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and Rahel thought it was a nice photograph
“Will you stop that!” Ammu said, so loudly that
Murlidharan, who had hopped off the milestone to stare into the
Plymouth, backed off, his stumps jerking in alarm.
“What?” Rahel said, but knew immediately what. Her spit
bubble.
“Sorry, Ammu,” Rahel said.
“Sorry doesn‟t make a dead man alive,” Estha said.
“Oh come on!” Chacko said. “You can‟t dictate what she
does with her own spit!”
“Mind your own business,” Ammu snapped.
“It brings back Memories,” Estha, in his wisdom, explained
to Chacko.
Rahel put on her sunglasses. The World became
angry-colored.
“Take off those ridiculous glasses!” Ammu said.
Rahel took off her ridiculous glasses.
“It‟s fascist, the way you deal with them,” Chacko said.
“Even children have some rights, for God‟s sake!”
“Don‟t use the name of the Lord in vain,” Baby Kochamma
said.
“I‟m not,” Chacko said. “I‟m using it for a very good
reason.”
“Stop posing as the children‟s Great Savior!” Ammu said.
“When it comes down to brass tacks, you don‟t give a damn about
them. Or me.”
“Should I?” Chacko said. “Are they my responsibility?”
He said that Ammu and Estha and Rahel were millstones
around his neck.
The backs of Rahel‟s legs went wet and sweaty. Her skin
slipped on the foamleather upholstery of the car seat. She and
Estha knew about millstones. In Mutiny on the Bounty , when
people died at sea, they were wrapped in white sheets and thrown
overboard with millstones around their necks so that the corpses
wouldn‟t float. Estha wasn‟t sure how they decided how many