Fading away
It’s right here… it’s right here… it’s right here… it’s right here…
Shebani repeated this in her head like a manic mantra, in rhythm with her frantic digging. On second thought she realised that she should have used some kind of tool like a spoon, a spatula, or even some old cardboard to aid with the digging. Using her bare hands to dig up the wet sand in her garden seemed like a regrettable decision in hindsight.
Well it was too late now, she had committed to this so she ploughed on.
With every repetition she kept telling herself that with the next dig she would find it, just one more, just one another, it’s right here, she knew this was the spot…it’s right…here!
She picked up the rusty old jewellery box with the benign Mother Mary on the lid — paint chipping off half her face, covered in mud, and hugged it close to her chest. Her heart wouldn’t stop pounding.
A light drizzle began. With trembling fingers, Shebani prised the nearly broken latch and opened the box.
It would have been unusual to come home and not see them fighting. Today, it was about how amma didn’t move from the couch all day. I dropped my college bag on the table and went into the kitchen to find some food. I rummaged around in the shelves and the fridge for a few minutes. Half eaten packets of soggy biscuits…some cereal…daal that was an air bnb to a family of ants.
“You are making a choice, Sheela! You are making a fucking choice to stay in this quicksand of “depression” while your family rots around you! I’ve been patient, I’ve dont everything I can — but limit hota hai! Everyone is asking me questions, you’ve lost your job — Don’t you care, don’t you…”
I took the half empty bottle of whiskey and an unopened packet of crisps and walked out of the kitchen, past them, and into my room. They never noticed anyway. Amma was staring straight ahead at the television that was playing home videos on mute but I doubt she was taking anything in.
She was singing softly over my father’s yelling as I shut the door behind me. “Kisika dard mil sake to le udhaar…Kisike waaste ho tere dil mein pyaar…Jeena issi ka naam hai”
It had been a little over two years since my 13-year-old sister killed herself. I haven’t been able to say her name out loud since. The last thing she told me was that she wanted to grow up, and be a boy and I snorted and told her that she was being ridiculous. I didn’t ask her questions, I didn’t take her seriously, I didn’t even glance up from my phone when she was telling me this. We were in bed on the opposite ends of our shared room and I was on the phone — deliriously scintillated by the text I had gotten from Mohit. “Show me what you’re wearing under your pajamas.” — and I was planning my angles in my head. I whipped the covers off me and went to the bathroom telling her as I went away “Kuch bhi bolegi abhi tu kuch jaanti hi nahi zindagi ke baare mein. Don’t be ridiculous. Chup chaap so jaa.”
After the funeral I found her diary. Countless entries about being bullied in school, about hating her body, about wondering why she liked girls, about how she wished she could talk to amma about any of this but that night at dinner amma, appa, and I were talking about how the world is going to shit and trans people are running the ruin, about putting all kinds of objects into her panties and feeling like it belonged there…about how she wanted her big sister to accept her and that maybe, maybe tonight…maybe tonight would be the night she would tell her. And they would embrace, her sister would understand and help her talk to her parents. Would be by her side as she took on the daunting task of creating a new identity — one that actually belonged to her. Her big sister would help her, surely.
As the entry proceeded, her voice through her pen got stronger. More confident. With every excitable sentence she built up her resolve to talk to me.
That’s it. I’ve decided. Tonight, I will tell didi and everything is going to be alright! :)
Shebani took out all the pages of her diary that she had ripped up and stashed inside this box, along with photographs of her dead sister. She remembered the rage the felt as she had stuffed these pages into the box, choosing to hide her guilt under the guise of anger and disbelief. It was easier to convince herself that her sister had died because of her own unnatural thoughts than to admit that she and her family had the most significant part to play in making her feel abnormal and unsafe in her own home.
Rain drops fell onto the pages as Shebani smoothened them out. She would show them to her parents tonight. Give them some closure, try to find an end to the abyss they were all stuck in. Her sister never left a note, and Shebani spent the last two years being a coward by not telling her parents that she knew why it happened.
Trembling from head to foot, she made her way back to the house, the papers clutched in her wet hands. She stopped at the door and looked down at them. Her sister had written what name she would want to be known as once she became a boy. Shebani stared at it just as a large raindrop fell upon the page with a plop! — The name… it’s right here…but it’s blurry.
She urgently wiped at the page trying to blot the ink. But it faded away, making a hole in the paper. And just like that she lost the last true remnants of her sister.
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After a lot of creative lamenting, Arjun Mohan and I have decided to hold ourselves accountable for writing everyday. We take turns giving each other a prompt, and we have 24 hours to write using it. This is #2
Today’s prompts have been used in the story, in bold.
VERY rusty writing after a very long time. The hope is to stick to it and to find the familiar ease.
