There are voices nearby – a stream of chatter from Olivia, with brusque interjections from Aunty Kala. A scuffling noise. Olivia kicking off the cushions, maroon and gold brocade and the blue ones with printed starfish, so that she can skip along the window seat. Aunty Kala is probably looking out at the tall pine tree in the backyard. I picture a tui with fluffed up feathers and a scruffy white beard sitting on the highest branch.
When I open my eyes, Olivia is jumping up and down on the window seat. She has her back to the window, her figure half in silhouette against the afternoon sun. Her mouth is moving. Her voice is getting louder; the sentences vanish before I can decipher them. My eyes come to rest on the coffee table, on the dislocated trio of an orange felt-tip pen, Monopoly Chance Card and hairclip at one end of the table. The varnished wooden surface is defaced by randomly spaced, overlapping grey rings. The undrunk cup of tea is cold and stagnant. Olivia came home from school a while ago; I begin to remember.
Every day begins the same way. After Olivia and Paul leave, I get dressed – a task that I mentally cross off. I go into the sunroom at the back of the house and slip the cover off Aunty Kala’s old sewing machine. She said I may as well have it, now that she doesn’t see so well. Paul has put up shelves for the colour-coded Tupperware containers that hold spools of cotton, buttons and metal hooks and eyes. A needle case hangs on the wall, and next to the sewing machine is a yellow porcupine pin cushion with a brown leather face. I start with the repairs: mainly trousers and cuffs for hemming, twenty dollars per job. I advertised through the school newsletter. The rest of the morning, I work on Olivia’s quilt. An old laundry basket in the corner of the sunroom is half full of fabric scraps donated by Aunty Kala and my friends and salvaged from clothes that I no longer wear. Stripes, spots, floral designs, vibrant colours, pastel shades, sequins, embroidery, satin, cotton and velvet. I spent weeks drawing the design – four blocks, each made up of large and small squares, arranged in a geometric pattern. I’ve decided on a colour scheme and calculated all the measurements. The quilt backing material and batting are in the linen cupboard, still in their packaging. Marking out and cutting the squares to the right dimensions is taking weeks. Olivia counts them every few days and arranges them into shapes. She says that I have over a hundred and that it’s time to start sewing them together.
I went back to my old job in the intellectual property office when Olivia turned three. The words that had once poured onto the computer screen in coherent paragraphs, interspersed with clauses in italics, seemed embedded deep inside my head. My fingers hesitated over the keyboard and would stop midway through a sentence. I took sick leave and then resigned from my position a year ago. When my GP diagnosed depression, Aunty Kala said that it was not a question of “if” but “when”. It was my mother all over again, she said.
I rest most afternoons. A tangle of arms, legs and hair lies motionless over the sofa. Multiple invisible layers envelop me and fog my thoughts. Later, my limbs are returned to me. The unvarying tune of the warbler reaches my ears, and textures begin to emerge out of colours. As I walk across the room, my body brushes against the air; it melts into nothing.
Most days, I set my alarm for ten to three, in case I doze. Out of the window in Paul’s study, I watch them set up road patrol, small groups of parents conversing at the roadside. Aunty Kala waits in her car across the road. She doesn’t know that I am watching. As soon as the children start crossing, I leave the house and walk along the road. Olivia is usually the last to come down. Aunty Kala waits until we are home before she gets out of her car.
Today, I stayed on the sofa and forgot to set the alarm. The sun was coming in through the bay window. I was thinking about putting away my sneakers, which were under the coffee table. Aunty Kala hates shoes lying around. Her gaudy orange slippers take up almost the entire top shelf of the shoe stand by the front door. The slippers are half buckled, and their soles are thinning; she never puts them on correctly. She won’t let us buy her a new pair. I procrastinated about my sneakers and fell asleep. Something woke me. When I opened my eyes, Aunty Kala’s large face with thick knotted eyebrows took up almost the whole frame. Olivia’s tiny face was in the corner, her brown curls jiggling.
