RUNNER UP: "You like?"

Content warning for child sexual abuse.

“'You, like?' is boldly corporeal. At its heart are the bodies of a woman, 'her memories frozen at age six' and a boy moving through violences so shocking his family won’t believe him. I’m in awe of the compassion and clarity with which the narrator regards his younger self, a reminder that we’re lucky if we survive our childhoods intact.”

—Iryn Tushabe

Y

ou’re ten, watching Grandma move in the dark, damp kitchen, lips pursed, limping, unable to put her weight on the still-healing left leg. The hiss of potatoes in the wok—burning, screaming, weeping tears into the boiling oil. Cumin and mustard tap dance. You imagine them popping and lodging themselves in Paati’s skin like bullets. You lean in through the passthrough window connecting the bedroom to the kitchen. Amma is getting ready for work. Her long, lush, braided hair sways over her calves. She pierces her ears and her lobes swallow the imitation jewellery, not to be worn while showering. Tearing a piece of the ghee-smeared roti, Amma gathers the yellow potatoes, a pinch of the mango pickle and her painted fingers disappear into her mouth, exiting empty, without smudging her maroon lipstick. She presses her soft, powdered cheeks against yours, you inhale her sweet perfume: honey, jasmine, rose. Bye baby, see you soon, she says. Paati and you wave from the door, half your body leaning out the frame. Amma walks away, the click-clack of her heels, the pendulum-like swing of her hair, the bounce of her brown handbag. The breeze lifts and holds aloft the loose end of her sari with the red and black polka dots. You don’t have school today and on no-school days you miss Amma terribly.

Inside the house, your aunt wails, like she always does when there’s no one in the room with her, thinking she’s been abandoned. She has soiled herself again. The air smells of undigested food, bacteria, mucus, dead cells. Her skirt needs a change. Hello? your grandma yells, pulling the stained fabric and dropping it in the empty blue bucket by her feet, its plastic lips chapped. She raises your aunt’s dead, useless legs and mops her wide bottom with a wet washcloth from front to back, between the creases and under the folds of her skin. Next, she wipes the rubber sheet underneath before stuffing your aunt’s dry, cracked feet into a fresh, cotton skirt. Yelle! She shouts to get Thatha’s attention, her tone sharp. Your grandpa, partially deaf in both ears, is reading the Times of India newspaper, his thick, dark glasses balanced on the edge of his pepper-like nose. Hey, you! Paati shouts again. Upon being summoned, he glances longingly at the headlines one last time, before discarding the paper on the coffee table. Your aunt screams again. She can’t articulate what she wants. Whether she’s hungry, thirsty, in pain, or needs someone to scratch the itch on her back she can’t get to with her one good arm. Thatha takes the stained skirt to the bathroom at the end of the long courtyard that you share with the homeowner’s family across from you. First, Thatha soaks the skirt in the bucket filled with water, where it drinks and drinks and bloats, growing heavy. He disposes the water and refills the bucket from the tap that shoots water like a machine gun, while he holds the skirt by its neck and dunks it again, lifting it high over his head and bringing it down—thwack-thwack—on the face of the flat black stone in the corner, there for this purpose alone. A thousand droplets hang in the air, yellow dots under the lone yellow bulb. His veshti is folded at the knees, calves strained, his skin purple and bruised. He squats on his haunches, and with a detergent cake that smells like snot and in the shape of an unfinished block of wood, goes to work with a bristle brush—soaping in circles, running the brush in straight lines. He dips the cloth again in clean water, wrings it with sinewy arms, his veins braiding this way, that. You tell him about the light, tell him, Thatha, the droplets look like I’ve sneezed, but he doesn’t bother with the unnecessary. Fills his mind with geography, weather, cricket, maps, numbers, medicines he needs to take and when and in what order. And always asking you why you let your Bournvita get lukewarm like piss before drinking it? Maybe that’s why he’ll live till he’s 93.

Your aunt is a part-formed mind, her memories frozen at age six from the convulsions that rattled her bones. She remembers you somehow, calls you by your name, your face a smile on her lips.

