The Narrow Road to Palem Read Online Free Page A

Peddamma to her father, and she threw out a hand to grab him by the wrist and drag him into the kitchen.
    ‘Yenki!’ said Ranga, but before he could react, she had shut the door in his face.
    ‘You want your Peddamma?’ she said, and slapped Satish on his face hard enough to leave four red marks. He fell to the ground and hid his face in the crook of his elbow, but she picked him up against the wall and slapped him again, this time on the left cheek, with enough venom to draw blood from the corner of the boy’s mouth.
    ‘You want your Peddamma?’ she said. ‘Go on, cry for her. Let’s see if she comes.’ She turned him over and struck him on the back. ‘Go on, cry!’ She tore open his shirt so that she could beat him on the sides of the arms, on the back of his neck, on his sides. Everywhere she saw skin, she pounced.
    ‘Amma!’ Satish was saying. ‘No, Amma. I don’t want Peddamma. Just stop hitting me, Amma.’
    ‘No! You said my food was horrible, right? Now call out for her. Maybe she will come and cook some nice food for you.’ When her palms burned, she reached for a soup ladle and found the heaviest one. Pinning Satish down to the floor with one hand, she began to whack him, on his calves, buttocks, and lower back. Once or twice he turned just as the blow was about to land, and she caught him plush on the bone, making him wince in pain.
    And in her mind the same words kept hitting her. Come tomorrow. Come tomorrow. Come tomorrow.
    And her own voice: he’s my son. You cannot take him away from me.
    She thought that as she left red marks of blood and burning over his small body. She thought that amid his howls of pain and pleading. She thought that as the boy squirmed and begged for mercy. She thought that as she opened the door and flung the ladle with a cry of rage at the sewing machine.
    When she saw Ranga’s blank face, she said, ‘He’s my son.’
     
    * * *
     
    Malli laughed in her ears again that night.
    Ranga had locked himself up with Satish in the front room and had given her the middle room to sleep in. Her fingertips tingled, as though they had been immersed in boiling hot water. She ached to use the ladle some more, and make sure that the boy does not utter the word ‘peddamma’ one more time. Nothing was going to stop her from claiming her son as her own. Not some dead ghost, not some live man.
    ‘You’re not going to ask me why I’m laughing?’
    Yenki shook her head in the darkness. She did not look around for Malli. She knew she would find her somewhere, anywhere – in the armchair, by the sewing machine, by her side, with her fingers entwined in hers.
    Wet fingers. Fleshy, limp fingers.
    She pushed away the slithering hands of the dead woman, but her fists met only air.
    The sound of the foot pedal came to her ears, slow to begin with, but picking up pace with each second, like a speeding up train. The wheel whirred and buzzed, but she knew that if she were to turn her face to look, the machine would just be sitting there, dead and quiet. The tingling on her fingertips did not cease, and did not go away when she rubbed her hands to her sides.
    Something cold and slimy gripped her feet, between the toes. She kicked, but the fingers held on. They kept touching her.
    ‘Do you know who I am?’ said Malli.
    ‘The ghost of the dead woman who took my son away from me.’
    ‘Am I really here? Or is your mind playing tricks on you, Yenki?’
    Yenki did not know. She had not asked herself that question, because the answer did not matter. She told the armchair that. Then she turned and repeated it to the sewing machine. The slime slid up her calves, fingered her inner thighs.
    ‘You shall not have my son,’ said Malli. ‘Yes, he is my son. And you shall not have my husband either, from now on. You did not think when you pushed me into the well that I shall return. But I have.’
    ‘I – I did not push you into the well.’
    Again that laugh, that loud, demonic laugh. ‘You