When the two aunties from Tauranga come to stay, they don’t just visit; they uproot and transplant themselves. They travel everywhere by car because Little Auntie is afraid of flying. She had to be sedated when she flew to New Zealand from India. The only thing she remembers about the trip is the smell of the dinner which was served soon after they took off. Little Auntie does most of the driving. Big Auntie drives at the unvarying speed of sixty kilometres per hour and would prefer not to drive at all. They load up the car, complete with portable fan, transistor radio and record player and usually stay for a month, often over the summer. They divert all their mail to our Auckland address. Big Auntie brings her framed picture of the Goddess of Learning which she keeps in a drawer by her bed. She lights incense every night and scatters fresh flower petals. Sometimes we catch her praying. She sits cross-legged by the opened drawer and speaks rapidly in low tones, rocking back and forth. When it’s over, she yells out for help. She can’t get back up on her own. Somehow, we manage to get her onto her feet without her sari unravelling.
“How do you manage at home? Little Auntie isn’t strong enough to lift you.”
“She’s puny. No muscles. I have to sit on a chair at home. God understands.”
Big Auntie probably weighs twice as much as Little Auntie, but that’s not why we call them ‘Big’ and ‘Little’. It’s because Big Auntie is five years older than Little Auntie. Barry has no ear for languages, so we use the English translations of ‘Barama’ and ‘Chhotoma’. The aunties don’t mind. Big Auntie is proud of being big.
I put the aunties in a room at the other end of the house, where Little Auntie is free to listen to the radio non-stop; it is her particular obsession. Big Auntie only tunes in for the news. We can barely hear the low-pitched wailings of the Bengali songs which they play on their crackling portable record player. Although Susie complains about the aunties’ taste of music, I have heard her singing some of the catchier tunes in the bathroom or when she is sitting in her swing. I know what Barry means when he says the songs all sound gloomy. My grandmother once told me that if I laughed too much, I would end up crying.
The news on the aunties’ radio sounds monotonous. I don’t mind Rose Jennings’ arts programme. I could listen to Rose for hours. I hear a lot of her when the aunties are here; it’s the station they listen to. Little Auntie tuned my car radio to that station when she borrowed my car last week, so now it’s on whenever I’m driving.
In the mornings, while Little Auntie listens to the radio, Big Auntie seeks company. She loiters around the hydrangeas until next-door Janice comes out in her fluffy blue dressing gown. They stand on either side of the hedge. Big Auntie talks about the roses which haven’t done well this year, about Kendra from the villa down the road who used to be a model and has been diagnosed with breast cancer, about the vandals who keep smashing the glass in the bus stop. Occasionally, Janice sneaks in a few words – “who would have guessed…it’s just too bad” – in her rasping voice.
Big Auntie is on the sofa now, on the other side of the room, bent over the paper. Susie’s head is in my lap; I am gently untangling her hair. She is half asleep from the sensation. Little Auntie’s radio plays in the distance.
“Listen! There’s an article here about snoring and vitamin C.” Big Auntie looks up, expectantly.
“Hmmm.”
To show any interest or to encourage more explanation from Big Auntie would be like drilling a hole in a pipe. I would have to listen to a continuous gush of talking until it all ran out. I work on an imaginary knot in Susie’s hair. After a few moments, Big Auntie heaves herself off the couch. I expect she’s going to check the mail.
“Are they gay, Mum?”
“Are who gay?” I’m surprised Susie knows what the word means.
“The aunties. They, like sleep in the same bed.”
“Oh! They’ve done that since they were very young.”
“They’re not sisters though, are they?”
“No, just good friends who have got used to sleeping next to each other.”
They have slept in the same bed ever since I can remember. When I was ten, my parents took us to India for the second time. A tall, bespectacled man wearing a long white gown met us at the airport in Kolkata. We called him Jatha, even though he wasn’t really our uncle, but a tutor from my father’s old college. The dust hurt my eyes and made everything look bright when we stepped outside. People speaking in a strange sort of Bengali surrounded us, their hands held out. I remember the whites of their eyes. Jatha gave them coins and shooed them away. My mother’s knuckles were yellow as the taxi nudged past cars and rickshaws amidst the persistent tooting of car horns. A pair of cows looked at us as the taxi stopped next to a dusty courtyard where Jatha’s son was waiting. Pritvi carried my sister on his shoulders up four flights of stairs to their apartment. When the lights went off during load shedding that evening, I lay in my mother’s lap, watching the shadows and listening to the conversations. Jatha said Pritvi loved Kolkata and would probably never venture out of West Bengal.
