Friday, 10 September 1993
‘I’m going to let you in on a secret,’ said Sukhbir, sidling up beside her, his head silhouetted against the golden glow of the afternoon sun, only now parting the twin gable ends across the street.
Clasping her diary close to her, Satya glanced back at her brother wearily. The garden had been peaceful momentarily, the gentle jasmine-like scent of those delicate white blooms winding above her soothing her awkwardness away, the pink nicotiana by her feet trumpeting their sweet fragrance all around. The makeshift arbour, threaded with potato vines and Eden roses was supposed to camouflage her, its untamed summer growth cloaking her from her petulant siblings.
‘What now?’ she groaned languidly.
‘I know where you’ve been the past three days,’ he said.
From within, a sharp pain pushed through her abdomen, an itch landing on the back of her neck, but she did not respond to that pulsating heat burning across her skin. Her eyes fell on the ripening pumpkins in the onion bed instead, their spindly threaded tendrils promising a winter of hearty soups and curries.
‘Cat got your tongue, Satya?’ laughed her brother.
‘Cat?’ she spat, animated suddenly, her gaze darting around the garden in search of that uninvited guest, forever despised. ‘No more gifts,’ she muttered, shaping her hand as a pistol and taking aim, ‘I’m going to kill that cat when I catch it.’
‘Nice deflection, bhenji. But it won’t work. I saw you. Your secret’s out.’ He grinned at her cruelly. ‘Yeah, forget those stinky surprises. There’s another cat for you to worry about now.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I’m gonna let the cat out the bag.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. I haven’t got any secrets at all.’
‘Oh yes you do,’ he croaked, plopping down onto the other end of the bench, his back pushed against its armrest. ‘I saw you leaving school after registration on Wednesday, and I couldn’t help wondering where you were going, so I followed you.’ He stared at the side of her face, her russet cheeks now flecked with the glistening perspiration that stood witness against her. ‘My sister bunking off?’ he exclaimed, his mockery undisguised, ‘Whoever would’ve thought it? The same yesterday. The same today. Way to go: it’s your first week at a new school and you’ve screwed up already.’
Without glimpsing back at him, Satya set her notebook down beside her and rose to her feet. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she muttered, traipsing off to wander between her mother’s raised beds, the greyish heads on the lavender hedge releasing their calming scent whenever her skirt brushed against them. In amongst the carrots waiting to be lifted, the coral buds of Star of the East had suddenly bloomed like fireworks overnight, launched skyward on spears of green foliage, taking her by surprise. She would not pull these out, like the dandelions and thistles she had plucked from the strawberry bed half an hour ago, but instead stroked the swathes of orange petals with her outstretched fingers, as if it would relieve her aching heart.
‘So you’re telling me you’ve been at school today?’ crowed her brother across the garden, ‘It’s all a figment of my imagination!’
‘I’ve got nothing to hide,’ she murmured, wishing him away, ‘I’ve been studying, reading, learning. That’s what matters.’
Sukhbir tittered to himself and followed after her. ‘Oh, so you’re happy for me to tell mum and dad?’ he asked, lunging towards her and catching her arm. ‘It’s a bit of a worrying trend, isn’t it? I’m sure they’d be interested to hear what you’ve been up to.’
His firm grasp, fingers squeezing her elbow crossly, caused her to wince and flinch away. ‘Yeah, well it’s none of your business,’ she bleated back at him.
‘Your business is always my business, Satya.’
His sister glared at him, eyes wide open. ‘Except when I’m having my head flushed down the toilet,’ she yelled, yanking her arm from his tightening grip. ‘Except when everyone’s chasing after me to give me a kicking,’ she barked, ‘Then it’s not your business at all, is it? Nothing to do with you. “Stand on your own two feet, Satya!” Well now I am standing on my own two feet, so mind your own business. You can’t choose which part of my life suits you to get involved in. I’m doing what’s right for me.’ She tugged her arm again. ‘And let go of me,’ she cried, seeking refuge once more under the tangled canopy that made this her favourite resting place.
From there she would watch as her brother waltzed back inside, affecting the faltering half-step beloved of his posse this term, closing the backdoor firmly behind him with a bang, all the beauty of the garden suddenly obscured. Not even the striking orange-red leaves of the Japanese acer could lift her from her morose gloom now. Her diary would have to counsel her.