“If you can’t wake up in time to meet your daughter after school, you should ask me to come earlier.” Aunty Kala spoke in Bengali and stalked off to make the afternoon tea. A noisy debate began about how many biscuits Olivia was allowed. I dozed and didn’t hear them come back into the lounge.
“Mummy! PLEASE can I?”
“Okay, darling.” I don’t know what I have agreed to. I throw a guilty glance in Aunty Kala’s direction. She is still staring out of the window. She clears away the afternoon-tea dishes and comes back with a cloth to wipe the coffee table. Olivia practises her hip-hop moves for the school production. She weaves around Aunty Kala, an unwieldy dance partner; she has grown so large that she rocks from side to side rather than moving forwards. As Aunty Kala steps into the kitchen, she bumps into the sideboard. A bottle of wine wobbles back and forth several times and topples over. It rolls and breaks with a smash on the tiled floor of the kitchen, splashing red wine onto the wall and carpet.
Olivia stares for a moment at the maroon splotch on the wallpaper and bursts into tears. A tiny voice creeps out from the back of my throat, “Oh, Olivia! You know you shouldn’t dance around like that in the kitchen!”
Aunty Kala picks up the largest pieces of glass and wraps them in newspaper. She pokes around in the cupboards below the sink, looking for the brush and shovel. “Oh, I feel quite peculiar!” She collapses onto a nearby chair.
I lift myself off the sofa. “It’s all the stooping. Why don’t you go home? I think I can manage.” I step around the glass and fetch her some water.
The front door closes behind her. I get to work, completing the tasks one by one, as if a drill sergeant inside my head is barking out the orders: pour salt on the carpet, vacuum it up, shovel up the glass, wipe the floor with a cloth, have a final go with the vacuum cleaner just to make sure, throw some chicken in the oven, do homework with Olivia, feed Olivia, load the dishwasher, wipe down the benches. The kitchen is warm and smells like a mixture of detergent, damp tea towels and cooking. The home economics room at intermediate school smelled exactly the same.
I dreaded Tuesdays because of home economics. On the first day, the teacher told me that the clean tea towel I had brought from home smelled of curry. My canvas bag wasn’t a basket, and my apron with the purple and yellow butterflies, which used to belong to my mother, was too colourful. I broke eggs the wrong way, and my dough was too sticky. She said that if I continued to be sloppy about my measurements, none of the recipes would work. I wished my father would buy me a pie dish like all the other children had – oblong and painted white with a blue rim. Aunty Kala said the paint was poisonous. The dish I took to school was stainless steel, like the ones in Indian restaurants, and rolled around on its round bottom. Nothing I made at school ever turned out right, and I knew everyone was staring at my dish.
I brush Olivia’s teeth while she is in the bath and wash her hair and tie it up in a towel. While she plays in the bath, I try and clean the red-wine splatter off the wall. I dab at it, then rub, making it look worse. I slide the small telephone table along a few inches. It is a grey marble sculpture, an abstract piece of art with irregular angles. I have positioned it so that the sharpest corners are against the wall. A vase containing a large bunch of dried flowers neatly hides the stain. Paul has filled the house up with abstract art. The ugliest painting of all, a pale yellow canvas with overlapping green and brown lines, takes up the whole top half of our bedroom wall. Paul brought it home on trial one day and hung it up. As he stood back and admired it, I pretended to like it. I hinted that our bedroom wasn’t the best place for it and that perhaps our house wasn’t large enough. The following day, he bought it. A colleague, an art enthusiast, told him these paintings will be worth a huge amount of money one day.
The air is frosty inside my nostrils when I put out the rubbish. I gaze into the mature night sky and let my thoughts wander until the tips of my fingers begin to sting. I go inside and call Olivia. She walks slowly into the lounge so that the towel won’t fall off. She thinks it makes her look like an Arabian princess. I rub her hair dry. She is staring at me and suddenly smiles. It is the same smile as when she used to wake up from her afternoon nap. I trace my finger over the humps of her cheeks and draw circles around her eyes. We sit together on the couch and read a bedtime story. Olivia smells of soap and toothpaste and is wearing very fluffy new pyjamas. She and Paul went shopping last weekend. I rest my cheek against her hair; her body moulds into mine. After the story, I tuck her in and pick her school clothes off the floor. She asks, without taking her eyes off her book, “You’ll tell Daddy to give me a kiss when he gets home, won’t you?”
