Shadow Theatre (12 page)

Why lie about his name? That was what had worried me.
That was how I knew something more was up. Giving the
father's real name would not have hurt him. If he were
Singaporean, it would have been a different matter, because then
there would be his reputation to consider, and if he were married, worse. I had considered that he might be married. Maybe
he already had children. But he was in America. Nothing that
happened here was going to touch him. Why go through the
trouble of hiding his name? Especially since this was one lie that
was doomed to show up as a lie, sooner or later. This baby was
going to be born, and there was going to be a birth certificate to
fill out. How far was Shakilah willing to go? Was she going to lie
to her child as well? My grandchild. Imagine the love already
planted in me for this sweet chiku in my daughter's womb.

When had I known she would be a girl? I knew it without
having to put my hand on Shakilah's womb, which is the easiest
way to tell with babies. But this one was my own granddaughter. I could hear her. Shakilah didn't know this, or if she did, she
never let on that she knew. You were quiet. I didn't even know
you were there. But your sister's soul could speak, and before she
realized your mother didn't want her to speak to me, we were
already communicating. No, not with words. Not her. Only I
used words, because after birth, the body always needs words,
when the soul goes into hiding. But your sister and her soul
were still one entity. She didn't need words, yet. I could hear her
clearly every time, like windy music, like rain on a leaf. Then
suddenly she stopped. I kept calling to her, but she would not
answer, and I didn't know why, at first. Tell me why you're angry
with me, I asked her. So then she told me, and poor thing, I could
feel her nervousness. I didn't ask her how she knew, because
some things between mother and daughter mustn't be interfered
with, and I thought I could set an example for her. I knew from
the very beginning, for her own sake, there were questions she
must never ask.

Nothing teaches like example. Understand what this means
about why I tell the story this way.

So I had to find another way to find out who your father
was. No, not to satisfy my own curiosity. This wasn't curiosity.
I was taking an enormous risk when I went into your mother's
room that day. We were already estranged. It wouldn't be an
exaggeration for me to say we had spoken no more than twenty sentences to each other, in the whole week since she had
come home. I didn't know why, but I could feel your mother's
anger swimming around me. I wouldn't have gone into her room
if it weren't out of necessity. Love was what led me there, love
for her, love for your sister. How could I protect a granddaughter whose strengths and weaknesses I didn't know?
Sometimes it's possible to foretell the evils that await a birth. Think of inherited strengths as scars from previous births, like
antibodies in the blood, left from battles fought by the ancestors when they themselves were born. That was what I was
looking for. I was looking for clues.

SHAKILAII ('01 11.1) HAVE hidden everything better. That was
what made me wonder if she had suspected I might go through
her things. Maybe she was hoping I would. I thought this at the
time. I thought it was her way of telling me what she couldn't
bring herself to say. Either she couldn't say it to me face to face,
or she was afraid to hear her thoughts turned into words, afraid
to give them that physical reality, so to speak. Words would
harden them, surround them with borders and sharp corners.
Words would imprison them. Shakilah knew the price of
speech. She knew language was a cage with no door. Start
speaking, and the only direction possible is forward, deeper into
the cage. Speaking is not writing. Understand the difference.
Writing happens between the body and the soul. Speaking happens outside the body, always threatening the soul, just as food
threatens the body even as it feeds it. For all her Americanness,
my daughter knew there was no such thing as free speech. Truly,
it was just an American dream.

The matchbox was the easiest to find, lying in the side pocket of her satchel. Her satchel was lovely, all leather and well
stitched, with three compartments on the inside, and five loops to
hold her pens. That was how I knew she was doing well over
there, so it wasn't a money situation that had brought her back.
And the matchbox was a perplexing clue, obviously a souvenir,
but very odd. When I picked it up, it seemed to glow for a
moment, but I thought maybe it was just a trick of the light. This
was around half-past twelve in the afternoon. The air was still
damp from the previous night's rain, even though the ground
outside looked dry, so the light felt strange, so glossy and fluid, a diaphanous film pressing over us. But it was only because of the
dampness, I told myself. There was nothing wrong with the sun. I
could see it overhead when I peered out of the window and looked
up. There it was, that morning draped in a white circular mist suspended in the sky. The left eye of our first ancestor, the eye closer to the heart, understand. I had never seen it look like this, but
truly, I thought nothing of it. No, I wasn't ignoring what had happened the previous night. Let me tell the story my own way.

