Who Will Catch Us As We Fall (6 page)

Her fingers drum on the armrest. She is tired of being perceived as the weak one, the fragile, estranged daughter. ‘The only thing that is going to make me not okay is if you keep asking me if I'm okay.'

A placating pat to her knee. ‘We'll have to get you a new phone but we have Ma's
old Samsung, which you can use for now.'

‘I'm not using that. It's so old, I might as well not have a phone at all!' Throwing herself back onto the seat with a dramatic flourish, Leena knows that she is being difficult but has found that anger and indignation are the safest responses in times of turmoil. Simple emotions, capable of generating just enough feeling without complicated layers to sift through. Once you push deeper, when you open yourself up to sorrow and fear, it becomes impossible to re-emerge, and even if you do, there is no guarantee you will be the same.

To distract herself, she thinks of the young man at the station, finds something romantic in reimagining his face to suit her preferences. In her mind, his skin is lighter, his accent more polished and, in recreating their meeting, she has set them in a trendy café in London: a petite, modern space.

Sneaking a look at her brother, she thinks that life would be a lot less muddy if there weren't so many variables to consider. If differences weren't like two banks of a roaring river, separated by slippery, moss-covered stones and spiraling riptides.
Possible yet impossible to cross.

‘Who were you talking to at the police station?' Jai asks and she blushes to think that he knows what is happening inside her head.

‘Some artist who was jailed for doing graffiti.'

‘That doesn't sound so threatening.' He speaks as if indifferent but is watching her closely.

‘Sounded political to me.' She fiddles with the radio, bumps it with her fist to steady the sound. ‘I didn't get his name, though.' Almost regretful.

‘Those kinds of artists never use their real names anyway.'

‘How do you know that?'

He fumbles for an explanation. ‘I read it somewhere.'

‘Have you spotted anything like that around?' She hopes he might be able to tell her who the man is. ‘He said something about a wall at City Market.'

‘No,' Jai lies, having seen the artwork before it was put up, knowing the exact location because he had helped in designing and tracing most of them under the cover of night, using only a torch to see, while his parents thought he was at a nightclub. Arriving home to scrub away the spray-paint grease from his skin and hiding the stained hoodie at the back of his closet.

They have turned into the paved road leading toward their house, past similar palatial homes. Someone has recently trimmed their lawn and she spots the green shavings scattered over the road; she pulls in the heady scent of it, acute and moist.

While they wait for Kidha to open the gate, Jai watches his sister. She has leaned back and closed her eyes, her skin flushed and bothered. He wonders if, on some level, she knew who she had been talking to. Finds it impossible that she wouldn't.

He knows that he should have told her a long time ago, should tell her now, but he feels he needs more time. He needs to observe her carefully, for just a little while longer, because he wants to make sure that when he tells her, she will be able to understand what he is saying.

In the red brick, one-bedroomed Parklands apartment, three stories up from an all-night chemist and an Indian sweet shop, an old painting is uncovered. Other more recent drawings, meaningless now, are pushed aside to reveal the patchy jersey sheet that has been used to hide it for so long. With a slight tug, it falls in gentle waves to the floor. He brushes impatiently at the alarmed silverfish darting for cover, using the edge of his sleeve to wipe away the dense layers of dust that have collected upon the glass, the only work of his that he has ever framed.

He had been deeply involved in graffiti by the time he had begun painting this; when he'd finally had the chance to convert the thoughts in his head to writings on the wall, the only logical starting point had been her. He would begin by tracing an outline of the steep hill of her cheekbone, her sharp lips – continuing on until those features transformed into a scorching sun or an over-stuffed belly of some MP; he would forge her almond eye from an anomalous bump in the wall, and when he was done it would have turned into the beak of a vulture – his own personal message to the universe.

He remembers the wild energy that had consumed him the day he had painted this. He had drawn the outline of her in the shape of his emotions; a reclining nude woman with her back to him, left elbow resting in the dip of her waist, fingers of the right hand caught up in black tresses of hair. The rising curve of her buttocks leading to an extended right leg dangling over the edge of the chest she was lying upon, left knee tucked up.

