The Hungry Ghosts by Shyam Selvadurai Read Free Book Online Page A

are children involved now. You cannot afford to make another mistake.”
    “He’s a boy,” my mother pleaded, “a little boy.”
    And so I understood that my mother would not defend me anymore. She was no longer in control of our destiny. I was.
    That night, as we ate dinner on the back verandah under a dim naked bulb that cast a pallid glow, I found myself observing my mother and thinking for the first time about how she must look to an outside eye, cheekbones stretching her skin, lips dry and chapped, blackish-purple hollows at her temples. She had always been thin, but now I saw that she had grown even more so since my father’s death.
    The next morning, instead of sitting with my sister, I took my copybook and
The Radiant Way
to my grandmother’s bedroom. She lowered the bank statement she was reading and her eyes followed me as I went to sit on the mat by her bed and begin my work. Even though she frowned sternly as she went back to the statement, I could tell she was glad I had come to her.
    After some time had passed, my grandmother folded up her glasses, gathered her bills and accounts and put them on the side table. She glared to warn me against any mischief, but there was no real rancour in her gaze now. She lay back and closed her eyes. The laundry basket was not far from where I sat. The smell of lavender perfume and rose talcum powder seemed to deepen the sweat and damp of unwashed clothing. The fan whirled sluggish air about. I could feel the perspiration gathering in the crook of my arms and knees.
    When I was sure my grandmother was asleep, I crept to the window and looked out through its thick bars. Renu was playing batta. She stopped, her feet planted on two squares, the batta stone in her hand, then continued with the game as if she had not seen me.
    Two days later, my mother came home with a box from Perera and Sons. She gathered us together around the back verandah table, and once Rosalind had brought cake plates and a knife, she announced she had been offered a job as an apprentice editor at the
Lanka News
, a paper owned by a friend’s father. My sister and I had also been accepted into the schools she wanted.
    The ribbon cake had hard vanilla icing and sugar flowers, the sort we only ever had at birthdays. My mother beamed at us. “Happy?”
    We nodded, but there was a troubling new vivacity to her manner, a harsh glitter in her eyes. As she began to cut slices, she said, not looking at us, “Children, how was your day, what did you do?”
    “I had a tea party,” Renu replied.
    “Alone?” My mother passed the first slice of cake to Rosalind, who was standing behind her. “You know, you must look after your brother. He is, after all, the youngest. You should include him in your games.”
    “He couldn’t play,” Renu started to say, “he had to—” I kicked her in the shin.
    My mother continued to pass out slices as if she had not heard, the knife sighing as it cut through the hard icing. She kept my piece beside her, andonce she was seated she beckoned me forward and hoisted me into her lap. She kissed the back of my neck, her teeth grating briefly against my flesh. “But you are still my baby boy, my best, darling boy, aren’t you?” Her arms were tight around me.
    “Yes, Amma,” I whispered. Sitting there in her hot embrace, breathing in her cheap perfume that smelt vaguely of chlorine, I glanced down at the slice of cake and was repelled. Yet when she held out the first forkful, I forced myself to take it, the crumbs prickling my throat.
    “Yes, children,” she said, “a bright future is before us. Indeed it is.”

    Another of my grandmother’s favourite stories begins with the line,
Like a leopard stalking its prey through tall grass, a man’s past life pursues him, waiting for the right moment to pounce
. It is the tale of a monk named Chakkupala, who, at the moment of achieving enlightenment, becomes blind. The other monks are puzzled by this and they appeal to the