The Bridge Home

You always felt like a younger sister, Rukku. You looked younger, too, with your wide eyes and snub nose. You spoke haltingly, and you hunched your shoulders, which made you seem smaller than me, though you were born a year before.
Born when our father was a nice man, I suppose, because Amma said he was nice. Before.
Imagining Appa “before” took a lot of imagining. I was a good imaginer, but even so, I couldn’t imagine him all the way nice.
The best I could do was think of him as a not-yet-all-the way-rotten fruit. A plump yellow mango with just a few ugly bruises.
I could imagine our mother picking him out, the way she’d pick fruit from the grocer’s stall, choosing the overripe fruit he was happy to give her for free. I could see Amma looking Appa over, hoping that if certain foul bits could be cut away, then sweetness, pure sweetness, would be left behind.
Because Amma did choose him. Their marriage wasn’t arranged.
Somehow he charmed her, charmed her away from her family, with whom she lost all touch. They were ashamed, she told me, ashamed and angry with her for eloping with someone from an even lower caste than the one she’d been born into.
It was all she ever said about her family. Not their names or where they lived or how many brothers and sisters she had. Only that they wanted nothing to do with us. And Appa’s family–if he had one didn’t seem to know we existed either.
Sometimes I wonder if they might have helped us if they’d known. But maybe they’d have done nothing, or acted like our neighbors and schoolmates, who did worse than nothing. Who sniggered or made rude comments when we walked past. Comments that upset you so much, you stooped even lower than usual, so low it looked like you wanted to hide your head inside your chest.