Grandma’s feeding your aunt dal and ghee mixed rice, scraping her fingers on the back of your aunt’s lower teeth to get every morsel in. She wipes the drool off her glistening chin with a hand towel. Your aunt’s face is miles from symmetry, a face that when people look at, they shake their heads in pity, place a hand over their cheek. Your aunt is a part-formed mind, her memories frozen at age six from the convulsions that rattled her bones. She remembers you somehow, calls you by your name, your face a smile on her lips. Sometimes, Paati tells you about the time she, Thatha and aunt, six at the time, took the train to a wedding. At night your aunt’s body started burning with fever. She frothed at her mouth, her body jerking like a puppet pulled by strings and before the train could halt, before she could get medical help, her limbs, her mind gave up. Now, your aunt opens her mouth wide so Grandma can pour water from a tumbler, little by little. Sometimes she pours too much, which your aunt coughs up out of her nose. She hums a Tamil song from her childhood. Always, the first two lines only. You’re beside her, listening to her mumble something about wanting your Appa to bring her a new doll to play with, your father who works in another country, your father whom you haven’t seen for six months.

Amma says promotion at work means a demotion in life. Appa doesn’t even know you were suspended for a week for calling Mrs. Priscilla’s sagging chest "knee boobs," right after she sank into her chair, before picking up her heavy breasts and placing them on her desk with a sigh. You were relieved that it was Amma who came to speak with your principal and not Appa.

It’s noon and you’re napping on the cot by the window. Your aunt scratches her pale belly, and her cotton shirt rides up, leaving half a breast on display, breast with deep ridges on her areola. You pull her shirt down. She’s quiet, snoring, clutching her red doll with its bird-beak nose tightly in her right hand.

Angry voices rise from the courtyard, the landlord and his son are dueling again. Over money, Paati says. An awful thing. Paati and you watch them argue through the slightly parted curtains. A silent joy swells in your heart that such a forbidden thing brings. You’re behind her, the smell of her half-dry sari in the closed room, al dente dreams, parts you can’t chew. You fall asleep with your head on her chest.

It’s almost evening, Amma must be on the bus back. You get ready to go to the mandi with Paati: scooters, buses, tuk-tuks, bee-beep-peep. Vendors shriek, their voices hoarse: Want this? Want that? Sweet potato with chaat masala, incense sticks—chandan, mogra, gulab; handcarts selling peanuts in shells, balloons pink and red, toy guns, paper windmills, sun melting the tar on the narrow streets, chickens for sale clucking in their cages. Indian squash, cauliflowers, red carrots, ladies’ fingers. Why no mans’ fingers? You ask Grandma and she laughs, looks at you with amused wet eyes, looks away from the road for a second and bam! An autorickshaw slams into her right hand, her little finger bends like a wilted flower that will never lift its head to breathe the sun again.

It’s February, weeks before your grade five exams. Mr. Sen, your black-lipped music teacher in school, wants you to take singing seriously. You have a beautiful voice, he says, smelling of whisky and cigarettes and insisting you sit on his lap when the class is empty, his skin twitching and quivering like a camel’s. On the afternoon of the Holi festival, after your winning performance at the interschool solo singing competition, after the other students depart, he invites you to his white ambassador that smells like mothballs. He sticks the moist tip of his lit cigarette into your mouth. He wants you to inhale. You cough; he chuckles. Don’t worry, I won’t tell your parents. He smiles, his teeth wet, muddy-looking, hands moving up and down your thighs. He says, Come closer and close your eyes. It’s cold inside the car. Amma must be back. Happy Holi, he says, rubbing colour over you. Your mouth. Your stomach. Your buttocks. He licks your earlobe. Bites your chest. Tickles between your legs. You like? He expects you to say yes. Eyes still closed, you nod. Let's play a game. You have to guess what object you’re touching without looking. First one’s easy. His cigarette box. The second thing, his knuckles, the skin on them dry and gravelly. The third: he grabs your hand and slips it inside his pants. His thing swells like a balloon. You know what it is. Grandma calls it Peepee. You have held yours many times, maneuvering it like a hose to see how far up the wall you can pee. You’ve never held an adult peepee in your hand before and feel that you shouldn’t be. If you tell Grandma, she may not believe you. Grandpa may not pay you any attention at all. Your aunt won’t understand a thing. Amma, she’ll cry. You could write to Appa, though your letter may end up like the others, somewhere under a pile of old newspapers or inside a never looked at drawer. Mr. Sen wants you to rub his peepee, shows you what he wants you to do with your hands. Like this, he says. He makes little sounds, takes these short breaths. It’s dark out, the parking lot is deserted. You follow his instructions until your fingers cramp and become wet like you’ve just dipped them in a bottle of glue. Do you have one? He means a peepee. Of course, you say, everyone has one. You’re such a sweet-sweet boy, he says when it’s time for you to leave. See you tomorrow. And remember, this is our secret. Don’t tell anyone.

