Kalpana's Dream (7 page)
Lucy began to sob. ‘I was helping you!’
‘
Helping
?’
‘Yes! Now you’ve got two of all of them. If you lose one, like you thought you’d lost the green one, then you’ve got an extra–’
Kate rushed to the door. ‘Mum!’ she bellowed down the hallway. ‘Mum! Mum! Mum!’
It was late. Kate lay listening to Lucy snoring. Like an engine ticking over, she thought, stoking up for a fresh new day. ‘I hate that sound, ’ Kate whispered to herself. ‘I hate it more than any other sound in the world.’ She glanced across at her sleeping sister. ‘And I hate
her
.’
All at once she remembered what Molly Matthews had said on the day Ms Dallimore had handed out their essay: how what you loved showed who you were.
And if that was true, then wouldn’t it be the same with what you hated?
Kate slipped from her bed, grabbed her workbook and hurried down the hall. The living room was empty: Mum and Dad had long since gone to bed. It was quiet and peaceful; the dark at the windows made Kate feel as if she had the whole world to herself.
She opened her workbook and picked up her pen. ‘I am a person who hates my little sister, ’ she began, and then, beneath the garlanded title, her pen began to
fly
. Across the page, and the next page, and the next – it was wonderful, marvellous. She could actually describe stuff, the way she’d never been able to do before: like the way her scalp began to itch when Lucy got her
really
angry, as she’d done tonight, an itching which grew and grew until it was like the pricking of a thousand little knives . . .
It was two in the morning when her mother appeared at the door.
‘Kate, what are you
doing
?’
Kate looked up with a dazzling smile. ‘I got an idea for my essay, and I wanted to write it down before l forgot, so I came down here.’ She added virtuously, ‘I didn’t want to turn the bedroom light on in case I woke Lucy up .’
‘Oh, ’ said her mother, startled by the wild gleam in her daughter’s eye. Mrs Sullivan padded across the carpet in her old felt slippers and placed a cool hand on her daughter’s forehead. It wasn’t hot at all.
‘Well, go to bed now, ’ she told her. ‘It’s very, very late and you’ve got school tomorrow.’
‘She was doing homework, ’ Mrs Sullivan told her husband a few minutes later, when she was sure Kate was safely tucked in bed. ‘At least that’s what she said – I hope she’s not sickening for something.’
‘She’ll be right, ’ said Trevor Sullivan sleepily.
‘Perhaps she’s growing up, Trev.’
Kate’s dad sighed and turned over. ‘I’d better get on with that sleep-out then – sometime soon.’
‘
Very
soon, ’ said Mrs Sullivan firmly.
Neema lay on her bed thinking about the flying boy. She’d seen him again this afternoon; she’d glanced through the window halfway through music and there he was playing cricket on the oval with the Year Eight boys. The way he ran, with a long, loping stride, had seemed utterly familiar to her. Now she knew he was in Year Eight, only a year older than her. But she still didn’t know his name and she didn’t want to ask anyone. It could be embarrassing to ask the name of a boy at school.
Sheep, shepherd, lamb: if she could work out why those words kept coming into her head whenever she thought of him . . .
‘Nirmolini?’
A small wrinkled face peered round the edge of the door. A wisp of floaty white sari.
Nani!
Neema sat up quickly, pulling her skirt down over her knobbly knees.
Nani had been with them a whole week now, and she wasn’t the least bit like bossy old Gran, but it was all sort of – awkward. How Neema wished she’d learned Hindi back when she was younger, as Mum and Dad had suggested. But it hadn’t seemed important then. Why learn Hindi when Mum spoke English all the time, and Gran too, when she was here? Why waste every Saturday morning at the Indian Culture School, when there were so many other things you could do?
And now . . .
Nani stood in the doorway.
‘
Soti ho kya
?’ she asked Neema, making a small rocking motion with her hands.
That must mean ‘sleep’, thought Neema. Nani must be asking if she’d been asleep.
