One Hundred Shades of White

We gripped her hand firmly, more so that she would not run and leave us, and we walked home in silence, not stopping once to jump and scrunch the leaves on the ground as we normally did.

The house was in a mess. Where were his pictures? They couldn’t have gone with him. I ran into the bathroom to see if his toothbrush had come back but it wasn’t there either. Did Amma think that she could put his pictures away and that we would forget about him? I went into his closet to look for them and saw his clothes weren’t there either. They were packed away in a big cardboard box. How could she pack him up like that? In just one day, like he never existed. I told Satchin but he made no response.

‘Why are Achan’s clothes packed away, Amma?’ ‘Mol, he’s not coming back. Come, eat something.’ Eat? Is that all she ever thought about? How could we eat? She had cooked an elaborate dinner and placed some chicken drumsticks coated with breadcrumbs on a side plate (more as an afterthought that we might not like the rest). We ate none of it and went to bed. The three of us slept together in my Amma’s bed. I wanted to cry but I remembered that Ammamma said that crying would indicate that the person would not come back and this was clearly not the case so I couldn’t cry. Amma lay in bed with us and Satchin whimpered as she held us. I contained my sadness and desperately wanted to hold both of them but then I decided not to get too attached to either of them. Everyone I ever really loved seemed to disappear.

Death precipitated events, just like the astrologer said it would. With no income and no way of getting back to India, Amma began packing things. The grocery man, Tom, came most evenings to help her. He had a sister who lived in the East End of London and he thought perhaps we could rent one of her bedsits. Tom helped us sell most of the furniture, Amma sold her jewellery and our toys, and she put down the deposit for two months’ rent on a shabby room. Satchin and I didn’t want to leave and we were sad but Satchin said that we had to be strong and not make any fuss. We did not say goodbye to our teachers or school friends. We left like thieves with the three suitcases, all tied with string, and as we climbed into Tom’s van, our childhood effectively ended.

I can’t remember much of that journey, except that it was raining hard and that the rain began to fall inside of me, suffocating me and taking with it any hope that I had of Achan’s return. The sea predator could not get me so it sent the rain. My heart beat faster and the rain fell harder: the rest, I cannot remember.

The flat was a semi-furnished bedsit off Green Street in the East End of London. We had to share an outside toilet with the man on the same landing as us. He was Polish and he dressed in an old black pinstriped suit every day of the week and rarely left the house, except on Sunday when he went to Church. Tom’s sister, Maggie, was the Irish landlady and she lived above us with her two cats, Arthur and One Eye. She was the one that came over to us as Tom parked the van.

Maggie was a fiery lady with bright red curly hair and a big bust that she emphasised with a light sweater. She wore a black pencil skirt which was obviously too tight. Miss Davies would say that she was having her last fling with youth, that’s what I heard her say to another teacher about Catherine Hunter’s mother who dressed in those type of short skirts. Maggie also had long nails and her fingertips were stained the colour of dried henna, like her teeth. She showed us into our new home. Amma thanked her. Maggie looked down at our three suitcases and smiled at us, a smile that pretended to look reassuring. She ruffled Satchin’s hair, which was the wrong thing to do because he only let Amma do that. He stepped back from her and clung to Amma who held onto him. Maggie smiled at me and I smiled back.

‘What’s your name, darling?’

‘Maya, Maya Kathi, and I’m six and my brother’s called Satchin and he’s eight.’

‘Well, Maya Kathi, if you ever need anything, I live upstairs,’ she said as she left.

The room had horrific orange psychedelic wallpaper, a decorative attempt to distract us from what it really was; damp, cold and sparse. It had dripping taps, a hob ring for a cooker, and a greasy, thick green curtain to divide the kitchen from the sleeping/sitting area. Tom showed us how to insert the ten pence pieces in the electric meter under the sink. He looked at my mother and he told her that it would not be forever, it was just a start. When he said that, I could tell Amma wanted to cry, but she didn’t. He left and we unpacked our things.

