Free The Hungry Ghosts by Shyam Selvadurai Page B

both docile and quick at her work. The next three years passed in this way, and when she was eighteen my mother sat for her Higher School Certificate.
    She went to the first exam intending to do her very best. Yet once she was seated in the classroom and the exam bell had rung, she found herself observing a gecko crawling after a fly on the ceiling, the spinning, humming fans, the girls crouched over their desks, the invigilators standing in the doorways and murmuring to each other across the hall. All this created a hazy shimmer across my mother’s mind. She watched the minutes pass on the clock, then studied the other girls busily working around her, noting their school ties and the barrettes and ribbons in their hair, the styles of their shoes, their various tics and twitches of nervousness, how some girls clutchedrosaries and other religious totems on their laps. At the halfway point, an invigilator made a tour of the room, and when she saw my mother’s blank examination book she nudged her and whispered, “Are you ill? Do you need a Disprin or something?”
    “No, no,” my mother whispered back. Seeing the woman’s concern, my mother began to answer the questions frantically. But too much time had passed, and when the bell rang she let out a burble of despair and kept working until, finally, the invigilator had to pry the booklet from her.
    As my mother left the classroom, she knew that even though she would not fail, she could not expect anything more than a credit. She felt frightened and cornered by this saboteur within, helpless in her grip. During each of the remaining three exams, her mind drifted from the questions and she would find herself, as before, looking about the room, observing the other students. Then a voice inside her would cry, “What are you doing! You are eating yourself!” and she would frantically try to answer a question, only to soon lose interest again.
    My mother, when she told me about those examinations, said she could not make sense of her actions, even to this day. It was as if some element of karma was at play, just like in those old Buddhist stories, some bad effect from a previous life realizing itself in this one. My mother laughed as she said this, yet I sensed she half believed it, as I, too, have come to half believe that we sometimes make choices inexplicable to us.
    The results came out a couple of months later. This time, my grandmother rose at dawn to wait. She and Rosalind spread the newspaper out under the dining-table lamp and craned over the columns. My mother watched as my grandmother ran her finger down, beginning at the top; watched the frown crease her forehead, the furrows growing deeper. After she had reached the end of the first page, my grandmother declared, “But there must be some mistake, they must have forgotten to print Hema’s name.” She glanced at Rosalind and then at her daughter. Perhaps she saw something in my mother’s face, because she quickly turned the page and ran a shaking finger down the columns that now listed only credits and passes. When she was halfway down she let out a throttled cry. My mother had received credits in physics and biology and a mere pass in botany and zoology. “But, how can this be,it’s not …” My grandmother stopped, seeing the mixture of emotions on her daughter’s face.
    In the silence the women could hear the Milk Board van outside the gate, the clink of bottles, a lone scooter passing, its puttering like the call of a lost bird. My mother pressed her folded arms into her stomach, ready for a beating.
    “Why?” my grandmother said. She sank into a dining chair and covered her face with trembling hands. “Oh, God, I am cursed. Rosalind, I am cursed,” she whispered. “Here it is again. My happiness denied. The naked peréthi, I
am
the naked peréthi.”
    My mother looked at her, not understanding.
    Rosalind, who appeared to get the reference, forgot decorum and rested a hand on her mistress’s