Wild Goose

Asha Rajan

A week after my perfect marriage to my perfect doctor-husband ended, I moved out of the perfect cookie-cutter suburban home we shared and into a single bedroom ground floor apartment in a part of the city better known for its after-business hours activities than for its genteel safety.

Two days later, my mother, my only living parent, died. A cerebral aneurysm, the doctor said. One minute she was clipping the ends off okra with her fastidiously manicured thumbnail, complaining about her neck pain, and my not trying hard enough to save my marriage, not having children, gaining too much weight, and simultaneously working too much and not giving up my job. The next minute, her lifeless body lay sprawled on the ground. An apsara in death, her Nylex sari fluttered around her like an aura, okra fingers scattered into a crown, and the steel bowl clattered her death knell, announcing her arrival to the afterlife. 

Her cremation was modest; it was just me, the new priest from the temple she frequented, the ladies from her twice-weekly carrom group, and her neighbour. The neighbour was a surprise. She and my mother had maintained a frosty cordiality ever since the Passionfruit Vine Incident ten years ago. Neither of them budging on their positions, neither of them willing to take responsibility for the overgrown vine or its upkeep, neither of them taking the initiative for fixing the common fence that groaned and creaked beneath its weight. The priest, who had not known my mother, performed the cremation perfunctorily, keeping his commentary about her as general and noncommittal as he could. The carrom ladies knew her better. They had met every Wednesday and Friday for the last 25 years to trade information on the cheapest place to buy cotton nighties and house slippers, complain about husbands and children, and keep abreast of salacious community news. Between personal reflections and rambling stories about my mother, they offered to come with me to disperse her ashes in the sea. I declined. I wanted a word with her on my own. The last word. At last.

I called a rideshare after the ceremony. It didn’t seem dignified to farewell her via public transport. The driver, intent on small talk, pointedly avoided all references to the faux marble, genuine plastic box – my mother’s new housing – on my lap, while stealing furtive glances at it. His one-sided conversation was comforting. Regular and rhythmic, his voice washed over me, allowed me to wander through memories of childhood plucking at images of the vibrant, demanding woman, now reduced to a plastic box of ashes balanced on my thighs.

I paused on the beach. The sand oozing between my toes sent a shiver of disgust up my spine. My mother had loved the beach in all its many moods. She had begged my father every weekend of my childhood to take a trip to the sea. Once there, she had thrown off her chappals and wriggled her feet into the sand. This is the feeling of freedom, she had said, but all I could feel was the sharp scratch of grains insinuating themselves into the nooks and crevices of my feet. I waddled down the shore and waded into the shallows clutching her – ensconced in her plastic box – under my arm. When the water was halfway up my shins, when my sari had captured pockets of air and ballooned like paisley-printed jellyfish around me, I opened the box.

‘This is it, I guess.’ There was so much I wanted to say to her, but now that the opportunity presented itself, now that she couldn't clack her tongue against her palate in disapproval or impatience, words fled.

‘I love you,’ I said, softly so she didn't reanimate and roll her eyes at me for being overly sentimental. I shook her out of the box and into the water. In a last act of petulance, to remind me that even as ashes, she was still my mother and would brook no public display of emotions, she crested the waves, slapping at my legs like she had when I was a child.

I rode home on the bus, the now empty faux marble, genuine plastic box on my lap. The bus noises were muffled, colours muted. My damp sari hugged my shins, anchoring me to grimy, uncomfortable reality. I hadn't known how to be in the world with my disapproving mother, and now I didn't know how to be in the world without her.

My knees hurt from being held decorously together. My shoulders hurt from deflecting the prying stares of strangers. I was relieved when the bus reached my stop.

I ambled past the scraggly garden at the entrance to my apartment, my mood as brown and desiccated as the leafless saplings and spindly shrubs. A few metres from my front door, my keys indenting their image into my palm, releasing a faint metallic smell, I heard a ruckus. A goose, squawking loudly, wings flapping, rounded the corner and bore down on me like the forward herald of a band of malevolent rakshasas. The percussive thwack thwack of its webbed feet on the footpath punctuated the raucous honking.

‘Stop,’ I yelled.

The goose backpedalled, treading in reverse comically, before coming to a stop, storm-grey feathers ruffled, bright orange beak open in an angry hiss. It stood appraising me, the way my mother had scrutinised my appearance at my wedding before clacking her tongue against her palate and declaring there were too many flowers in my hair. I half expected the goose to criticise the way I draped my rarely worn sari.

‘Where did you come from?’

The goose looked me up and down, tilted its head, and clacked its tongue against its palate just as my mother had done.

‘Shoo,’ I tried tentatively. The goose honked, but did not move.

One eye on the goose, I cracked open my front door and eased myself in backwards, holding the empty plastic box that once contained my mother out in front of me like a shield. The goose tilted its head to the other side.

I backed into my apartment, one arm behind me, patting the air in search of the dining table that sat in the middle of my kitchen, the other hand still holding my mother's former housing in front of me as if it were a talisman that exuded a magic spell to keep angry birds at bay.

The goose followed me, taking a step forward for every backward step I took. I stepped inside the threshold. The goose stepped forward. I gripped the edge of the door, ready to swing it shut between us. The goose shuffled closer. Before I could close the door, the bird flung its wings wide, starfishing in the doorway.

‘Y–you can't come in.’

The goose honked, then clacked its tongue. Without further hesitation, the goose waddled forward, extended a wing to push me gently but firmly out of its way, and settled its fat feathered bottom on a chair at the head of the dining table.

‘Oh. I guess you can come in,’ I said, waving it in like royalty. The goose honked and clacked.

‘Don’t peck me, okay?’ The goose honked and clacked its tongue. I was sure I saw it roll its eyes.

I didn't know what to do, who to call about this intruder. I couldn’t consult my mother – not about the finer points of bird removal, nor about removalists. Something about the bird’s presence was oddly comforting. I didn’t want to be alone and even angry avian company seemed a better alternative to yawning loneliness. I set the faux marble box on the table and closed the front door.

‘Are you hungry?’ The goose honked and clacked.

‘I was planning to make sambar. In honour of my mother,’ I said. The goose honked quietly. There was no clacking of its tongue. I took this as a sign of approval.

From the fridge I took out the small purple pearl onions, the green chillies, the ginger, and the okra. I spread newspaper over the table, set a cutting board, a small paring knife, and a steel bowl down, and tipped the okra out in front of the goose. Without hesitation, the bird picked up a finger of okra in its beak and, with a crisp snap, broke off the tip.