thud-bounce-strike
thud-bounce-strike

The duct-taped tennis ball has served me well, skipping from my mangowood bat to the vomit-yellow walls of the narrow hall and back again. It is now time for the ball to go. The muddied silver tape has not even started to peel away. But baba will return home soon and buy me anything I need. Anything I need only, because baba always says, “Men will get their wants and girls their needs.”

Baba used to call maa his Jaan—his soul. He lavished her with presents—Sudanese trinkets, Turkish lanterns, and on their fourth anniversary, a rare moth in a display case. Baba would look at maa as if she was Nour—light—before kissing the inside of her wrist.

That is, until he found another Jaan, who played a minor role in a major telefilm. Since then, maa became his Beshya—his whore; no longer the center of his life. Baba started investing most of his time in his business and his new Jaan, and we became the defective products kept at home for his formal pleasures.

thud-bounce-strike
thud-bounce-strike

May has cut through the winter gloom again, showering blessings aplenty. With it, it brings the drought of the sun and the lack of ice in our fridge. The stagnant air, already heavy with characteristic humidity, falls to lap at our sweat. Wafts of sicksweet mango pulp rotting in the ditches and the banana-esque odor of jackfruit flowers make maa throw up every other morning. At least, that is what grandma tells baba and the neighbors.

The ball oscillates back and forth. Opposite to me, the encased moth catches stray light.

thud-bounce-strike
thud-bounce-strike

My red frock lies on the floor, the waist of the pajama bottoms pulled up to cover my exposed belly, the long cloth roughly folded up to my knees. The air that was once scorching now feels sticky without the dress. Grandma would have won the Olympics had complaining been a sport. What a feat she displayed—propelling lozenge-coated curses. Her javelin being, “Girls your age play with a different kind of balls.” Her discus being, “Like mother, like child.”

Grandma, however, never resented maa for her state of half-dress when Ahmed kaka, our local constable, took her to the garage and had her white saree wipe the floor.

Though maa is the legal mistress of the household, domesticity never suited her. Jamila bua, our maid, takes care of that part—nurturing the house and its somehow-surviving occupants. The only item that has earned maa’s love is the framed Attacus atlas moth Baba gave her the year I was born. The only item she cleans and kisses five times a day. All others, including me, are either ghosts of blunders or objects of scorn. On some lucky days, both.

thud-bounce-strike
thud-bounce-bowled out!

The tennis ball skids the wrong way.

Sound registers before sight.

The clatter following the collision grates on my nerves. Didn’t grandma’s skull cracking open on the dirty bathroom mosaic make the same sound? “The tiles played cricket with grandma’s head,” Jamila bua had joked after the burial, “as you do.”

At the end of the hallway, the clatter leaves glass shards strewn over the floor. The wooden edges of the frame have their dislocated blades raised. Trapped inside, the fossilized moth lies unmoving. The prettiest female, most precious of its kind. Two pairs of eyes painted on one pair of wings.

Faux eyes, faux dreams.

Maa’s only love. Baba’s fourth anniversary gift.

The staccato clicks of maa’s heels on the floor prick my feet. I feel my head droop to my shoulders, sweaty fingers clench around the threadbare pajama, the left leg rolls down to my ankle. I wait for the inevitable. For maa’s swears to fill the hollow walls. For the impending hurls to caress my skin. For us to execute our routined “Everything is an Inarticulate Expression of Love.”

Today is not a lucky day, it seems. When she speaks, I realize maa has not even approached me. Her massacred fossil-love lies near my feet.

“You should’ve broken the case sooner. She could’ve lived.”