In the Shadow of the Banyan (29 page)

Mama noticed me staring, looked up, and attempted to smile. I went to her, bringing Radana along, and added our bundles to the pile. She paused, her body rigid, as if wanting to grab hold of us and smother us with kisses, but she dared not with the Kamaphibal around. Such wanton display of affection was against the teaching of the Revolution. She nodded for us to keep working. Picking up an armload of straw each, we continued on our way, heading toward the haystacks on the other side of the compound.

•  •  •

Finally the bell rang. We could stop working now and have our treat. Along with the rice flakes, everyone received a banana and a cone of sweet palm juice. “Come back later,” one of the wives of the Kamaphibal told me when she thought I was trying to get a second helping. I explained I wanted a share for Radana, and on hearing me the Fat One exclaimed, “Oh, is she even old enough to receive her own share?” I froze. Laughing, she scooped out Radana’s portion and offered it to me, along with a banana and another cone of palm juice. Hugging my hoard, I quickly left before the Fat One changed her mind.

I found Mama sitting on a spread of straw. Radana lay in her lap, yawning, looking as if she was about to doze off. At the sight of food, though, she suddenly sat straight up, bouncing with excitement, licking her lips, offering her arms to me in a gesture of a hug—sudden love. Mama seemed unable to bear the sight of Radana’s hunger. She got up and, looking at the queues of people waiting to receive their shares of rice flakes, said, “It might take me a while . . .” She sounded especially tired. “Let your sister sleep when she’s finished eating. Keep an eye on her. Don’t let her out of your sight.”

I nodded, cheeks stuffed with rice flakes and banana. Beside me Radana slurped the palm juice from the leaf-cone I held to her lips, making puppy sounds, reminding me of the twins, and without warning, tears sprung to my eyes, as I wondered if somewhere they too were hungry. I looked up at the full moon, allowing myself to believe the world was indeed small enough for this one orb of light to illuminate its entire surface, that somewhere under this same moon, this same sky, the twins and the rest of my family were safe and well fed, if only for this one single night.

We finished eating. Radana yawned, rubbing her eyes with her soiled hands, spreading the stickiness all over her face. I took the edge of my shirt hem, licked it, and wiped away the broken bits of food from her skin and hair, while she nodded and swayed, her body heavy with sleep. I steadied her and, with one arm supporting her neck, laid her down on the
kroma
. She fell asleep in an instant.

All around the compound, other children, especially the little ones like Radana, were seeking the comfort of their mothers’ arms, and if their mothers were not available in that moment for one reason or another, then they sought the security of a soft nook at the base of a tree or a whorl amidst the straw. It was late, perhaps near midnight from the feel of it, but I couldn’t be sure, it being so bright. Certainly it was time for sleep. Even the crickets and cicadas had quieted down. A hush now settled over the whole place as people moved sluggishly about putting away tools and baskets of threshed rice, gathering their belongings, readying themselves to return to their villages. We could all leave, but some people had yet to get their treat, many lingered hoping for seconds, and others simply wanted to rest and catch their breath, let food reenergize their bodies before starting the journey home.

Again, I looked up at the full moon, imagining Papa’s face looking down at me. I felt his presence everywhere. I wanted to be alone, gripped with an urge to speak aloud with him in complete privacy. I looked down at Radana. There was no harm in leaving her here, I thought. She was fast asleep. Besides, Pok and Mae were just a few feet away, slouching against a tree trunk by one of the fire pits, eyes closed, leaning into each
other, much as the Sweetheart palms on our land leaned into each other, their chests heaving in harmonious snoring.

I got up and weaved my way through the haystacks toward the woods beyond. There I took a familiar path, slipping seamlessly through the waist-high grass, my body light and inconspicuous as if I were a spirit, a shadow capable of moving through space without causing a ripple or break, until the grass reached all the way up to my shoulders. I walked round and round in the same spot, trampling the delicate, yielding blades to create a comfortable sitting place. It looked so inviting, the whorl I’d created, like a nest almost. It would be as good a place to sleep as any, I thought. The spot I’d chosen gave a clear, straight-shot view of the moon, with no tree or cloud in the way, and feeling safely nestled, I began to talk to myself, making no sense at all, testing my voice first before calling out to Papa, saying his name.

