The Queen of Cats

Anamnesis 2: But In My Cold Arms You'll Stay

Hello Reader,

Thank you for sticking with this story so far. And thank you for all the lovely feedback you've all been leaving me. I can't tell you how much it means to me.

This chapter's for @linahanson who wrote the two amazing Cursed Time books. She's already got a ton of reads but she deserves a ton more.

Hope you enjoy the chapter.

Cheers!

xxx

And I know what's on your mind

God knows I put it there

But if I took it back

We'd be nowhere

You'd be nowhere again

-Cold Arms, Mumford & Sons

Year 26, Mumbai

Vikram's knuckles turn pale-white against the black leather of the steering wheel.

"Look, there are good places here for stuff like that. It's not like your bloody Kottayam."

I say nothing. I sit and watch Mumbai crawl past me. Vikram occasionally hammers the steering wheel, adding to the urban cacophonous symphony that blares around me. Rain pelts our sunshade like a vehement god's piss.

It is chill in the car, despite the air conditioner being off. It is the chill that icier rain and even icier temperaments bring about in closed spaces.

Somebody takes a turn too early. Vikram rams the brake pedal and hisses between his teeth like a cobra. "Bastard!" he yells.

"Please, Vicky. For me." I ask, my voice almost drowned out in the aftermath of his rage. But he hears me.

"Shit, Kripa, what can I do? I can't tell my mum to start liking cats, can I? Now, this is a good place. The Jawandas always put their dogs there when they go back to the states."

"So that's all the value I have here, right?" I say. I'm surprised. I didn't think I had it in me. "The only thing I've ever asked for and you can't 'casue of your mum-

"You bitch!"

The tears leak so readily it scares me.

"You stupid bitch. Is nothing enough for you? Nothing. You have no respect. No respect for me or my family or my tradition."

The cat is on my lap. Old, still thin, still black with the same white patch over its eye. Just like the day I found it.

"What I should be doing is killing that piece of shit. I should be cutting its throat. I'm giving hard earned cash up to feed it and now I'm going to give even more hard earned cash up to put it in a bloody hotel. Ungrateful bitch!"

The cat looks up at me. It is startled by the hot tears falling on its back.
He pulls over, turns around and grabs the cat by its neck. I whimper. The cat yelps.

He drops it on the road, slams the door and keeps driving.

I don't know what I say. "No....YOU HAVE...You have to go back. You have to get it back, it's my cat, my cat..."

"Bitch!"

The car is silent, except for my dry sobs.

"You want me to waste more money on that piece of garbage? Learn to respect me first. Now don't let Mummy see you like this."

He pushes me straight to the loo once we reach the airport. "Wash up!"

I look at myself in the mirror.

I look younger than my 26. My stomach swells with the second life inside me. I am a bitch, apparently. That is all I am.

I splash cold water on my face, dab it with a napkin, reapply whatever make-up I have on hand.

I get back out.

I find Vikram's back in the middle of the crowd. Red. His mother's favourite colour. I stand next to him and lean on the railing, my eyes fixed on the arrivals gate.

Vikram is smoking. My Vikram. Coarse as a factory worker when he smokes.

He spots his parents and he snuffs it out immediately. He's dressed in a ridiculous Aloha shirt. She's wearing a sequinned churidar.

Mummy sees us first. Her eyes take Vikram in, up and down, like as if he's some kind of statue she carved out of gold herself. Then, her eyes fix squarely on the bulge of my belly. Then my breasts. Then me.

I don't smile.

She doesn't either.

We do the usual bullshit we're supposed to do. I hug them and kiss them and she stands as stiff as a pole while I bring myself to kiss her withered cheek, caked with foundation. It's like kissing a newly apinted wall.

We pile into the SUV, Daddy in the front where I'm supposed to sit, Mummy and me together in the back, both of us pushing ourselves to the edge of the seat. We do not look at each other.

Vikram prattles in a way that he never does in front of anybody else. Only his darling of a mother. She looks out of the window, snarling a little every time she sees a patch of slum or an emaciated woman in a filthy sari. She puts sunglasses on. In the moody dark of the rain she looks like a blind woman.

She finally looks at me. I give her a smile. She does not return it and I'm not surprised.

"What's wrong with her?" she asks, finally.

I open my mouth to speak and she glares at me. I quieten.

"Kripa's been feeling a bit nauseous today." Vikram says. Bastard. "Must be the baby."

Her face screws up. "I was never nauseous when I had you! Or your sister! What has she been eating?"

I'm completely used to this. The way she speaks about me like as if I'm not even there.

"Oh, you know, Mummy..."

"Dieting! That's what's giving you nausea." She turns to me and grabs my cheeks with her pincers-for-hands. "You listen to me, you Madrasi. You better squeeze out a healthy grandson for me, you understand? Healthy!"

Daddy turns around. "Enough." he said.

She glares at him, her talons still digging into my cheeks. "If this Madrasi bitch doesn't eat properly..."

"Enough."

She glares even harder. Then, she lets go.

Daddy gives me a tired, sad smile. I don't return it. Probably because my cheeks are sore. I touch them to check if it is bleeding.

I wonder, as I usually do when Vikram's parents come over, whether this was penitence for what I did to my mother.

She was dead, her body beneath a headstone in Birmingham, the words 'Paki bitch' graffitied on it, and beneath the pressure of her sins added up.

Here I am, beneath the pressure of her sins and mine added up and the words "Madrasi bitch' branded on me.

I would cry, but I didn't have any tears left.

We pass a black tailless cat. I see her through the rain, her eyes firmly fixed on me.

I do not say a word.