At home, Grandma wants you to wash your hands. Wash your face and feet also, she says. She says, Kanna, you’re such a good singer, when you tell her about winning the competition. Amma says, I’m sorry I missed your performance. I’ll come next time, okay? She says, Mr. Sen is such a good teacher. You should take private lessons from him.

You can’t tell anyone. Not to anyone at home. Not to anyone at school. It’s your fault, it’s your fault, it’s your fault, you hear a voice go in your head. You have trouble falling asleep. Trouble eating. Trouble peeing. The doctor says, Growing pains and prescribes iron, zinc, vitamin D.

Your heart is Jack-In-The-Box, ready to explode.

In school, the maths period is over, the next period is music. Your heart is Jack-In-The-Box, ready to explode. You’re guarding the door while Shankar, the biggest boy in school, makes a cartoon drawing of Mr. Sen with a human body and a donkey head, making hee-haw sounds. Shankar isn’t afraid of anyone. Maybe someday you can tell Shankar about Mr. Sen. When you see Mr. Sen rounding the corner, you start braying and Shankar and the others scramble back to their desks. Mr. Sen sees the drawing on the board. Someone whinnies in the back and you snort with laughter. He pinches the tips of your ears between his chalk-rough fingers and hauls you to the principal’s office. What did you draw on the board, you rascal? The principal raps a duster on your knuckles. Her long fingers leave long red marks on your cheeks. You want to tell her what Mr. Sen did but know that she won’t believe you either. No one will. Tell your father to come to my office on Monday.

You have two days to confess at home. You don’t tell on Saturday, because on Saturdays Amma takes you with her to the parlour where she gets her hair straightened. Sometimes, the nice lady there washes your hair with lukewarm water, your head tipped back over the sink, massaging your scalp with her gentle fingers. Sometimes you fall asleep. Sometimes you’re on the same train as your aunt’s; sometimes locked inside Mr. Sen’s Ambassador.

Sunday, you rent a bicycle from the corner shop: the red one, dark-brown seat, and pay 50 paise for the hour. You ride up and down the street. A bakery at the head of the lane makes atta biscuits and cakes with overly sweet frosting and the street smells of simmering butter and sugar in hot pans, summer, winter and rain. Be careful, be careful, be careful, your mum chants as she sits in the sun, her aging face and thinning hair, and peels peanut shells. You ride past your house again, head turned toward her, happy that she’s home. Every time you round up the street, you try and gather the courage to cough up the truth. You’re ready, you think and brake abruptly. Her eyes fill with horror then, her voice leaves her throat and explodes out of her mouth as she watches you soar, before, like the cloth in Grandpa’s hand, your head thwacks against your neighbour’s stairs. The man on the scooter behind you sobs. You think it’s Appa and you stretch your arms. You tell him it’s okay. He picks you up in his arms as you drip blood, dark and sticky on his white office shirt, and you mumble that grandpa will clean it for him. At the hospital, lying on a white bed, a nurse in a white uniform, talks to you, her fingers busy behind you. How old are you? When’s your birthday? What’s your favourite subject in school? She says, this is how it feels when angry ants bite, as she stabs your scalp with her needle—in-out, in-out.

At the hospital, Amma is sitting by your bed, and you confess: what happened at school, that the principal wants to meet Appa. And maybe it’s the pain from the stitches pulling on your scalp, you also tell her what Mr. Sen did to you. You expect a, I’m so sorry this happened to you and instead, get a, You don’t know what you’re talking about because you hit your head. Go to sleep and everything will be fine.

Years later, you still recall the marinated, headless orange chickens suspended at the dhaba on the corner of the Ajmal Khan market, a steel rod punched through their bodies, and the discomfort you felt. The kind you felt when Mr. Sen pulled your pants down the week after your accident. And each time after that time.

That rod is still inside you now, because Amma still makes you take iron, zinc, vitamin D, and still believes you aren’t okay in the head, that you’re still a bird flying against the wind.