‘Oh, no, no, ’ she said quickly, politely, the way she always spoke to Nani. ‘I wasn’t asleep, you didn’t wake me up or anything. I was just having a rest, lying here, thinking about, um . . .’ she tailed off, hearing her own silly voice rattling round the room.
She was gabbling again. She sometimes did that when she found herself alone with Nani – talked really fast, as if she couldn’t stop, because she was embarrassed that she couldn’t understand a word her great-grandmother said. And Nani kept trying to talk to her. Nani would try to tell her something, and then stand there silently, waiting, as if she expected Neema to reply. But how could she, when she didn’t know what Nani had said, and couldn’t give any answer that Nani might understand? So Neema gabbled on in English to fill the silence up.
There was a silence now.
Nani stood patiently, a little way inside the room, her gaze fixed intently on her great-granddaughter’s face. Studying it, thought Neema, as if her face was some kind of map and Nani was searching for a special landmark there. It made Neema long to run away – and then it made her feel mean, for wanting to.
Because Nani was lovely. She was gentle and kindly, and she loved all three of them; you could see it in her face. You could see it especially at dinner-time – now that Nani insisted on doing all their cooking – in the way she ladled her marvellous food onto their plates (Mum didn’t think it was marvellous, but Dad and Neema did) and then watched while they ate it, as if giving food was a kind of love.
Neema sprang up and began to bustle round the room, picking things up and putting them away, a set stern expression on her face, as if she was very busy and had important stuff to do. She went to the desk and shuffled the folders there, and Nani followed her, two small steps behind. She pointed to the sheet of paper, still blank except for Neema’s name and the title of Ms Dallimore’s essay.
‘
Iskool ka kaam
?’ she said.
Neema could tell it was a question because Nani’s voice went up a little at the end. ‘It’s homework, ’ she said.
‘
Kaisa kaam
?’
Now she must be asking what kind of homework it was, like Gran did when she came to visit; only Nani’s voice wasn’t bossy like Gran’s, it was soft and rather shy.
‘For English. It’s an essay.’ Neema’s voice sped up again. ‘Well, it’s not an essay yet, because I haven’t really started it. No-one has, except for Kate, and she’s actually finished hers. Can you believe that?
Kate
! And it’s the kind of essay where it’s really hard to think of anything to say. Like, I don’t know–’ Neema broke off on a sudden gasp, and Nani stood there, still studying her face.
Neema smiled uncertainly, and then Nani studied the smile, frowning slightly, as if there was something wrong with it, as if it was the wrong sort of smile.
It was. Neema could see her face reflected in the wardrobe mirror, a face that hardly looked like hers. Her mouth was a stiff quirky shape, and her little dimple didn’t show. Oh, how she wished Nani would leave her alone!
And as if she’d heard that very thought Nani turned away sadly and walked out through the door.
Gone.
Neema stood and listened to the soft brushing sound of Nani’s bare feet on the polished boards of the hall. ‘Nani!’ she called guiltily, running after her.
Nani turned round.
‘Goodnight, ’ said Neema. ‘Goodnight, Nani.’
Goodnight. Kalpana knew that word. Indeed, she knew many English words which she’d picked up from Usha, long ago when her daughter was small and had gone to the English Language School. But she couldn’t bring herself to say them out loud to other people; she was afraid they might sound thick and stupid in her voice. That people might laugh . . .
‘You are too proud, always, ’ Sumati often said, ‘too proud in little things.’ And she was, thought Kalpana. Too proud to risk one single word, even to her lovely great-granddaughter, Nirmolini.
‘
Soja beti
, ’ she said instead, which meant, though Neema didn’t know it, ‘sleep well, my child’.
Was that goodnight? wondered Neema. Should she repeat it, then? But what if it meant something else? Like, ‘Go away, you heartless girl!’ Or what if it was a phrase that, in India, only old people were allowed to use?
