Free Everything Was Good-Bye by Gurjinder Basran

taught to do, and we summed up family health in small reassuring statements that opened to truthful sighs.
    “What will you do?” Tej asked. “Where will you go?”
    “I don’t know,” she said. Perhaps admitting it out loud frightened her, because for the rest of the visit she stared out the dirt-streaked window without saying a word. When we came home, my mother called us into the kitchen where she was making roti . I couldn’t tell if she was angry or if the dry heat offthe cast iron tava had simply settled onto her cheeks. “Goapy Auntie called. She said she saw you in the city today.”
    “She’s wrong.” I glanced at Tej. “I was at school and Tej was… ” Before I could finish my sentence my mother lifted her hands from the tava and hit me. “Liar!” I fell back and reached for the counter to steady myself, but only managed to grab hold of the stack of plates piled on it, pulling them down with me.
    My mother turned the stove offand walked to her room, where she stayed barricaded for the next two weeks. She ignored our knocks, our pleas at the door, our tear-soaked apologies. The only person she would speak to was her brother. Mamaji came by once a day, and each time he emerged from her bedside I looked into the room to see my mother lying in the near-dark, discarded tissues piled on the nightstand next to empty teacups. Once she saw me peeking in, and told me in a small voice to come inside. I hesitated, my steps short and heavy, approaching with the trepida-tion of a child looking upon the old and infirm. I sat on the edge of her bed, saying nothing as I listened to her breath fall into a sedated sleep— slow and rhythmic, perfectly prescribed. As I rose to leave, she startled and clasped my hand, looking at me as if I were a stranger, the edges of her reality softening into the mercies of sleep. I sat in the dark watching the little light there was play on her face like a language of dreams. I lay next to her and slept there for the next year.
    Occasionally Harj sent me a card. Any time one arrived, my mother stared at it for a long time before asking me to read it to her, and then was disappointed that all it ever said was: “Missing you. xoxo Harj.” Sometimes my mother would buy a box of ladoos and send it to the return address. I told her that Canada Post would not deliver ladoos to a po box, butshe insisted on sending them. They were Harj’s favourite. My mother was always saddened when the crumpled box of sweets was returned stamped “Address Unknown.” She took the contents—broken bits, sugary yellow crumbs—and scattered them on the front lawn. “For the crows,” she’d say.
    I stopped in front of our home, looked around, and through the front window of the house across the street saw an auntie standing in her living room. I wondered if she was clocking me or whether she was wondering, as was I, why there were so many cars in our driveway. I rushed inside to find out. The house smelled like an Indian sweet shop; the intense aroma of ghee filled the spaces between chatter and smiling voices. I hadn’t heard such bright voices since Harj had left.
    “What’s going on?” I asked Serena, who was standing in the kitchen with Masi. Masi smiled and took offher glasses. She handed me a large, folded aerogram. I opened the knifed edge and pulled out a 4x6 studio portrait of a young Indian man. The constipated expression on his face belied the seemingly thoughtful posture he had assumed, with his arms folded across his chest. The edges of the photo were softened and air-brushed, not at all like the edgy and candid portraits Liam liked to take.
    “He is handsome, isn’t he!” she said, clapping her hands.
    “Yeah, I guess—who is he?”
    She grabbed my shoulder, shaking and hugging me with a force that was greater than her five-foot frame. “This is Kishor Auntie’s nephew. He is here from England looking for a bride.”
    “Kishor Auntie?” I had always thought it strange to call