‘10 September 1993,’ she scribbled furiously, her open notebook resting on her knee, her back bent over. ‘Friday,’ she wrote, then: ‘My brother’s an idiot.’ Reflecting on this, she crossed it out with a single line of ink before it had even had time to dry, then scratched it out with a cloud of biro. For a second, she gazed back across her mother’s pride and joy, taking in the river of pink cyclamens to her left and right, returning the autumnal garden to spring, just as everything had seemed to be coming to an end. Yes, that was what she wanted to say, she thought, and she put it down in her elegant cursive script.
My soul wilting
Like petals
In the summer heat.
It gets too hot
For me in here.
Can’t stand the heat;
Must escape.
Across the garden, she could see her sisters staring at her through the window, giggling amongst themselves. ‘Well what do you want from me?’ she asked finally, heading back inside, responding to the questions they did not ask.
‘Less of you,’ replied Jaspreet promptly, as if she had been waiting all year to release those momentous thoughts. ‘Satya’s special, Satya’s special, Satya’s special. No more! The world doesn’t revolve around you!’
‘Yeah,’ agreed their brother, emerging from the doorway between rooms, ‘that’s about it. I’m glad this is how everything turned out. I couldn’t bear another year hearing how perfect you are. I’m glad it all fell apart. Dad should never have sent you there, thinking the rest of us would just look on and admire. How would that work? Why should we? Why should you get special treatment? So I’m glad this is how it turned out. An answer to a prayer, you might say. Or do you think you’re the only one with faith?’
‘Oh no, we’re all too stupid to have dreams like poor little Satya,’ sneered Jaspreet, ‘How could any of us possibly understand what she’s going through?’
‘Yeah,’ said Sukhbir, ‘welcome to our world.’
Satya stood motionless, staring at them. ‘Is that it?’ she asked, but she did not await their response. Pressing her diary firmly against her body, she fumed from the room and hammered up the stairs, deliberately thumping her heels on each tread as she went.
Even up here the air tasted of cumin, she thought, but it was somehow stale and repugnant, lingering in the unmoving air, unwelcome. Sitting on the edge of her bed, she stewed over every mean word her siblings had uttered since she had arrived home. As she stroked her left arm, sore now from her brother’s biting grip out in the garden, she told herself that she did not care what he thought, but the sickly feeling within related another tale altogether. She wondered about remaining in her uniform now, as if it would stand witness for her against his accusations, but she knew that was a futile quest.
Lifting herself off her duvet, she began to undress, hanging her old school blazer and skirt back in her wardrobe, wondering when there would be money to replace them or if she would forever be the odd one out. She rolled her tights off her legs and replaced them with her loose salwar trousers, red in colour, baggy from her waist to her knees. A moment later she pulled her short-sleeved tunic over her head and straightened it out until its ends covered her thighs, front and back. There was a dupatta to accompany this outfit, sometimes draped loosely over her head, sometimes flung over her shoulder, but this evening it remained in the drawer. Here came those perpetual feuds within, plaguing her with disquiet about the tone of her skin: this time a counteroffensive to her usual lamentations. Yes, for had her skin been paler, she mused, this outfit would have been much too red or much too bright; no, but this suited her to a tee the mirror replied, offering her renewed self-esteem that might just last all evening, her demeanour suddenly transformed. Relaxed now, she pulled a textbook from her bag and settled at her desk to read until dinner.
Times had certainly changed; the spread on the table divulged that much. Tonight, there were two pots laid out on the cork placemats in the island between six sets of bowls and spoons: one contained a steaming marrow curry again, the other boiled rice, accidentally revealing changed fortunes. Long gone the rich white basmati rice once favoured, its floral, nutty flavours so intensely delicious that a bowl on its own would suffice; here that tasteless greyish American long grain, smothered with the taste of cardamom and cinnamon bark. Upstairs, Satya’s hunger had her yearning for second helpings, but now she was having second thoughts instead. Secretly, she hoped for dessert to compensate; even blackberries picked from the rampant brambles poking over their neighbour’s fence would do.
