Possession

Father gives mother her medicine each night. He says it is to straighten her crooked back. When he finishes, sometimes there is blood on her face. I creep to her side and wipe her clean with water and rags.

She does not say a word against him. “It is his right” she says, even when she has to groan the words. She was born with the hump and her back stays crooked and she walks bent over no matter how much he beats her. But on four days of the month he dare not touch her because she is filled with ghosts and speaks in tongues. Everything changes on those four days. Father makes himself scarce and the house is filled with whispering women who come bearing gifts.

I am not afraid of mother when she is possessed, even though her eyes roll back in her head and her face changes and different voices fall out of her mouth.

The women come because they want to hear from dead ones. Sometimes they have to wait months and months. Sometimes the dead people speak quickly through mother. Jeera was scarcely dead a day when mother’s lips quivered and her shrill voice came through. She had long been known for a shrew and her husband was afraid of her. He had been eyeing the blacksmith’s daughter, but when he heard of what his dead wife had threatened to do he forgot about marriage. The blacksmith’s daughter took her father’s hammer and broke his knee. But so afraid was he of his dead wife, he still refused to marry her.

Lakhi’s dead daughter spoke to her once. She knew it was her because she told her mother she still longed for green man-goes with salt. Otherwise she said she was happy and had met Lakhi’s other two little ones who had died when they were babies. Lakhi wept and was peaceful after that.

When Makhan’s mother was arranging the marriage of her daughter, her own sister spoke suddenly after years and years and warned her that the boy was slow and had fits. When the family investigated, it proved to be true and the marriage was called off.

The ghost of Ramiya’s mother appeared to curse her son-in-law. She warned him that if he starved her daughter again she would make sure that he could not swallow a morsel him-self. Now he lies on a cot and his sides billow as he struggles to breathe. Every grain he eats comes heaving up from his stom-ach again. Sometimes he vomits blood.

It is because of this that when mother speaks on those four days everyone listens. The men come nowhere near the house, but the women gather in large numbers. Mother sits in the courtyard, her eyes blank and grey. She will begin to twitch and shiver before the voice comes. Sometimes the ghost is an angry one and flings mother around the courtyard, beating her against the walls and floor.

Mostly it is women ghosts, but once in a while mother’s voice will deepen and roughen and a man’s voice will come out. It makes all the women uneasy, even if the man speaks gentle words.

On the fourth evening mother goes down to the temple to bathe in the pond and do the rites of purification. She spends hours in the temple in front of the Devi. She says that she thanks her for her gifts. I told her once that she should ask for the gift of a straight back and mother said that her hunchback too was a gift from the Devi. How it can be so I cannot see. All it has got her is curses and kicks until the ghosts began to come to her. She herself told me that her mother called her cursed and unlucky because of the hump and refused to keep her in the house the day her blood started to flow. She was hastily married off at eleven to father who had to be paid to take her away from the house.

When Mother returns from the temple she is her normal cringing self. She seems more bent than ever. We both know that night she will get a bad dose. Normally she sends me next door to spend the night with my friend Seeya. In the morning she says, “It is his right. He is my husband. I belong to him.”

The gifts that the women bring help us eat through the month. Without that we would starve because father works only once in a while and all that he earns goes on drink. Some-times mother herself gives him money for drink to buy herself a night’s respite.

I asked mother many times how the ghosts came upon her. She says she does not know. It is the Devi’s doing. One day when her blood began to flow the world went red. She remem-bered nothing until four days later when the neighbourhood women told her that she had been speaking in voices and say-ing things that made her a wonder in the village. Father tried to beat it out of her, but even he grew afraid when the voices told of things that began to happen. Now he dares not touch mother when the ghosts are upon her.

Mother says that it is in the blood. Soon my blood will flow and perhaps I will have inherited her ability to hold spirits like a glass tumbler. I am not afraid. I am waiting for that moment when I too become sacred for four days and no one dares touch me.

I go every morning to the temple and sit before the statue of Devi and pray and pray to her to make it happen.

