Em and the Big Hoom

by Jerry Pinto

I had never thought of my father’s ears. But later that evening, as he stood in the kitchen and cooked for me and my sister, scraping at a fry-up of potatoes, I saw that his ears were indeed unusual. When was the first time that she noticed his ears? Was it part of her falling in love with him, or did it happen in the hypersensitive moments that follow? And when she called him by that name the first time, did he respond immediately? He probably did, without asking why. They could be like that together.

It intrigues me, love. Especially theirs, which seems to have been full of codes and rituals, almost all of them devised by her. She also called him Mambo, and Augie March, but almost never by his given name, Augustine. He called her Imelda, which was her name, and, sometimes, Beloved.

We had laughed a lot, happy that we could go out and laugh, like all the others we knew who were our age. And it was a warm afternoon, the kind made for laughing. When the show was over and we came home, the nurse was asleep.

But in all the films Imelda had seen, the suave young man would say ‘Hello buttercup’ and the heroine would answer such impudence with the kind of remark that would stop his airy advance through fields of irises and daisies and tansies. Such a crisp response marked her as someone different from the rest, a fitting sparring partner, someone to love.

I tried to believe Em in everything she said. It was my act of faith, because I could see how the outside world immediately discounted whatever she said. But I wanted so hard to believe that I often found myself in the position of the inquisitor, the interrogator, demanding verification, corroboration, further proof. Most of the time, she didn’t seem to mind.

I’ve been told that I exhaust people with my curiosity. Once I was told that living with me would mean being trapped and slowly asphyxiated. Should I blame Em for this? Or would I have turned out just the way I am even if she had been whole and it had been possible to reach her?

Lithium was indeed the miracle drug. For two years, Em did not suffer the terrors of twitching depression, nor were her manic states stratospheric. This did not make her an ordinary mother. She still refused to have anything to do with the kitchen. She still thought baths were a necessary evil and tried, like the boys of hundreds of American cartoons, to avoid them. She still laughed immoderately and wondered aloud whether there would be news in the paper about trees because there was a white light shining out of the subabul outside our balcony. But we could all live with this and we settled down happily and humdrummily. We could taste our happiness.

Those who suffer from mental illness and those who suffer from the mental illness of someone they love grow accustomed to such invasions of their privacy.

How could one demand perfect submission from those who are imperfect? How could one create desire and then expect everyone to pull the plug on it? And if God were capricious, then God was imperfect. If God were imperfect, God was not God. But being an atheist offers a terrible problem. There is nothing you can do with the feeling that the world has done you wrong or that you, in turn, have hurt someone. I wavered and struggled for a long time before I exiled myself from God’s mansion.

‘If anyone ever does you a favour, you cannot forget it. You must always credit them, especially in public, especially to those they love and those who love them. You must pay your debts, even those that you can never fully repay. Anything less makes you less.’ But he did not say anything more.

She was a wise woman and she knew that religion was best in small doses.

Barely standing, and that wasn’t enough. Home was where others had to gather grace. Home was what I wanted to flee.

Birth was supposed to be painful and we were suffering in expiation of Eve’s sin. Adam got away, of course. Men do.’