One at a time, their mother filled five of the bowls, curry on one side, rice on the other, and passed them along the table. First to her son at the other end, occupying his father’s place, then to her daughters, eldest to youngest. As usual, her husband’s bowl remained unfilled as she served herself: half the portion of rice. She was watching her figure, she always said. ‘Tuck in then,’ she told them when they seemed to hesitate, ‘khana.’
Nobody could say the meal was delectable; those days were behind them. The abundance of courgettes, mistakenly left to multiply, unpicked in the garden for weeks on end, meant that September would be the month of the marrow, each evening marked by that unmistakable trumpet concerto let rip. No amount of ginger, coriander or paprika could mask the bland watery taste, although the quantity of garlic and chilli powder in tonight’s dish demonstrated that the cook had not stopped trying.
‘So,’ piped up Sukhbir, glancing at his mother as he pushed the beige curry around his bowl, ‘did Satya tell you she has something to share with you?’
Choking on a piece of turmeric-stained cauliflower that went the wrong way, her eyes suddenly bloodshot, Satya glared at her brother and frowned. ‘Shut up,’ she whispered, grasping for her glass, but her mother only peered at her inquisitively.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘There’s nothing,’ she coughed, still gagging on the lethal brassica, ‘Sukhbir’s just being an idiot.’
‘Sukhbir?’
‘There’s nothing,’ insisted Satya adamantly, gulping down the last of her water.
A smirk cracking in the corner of his mouth, Sukhbir pressed his toe down on hers beneath the table. ‘Yes there is,’ he said, jabbing her ankle with a swift kick on its side, ‘Why don’t you tell her about your little secret, Satya?’
Their mother set her spoon down and stared at her. ‘What secret?’
Her eyes down, Satya jolted her head to her left and right, and tried to shovel more marrow past her lips, ignoring the awful glances set upon her that threatened to penetrate her soul and read her innermost thoughts.
‘Come on Satya,’ said her brother, choosing now to crush her toe beneath the back of his heel instead, ‘why don’t you tell us how you’ve been skipping school the last three days?’
‘You what?’ spat her mother.
‘I’ve been studying on my own, that’s all,’ whispered her daughter.
Shaking his head, her brother pointed at her with his empty spoon. ‘She’s been down at the wood,’ he said, feigning disappointment.
‘Yeah, but I’ve been studying. I wasn’t doing anything wrong.’
That was when the house seemed to shake, her mother’s untamed rage reverberating around them, her spoon handle hammering on the tabletop. ‘Nothing wrong?’ she screeched. ‘You skipped school!’
‘So what am I supposed to do?’ cried Satya, ‘That school’s absolutely rubbish. I just thought me going off to study on my own was better than me going there and just wasting my time. That’s all.’
‘Listen to yourself, Satya,’ cried her eighteen-year-old brother, imagining himself forty-five. ‘Do you know how arrogant you sound?’ he asked, thumping his fist on the table, causing all six bowls to jump in the air and clatter down again at once. ‘Is that what private school did for you?’ he sneered at her. ‘Do the rest of us twag lessons? Why are you such a special case?’
Satya was unsurprised by her younger sisters’ naked glee, beaming gormlessly at one another across the table, but her brother’s bold intervention shocked her. ‘You’re not my dad,’ she bawled back at him.
‘Dad’s not here,’ he replied, gazing at his mother. ‘I am.’
‘That doesn’t mean you have the right to tell me off.’
‘Yes, but I do,’ cried her mother crossly. ‘What on earth were you thinking?’
‘They don’t teach anything at that school,’ tried Satya.
‘And what did you learn today? Tell me. Come on, enlighten us.’
Her mother’s ferocity stunned her, drawing tears from her eyes. She hardly recognised this fearsome character, usually so calm and compassionate that she had always felt she could tell her anything. ‘I was revising today,’ she offered meekly, ‘I’ve been revising this week.’
‘How convenient. Because it seems like a strange place to go to study. The library, I could understand. What did you do when it rained?’
It had rained a lot, she admitted. ‘I put my coat on,’ she said.
‘And your books? They wore coats too, did they?’
‘I waited for the rain to stop.’
‘But it rained most of the day.’
‘Not most of the day,’ she muttered, ‘it was on and off, so I got my books out whenever it was dry.’
‘A likely tale.’
