“You can?” I say, because actually that sounds quite awesome.
He doesn’t touch Mom or touch me, but waves at us and says enjoy your picnic and don’t eat too many worms, Sanusha, but didn’t he hear Mom say I have to eat apples now?
Mom waves a little and then looks miserable, like Mr Miserable who hasn’t learnt to turn that frown upside down.
“I think we should go, baby,” she says. “Asmita Ayaa asked me to get some carrots.”
“That man shouldn’t have had our passion fruit,” I say to Mom. “And it was supposed to be just us at the picnic. That’s why we left Asmita Ayaa behind.”
“It’s kind to share, Sanusha. And you don’t need to mention this to Appa. He’d be a bit upset if he knew we went on a picnic without him.”
“Appa hates picnics. They make his pants dirty.”
“That’s right, darling, he does.”
*
At the house Asmita Ayaa and Mom peel the carrots. Sometimes they talk while they’re working and sometimes they don’t – today is a quiet day. Mom turns on the radio and Asmita Ayaa hums softly. Asmita Ayaa can peel 10 carrots in 3 minutes – I timed her with the clock on the wall. You have to watch the second hand, the fast one, and each time it goes past the 12 then that counts as 1 minute. The peels shoot in all directions, even on the floor. She doesn’t pick them up till afterwards and sometimes I step in them and pretend to fall down like I’ve skidded on a vrot banana.
Mom peels neatly and slowly. She holds each vegetable like a fragile little baby (fragile means it can break easily – just like Mom) and then curls the peels off, one by one. She makes neat stacks on the newspaper, and when she lifts the paper up, you can’t even see where she was working.
Then they chop the onions. I don’t like onions. They make me cry, and not because I’m sad. They make Mom and Asmita Ayaa cry too, and soon we are all there, the Moonsamy women, crying in the kitchen while the sunflower oil gets hot, hot, hot. The fan above the stove goes hummmmmmm, so we can’t even hear the radio. That’s why we don’t hear when Appa drives into the carport because he doesn’t have a garage for his car, which is quite new. He got it for his fancy job in town. Mom got his old car, which smells of off milk when it gets sunny, because I spilt my bottle once when I was a baby.
Appa walks into the house, and we only see him when he puts down his keys on the kitchen counter.
I wait for Mom to run to him like she used to, so she can beat Asmita Ayaa to say hello, but she doesn’t look up from her onions. Asmita Ayaa puts down her knife, wipes her hands on her apron, and hugs Appa.
“Hello, my son. You’re home early.”
From behind his back he pulls out a bunch of flowers. Pink ones. Mom’s favourite.
“I came home to see my family, and to give my wife some flowers,” he says.
Mom turns the pot, tipping in the last of the onions. They sizzle. (A good word. It sounds like what it means.) She stirs.
“You can put them in a vase, Rajit,” Mom says.
“Now, now,” says Asmita Ayaa, “is that the way to thank your husband?”
Mom looks at my grandmother. “What do you want me to do? Screw him?”
I don’t know what that is, but Asmita Ayaa’s face drops like Mom spat at her. It’s very bad to spit even though it is really cool to see how long it gets before it breaks.
Mom switches off the stove and holds out her hand to me. “Come, Sanusha – I want to go for a drive.”
I don’t know what to do because Appa looks like he needs a hug.
“Go on your own, Thea,” Appa says. “The kid needs a bath.”
I’m not the kid. I’m Sanusha.
Mom just ignores him and marches us through the front entrance. She straps me in, and I wave at Appa, who’s followed us out to the car, his face scary like a big storm.
“You watch how you drive with my daughter,” he shouts at her.
Mom slams her door and makes the engine go grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. We drive down the street and I can see Mom is crying.
“Are you hungry, angel?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“How about a big, meaty burger and then a movie?”
“In the middle of the week?”
“Sure. Why not?”
Mom lights a cigarette and opens her window, blowing smoke out in big clouds. It’s already getting dark so I can see the red tip of her cigarette glowing as she moves her hand. Appa would shout if he knew she was smoking with me in the car. Mom reaches over to turn on the radio. She makes it so loud that my ears hurt and I can’t even ask her to turn it down.
“You’re having us followed?” she shouts, all of a sudden, and she swings her head so she can look behind our car. She turns down the music, and flick-flick, she moves sideways across the road.
“Okay there, darling?”
“Yes.”
Then she shouts a really dirty word over and over again, and changes to the left. “Leave me alone!” she says. “Leave me alone!”
But Mom isn’t alone – she’s with me, and we’re going for a burger and a movie in the middle of the week. Mom leans over. She’s looking in her handbag.
“Where is it? Where is it?” she says.
“Where is what?” But she doesn’t hear me, because she has to swing the car around a bus filled with faces with mouths like big O’s.
“Jesus,” she says, and I’m very confused because she doesn’t talk about him except at Christmas, which is his birthday, 25 December. This is a good day because 5 can go into 25 exactly 5 times.
Mom throws her cigarette out the car, which I know for sure is a naughty thing to do. She’s a litter bug damaging the environment. Then the world will end and we will have nowhere to live.
Mom’s car is going grrrrrr, grrrr, grrrr. My seatbelt squeezes my shoulder when we turn a corner.
“It’s too fast, Mom,” I say. This is true. I saw a big sign and it said 60, which means 60 kilometres an hour. She’s going to get a speed fine! Maybe she doesn’t hear me because she doesn’t slow down, and she turns another corner so fast I think I’m going to fall out the car. I push down my door lock button.
“Go away,” she says. “Piss off.” (That’s another word for wee, so I think this is also a dirty word.)
“Where are we going, Mom?” I shout.
“I need to get to Annie.”
I like Auntie Annie. She once bought me a book about a guy called Newton who had an apple fall on his head and he worked out why it fell. I had an acorn hit me on the head once, but I didn’t think up anything clever after that.
“Don’t worry, Sanusha – we’re going to be fine.”
I just want Mom to slow down.
“Slow down, Mom!” I say.
“We’ve got to lose him,” she replies.
I don’t know who she’s talking about.
“Lose who?”
“The man who’s following us. We need to get to Annie.”
My stomach goes grumble, grumble like Winnie-the-Pooh when he needs honey.
“What about our burger?” I ask. “You promised me a burger and a movie in the middle of the