Thangam speaks again, her eyes shut. “He wanted to be responsible-”
“No!”
The children step back in unison as the hot roar of refusal whips past them. Sita alone stands her ground and looks at her siblings triumphantly.
“He wanted to be my boss. No respect for me, me! His elder brother-in-law! Go and work for him… big shot…”
In the field before the cinema, they all privately recollect the scene between their father and uncle. One would guess from Sita’s smug face that in her version, Goli is the winner. In Janaki and Laddu’s memories, the victor’s identity is less certain. Kamalam recalls words but not meanings. She thinks she wants to go home, but she is not certain where that is, just now.
As uncomfortable as all of this is, they all appreciate Sita’s continuing good humour. The occasional lapse, such as that in the cart, reminds them of how good they have it now. That night, for example, Sita doesn’t give Janaki any lentils from the rasam. Since Janaki hates that bottom-of-the-pot sludge, Sita usually stirs it up and dumps it on double thick. But not tonight. Janaki ascribes this to Sita’s new-found mental peace. Then Sita eats-last, as she has taken it upon herself to do. Janaki sees her take the last of the rasam. It is nearly clear. There are almost no lentils in the broth.
Janaki presumes Sita forgot the lentils, a logical supposition given the quality of food Sita has been serving since their arrival.
The next morning, they eat pazhiah sadam, fermented rice with yogourt. (“Best thing for young tummies,” their grandmother always says.) But the buttermilk is watery and they are all hungry by mid-morning. When they come to Sita mock-whining that they want a snack, they expect her indulgence with milk sweets, since she’s been handing them out freely all week. Instead, Sita barks that if they’ve got nothing better to do than annoy her, why don’t they spend their time finding some fruit in the garden. The children drift out of the house, avoiding the two stunted, barren banana trees that stand at the end of the yard like more children their father forgot. Lunch is rice, lots of rice but with rasam even thinner than it was last night. For supper, the same. Kamalam asks for more and is given a big chunk of plain rice with a pickled baby mango from the jar Sivakami packed with their luggage. Thangam doesn’t eat, saying she’s not hungry. She drinks half a cup of nearly transparent buttermilk and goes to bed. Their father still has not arrived and Sita will not eat until after he does. Nine o’clock, ten o’clock, eleven o’clock pass, and Sita sits in the dark. She says she wants it dark so everyone else can sleep, but she wiped out the bottom of the lamp oil can with cotton wicks the night before. At eleven-thirty there is a loud knocking on the doors and Goli’s voice calls, “Thangam! Eh, Thangam!”
Sita lights a lamp and unbolts the doors. Goli drops his dapper hat and swinging cane in a corner. He drops himself onto a waiting bamboo mat. Sita holds the oversized lamp with the itty-bitty flame, so he can see. She asks, “Supper?”
He is prone and his eyes closed. He turns onto his side and gets comfortable as he says, “No. Ate at the club.”
Sita blinks, then glances at the lamp. She hurries to the kitchen and eats in a race against the dwindling flame.
For breakfast and lunch the day following, they have rice with buttermilk so thin that it looks like kanji, water that old people strain from boiled rice and drink for strength. Each of the children pretends the runny white meal is something else: onion sambar, spinach curry, bitter gourd. Kamalam starts to sniffle a little as she bites into the tangy flesh of another baby mango. Janaki signals her, “What?”
Kamalam answers aloud, “I miss Amma.”
Janaki’s sinuses start to sting, too, at the thought of their grandmother, her generous kitchen and care. Sita ends this nonsense. “Hush. Stop that. You have your ‘amma’ right here. You want to go back to living with Vairum Mama, where we are not wanted?”
That night, Goli’s work forces him to stay over in a neighbouring town. His family eat their poor meal early, all together, and gather in the hall. The moon has narrowed nightly and is almost ready to turn and begin its pregnant climb again. In the bluish darkness of the hall, the children lie or sit on their bedrolls and play word games, making up rhymes and riddles, laughing loud and free in the night that gladly does not contain their father. Sita shines brightest of all in the open darkness of this night. Why? Tomorrow is Thursday, payday.
It is afternoon. Sita is sitting on the veranda when Goli arrives home from work the next evening-empty-handed, but with a spring in his step.
“Coffee?” he asks, walking past Sita, into the house, with his head opposing the direction of his travel by about thirty degrees. Sita had put off making the coffee, hoping-not, though she would never admit it, assuming-he would bring some of the precious dark dust, since she has enough to brew only a thimbleful. She sits a moment longer on the veranda, where all sit to sun their cares or forget them by watching their neighbours, where private pains meet the life of the street, where decisions are made and deals contracted, along streets just like this one all over Madras Presidency. Different people, different language, but the same worries. And despite all this, Sita sits all alone in the rosy dusk, her toes over- and underlapping one another, her chin on her knees. In the rapid sunset, it is only moments before she can no longer see her toenails and is isolated even from herself.
Taking a breath, she picks herself up and walks into the house just like her father did, her head cocked at an unreasonable angle, trying to see what he sees. There is no more milk in the house. She brews the weak coffee and dumps three tablespoons of sugar through the pale steam. Thank God sugar and rice come in huge sacks. Plenty of those commodities remain. Looks like sugar and rice for supper tonight.
She places the tumbler and bowl on a saucer and carries it out to her father. No more English biscuits or store-bought sweets. Goli is pacing to and fro. He grasps the bowl and pours the coffee from the tumbler to blend and cool it. He is anticipating, as every drinker of great South Indian coffee does, the pleasure of foam and steam rising as the creamy liquid, falling from the lip of the stainless steel tumbler, hits the cylindrical bowl. He gets steam, but no foam. He frowns and peers into the bowl, fighting more the fog in his mind than that around the dish, trying to see what is wrong. Sita stands by, her mind a blank with hundreds of squirming questions nibbling its edges. Finally, Goli looks up, his spectacles opaque from the mist, and asks her, “What is this?”
She answers, reflexively obedient. “Appa, coffee, Appa.”
“It doesn’t look like coffee,” he grunts.
“Appa, that’s what coffee looks like without milk, Appa.” She bobs in a sort of curtsy.
“Who drinks coffee with no milk?” Goli addresses the ceiling. “Am I an Englishman?”
Sita swallows the air in her mouth with great difficulty and asks, “Did… did you get paid, today, Appa?”
“Oh, yes, oh, yes.” Goli smiles. “Stopped after work and put the whole thing down on that new cinema of ours. Ready to fire her up any day now.” He makes another long waterfall of the coffee and remembers his displeasure. “Milk!”
“We have no milk, Appa,” Sita explains gently, her face tense.
“Get some, then, are there no cows left in the world?” he jokes. “Listen, girl, you can hear them now…”
The questions in Sita’s mind are taking big bites now, feasting on her eleven-year-old brain. She replies, “I need money, Appa.”
“Money? You need money?” Goli rises. “It is not enough that I am slaving from dawn until dusk, working for the English, buying properties, doing business, you want money now too?”