HER BROTHERS HAD BEEN RIGHT: Vairum is leaving her. Sivakami had known this, and still, boldly, baldly, made her choice.
The seventeen-year-old Vairum, though, looks indisputably happy and proud. His valise is packed, his shoes shined; Rukmini, Gayatri, Minister and their children, and Vairum’s math teacher are gathered for the send-off. Murthy will escort Vairum and get him settled in the dormitory. Sivakami has nearly finished assembling a tiffin for them to eat on the train.
Muchami comes to the kitchen entrance to say the bullock cart is ready. With little to take, Vairum could easily have walked to the station, but what sort of fare-thee-well would that have been for a young man off to attend St. Joseph ’s College in Thiruchi?
Always, Sivakami glances at Muchami’s face to gauge her own emotions, but today his expression is not her own. No one feels about her son as she does. Muchami has concern for the child, and pity, and the restrained affection that develops with proximity, but does not have Sivakami’s passionate protectiveness. His pity is reflexive: Vairum is a child without friends. He is thought so sharp and so bright as to be unassailable. Even Gayatri, despite an interest in Vairum’s welfare, feels no fear on his behalf. Thangam is not here to show affection toward her little brother, and so Sivakami alone worries for the diamond-hard boy. She knows he will succeed, at college and afterward. He will become all he was meant to be. So what is she worried about? She has the feeling that if she could see far enough into his dark eyes, she would know, but Vairum doesn’t let her look.
Sivakami speaks in tones alternately too brusque and too indulgent: Has Vairum packed twenty neem sticks for his teeth in case he couldn’t find a good tree right away? And what about the shoe polish Minister brought him from Thiruchi?
“I can buy shoe polish there!” Vairum says.
“Obviously: that’s where he bought it,” she says, peevish now. “But we have no use for it here!”
Vairum has no patience for his mother’s sentimentality. He wants to rush out, rush forward. He hears the bullock snort and stamp outside.
Sivakami is not finished. “Every mother who permits her son to leave her asks him for a promise. I am the same as every mother.”
Vairum looks away from her, toward the door.
“Look at me,” Sivakami says. He looks at her feet. “Your father’s first wife was lost in the river which connects our small village to Thiruchi. I worship our Kaveri Mata daily, the river that gives us life. I ask her to spare the precious lives of our children. Promise me.” Sivakami strains toward him. “Promise you will not swim in that river. You drink her water, your clothes are washed in her flow. That’s enough. Boys will try to tempt you…”
Fat chance, thinks Vairum. Muchami reads it on his face.
“It will look like fun, but I cannot afford this. It is sacrifice enough to send you so far.”
Vairum looks troubled. “The cost, Amma?” He thought he knew all their financial ins and outs. They can afford this.
“The cost of losing you, to the city, to the river, to…” She can’t go on.
Minister clears his throat, steps in. “Promise your mother, and then look lively. Only twenty-five minutes till the train.” He nods at Muchami, who picks up the valise.
Vairum mumbles something.
“Huh?” The volume of Sivakami’s voice startles both her son and herself.
“I promise, good?” he repeats. “Can I go?”
Sivakami is seeing two scenes at once. She watches her son mount the cart-shiny dark shoes and shiny dark head and large, slim hands dangling from thin adolescent arms, his father’s hands, but for a large white patch emerging from one sleeve and encompassing two knuckles-as she also sees a moment from their past: their family, wading into the Kaveri. She recalls the feeling of her hair ravelling its binds and floating up in the breeze cooling itself along the water. Baby Vairum, arms clasped around her knees as Muchami calls to him from farther out in the current. Hanumarathnam, helping little Thangam out of her paavaadai on the bank.
Watching Muchami help Murthy into the cart, she feels as though she is looking at and through the river’s surface, seeing her own world reflected and also seeing the otherworld of fishes and insects. The otherworld of her memory feels at least as real: Muchami is several steps out in the river, the water only as deep as his shins. Vairum lets go of Sivakami one hand at a time with Muchami’s wiry grasp around his chubby baby elbows. Delighted, he floats in the water, little-boy face to the sun, with Muchami squatting, holding him up. Hanumarathnam squats to do the same for Thangam, but she doesn’t float. He tries to lift her from the armpits, but she’s too heavy. Hanumarathnam falls, a big splash, and gets up laughing. Thangam splashes, too, slaps the water in excitement, then covers her mouth with her hands. Sivakami claps in excitement, and Vairum claps, too, laughing in the sun. Oh, those eyes.
Before her now, in the Brahmin quarter, the bullock’s back gleams, then dulls with dust up the fatty hump. The tail flicks once as the cart rocks around the corner and away. Vairum doesn’t look back. No weeping crowd, no running children. There are no rituals for bidding farewell to a son.