A People's History of Heaven by Mathangi Subramanian

Author:Mathangi Subramanian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2018-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

10

Half-Wild

“padma? padma, where are you?”

“Amma?” Padma springs up from where she’s sitting with the rest of us, crouched in front of steaming plates of biryani.

“Where is everyone?” Gita Aunty asks. “Why isn’t anyone home?”

“We’re all out here, Amma,” Padma says. “There’s been some trouble.”

“Trouble?” Gita Aunty says. Rubs her eyes with the back of her hand. “What trouble?”

“First, eat,” Padma says. “Then I’ll tell you.”

Our mothers are brassy and cheerful, larger than life. Fill up space with their bodies, their orders. Their noise. Padma’s mother, though? She doesn’t take up any space at all. Floats through Heaven like a silhouette. An outline of someone who once was, a charcoal pencil sketch smudged around the edges.

Padma’s mother is nothing like our mothers. But Padma says she used to be.

“Did you feed the crows?” Gita Aunty asks. “They’ll be hungry.”

“I will, Amma. Right now it’s dinnertime, okay?” Padma says. Steers Gita Aunty around the bulldozers, away from the line of engineers loading up the bus. Settles her mother on the ground, pours water over her hands to wash off the dirt. The way our teachers did when we were in preschool. Before we knew how to take care of ourselves.

Banu scurries over with a plate of biryani and a water bottle. Hands them to Padma, who hands them to her mother.

“Eat, Amma,” Padma says. “You need your strength.”

Beneath the glow of the rising moon, streetlamps flicker and headlights glimmer, fireflies twinkle and cell phones gleam. The foreign lady’s camera flashes, illuminating Padma stroking her mother’s back, Banu curling her shoeless toes. Gita Aunty hunching over her meal, next to the space where Banu’s ajji would be if she wasn’t too sick to eat.

Heaven may be striped with all kinds of light tonight. But it’s the line between the mothered and the unmothered that always glows the brightest.

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