Birendra was tired of sitting still in the Nairs’ living room, tired of listening to the condolences offered by each visiting neighbor, tired of being reminded his mother was gone. He had to escape. Outside, it was mostly quiet. Other children were at school. The sounds he heard were familiar—squawking crows, the occasional moped in the distance—but their isolation, on a school day, in the wake of his mother’s death, rendered them gloomy, haunting. He took a seat under the clean linens that Mrs. Nair had hanging on a clothesline strung between two coconut trees. They’d been there since the day before. He found a shard from a burst planter and began to scratch at the earth. The Nairs had stopped bickering about him, but he’d heard Mr. Nair remind Mrs. Nair that morning, “We honor the sixteen days of mourning, and then he must go.” Birendra felt guilty for causing problems, but he’d not yet found the strength, or the words, to speak, and so he had no apology to offer.
Soon Mrs. Nair came to him, carrying with her one of the red plastic chairs from her kitchen. He was digging a hole in the dirt now. The legs and back of the chair bowed slightly under Mrs. Nair’s weight as she sat down in front of him. He knew he should go to her, comfort her and be comforted, but he kept digging, finally pressing the shard firmly into the little hole he’d made.
“Birendra?” She dabbed at her eyes with a dish towel. Tears began to fall from his own eyes, though he hadn’t known he was about to cry. “I’m going to need your help with something.”
He wiped his eyes and prepared to stand, but she motioned for him to remain seated where he was.
“Your uncle and aunt are living in London, yes?”
“Yes,” he said, and the word caught in his throat after so much silence.
West London, he thought, hearing the way his mother would say it. He looked down again and pressed the mound of dirt until it was flush beneath his palm. Did Mrs. Nair want to contact his aunt and uncle? To tell them about his mother? Or maybe, he thought, she was looking for a new home for him because Mr. Nair would not let him stay. Would he go to London after all, without his mother? He had so many questions, but he only wanted to pose them to his mother, and since he could not, he asked nothing at all.
“I’m sorry Mr. Nair is upset,” he said. “I’ll be good. I promise not to get in his way.”
Mrs. Nair opened her arms wide now to receive him. He stood and dusted himself off, then climbed onto her lap, remembering how the chair had buckled under her weight, then forgetting as he was pulled tightly into her warmth.
“You don’t have to worry about Mr. Nair, dear one. He can’t help himself. We will contact your uncle and aunt. And you will stay here until they can come for you.”
These words made him feel sick. Sick with the fear of leaving home and sick with an overwhelming relief that he wasn’t going to be alone after all. But London, West London, was so far from everything he’d ever known. He’d never imagined he would go there without his mother. He thought of the letter she had written to his aunt just the other day, the one he’d sent on his way home. He could write one now and impress his aunt and uncle with his English skills. It would be difficult, much more difficult than a brief greeting or a little drawing. Difficult because of the news he would have to share, but he would try his hardest. Surely they would come for him when they learned what had happened to his mother. They had invested in his education. The letter would show them how much he’d learned. And the Nairs could not write it, knowing neither Hindi nor English. They would have to ask someone else in any case.
“I could write them a letter,” he said.
Mrs. Nair turned him in her arms and studied his face carefully.
“Do you think you could do that?”
“Yes,” he said, trying to smile, preparing himself to stretch the truth. “Amma and I wrote them every month. Please, please, let me write it.”
Mrs. Nair wiped his cheeks dry with her thumbs. She began rocking her head and he knew she would let him. A smile came more easily now.
“Perhaps that would be best,” she said. “They will want to know you are safe.” She pulled him close once more. “And who could resist you, dear one?”
Back at the kitchen table, Mrs. Nair placed a notepad and a pen in front of Birendra. The blank page made him nervous because he wanted so much to impress his aunt and uncle but also because he didn’t know how to tell them what had happened to his mother. He hated to cause such pain. He knew how close his mother was to his aunt, how much she loved her. He heard his mother’s voice as they’d worked on his family report: Your uncle is kind; your aunt is clever, just like you. He was writing to family members who cared for him even though they were far away. He would try his best to write a good letter. And though he hadn’t been able to tell his mother, perhaps he would one day tell his uncle and aunt that Mr. Mon had singled Birendra out to commend him, and they would be proud. He would continue his education in a school where they lived in England. He might even be able to join a reading club there, where every book would be in English.
He took the pen in hand. Mrs. Nair settled in beside him and began to dictate. He tried to translate her words from Malayalam into English, using his most careful penmanship. She asked if he shouldn’t write in Hindi, as his mother had, but he insisted that his aunt always spoke English to him when they talked on the phone. Mrs. Nair suggested phrases he simply didn’t know how to write in English. But he remembered Mr. Mon’s “3-C” rules—clear, concise, correct—as he struggled to transcribe Mrs. Nair’s meaning, if not her words. It took a fair bit of thinking and more than one false start for Birendra to complete the brief letter. He wrote:
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Bhatia,
I’m sorry to write with terrible news. Your blessed sister is with God. She died 16 November 1993. Please come for your Birendra. He is waiting for you.
This final sentence was his own. He read the letter silently, and he thought his teacher would be proud. He read it aloud to Mrs. Nair, and she nodded, but he knew she did not understand the words. He signed it from Mr. and Mrs. Nair, but he wanted his aunt and uncle to know the letter’s true author, so he added a postscript: Written by your loving nephew.
Mrs. Nair appeared relieved when he set the pen down. She retrieved an envelope he recognized from his mother’s room, one of his aunt’s letters. Setting it down beside a blank envelope, she asked him to copy the address. They should post it right away, she said, so it would arrive as quickly as possible.
His aunt’s return address was complicated, a combination of letters and numbers written in his aunt’s cursive, which wasn’t precise, like his mother’s. But he did his best to copy each shape exactly as it was on his aunt’s envelope, regardless of whether he knew its meaning. He tried to ignore Mrs. Nair’s anxious pacing. She kept looking at the bedroom door. Was she afraid Mr. Nair would awaken from his nap and disapprove? But he couldn’t worry about that right now. He had to focus and take his time. Was that a 1 or a 7? An S or a 5?
At last it was ready, and he lifted the letter into the air, as if it were an offering, then folded it carefully in thirds before placing it inside the envelope, licking the flap, and sealing it closed, as his mother had so often allowed him to do. He was eager for the letter to reach London. Mrs. Nair, he could see, was excited as well. Did she know, he wondered, that it took two weeks for a letter to arrive? Mrs. Nair now retrieved her wallet, took out one note, then another. She paused and looked at Birendra. He had forgotten he would need money and looked away, embarrassed.
“Do you know how much it costs?” He did know this. He could imagine the stamps his mother would let him lick and paste—there were two and they were different—but suddenly he couldn’t remember their values. “It’s okay,” she said. “Don’t worry.”
She told him to wait there; she would be back any moment. It wasn’t right for him to leave the house. He was in mourning. She would go to the neighbors and ask someone to post it on their behalf. From the window, he watched Mrs. Nair hurry down their narrow road. He wasn’t accustomed to seeing her move so quickly. It made her look younger than she was, despite her silver hair. She disappeared around the bend and didn’t return for several minutes. When he saw her again, her hands were empty. The letter was on its way. He remembered the price of the stamps just then and could imagine the man in the window placing the postage in one corner and then, with his square rubber block, imprinting the words by air mail below his aunt and uncle’s address. It felt as if a part of him were sealed along with the letter in that envelope. They would both embark on the long journey away from home, away from Mr. and Mrs. Nair and the house next door that was no longer a home. The rest of him would follow before long, he thought. For now, he would have to wait.