Hana & Hanaan | ✓

Chapter 10

Bleurgh!

No wonder I'm even more messed up today. But was that it? Hana, do you remember more of what happened later on? I do. And I laugh about it to this day because at that instant, I suppose in her own love of eggs that we never fed her, our beloved white Persian cat, my beloved and cherished Anna Sofia leapt around my legs and I lost my balance. I reached out to hold onto something and guess what I held onto in that world-tilting moment? Three more eggs!

On your seventh birthday, I treated myself with an egg bath!

Happy egg-day, Hana!

I smelled absolutely lovely later when Mama bathed me with half a soap, quarter of a bottle of shampoo and a full bottle of baby powder while Baano de-egg-tised the kitchen and you just watched everything numbly, wondering in that seven year old little head, after all this chaos, should you add more utensils to wash by making that cake you had not even started yet. Mama gave you my part of the scolding and told you to woman up, stop thinking so much about everything and not always compromise your own happiness over the troubles of others. You didn't look convinced and you weren't up until two years ago when you made it your motto. You let go of everything and anything that came in the way of your happiness and though it has made you glow so differently, helped you lose so much weight, it has also killed the girl in you that was my sister.

My Hana.

Could you not have done all that without distancing yourself emotionally and mentally from me?

Was I that toxic to you?

God dammit, why can't this tablet not answer me on your behalf, how is technology still such a child's play??

So when Mama told me it was because of my mess that Hana no longer wanted to bake her birthday cake and I wouldn't be able to eat any, I came over to you and asked you if it was true. You were so overwhelmed by the chaos, you couldn't answer me, your lower lip was quivering, your puffy cheeks were huffed up and your eyes teary enough wouldn't meet my gaze. I tried lifting up the corners of your mouth with my hands to make you smile but just ended up pinching you instead and you pushed me away lightly.

It wasn't easy seeing you like that so I began crying, like really loud wailing crying about how I wanted to eat cake and you wouldn't bake it for me and I started screaming at Anna Sofia for ruining all chances of me eating cake and it just ended up with you also beginning to cry and Mama asking us both which wall she should go and bang her head against. After a while we started laughing when Anna Sofia came from the kitchen, a hair net on her own head and a kitchen cloth wrapped around her tummy like an apron— I suspect it was Baano, she must have wanted to eat cake too — and we laughed and you agreed to bake the cake then.

I held Anna Sofia tightly in my arms as I watched you from the countertop cracking the eggs so perfectly in the bowl. You sifted the flour with such easy motions of your wrist. You stirred the beater in the eggs with your right hand and added sugar with your left without breaking a blender, three drinking glasses and toppling a chair over as I would have had I been in your place. I watched you in awe the way you measured oil and then put it in the eggs and sugar mixture. You found it a little too difficult to fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients so Mama helped with that. You poured the deliciously chocolate molten slowly pouring batter into the circle pan which you had already aligned with baking sheet and greased with oil. You placed it into the oven and with Baano, you transferred all the dirty utensils into the sink. You pulled out a new bowl and poured cream in it. You added sugar and more cocoa to it and some milk too before stirring in the beater in it. You placed it in the freezer while the cake baked in the oven, the sweet smell of chocolate and cake wafting in the air and tickling my nose.