“Oh, Dada, what have you said. See the Tiktiki? It’ll come true.” My mother pointed to a lizard on the wall behind Jatha.
“What nonsense,” said my father. The street noises continued all night, people discussing things in shouted Bengali, the bells on the rickshaws. The next day we travelled by train to my grandmother’s house.
Some nights, my sister and I would sleep in my grandmother’s bed with our cousins; other nights we slept with my forty-year-old aunties who were too old to get married. Our nights were always disrupted. My cousins, six-year-old twin boys, wriggled around in my grandmother’s bed. One of them snuggled against my back to help him fall asleep. In the other bed, Big Auntie snored. Tiktiki walked about at night on the ceiling in swirling patterns; I tried saying, ‘Dadu will come home tomorrow with a pet monkey’ out loud but it didn’t come true. Big Auntie must have snored too loudly. I wished that one of the Tiktiki would fall on her and wake her up.
“O-re-baba! Those insects. I’ll lose my hearing if I stay out there any longer.” The cicadas are shrill and numerous. Big Auntie walks to the end of the passage. She returns a minute later, Little Auntie trailing behind. Big Auntie is carrying the transistor radio turned up on full volume. Susie lifts her head and giggles.
“We’re making tea. Would you like some?” Big Auntie has to shout to be heard over the person reading the news.
I nod vigorously and give her a thumbs-up. Little Auntie has her own supply of Darjeeling tea, smuggled into the country by Pritvi, who sponsored Little Auntie to come to New Zealand. My mother sponsored Big Auntie. When Pritvi moved away to Sydney, he made the aunties promise that they would spend at least six months every year staying with his friends and relatives. He arranges house sitters and gardeners to take care of their place. Big Auntie says Pritvi is like his father. Jatha travelled by rickshaw for an hour every week along dusty roads when he was a student, to buy medicine for his great aunt from a homeopathy doctor.
The newsreader’s voice is amplified in the kitchen. I think about the time Rose interviewed me on the radio when I went down to Wellington for work. We sat together in a dark room having a conversation on air without looking at each other. I talked about making a recording with a local Baroque orchestra. Rose manipulated the conversation so that I sounded almost witty. She joked about crossing enemy lines, how I must feel conflicted because I was born in Wellington. She doesn’t treat all her guests so kindly. Her questioning often leads people off on a tangent and they dig themselves into a hole.
I prod Susie. She ignores me at first, eventually stomping off to the kitchen. Little Auntie brings the tray with the tea things. Her lips are pressed together and the bony outlines of her wrist are visible. Susie follows with a plate of buttered white toast sprinkled with raw sugar. Her hand hovers over the plate before choosing the two plumpest pieces.
“Plate!”
“Don’t need one!” She runs into the garden and almost crashes into Big Auntie who is carrying a jug of hot milk in one hand and the radio in the other. Big Auntie makes a performance of switching the radio off before we have our tea. She fills up the silences with her observations of our overgrown garden and the mould growing in the bathroom.
“Your cleaners aren’t doing a very good job. Perhaps you should find someone else?”
Big Auntie knows very well that we don’t employ cleaners. She chuckles and passes me a cup. The tea is sweet and fragrant, like the tea we drank first thing in the morning in India. We sat on my grandmother’s bed, drawing pictures on paper that smelled musty and crumbled at the edges. We heard Little Auntie’s bangles as she approached, and the slapping sound of her sandals on the veranda. The tiny crackers were sweet and salty and dissolved almost instantly. In the background our cousins screamed as they were scrubbed by Big Auntie in preparation for school.