Suddenly I heard other voices. I stiffened and lowered myself to hide. The voices came from the direction of the footpath, accompanied by the sound of footsteps. Then came an abrupt swoosh, like someone slipping and falling. “Get up!” said a man, followed by the sound of a kick and a shove, then the footsteps moving forward again, and a second voice, “How dare you steal! Right under our noses!”

“It’s harvest and we are starving,” answered a third.

“Well, you won’t have to starve anymore. We’ll put an end to your misery. How do you like that?”

No response.

“So where will your final resting place be? The well over there, where the landowner and his family are, or the forest beyond, where we have taken all the others?”

Still no response.

“Let’s take him to the forest.”

They pushed and shoved. I dared not move from my spot.

•  •  •

I don’t know what path I took, whether I walked or ran or crawled, how much time had passed. When I arrived at the communal granary, my arms and legs and face were all scratched up, grazed by sharp grass and
whipping branches. Mama grabbed hold of my shoulders and, looking me up and down, demanded, “What happened to you? Where have you been?” She shook me so hard my head wobbled. “Where’s your sister?”

A cry came from one of the haystacks: “Mama!”

There was a whole army of them. They were as big as flies. Radana screamed, her arms shielding her face from the mosquitoes as if she were on fire.

twenty

B
ack at the hut Mama whipped me. With the spine of a coconut leaf so thin it felt more like hot wire across my back. Pok and Mae pleaded with her. They tried to pull me from her grasp, but she reminded them, “I’m her mother!”—they had no business interfering—then back to me, “I told you to watch your sister. You were supposed to keep an eye on her. Instead you let this happen. Look at her!” She pointed to Radana lying on the straw mat, her body covered with swollen bites. Even so, I knew this wasn’t about Radana, or me alone. This anger she unleashed was meant for something larger, for all that she’d lost. “You were careless. You deserve this. You’ve asked for this. Do you understand? You’ve asked for this!”

Yes, I understood. But I couldn’t speak.

“Answer me! Where were you when you left your sister alone?”

“Papa!” I heard myself cry when the spine of the coconut leaf slashed the small of my back.

She whipped me harder. “He—can’t—hear—you.” A lash for every word. “It’s—no—use—crying.”

But I wasn’t crying. I was only calling out to him. I saw him now through the open doorway. A luminous, fearless moon. He smiled, holding the world in his light. I wanted him to hold me, to caress my seared skin, to patch my broken love. I wanted him to hold Mama, make her gentle and lovely again, as he made the night seem gentle and lovely, despite the secret it shared with me.

“It’s no use crying,” she said again, tears rolling down her cheeks in long, lustrous strokes, like the lashes she lavished on my body. “He can’t hear you, do you understand? He can’t! He’s gone!”

Yes, I understood. Everything and nothing at all.

“Gone!”

“I’m sorry!” I cried as the coconut spine lacerated my shoulder. “I’m sorry I let them take him away!”

She stopped, as if stunned by my words. She threw the whip away, fell to her knees, and broke. Like a beautiful and fragile dream she broke, and everything broke with her.

