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

purrs to nobody in particular, and looking through the crowd sees Mrs Balakrishnan – Rajan’s mother – prick up her suspicious ears on the other side of the market. Mrs Balakrishnan frowns, swivels, leans forward to catch the whispers and looks black as thunder. Rajan won’t be marrying a bad wife, Mary resolves, with a comfortable lack of foresight. Not if she has anything to do with it.

17. Tuesday, 8 a.m.

The courtyard’s almost invisible behind sheeting water when I wake. Huge raindrops slam down onto the verandah roof and wet my feet with fine, bouncing spray. The prayer room’s been swept and the candles relit, with Ammuma’s sleeping mats piled up in a corner of the verandah. The clock in the hall finishes its chiming: eight o’clock. Time to go.

Karthika comes out onto the verandah as I shake the stiffness from my legs. She’s dragging a bucket full of dirty water, with her skirt tucked high between her legs. Her bare feet leave splay-toed prints on the concrete floor. She heaves the bucket to the edge of the verandah and spills water in an arc. Without turning round, she takes a deep breath.

‘Durga-Miss …’ she says, then stops. She’s frightened, I realize. She’s scared I’ve spent the night chewing over what happened with Tom; gnawing my way through shock and anger until now I’m after revenge.

‘Sorry, Durga-Miss,’ she says. She looks down into the empty bucket, standing on one leg. She cradles the other foot like a stork against her bulging knee. She’s swaddled Rajneesh under her flimsy blouse. ‘About last night, so sorry. A mistake is all. A mistake.’

That shuts me up. Karthika’s cleverer than I thought. She’s learnt to apologize, to grovel, to make excuses before anyone’s asked for them. She’d like to be vicious but if she can’t, she’ll be fragile.

‘You’re always meddling,’ I snap. ‘You go into my bedroom, you give Rajneesh my things. You tell lies about my … about Tom-Mister.’

Karthika looks taken aback. ‘No, Durga-Miss. I didn’t. I didn’t any of it.’

‘You’re just jealous. You want to meddle in my life because –’

Because yours went wrong. That peaked face, all nose and eye sockets, watching from above a mop as I went off to school. Those thin fingers picking fish from the bones I’d left on my plate.

‘No, Durga-Miss,’ she insists, more earnestly than I’d expect. ‘Not jealous.’

She looks down, and I can’t believe it, but there’s a blush creeping up her cheek. ‘Me and Tom-Mister are hati … in love. He says he wants to marry.’

‘He what?’

She smiles, unabashed and clear-eyed and greedy as any well-brought-up young lady. ‘Look, Durga-Miss,’ she insists. ‘Look.’

She starts undoing the buttons on her blouse. Rajneesh lies tightly swaddled against her ribs and I can see only the pale rind of his forehead. She pulls her blouse further apart to show me his skin gleaming against her flat brown breasts.

‘See how fair? Like Tom-Mister … just like.’ Her voice trails off. Gets quieter, more hesitant, as though for the first time she’s hearing just how it sounds. He’s Tom’s son, she’s saying, and I feel sick. Queasy, as the truth slips down like a cold pebble. He’s Tom’s blood and bone – foisted on her – in my bedroom, most probably. How did they do it without Ammuma hearing? Did she want him like I did? Did she not want him at all? She’s my little sister, for what that’s worth.

‘So you can stop saying this, all of it,’ she finishes, with a sudden tawdry bravery. ‘I’m not jealous, no need of jealous. Tom-Mister loves me. He says it serious.’

‘Karthika …’

And in the middle of this horror, it’s somehow funny. She looks so small, so fierce. So much like a servant-girl, the old Durga would have thought.

‘Karthika, Tom isn’t – you don’t really believe Tom’s going to marry you?’

She doesn’t reply. Perhaps she hasn’t understood; she’s not at home in English, where her elbows stick out and nothing quite fits. And I’m angry, all of a sudden. At Tom, at myself. At Karthika, who’s had what I haven’t and got what I’d have loved to refuse.

‘You’d better stop saying things like that. You need to be modest, in your position.’

She stares at me, then her face suddenly crumples and she slams her foot against the empty bucket. Her thick toenails crack against the rim and it tumbles away. She balls her fists up in the folds of her too-large red nylon skirt and turns her back on me. I can guess what she’s thinking. Modesty’s no good to her; won’t turn sequins into real gold or a red nylon skirt into a threadwork sari. Won’t turn her into a girl who could have any man she wanted, instead of a girl who’s already had several she didn’t.

She stamps over to the sleeping mats, her lower lip pushed out and her eyebrows arrowed. Ammuma would say that I shouldn’t encourage her by talking to her. Give her an inch, Ammuma says, and she’ll take it, too.

As Karthika pulls the mats together I see something in the corner, a shapeless flop of canvas against the wall. Tom’s bag. I quickly grab it as she stamps out of the room. The canvas straps are dark and stiff with sweat and cologne. Last night comes back to me with an ache in my belly. His fingers on my skin. A lick of his sweat on my tongue. And then Karthika, peering through the door with her eyes bright and vicious as a movie pontianak.

I hold the bag up, breathing in its smell. There’s an address tag on it, a hospital-issued paper strip, with TOM HARCOURT in bold black letters. The address is Jalan Seroja, one of the streets on the outskirts of Lipis.

‘Aiyoh, Durga,’ Ammuma’s voice makes me jump. ‘Should be going already.’

She’s standing by the verandah entrance watching me. ‘Got packed, is it? Some