Color Me In

I

My mother is being buried today.

Rain is pouring thick and fast down our faces; a river of mascara black tears and I watch from a distance in the graveyard where she is now being buried.

I haven’t been home in five years and yet coming back seems an irrational decision, even if it is to bury my mother. To bury my mother. I can’t get over the thought – it seems so foreign – so distant.

Sleeping in my room again is nerve-wracking for reasons I cannot explain. Any minute now, it seems like my mother will crack open the door and peer in to see whether or not I’m asleep. Satisfied, she’ll walk barefoot back to her room and then somewhere down the hall, I’ll hear the faint click of her door.

Instead, I hear Hassan’s faint snores in the next room; my bed isn’t big enough for the both of us and we are separated by a wall of thoughts and memories.

Rolling over, I pull the covers tighter and look out the window but there isn’t much to see – a huge tree whose origin and name are unknown, blocks out everything – my room never had much of a view. Unable to sleep, I creep out of bed slowly, tiptoe to the door, open it a sliver and peer through. The quiet stillness of the house greets me and I walk down the hall, careful to not wake Hassan.

The door of my mother’s room stands ajar, moonlight streaming through the crack casting shadows of the life without. The branches of the old mulberry tree stand barren and blossomless outside her windows, its roots forcing it to lean in at impossible angles.

My eyes wander around her room – it is clean – each artifact carefully in place as if she arranged her coffin before she decided to die. There are no paintbrushes littering the scene, no idle scraps of paper, no telltale signs that a painter ever inhabited this room. But my mother did not believe in the perplexities of paper. She didn’t like limiting her existence to within its confines, as if her spirit was tamed by sheets of bark, as if they controlled her somehow. But it always seemed so strange to me.

Her desk stands dusty and painfully unadorned now, and I have the irresistible urge to steal her chair, as if she is still in the room.
So I sit
...but all is still not as it should be.

As I turn on the lamp, something on the desk’s surface catches its glare and I look down to see her watch and I laugh. I laugh at its awkwardness, at how unusual it seems in the uncannily tidy room, at how much it suits her personality. The odd man out: Dust on the surface, but the undeniable sense of order in her room.

I’m laughing until I’m crying with the tears I never thought would exist for my mother. Reserving love for her was always the equivalent of burning a hole in your soul, and yet here I am, crying for the woman I don’t think I knew.

I tug at her drawers now, because no stone must be left unturned – because who knows what I might find within their confines – because I can’t leave knowing I won’t come back, without something to say goodbye to.

And then I find her diary.

My mother seems to have aspired to the uncanny.

Diaries are full of papers, and not just papers but sheets and sheets of the confounded thing. What gave her the right to keep a diary? What gave her the right to be so damn hypocritical about it?

I open it, but close it shortly after; switch off the lamp and relinquish her chair; walk back to my room, and slip in between the sheets; place the diary next to my pillows; will come back to it. Just not today.

**

When the sun streams in – for a moment – I think the events of the night before have not happened, but the diary’s leather inches away from my nose assures me yester night was no dream and I sigh away the betrayal.

Glancing at the clock, I know Hassan is not awake but I need someone to talk to…so I slide into bed with him, kicking his calves to the side. He grunts but rolls over and cocks an eye at me. Placing the diary on his chest, I look at him expectantly. Rubbing sleep covered eyes with his knuckles, he frowns at its mahogany surface wanting to know what it is. But I’m not going to tell him.

I want him to read it aloud, I want to hear her words in his mouth; I want to read it in his voice and feel content.

So he begins…

I am not his today and I don’t want to give this thing a name, a place or a time. Today, I do not think how he desecrates me night after night in a perpetual series of nightmares that often seem to threaten my sanity.

Today, I belong to no one and let me be content that it exists and that it’s inside me where it cannot be touched. No, not even by you.

Today I hear the laughter of our children outside my window. I am writing, guided by their indefinable, joyful light. Their small, tiny feet patter against the cold, cemented floors of our terrace and they smile with glee, because we’re load shedding and there’s nothing quite better for hot feet than cold, cold cement.

Today, I am a mother.