•  •  •

Later that night the sky wept. I opened my eyes and saw her sitting in the doorway. Outside, it was almost pitch-black, the moon now hidden behind a curtain of rain. Rain that came in the middle of the dry season, the last fall before the earth cracked open.
Pliang kok
. Borrowed rain, Mae called it. Borrowed from another night, another loss. Above us the roof was leaking again. Mae got up to place a pot under the leak. She went to Mama’s trembling form in the doorway. “Come, child, come,” she said, her arms around Mama’s shoulders. Mama shook her head vigorously, like a child refusing comfort. Mae sighed and came back to lie down beside me on the mat. A minute or two passed, then I heard Mama’s voice—“Countless times I ask myself, Raami, what I could’ve done to stop your papa from leaving. There was nothing. Nothing I could’ve done, or that
you
shouldn’t have done. I know you think I blame you. Maybe a part of me wanted you to believe it
was
your fault, because, knowing why your papa did what he did—to save us—I couldn’t be angry with him. But the truth is no one, none of us, could’ve stopped him. He was who he was—he did what he believed was right. He stuck to his convictions.” She gave an ironic laugh. “Your papa’s poetry took him to great heights, Raami. But he didn’t see that up there he was fully exposed. They would eventually spot him, even if you hadn’t said his name.” She let out a breath, as if letting go all she’d kept hidden. “Words, they are our rise and our fall, Raami. Perhaps this is why I prefer not to say too much.”

I closed my eyes, counting the raindrops as they hit the metal pot,
tdock, tdock, tdock
. . .

•  •  •

In the morning, I found Mama outside stirring a pot of boiled lotus seeds over the cooking fire. The pot of rainwater was nearby. I walked to it, scooped some out with my hands, and drank, my parched throat remedied. She handed me a bowl of the lotus seeds. At first she was silent, wouldn’t even look at me. Then, as I sat down to eat, she said, “There was a mother . . .” Her voice was small, like the rustle of a leaf in an immense forest. “She loved her daughter so much that she’d give the child whatever the girl desired. One night while they were playing in the garden, the little daughter saw the full moon and wanted it. The mother tried to explain that the moon belongs up there. You can’t just pluck it from the sky like you would a fruit from a tree. But like any small child, the girl didn’t understand the moon isn’t something you possess. She cried and cried. So what could the mother do but give her daughter the moon? She brought a bucket of water, and pointing to the reflection, said, ‘Here’s your moon, my love.’ The little girl, delighted, plunged her arms into the bucket, and for hours she played with
her
moon, watching it dance and swirl.”

It was the first time, I realized, Mama had ever told me a story. All the stories I knew came from Milk Mother or Papa. Why? I wanted to ask. Why had she never told me a story before?
Words, they are our rise and our fall
. . . Why now, when all that was broken could not be mended with words?

“I’d give you anything,” she said. “Bring him back if only I could.”

I searched her eyes, and in their watery depths thought I saw his face. She turned away, wiping the side of her cheek with the base of her palm. Then, taking the bottle of iodine, which she’d obtained in exchange for one of Papa’s shirts, she colored the welts on my back, her touch as gentle and tentative, I imagined, as a brush on canvas.

I let her caress me, as she’d whipped me. One stroke at a time.

•  •  •

One afternoon, some days later, while we were cutting rice, Pok’s silhouette appeared like a mirage in the midday sun. He hurried across the rice
fields toward us. Mama abandoned her sickle on the ground and rushed to meet him. Malaria, he told her. Radana had malaria.

Back at the hut, Mama sat hugging Radana to her chest, a blanket around both their bodies, and I couldn’t tell who was shaking, she or my sister. Mae came in, lugging a basket of heated stones she’d wrapped in some rags. Mama looked up, pleading, “I can’t stop her from shaking! Please, tell me what to do.” Mae took Radana from Mama and, swaddling the blanket tightly around my sister’s tiny body, put her down on the straw mat. Then, one by one, she placed the heated stones around Radana, pressing them against the blanket. Still Radana shook, her teeth banging against one another—a horrible sound, like an animal chewing on its bones.

She’d been attacked with bouts of chills since the morning. The first one started soon after we’d left for work, Pok said, but since it was mild he and Mae thought it was a cold. Radana had had no fever, so they weren’t too concerned. Still, they kept a careful eye on her. The chills became more severe, each attack lasting longer than the one before, until there was no doubt in their minds this was malaria, which they themselves had suffered, as had countless others in the village. They knew the course of attacks well—first the chills, then the high fever, finally the pouring sweat and pounding headache. The chills Radana was having at the moment seemed to reach a peak. The whole hut shook with her.