revisiting
Preoccupied so with the distant echoes of her own childhood, she had almost walked past the gate again when something about the beetle tree caught her eye. Up and down the lane she looked and sure enough this was the only one standing. A kaleidoscope of butterflies took flight in her stomach. This had to be it. Her eyes settled on the gate, and a chuckle escaped her lips. Yes, yes this was it; oh how she loved to swing on those hinges once.
It took a couple of tries before she could coax the lock open; then with a strong push to the gate, she almost toppled into the front yard. She hadn’t been back here since Nana passed away. Then with Mama gone and Nani’s mind addled with grief, no one had lived here in close to a decade. An unruly tangle of weeds had overtaken the once-manicured lawn, and a thick layer of moss had settled on the brick-paving. The path might’ve been a slippery mess during rains, but she was lucky the town hadn’t experienced one in over a month.
As she walked past the old house, through the archway and unto the courtyard facing the ‘newer’ one, a rush of emotions came over her. If she closed her eyes, she could still go back to those warm October afternoons – her running around with her siblings and first cousins and second cousins, and their mothers basking in the sun. The tring tring of the chatpate-wala as he arrived on his cycle. How they would rush to buy some – or more like a whole lot. Suddenly she was awash in that same aroma, and her mouth flooded with water. How she missed those days, how she missed her mother.
The once-busy house was without a single soul now. The laughter and bluster of her youth had been drowned by a deafening silence. If someone had looked out the window at her that day, they may have thought she had lost her mind, seated as she was – laughing and crying in equal measure. In fact, she sat there in the same spot until the clouds gave off a soft red glow; then she stood up with a jerk, wiped her cheeks and headed out. She hadn’t stepped into either of the buildings; that would have to wait for another day.