Ladies Coupe by Anita Nair

surrogate fist nestling between her breasts that covered most of her chest. Sheela knew Ammumma did it so that even if she were to die in her sleep, she would do so looking her best. Her children, of course, dismissed it as a sign of age and its concurrent eccentricity.
    Daddy came back from the hospital two weeks later and said, ‘The cancer’s inoperable. They want to try radiation.’
    Mummy’s sister and brothers descended on them. A swarm of locusts who devastated the smooth fabric of their lives.
    Mummy, Sheela’s capable Mummy, became a little vague. The family GP said it was stress taking its toll. He said it was depression caused by the illness of a loved one. He said it was nothing that time, rest and a course of antidepressants wouldn’t cure.
    Only Sheela knew different. Mummy depended on Ammumma to provide a sense of continuity in her life. Mummy wanted to bask in the secure knowledge that there was someone who could tell her what to do and never be wrong. Someone who had all the answers for the one million doubts that swam into her mind from the farthest corner of her troubled soul. And suddenly it seemed that someone would no longer be around. Sheela knew Mummy felt lost and helpless. Sheela knew that for the first time Mummy felt the burden of the responsibility that would come to rest with her now that Ammumma was dying. Her sister and brothers would seek in her the wisdom and strength Ammumma had. While all she wished to do was to continue in a state of forever daughterhood. Petted, cosseted, and absolved of all motherly virtues for the rest of her life.
    Daddy, Sheela’s otherwise kind Daddy, turned into a hideous beast. Nothing Sheela did was right. He picked on her and found fault incessantly: You don’t help your mother enough. Your friends are not our kind of people, they’re riff-raff! You watch too much TV. You wander around all the time. Who taught you to say ‘shit’ in every sentence? Who is that boy I saw you talking to near the park gates?
    The list was endless and mostly contradictory. Sheela didn’t try to reason, as she would have once. ‘How can I watch TV all day and still be wandering around as you claim?’ She would have demanded when she was younger.
    But Sheela didn’t talk to her Daddy like that any more. These days, when she thought she was being witty, he scolded her for being rude.
    ‘But I thought you wanted me to be witty. That you were proud of my sense of humour,’ Sheela wanted to cry. When she was a little girl, he had encouraged her to speak like an adult. With a razor-edged wit and a finely developed skill of repartee. But now that she was grown, when he saw her, he saw a woman and not his little girl any more and he only felt anger at what he thought was her questioning his authority.
    Sometimes when friends came calling and there would be a little girl whose father beamed proudly at his daughter’s quick answers, Sheela would want to butt in and plead, ‘Don’t do this to her. My father was the same. He thought it funny when I was cheeky. Only now he calls it back chat and it makes him furious. Please, don’t do this to your daughter. She is going to grow up thinking this is the way to be. Instead, teach her to swallow her words, make her mouth nice and pleasant, innocuous things. Kill her spirit and tame her tongue. So that when she grows up, she won’t be like me, wondering what it is I said wrong and what blunder I am going to commit next by opening my mouth.’
    Sheela heard Daddy out and waited for him to leave the room. When he was angry, he always left the room as if he
couldn’t trust himself to remain there and cause no harm. Sheela didn’t mind. Daddy was the same when he went to Ammumma’s house. Sheela was very often the butt of his ire.
    She knew why he was being so abominable. He resented being relieved of his position as head of the household, man of the family. The rich brothers had taken over the running of the house – bills,