She sneezed twice and heard her mother’s voice sing-song, someone’s thinking about you. Her daughter is two months old now. They say she looks like him. They don’t like her enough to lie; as if babies can look like anyone apart from themselves. They wouldn’t think twice if they knew. They will say they thought something was off in the beginning itself.
She watches her mother even closer now. Her every action seems to carry a secret weight, a meaning only mothers know; she can’t tell it yet but she hopes it shows in her actions too.
There isn’t even anything much for them to know. The nanny has come to bathe the child; she has twenty minutes to think about him. His beard was greying when she saw him last. The child isn’t his; they can’t even use that against her. She wonders if her mother did the same; she is saddled now because of her only.
Her mother thinks she looks like her. When she’s playing with her, she sees it too. Grandmother and granddaughter, like two peas in a pond, an aunty said. It took her a week to realise what she could have told that aunty; but she feels even sillier for holding onto it; peas in a pod aunty, the mother tells the wall while sterilising the bottle, the formula is cooling on the marble. Her mother didn’t have milk for her too.
They spoke about children the second time they met. He swore by his time in boarding school and wanted the same for his children. She had wanted to bite the chin the grizzled beard was on, it was smiling, he was talking, they were laughing. Her phone rings. It’s his mother, she calls her every time she can’t get through to him and calls until she picks up, you have a maid to cook and a maid to look after the baby, what else are you doing there?
Yes Amma I’ll tell him to pick it up on his way back, and about the fish curry you made, and that it’s avoli. Yes Amma I know it’s pomfret. I’ll tell him okay; okay, bye; yes okay; okay; okay bye. The bath is over and the child is hungry again; at least she’ll sleep for a bit after.
He was sweet even when he was sour but he never liked her enough to stay. Not the first time or the last. She is stuck now because of him and the child doesn’t want formula. The mother started crying with the child; she doesn’t have any milk to feed her. Fat tears filled her eyes but refused to spill; if they fell freely, she was as right as the child, if they fell sludge-slow, she was the worst mother the child could ever have. She was too young a mother to know what her mother knew; a woman once a mother, can never be right again.
Clear from the start, he said, I’m not your guy but she didn’t care, she had decided already. The mother worries no one will want her like that again and he didn’t even want her proper, not her the way she is. They won’t even have the satisfaction of a forbidden love story. He was only the kindest person to touch her and she decided she loved him. The child is sleeping; her husband called, he’ll be home in twenty. He picked up dinner from his mother’s but she’ll have to eat by herself, he had kappa and fish curry at his mother’s and it was so good, he couldn’t possibly eat with her.
Her mother calls, she’s worried about her and wants to tell her about the clotheshorse she’s given for polishing. He better know what he’s doing, she warned her mother, she had loved that piece of furniture as a child, round the same time her mother bought her, her first book; all the others she had were second-hand and donated; this was a fat bound block in bright blue with a sweet-eyed black and white pony smiling out; bought for her and for her to keep; her very own, Pretty Star The Pony. He is very good, her mother repeated, running off the line before she started in on anything else.
If her mother didn’t want to have a conversation with her, did it mean she’s turned into her? the new mother worries. Her mother’s been keeping her at a distance since the child came; they speak only about the child or the things she had to do, her mother is busier than ever in this time of her life; or she told her what to do to care for the baby.
He hasn’t spoken to her in two years. She thought he would come to church and stop her wedding; she made sure he knew when and where it was happening; but he didn’t come. Theirs nothing even for them to talk about. The child’s awake and not crying; she’s staring up at her. She knows, the mother worries, she knows every thought and what I won’t accept, and when she grows up and asks me if I wanted her, what will I tell her? I thought he would come back if he saw me be a good mother; I thought you would help me forget; I thought you would make everything better. Her mother must have done the same. There’s nothing like broken dreams to pave motherhood. Still she thinks it so sweet, this yearning like a child in between repeating her mother’s life. How else did she go on; she must have fed some fantasy while I slept, the mother thought.
It’s Sunday today. He wants to go to church with the baby. It’s the Feast of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour today; his mother has taken a vow, the child will attend the feast for her continuing good health. The mother can’t help but rankle. They don’t just not like her they’re surprised no crisis has struck the child yet. Her mother slept in and is going for the evening mass at four thirty. They’re leaving at ten for the grand mass at ten-thirty; they could now attend the children’s mass with their brand-new baby and exchange knowing smiles with the other young families. You never want to go to church, she tried telling him; I don’t have anything to wear, the baby doesn’t have anything to wear; she’ll cry the priest down and get us kicked out for sure, she tried joking. But he wanted to go and thank God for all his blessings, he said.
She wonders if she’ll see him at church, she never has but maybe he’ll come for the longest mass of the day. He wasn’t there and the baby slept through it, what did I tell you, her husband said after mass, beaming at his proper, little family, mother, wife and child. Men are such idiots, the mother thinks, they need so many things and so many people around them to be sure they made it. The mother doesn’t think she’ll ever enjoy sex again; this child has gutted her out and she hasn’t even had half the adventures she thought she would before it. They didn’t even have sex for her to hold onto; nothing to compare her husband with; but she’s sure he would have been better.
The child’s awake. The day’s over. He’s fast asleep he has a big meeting tomorrow and apart from the washing machine’s groaning and shaking, not another sound stirs the night. The child’s watching her; they are rocking on the chair and for once he isn’t in her head; the child’s brown eyes is all she sees; her mother’s eyes. That night she went to a meadow in her sleep. The meadow smelled of crayon and rolled before her in bright, happy green. It felt like the softest down; the coolest breeze blew the sweetest song and she’s happier than she can remember. A warm breath teased goosebumps on her neck, she turned and it’s Pretty Star the Pony smiling at her. She wrapped her arms around his neck.
The next morning a surprise package landed on her doorstep. It was the clotheshorse polished to gleaming mahogany new; and the moment the never-lover finally left her.