I fail the antonyms quiz. One question asks if my father is absent or present. I circle both. Another asks if my mother is kind or unkind. I write, “I don’t know.”
My teacher’s eyes narrow behind her black-framed spectacles. She tosses my paper on my desk. “Your answers are not funny.”
“It’s the truth. My father is mostly absent,” I tell her.
Her nostrils flare and she snorts. “Just because he’s gone temporarily doesn’t mean he’s absent.”
After Appa calls to say he’ll be late returning from work, Amma says we’re going to Kavi Aunty’s. She asks me to wear the purple-and-yellow-checked pinafore―an outfit she sewed using a magazine picture and her trusty Singer―because the lady is foreign returned. Amma also instructs me to be on my best behavior.
Aunty shows me her golden-haired, blue-eyed doll. When I pull on the string attached to her back, the doll blinks her dark lashes and sings, “I love you.” I pull-pull on the string. The doll repeats the words, again and again, until the string comes off in my hand and she doesn’t speak any more. Amma watches me through narrowed eyes, clenches and unclenches her fists.
On our way home, she mutters through tight lips, “You were so good today. Such a well behaved girl. Of course Kavi will invite us again.”
Some opposites are easier to understand. For up and down, our teacher puts a book on top of her desk and then on the floor. For short and tall, she makes the tallest student in the class stand next to the shortest one. She taught us the opposite of responsible is irresponsible with the story The Ant and the Grasshopper. I like that opposites are also called antonyms.
I’m coming home after returning a book at my friend’s when I see the fox―beady eyes gleaming, teeth bared in a snarl―just inside our door.
“Amma, there’s a scary animal in our house,” I scream.
She smacks her forehead, then picks up the animal; she, who doesn’t even like our neighbor’s little Pomeranian.
In the living room, Appa’s glued to the news.
“What a wonderful gift you’ve brought your daughter,” Amma says. “A stuffed animal! Just perfect.”
Appa turns up the volume. “There’s talk of rain and floods,” he says. “They say this one will be big. I must go to my mother’s.”
Amma walks into the kitchen, turns the faucet on full force.
Appa spends weekends helping my grandmother. He takes her shopping. He helps her find a plumber or an electrician, waits while they repair things. On Fridays, he goes to her place from work so he can take her to the bank and then stays over.
Amma rushes out of the kitchen. “Of course, you should go to your mother’s. She’s important.” She drops a pan. It clangs against the floor.
I want to ask Appa why he hasn’t learned about Amma’s opposites. But he’s listening to the news.
Sudha Balagopal‘s writing appears in CRAFT, Split Lip, and Smokelong Quarterly among other journals. Her novella-in-flash, Things I Can’t Tell Amma, was published by Ad Hoc fiction in 2021. Most recently, her novella-in-flash, Nose Ornaments, was chosen runner up in the Bath Novella in Flash Contest. She has had stories included in Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions and the Wigleaf Top 50.
Header photograph by Jen Ippensen
Header artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson
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