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

witchery in that coiling wind; there might be devilment setting the kitchen cats hissing under the table. I could frighten myself like this if I had more time, but Ammuma needs a beaten egg soaked in milk, and my suitcase still needs packing. No witchery here, just an extra pair of hands.

‘Mary-Auntie! Hello, hello.’

The shout comes as I’m turning up one of the hurricane lamps. The wick flares and goes out, singeing my face and plunging the verandah into gloom. Tom. Here without so much as a by-your-leave, expecting us all to jump and flutter and burn our fingers into the bargain.

‘I heard you were discharged yesterday, Mary-Auntie.’ He comes up the verandah steps two at a time, with a rucksack slung over his shoulder. I relight the lamp, sending a sudden glare over my face, and he gives a start.

‘Durga!’

Ammuma huffs, something between a cough and a scold, and Tom immediately turns to her. He knows how to please, kicking his shoes off – one lands in a dusty corner and lies there in all its Italian-leather glory – and sitting cross-legged by her chair. He slings his rucksack into a corner with the shoes and the dust and me. You’d almost think he’s delighted to be here, sitting with his trouser-creases getting ruined and mosquitoes crawling down into his collar.

‘So good to see you home again, Mary-Auntie,’ he says. ‘Dr Rao said you were his best patient.’

She snorts again. On the one hand she’d like to send him packing – out into the night you go, and no thanks for sniffing around my granddaughter – but she can’t resist the urge to boast.

‘Taking antibiotics,’ she tells him. ‘And also this cylinder. Heavy one, but already helping.’

She pats it with pride. She’s brighter when she’s got someone to perform for. She likes Tom, likes the gossip he brings back from work. So much more interesting than a granddaughter and her mathematics.

‘One of the Varghese kids came in with measles today,’ Tom tells her absently. He’s patting her hand and making a big performance out of inspecting the oxygen cylinder. He takes her rubber mouthpiece and bends it back and forwards against his palm.

‘One of our best, this is,’ he says, and Ammuma beams. He doesn’t mind humouring her – of course not, he doesn’t have to live with it – and in return she softens.

‘Dr Rao said this was important. And the dressing-paste also. See? Here, for the bandages. He’s a good boy, this Dr Rao.’

Not half an hour ago she was fretting, sure her burns were worse and calling Dr Rao a jumped-up quack who couldn’t tell rice from grass. I roll my eyes and stand up, brushing dust from the seat of my skirt.

Tom smiles at me. ‘Durga can help you with the bandages, can’t she?’ he says.

Ammuma’s head whips round. She’d nearly forgotten I was there. Huddled in the dark, getting up to who-knows-what behind her back. Going to the bad, most likely.

‘Durga won’t be here, lah. Going back to her job.’

There’s a silence, stretching out between the three of us. I thought Tom would have said something. At the very least he could have been polite and sorry-to-hear-you’re-leaving, or perhaps he could have swept me off my feet and carried me into the night. But he just coughs, rubs his jaw. I’m too heavy for carrying, that much is clear. There’s too much solidity in my bones.

‘Why don’t I bring some tea, Ammuma?’ I ask briskly.

She’s pleased enough at that, asks for gem biscuits too and some of the watermelon. She doesn’t want me around Tom, not even on my last night. Too risky, too easy to slip and spill my virtue everywhere.

I walk slowly to the front room. I’m not wearing my best sari any more, only an ordinary skirt and blouse crumpled from my suitcase. But underneath, where nobody can see, I’m still wearing silk. It’s slippery stuff that shivers and slinks, a set of underwear I bought in Canada to wear for Deepak. It’s a sunrise pink, it’s the exact colour of the flush on Tom’s throat and it’s far more beautiful than me.

I stand still, listening to the trickle of voices from the verandah. The room’s almost black, with only a weak glow filtering in from the compound at the back where Karthika’s lit a fire. There’s a smell of boiled sugar from the sweets Karthika cooked to be placed in front of my mother’s shrine. Silverfish scuttle in the corners, and a few scorpions hang black and ponderous on the ceiling. There’s nothing in here that can hurt, I tell myself – a little heartache, a little poison – if only you keep your wits about you.

‘Durga?’ Tom’s a bulky, formless shape, coming in from the verandah. His bare feet pad on the floor with a sound as wet as buttermilk.

‘Are you really going?’ he asks quietly.

‘I can’t stay,’ I tell him. There are lectures, I explain, research grants to apply for, Anwar doing double-duty teaching all my classes. They give me some logic to brace against.

‘You’re cross about yesterday,’ Tom says. ‘I know we arranged to meet, but I’m sorry, Durga, I just forgot –’

From Tom, who thinks that forgetting is a crime. He wouldn’t have forgotten Peony, I think – and then, I’m suddenly sick of it all. Sick of the past, which Ammuma rightly says is all blood under the bridge. Sick of ghosts, who should know their place and wait their turn. I feel the heat of Tom’s body next to mine and remember lying on the prayer-room floor. I remember his fingers, slippery and seeking and finding their home. There’s a stir in my belly and a trembling in my thighs. And so what if I’m no better than all those girls who’ve gone to the bad or gone to the devil, just like Ammuma warned me about. I’m exactly like them, under the skin. Looking for happy endings, looking for proofs, looking for love