Maggie and Tom came back a few hours later with an old iron bed for the three of us to sleep in and a few other bits and pieces which Maggie said she didn’t need. ‘Tom said you’ll need a job,’ Maggie said to Amma. We translated and Amma nodded. ‘There’s a factory a bus ride away from here that is always looking for people. Can you sew?’ Maggie waited for us to relay what she had said and Amma shook her head. ‘It’s not difficult, it’ll take a day or two to get into it. I’ve a machine upstairs. I’ll teach you.’

That is how we spent the next two days, in Maggie’s warm room with an electric bar heater and a Singer sewing machine buzzing away. One Eye and Arthur were jumping about and playing with us, whilst the television was on in the background. Maggie said Amma was a natural and would have no problems in finding work. We, in the meantime, she said, would have to be good for her and go to school. On Monday, she would take us to enrol at the local primary school and she would then accompany my mother to the factory. I thought that Maggie was another sign and that my father had sent her to show us that he hadn’t forgotten us. I could tell, though, that Amma was very cautious of her. I don’t know what exactly it was about Maggie but Amma wasn’t herself when she was around her. Maybe she didn’t understand her.

That Sunday evening, before we went to bed, I wrote a letter to my Ammamma telling her all that had happened to us. I hadn’t written religiously like I had promised because we had been so busy, but that Friday, I began my first letter, not something that I told Amma to write for me. I really missed her and I tried to remember the things she taught me but I couldn’t, so I told her things that we did and how it was now. I asked Satchin if he wanted to write anything to her on my letter. He took it from me and began laughing. He read from the beginning: ‘Dear Ammamma, Who are you?’

‘You mean how, Maya, not who.’

That was the first time he had laughed since that day. It was worth saying ‘who’ if it made him laugh. How/who, it didn’t really matter, because Ammamma didn’t read English anyway. It was just so that she would get something from me to let her know that I hadn’t forgotten her and I wanted to send it because I needed her now. Amma lit a candle and burnt an incense stick and placed it near her bronze figurine of a little Goddess with many arms and thanked Her for whatever she had sent. Momentarily, the scent masked the dampness and put us to sleep. It took me back to the veranda, waiting for my Achan, who would scoop me up and tickle me, or back to the big house when he came in late at night, kissing me and saying, ‘Who is my best little Mol?’ As morning approached, I had fragments of dreams of my Ammamma, the smell of the sea vividly invading my senses as we were running along the beach, or as I sat on the side, watching her swimming with all her clothes on. Occasionally, it didn’t make any sense, like when she appeared in a red telephone box. I promised whoever was listening out there that I would never complain if I could have those days back with the two people that I loved most. I awoke to the smell of that urine-stained mattress.

Amma got up early that morning and insisted on washing and oiling our hair. ‘You want to look good for your new school don’t you, makkale?’

I thought it was best not to make a fuss because she seemed sad at the prospect that it was the last time she would be able to do that for us. ‘If I get work at the factory, I will have to be up very early and go before you wake up, so I won’t have time to do this for you every day, not for a little while anyway.’

She helped us get dressed and Maggie came down to get us. Maggie said she would be back for Amma in half an hour to take her to the factory. We kissed her goodbye and left her to get ready. ‘Be good,’ she shouted through the window.

Maggie held our hands but Satchin released hers as we began walking to school. We passed derelict buildings, shops that were boarded up and covered with graffiti. Some said simply ‘Pakis out’. These Pakis were everywhere, according to the graffiti. ‘Who are they?’ I asked Maggie.

‘You’ve not to take any notice of that sort of thing. Do you hear me children? Just silly people giving other people nasty names.’

There were empty beer cans sprawled along the way, which had been dented by heavy fists or feet, and a group of punks crossed the road. Their hair colour reminded me for an instant of the exotic birds we had back in India. I looked at my brother to see if he had thought so too but he was somewhere else, looking down at his feet. This was the ten-minute walk to school that we would grow so familiar with, and then we went into a very old, grey building.

Maggie accompanied us along the corridor to see Mr Mauldy, the headmaster. He asked us lots of questions and gave us a stack of forms which needed Amma’s signature. We said we could sign right there as Satchin was the one who normally signed for her when Achan wasn’t around. Maggie smiled at the headmaster, saying that we were always joking around like that, and she took the forms and put them in her handbag, adding she would make sure that my mother got them. He smiled at us uncomfortably and then he took us down the corridor to show us to our respective classrooms.