I reassure her. If Olivia is asleep, she interrogates him the next day, and Paul provides a detailed account of what time he came in and how she looked when she was asleep.
“Mummy, why did you blame me when the wine broke? You know it was Aunty Kala.” She calls out when I am halfway down the passage. I hurry back and give her extra cuddles and kisses. I explain about Aunty Kala’s hard life and how it’s important not to make her feel bad.
Paul texts to say that he’s working very late and not to wait up. He has had to take on extra work in the past few months. It has been hard managing on one income; we’ve had to buy a new car and pay Olivia’s school fees. Paul hasn’t bought any art lately. I put the remaining chicken in the oven and turn it on low. While I wait for it to reheat, I drag a chair over to the heater in the lounge and put my head close to the vents until my eyes dry up. I curl up on the couch. The dishwasher beeps. Lights are going on all over the valley.
At the sound of a key rattling in the lock, I sit up and rub my eyes. It doesn’t sound like Paul. Bags are put down noisily and shoes are thrown off. A pair of bright orange slippers heads towards me.
“The water has gone off. The whole side of my street is affected. I rang Paul. He said there was nothing he could do. He told me to come here until they fixed it.”
“I’ll make up the bed in the spare room.”
“I will make it.” She swats the air with her hand. “Does he often work late like this, your husband?” She gestures to our wedding photo on the sideboard.
“Paul has a lot of deadlines at work at the moment.”
“With your illness, it’s not good for him to be out all the time.”
“Actually, I’m beginning to feel better. I changed medication.”
“But if Paul were promoted, he wouldn’t have to work so hard.” She glances in my direction and shuffles around the room. She draws the curtains, plumps up the cushions and starts folding things: Olivia’s jacket, my cardigan, a stray tea towel. “Oh, that’s right. You told me. He already applied for promotion. He has worked there for more than 10 years. Astounding. Why didn’t he get it?” She says it as if she has only just found out.
“It’s very competitive. There was an interview; he lost his nerve.”
“What’s that smell?”
“It’s my dinner cooking. Would you like some?”
“I’ve already eaten.”
The chicken has dried out and the edges have burnt; I cover it quickly so that Aunty Kala won’t see. The oven might have caught on fire. I unload the dishwasher and rearrange part of the pantry until I hear Aunty Kala getting ready for bed. When I am certain she is tucked away, I creep into the lounge with a teacup of wine and a bowl of partly charred chicken. Paul said he wasn’t surprised when he wasn’t made senior associate. He was one of the only juniors who didn’t have a family connection to one of the partners. He said they’d probably made up their minds even before his interview began. One of the partners told him later that it was his defensive manner during the interview – he needed to work on his personal style. I flick through the TV channels. People with attitudes and smirks yell at each other. I end up eating in silence.
Later, when I hear Aunty Kala snoring, I put on my gloves and boots and slip outside. The cold air is energising. Skittering footsteps approach.
“Why is Aunty Kala here? Where’s Daddy?”
I tell her Paul is at work and Aunty Kala’s water has been turned off. “Haven’t you been to sleep yet?”
“I was asleep. I had a dream about a chainsaw, a really noisy one, but it was Aunty Kala snoring. I can’t get back to sleep – I keep thinking about tomorrow.”
She was telling me about it when she came home from school; I don’t remember. I pull her beside me on the garden seat. I take her into my arms, the way my mother used to cradle me. It is one of the only things I remember about her. Olivia wriggles out and runs across the grass. The fairy lights turn on. I hear the latch on the gate.
“What are you doing up?” Paul picks Olivia up and walks over.