I once asked my mother how the aunties ended up living in my grandmother’s house. She explained that Little Auntie was a distant relative and Big Auntie was the daughter of my grandmother’s best friend. Neither of them had brothers; they had nowhere else to go. My real aunt resented the aunties living with them. The aunties felt obliged to take on extra duties. They spent their days organising meals and running around after my cousins. They taught them how to pick bones out of the Ilish fish and slipped them blocks of gur to eat with their ruti. Even though a cook prepared most of the meals, the aunties spent hours each day squatting on the concrete veranda outside the kitchen, shelling peas and chopping vegetables. Large wooden bowls of cauliflower, carrot, sweet potato and cabbage. I couldn’t believe that we could get through so many vegetables.
I top up the tea and take the last piece of toast.
“We heard your friend on the radio last night.” Big Auntie smoothes out her sari and nods sideways at me. Little Auntie nudges her, saying something in Bengali. Big Auntie ignores her. “You know, the one with the beautiful voice.”
“Rose. Rose Jennings.” I am not used to saying her name out loud.
“That’s right. Rose.” She pronounces Rose like the Scots; she rolls the ‘r’.
“She’s not exactly my friend. She’s interviewed me on the radio once, that’s all.”
That really is all. I have no idea when I will see her again. Once or twice a year, I work with a group down in Wellington but there would be no reason for me to contact Rose. I see her in the distance when she comes to Auckland to review concerts and festivals. Our only real conversation off air was a month ago, at the airport when we were delayed. She was worried about her mother; they called my flight before she could finish telling me.
Little Auntie puts down her cup. She plaits my hair, humming a Bengali song. She says my hair is like my mother’s, curling in all directions. Little Auntie’s body has shrunk, her smile taking up almost all of her face. She smells the same as she did thirty years ago, of coconut hair oil; Pritvi brings it back from his yearly trips to India. Jatha has been growing frailer since Pritvi’s mother died. He is living in his nephew’s house where the rooms are very damp. Pritvi wants him to move to Sydney but Jatha won’t leave India.
“Mail! One for Dad and two for the aunties.” Susie throws two envelopes with large yellow forwarding stickers onto the coffee table. She puts Barry’s by the front door.
“The mail is late today. One from Pritvi.” Big Auntie hands it to Little Auntie. “And one from the ministry of transport. Eh-Ram! It must be a speeding ticket. The way you drive on the motorway, as if the police are chasing you.”
“What date?”
“January the fifth.”
Little Auntie ties off my plait and leaves the room. She returns with a battered diary. “January fifth. I had a dentist appointment – you drove.” She takes off her glasses and looks at Big Auntie.
“But I’m a slow driver,” she says.
Little Auntie puts her glasses back on and snatches the letter off Big Auntie. “Sixty-two in a fifty zone,” she says. She folds up the letter and swats Big Auntie on the knee. “I’m going now to read Pritvi’s letter.”
Big Auntie takes a plate of toast for Little Auntie at lunchtime. When she returns, she doesn’t mention Little Auntie or the letter; she talks about the speeding ticket. How they only ever buy things on special at the supermarket and then she has to go and lose one hundred dollars. Barry comes home from work to find Big Auntie talking to herself in the garden.
“What’s up with Big Auntie?” He puts his viola in the hall cupboard.
I tell him about the speeding ticket. There is a mischievous gleam in his eye. He says he will have a word with Big Auntie about her driving.
“Don’t tease her. I think they’ve had bad news. Little Auntie spent most of the day in her room.”
I set the table, put the spaghetti on and skulk about the kitchen. Little Auntie is stirring discarded broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage stalks into oil and onions. She throws in turmeric powder, cumin powder, chilli and mustard seeds, her weekly special. Only the aunties will touch the stuff. Little Auntie turns the heat down and covers the pot before turning to me with an inscrutable look. I pretend to hunt for something in the pantry.
“Is everything ok?” I ask in a small voice.
“Later,” she says in Bengali, waving me away.
Spaghetti with lamb meatballs is normally a cue for Susie and the aunties to sing the meatballs song. Susie is eating in stony silence. She and Barry had a fight about a sleepover party we won’t let her go to. Big Auntie serves herself a second helping of meatballs and looks at each of us in turn, as if she is about to make an important announcement. She clears her throat.