My new teacher was a lady called Miss Brown; she didn’t have the warmth of Miss Davies and when she smiled she revealed a set of piano teeth, with a protruding e flat. ‘This is Maya, everyone say hello,’ she said, introducing me to my new class. ‘This is Maya,’ she repeated. Everybody talked over her. She shouted at the top of her voice and they stopped for a few seconds and looked at her apathetically. Nobody volunteered for me to sit next to them and I could feel the hostile eyes of a boy in the front row. Miss Brown pointed to the back of the class to a seat next to a small girl. I went over to her and as I took my seat I smiled nervously at her. She smiled back, saying that her name was Fatima and she gave me a yellow fruit gum. This act of generosity meant so much at the time but, weeks later, I realised that she had packets and packets of them as her mother worked at the sweet factory and the yellow ones were the ones she didn’t like and so discarded without a second thought.

Miss Brown was teaching the colours of the rainbow and was asking if anyone knew what followed red. I knew all the colours because in the old school we had learnt a song. I kept putting my hand up and answering questions and the boy in the front row kept looking back at me. I smiled and then he squinted his eyes at me so I ignored him. This aggravated the situation because he mouthed something back, to which I shrugged my shoulders, indicating that I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

‘He’s Mark Fitzgerald, you can’t mess with Mark Fitzgerald like that, say you’re sorry,’ said Fatima.

‘But I haven’t done anything.’

‘Just say sorry or there will be trouble,’ Fatima urged.

I never say sorry, especially if I haven’t done anything wrong, so I continued to ignore him.

At playtime, Mark Fitzgerald and his big friend came up to me.

‘You don’t ever mess with me, Paki.’

I did not quite understand what Paki was so I told him I wasn’t a Paki and I hadn’t messed with him.

A crowd had gathered.

‘Not a Paki,’ he laughed, pushing me.

‘Well, why have you got dirty hair and that Paki smell? Bet you eat with your fingers an’ all. Look, Marty, we’ve got another new Paki,’ he shouted to the other boy.

At that moment, I envisaged Catherine Hunter’s golden locks and wished that I was still at my old school, twirling around aimlessly in the playground with a Hula-Hoop.

‘Bet you’ve brought some smelly sandwiches with you as well,’ he said, grabbing my bag.

Oh God, my lunch box. I hoped Amma hadn’t put in any masala potatoes between the bread or packed vadas. Mark Fitzgerald’s sidekick went to open it. I closed my eyes, fearing the worst, and then I heard the word ‘cheese’.

Thank you, Amma, thank you for not doing that to me.

‘It’s cheese,’ Mark Fitzgerald shouted, flinging the sandwich, and then he threw my bag at me.

That was the Kermit the Frog bag Achan had brought for me from America.

And then I don’t know what happened but something triggered in me and I went for him. I jumped on his back, pushing him to the floor, and pounded him with my fists. All the other children began screaming with excitement and shouted my name. Anger, hurt, sadness all came through my fists as I beat him, I couldn’t stop, and then Mr Mauldy prised me away, marching me into his office.

I ached all over.

‘This is no way to behave, Maya Kathi, especially not on your first day.’

I tried to explain that it wasn’t my fault, that Mark Fitzgerald had started it, but he wasn’t listening.

‘I’ll be watching you very closely. One more episode like that and you’re out. Do you hear me? OUT!’

I said nothing, I didn’t care. I was very, very tired and sad and wanted to sleep and forget everything.

When I walked into my class, all the other children began cheering. Miss Brown said there was no need for any of that and asked them to stop, but they continued. She added that poor Mark had had to be taken to the nurse’s office and then they began clapping. I didn’t really care and sat back down next to Fatima who asked if she could be my best friend.

I thought Amma would come to collect us after school but Maggie came instead, saying that Amma had got work at the factory and would be home later.

‘Did you have a good day, children?’

I said nothing. Satchin shrugged his shoulders.

‘You’ll get used to it. It’s always difficult at first, especially when you’re new.’

Used to it, used to it, we weren’t going to get used to anything. I would speak to Amma, she would make sure that we went somewhere better or find a way of sending us back to our old school.

