Today's Reading
Like it was his own house. Aisha supposed, abstractly, that it was now. "Oh?" Aisha said, just as careful. She felt rooted to the spot, felt something clawing at her throat, wasn't sure if it was panic. "Everything okay? Did you hear some news?"
"No, I didn't hear anything." Esah put her blue mixing bowl in the sink and ran the tap. She wasn't looking at it. The bowl still contained all the batter she needed for the cake. "I was just thinking that I want to make things right," she said. "What with, you know, everything."
"Everything," Aisha repeated uselessly. "So you want to go to her?" Walter's head turned back and forth, as if he were watching a tennis match.
"Maybe," said Esah. The water flowed down into the batter, ugly, and Esah looked at it, unseeing. "What else can I do?" She meant, 'Now that we have no time left.'
Aisha walked over to her mother's side and put her arms around her very, very gently. She reached forward and turned off the tap. The batter lay there, embarrassed and ruined. Esah let out a loud, annoyed sniff and muttered about the loss of cake.
"What else can we do, you mean, Mak," Aisha said. "I'm with you." She ignored whatever it was that was clawing inside her and nodded firmly, forehead against her mother's warm shoulder, trying to be convincing. "One step at a time. It'll all be okay."
A STORY ABOUT JUNE
(three years ago)
June had been nineteen when she decided she'd had enough of the house. "What do you mean you've had enough of the house?" Aisha had
demanded, following her around the room as June picked up things, considered them carefully, and either threw them back down or into her suitcase.
Her suitcase was fading and huge and still shockingly pink. June had pleaded for it when she was sixteen, for her trip to Europe. Their mother had given in to the trip after a month of June alternating between furiously sulking and sweetly doing every chore in the house. She had made June install a tracking app on her phone so she could check that she was at exactly the places she'd said she'd be, at exactly the times she'd said she'd be at them.
"I just..." June considered her sister, her suitcase, her stuffed dinosaur, Lala. "It's not the house. The house is a metaphor."
"We're not in English class, June!" She watched as June picked up a pair of socks and discarded them firmly into the depths of her wardrobe. "What does that mean? A metaphor for what?"
June stopped short and stared at her, as if it was obvious. "For how if I don't leave now, I'll stay my whole life," she said.
"You won't; you're supposed to go to university!"
"University schmuniversity," June declared succinctly. She'd finished her last A level that day. As Aisha recalled, it had been Literature, hence the metaphor talk. "I'm not going. I just haven't told Mak and you since you'd both be on my case, and this way I got to enjoy these last few months with you both ... I'm not dying, Sha. I'll still be your sister."
At this she sat down on her (faded pink) bed and held on to Aisha's shoulders firmly, like she would never let go (she had). "I'm just ... finding myself."
Aisha stared at June, the almost manic glint in her eyes, the (bright pink) highlights in her hair. "You can do that here."
"I know I can't," June said, stubbornly sure about this like she was stubbornly sure about most things.
"What will Mak say?" Aisha asked, a last-ditch attempt. She was fifteen and too fifteen to say, 'Please don't leave me. Not yet.'
"Ah," said June, looking away. "There's the rub. If she could only understand—but she'd never—but you never know, she might." She rubbed at her chin, unsure. Then she looked back at Aisha with something like hope. "Maybe if you said something. Maybe that would help?"
"You want me to say something," Aisha said slowly, "to make her okay with you leaving?"
"She listens to you," June said, which was blatantly untrue in Aisha's opinion. "You're the good child. Say something so she isn't so upset?"
"There's nothing I can say that'll do that," Aisha said flatly. But June, shrugging away Aisha's doubt, seemed to take this as confirmation of her help. She spun around a little happier, tossing a hairbrush into her luggage.
She'd told their mother that night over dinner. Esah had asked, 'What about university'? Esah had said, 'You're too young to know what you want'. Esah had shouted, and she rarely shouted, 'Leave now and you leave forever. Go, then'! 'Sik kenang budi'.
...
