xiThat Hot Summer Afternoon

That day it was hot. The kind of hot where mosquitos don’t bother hovering but hang limply in the air like zombified clouds of dust. The kind of hot where your eyes are always pacing across the garden, looking for pockets of shade to slip into. The kind of hot where you buy a couple of earthen pots off a shopkeeper for 200 rupees to keep them (and him) from having to melt under the sun’s glare.

When we came home, Papai ammakkaiyya sat us down in the veranda and got us some paints and a paintbrush each. Then, when she was back in the kitchen, the fragrant smell of basmati and bisebellebath wafting through the clumpy air, Saranya suggested we stack the pots. It was more efficient and I’d have more control—being the elder one, a whole six years, I knew these things—so we placed hers atop mine and got to work.

In the kitchen, ammakkaiyya was clattering around; through the screen door we could see her setting the pressure cooker, tossing ingua and pusupu into a steel ginni and turning up the flame. A gentle breeze slid by and cooled the sweat on our backs.

The fragile peace lasted all of ten minutes.

It must’ve been Saranya’s hand that did it. Either that, or the momentum of my paintbrush dabbing red onto the earthen surface. Whatever it was, when the pots got knocked over and burst hollowly at our feet, I started crying.

Like, real weepy tears, the kind you reserve for when you’re abandoned at a museum at your sister’s birthday party and the mountainous figure of a security officer scoops you up and asks where your parents are.

That didn’t happen to me; Saranya didn’t have a great time at my fifth birthday party, all things considered.

Anyway, by the time ammakkaiyya found us, my hiccup-sobs had morphed into wails. Her eyes roamed over the scene: the earthen shards sinking into the grass, Saranya and I scrubbing our tear-streaked cheeks and scrunching our noses (the loss of our afternoon painting project seemingly unbearable).

“What happened?”

But I could not answer over the white ringing of tragedy in my ears. I faintly registered her prodding at me, asking me to stop and tell her what was wrong, then chiding me when she realized what we had done. But I couldn’t let up: I was hungry, I was hot, and now I had lost my pots.

She grabbed my mother’s arm and yanked: that got my attention. My wails went somewhere that could only be classified as supersonic. In my peripheral vision, pigeons flapped wildly away, and the houseflies beat their wings furiously, like the air was some sort of invisible soundproofing mechanism—that if they could just get enough distance, a bulletproof barrier would be erected against my tears.

“If you don’t stop crying, I’ll lock Sujatha in the bathroom!”

Indignity of indignities! I puffed up—a volcano ready to spew white-hot ash and pumice—and she grabbed my mother’s arm, yanking: calling my bluff. For a second, I thought to continue, but my aunt had my mother in an iron grip, so I wilted. I blinked balefully, slowing the snot-thick rush of tears down my throat. I waited.

Papai ammakkaiyya stopped dragging my mom and issued a final warning to me. It was over and I had lost; waved the white flag and abandoned my mother. I couldn’t overcome the shame of that day: it followed me like the sun’s gaze beating down on my neck that Indian summer afternoon.

Then, the other day, when I asked ammakkaiyya about it, she cracked up so hard she had to wipe away tears with her saree pallu, tassels sweeping across her face in broad strokes.

“Paapam Sujatha!” She exclaimed, voice dripping nectar. “Your daughter is shoooo shweet and protective of you!”

Well, that was that, I guessed, swatting away her mock tender caresses as my mom grinned cheekily. That memory seemed altered somehow; transformed by their peals of amusement.

In a flash of remembrance, I pictured ammakkaiyya pushing my mother towards the bathroom threateningly. Her lips were red with the effort of biting them: as though she were stifling laughter.