‘We’re not staying,’ I said.

‘Not staying where?’ Maggie asked.

‘Here, here in this horrible place, in your horrible house,’ I said, as she opened the front door.

Satchin put his hands on his face.

‘Is that right?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Listen, young lady, let’s get a few things clear and then you and me will get on fine. Be grateful, because this is the best there is at the moment and if there wasn’t this you’d be out on the streets.’

There were no beaches in London, that’s why she said streets.

‘Think of your mother. She’ll be working hard all day so she can put some dinner on the table for you, so the least you can do is be grateful; at least she’s there for you.’

I thought again about the children with no Achans and Ammas who couldn’t ever have a balloon, how sad they looked, and then about the fight. It started because he threw my Achan’s bag. What would happen if Amma went too? We would be like those children, out on the streets.

I must have looked frightened as Maggie bent down and looked at me. ‘I’m sorry to be hard with you, darling, but it’s going to be a little difficult at first. That’s always the way it is, but it will get better, I promise you, it will get better, but you have to try and be strong and be good for your mother.’

I looked at her and told her about the fight and what Mark Fitzgerald said to me and how I beat him and I couldn’t stop. Tears rolled down my face.

Maggie picked me up and cuddled me. ‘I’m sorry, darling, not everyone is like him and by the sounds of it you won’t have any problems with him no more.’

She kissed my cheeks and made me feel safe, like I could believe what she told me.

‘Now, would you like something to eat?’ she asked.

Satchin and I nodded and Maggie took us upstairs and made us fishfingers and spaghetti hoops whilst we watched her black and white television and waited for Amma.

Amma came home later looking exhausted. ‘Did you have a good day, makkale?’

‘Good,’ Satchin replied.

‘It was really good and we made lots of new friends,’ I added.

Ammamma said sometimes you had to do things just to make other people happy and then it would make you feel happy, but I didn’t feel anything when I said that. Maybe it was because I felt bad about what I had done to Mark Fitzgerald.

Amma thanked Maggie.

Maggie said it had been no trouble and that we were really good kids.

We went downstairs and went to bed.

The next day Amma got up and went to work early and left us all the breakfast things prepared. Satchin served it all and then washed up and took me to school because Maggie was busy. It was a straight road, left at the crossing and then straight again. It wasn’t difficult, but we followed the other mothers and children just to make sure we got there. I don’t know why I expected it to be different. The children were much nicer to me but there was still sadness, a sadness which was built into the school walls. There were no pictures or singing in the corridors and assemblies were endless prayers and hymns that none of us could identify with, nobody brought in their toys to show the other children; maybe they didn’t have any. You couldn’t really sit assemblies out even if you wanted to. Fatima did, insisting her father would get angry as they were Muslims, and she was taunted regularly, but preferred this to what her father would do if she attended. I wanted to sit out with her but just got on with learning the Lord’s Prayer.

Assembly was Mr Mauldy’s time for imposing his authority with threats of caning for misbehaviour. He held the cane firmly in his hand as he spoke from the stage and lashed it against the podium, but nobody took any notice. What was another beating in the scheme of things? Then came the occasional morale-boosting song, introduced more as an afterthought that maybe this was the way to go:

‘I love the sun, it shines on me, God made the sun and God made me. I love the rain, it splashes on me, God made the rain and God made me.’

The bullies laughed at the absurdity that there could even be a God, let alone one sitting and making the sun and the rain, and glared at those who were heartily singing away. They had antennae to identify the weak: nobody could really blame them, for this is what they learnt at home. You had to pretend to be strong, even if you weren’t, or you had to find some way of keeping them at bay.

They never touched me, not since that episode with Mark Fitzgerald, and many of them even listened to me. One day Miss Brown had to go in for a blood test which she made such a big deal out of that I thought she might never come back and teach again. ‘She’s going for a transfusion that might not be a success,’ I said, preparing the class for the worst. She arrived back in class the next day, larger than life, to a pile of bereavement cards. ‘It were Maya, Miss, she said you were gonna die,’ informed Nicola Jory.

Miss Brown muttered something about wild imagination but you only had to look at the size of her plaster to know it wasn’t that.