He had started to fill in the body with painstaking strokes of his brush and, finding it lacking an intimacy he was compelled to reach, used his fingers instead. Languid circles, taking his time within all the secret crevices, using his thumb, index finger, even the heel of his palm, reaching where the light could not. Rapid dots,
tak-tak-tak
, forming the humped bones of her spine.

Upon its completion he was faced by magical twists of color – a lithe brown body lolling beneath the arching branches of a magenta bougainvillea tree, its flowers settling upon the old chest she was guarding. Secrets or memories, happiness or gloom.
Which one
?
he asked himself before remembering that one could not come without the other.

‘
Cuzo
!
'

A rapid banging on the door shakes him out of his reverie.

‘
Cuzo
– open up, hurry.'

Quickly, he rewraps the painting in the bedsheet, sliding it back behind everything else, a pang of loneliness following him to the door.

Jackie.

In all the confusion, the unexpected blurring of time, he had forgotten about her. With a steadying breath, he pulls open the door and a girl stumbles in smelling of butterscotch body lotion, used generously to cover up the stench of marijuana.

‘Where have you been?' she demands. ‘I've been coming around here for two days now looking for you.' Jackie fans her face, takes out a tissue from the cup of her bra and dabs her shiny forehead. ‘I had to go to Nani's
place, Chris's friend, to borrow his phone and I thought I would stop by here and try one last time.'

‘I thought you were staying with Otis.'

The girl adjusts her denim skirt and tugs at the red corset top in an effort to cover up her midriff, but it keeps riding up. ‘Nah, man, that
jama
! One day he comes home and tells me to leave. No explanation, nothing.' She gestures to her damaged hair, pulled back into a dry, frizzy ponytail. ‘Not even enough
doh
to fix some braids.'

‘But enough for a bag of
bangi
. I told you to stop smoking that stuff.'

‘No judgment here,
cuzo
. We all do what we can to get by.'

‘What do you need, Jackie?'

‘Just a place to stay for a little while. Three days and then I'll bounce.'

The place is still as bare as she remembers it. The faded pink carpet and a cluster of old pots and pans beside a charcoal stove beneath the window. The box TV and sagging brown couch that she knows he will sleep on today, letting her take the only bed in the small room. ‘All that photography not paying as well as it used to?' she asks.

‘It pays fine.'

‘There's no use hanging onto what's dead,' she says.

‘No one has died.'

‘There is more than one way to be gone forever,
cuzo
.'

He considers telling her about what happened earlier. It is on the tip of his tongue. Perhaps if he says it, it will feel less like a fragmented dream. Instead, he tells her, ‘You can stay as long as you want. This is your home too – take the bed.'

Thanking him, Jackie's eyes flicker to the wall. ‘What are you doing over there?' pointing at the paintings.

‘Nothing.' He lunges forward but she leaps over the couch and gets to them first, pushing away the first few drawings and spotting the hastily thrown-over sheet. She pulls it away and together they stare down at the sighing woman. Jackie senses a sneer; she remembers that girl alright.

‘This is not good,
cuzo
.'

‘I was just cleaning up.'

She turns to him. Her powdery eyeshadow has melted in the heat, leaving clownish streaks that make her appear wilder than usual. ‘What happened?'

He looks at the painting of Leena, astounded by the similarity it shares with its subject, despite him not having seen her for years before he completed it. He touches it, hovers somewhere between the shoulder blades and says, ‘She did.'

It was easy to call upon those summer days of her childhood. Full of earth and grit. In the midday heat, the dust contaminated the air and settled on her skin in a hard, reddish layer. Then there followed the cold showers, watching clumps of dirt swirl around the metal drain of the bathtub before disappearing forever.

Afterward, while Jai was sent to watch TV, her mother would sit Leena down on her dresser to tackle her tangles. Comb clutched in one hand, Pooja firmly grasped her daughter's hair in the other and pulled it so far back that Leena's eyes would smart. But she didn't mind. These moments alone with her mother were rare and she thrilled at the cool touch of Pooja's hand, her soft, high humming.

