A Sister's Promise by Renita D'Silva Read Free Book Online

could live without . . . ’
    ‘Really? Then why do you complain when I cut your allowance? What do you know about hunger? Have you experienced the tortured seizures of an emaciated stomach, the anxious tremors of not knowing where the next meal is coming from? You spoilt brat. Your room alone could house two of the huts I grew up in. I keep making allowances for you, thinking you’re a teenager, that you’re going through so much, but do you know what I was doing when I was your age? Have you any idea?’
    All the anxiety, the dread she experienced when she saw Raj flanked by policemen, bursts out of her in one furious tirade. She just wanted to let Raj know that he had crossed a line, and that she would not entertain the law escorting him home on a regular basis. But instead of getting her point across calmly, she’s lost her rag . . .
    Why is she like this with her son? Why can’t she tell him what she’s really thinking, hold him like she wants to, show him she cares?
    Because I am afraid. So afraid to love him in case . . . in case he gets hurt. In case I lose him.
    Instead she rails at him, driving him further and further away.
    He is hurt. And I am losing him anyway.
    And why bring up her past? Why now? Because of that dream . So real. Bringing it all back . . .
    Raj sits up, long legs bunching, staring a challenge at her. ‘No mum, I don’t know what you were doing when you were my age. I don’t know anything about your past, because you haven’t cared enough, or you haven’t had the time to tell me. Maybe, it’s because you’re always fucking working.’
    That does it. Something inside her breaks. She strides up to her son, lifts her hand and slaps him, hard, across his cheek.

SHARDA
SEETHING SILENCE
    Dearest Ma,
    I sit by Kushi’s bedside and I write to you like I have over the years. These letters are my lifeline, and keep me tethered to the here and now. I want to be strong for my daughter, be there for her when she wakes.
    I don’t want to collapse again like I did when I found out what had happened —I have jotted that down in my previous letter. I am keeping a record of exactly what took place so I can produce it when we take the people who did this to my beloved Kushi to court.
    Beside other beds along this long, illness-infused, grief-infected room, loved ones keep vigil like I am doing. We do not meet each other’s eyes, preferring to keep our blame and our self-flagellation, our what-ifs and if-onlys to ourselves.
    I look at Kushi, hitched to the bed, the myriad tubes keeping her alive sticking out of her like pins in a voodoo doll, her face ashen as clouds bereft of rain, and I will her back into my life. My vital girl, full of life, now just a shadow.
    My fault.
    Why did I ignore those threats?
    How could I have wilfully let my perfect girl, naïve in the ways of the world, out of my sight when I, of all people, know the true, monstrous nature people hide behind false smiles and cloying grins?
    I want to find the people who did this and hack them to bits, squeeze the heinous breath out of them. But I dare not leave my daughter’s bedside, be lax in safeguarding her yet again.
    I’d had a premonition all day, that sense of unease burdening my chest. Why didn’t I act on it instead of ignoring it, tamping it down, and hoping it would go away? Granted I didn’t know what exactly was going to happen—nevertheless, I should have gone in search of Kushi, found her and brought her home with me, and kept her safe. Or I should not have let her go out at all that day.
    Now, here she is, my treasured child, her pale face motionless as the moon suspended in a nest of clouds in those tormented hours just prior to dawn’s emergence from behind the stuffy curtain of night.
    Does she know how very proud I am of her? How much she has taught me? How she has changed me, made me grow, own up to my mistakes, come into my own?
    I want a chance to tell her. Please God, please Ma. I want her back. She is