“Tomorrow is Saturday. I think we should all go for a picnic at the beach. We can take two cars.”
“Great idea!” I say. Susie shrugs her shoulders.
“I’m working,” says Barry. “A quartet job in Warkworth. I’ll need the car, sorry. It’s my turn to drive. Bummer.”
“No problem,” says Big Auntie. “We four can all easily fit in our car. Little Auntie can drive. What do you say?” She looks at Little Auntie who nods sideways. Barry looks at his empty glass and sighs. Big Auntie picks up the wine bottle.
“Oh, you’ll need a glass,” says Barry, winking at Susie. “Or were you going to drink it straight from the bottle?”
Big Auntie waggles her finger at Barry. The aunties never had alcohol before they came to New Zealand. Big Auntie still doesn’t drink. She doesn’t discourage Little Auntie, even eggs her along, although she’s not drinking tonight. Barry says Big Auntie is dying to find out what Little Auntie is like when she’s a bit tipsy. So far, it has been disappointing. Little Auntie once drank two thirds of a bottle of bubbly without being at all affected.
“Anyone else like some of this beautiful curry?” Big Auntie tips the vegetable curry pot towards Barry.
“No thanks, Big Auntie. But there’s a lovely dead branch from our totara tree marinating out the back. I might barbecue it for dessert.”
“Oh ho, you can laugh about it. Why all this wastage? You’ve paid for it all, you might as well eat it all.”
“Well, you don’t eat the apple core, do you? Or the skin of a kiwifruit,” says Susie.
“Yes. I do.”
“What about banana skin?”
“That’s not edible.”
“Monkeys eat them.”
“So, I’m a monkey now!”
Susie and Big Auntie usually have a standoff about something during meals. It nearly always ends with both of them laughing at each other, Susie spluttering rice everywhere.
Later that evening, the aunties are whispering in their room. The radio and record player are switched off. Their door is shut and they are speaking in Bengali. I can make out some of the words. They are talking about Pritvi. Something about Jatha, and people behaving badly. They are still talking when I come back an hour later to give them a goodnight hug. Little Auntie’s eyes are brimming when she briefly meets my gaze. I start to say something and she shakes her head.
I tell Barry that I wish the aunties would talk to me. “Thanks for not minding about them staying so long.” I don’t want him to think I take him for granted. I know he likes having them around. Barry says I seem different when they are here, more like how I used to be before Mum died. I laugh more, smile more, even cry more. Little Auntie sometimes breaks into Bengali when she is talking to Barry, without realising it. He nods and smiles, pretending to understand every word, hoping she will keep going. They are his aunties as much as they are mine.
I turn back the sheets and see Barry’s checked green pyjamas. He takes off his glasses.
“You eyeing me up? Thought it was a bit late for you.” He puts his bookmark in his book. I laugh. It is very late; I just want to go to sleep. Barry takes off his pyjama top because I am making him too hot. I nestle my cheek against the side of his chest as he reads. I don’t fall asleep immediately. I hear him lick his finger just before he turns the page. It is the quietest of sounds, the snap of tiny bubbles as his tongue moves off the roof of his mouth. I once told him how much it irritated me, that he wet his finger before turning a page. He stopped doing it for a while.
Barry is ironing his white shirt as we leave in our beach gear the next morning. He helps us load the boot and looks dejected as he waves us off. The aunties aren’t talking much. I’ve rarely seen them so quiet. Little Auntie doesn’t react when Big Auntie points to the speedometer as we enter the motorway.
A partly deflated bouncy castle and a deserted merry-go-round occupy a corner of the beach. A woman wearing a yellow straw hat emerges from the tarot-reading tent. I give Susie some coins and follow Big Auntie further down the beach. Big Auntie peers inside the chilly bin and pulls out a bottle of sparkling grape juice. “Little Auntie can have strawberries and champagne for lunch!”
Little Auntie is walking towards the water. Loose strands of her hair glisten in the sun. She should be wearing a sari, the drops of patterned silk rustling and swaying against her ankles as she walks, but instead she is wearing trousers. I unfold the deck chair for Big Auntie to sit on. “What was in that letter?”
She waves me away. “She should tell you herself.”