They lived in a compound of identical apartments, stone exteriors with white grilles on the windows that curled at the bottom like the letter
S
. Low and flat, with three brick steps leading out, the maisonettes sat in a wide circle so that it didn't matter where your house was, you could still push back your curtain, peek through the gap and see everyone's business.

During the day, along with the other children living in the compound, Leena would race around the curving street on her BMX bicycle, remove her feet from the pedals as she turned the corners and take her hands off the brakes if she was feeling brave. The pedals would whirr and scratch her ankles and she would proudly show them off like battle scars.

The mothers used to shout at them – dark and stout Indian women, bright saris pushed over their shoulders as they leaned over stainless steel pots on
jikos
,
their knees straddling the charcoal stoves, stirring onions which snapped and crackled in the hot oil.

To Leena, it seemed as if they cooked from the moment they woke up until their husbands returned home from work. Even after she had left the flats, she couldn't think of that place without the memory of a spicy curry burning her eyes or the sweet taste of the
jalebis
that they used to hand out as the children went by, pinching their chins and pushing the sticky orange sweet into every mouth, even if it wasn't wanted. Her mother was always absent from these scenes, with her Bridge games and charity events, leaving for the temple early in the morning after feathery kisses goodbye, making Leena feel like a proud orphan.

‘Be careful, Shamit!' Mrs Goyal would shout. ‘I don't want a son with a broken head. Of what use will you be to me then?'

‘Look at you – thinking you're a hero. You're lucky I don't tell your father what a
besharam
daughter he has. Mannerless girl!' Mrs Shah would scold her daughter, Preeti, giving her a stern tap on the backside.

Although those days were only full of good memories, the ones Leena clung to the most were the ones when Jai was with them. They learned quickly never to ask him. He came when he wanted and even then it was with an air of distraction, as if he always had something more important on his mind. He would pick up a soccer ball and juggle it between his nimble feet and they would play football. If he came out swinging a cricket bat, two teams would automatically form, eagerly awaiting his cue. When he grew tired, he would leave the game and, for the sake of her pride, Leena would force everyone to keep on playing for a few more minutes, but the enjoyment would always slow, dwindle down and eventually stop. This teenage boy who was so much older, smarter and handsome than the rest of them, with his head of tamed black curls and dancing features, whose life was so exciting that they longed and dreaded to be a part of it.

‘Ask him to come and play with us. He'll listen to you.'

‘He never listens to me,' she would reply, even then, too proud to ask.

So someone else, if they were feeling brave, would speak up. ‘What's next, Jai?'

‘Jai, do you want some banana crisps? My mother made a fresh batch.'

Sometimes it would work. They would manage to trap his attention and he would stir, raise himself up on his elbows and give them a brilliant grin, biting down into the deep-fried plantain. Other times, he would be too lost within himself and their words would never reach him.

‘Sorry, not today, guys,' he would answer, rolling up and balancing on his heels before standing fully.

They would trail back toward their bikes that were strewn over the curb and falling onto the street, or return to the multicolored hopscotch game scrawled hastily in chalk on the pavement, feeling the thrill in the air suddenly collapse. The day would compress without him, turn dull and shrink, the hope unintentionally dragged from it and its magic completely lost.

In the early evening of Leena's twelfth birthday, the Kohlis were driving back from Carnivore, an open-air restaurant situated in the Langata suburb where they had organized a Sunday lunch for her school friends.

Pooja rolled down her window slightly to allow in some cold air, hoping it would help settle the swimming sensation in her head brought on by one too many cocktails. She had spent the day sitting in the dining area, which had led onto the vast playground with its numerous slides, seesaws and a plastic brick castle that consisted of rope ladders, bridges and cargo nets. While the children had played, the parents sat in the shade of overarching palm trees, sipping cold beers and
Dawas
while the waiter moved quickly around them, cleaning away plates and refilling empty glasses. It had been a day full of laughter, the clicking of cameras, cherry-topped Black Forest cake and her husband holding her hand beneath the table, teasing her fingers.