, she’s Francesca, she’s a baby with a Little Twin Stars book and she’s a teenager with a best friend for ever. She’s all the missing girls of Pahang rolled into one.
For a brief, hallucinatory second I wonder whether my mother might really still be alive. Whether she could be living quite calmly by the Kampung Ulu swamp – fifty years old by now; large as life and twice as unnatural.
‘Amma?’ I whisper, and the sound of my own voice shocks me back to reality. These aren’t gifts for a fifty-year-old woman. Like the autograph book, these are gifts for the child she used to be. I can see the Amma-tin at the bottom of the trunk, dark-blue, with Huntley & Palmers in red writing. I hesitate. Locked up inside that rusted lid is a daughter, after all. No weightier than a breath, perhaps, but she’s there for all that.
I take the tin out onto my lap and pry the lid off. There’s a pop-up book lying on top, just like I knew there would be. Animals spring out from its pages: crocodiles with softened teeth and fish turned damp with age.
Francesca Panikkar, the inside cover reads.
Ipoh, Perak, Malaya, Earth, THE WORLD
It’s Ammuma’s elegant handwriting. The same as the lettering in the autograph book, crisp