I had to utilise the fact that I wasn’t touched by the bullies and find ways of keeping my status, so some playtimes I set up stories narrating colourful scenes and turned even the most hardened bully into a goblin or a prince. As I narrated, standing on the bench, they would turn their overcoats into fantastic capes and would vent their anger by slaying some dragon, or would make wishes to wizards that we knew would never be fulfilled. Never did I finish with a happy ending, always with a bizarre twist of fate, otherwise they wouldn’t have played. Fatima became my assistant and made some really good sound effects like the wind and torrential rain. Most times, she was made redundant by the real thing and on those days, I found her something else to do.

Satchin kept his bullies away by mimicking. He imitated his teacher really well, curling up his lip and speaking like she did. He was always full of bright ideas and if any of the kids had problems, he would find a way around it. One day when he saw Amma was struggling to pay for the electric meter, he suggested pawning the Silver Jubilee spoons that our old posh school had given us after prancing around a pole, country dancing. We had kept them safe for an emergency and so, one day after school, we took them to the pawnshop. The broker looked at us and then the spoons and repeated our demands for five pounds a piece. He laughed so hard that his belly shook. ‘How much then?’ Satchin asked authoritatively.

‘Five pence a piece and even then, I’m being generous.’

With his highly developed bartering skills, Satchin said, ‘Ten and you have a deal.’

The man paid him and we ran off, triumphant.

We had meant to put the twenty pence in the meter, but on our way home we loitered for several minutes outside Mr Patel’s sweetshop. We stood there grappling with the thought of a couple of packets of crisps each, a few boxes of sweet cigarettes, four sticks of liquorice and two packets of Bazooka Joe’s bubble gum, and succumbed to temptation and went in. Coming out clutching several brown paper bags, we made a pact to make them last and to share. Neither of us was sure of the terms of this agreement and I began secretly eating the contents of the bags and a few hours later, everything was gone. Satchin didn’t fight with me when he found out, he just looked at me, disappointed.

Our relationship changed when our father died and subsequently when Amma had to work. We knew we were fighting on the same side, so it was pointless wounding each other on purpose. Satchin became very protective towards me and although he would not overtly acknowledge me as his sister, he would wait for me near the school gates so we could go home together. He was the one who had possession of the door key and took responsibility for most things. I was in complete awe of my brother, the way he could do things and make things feel so exciting when they blatantly weren’t. We would run home chasing each other, or take turns to kick empty cans, but always in a world of our own, averting the glances of strangers, not giving them an opportunity to say anything or make gestures at us.

We were acutely aware that all around us, on the streets, a battle was raging. Poverty is a hideous thing, it fills people with a sense of injustice, frustration, inadequacy, even unworthiness, and from then on, a secret war begins inside them. The battle is to become someone, to prove something, and it never ends. Surrounded by derelict buildings crumbling like dreams, burnt-out cars and pavements stained with venomous spit, people fought themselves and each other. More often it was each other. Maggie’s simple home was a sanctuary from everything that lurked outside her battered blue door. An oasis in the middle of everything concrete and void.

Once inside the bedsit, Satchin heated up whatever Amma had made for us and we ate together, washed up the dishes, tried to do our homework and waited for our mother to come home. Sometimes the wait was just so boring that it was better to fall asleep. What Amma did at the factory, we didn’t really know, but she always came home very tired. On Fridays, she brought something back for us: a colouring book, a reading book or matchbox cars, so we always stayed up. We never asked her for things and, believe me, I wanted to; I would have loved some transfers or stickers but Satchin told me not to ask. He said that some nights he heard her crying, saying that she couldn’t give us the things she wanted to, and he said that asking for stuff would make things worse.

On Sunday, Amma’s day off, we went to the park and she sat on the roundabout and watched us play or, on very special occasions, Tom would take us in his van to the seaside. They thought we would enjoy this but I hated the sea, it was a predator like the heavy rains, and predators took things away when you least expected, just like the rain. Satchin and I ran along the beach or played in the arcades and for those moments we could be children. Then on Sunday evening, we would crawl into bed, knowing that soon it would be Monday and the week began again. It could have gone on and on like that and we wouldn’t have known the difference had the seasons not changed.