This time when the ghosts came they brought with them Hasiya’s sister who had just died. Hasiya was crazy with cry-ing when they gave her the news that her sister was dead. The sister had been like a mother to her and brought her up. After Hasiya married into the village seven years ago, she had never been back to see her sister. As soon as she got the news she came running to mother. “Let me speak to her, let me speak to her at least once” she begged. It was not mother’s time so she told her to wait until it was and then maybe she would have a chance. Hasiya begged and begged but mother told her she had no control over it at all. It was all the Devi’s doing.

When mother’s time came Hasiya refused to leave our house. She sat here day and night for three days. On the fourth day her sister came and spoke to her. She told Hasiya that she remembered her every day of those seven years and she loved her. She told Hasiya that she should not feel grief that they had never met again. What was distance? Even now when she had left the world entirely she still loved her sister.

Hasiya was so grateful that she brought us a special gift. It was a pair of silver anklets that had originally been a gift from her sister at the time of her wedding. She wanted mother to have them.

They were so beautiful. I ran my fingers over them and sounded the bells that dangled in loops from them. “What will we do with them?” I asked. Mother said, “Sell them of course. Do you think we are rich enough to actually save them for wearing?” She took them from me and buried them in the rice pot.

That afternoon when Mother was plastering the courtyard again, I dug them up. I only wanted to wear them for a little while. I ran out of the house, muffling them in my dupatta so that the bells wouldn’t sound and alert her.

Seeya was sitting on the wall of her house eating sugarcane and she shouted, “Wait for me,” and follwed me. We both ran to our secret place in the middle of the sugarcane field. I showed her what I held in my hand. Her eyes went wide. “Oh how beautiful they are. Let me try them.”

“No” I said “I’m going to try them first.” I sat down and put the anklets on. How beautiful my feet looked! They were like the feet of a princess, not that of a little village girl.

“Give them to me now!” cried Seeya eagerly. I pushed her hands away. I didn’t want to take them off so fast. I got up and danced a few steps. The anklets jingled merrily.

“My turn,” wept Seeya.

“They’re mine. I don’t have to give them to you.”

I danced out of her reach. She made a grab for me. We shouted at each other.

So intent were we on our quarrel that we didn’t realise that someone was coming through the sugarcane, drawn by our voices. I had forgotten that Father was supposed to cut the cane that day.

He came upon us suddenly saying, “What are you two doing here?”

Seeya screamed and both of us turned and ran into the sugarcane. Father always pinched and hit us when he saw us together and we were afraid of him.

Father called out, “Come back here you two.”

The blades of the sugarcane are razor sharp and slash at you if you’re not careful. We crept through the rows, getting scratched and scraped. We heard him start to move through the sugarcane. I have no idea why he was chasing us. Normally he let us go. He called out again and I realised that he was drunk. Seeya looked at me with scared eyes. She crawled hur-riedly through the cane, unmindful of the cuts. Her mother had told her never to be around father when he was drunk.

It was the anklets that gave me away. I hadn’t paused to take them off. Now their bells sounded with every move. I froze into place hoping he wouldn’t have heard them. But the sug-arcane in front of me quivered and a hand came through to grab my hair.

“Got you!” said Father. I was all alone. Seeya had run home. As he dragged me to my feet, the anklets sounded again.

His eyes went down to my feet. “Silver” he said, “where did you get those? You think you’re a princess?”

“They’re mother’s.”

“And the bitch tells me she has no money to give me! Give me those.”

“No” I said, “they’re mother’s. Hasiya’s mother gave them to her.”

“Nothing is hers. It’s all mine. Give it to me.”

I twisted in his grip suddenly and made a dive for freedom. He caught me easily.

“It’s not good for a young girl like you to wear anklets like this,” he said. “People will think you’re a whore.” He slapped me hard across the face and I stood quiet. There was nothing I could do to stop him taking them.

He held my ankle to take off the anklets. As his hands touched me he looked up at me, a strange expression on his face.

Instead of removing my anklets he stayed there kneeling for a minute. Then he ran a hand up my skirt. I screamed and tried to run but one foot was held in his grip and I twisted and fell. He fell on top of me pinning me down.

“Let me go!” I begged. “I’ll tell mother you troubled me.”