Satya’s dribble of tears became a flood. ‘I’m not lying,’ she protested, conscious of those hostile eyes watching her every move, ‘I went there to study on my own. It’s true, I promise. I read loads. I achieved a lot the last two days.’
‘So you know better than your teachers, do you?’
‘Maybe,’ she shrugged. ‘They don’t seem to know anything.’
Across the table, Sukhbir scowled at her. ‘And no doubt you think you know better than mum and dad too. Why don’t you tell dad what he’s doing wrong? Go on, Satya: why don’t you sort out his business for him? After all, you know everything.’
‘I never even said that; I just don’t see the point of sitting through a day of school when every lesson’s a riot.’
Hearing her, Sukhbir found himself on his feet, smacking his palms down on the tabletop again, sending his cutlery flying. Leaning forward, he scolded her bitterly with angry eyes. ‘But how the hell would you know?’ he bellowed, exaggerating his rage deliberately, his bristling eyebrows arched. ‘You were only there two days before you decided you knew better…’
‘Oh be quiet, Sukh,’ barked their mother, annoyed. ‘We don’t need these theatrics now. Just sit down and eat.’
‘You need to deal with her,’ he snapped back at her, but his mother only retrained her gaze.
‘Satya,’ she grumbled resolutely, ‘this morning I started work at five. I clocked off at three. Yesterday I worked two five-hour shifts. On Wednesday I worked fourteen hours, eight in the morning until ten. That’s why you ate dinner without me.’ She stared at her daughter intently. ‘Do you know what I do all day, Satya? I mop floors. I stack shelves, vacuum offices, answer the phone, fold clothes, type letters. Whatever the agency gives me. What do you think, Satya: are these jobs beneath me?’
She awaited her eldest daughter’s response, but her eyes were elsewhere. ‘Look at me,’ she said when her daughter seemed to ignore her, hunched over her bowl. ‘Five years ago, I was the honourable wife of the great Vijay Singh, businessman of the year. We had our photo in the Mail, receiving an engraved crystal award from the Chamber of Commerce. So what do you think? Are these jobs demeaning for someone like me? Do you think I have no self-respect?’
She gazed around at all her children. ‘What do you think Jas?’ she asked. ‘Do you think I expected to be doing menial jobs like these at this stage of my life?’
‘I guess not,’ muttered her fourteen-year-old, shrugging.
‘There’s no, “I guess.” I can assure you this wasn’t in my plan. These weren’t my expectations. We’re not some illiterate family that can barely speak English. We’re ambitious, we’ve worked hard, we’ve never begged nor scrounged.’
‘I know that,’ whispered Satya.
‘You’re not the only one struggling to come to terms with our new reality. But it is what it is. You can blame John Major if you like. You can blame the recession or Black Wednesday. You can blame some millionaire property developer opening yet another retail park. You can even blame me and your dad, but in the end, it doesn’t matter. We are where we are. We’re just going to have to get used to it.’
‘That’s easy for you to say,’ complained Satya, ‘you’re not the one…’
‘No, Satya, it’s not easy for me. It breaks my heart. But there’s no time for mourning. We just have to get on with it. Your dad’s business isn’t going to recover. There’s no way in the world he can compete with Currys and Comet now. I’m sorry, but the good times are over.’
‘Don’t you think I know that?’ muttered Satya impatiently. ‘But that’s not what the problem is.’
‘Satya’s special,’ laughed her twelve-year-old sister, deriding her.
‘Just shut up, Meeta. I’ve never, ever claimed anything like that. All I object to is being treated like dirt. What happened on my first day… you’d run away too.’
‘It’s not an excuse,’ thundered her brother.
‘How can you say that?’ she cried back at him, fresh tributaries snaking their way down her cheeks. ‘The moment I arrived, everyone was judging me, lining up to pick on me, calling me a snob…’
‘It sounds like they were right,’ jeered her brother.
‘Oh, of course,’ she sobbed, ‘And so they were right to chase after me. And they were right to shower me in flour. Of course, of course, it’s just what I deserved. Stupid me!’
‘If you’re not careful, dad will do a lot worse than that to you,’ he scoffed.
‘No, dad would hear what I’m saying,’ she yelled. ‘Dad would listen to me.’
‘Well, your beloved papaji’s not here.’
