Fragile Monsters by Catherine Menon (100 books to read in a lifetime txt) 📕

don’t think.’ She bangs her hand on the car seat. ‘What to do with you? Next day you’ll be asking for marry with some white boy, some Mat Salleh boy, isn’t it?’

Ammuma dreads me ending up like my mother: unmarried and pregnant and no better than the servant-girl. While I was in Canada she used to read me stories down the phone from the KL papers. The big city, she used to say, where girls drink and dance and hold hands with boys. She chose the stories carefully, to give her opportunities to be shocked. To say things she’d regret later.

‘My own granddaughter,’ she mutters, loud enough to be perfectly well heard. ‘Dressing up in a skirt like underwear.’

I put my indicator on, keeping my expression even. Ammuma gives me a suspicious glance. Granddaughters are hard work, that look says, ungrateful and liable to tangle with the wrong sort. She takes the rubber mouthpiece off her lap and slips it between her lips, where it takes over her breathing for her and blurs the rest of her words.

‘… should have taught you better.’

Should have? Would have? It’s a criticism – somebody’s at fault, somebody’s to blame – but like all Ammuma’s judgements it’s easily missed. She slips them out, somewhere between one breath and the next.

Karthika’s in the dining room when we get home, with an incense stick burning on top of the almirah. She’s hunched on a chair with her legs drawn up like a chicken about to lay. There’s a glance between her and Ammuma as we shuffle past to the hallway bathroom; a silent call-and-response I can’t interpret. We came to a sort of truce yesterday, all our quarrels broken down under the weight of cleaning that we had to do. She didn’t mention that great-grandmother of hers again. Why would she, when I’m scrubbing floors too?

‘Not this bathroom, ar.’ Ammuma stops at the bathroom door, her skirts gathered up ready in her arms. ‘Upstairs only.’

‘Ammuma, I can’t manage the cylinder on the stairs.’

She sets her teeth, looks mulish. ‘Upstairs only,’ she repeats.

I can feel the blood coming to my face. So easy to skid into a quarrel with Ammuma, and so hard to know better. Karthika looks at me with a malicious glare – See what I have to put up with, Durga-Miss? – and I slip my arm under Ammuma’s elbow.

‘Come on, then. I’ll help you.’

It’s a struggle to get her upstairs. My armpits are damp with sweat by the time we manage it, and the sugar-starch at the hem of my sari’s marked with stains of dust. She’s lost her temper, I’ve kept a finger-grip on mine and Karthika’s downstairs listening avidly to the whole thing.

Ammuma wants the bathroom cleaned before she’ll go in, so she props herself against the door while I upend the shower bucket. Water sloshes over the floor and she pushes past me, getting her feet and skirts soaked. Too dangerous, I’d have said any other time, too slippery for an elderly lady. In this mood, though, Ammuma’s more fierce than old.

‘Amma!’

I jump. It’s a high shriek, coming from Ammuma’s bedroom. I hurry across and push the door open. It’s Karthika’s baby, Rajneesh, sitting on the floor with his face scrunched in outrage. The sleeping mats have been dragged out from the box room to make a little nest, and he’s there in the middle holding a tiny pewter horse. It looks familiar, and after a second I recognize it as mine. It was a birthday present from Ammuma the year I turned seven. There are other toys scattered about, too – a battered velvet puppet that was once my favourite, and a feathery pen.

Rajneesh is in the middle of the toys, his face screwed up and his back arched, as though all he needs is the breath to scream. There’s a deep scratch on the back of one of his arms, the edges ragged and white. In a moment it’ll bleed.

‘What-all is happening?’ Ammuma appears at the door, still snappish with temper. ‘Durga, don’t bring that child up here.’

‘I didn’t!’

Rajneesh gets his breath and lets out another full-blooded howl. Karthika must be able to hear, but she’s choosing to stay put. Ammuma ignores it all magnificently, wagging her finger and lecturing me although I can’t hear a word over the screaming. I should know better, she’s saying inaudibly. Giving those good toys to a kampong brat, letting the servant-girl bring him up here without so much as a by-your-leave.

‘Karthika must have given him the things from my room,’ I say, over the screams. ‘Rajneesh, hush!’

I scoop him up, wrapping his cut arm in a fold of my best blouse. All this morning’s excitement of clothes-hair-makeup seems so far away; I should have known better than to pin my hopes on a good sari and some goldwork thread. Rajneesh pushes his face into my neck, then opens his fist. Something falls to the floor with a crack.

‘What?’

It’s a shard of china. I toe the blankets away, and find the cross-legged Indian doll from the box room underneath. He’s broken it accidentally, cutting himself on the jagged edges.

‘What’s that?’ Ammuma snaps, and I move so that she can see.

‘A doll, Ammuma. I found it in your box room yesterday. I think it’s Karthika’s –’

I stop. She’s turned pale.

‘Ammuma? Are you OK?’

‘Fine, fine.’ She bats my question away and shuffles closer, edging me out of the room.

‘Typical servant-girl,’ she adds. ‘Giving him your toys, and can’t even keep his own out of the house. You take him away, Durga.’

‘I’ll be right back, I promise. You can’t stay here, Ammuma. It’s dirty.’ I’m almost at the door now, with Ammuma’s not-quite-pushing.

‘You go now, Durga,’ she says again, more insistently. ‘You stay downstairs, with the child. I’ll tidy up.’

And the door closes in my face. Rajneesh is a damp and sobbing weight in my arms. He’s stopped screaming now, but his breath still comes raggedly and he’s pressing his wet face into