“Why are you making that face, Daddy?” She strokes his cheeks with the palm of her hand.
“Darling, you look exhausted.”
“Yes, but it’s all over now.”
“What do you mean?”
“They were just following processes.” The automatic outdoor light turns off; Paul’s face fades into the darkness. “Those bloody shelves.”
“What?”
“I’ll tell you later, okay?”
A wave of nausea passes over me. I swallow a few times. “You probably didn’t stop for dinner. You’ve got to eat, Paul.”
“Don’t start, Anu.”
“You could always take sandwiches from home. Or get a pie from the dairy across the road.”
“Just leave it, will you?”
“You’re squashing me, Daddy.”
“What is happening? Why is everybody outside at this time of night?” Aunty Kala stands in the doorway.
“Paul’s home.”
“And you have kept the child up so late, waiting for her father? Come on, Olivia. I’ll take you to bed.” She steps outside in her slippers; the outside lights come on. Olivia buries her head in Paul’s jersey.
“I’m sorry if we woke you, Aunty Kala. You should go back to bed,” I say.
“You didn’t wake me. I hadn’t even fallen asleep. So much to worry about. I came up to make sure you had remembered to turn the oven off and saw the front door open.”
“Can we all just go inside?” says Paul. “Olivia’s shivering, and I’m starving.”
“But I heard snoring, Daddy.”
I take off my boots and close the front door. Aunty Kala paces up and down the passage. Paul watches her for a moment. He puts Olivia down and heads to the kitchen.
Aunty Kala watches him. “Maybe Anu should find a part-time job. Paul wouldn’t have to work so hard. It’s not good for his health. Anu says she is getting better. She should be with other people. All day long, she stays alone in this house, sewing.” Her voice rings down the passage.
Paul strides back and faces Aunty Kala. “Until Anu is completely well, I don’t want her doing any paid work, other than the sewing.” He speaks in a low voice, gaps between the words.
Aunty Kala looks at me and tilts her head. Her hand slips down the stair rail as she descends, one creaking step at a time. The door clicks shut. The last time Paul spoke in that voice, he ended up in the emergency department with chest pain. He had been working late and bristled when I offered to make him a snack and tried to give him advice about his difficult client. His heart was fine. The emergency doctor told him to see someone about his anxiety, because next time it might really be his heart. Olivia was doing maths at the dining table when we arrived home. Aunty Kala called out questions, warming her legs by the heater. Her sari was hitched up above her knees, and her thighs looked pale and thin. She wasn’t expecting Paul to come home. She thought they were going to keep him in for a few days.
I take Olivia’s hand now and lead her back to bed.
“You’ll remember to set your alarm, won’t you?” says Olivia. “I want you to help me put the sari on, not Aunty Kala.”
Dress-up day at school, raising money for something. There was a notice about it last week.
“I’ll set my alarm,” I say. “But Aunty Kala would be a lot better than me at dressing you in a sari. She used to dress me up in a sari sometimes, when I was a little girl.”
“Mummy, you’ve told me that so many times!’
There was always a huge pile of shoes by the door when we arrived for the Indian functions; we were never on time, even by Bengali standards. The herds of aunties ordered their husbands to set up trestles along the white-tape markings of the indoor netball court. Containers of rice, curry and dahl covered in aluminium foil were set out next to bags of potato crisps and 1.5-litre bottles of Coke and Fanta. At the other end of the hall, people sat on rugs and cushions in front of bowls of petals. The aunties lit candles and incense. An uncle wearing a woollen jersey over white robes sat cross-legged holding a book, reciting words I didn’t understand. The other children wore embroidered silk shirts and pants and chased each other around the hall. Aunty Kala insisted on dressing me in a sari. I stood in a corner, terrified that my sari would unravel and that all the boys would see my petticoat.
Olivia begs me to sit beside her until she is asleep. I pull up a chair and watch as she closes her eyes and wriggles around for a minute. She lies still, her breaths slow and even.
