Ancestral Bones

Chapter 2

Safely tucking away the little bloom of displeasure towards Nani in one corner of her heart, Meenu stepped over into the adjoining room and her nostrils were immediately assaulted by the fowl smell of urine and feces. Though it was nothing new to her, the overpowering smell still made her choke on her next breath and her eyes stung.

Ignoring the roiling of her empty stomach she made her way towards the general direction of where two large holes on the wall that acted as windows lay. Crudely made wooden wedges partially driven into the clay wall held the woven rush mat covering the holes upright and against it, preventing the morning light from fully entering and illuminating the room though a couple of stubborn rays still managed to filter through the gaps in the weave of the mat.

Meenu grabbed ahold of the lower edge of the mat and rolled it up, securing it to the wedges on either sides of it using a rough coir rope. Blinking against the sudden flood of light assaulting her eyes that were previously adjusted to the gloom of the shack, Meenu gripped the lower edge of the window hole. She didn't want to turn back. Not yet. No matter how long it has been since her mother took ill, she could never get used to this ghost of a woman who stole her Ma's place.

Another phlegmy cough, followed by a rattling hiss of a breath exhaled. Unbidden, tears blurred Meenus' vision.

Through the haze of tears, she observed the solitary palm tree on the side of their shack with its swaying fronds. The old nanny goat 'seeli', loosely bound to its trunk by a frayed piece of rope was lazily muching away on the leaves of a vine wound around the trunk. Seeli was old. Skin sagging with the weight of numerous wrinkles over its round belly. Thin, spindly legs with knobby knees holding the weight of its body. She was a gift from the village chieftain to Ma when Ma's belly got full with Ari, my youngest sister. Seeli only ever birthed a single sickly kid which didn't survive for long. But she provided us with milk for awhile and then that was it. She wasn't a burden to us so we just let her be. She roamed throughout the village and grazed away on whatever greenery took her fancy and came back home to us. That too whenever she felt like coming back home. We don't usually bind her with the rope. Nani probably got ahold of Seeli last evening and bound her to the palm tree.

No longer misty eyed, Meenu heaved a heavy sigh and turned towards where her Ma lay. She stepped closer towards the prone figure lying on the sleeping palette. As she got closer, she could make out the outline of little Ari snuggled against the wheezing form of Ma.

This always happened. No amount of threatening or pinching would keep Ari from sleeping next to Ma. She had no idea how Ari could bear the stench of decay and excrement wafting off of Ma's body. Both she and Nani tried their best to explain to her how important it is to let Ma rest, and they also tried to keep her away from Ma when Ma had one of her episodes. It was during one of those episodes of Ma's spasming fits that Ari tried to cling to Ma and got one of her teeth knocked out by a flying fist. Even after all the screaming and blood of that day, Ari still went to snuggle up with Ma the next night.

In a way, Meenu could see that Ari, in her own way understands that they are soon going to lose Ma. May be that's why Ari insists on staying close to Ma as much as she possibly could.

Though Meenu could sympathize with the fact that Ari's still 5 year cycles of age and that it's too young of an age to lose their mother, she couldn't help but be a little resentful that all these emotional needs of her younger siblings only ever adds more and more for her to deal with.

Crouching low, Meenu pried Ari's hands off of Ma's prone form. Ignoring Ari's whimper of protest and her own protesting back to picking up the five year old's body from the floor, Meenu hurried over to her own room. Using her leg to topple over and unroll the sleeping palette that she previously rolled up and placed leaning against the wall before going to see Ma, she carefully layed a still half asleep Ari on it.

Straightening her body up, Meenu onserved the lean face of her little sibling, void of any roundness indicative of a healthy child her age. She placed her index finger on the center of Ari's forehead and tried to smoothen out the little frown wrinkle on there. It made her heart feel heavy to see such a young child be so sad and troubled. Ari was so unlike the other village children close to her age, she rarely spoke out loud, rarely played and she shied away from any kind of interaction with people. Even with her own siblings.

Rubbing her chest as if to make the heartache physically go away, Meenu walked over to the back door of their shack and entered the little shaded area with a dried palm frond roof held up by wooden poles firmly dug deep into the ground. They treated it as a kitchen area. Attached to the back wall of the shack is the clay stove where Meenu does her cooking. Half burnt wooden sticks and ashes from the day before, still remain on the clay stove top. A huge soot stain spans above the stove's adjacent wall up to the roof. Below the clay stove top is where all the cooking earthenware pots were kept.

Removing the cloth covering of a large rusty bucket sitting besides the stove, Meenu took a peek inside to see if enough sea water is there, that she collected the day before. Satisfied with the amount of water she found within, she then grabbed the knife lying on a side of the stove and moved towards the grove of banana trees behind their shack.

The grove was on another's property. It belonged to village black smith. After the miserly old troll passed away just last year, the property passed onto his son who turned out to be much more agreeable than his old man and allowed Meenu's family to make use of the property as long as they didn't lay their hands on any of the harvest that is to be rightfully his. That was quite okay with Meenu as she never really did like the slight acidic taste of bananas.

The morning breeze ruffled her clothes and pulled loose tendrils of wavy hair from her hair bun. The fresh cold air currents dancing across her exposed skin made goose pimples appear on it. Using her knife, she cut off part of a considerably wide banana leaf from a tree at the edge of the grove. Carefully folding the leaf along its thick mid vein and tucking it under her left arm, she made her way back to the shack.

There is a worn coir rope tied to the roof at either ends of the wall on the outside of the shack, its middle sagging against the force of gravity as well as against the weight of the clothes hung over it. Walking upto it, Meenu touched each of the clothes hanging on the line to see whether they are dry or not. She then grabbed a couple of wide, yellowed, stained cloth strips from the line and draped them over her left arm.

Hurrying back to the shack, Meenu left the knife on the stove top and grabbed the bucket of sea water with her free hand. She then hurriedly stomped her feet a couple of times at the threshold of the back door of the shack to get rid of any dirt clinging to her feet, before entering the shack. After entering Ma's room, she placed the bucket beside Ma's sleeping palette and then placed the banana leaf and the cloth strips next to it.

Then and only then did Meenu take a breath of courage and turned her head to look at the waif of a creature that her Ma had turned into.