A Sister's Promise by Renita D'Silva

we would have fish, when Da had saved up enough to negotiate for the rejects from the boats—fish too small and too plagued with bones to sell. I remember being shaken awake at the crack of dawn and taken to the fish market, the soft air, saturated with the drowsy dream-infused aroma of night, whispering lullabies as I dozed on Da’s shoulders.
    I hear the tantrums of the waves, the crashes and the rumbles as they collide with the rocks, long before the coconut fronds part, a swaying curtain, to reveal the rush of greenish turquoise depositing select gifts onto the moist, cream beach. Boats bob black on froth-capped blue. Yellow nets flash as they get closer to shore. The scales of thrashing fish glint in the sun. Seagulls swoop and crabs scurry into sandy shelters.
    Da sets me down and I try to grab a crab with both hands, but it scoots into a hole and disappears, too fast for my clumsy efforts. The boats anchor in a rush of noise and smell, salt and ammonia. Fisherwomen are ready with baskets, haggling for fish.
    Afterwards, Da and I would swan home with a bagful of rejects, a bargain for less than five rupees. I can almost taste the fish curry and fried fish we would eat later that evening; I see myself carefully prying the last sliver of flesh clinging stubbornly to the multitude of bones, a rare treat.
    I remember long days steeped in joy spent at the little stall, Ma, that you and Da used to man in the patch of earth beside the highway that bisected our village, and which the villagers had appropriated for market in the hope that the buses that shuddered past would stop once in a while, affording business. I would place the vegetables you had coaxed out of our sorry-looking patch of land into their waiting bags, and carefully count out the change, and you would grin at me, pat my head, and mouth, ‘My wonderful girl’.
    We would eat red rice and pickle most days. We would only eat the vegetables you grew if we did not manage to sell them and they started to go bad. The milk we got was so watered down that we couldn’t even make curd from it. But, despite all this, I was completely, incredibly content.
    And then came the day which would mark the end of my life as I had known it, the day everything would change forever . . .
    You haven’t been yourself for some time, Ma. You have been sleeping a lot and when you wake, your face is the greenish yellow shade of the underside of banana leaves. I often hear you retching in the lean-to.
    ‘Are you not well, Ma?’ I query many times.
    And you smile a smile that is a tad weary at the edges and assure me that you are fine.
    One day, you sit me on your lap, cup my face in your palms and say, ‘Since you’re growing up so quickly, Sharda, into such a wonderful little girl, it is time you learnt a bit of cooking.’
    I jump off your lap, skipping with delight at being treated like a grown up.
    ‘We’ll cook the okra we couldn’t sell yesterday, what do you say?’
    We squat together on the kitchen floor and you show me how to handle a knife. You give me a blunt one so I don’t cut my fingers and patiently, you teach me to chop onions, garlic and ginger.
    ‘The holy trinity of our cuisine,’ you say smiling and I smile along, although I do not quite understand.
    You heat the oil and add the mustard seeds and the curry leaves. I love the heady scent of frying curry leaves and put my face too close and one of the popping seeds nicks me in the face. I cry out, Ma, and you gently rub my cheek with your magic fingers.
    You ask me to add the onions and I notice, as you thrust them at me that you have gone green again. I hear you heaving as I add the onions and watch them go from pinkish white to translucent gold, the piquant, tart reek of raw onion replaced by the heady aroma of comfort.
    By the time you come back, I have added the garlic and ginger as well and am in the process of stirring everything together.
    ‘Well done, my darling, you’re a natural cook,’ you beam