“Mummy, have you fixed Sally-Anne’s arm yet?”
“No darling. I’ll do it tomorrow.” But I don’t promise.
“I’ll be wearing leggings underneath, so it won’t matter if it falls off,” she murmurs.
Her eyelids stay closed. I stare at her as she falls asleep.
As I child, I tried to imagine what my mother must have looked like as she lay in her coffin. I wasn’t allowed to see her. My brother said she looked like she was asleep and that the lines on her forehead had disappeared. When I was nine years old, I accidentally broke my brother’s favourite balsa plane. He was about to smack me in the head, when he dropped his arm and grabbed me by both shoulders. He made me look at him. “You wanna know why she looked like she was asleep? It’s because she really was. Really, really asleep.”
I leave quietly and am surrounded by large shadows, cast by soft toys on a high shelf outside her room. She will be frightened if she wakes in the middle of the night. I switch off the passage light and they disappear. I set my alarm for seven thirty, although Aunty Kala will be up long before then. Paul puts his head in the door as I am getting into my pyjamas. I ask him if he ate.
“I made a sandwich. The chicken looked completely burnt, so I chucked it.” He says he will sleep on the pull-out bed in the lounge – we both need a good sleep. He sits on the bed for a moment. “Why don’t you think about taking on some legal work? She’s right – it’d do you good. You could sew in the evenings and weekends. Focus on Olivia’s quilt, not mending other people’s trousers.” He kisses my cheek lightly as he gets up to leave.
“She means well. Aunty Kala, I mean. I think she was upset, Paul.”
I hear his measured breathing. “I’ll say something to her in the morning, okay? Stop stressing.” He picks up Sally-Anne from behind the lamp on my bedside table. The arm fell off a month ago. I keep forgetting to take the doll up to the sunroom, and now the arm has disappeared under the bed.
“Actually, Anu, we could do with the money.” His voice trails off.
My mouth feels dry, and my thoughts begin to blur as the drugs start working. “What were you talking about before, outside?”
Paul pulls at a piece of thread and more of the stitching unravels. He throws Sally-Anne back on the table. “You know those shelves, the ones I put up in the sunroom? Well, I didn’t buy them online. I took them from work. Anyway, I’ve been given a formal warning, and they’ve transferred one of my clients to one of the juniors.”
“Can they really do that? Over a set of shelves?”
“It wasn’t just shelves.”
I remember Paul coming home with the shelves one Friday after work. While he put them up, he told me to go into the den and help Olivia set up a small flat-screen TV and DVD player. He said he had bought them online, from the same woman who had sold him the shelves. She was moving to Iceland. The three of us sat on cushions in Olivia’s den and watched The Little Match Girllater that evening.
“How did they know it was you?”
“They wanted to put the shelves up in the new reception area and couldn’t find them. Some busybody, they won’t tell me who, told one of the partners they had seen me walking into the lift with them. I thought I’d better come clean and tell them about the TV and DVD player too. I tried to explain – how they were sitting in that musty storeroom. I didn’t know there was an inventory and that they were planning to sell all the old stuff.” He pauses briefly in the doorway. “By the way, you did leave the oven on.”
I lie in bed with my back to the painting. Our bed is made of knotted cedar wood; the eyes of a fox stare at me. I turn off my bedside light. The sound of snoring is amplified through the floorboards. I activate the white noise function on my phone and put it by my pillow. I am enveloped in crashing ocean waves; all other noises disappear. Alone with my thoughts, I promise myself that tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow will be the day that I will repair Sally-Anne’s arm and sort out Olivia’s clothes, the empty photo albums and the bag of unsent Christmas cards. I will figure out how to join the pieces together for the patchwork quilt and search the Law Society website for part-time jobs. I will thank Aunty Kala and tell her I don’t need her to be here anymore. Ever. I will tell Paul I want my wall back. I whisper these promises out loud, my voice melting into the white noise. I fall asleep imagining Olivia in my old blue sari with the pink and gold butterflies, the long end fluttering behind her like a flag.