The Tusk That Did the Damage by Tania James Page A

not the rest of my life.”
    A fair answer, I admit. Jayan simply wanted to make an honest living, upright and in the open. I wanted a cure for my guilt.
    As if guessing my thoughts, Jayan said, “Raghu is dead. And if you had been with him that night, you would be too.”
    “You don’t know that.”
    “I do know that. You run like an old woman.”
    He gave a demonstration, amusing only himself.
    “What do I tell Synthetic Achan?”
    “Tell him you have other duties now.” A smile tugged at his mouth. “Tell him you will soon be an uncle yourself.”
    Hard to believe I had not realized Leela was five months pregnant. Indeed I had noticed she was plumping in places, but I had assumed she was gaining weight the way many young wives packtheir middles and behinds, trading their slim-waisted skirts for house gowns.
    After Jayan disclosed her secret, I could notice nothing else. Though Leela had barely a bump beneath her house gown, suddenly it seemed to me that her attributes were growing by the minute. Twice she caught my ungallant eye and began a habit of tossing a towel over her bosom whenever I approached with a glass of warm milk or a boiled egg or whatever my mother had me bring her.
    Intent on building a life of substance for his child, Jayan worked long days, drank much less, and even took Leela to temple for some baby-blessing ceremony. He enlisted my help in digging a trench around the shed where we kept our rice bureau locked. Other farmers had reported elephant raids to their sheds, where a single beast could sniff out and swallow a year’s worth of food. We hired a few more hands to help with the digging and bolstered the side walls with timber. Over it we laid down a plank for crossing.
    My mother filed many a complaint against the plank, but my brother thought it the only solution. What would she have him do—plant a bitter hedge around the shed like Kunjappen had done? One bull had braved the taste, then suffered loose motions all over the walls and bushes.
    Speaking of smells, I suppose the outhouse is not a topic of dignified discourse, but let me indulge because as you will see the toilet and its placement would alter the course of our lives.
    When Jayan was in jail, Synthetic Achan undertook renovations on his house and offered a few to ours, partly out of generosity and also out of shame that his own brother’s family should still be living under a paddy-grass roof. My mother installed a gasstove, which she never used unless guests were in the house; she much preferred the smoky infusions of a wood-burning stove. She had the paddy-grass roof switched to tile. I missed the look of the grass when it was fresh and sun dazzled, but I did not miss the way it grizzled and grayed over the months until we had to haul fresh grass onto the frame.
    The single modernity my mother would not accept was a toilet inside the house. “But no one has an outhouse anymore,” I told her. “Ours is an inconvenience.”
    “What,” she said, “to take ten steps outside for your business?” Neither Leela nor I could persuade my mother. She plainly refused to suffer the sounds and smells and squalor of a toilet spreading through our rooms.
    Now that Leela was pregnant, my mother regretted her prior stance. She had not considered the burdens of pregnancy, one being that every ten minutes the pregnant woman is on her way to do the needful. In the middle of the night Leela would slip out without turning on a light. Between the churning notes of Jayan’s snore, I listened for her footsteps to make sure she had not fallen.
    On a night such as this, her footsteps fading, I drifted off and later awoke to the hushed hiss of rain.
    I peeked into my brother’s room. Her side of the mattress lay empty. I shook him until he turned and saw her gone, the scowl fading from his face.
    Without waking my mother, we rushed into the drizzle. I had to feel my way along the clothesline strung between our back door and the outhouse, which