everything you never said

05. mina

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BEFORE the death of my father, amma was a different person. I watched her, vivid and vibrant and bursting with energy, hopelessly positive, like an errant sunbeam on a gloomy day. It used to annoy me from time to time, how she breezed through life with a bright smile and didn't let anything get to her. Don't sweat the small stuff, kutti, she used to tell me. Life is short.

Life is short, and that's the problem.

I didn't see amma anymore, not truly. Before, she would sing loudly and carelessly as she made our dinner. She laughed at lame jokes and befriended the sparrows that visited our garden from time to time. We had dance parties and baking sessions. She lived, she laughed and she loved. And sometimes, I hated her for embodying a piece of decoration, because I wanted what I couldn't have - to be so effortlessly happy.

There's nothing I wouldn't have done to see her smile again. Not that tight, pained one she gave to the aunties and uncles that visit our house, the one that people can see through, but pretend they don't. I missed her old smile, where her nose would scrunch up and her dimples would show, her eyes would widen with a childlike wonder and you can't help but smile back at  her.

It hurt, because when my dad died I didn't lose one parent, but two.

I lost my childhood, I realised, when what I had left of it showed up at my doorstep. Noah stood there,  a bouquet of roses and tea in hand. He was wearing that smile, the apologetic one when you're not sure how much you can smile without seeming insincere. It was the first I'd seen him in almost a week, since the park. I'd let my guard down, and all it had gotten me was a cold shoulder. 

I narrowed my eyes at him. 'Turn around, you're not coming inside.' He hesitated, but did as I asked. 

'Amma, I'm going out for a walk. You need anything?' I shouted from the doorstep. There was no reply. Guess that's a no, then.

'I'm sorry I'm ignoring you, I never meant to hurt you.' He says. Only it comes out as 'I brought you flowers.'

'Don't ever do that again.' I want to say, only I end up saying 'Want to plant these together?'

We walked together, a comfortable silence where neither one wants to break the reverie, stray shoulders bumping together, the cold air stinging my skin and making my cheeks warm.

'My father always bought me marigolds' I said to nobody in particular.

'Yeah?' Noah asked, his eyebrows furrowed.

'Yeah. We used to go to temples, and right outside, there was a flower vendor who made chains out of flowers. I loved the yellow marigolds and every single time we went, I'd beg him to buy me one. It made me feel like a princess, wearing the flower crown and being paraded around on his shoulders.'

Noah walked out in front of me, placing his hands on my shoulder firmly and looking at my eyes.

'Noah? What are you-'

'I won't say I'm sorry, because that fixes nothing. Those are just words, meant to make one of us feel better, and it's not you.'

I open my mouth to say something, anything, but he continues. The sincerity in his eyes makes me blink.

'I'm here for you, though. I am today, and I always will be. I hope that's enough.'

'It is enough.' I want to say. 'You are enough.'

'Are we planting these here?' I ask instead.

He chuckles humorlessly, like he's sharing a joke with himself. I'm so used to pushing people away that I'm numb. 

I remember something my mother told me, when I had come crying to her in 5th grade after Bethany had called me a terrorist. She looked so angry, the angriest I had seen her till that day. But then her eyes clouded over with emotions, too many, too jumbled to separate.

'Come here, Kanna,' She  called, cradling me in her arms and wiping the warm tears from my eyes.

'It's hard to be good in a world like ours. A world where people take one look at us and write us off as different, as outcasts. But we have to be good. We have to be kind, be patient and truthful and fair. We have to be the very best we can be, because we owe it to everyone around us.'

Later, I learned that it was called Dharma. The code of conduct that all of us have to follow. The rules, the virtues, our duties, and the right way to live. The reason? We owe it to the gods, our parents, our friends, our ancestors and everyone we surround ourselves with. It was what we ought to do, because it is what's right. As a child, that scared me: the fact that anyone who does good, is doing it not because they want to, but because they had to.

My thoughts were interrupted when Noah tugged at the roses in the crook of my arm.

'Hand them to me, would you?' His eyes were softer, and it put a smile on my face.

'I never liked roses, they were too cliché.' I muttered to myself.

'I know. but there's one thing I like about them, Mina.'

He placed the roses gingerly into the hole in the soil, and pulls me down, onto the soft, yet prickly grass.

'Even if you cut them off, eventually they have the strength to grow back.'

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hi!
so i haven't updated in a month,,, i'm like so sorry sjdjswk
but i really hope y'all like this chapter! my tests start soon and i might not have time to update, but i promise to try to upload a chapter a week.
love,
sanjana