I feel his hands clench over mine, yet he asks no questions. But the words echo in my mind and when he disappears into the shower, I gather the sheets around me and plunge forward.

Jahangir asked me something today. As a mother, a parent I ought to have anticipated it. “Where do babies come from?” He’s ten and doesn’t deserve to be lied to. I didn’t believe in telling him that “when mommy and daddy love each other very much, a stork flies in and puts a baby in mommy’s oven”.

So he now knows about sex. To be honest, I was a little surprised that the question was coming from him now; he must be making his own discoveries I presume.

But it’s Mona who worries me – she seems to assume too much responsibility than necessary – asking no questions, embarrassing or otherwise. I worry that she might grow up a little more disillusioned than the others, especially when I catch her looking at me with that odd gleam in her eye. I recognize that gleam – I’ve drawn it over and over – the elusive gleam of enigma. It’s as if she knows all is not as it seems.

All is not as it seems, Mona. All is never as it seems.

I pause and frown over what I’ve just read: What secrets did she keep and why wasn’t all as it seemed?

When Hassan reappears, a towel around his waist I promptly thrust the diary under the pillow and out of sight.

Tell him.

But tell him, what? Somewhere deep, I have always felt ashamed of my mother – she was never quite the same as everyone else – and we as a family, were perpetually different. My eyes watch him dress but my mind hasn’t left the confines of her diary and I long for him to leave so I can continue reading. But where will he go? He knows no one here and the quickest way to go is to call a cab for the airport, and board a plane.

So I smile and rally him with sweet kisses and send him on his way. He says he’ll start packing, and doesn’t know I have no intention of leaving. But he’s gone now and I can escape again.

I painted today. It seems a little foreign writing it like I did…why do you think that is? Is it because somewhere, very, very deep down, I feel I’m doing someone a disservice? But who? No one is being harmed because a woman is painting the vacuum in her life.

It’s not complete of course, and it probably won’t be considered “art” by the gallery. It will sit in the studio in a dusty corner, leaning against the wall like the others. But I feel a little better telling you that my freedoms lie quite untouched.

Our freedoms…I forget.

Hassan has reappeared – I can see his figure framing the doorway – but am in no mood to look up just yet. I want to know whether her paintings are still in the studio; they might help with the pieces I now hold in my hands. I expect him to say something, to ask where I’m going as I clamber my way up the stairs but he says nothing.

**

The door won’t budge, despite throwing my weight against it. He must hear me downstairs, hammering away but he makes no move to help me. Finally, exasperated I yell for him to come up and even then he takes his time.

You should have told him.

But he’s a man – I reason, as we burst into the room together – he’ll live.

I expected it to be a little less clean…
A little more like a painter’s studio should be, but her canvases are all aligned straight back against the walls, faces hidden. I walk closer and turn one around.

I don’t know if it’s a direct result of reading her diaries, but it feels like there is pain in her strokes. She is writhing in this one, seething in the other, confused in the third – it’s as if she’s wearing her heart on her sleeve.

A frown crosses the brows of my painter husband and again, he asks no questions but they linger in the spaces between us.

Her diary. Her painted confessionals. Why?

**

Her diary waits for me, sitting complacently on the bed where I left it.

I watch you sleeping; you are so different from what I thought you would be.. Calmer, as if your verses are tales (only) of a more virulent sea.

We are so alike – you and I.
I a moth to your eternal flame. You draw me closer each day. But weary, both of us. Careful to not get too close; no moth smoke for us. Maybe someday. Maybe someday soon.

There is no reason for you to be here, but you are.

I watch, my gaze quite predatory in nature: Not the guardian angel I pretend to be.

Your head is inching dangerously closer to mine and I am thankful your eyes are closed and you cannot see how…
our roles have been reversed;
of how I picture us,
lying side by side, just breathing each other in.

Thankful. So thankful.

Suddenly, your head falls and your eyes jerk open: Faithful brown eyes.

You smile.
I melt.

How I love you, darling!

