I. Blood is thicker than water
It was the summer we learnt to crack eggs. We would knock their hard shells on the kitchen counter, trailing the whites behind us. We discovered that some rocks crumbled like chalk and drew pictures on the concrete. We declared the window a ladder to the sky and climbed endlessly. The ladder put us on top of the world, right below the ceiling. Summer—blistering despite the dusty fan that would not be hurried—could never last long enough. We slept as little as we could, stretching time so we could play longer. We were awake before the newspaper arrived, before my grandfather began smoking, before light and before sound. The front door would be unlocked soon enough, unleashing us into the yard.
Sometimes, during rush hour at the cafe with plastic utensils and imaginary customers, one of the chefs would be pulled away. Timing was crucial now. We had to work harder to make up for the disappeared chef. The air would turn glutinous. Despite our best efforts we split into two—voyeurs in the plastic kitchen and transgressors in the adjacent room. Over the sizzling of pans and whistling of kettles, we could barely hear the yelling in the room next door. We’d glue our eyes to plastic tomatoes and chop methodically till the chef returned. There would be no comment on her runny nose or puffy eyes. Quick, the customers need their coffee.
Her hands were small, as small as an egg. Her palms were crisscrossed with familiar red lines. It was not a lack of sympathy that made us ignore those hands, but collusion. The stinging palms would heal. What was unbearable was the humiliation of being pulled off the ladder to the sky,
which was just a window that did not reach the ceiling, and returning defeated. We were used to that burning of shame and knew that pity was incendiary. So we allowed the tears to make the coffee salty and the hiccups to ruin the dialogue. We would allow the chef to brew far after the customers had left and the cafe was past closing time, and when her eyes were dry, it was all okay.
Once we were done with the cafe, we took up spycraft. Working on the tight schedule of a global secret society, we had no option but to leave the kitchen set in the middle of the living room. To the untrained eye, I may have appeared to be a disorganised child. In reality, there was never a moment to waste and my toys liked the floor much better anyway. My mother never understood the joys of a treasure hunt. One evening, the brand new geometry box wanted to join the chaos of the floor; out of courtesy, I couldn’t decline. That was how my mother found me, surrounded by a thousand things I had not put away.
The following day, I could think of nothing but fifth period maths. I had thought of a thousand ways to go about it, but found no option but to pull my geometry box out, heart pounding. Its clean lines were warped, the lid seemingly broken by use. When questioned, I laughed it off. An accident
Sitting on the floor with my newly broken geometry box, my mother had asked me what was really mine. She had paid for my box. For my clothes. For my beloved pink rabbit. All my possessions, borrowed. In a moment of naive rebellion, I declared I could do without material possessions. She could take back everything she had paid for.
Well, she had also paid for the floor.
A stroke of genius, checkmate. I could not levitate. A sharper person would have learnt to walk in the unpaid space of apologies or thrown themselves into the rent free sky from the balcony. I cried. In a single moment, I was reduced to carrying the crushing weight of gratitude. In her generosity, she offered to let me have the space of a single tile for free. Fifty centimetres in length and another fifty in breadth. The one tile exile lasted only a few minutes, my world closing and opening like a fist. I was welcomed into my mothers arms and it was all okay.
In this way, my mother and I walked the line between giving up and giving in. Some days I sat on my yellow swing, perfecting the art of palm reading. The red lines would have made any other palm reader wildly inaccurate, for they would call it heartless. Of course, I knew better. We were not a violent family. Violent families broke bones and buried bodies, and we did none of that. My family was doing what it had always done—raising kind human beings.
II. I am in blood / Stepped in so far*
The line separating discipline and violence is distinct. For instance, a belt was a tool for violence. Therefore, we never used it (we are not a violent family). A cane, on the other hand, was a tool for discipline because we used it (remember, like I do, we are not a violent family).
It is odd, buying a cane to hit your child. I still don’t know where you procure such canes from. What else does the cane shop sell? Do they have an aisle for canes, right beside the fruit yoghurts at the dairy section? How does one select the right cane? Do you listen for the trademark whistle of air resistance when you swing it? Do you have to buy a bigger size when your child grows? How do you look at an object, without anger or malice, and think, I will hit my child with this?
In retrospect, these memories are disquieting. The dazzle and distraction of childhood made everything seem palatable. Everything makes sense when you are a child. You are still complicit in the creation of the law of the world; when there are few paradigms to break in your mind, the line between normal and abnormal is yielding. Violence became a normal and necessary part of life. It was the cost of raising someone right, the rigidity of righteousness overcoming any gentle feeling. Thus, I became a co-conspirator. Tell enough children to call violence truth and cruelty becomes a virtue.
Sometimes you live with the cognitive dissonance of enacting violence as a kind person for years before something snaps. My mother’s discipline has broken skin exactly once. I look like my father, his nose and brows and height, but I have my mother’s blood. The incriminating red revealed something tears had not, and she never hit me again.
But I am only halfway done. To speak only of violence when I speak of my mother is not only an inaccurate retelling, but a dishonest one.
They tore my mother open so I could be born. She was only twenty three, still doing her masters. The scar from those stitches never faded. She says she’s glad to have them, because she has me.
I was six, the first time I remember failing. The day the competition results were announced, my name missing from the list, she got me an art kit. She told me it was because I had worked hard and that was important. I was sick often, missing weeks of school. When I couldn't sleep properly, she didn’t sleep either, sitting up next to me all night. When I had an allergy declared, she would not touch a single thing I couldn’t eat. How can I eat when you can’t?
My mother. The shortest member of our family, even shorter than our great dane. Strangers approach her at the airport and talk to her about their day, something about her allowing people to open up. My mother, who cries at the end of bittersweet films. I call her when I’m sick and cry through the phone. My mother, who taught me to read three languages and to climb trees. She bought me storybook after storybook, filling all the shelves in our apartment. My mother, who is kind, who insisted that I be kind. My mother, who says she would have done things differently, if she knew better.
How could she have known better? She was the perfect daughter, with so many trophies that my grandmother didn’t know what to do with them. When the shelf overflowed, she tied them up in a sack and kept them in the storage. My mother, who did everything right, and still went to school with blue bruises from her mother’s pinches. But how could my grandmother have known better? Her mother did not even raise her for the discourtesy of being a woman.
The question of the normalcy (or abnormalcy) of abuse came up when I wondered about my capacity for it. As a child, violence was rhythmic and benevolent, an act carried out in kindness. I now know better. But it took me two decades and it took my mother four—in the gap between certainty and regret, how cruel will we be?
We are a lineage of women who have been incompetent daughters and uncompromising mothers. But we need not remain so. There are so many cycles of heartbreak my mother has broken, to love a daughter with short skirts and queer opinions. All the same, there remain cycles of violence she is unaware she has partaken in. I wonder what violence I will unknowingly visit upon my daughter. Will I be a mother first or a daughter? If I cannot tell the difference between love and violence, am I consigned to always do both? I do not believe so. I do not believe my mother believes so either.
I could never describe my household as violent—not at nine and not at nineteen. I was raised with an overabundance of care. I have not been unloved a single moment of my life and I know that is a privilege. I am not excusing violence. I am trying to understand it, to see if it could have been any other way. I am trying to see if we were ever permitted to be gentle mothers and daughters. Which mother holds blame? Which daughter forgives?
Across the breadth of a tile and the length of a sleepless night, I don’t know how to measure my mother. I pity Anubis, who must weigh even his mother’s heart against a feather and know it is heavier. But I am not punished to be so exacting.
*Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Wordsworth Editions, 1992.
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