Jerry Pinto - Em and the Big Hoom

When I’m home, I’m hoping to set it all down, though I know failure is never shed so easily. Victories evanesce quickly enough. Failure hangs around you like a cloak and everyone is kind and pretends not to see it.

Not Em.

She wades into the thick of it.

‘Bad day at the office? I can smell it on you. Now there’s a man beaten by the system I would say to the bishop, if there were a bishop sitting next to me. But this ain’t no bishop, this is my son and he’s no great big ball of gas today. Give us a hug.’

I give her a hug. She reeks of beedi smoke and hair oil and Iodex.

‘You in pain?’

‘Pain pain go away, come again some other day. Little Johnny wants to play with himself.’

I don’t want a nasty riff on nursery rhyme. I want tea and sympathy.

‘I asked you a question.’

‘No, you did not. You made a statement.’

‘Okay, let’s go back a bit. Are you in pain?’

She strikes a pose, her wrist to her forehead. ‘You cannot imagine the torment.’

Then she peers at me.

‘No pain, no. I just ate some Iodex.’

I don’t know how to respond. She could be joking.

‘Open your mouth.’

‘Ha ha ha,’ she mocks. But her mouth is open and at the back, I can see a black smear. I reach in with a finger and dab at it. I sniff. Iodex.

‘Why?’

‘Because the sky is so high and the crow shat in your left eye. I could tell you a lie but I don’t see why. The world is a game and the game is a tie. The tie is around your neck and they’ll string you high.’

There were times when I could see a lot of my mother in the body whom I met at home. There were times when there was very little of her. This was one of those times. She was a parody of herself. The mania had taken over but it was a sly episode. She was sitting there, smoking as if she were ordinarily manic. Whatever that means. But she wasn’t. She was into pica, the desire to eat extraordinary stuff, and that was unprecedented. She was suggesting my death and that was also something she wouldn’t normally do. I wanted to reach out to her, even though I knew from previous experience that this was futile. I wanted to understand her and her predicament because I was her son and I loved her with a helpless corroded love. I wanted to but I could only shout.

‘What the fuck are you talking about? Why can’t you answer straight, you piece of shit?’

Em opened her eyes wide. I looked into my own eyes.

‘You’re angry. Ooh, my little p’ecious boy is angry. He’s angry. I’m frightened.’

The mockery was apparent and hideous — she mimed trembling — but it reminded me that this was part of her illness. I tried to calm down.

‘I’ve had a tough day at work…’

‘Ooh, he’s had a tough day at work. And for what? For some three thousand rupees. Can’t buy much with three thousand rupees. Can’t go far with three thousand rupees. Can’t even live on his own with three thousand rupees.’

I could not remember ever feeling so violated and hurt.

‘Shut up,’ I said and I could hear my voice beginning to tremble with tears. ‘Shut up, you disgusting bitch.’

‘Do you want a cuppa?’ she asked, suddenly herself.

‘Are you fucking mad?’ I was almost beside myself.

‘Shhh,’ she said and suddenly picked up the book in which she wrote letters to people, letters that never got posted unless Susan read them and decided that they would not hurt the recipients.

‘They’re listening.’

‘Who?’

She rolled her eyes and looked desperate.

‘Who?’ I asked again. ‘Who’s listening?’

Now her expression suggested that she had transcended despair. Now she was willing to play some mad endgame which she thought I had inaugurated.

‘It began when you were a baby. You pointed to the fan and I knew that they were there, that they were listening. You found them first.’

‘Are they listening now?’

She rolled her eyes again and then, as if she couldn’t bear the whole thing, the stupidity of her son, the pressure of the performance, she shouted, ‘Go, then. Go. Do your damnedest. But if you touch one hair on my family’s head, you’ll regret it.’

Then she smiled and said, ‘Can the disgusting bitch make you some tea? You must be tired.’

The next morning I found a note under my pillow.

I have to get you all out of here. If they come for us, they must not get us all. I have to drive you out. You have to go. That’s why I said what I said. I’m very proud of you but they must not know. If they think I hate you, they may spare you. Go. Go away. Himself and I can manage. We’ll go down together, in flames. We can take it. We’ve lived and loved. You haven’t. I want you to live and love but when you do, they can get you. Susan, they can’t touch, she’s pure of heart. She can stay. But you must go. Soon. But wait for my birthday. And get me a Cadbury’s chocolate. Cad equals Catholic. Bury all the Catholics. Don’t tell anyone.

The note was signed ‘The Disgusting Bitch’.

I didn’t know what to make of it. Em was asleep and so we were all very quiet that morning. I went to work and tried hard not to consider all the issues that were unresolved. When I got home, Em was gone. She had been hospitalized again, at her own suggestion. Susan was with her and The Big Hoom was taking a nap, probably worn out by the hospital thing. When we had dinner together, I suggested to The Big Hoom that I move out. He continued eating quietly as he thought about it. Then he looked at me carefully.

‘It might be a good idea,’ he said. ‘Can you afford it?’

‘No,’ I replied.

He smiled, but it was brief and as much grimace as smile. Then he said, ‘Then the question doesn’t arise, does it?’

‘But you’re not opposed to the idea?’

He put down his spoon and looked at me steadily. He said, ‘You will always be welcome to live here. It is your home as much as it is anyone else’s. But if you want to move, do it when you can, not when you want to.’

As a prescription, that wasn’t a bad one: when you can, not when you want to.

When I went to visit Em in hospital, her eyes were aquaria, full of strange living forms and artificial additions. She had finished cleaning the lady in the next bed who kept spitting up her food. But she was not yet completely there.

‘I hear the words of a song and the music of another. They play together like children. Like children entering the kingdom of heaven. How much chocolate can there be in heaven? The food of the Gods and the shit of the Gods. For me, the food. For Mae, the shit. She wants her gold back, poor darling. I wonder when it went. Where it went. How it went. Why it went, we know. Why, Sister Sarah, why? What it went does not work. Do you follow me?’

She was free associating, gliding through language.

‘I follow.’

‘Oh no, you don’t. Following me will bring you here and here is where the mad people are. You don’t have to be mad. I went mad so that you don’t have to be. You don’t have to do anything now that I am the disgusting bitch.’

‘I didn’t mean that.’

‘What?’

I looked at her carefully. She was not letting me see what she was thinking. So I knew, immediately, that she had registered the thoughtless insult and that it had mattered. She was not going to give me proof so there was no way I could actually apologize. But I tried.

‘I’m sorry I said that.’

‘Sorry, sorry, kiss the lorry, the schoolboys would say. There was one who walked down the road shouting, “Tony Greig, lambu-ta!” And there was another who read me a poem about butterflies. He read it under the mango tree while I waited for you.’

There was no going in. And there was no going away. I pushed my chair back from her bed, closer to the window with three vertical iron bars, and went back to the book I had carried with me. I read through Em’s rhymes about mango trees and her Mae and Satan’s bee. I read till she was tired and only mumbling, and then The Big Hoom came and I could go home.