I skim over the page again; where was she when this was written? Traveling somewhere perhaps? She often took trips to shows in varying art galleries to promote her work, although I can’t remember when she traveled with anyone special. She was usually accompanied by Uncle Gervais – Gerry for short – bringer of fun, with his candies and board games, though we seldom played them as a family.

I grasp the pillow tightly – surely that can’t be it – it’s too clichéd to be true.

Gerry.


II


My mother – the artist, the writer and now the enigmatic – what does this mean? How am I to solve the mystery of her life if she won’t offer me significant clues to her past? I have rummaged through everything, but there is no address book, nothing to tie him to her life and searching for Gerry has been pointless. She speaks in riddles and I can only think it’s because she didn’t want anyone to know about him. She relied, rightly, on a child’s fuzzy memory of a time not associated with happiness.

But my childhood memory has failed in one regard, at least: She was not wholly oblivious to our existence. Though I may be wary in searching for clues, it doesn’t stop me from opening her diary yet again, to discover what really does lie beneath.
**

He was with me again, today – smiling his cherub style grin – wide and abysmal, like the grin itself was trying to draw me into the horrors of that insanely normal night. Normal, that is, except for one minor detail.

Growing up my parents tried to convince me that were no such things as monsters. But not all monsters lie beneath a bed or crawl out of a closet; some are more everyday. Some wield guns and drop bombs, others disguise themselves under lengthy beards and meaningless sermons and still others behind a charming façade, and that’s the terrifying part because they’re everywhere, love – they’re everywhere. Lurking, creeping behind a bush or tree ready to grab you by the throat and drag you under to feed. The suddenness of it all taking you by surprise; numbing you from screaming, from breathing, from doing anything to shield yourself and when it’s over, you lie there stripped.

My sisters and I were always taught to protect ourselves – to keep things pure before marriage – because anything…anything could be construed as a stain, a mark on the stoles of our lives.

But nobody knew, did they? We carried it out so well, you and I.

Gerry, did you ever think? Did you ever stop to consider that you were throwing away your life? That the child I carried for six months after would never be yours, but forever a reminder of what was taken away one September evening?

What would I do without you, darling? What would I do without your guiding light, forever steering me home?

It is followed by another, rashly written entry littered with stains where the ink seems to have spread outward. Was she crying?

Today, the impossible has happened – you’ve left me here, alone – stranded.

I cannot think. I cannot do anything.

How could you?! Didn’t you know it was to you I would leave these pages? Didn’t you realize what you were leaving behind? What use is any of this if you’re dead?

Gerry. My Gerry.

The thing about secrets, as evident by my mother’s diary, is that they have the perpetual habit of being discovered.

Everything falls into place now.

I am the child she speaks of, her first born. Her virginity stripped and the seed of me planted in its place.

I am the secret.


III

My mother’s diary haunts me as we hover over the Atlantic. The ocean below is deliciously aqua and the clouds make haphazard reflections on its surface. I can clearly make out the sandy, dusty earthen beaches that lie thousands of feet below.

Viewed from above, I am a speck on the sky’s surface. A dot. A person sitting on a seat, in an aisle, on a plane navigating across continents enjoying the journey’s importance, when all it comes down to is this: I’m running away.

It looks calm from here, but one fault in this aircraft of mine, can send us all plummeting downward. And then it won’t look so peaceful anymore, not so forgiving; enclosing around us, taunting us with our haunting secrets.

I shake myself from the reverie, my mind still in Islamabad where the monsoons rage forward in their eternal quest for dominion, and remember my mother’s words – reminiscent as everything about her is now – narrating her world.

**

It’s raining outside and it seems like the mustiness of a weather unsought has crept inside. The marble floors are cold but damp and the air smells a little of rain. Air conditioners work, but the air they leave behind is stale and only seems to make things worse.

Outside my window, two snails creep painfully slowly across the verandah, leaving a slick of goo in their wake. They are lucky to carry their houses on their backs. Imagine if we lived like that…we’d never have to hide anything again – we could disappear into our little shells, happy and distant – wouldn’t that be fun?

