*Shortlisted for Gooseberry Pie’s 2nd Annual Writing Contest
Photo by Wilhelm Gunkel on Unsplash
by Sudha Balagopal
my heart somersaults because my phone rings at 8:00 p.m, the exact time I’d call Ma everyday, and her number’s displayed, so with shaky hands I answer the call, to hear a cheerful lady at the other end tell me she went to eat chana-bhatura with Mrs. Rao next door, that it was super-delicious, after which she assures me she’s in perfect health and that I shouldn’t worry about her before she hangs up.
Open-mouthed, I stare at my device since conversations with Ma began with complaints about her attendant―she brought Ma cold food, hurt her scalp by pulling on her hair and left unwashed clothes piled in the basket―and ended with how she’d been abandoned in a dump, which meant 8,000 miles away, guilt would squeeze my belly.
The next day, the effervescent lady calls again, regales me with details of her shopping trip―how she loved her new green-and-pink sari, how she found the kindest tailor who promised to make her the perfect blouse to go with it, how he joked that she’d be the most stylish eighty-year-old in town―and finishes the call by saying she adored me, that I lit up her world.
Ma’d say shopping for clothes was pointless, she stayed indoors in a faded old housedress all day, no one visited―her brothers were dead, the greedy sisters-in-law had disappeared with all the family jewelry, and of course, her only daughter lived in America―while she shriveled like a pickled gooseberry in Chennai, just waiting-waiting.
During my last call with Ma, she spewed words about my deceased Pa―cantankerous, ornery, unappreciative, stingy―her disturbed mind unleashing like a monsoon thunderstorm, but there was no point trying to convince her otherwise, so I kissed my fingers and touched them to Pa’s photo on my mantelpiece before I hit the off button.
By the third day, I expect my phone to ring at 8:00 p.m. and when it does, I prepare to tell the sweet lady I appreciate her calls, her words, her spirit, when a stern male voice at the other end shouts, “What are you doing in this room?” and I listen to her answer, “Just talking to my daughter. Surely, that’s allowed?” in response to which, I whisper, “Yes, Ma. Of course, you can,” phone cradled against my neck, until I hear the final click.
Sudha Balagopal is an Indian-American writer whose work appears in Doric Literary and Fictive Dream among other journals. In 2024, her novella-in-flash, Nose Ornaments, was published by Ad Hoc Fiction. Her work is included in Best Small Fictions 2022, 2023, 2024.
