lovecrimes.mp3
if we ever get caught, it'd be a long vacation for two
Mother fell sick at the end of summer, and I knew it was my doing. By the time she was bedridden, she talked to none of us, would only hum on the phone, as if to reassure us that the line was alive, and we must speak. Ask about her health, give her advice that meant nothing, act like the grownups we had left home to become. She was a devout precant, beginning and ending her days with fervent murmurs that would ring all around the house. Such was her devotion that she bent the rules of morphology – she melted into the prayer she held close to her, closer than any of us, for whom the prayer apparently was. The only sign she was Aware, to avoid using the more tangible word, was that she would turn the other way whenever anybody overstayed their welcome in her room.
I could not visit her, despite the fact that I was not showing. If I were showing, it would mean it was too late. It wasn’t. I was known to delay things to such an extent that even I would have to sit and hope for divine intervention. I had delayed living my entire life, and now was the time for the cruel joke’s punchline – the more I delay, the livelier It became.
What could I refer to It as, how do you define a sensation that grazes the definition of a tumor? I slept on my right side, so as to not stress my heart, and I would wake up in the middle of the night, with a lopsided feeling in my gut. I would wake up to the sound of the night, the refrigerator I could finally afford, the sound of somebody’s mobile from the construction site nearby, dogs crying – a sign that somebody was about to die. It made my heartbeat ring everywhere within me, which doubled the fear that It had grown beyond repair.
I tried writing letters to people I no longer talked to. Simply to say the scandalous thing I was nursing as my own Life Event Presently. I tried walking out at odd hours, hoping I would end up falling, or getting hit by a car – a convenient accident that would hit exactly where it would hurt. When your leg gets sawed off, do you feel the pain of the limb that no longer exists? When you hurt yourself and you feel that pain, are you strong, or are you weak?
I walked around the house, my feet heavier than usual. It reminded me of how I could hear him moving around the house, even when I was sitting on the bed, him out of sight. I could hear him approaching me, I would worry that the downstairs neighbour might be bothered. I was worried about everything, things that didn’t even concern me. I was always jittery and nervous and scared. I am sure he got tired of it all, at least on some days, but he never complained. He never said anything, even when I was at my worst. I could never explain myself to him fully; in some stubborn sense of romance, I wanted him to figure it all out.
That is what he left me to do. To figure It out. When I went out to the market, I still bought cigarettes — to appear Normal. I would stare at women, past the cusp of motherhood, past the cusp of the ability to bear something capable of hurting them in the future and instinctively put my hand on my stomach. I would stare at little kids and see my younger self staring back at me. Stupid girl, stupidest girl on the block. Who asked you to go looking, go living? Why are you so greedy? Why did you think you would be lucky and be loved in a way that mattered?
I would shake that feeling off, but it would serve as a reminder to call my mother. She was the juxtaposition of it all – beyond motherhood, but not beyond the ability to critique her life’s biggest project. I would tell her what I saw in the market, what I was planning on cooking, and she would maybe whisper a sentence or two, but I would understand nothing. I would proceed to apologise about not being able to visit her, but that I would, soon. Soon. Once I sorted my days. This activity occurred every day.
I would go back home and stare at my phone screen, gathering courage. I was lonesome, I was sad. I was everything. I was about to be. I was expecting. I was courageous. I was the most important woman in somebody’s life once.
Mother was not getting better. She didn’t even pick up the phone anymore.
I set a date to visit her, but I knew it wasn’t for that.
I let a week pass. Monsoon was in full swing now. I walked on the terrace in slippers, deliberately. I wanted to slip. Slip down the stairs, like I did one summer, and ended up with a gash on my thigh. I felt possessed, but it wasn’t parasitic. It was symbiotic to the point of sustenance. I felt hungrier. I felt lethargic. I had a personal reason, a secret, to delay living further. I would eat all the fruits I could find on the fruit carts in the market. I would sometimes not even wash them. The rain was doing its job. I would slice open anything that I could, so that I didn’t do it to myself. I was possessed but I was possessing It too, I was letting it in on all my innermost secrets, without even having to speak.
It was time to end it all. I knew I wasn’t going to find a hand to hold through it all. I knew I was too old to think of romance, of “through thick and thin,” of “in sickness and in health.”
It rained pretty heavily that night; I was set for an appointment the next day. It was a little daunting to figure it out, but I had emailed a friend, a doctor friend, who was patient, kind, and asked no questions. He set it up for me. I just had to reach there, which wouldn’t be tough. I always knew how to end up in places.
It took an hour, or maybe a month, but I woke up with nothing changed. I was recommended less strain on my body, some rest, and was asked a couple of questions skirting around the edge of knowing where the other party was, My Other At Every Party. I just stayed quiet. I was my mother’s daughter.
I went home, smoked a cigarette, packed a bag. I did not eat any of the fruits. They all seemed to be from a past life, seemed to be a part of the backdrop, a painting. They would have rotted by the time I returned.
I called my mother. She picked up. She told me she walked around on the terrace that day. She spent the previous night throwing up, nursing a migraine. Throughout the years, that was the sign that she was about to get better.
I went back to my bed to lay down on my stomach, just to feel a weight that had just started to feel familiar, at least in my heart.
The fruits rotted anyway. Everything felt disgusting for a few days. I consoled myself by stooping to desperation. At least I was loved enough once, even if I was alone in the consequences.
i love you
what colour were the 'fruits from the past life'?