While my friends back home furiously cover up their skin with layers of sticky makeup and continuously complain about redness and freckles. My years in India had convinced me that each freckle was a kiss from the sun and I covered in luck.
Fate, however, disagreed, along with my family.
I was a murderer before I could speak. My mother died because of me, she gave me her life.
Agnes Moore died during childbirth, aged just thirty-one.
My parents had married young, three years later they’d been overjoyed at the appearance of my sister. Then, I happened and half of their marriage ended, ten years on. Almost sisteen years later, both my father and my sister blame my mothers death on me.
People stare when I walk down a dusty backstreet in India. Dirty blond hair falls down my back when it should be pinned back, my blue eyes can be seen a mile off, like my mother I am tall, like my father I am skinny.
Rachel, my bitter sister, has my fathers dark hair and eyes, my mothers curves. My fifteen and almost twelve months tower her twenty years and now I can look over the top of her dark head.
Every year we reappear in Bombay for no particular reason, a tradition started by my mother I think. We go to the same old house and do the same things. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t bored of it.
I slip through the market stalls my loose skirt twirling around my feet, dust clinging to the hem. I stop at a fruit stall and pick up a large orange, stroking the waxy skin with my thumb.
‘You will find the fruit sweet and full of juice.’ An old voice croaks. I turn and look up, a toothless old man with deep laughter lines and tiny dark eyes shining in the sun.
For a few moments I stare.
‘S-sorry.’ I mummer, falling into his eyes, seeing that the sun is turning them into a deep amber. ‘Sorry,’ I say again, stronger. ‘I haven’t any money.’
Gently I place the orange back with his friends and, with my eyes still on the mans, I push back into the crowd.
Yellowing teeth grin at me, old eyes twinkle, laughter rings out. But underneath the shining surface, I see the tiny dark boy slip a loaf of bread off an unwatched table and sink back into the shadows. The blind beggar woman trying to count her few grubby coins. The plague ridden rat gnawing at rotting meat, safely hidden by a vibrantly coloured tabled cloth that is fading at the edges.
Our ancient house is on a long line of the same stone houses. Large bay windows, shabby front gardens, politely ignored, sloping roofs, big front porches shading wooden front doors. Ours in at the end. The stone steps slowing crumbling, the thick curtains faded.
Lalita, our cook, cleaner and carer, lives only ten minutes away with her daughters and their husbands and her daughters, daughters and her one grandson. Against my fathers will they hide me there when I’m sick of Rachel’s judgements and my fathers sickly gazes.
When I push through the front door, I see Lalita’s eldest granddaughter, Paayal, standing at the top of the stairs, a worried look on her face.
Paayal is two years my senior, with beautiful dark brown eyes dotted with flecks of golden gleaming through them.
Upon my arrival she rushes down the stairs and grabs hold of my shoulders.
‘Miss Calista, Calista lady.’ Paayal cries. ‘Where have your been lady, hurry Calista, come quickly.’ She takes my hand in her own, rough, strong one and pulls me up the stairs behind her. She guides me to my fathers, strictly out of bounds, chamber.
The room reeks of vomit and sweat, the air thick with the heat from outside. Lalita is sitting by my fathers bed mopping his sweaty pink forehead.
Rachel is in a corner, huddled up in my fathers chair. Her fair skin is blotchy, her eyes glisten with tears.
Quietly we stay in the illness stricken room and watch as my father dies.
***
The first thing I see when I wake up is the golden sun pouring through my fathers bedroom window.
The first thing I hear is the bustle of an awakening city.
The first thing I think is how beautiful the colour of the sun is. Then guilt floods me as I remember my father dies last night.
The first thing I smell is incense covering up the smell of death.
The first thing I feel is a soft hand on my shoulder. I look up into the beautiful face of Lalitas youngest daughter, Sandip, a sad smile pulls at her lips as she silently helps me to my feet.
My mind and body feels numb as Sandip helps me right downstairs to the kitchen at the bottom of the house. Rachel sits at one end of the old wooden table her white fingers clasped round a chipped mug. Sandip leads me to a chair next to her. Lalita pushes a steaming mug in front of me. I don’t touch it.
I reach for Rachel, she pushes me off. ‘Get off me you,’ she snarls, ‘You vermin, you did this,’ her voice rising to a shout. ‘It’s your fault!’
My head snaps up in shock and stare into her face, fear and anger and sorrow plays in her eyes.
I push away form the table, stumble backwards through the kitchen, turn and run from the house.
I run along the crowded streets, tears blinding me. Colours spin in my head, smells make me retch, I’m dizzy, falling. I pull myself together and keep on running, right up until the moment when I run, smack-bang, into a body. It turns and I stare up into a familiar face, strong arms embrace me and I sink into a warm chest.
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AN: Feedback pleeease! It's my first story, I hope you enjoyed enstallment one. Peace out beautiful people, I xx
