Amala’s eyes dropped to Gita’s wrists and then quickly looked up, away from what she wasn’t supposed to see, wasn’t supposed to acknowledge. Remembering the Tally girls didn’t do such things. They didn’t look where they weren’t supposed to. They were a polite family. Polite families never discussed unpleasant topics. Especially about themselves. Not Amala’s neuroses. Not Gita’s suicide attempt. Not with company or even with one another. The girls’ mother, Indira, didn’t allow such talk.
But now Indira was dying. And the Dougla girls — with the black father and Indian mother — were left to wonder if they would now talk about those disagreeable things.
When she was a little girl, Amala would wish for a time when she had no more ties to her hometown, Newport News, Virginia, where nothing changed. Where bad memories painted the streets — from Terminal Avenue to Denbigh Boulevard. She lacked Gita’s strength. Her big sister just never came home. But even she was here now. Near death, Indira had done what she could not in life: bring her wayward family together.
Amala realized there was only one way she would never need to come back. After that Amala couldn’t wait for her mother to die until it happened. Amala never learned to separate Indira from Mother; Gita had learned the difference too early. But Amala could not forgive her mother’s transgressions, let alone her imperfections.
But Amala was a dutiful daughter. She was there when Indira got sick. Back home. She made her as comfortable as she could. Comfortable in her home. But that place never felt that way to Amala. A place of taunts and anxiety. Where she couldn’t escape even the slightest misstep. But she went, taking a leave of absence from her professorship, risking her chance at tenure. Amala was with her mother in those last weeks. Unlike Gita.
Gita called from time to time. Sent money. Helped pay for home hospice care. Called her mother everyday. But the sisters didn’t talk to one another. Until those last days.
“What is it?” Gita asked. “What’s wrong?”
“You need to come home, now!” Amala said. She had never commanded her sister until then.
Amala picked up Gita late that night from the train. When Gita stepped off the train to see her sister standing there she opened her arms and hugged her. But then Gita stood back, she realized her little sister was someone she didn’t know. The ride to the house was quiet. Nothing more than perfunctory acknowledgments and pleasantries.
Gita didn’t know what to expect when she got to her mom’s room. She came through the hallway and immediately up the stairs. Pictures of Gita and Amala lined the hallways. Gita smiling through her braces. Amala scowling in a flower-print dress. The girls bulding a sandcastle together at Virginia Beach. Gita with her friends. Amala with her modules. A time capsule in the form of a mural.
Around the bend was her mom’s room. Gita closed her eyes and breathed out audibly before stepping inside. There was her mother, laying on a hospital bed slightly lifted with a pillow beneath her neck. The sickness had aged her by 20 years. The hospice nurse was attending her. No tubes or machines.
When she heard Gita’s name Indira opened her eyes and smiled when she saw her first-born: “My dahling!” Gita laid her head down on her mother’s breast and wept hard and deep. And it was her mother who comforted her in that time. “My dahling’s home!” Her breath acrid from an empty stomach. Her Trini accent and voice were strong as Gita had always known it. But that passed. The sound of their mother’s voice slipped before she did. The opiates were no longer strong enough to ease that pain. Words were replaced by sighs and moans. There was a rhythm to it. A horrible tempo of pain. A pain that her daughters heard. A pain her daughters dreaded. A pain that never seemed to cease. It returned at regular intervals. Like Chinese water torture. No longer able to eat, the girls fed her ice cubes as the hospice nurse had told Amala. Taking turns keeping watch, feeding ice cubes, and giving painkillers.