Uzma Khan - Trespassing

No, he liked them buxom too. That blonde one, well, she could have been lactating.

‘Yesterday, the paper printed a statement issued by US Intelligence. Know what it said? It said the risk of missile attacks against the US was on the rise, so America must increase defense spending. Can you believe it? While poor countries are punished for defending themselves, the strongest military power in the world comes up with excuses to keep building its weaponry.’

He talked, looked and behaved just like his father.

Daanish folded up the paper irritably. ‘The problem is that we require aid at all. Beggars, that’s what we are. We can either join the bullies or stay the beggars. Those are our two choices.’

She stroked his cheek. He shrugged her off. ‘You haven’t been listening at all, have you Anu? You’re not interested.’

‘Oh, don’t be that way,’ she pulled him.

But he stood up and walked up to his room, adding over his shoulder, ‘Aba would have listened.’

She glowered at the doctor still looking in.

She had stood beside him, fanning his forehead.

He grasped her wrist and said, ‘I must talk.’

She was terrified of what he would say next. Why should she listen? She’d heard enough.

‘Haven’t you ever sinned? Done anything reprehensible, disgusting, vile?’ He shook her wrist.

She begged to be released.

‘No. I want you to listen.’ He began stroking her hair with his other hand, tenderly kissing its tips. ‘I’ve tried to always stand by you. Even though, sometimes, I failed.’

‘It’s too late for this,’ she sobbed. How dare he ask for her forgiveness now, when she’d lost the appetite for it! Why was it her job to absolve him of guilt? He’d had an easy life. And of her he now demanded an easy death.

‘No,’ she pulled her hand away. ‘I won’t hear it.’

‘You will,’ he laughed. ‘And you will know there’s one gift you never found. But then, neither did I.’

She climbed the stairs to Daanish’s room, hearing him call and cough. She began removing her boy’s things and never saw the doctor open his living eyes again.

Fifty-two days later she woke up thinking: fifty-two. She had to find the gift.

She wondered what clues he might have left, and where they’d be hidden. It was cruel indeed: during his life she’d never played along. But now she was consumed. Would he leave any hints in the house? Perhaps. Most of his gifts to her somehow related to food and drink. She started in the kitchen, emptying cabinets, poking through drawers and under the stovetop. Once he’d left a camel bone fan for her on a blade of the ceiling fan, and it had shot into the window when she pulled the switch. Nothing up there now.

When the kitchen was thoroughly searched, she dug around her plants. These were also his favorite haunts. Nothing. Nor in the television room, not even near his sofa. She couldn’t find it.

Daanish passed her on his way out. He was going somewhere with Khurram again. He kissed her goodbye. She watched him leave — the strong arms, long limbs. It could have been the doctor, twenty-three years ago. Before he began balding and his midriff started to sag. Before she became the shadow in the cave.

She stepped out into the lawn, watching Daanish recede down the street to Khurram’s house. Then she held her clammy face up to whatever breeze blew. She didn’t want to go back inside. What she wanted was to stand here till the compulsion to play the doctor’s game left her. She looked around her small garden, where the plumbago bush was a spring of blue stars, and each anthurium blossom a pink palm with a white middle finger rising. The doctor had always said it was the most obscene thing he’d ever seen. He’d had such a one-track mind. Still did. She wanted to forget him and enjoy the flowers, simply because they were hers to enjoy. She wanted to let the sluggish day pour into her. She wanted to touch what was hers before she’d married him.

Leaves rustled. A stray cat had given birth to four kittens that huddled beneath a banana palm. One kitten, black with a white spot on its tail, pounced on the others and swatted the air. His mother growled softly.

Before her ovaries were removed, what gift had the doctor given?

She couldn’t stop. She was his sparrow yet. Sighing, Anu went inside to start cooking.

Entering the kitchen it hit her. Of course: the doctor’s first gift was their son. The last gift would be connected. She’d found the clue. It was Daanish.

But what next?

She stood at the sink, cleaning a chicken, feeling his presence still. She would learn to accept this too. She’d adjust, wrap up the guipure and spread the tea. Throw out the tea and make it fresh if he wanted. It was like lying still beneath him when he awoke in the middle of the night, no doubt dreaming of her, and, without caring whether she slept or not, entered Anu roughly in the dark. He’d never die; even this could become routine.

Leaving the chicken to simmer on the stove, she consulted her watch: just after noon. Daanish was coming home later each time.

The child was leaving again.

‘Where do you keep going?’ she pleaded.

‘I go to have fun, Anu,’ Daanish answered, exasperated. ‘Why don’t you get together with your friends?’

‘But,’ her voice trembled. ‘Maybe I could come with you. Khurram’s such a nice boy. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.’

He stood in tattered shorts and a T-shirt, gaping at her from under a cap. ‘I’ve been trying my best to stick around you, but I need time away too.’

He made it sound like a favor. As if her company was penance. Just like the doctor. ‘I won’t be getting in your way,’ she whimpered. But he was stubborn and pulled free.

She spent the day pacing from one window to the next, frequently moving outside to prune her hibiscus bushes bare. Several times, she walked up to Daanish’s bedroom, believing the door had miraculously unlocked. Foolishly, she’d forgotten to remove the key from the knob before his arrival. If Daanish was the clue, perhaps the gift was in his room. Should she get a locksmith?

Every time he returned from these outings, his clothes were matted with sand. Rivulets of salt hung in the dense hair of his legs and his lashes were like a dusty paintbrush. Once, she was sure of it, his upper lip was cut. Just where it curved, under his right nostril. He tried to hide the smear of blood by pointing his chin away from her, sucking it in, keeping the cap on all day. But the shadow of its bill had not fooled her. The thin nip was prominent. There was little doubt in her mind that he went with Khurram to the cove. Probably, he’d fallen on rocks, though why only that centimeter of upper lip was struck was a mystery. And why the secrecy? He’d loved her to go with him as a child.

She started on the bougainvillea. Unlike the uppity wives of the doctor’s friends, she’d never relied on domestic help to get her work done for her. The gardener came once a week to mow the lawn — most of the watering and pruning she managed on her own. She required no help with the cooking. They had no driver or chawkidaar. Then again, she sighed, why hire someone to guard property in obvious decay? The house’s exterior should have been repainted years ago, and the cracks filled. Perhaps that would be her next project. She’d have to wait though: the money spent on refurbishing Daanish’s room had come out of selling the pearl necklace and other gifts, and she didn’t have many left to sell.

Clipping the thorny bougainvillea stems, she gazed up at the muted sky. It was the color of the pearls. She mopped her forehead. Humidity was in the nineties but still not a drizzle. Barely even a breeze today. Her modest garden lay in a stifled haze. She walked barefoot on the prickly grass with browning roots. The doctor had given her a monthly allowance enough to purchase only one tank of water per week. Not enough for the lawn. Those wives he flirted with bought American grass seeds, and their lawns were soft as pillows. And hers, that horrible Mansoor woman with the horrible daughter, hers had won every horticultural award since Anu first learned there even was such a thing. She pictured it: green like the jade box the doctor once hid for Daanish. The child had of course found it the same day. How did they communicate so flawlessly with each other?