‘Ammuma! Mother Agnes!’
Ammuma’s sitting by herself on the verandah. There are two cups on the table but everything else – letters, exercise books, Mother Agnes with her mincing plumpness – has gone.
‘Already Agnes left,’ Ammuma says calmly. Then, as I stare at her, ‘Look, some storm we’re in for.’
She nods out into the compound yard. Sweeps of rain spit across the driveway, with intervals between them like a held breath. Everything’s damp, my hands sweating where I’m clutching the photograph and a strange, swooping feeling in my stomach as the pressure starts to drop.
I find my breath. ‘Ammuma? I found …’
Her lips compress over her outsize false teeth. She’s like a snake, she can taste a brewing fight from a single sip of air. ‘Prying-poking, Durga? You go looking for trouble, you find it.’
She looks up at me. I’m about to hand her the photograph, but then I can’t. My arm shakes, refuses to move. Once she sees it, I know, there’ll be only a few seconds of my old life left. A minute or two at most, before everything changes and unravels and carries me away like a flood.
‘I found this autograph book last week,’ I say instead. ‘In Tom’s bag of fireworks. You wrote Francesca’s name in it.’
Ammuma picks up the book. She stiffens slightly.
‘With fireworks?’ she asks, then seems to pull herself together. She shuffles further back into the chair and folds her arms. ‘Gift only. For the shrine, it is.’
‘No. It isn’t, Ammuma. The address, you wrote Kampung Ulu.’
We both look at the book lying in her lap. ‘Ammuma, was … was Francesca in …’
There’s only one place near Kampung Ulu where people were handcuffed. Where there were locks on the gates. Where there were backwards boys and all-too-forward girls. The San.
Ammuma sets her mouth obstinately and picks up her cup. ‘In Tom’s fireworks bag?’ she asks again.
‘Yes, I told you. Stop pretending –’
She waves a bony hand. ‘Tom-this, Tom-that, Tom-everything. Words only, isn’t it, Durga? Choking like fishbones on fancy –’
‘Ammuma!’
‘– on fancy words. Enough –’
‘Ammuma, it’s –’
‘– enough only to stop flirting.’
‘Ammuma!’
‘I told you better to stay away from him, Durga,’ she says, sucking her teeth. ‘All very well for the servant-girl to fall on her back,’ she continues, as if to herself, ‘but not so good for my granddaughter to do the same, hanh?’
‘I’m not.’ I grab Ammuma’s hands, pulling her round to look at me. Her wrists are like my mother’s, splayed and delicate. My hands clench; Ammuma’s bones slide under her skin. She lets out a yelp.
I want to stop. I want to let go before it’s all too late and I can’t change my mind. Her skin turns white under my fingers. I wonder if my thumbs will meet, crush those flaky bones to powder and ash as she vanishes and leaves me with nothing but dirty hands. There’s a lusty urge to hit her, to do something I’ll regret while my blood’s singing and I’ll never have this chance again. A curtain of rain sweeps over the roof with a noise like scattering pebbles. Let go, let go –
‘I found this photograph, too.’ I fling her hands back down into her lap. ‘In the Amma-tin.’
She doesn’t look up. Her hands lie limp as eels in her lap. There are two large white patches where my thumbs were clenched over her puckered scar. Every bit of me’s horrified: Dr Panikkar with her how-could-I, and day-time grocery-fetching Durga wailing that I’ve made a mistake and sleepless night-time Durga asking what-was-I-thinking. And so, to put them all back in their place, I pick the tin up and dump it on Ammuma’s lap.
‘It’s Francesca, isn’t it? In the handcuffs.’
Ammuma looks down at the tin, plucking the photograph out. She gives it a quick glance but doesn’t say anything.
‘Why is she handcuffed? Did someone put her in the San? Did you? Tell me!’
Ammuma purses her lips and stares out at the rain. There’s a tiny sink fixed to the side of the house, and it’s jammed with twigs. Water swirls around inside, unable to drain and never getting anywhere. I recognize that look on Ammuma’s face. It’s a shut-door look, a stamped-foot look. It’s Ammuma insisting on black when the world’s saying white.
I take a deep breath and turn away from her. The verandah floor feels swollen with damp, as though it’s trying to shrug me out. The banana plants around the compound walls are almost flattened, and there’s a milk-coffee look to the sky. The wind rises, then stills. And then, out of nowhere, there’s a tiny crunch and a seeping hiss of air.
I whirl round. Ammuma’s choking. She’s picked up the mask attached to her oxygen cylinder and slipped it over her head. But she must have done something to it, because it’s smothering her, suffocating her. She claws at the mask straps, letting the mouthpiece slip just a fraction and then she gags again. When she finally draws in a breath, it sounds like fingernails grating on stone.
‘Ammuma!’
She gives another sandpaper gasp and spits out some shreds of plastic. I lunge across the verandah and snatch up her shattered mouthpiece. The tubing pulls tight. Her face tips closer to me and for a second we stare eye to eye. The mask is sliding and wet. It’s coated in saliva and some sticky, greenish fluid. The rubber nodules have been severed and there’s a set of tooth marks on the tubing. She must have inhaled a fragment of the tube. I slam my palm on her back, over and over. She bends over – I’m smacking her spine with my fist – and then a