Exasperated by the commotion all around her, their mother rapped her serving spoon on the table loudly, demanding their silence. ‘Won’t you lot just be quiet for once?’ she groaned, berating them, ‘I don’t have energy for this. I’ve been on my feet all day. Have mercy on your poor mum.’
‘Aren’t you going to deal with her?’ demanded her son.
‘Sukh, my back is killing me. I’m tired. I have a migraine. Just leave this now.’
‘You should tell her off.’
‘Needless to say, she’ll be in a lot of trouble when your dad gets home.’
‘Trouble?’ sputtered Satya. ‘I just told you what happened to me. But you just pass over it like it was nothing. This is so messed up, I don’t even know where to start.’
Forgetting his pretence of mature sobriety, Sukhbir grinned at her meanly. ‘You won’t get away from the fact you’ve done something wrong,’ he told her, nodding. ‘Don’t turn this around on bebeji.’
Satya gaped at her brother contemptuously. ‘Why don’t you listen to me? They treated me like dirt on my first day, and you want to know why I didn’t want to go back. What do you think? Give me some respect.’
‘We’ll give it when you deserve it,’ replied her brother.
‘Why don’t you just shut up, Sukhbir? You’re not dad.’
That serving spoon was banging again. ‘Please,’ complained their mother bitterly, ‘I can’t take any more of this. Won’t you two just stop bickering all the time? It’s tiresome. Have some mercy.’
‘Whatever happened,’ snarled Sukhbir indifferently, ‘none of it’s an excuse for skipping lessons.’
‘Yes it is,’ protested Satya, ‘It absolutely is.’
‘I said stop this,’ screamed their mother angrily, nearly crying. ‘I’ve said enough already. Enough!’ Briefly she glanced at Satya, taking in the agitation on her face. ‘If you had a problem, you should’ve spoken to a teacher. Or to me. Or your dad.’
‘I did speak to dad,’ she retaliated, ‘but it didn’t help. It didn’t change anything. And how could I speak to you? You’re always tired after work. Every time I try to talk to you, you just say, “Not now.”’
‘You know why that is,’ muttered her mother. ‘Someone has to toil day and night to make ends meet. The good times are over, Satya. Your job is very simple: A-levels, degree, career. That’s it.’
‘And what do you think I was doing?’ begged her daughter. ‘I skipped school to study. I was doing what’s best for me.’
‘No, Satya, you weren’t. We’re not ignoramuses. We’re not a family like you meet out there, who don’t care what their kids get up to. We’re not illiterates. We’ve invested everything in your education. We’ve done our part, now you do yours. You’re our pension. There’s no Plan B.’
‘What, so I just go back to that pathetic excuse for a school and pretend it’s not completely dysfunctional?’
‘That’s exactly what you do. You study hard, try your best, as I know you can, and you get top marks. You go to the library after school, and you stay focussed, remembering where you’re going. I’m not having you following in your brother’s footsteps.’
‘My footsteps?’ sputtered Sukhbir irately.
‘Yes, Sukhbir,’ she replied caustically, ‘that was supposed to be you.’
‘I should’ve known this would come back on me,’ he cried, outraged. ‘No, but I’m not having it. She’s always had special treatment. But us? Apparently, it’s okay that we’re destined for the scrapheap.’
‘That was your choice, not mine,’ jeered his mother. ‘I tutored each of you personally. It’s not that you didn’t have the same opportunities. It was meant to be you going off to uni. As it is, we’ll just have to give you another job. You’ll make sure the bullying stops on Monday morning. Understood?’
‘No, never, no way. I’m not going to watch over her.’
‘Oh yes you will,’ said his mother firmly, ‘or there’ll be serious trouble.’
‘Seriously?’ he whinged, wincing. ‘Satya’s the one who should be in trouble, not me. Why are you letting her off?’
‘I’m not. Her dad will deal with her when he gets home. None of my children plays truant. If her dad has to wallop her to make that clear, so be it.’
‘But it isn’t fair,’ yelled Satya, leaping to her feet, sending her chair colliding with the cupboard, her spoon clattering onto the table. ‘No one’s listening to anything I say.’ Pushing past Meeta, around the table, and past her mother, she tore through the kitchen door, hurling it shut behind her.
‘You come back here,’ was the last thing she heard her mother yell as she headed out of the front door, slamming that behind her too.