I run towards the shore, zigzagging around the rocks. The waves get louder as I approach and the air smells of sea water. I can taste salt on my lips; it is encrusting strands of my hair. Little Auntie has rolled up her trousers and walked in up to her knees. She is motionless, her hands by her sides, the waves crashing against her and falling away. She turns around before I can call out to her.
“Please tell me!” I shout to be heard over the waves.
Little Auntie lowers her head. I lead her behind some rocks near the shore. She tells me half in English, half in Bengali that Pritvi’s father, Jatha, is ill and could die in the next two months. He keeps asking Pritvi to bring Little Auntie with him when he flies to India next week.
“Of course, you have to go. They can sedate you again. Is it the airfare? Can we help you buy your ticket?”
“No, Pritvi will take care of that. Money is no problem for him.” Seagulls gather on a mound of tussock nearby, screaming. We walk around to a shallow cave and sit facing each other, cross-legged in the sand. The families are the problem – some of them don’t want Little Auntie to be there, to be acknowledged.
“I’ve known your Jatha since I was twelve years old. Our sisters were at school together. We all played cricket in his yard. One day, when I was at my cousin’s wedding, I went onto the roof to get some air. I was eighteen years old. Your Jatha was leaning against the balcony, looking at the rooftops below. We talked for over an hour. His voice was gentle. I could hear the music in the background. No one came looking for us. Over the next few months, he came to our house whenever his sister came to see my sister. We would talk, just the two of us, in the shade of a jackfruit tree at the back of the house. Our sisters would be nearby. Nobody thought anything of it at first.” Her smile changes into a look of sadness. His marriage had been arranged and he was too dutiful a son to go against his family’s wishes. Little Auntie never saw him again; they broke off all contact. Pritvi fears the family will cause trouble if Little Auntie flies over. It might be disloyal to his mother who died several years ago.
“But what about Jatha’s wishes?” I ask. When Jatha dies, that will be the end. All that has been unsaid for so long will remain unsaid. His feelings will stop. He will never know what our lives will be like or that we will have fond memories of him. Little Auntie nods. She knows what I am trying to say.
We head back, following the shoreline with our footsteps. Little Auntie says they’ll telephone Sydney tonight. Big Auntie always yells into the phone when she calls overseas. Barry will get out his ear muffs like he did last time. We’re still laughing as Big Auntie and Susie come into view. Big Auntie waves a chicken drumstrick in the air and calls out to us, praising Auckland beaches. Tauranga ones are not nearly so sheltered. A big gust of wind sends sand in our eyes and all over the salad.
“Eh-Ram, you should have kept the cover on it!” Little Auntie sits on the blanket and brushes Susie’s hair off her face. “How was the carnival?”
“The merry-go-round was on the highest speed. The lady with the yellow hat was waiting for me when I got off. She had a lizard tattoo on her neck.”
“Did she tell your fortune?”
“No, but she let me pick a card. I got the High Priestess. A lady wearing a crown, holding a roll of paper.”
“A scroll. Ba-bah – that means you will do very well at school. Eesh, you are eating all the strawberries – you’ll have a stomach ache.”
“The moon was on the ground.”
“That’s a bit strange.”
“People can’t really see into the future,” says Susie sneaking the last strawberry.
“No, but sometimes there are clues.” Big Auntie nods sideways.
“What nonsense,” says Little Auntie with a smile. She gathers up the dirty dishes and empty containers.
We walk to the car. I imagine having a conversation with Rose over coffee one day. I’d ask after her mother. I picture our lips moving but I can’t hear the words. The wind builds up as we approach the crossing. The tarot reader is walking ahead of us, hugging a battered shoebox. A gust of wind lifts her hat into the air. She lunges forward. Dozens of cards flutter towards the hills. It would be pointless to chase after them. The wind dies down in steps. Susie and the aunties get into the car. I dislodge the hat caught in the branches of a nearby tree and hand it to the woman. I say something about the wind. She replies, pointing to her empty box. Everything is soundless. I climb into the car and Susie leans her head against my arm. The traffic has reached a standstill. Big Auntie switches the radio on. I look up at the rear vision mirror and see Little Auntie smiling to herself.