But maybe not…maybe I can just sit contentedly and bask in the afterglow of your verses, as they ladle off your tongue. You don’t know, do you? How could you? You’re perfectly oblivious to anything outside your shell – you’re the snail that never crept out – I’m the snail that never crept in.

Sometimes our opposing qualities endear us to me – they should count against us, I know – but they don’t. Things might be easier if they did.

The clouds have disappeared, so closely are they huddled in the foreboding sky above and it seems later than it really is. The verandah’s wet, puddles of rain rolling right off its surface.

Where are my children now? They should be outside, sucking in the rain like they played on the same verandah, echoing each other’s laughter, mouths wide open, eyes rank with glee as hot feet sought cold, cold cement.

But they’re all out pursuing some hidden passion or the other. I feel a clear disconnect from them sometimes, as if we are peas but not from the same pod.

A door has just banged shut as the wind screams outside – do you think it’s howling at us? Howling at our inadequacies? Shrieking at our moonlighting trysts? Yelling at the secrets we keep, holed within us like gaping cavities?

But one thing remains constant – the rain continues – plastering the world in sweat knowing, that when it clears, when the clouds roll away, when the sun glares through, we’ll be longing for it again.

Sound familiar?

The electricity’s back…and so are our children. But outside, the wind still lashes at us, always admonishing.

**
The seat beside me is empty – Hassan among the passengers forming a line outside the bathroom – welcome to the world of travel on Pakistan International. It seems insane that all flights were booked, as if somehow, this plane serves as a reminder of what we’ve left behind.

He hasn’t asked me about my sudden decision, but he’s curious I know. I can feel it in the way he looks at me sometimes, trying to decipher the codes in me. But I’m not going to tell him – I can barely admit it to myself – my last thoughts before I rushed into a frenzy of packing: I’m the secret, haunting me now that I’ve got nothing better to do.

My mind kicks into overdrive, imagination filling in the gaps of words unsaid in her entries.

A woman gets raped one September evening walking lazily in a park, thinking about her lover and their upcoming nuptials when suddenly, out of nowhere, she’s grabbed by the throat and raped ruthlessly.

Shocked, but with great difficulty she tells her husband-to-
be of the situation and the fresh discovery that she’s pregnant from that one, horrific encounter. They make a plan – rash and imperfect – nobody will know. They marry immediately and six months later, the baby is born – they say it’s three months premature – and looks it. It’s a weak little thing.

The child grows up with an enigmatic nature, taking care of herself in the shadow of an absent mother who is perpetually otherwise engaged. But she can’t help think of that September night when she glances at her daughter – she wishes she could – she wishes she could very much, but it’s difficult. She and husband separate shortly after the second child is born because she is still caught in the tentacles of the past and he is ruthlessly trying to move forward. But they are entwined in each other’s lives, like they must be, like they want to be and he comes often but not too much, to visit the children. Their children.

And then the impossible happens – he dies and her life comes crashing down – just like that, it’s over. But she cannot face it, and spends days in her studio painting her grief until she feels the sorrow depleting and numbness taking its place.

And always cautious that her first born never discover the secret of its birth, she distances herself from her children in the hope that they will grow up stronger than she. Grow up jaded and real, not lost in a land from where there is never an escape. She knows she is distancing herself from them, but it is a price she is willing to pay…

There was a ghost flitting through the corridors of my house long before she died.

**
And you try to rationalize things, but not all things can be rationalized. Some things happen because they must and there is no hidden meaning or purpose in them other than they must happen that way for life to move forward. In the end, everything must move forward.

And sometimes you consider yourself the poster child for the poetically insane, and who knows? You might be. And you can write countless letters and still not get the closure you so desperately need; always content to suffer in silence until you’re not suffering but weaning your way, and it’s not in silence but the sullen cloak that becomes you so well.

And new years begin in April where you’re the fool on the first of the month.

But…there must be a but.

**
Hassan plops down on the seat beside me and I turn to look at him.

‘All done?’ I ask.

‘All done.’

I nod and turn back to the window, disregarding our reflections staring absurdly at us.

‘Is everything alright?’ he asks me.

I think about my mother, her entries, her life. I think about how she’s managed to keep me secreted in her life for so long. But…