Free Em and the Big Hoom by Jerry Pinto Page A

tried to tell me the story of the king who looked at his ring in good times and in bad. On his ring there was inscribed, ‘This too shall pass away.’ Like so many young people offered this purulence of cliché, I said in my heart, ‘Fuck off, you stupid old shit with your chutiya clichés and your kings with rings.’ In real time, confronted by my grandmother’s much-loved, guilt-worn slow dissolve of a face, I said, ‘I’ll make tea.’
    â€˜I’ll have a cup too, you silly bastard,’ said my mother. ‘Not that you were. He took my hymen with his danda, he did. And then three years later, bang on the dot, there you came. Do you know Susan took ten years off the Limb’s life? He was white with fear because of my screams. But you? You just popped. They shouted –“The head” – and there you were. A tit man too. You just found the nipple and latched on. Susan, on the other hand, just wouldn’t drink. She must have known, woman to woman, she must have known that they had got to me. Don’t let them get at the tea. They’ll send beautiful girls who will try to bamboozle you.’
    â€˜What Imelda . . . ?’ Granny tried to stem the tide.
    â€˜You don’t know anything, Mae. You don’t know anything. You don’t know how they work.’
    â€˜Who is . . . ?’
    â€˜They target young men. They work on them through the sex instinct. It’s very strong in young men. Do you know, Mae, I read somewhere that women peak later but men come into their sexual prime at the age of eighteen. What do you think he would have been like at eighteen?’
    â€˜The king with the ring?’ I asked. It was enough to distract Em from a subject I hated: her sex life with The Big Hoom. She brayed with laughter, demanded another beedi, and asked me whether I was waiting for an embossed invitation from the Queen before I made the tea.
    In the kitchen, I could hear Granny trying to convince Em that no one was after her. I felt my rage rise again. Years of this, no, decades of this, had not taught Granny a simple truth. There was no way into my mother’s head. Not at this stage. For most of the year, it was possible to carry on a conversation, even to influence her behaviour with ordinary logic. But when she was twitching with despair or riding the crest of a wave of laughter and fury, you could only make contact by mistake.
    â€˜How was your day?’ Susan asked her once, when she was depressed.
    Em sat up bolt upright in bed and then her shoulders collapsed. Her face crumpled like a little girl’s and she began to wring her hands.
    â€˜Am I a standing red pen?’ she asked.
    It would be funny many years later. It would become a family symbol for the cross-connections and misunderstandings that happened when our words went through the prism of Em’s illness. They turned into something exotic and bizarre, bearing only a surface resemblance to our meanings. But at that moment, the question came out of the pit. It was coated with the animal intensity you see in the eyes of a dog hit by a car and dying on the road.
    â€˜No, you’re not,’ said Susan firmly. She was taking a huge chance.
    â€˜Oh thank God, thank God,’ Em sighed and lay down again.
    Susan looked around the room for red pens. She checked the house for them. ‘I was wondering if there was a standing red pen somewhere. I thought: is this some kind of symbol? I thought: you know, she was a teacher. Red pens? Corrections? Right and wrong? I don’t know.’
    Sometimes it was possible to catch a glimpse of how Em’s mind worked. You saw a note somewhere or you saw the name of a book or a headline. But this was not one of those times. There were no red pens in the house. So she asked Em why she thought she was a standing red pen.
    â€˜I don’t know,’ Em ground out. ‘I don’t know. I wish I