The matchbox had been painted red, on the sides and on
the back. On the front was a picture, also painted on, of a bride
and bridegroom, holding hands inside a wavy border made with
gold thread glued onto the box. It looked like a wedding picture
to me because of the way they were dressed, the man in a black
tuxedo, the woman in a red satin gown, and she wore flowers in
her hair. Bougainvillea, I thought at once, even though the flowers were tiny. They had the fragile air of bougainvillea. The wall
behind the woman's head was bright yellow, and decorated with
a few floating leaves, dropping from a tree branch that wasn't in
the picture. Both the man and the woman had black hair, and
beige skin. I assumed they were American, maybe from
California, where the climate's warm enough and sunny enough
to grow bougainvillea.

So the father isn't blond. That was the first conclusion I drew,
before looking inside the box. The second was that his eyes
were not blue, because the man and the woman both had dark
eyes. Then I pulled out the little drawer, because I could feel the
weight of something rolling about inside.

There was a tiny transparent capsule containing reddishbrown dirt, a tiny doll made of threads of different colors, and a
tiny strip of white paper, folded in half. Was the doll American
voodoo? Knowing your mother, I wouldn't have been surprised,
but when I moved my hand over the open drawer, I felt nothing.
No energy from anyone's soul was trapped inside. Then I unfolded the strip of paper. On it was printed, Leave the past behind.

I looked at that sentence a long time. Then I folded the strip
of paper and put it hack into the box. I closed the drawer and
dropped the box into the side pocket of the satchel, and I slid the
satchel into the narrow space between the bureau and the bed,
exactly where I had found it, I thought. Then I walked around the
bed to where her suitcase was lying on top of her old desk.
Shakilah still hadn't unpacked her clothes and most of her things
were in the suitcase, so I opened it slowly. I felt underneath her
clothes, slipping my fingers carefully between the layers so as not
to ruffle them, and I found the other things, the other details of
her life in America which she couldn't tell me about.

That was when I was forced to put two and two together.

NO. I I F R FRII. N►) Rose didn't know, even though she and your
mother used to be best friends. Rose never had that kind of
wildness in her, and with a mother like Helena, besides.

No wonder Eve would look so broken-hearted whenever I
saw her. Back when Shakilah had first left, and the loneliness
had been unbearable, the house so silent in the evenings, I used
to go for walks. Sometimes if it was the right time, Eve would
be outside her house, watering the jacaranda as usual. No wonder sometimes she would look up when I passed by, and look at
me in that way. I had thought she understood my sorrow, and
for a while, I was even afraid she might have guessed at the
truth, because of the way she would look at me.

And all that while, she had been searching my face to see if
I had guessed her secrets.

IMAGI NF ►►A\IN(;' )M►►►IIN(;likethatstabyouintheback.
Your daughter, your own daughter whom you've raised, whom
you've gone through fire to protect, so to speak. You start wondering if you did it too late, if your lack of courage made you wait too long. And what about now? What should you do now?
What should you do about your granddaughter?

So I knew why she was out for so long that morning, when
she had gone for a walk by herself.

I could hear her and Rose talking downstairs when I woke
up from my nap. (Zaida's daughter Mahani had also come over
that day, but she had left by then.) I wasn't feeling refreshed,
not at all. There was still a bit of a headache throbbing behind
my eyelids, but it was faint, not the blinding pain that had built
up while I was sitting in Shakilah's room earlier. I had never had
a headache like that, arrows of pain shooting down my sides,
into my arms and my thighs. And how my right hand had
burned. A single sharp pain in it, like a red-hot iron needle passing
through my palm. No, I had no explanation and I wasn't looking
for one. There are more things in heaven and earth, Mercutio, than are
dreamt of in your philosophy. No, Mercutio never heard those
words, because he was in the other play with Romeo. But he,
too, was fated to die. You see how we forget the one that's not
directly in front of us. Yes, this story's wandering about a bit.
Believe me, it's the only way.

