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

‘Anil?’ she calls.

Anil moves slightly in his chair and raises his head.

‘Ma-ry,’ he says slowly, but doesn’t move.

Although Mary doesn’t know it, Anil’s long since given up expecting her or anybody else to come at all. Stephen and Radhika are both dead – and Anil refuses to think of that, just as Mary refuses to think of Rajan lying broken in a ditch somewhere – and Anil’s been surviving on fruit and well-water. Left alone, the devils have uncorked themselves from inside his head and sauntered about the house poking their noses into things that don’t concern them. He’s shut them up into rooms, he’s locked doors and blockaded passages until the only safe place is out on the verandah, but that hasn’t put them off. So, when he sees his sister walking down the driveway – when he knows she’s far away in Ipoh and irredeemably married – he can only conclude she’s a devil. A Mary-devil and a little-boy devil, dressed in a bright pink shirt.

They must be ghosts, thinks Anil, a trick of the light. And so he doesn’t move, not even when Mary runs up the stairs and pulls him into her arms. My great-uncle doesn’t believe all he sees these days, and very lucky for him, too.

21. Tuesday, 4 p.m.

I wrap the plait of hair back up in a neat roll. Ammuma’s never talked about those days, not straight out. She only ever mentions the war in opaque, allusive words – sometimes even in Tamil or Malay – as though if she tells it differently then this time it might turn out better.

I stare down at the trunks, crammed with tiny, tawdry presents. Here’s where Ammuma’s grief is, not in her words. She’s been packing it up in dolls and toys, in things the war took from Francesca. And she’s been taking them to Kampung Ulu. I don’t know why. Perhaps because Peony died there; one dead teenage girl being very much like another when it comes to grief. Perhaps not. Perhaps no reason at all but the windy demands of ghosts.

When I put the plait back I feel something papery stuck to the side of the tin. It’s a yellowed envelope, tucked in one corner. There’s faded tape across the back and Francesca written over the front. Inside are a few photographs, tacky with damp. They don’t look like they’ve been moved in years.

The first one’s Francesca as a girl, a sepia toddler of three years old with milk-teeth and satiny plaits. And another: Francesca looking like a little boy with short-cropped hair. Teenage Francesca in a copy of the picture from Ammuma’s shrine. And then, startlingly, a colour picture of almost-grown-up Francesca on the verandah downstairs. The steps look polished and swept, and Francesca’s dressed up like she’s going to a party. She must be fifteen or so, but she’s in babyish lace and a satin-sashed party frock. Ammuma’s behind her, leaning forward with her hands on Francesca’s shoulders. The puckered scar on her arm looks fresh, and far worse than I’d have thought, with the skin weeping off it in great sheets. To my surprise Francesca has smaller, patchier scars splashing up her arms too. She looks more helpless than she did in her three-year-old photo. She’s heavier than I expected, with her satin-covered stomach bulging out, and I wonder if I’m in that sepia world too. Biding my time.

There’s one more photograph, and in this one Francesca’s hugely, frankly pregnant. She’s lying in a starched white bed with metal railings and her stomach curves in a solid arc out from the sheets. There’s a birthday cake next to her, incongruous with its candles and scattered sweets. On the bedside table is a hairbrush, some torn wrapping paper, a brand-new doll, dressed as a princess. Ammuma sits on one side of the bed, holding Francesca’s hand and smiling at the camera. She has to lean over, because Francesca’s arms are scarecrowed above her head with her wrists bent out. The photograph’s overexposed and it takes a moment before I understand what I’m looking at. A metal rail. The shadow of a pillow. And a pair of handcuffs, manacling my mother to the bed.

I drop the photograph. My throat swells. I can’t breathe, then air scalds its way into my lungs. Francesca stares back at me from her picture. A birthday photograph, although her face gives no clue that she knows what’s happening. She’s blank, her mouth hanging open and a thread of spit lacing between her teeth.

I don’t know how long I sit there. From downstairs I hear sounds – little, creeping life-noises – but they seem very far away. The wind, the buzz of the radio, a flutter in the corner as a cockroach crawls. Everything’s melting together, blurred as though it’s behind a pane of broken glass. I’m cold, cramped, my fingers clenched tight over a faded envelope and toys scattered in my lap. Ghosts everywhere I look. Ghosts everywhere I don’t.

Gradually my heart slows down. I sit back on my heels, taking a deep breath. I dump the rest of the photographs back in the envelope, then examine this one more closely. There’s a fascination to it, a squirming horror that could turn the whole thing into a joke, if I let it. Villains and handcuffs and Ammuma at the middle of it all.

The picture isn’t very clear, but I can just make out some objects piled on the foot of the bed. I rub my thumb over the photograph. It’s a pile of books, tumbling over the taut sheet. Exercise books, in a bleached-out rainbow of colours. Green, mauve, black. Blue, for friendship. Red, for secrets and confidences that she never did keep too well.

I jump up, grabbing the tin tight to my chest. ‘Mother Agnes!’

The box-room door rebounds as I fling it open, leaving a dent in the