The Smile
by Annie Louis
The green board pointing towards the north was the last thing Ebbie saw outside the window. It said Pala 22kms. Mamma and Dada were fighting in the car; they were on their way to see sister Chelsa and then proceed to Dada’s hometown.
Sister Chelsa was a sweet nun, fair and round. The skin under her arms hung loosely and she had pretty freckles near her collar bone. Even though she was dressed in a white floral nightgown she always wore a veil. Her brown veil was neatly tucked in and the coif pinned with bell pins.
The convent she stayed in was behind the St. Mary’s Girls High School. She was an English teacher there, before she got sick. Dada said it was a grave disease, called cancer.
Once, when they went to the convent around 3 o’clock, Ebbie saw tall girls in school uniforms walking on the school ground towards the gate. The girls had smiled at Ebbie but he was too shy to smile back, so he hid behind Dada.
This time, as Mamma pulled the seatbelt and clicked it in, he decided that he would smile at the girls today. He had earlier practiced his smile in front of the wash basin mirror. Mamma didn’t brush his teeth today; she squeezed out the paste onto the brush and kept it on the side of the sink. He saw that her face was swollen, and she walked out without saying anything.
He stood there on the red plastic stool, practicing his smile and waiting for her to come back. After 15 minutes of waiting, he brushed his teeth by himself. Up and down in circular motions, spitting once before opening his mouth to do the sides. His mind replayed how Mamma always said “rinse thrice before splashing water on your face’’. He practiced a final smile before getting down from the stool carefully.
Mamma came in and nodded at him. She knew that he had brushed his teeth, and placed his glass of plain milk on the table. The Bournvita had finished yesterday.
……..
Their voices grew over each other, clawing on to the car seats. Mamma started with breathless weeping and then screaming. She screamed, holding her head down between her knees. Dada pulled the car over to the side and sighed. Ebbie was scared. He didn’t know what to say, so he practiced his smile before tears started to roll down his cheeks.
Dada turned back, leaned towards him and touched his thighs, but did not tell Ebbie that it was going to be okay, that it would be fine.
……..
The convent was a square, hollow building. Sisters stayed in small cubicle rooms. The lawn in the center of the building had a mother Mary statue in the middle and bright flowering plants. When Mamma and Dada wanted to talk to sister Chelsa, they would ruffle Ebbie’s hair.
Mamma would say, “Ebbie, why don’t you go take a look at all the beautiful flowers out there and tell me what you see?”
The first few times Ebbie went around excitedly looking at the flowers, afraid to pluck them because a sister from the first floor always stood there watching over him. Soon he realised that they did not want to know what Ebbie saw, they just wanted to talk alone.
Yet he always waited for Mamma to complete her sentence and hold his chin, before running out.
He didn’t mind staying in the garden. He watched the bees buzzing around from a distance and ran in circles around the lawn. If it had rained earlier, he would shake the plants and giggle when the dew drops fell down. Before he got tired, and would sit on the stairs far away from his parents, he would always go near the mother Mary statue. He wondered why her face was drowned in sadness.
He would then sit, his hands fidgeting with the pebbles from under the bushy shrubs next to the stairs while he waited for Mamma to ask him to come back and say goodbye to sister Chelsa.
………..
Dada opened his door to get out. Ebbie did not look at where he went. He wriggled out of the seatbelt and placed his hands on Mamma’s shoulders. Mamma didn’t notice that Ebbie was standing on the car seat with his shoes on, which otherwise would have got him his ears pulled.
Mamma was still crying but meekly. She did not look up when Ebbie asked her why she was crying. Dada came back with a water bottle and gems for Ebbie.
Ebbie knew from their previous loud conversations that Mamma's family owed Dada money.
Now Dada wanted it. And nobody was giving him the money.
But Dada had lots of money in his wallet, he even had coins jingling in his right pocket.
They were not always like this. They were happy, smiling. Mamma made good food and Dada would give her cheeks kisses. They went to the beach, built misshapen sand castles and watched the sun sink into the far away water. They held hands and baked chocolate muffins.
Ebbie got golden stars for doing well at school. Mamma would dress him up and Dada would drop him to school.
The house was always busy with things, homework, promised play-time and evening dinners. The house would be waiting. Waiting for Dada to come home, waiting for Yeshu to come and ask Ebbie to play. The kitchen shelves were full, the vegetable basket overflowing and the bananas never had space in the fruit basket kept on the white dining table.
But now nobody filled the Bournvita jar. Mamma forgot to brush Ebbie’s teeth. The house was not busy, it was not waiting. The house was quiet, it was slouching.
They did have fights before, there was wailing and screaming, words that hurt the walls and pierced the glass photo frames. Yet this fight felt different, it was long, like the long wars the kings in his grandmother’s stories fought.
……..
It was not raining today. The sun was hot and bright. The sky was blinding yellow and the warm air smelt of sweat and anger. They parked their car and walked towards the convent. It was not 3 o’clock yet.
They didn’t hold Ebbie’s hand like they usually would. All of them walked quietly, Ebbie trying to walk faster to keep up with them.
Mamma’s tears had dried on her cheeks, forming dried transparent patches. The sisters gave them cold water from the pot as they glided into the wooden benches.
Sister Chelsa was also not her happy self, her warm smiles that caused soft wrinkles on her face were missing. It was as though she knew what was happening, she saw what happened in the car, what happened in the morning, what had been happening in the past couple of weeks.
Ebbie waited for his Mamma to ruffle his hair, but instead his parents said that they were going to look at the flowers in the garden. Ebbie was confused. Did this mean that Mamma and Dada had stopped fighting?
Ebbie was nervous, he had never spoken to sister Chelsa alone. He stared at the clock on the right wall, it was 2:45. He still had 15 minutes to finish this and then smile at the girls.
Sister Chelsa smiled for a while, holding his hand, rubbing it gently. Adults rubbing your hands gently is a bad sign.
Dada had rubbed his hands gently before telling him that little Elsa had died in Mamma’s tummy.
When Dada had to go to Indonesia for two years, Mamma had gently rubbed his hands telling him that Dada will come back soon.
Ebbie’s chest started to feel tight. His eyes blinked rapidly and the hollow feeling started to spike up from his toes.
Sister Chelsa said that Dada and Mamma were having some issues. Some problems.
Some problems that need some time to become fine, to heal. For the house to be busy and waiting, it needs some time. So they were dropping Ebbie off to a school, where he would stay now.
It was a boarding school, and sister Chelsa said that there would be a lot of young boys there and that Ebbie would have lots of fun.
Ebbie didn’t say anything. He looked at the clock again.
‘5 more minutes to smile. 5 more minutes to smile’.
They walked out of the convent. This time Ebbie walked in the front. He saw the tall girls walking out, swarming the grounds. He waited for them to smile, they did. He smiled back, a perfect smile that he had practiced all morning.
Some time didn’t have a value. It couldn’t be weighed on the pink weighing machine in their house. No amount of mamma’s teaspoons could measure ‘some time’. The cloth tape with black markings on it could not find the length of ‘some time’. It just floated in the air, with no clock to capture it.
They say children don’t remember, that they will forget soon, but Ebbie will remember everything.
visual by Manal Ahmed.