By the time Ma arrived in the bedroom, Fatima was crying, and Mo full of excuses. Lying on the floor between them was the sleeve that Mo tore off Fatima’s pyjama during the fight. The children were put to bed an hour ago but, once again, it became apparent to Ma that something was bothering them deeply. She couldn’t help but think that it was related to Anwar and Amina’s disappearance that night, and thought to scold the parents just as severely as she cautioned the children that a torn sleeve was the least of their worries if they didn’t get back into bed.
“I want to go home!” Mo cried.
“It’s the middle of the night,” Ma told him, “go to sleep.”
“I want to go home!” Mo yelled again, stepping away from her. Ma didn’t know how to tell him that she too was worried as to why his parents were unreachable that night.
“Okay,” Ma said, “I’m going to telephone your mother right now and ask her to come and fetch you.” Ma then turned to leave, but stopped in the doorway. “If she asks why you want to go home, what should I tell your mother?” Ma asked.
“She’s trying to make me break my pinkie promise!” Mo yelled, pointing at Fatima, who was about to share her opinion on the matter but decided not to on account of the stern look she got from Ma.
“What pinkie promise?” Ma asked.
Mo bit his lip until Ma convinced her grand-daughter to press her palms to her ears. Fatima scowled, but obeyed.
“What pinkie promise?” Ma asked again.
“I can’t tell you!” Mo replied.
“Who said so?”
“Erm, mummy,” was Mo’s answer.
“Hmm, why did she say so?” Ma asked, sitting down on the bed to draw the boy closer to her.
“Because it will get me into a lot of trouble,” was Mo’s reply. Ma was no sleuth but those words were too tempting to ignore.
“We don’t want that now do we?” she said, and the boy nodded emphatically. Mo showed his trust in his grandmother with a hug.
“Ok, I’m going to call her,” Ma said, detaching herself from the child, “erm, what should I tell your mother you didn’t say?”
When Mo was done whispering in Ma’s ear, she reassured the boy that his mother would be glad to know that he kept secrets as securely as a vault. Mo jumped into bed, satisfied, and allowed Ma to tuck him in. There was unfortunately nothing she could do about the sleeve lying on the floor, but managed to get Fatima back into bed too without a fuss by promising to buy her a new set of pyjamas soon.
“You’ve both been good children!” Ma exclaimed before killing the lights.
Back in the lounge, Pa learnt why Amina had laughed so heartily at the groom choking on the cricket at Leila’s engagement party. He heaved a breath of oxygen from a tank and returned the surgical mask to it. Pa was relieved that the entire incident was just a comedy of errors, and negotiating with the Ebrahim’s to mend Leila’s marriage had become a rather simple task. Even they likely had the capacity to forgive childish innocence.
The pinkie promise that Mo made to his mother was the key to the riddle of the entire engagement fiasco.
After Mo had found the cricket in a flowerbed, he showed it to his mother, who then gave him a piece of barfi from the sweetmeats tray to feed it. The child must’ve been too enthusiastic and probably smothered the poor insect. Mo undoubtedly choked too when he realized that he had killed the cricket and, afraid to own up to it, squeezed the insect’s corpse into the soft block of barfi to conceal his mistake. He then returned the barfi to the sweetmeats tray as if nothing had happened, and the rest was history.
As a mother herself, Ma could easily understand why Amina had refused to say a word about the incident.
Brad went as far as imposing sanctions on Amina’s children after the Ebrahim’s questioned what kind of family they were marrying their son into. Anwar blamed Amina for embarrassing him, and jeopardizing his quest to seize the family inheritance. Everyone else didn’t know what to say, and Amina couldn’t say anything lest the intense conflict surrounding Leila’s engagement came crashing down on her little son.
Mo was at the centre of the entire debacle.
Everyone was wielding their pitchforks, looking for a witch to burn. If all that vitriol led to little Mo being tied to a stake, then the boy’s innocence would’ve been lost forever. Amina saved that child’s life by taking on the immense pressure that followed the engagement debacle.
While Pa nodded firmly in agreement, Ma decided that it was imperative to continue protecting Mo, just as Amina had intended, when talking the matter over with the Ebrahim’s. Amina may not have figured out a way to guarantee Mo’s safety, and kept resiliently shut about it while dealing with the situation, but Ma and Pa could carry the cause with certainty.
“You haven’t said a word?” Ma asked, feeling a little guilty for monologuing.
“I’m tired,” Pa replied, “I think I’ll go to bed.”
“Are you feeling okay?” Ma asked, checking his temperature with a hand to his forehead.
“Nothing’s the trouble,” he replied, “for once, everything has worked out just fine.”
“Yeah,” Ma agreed, “Amina turned out to be quite sensible after all.”
“Please tell her that when you find her and Anwar,” Pa said, pushing himself to the edge of the couch.
It was uncanny, but that reply sounded just like the one Ma used to extract Mo’s pinkie promise. She helped Pa to his feet while wondering if his silence was really a reluctance to respond to the news. They were like the sun and the moon, the two of them, best friends who understood each other.
“Any idea where we can find those two?” Ma asked. She was testing Pa, of course, and the quizzical look he turned to her with said that that he knew this game better than Mo.
“Oh you know, keep trying their telephones,” Pa replied.
“Is there anything we don’t know?” Ma pressed on, and Pa flopped back onto the couch to make himself comfortable.
When she teased it out of him, Ma learnt that Pa had caught Amina and Brad quarrelling behind the shed on the morning of the engagement.
“Well they hate each other so they can’t be having an affair,” Ma remarked, then asked, “what happened there?”
“Something much worse,” Pa replied, “little Mo is caught in the middle of something far bigger.”