Fiction: What does Naina do when her father calls her to wipe the blood off her mother’s dead body?

Ma is dead.

When I walk into her bedroom, I find her lying on the floor, one hand resting on her stomach, the other casually by her side. The pallu of her sari has been stretched across her face, hiding it. A sliver of collarbone peeks through. I kneel and wipe blood with my thumb.

I press my palm into the marble floor and allow the blood to soak into my fingers. We were taught this a long time ago. I push my fingertips harder against the stone and watch them swell, absorbing blood like a sponge. There is a slight discomfort in my wrist, then Ma’s blood begins to move through my body. I don’t want it inside me.

The house is silent. It is a little after 3 am and Papa is in his study, composing a message to send out to relatives. My son Raghav is at his friend’s wedding. I haven’t told him yet.

In the bathroom, I wait for drops of water to fall into a bucket of milk. My throat contracts and coaxes vomit to coat my tongue. I choke and bite down hard. No tears, not tonight. The bucket half full, I carry the milky water back to where Ma is lying.

How many times have I spilled water on this marble floor? I grew up here, at Tolstoy House, and as a child I carried piping hot buckets from this bathroom, through Ma’s bedroom, all the way across the veranda to the bathroom I used to share with my sisters. All the time pulling my back straight, walking with long steps to cover the distance faster. Long steps make the stomach tight. It is an odd memory, a familiar squeezing at the centre of my belly button. I hadn’t pictured having to do this again. Not at forty-four and not with a shoulder burning from the strain.

Of all the nights and all the places Ma could have chosen to die.

I drop the bucket, milky water spills, mixes with the blood still wet on the floor and flees like a thin pink snake across the room.

I dip a towel in the bucket, twist and wring the excess out. A drop falls, another pink snake runs across the room. I’m scared to hold Ma’s blood inside me. Scared to touch it with my porous fingers. I need to clean the floor with the towel instead, so that cotton fibres can stretch between us – a swathe of fuzzy white – like a barricade stopping my skin from colliding with her spilled blood.

I squat down and begin to scrub. The more I scrub, the more blood spreads through the room.

Why is your body so bloody, Ma?

I am not ready to look at her.

I move to the opposite corner of the room. The towel spreads and soaks, collecting the pink snakes. Piled up in the bucket, they sit like temperamental balls of wool, threatening to unravel.

Ma went to bed early complaining of a stomach ache, and had a heart attack in her sleep.

“It was her time to go, Naina.” That’s what Papa told me on the phone.

How does a heart attack leave her body bloody? This I cannot ask Papa.

I trace the pattern of block prints and hexagons on Ma’s sari, my fingers hovering in the air above her. Soaked in blood, the print is barely discernible. I pick up the towel and scrub the floor again.

Washing dead bodies used to be a family activity. Back when I was the youngest of three; Sujata the eldest, then Kavita, then me. We absorbed blood out of marble and wood and cheap tiled floors. It was Ma who taught us how to clean.

Blood released is pain unleashed. That’s what Ma told us. That when spilled, blood spreads rapidly, moving in a rush to coat every available surface in its sticky sadness. Blood clings on to corners and ridges. It is not enough to wipe with a cloth or wash away the layer on the surface with buckets of water. Blood is stubborn. It gets inside grooves, it coats the grouting in between tiles and it seeps into grains of wood.

Ma taught us that what blood is always searching for is another resting place. A body to replace the body. So, we had to offer blood a home. A place to lie down. We had to learn to open our bodies wide and be the ones to carry wasted blood inside us. We had to find space – push aside organs and puff up the uterus – create an empty cavity deep enough to store blood, until, once a month the dam breaks and we can expel all that we are holding.

The towel is soaked through and the floor is still a mess. I have no choice but to touch Ma’s blood. I extend my arm, dipping my elbow into a puddle. The blood dissolves into my skin.

To do this, I need my sisters. One to hum a song while I clean. The other to pinch my nose shut to the stench of death. If there is a way for us to be together again, I’ll work without complaint. If we can be together again, I will wade through this river of blood without a second thought.

But I am quite alone tonight and my grief is like quicksand.

I lie down and cover the bloodstains with my chest. Spreading my arms and legs, pushing my torso wide, I wait for the blood to seep inside me.

White marble begins to look up at me again. The pallu of Ma’s sari is darker than the rest of her sari, having turned a deep shade of maroon. Recognising flowers in the pattern of hexagons, I pause. I bought this sari from a handloom exhibition two years ago. I wore it to an event at the school where I teach, just last month. Before it turned brown and red and pink and the other shades of blood, it was green, with a yellow satin border.

Ma has lost so much blood.

On my knees again, I force myself forward.

I need to look at you Ma.

Hands shaking, I reach to lift the pallu away from my mother’s face.

“Don’t.’”

I stop. My knees digging into stone, my body hovering midair. Gut clenched, diaphragm tight with a constricted breath.

“Wash her. Drape her in the sari I have kept on the bed. Leave her face covered.”

I slump back down on my knees, my stomach expanding into soft jelly.

Yes, Papa.

I have to undress Ma to bathe her. Clean her and then wrap her up again.

The pleats of Ma’s sari are tucked into her petticoat. I pull them out. The pleats unfurl across the floor. I tug at the knot on the string of the petticoat. With another tug the petticoat pools around Ma’s ankles. Ma’s body rolls left. Ma’s body rolls right. By the time I am done removing her sari, I am panting. The six yards of fabric lie crumpled on the floor. I bunch the sari into a ball and push it upwards, towards Ma’s face. Through all this I have made sure the pallu covering her face has not moved.

Undoing the hooks of Ma’s blouse, I lift her back off the ground; enough to pull her arms out. Ma is heavy and I almost lose my balance. Ma’s left arm is tangled up in the blouse. With a pair of scissors I attack. Frayed strips of stained yellow cotton fall from her body. Ma lies naked on the cold marble floor.

I dip a fresh towel into the milky bucket, this time to sponge her like she used to sponge me when I fell ill as a child. Dabs of warm cloth, small circular rubbing motions.

I dip. Wipe. Dip. Wipe again.

The bucket turns red. Ma’s body slowly pales.

Now the smells; rotting cabbage, old meat and iron. Urine. The stink of Ma nestles itself deep inside my nostrils.

I fetch a fresh, crisp white blouse and a clean petticoat. It is muscle memory, pleating and tying a sari, knowing what height the pallu should sit at; I do it every morning before work. But tying a sari around a dead body? It is like playing a game of tug-of-war. No matter what I do, the pleats are uneven. A cotton strip of eggshell-coloured fabric dances forward from the bottom of the sari. Some pleats are too small, some tucked in too high. Ma would have been embarrassed to be seen in such a messily draped sari.

I won’t cry. Not tonight.

I leave the bloodied pallu over Ma’s face and walk away.

It is still dark outside. Half a moon looks down from behind a cloud. A fruit bat swoops past the window. I pour myself a shot of vodka. Then another. And another. Three shots for the three of us. Sisters. One dead, one on the run. They should have been home for this. If Ma must die, my sisters should be with me. That sounds like a reasonable request. 

Excerpted with permission from The Ex-Daughters of Tolstoy House, Arunima Tenzin Tara, Speaking Tiger Books.