At least, I had managed to sleep a bit. Always be thankful
for small blessings.

THE WORST WAS yet to come. What was I being tested for? Or
was it punishment? When she told me what she was thinking
about, I was stunned. I couldn't speak for a few seconds. I could
only stare at her, at this daughter who had grown within my
womb, whose delicate head had once fit perfectly against my
palm. When I used to cuddle her, my fingers would close so easily around the side of her head, and I would hold her like that,
her earlobe rubbing on my middle fingertip, her skull so fragile
beneath my thumb, I would check for marks whenever I put her
down, nervous about leaving a bruise on her. This daughter I used to sing to, very softly after Ben had fallen asleep, partly so
as not to wake him, but also because I knew her eardrum was so
tiny and new, I was afraid to burst it. This daughter, whom I had
loved even before she was born. How could she say she didn't
trust me? In a voice so empty, so devoid of feeling. Had she
wandered so far from herself? What had happened to her soul
in America? What was going to happen when she went back?
Because no matter the cost, there was no question that she had
to go back, I thought. Your mother was never safe here. Even
she knew it. The question was how not to give in to my longing to keep her home, especially now that she seemed so lost,
and with another life to think about. Another soul, not yet born
and still tender. And I didn't even know about you.

What did Shakilah mean, she didn't trust me? That was
what I was wondering when she said it.

You know what I mean, Mama."

She must have read the question in my eyes. Shock and confusion had paralyzed my face. She could see that, obviously. She
must have expected it. She had even hoped for it, I thought, as I
looked at her sitting there on the couch, with her hands folded
in her lap, as if she were demure and ladylike, which as a teenager she had never been. I could see she was a woman now, your
mother. I could feel within her the wall surrounding her soul, so
that I could no longer reach it. Within that wall was a desert
so bleak like the Gobi, miles of dusty sand where her soul was
wandering. Was she going to take her daughter's soul there as
well? Mama, if something happens to me, I want Eve Thumboo to take care
of my baby. I've already asked her. Not a shiver in Shakilah's voice
when she had said that, when she had looked me straight in the
eye and informed me she was going to give away my granddaughter, and not only that, but give her away to the woman
who had already grabbed one child from me.

Finally, I found my voice, but it was shaky. "I don't know
what you mean," I told her. "Tell me what you mean, Shakilah."

She just looked at me.

It was close to six o'clock. Rose had left around half-past
five, with a sheepish expression on her face as she apologized for
not being able to stay for dinner that evening. Now I knew why.
Helena herself had stopped by with Bernadette, under the pretense of bringing over some of her pineapple tarts for Shakilah.
Wait till they found out about this, I thought. My headache was
building up again, a dull pain this time, a sluggish ache centered
in my crown and sending thin roots down. I could feel the darkness that was coming as I shut my eyes for a moment. The night
was already moving through the trees, heaving against our walls.
The pain ripped through my shoulders. I felt it enter my chest,
but it didn't go lower than my navel.

"Shall I get you some aspirin?" Shakilah asked, but her voice
didn't sound willing or concerned. It sounded exhausted, fed up,
even though she was trying to hide it. As a mother, you can hear.

I shook my head and opened my eyes. Outside, the air still
carried a dim light, the paltry glow of the sun as it was going
down, but in the living room twilight had already arrived. I
thought about switching on the lamp on the end table beside
me, but my arms felt heavy. I thought, what would be the point?
I was also afraid of what else I might see in your mother's eyes,
if the light in the room grew brighter. I couldn't look at her anymore. I stared at my hands. How ugly they had become, how
dry and old and useless. As always, I was aware of not wearing
my wedding ring. At least, I didn't have to wear it anymore.
Shakilah must have noticed this, but she hadn't said a word
about it.