“What will she do? Taking her medicine is about all she can do.”

“I’ll tell everyone! Let me go!”

Father reached out a hand and grabbed the scythe with which he had been cutting the sugar cane. The blade was very sharp. It was very cold against my neck. Father’s breath stank as he spoke into my mouth.

“You are my daughter. I can do with you as I wish. I could kill you and no one would say a word. Do you want to be killed?”

My heart turned to cold stone. “No,” I said. I lay quiet after that even though he hurt me badly. I screamed but no one heard me in the thick sugarcane. The anklets rang again and again and I hated the sound.

Father rolled off me and grabbed my feet. He pulled the anklets off. I got up and ran. My legs were weak and shaking and I was filled with a burning pain. My skirt was wet. The sugarcane slashed at me as I stumbled through the field, running blindly towards my mother.

Mother was in the kitchen kneading atta as I stumbled in. Her eyes went to my skirt and the stains on it. She looked at me eagerly, “Has it begun?” I shook my head and began to weep.

After I told her she put her arms around me and sat there silent. She said nothing, did nothing, just sat there with cold arms around me. Finally I pushed her arms away and screamed at her, “Why don’t you do something?”

Her eyes went blank and she began to shiver. Her hands and feet began to twitch. I had seen the signs so many times that I recognised them immediately.

The possession was coming upon her. Out of time and unexpected. I put my hand on her shoulder and she was cold. For the first time I was frightened. I ran to the neighbours and called them to help.

This time her possession was different. How she thrashed about the courtyard! She broke the small tulsi pot in the middle. She hurt herself and her blood began to smear the courtyard as she rolled from end to end, her back arching and her eyes white. Foam dripped from her lips. Her hands and feet drummed against the earth. The women began to gather. Six of them tried to hold her and could not. She broke free and continued to writhe. A very angry ghost was coming.

Finally, when I was so afraid that I was weeping, she began to quieten down. Her hands and feet stopped moving. Then she stood up. When she did, everyone gasped. She stood straight for the first time in her life! When she opened her mouth to speak we all understood.

This time it was different. This time the Devi herself had possessed mother.

Mother stood tall in the middle of the courtyard. Her hair was untied and her eyes blazed. Blood smeared her forehead. Around her the women sat silent and shaken, waiting for her to speak.

“I am the Goddess” she said. “I am the Goddess. I dance. With every step the universe shudders. Stars fall streaming into the abyss. I burn with the heat of ancient suns. My breath dances with the fire of comets. What is mortal man to me? Let him touch me if he dare. No river goddess will descend to succour his ashes. I am the Goddess. Look, I dance.”

Mother began to dance. Faster and faster she danced. The women clapped and thumped in rhythm. Someone began to play a drum.

The Devi spun around the courtyard, her hair lashing from side to side. Women began shrieking hysterically as they rose to their feet and joined her. It was a circle they danced in. From time to time one would break out of the circle and go spinning and screaming free. The Devi danced at the centre. Faster and faster. A dance of destruction it was. As she danced she screamed at them, whipping them into a frenzy.

“What sort of man would devour his own daughter? What kind of evil would devour the innocent?”

The women screamed and wailed. One voice rose higher than the rest, “He is a demon. He swallows his own young.”

“What kind of man would lay his hand on what he had birthed? What kind of man would take the innocence of his own child? He is not a man but a demon!”

The women took up the chant. “Demon! Demon!”

They danced until it seemed to me that they were all joined together. It was not many women but one who whirled and screamed. Then the Devi came to a halt and lifted her hands imperiously.

“Punish him. I say to you punish him. Only with his blood spilt can the earth be purified.”

Like a bangle broken on the floor the circle split and women began finding weapons. Our string cot was pulled to bits and its legs became lances. The knife from the kitchen, the stone grinder, spoons, brooms, iron rods, everything was taken. Hasiya’s mother grabbed the axe that stands behind the door.

I knew what I would carry. I ran and picked up a scythe.

“Give me his blood” hissed the Goddess. She stood straight, tall and awful to behold.

“He is mine. Give me his blood.”