Skins

Part Four.

The skin on her hands was thin, bluegreen veins snaked over them. A leather box lay pressed against her lap.

'I had to find you. It-it wouldn't have been right if I didn't.'

'Thank you.'

'If it's not imposing, may I ask how--?'

'I don't think it's a story that should be told.'

The woman's white cotton dress swelled as she inhaled. The girl at her threshold, no older than she was when it happened, smiled a faltering smile. A cramped awkwardness drew itself around them like rope.

'Well, it was lovely to meet you. I'm glad to have helped,' the girl took a step backwards, preparing to leave. With a twitching, unsure movement, the older woman stepped after her.

'Yes?'

'How did you find it?'

'My uncle left me his possessions. He was a priest, he didn't have much... I believe that held a lot of meaning to him. It was a long time ago. I was just a child.'

'Thank you. Thank you, God bless you. Goodbye,' the woman smiled weakly, retreated back inside her house, and closed the door. As soon as the door clicked, the awkward, strained secrets, coiled around her ribs, slithered back into the leather they'd come from.

She sat at her wicker chair and held the box firmly against her legs. She knew what was inside. Letters. Photographs. What their skins had prevented.

A small, leather box, patterned with a knife. Pictures of Parvati, bathing, and the birth of her son, Ganesha. Mehndi curls and petals dotted in sandalwood. Old sandalwood. Dried carefully and plaqued to the porous leather. She remembered how he had taken a knife edged with turmeric stains and cut at its surface. He told her stories while he drew his history.

'She took the turmeric paste,' he had licked the knife at this point, twirled it in his fingers and sliced a long, curved line into the leather. 'And into it, she breathed the love and intuition of a woman and the strength and fearsomeness of a man, and she created her son, Ganesha.'

She prised a wavy yellow page from the others. It was written in a curly, feminine hand, dated ten years previous.

To my dearest Siddhanth,

The villagers celebrated today. I'm sure you must do something similar in Bangalore. I woke up in the morning, and my windows were blocked out with colour, even the stained glass in the chapel was caked in blue and pink and yellow powder. It was beautiful. I stepped outside and the heavy air just exploded with light and laughter and the children were running around in their worst and patchiest clothes, giggling and covered in vermillion and coloured flour. The missionaries panicked - they'd never seen such a display. The church Father's robe was splattered with green and he looked absolutely livid. I think of you now, how your laughter would sound mixed in among the festivities and your beautiful teeth would stand out so sharply against your skin plastered in jacaranda and saffron.

She never signed her name because she never intended to send them. They were scars designed to both remind her of the pain and re-inflict it.

At the bottom of the box a broken rosary lay dejectedly, its brass Jesus dull and its beads cracked.

She closed the box and hitched up her white cotton skirts around her knees. Her thoughts, once distinctly white (as one expected of a white woman), now danced, peppered with Indian Lilac.