So Neema only smiled again, that stiff uncertain smile she always gave to Nani, which froze her soft features and concealed the small dimple that showed when she truly smiled.
Dear Sumati
, wrote Kalpana.
I am happy to hear that you have arrived safely at your sister’s place
after the long train journey from Ahmedabad and those many troublesome
hours on the bus.
Yes, you are right: some of these bus drivers are ignorant fellows
indeed! To think that he would boss you around: refuse to let you take
your sack of sweet potatoes onto the bus – the sweet potatoes you bought
for your sister Lakshmi from Ratan Lal’s stall! Everyone knows that
Ratan Lal’s sweet potatoes are the best in all India, perhaps even in the
world. That this bus driver should throw them on the roof-rack! And that
later, in the mountains, you would look out through the window and see
them tumbling down! And hear the other travellers cry out in distress,
believing your potatoes were stones and avalanche!
I am not surprised to learn your throat is sore from shouting (take
lemon and best honey, mixed together, warm) and yes, you may be right
again: that driver may have been a school teacher in his former life, and
for his sins will surely be a cockroach in the next.
Here it is very strange, Sumati, so strange it would take many pages to
tell. The city is as big as Delhi, and yet the street where my granddaughter
and her family live is empty in the middle of the afternoon! And at night,
Sumati – at night it is so quiet you would not believe! At home, even at
the latest hour, there is always some small sound to remind you that you
are among other humans on this earth: the rumble of an ox-cart on its
way to market, the chatter of late travellers passing by, a little snatch of
film-song from the rickshaw wallahs’ camp at the bottom of the road . . .
Kalpana put down her pen and walked to the window, drawing the curtain aside. The street outside lay still and silent; nothing moved except for a large white fluffy cat stealthily crossing the road. As Kalpana watched he leapt onto the gatepost and began to clean himself, then raised his head to stare at her with big round yellow eyes.
‘A cat, ’ said Kalpana, out loud in English. It was the first English word she had really learned, printed in big letters in her little daughter’s first English primer. They’d learned it together, all three of them, she and Sumati and Usha, on the verandah back home, long, so long ago.
Kalpana’s gaze drifted to the big tree in the garden, whose branches spread over the low flat roof of the garage. She’d known the moment she saw the tree that it was the same as the ones she’d seen in her flying dream: it was the same grey silvery colour and had the same long thin pointed leaves. ‘A gum tree, ’ Priya had told her, and in the streets of this suburb there were many gum trees, and somewhere, Kalpana knew, there would be a lake like the one in her dream with a bank of the silvery trees alongside.
Now there was a sound from the street. Faintly, in the distance, she heard a soft rhythmic clicking noise: ticktock, ticktock, ticktock – what could it be? The sound grew louder, the white cat sprang from its post and ran away and there, by the glow of the streetlight, Kalpana saw a tall thin boy sailing past the house, so fast he seemed to fly.
She blinked and rubbed her eyes. When she looked again the boy was gone. Perhaps she’d dreamed him, though as she listened, she could still hear that faint tick-tocking, growing softer and softer until it was swallowed into the thick silence of the foreign night. ‘
Uran khatola
, ’ she whispered. And then, more slowly, as she worked the English words out, ‘the – the flying boy!’
I have been having that flying dream again,
she wrote on to Sumati.
You know, the one you laughed about, where I was flying,
faster and faster, but only a simple hand’s height above the ground. But
you didn’t laugh, my dear Sumati, when I told you the feeling of my
dream: how if I flew fast enough, I would see my dear Raj’s face again;
I would see his special smile . . .
Gull Oliver skimmed along the moonlit street, heading back to his home in Delphi Drive.
That had been
her
house back there: he was certain of it now; he remembered that big gum tree, the way it leaned a little, spreading its branches over the flat roof of the garage. Back at Short Street Primary, Mrs Flannery had made sure all the Grade One kids who’d been chosen as ‘shepherds’ knew the houses where their lambs had lived, ‘Just in case, ’ she’d said.