Anita and Me (WJEC Eduqas GCSE English Literature): Exam Questions

‘You’re so lovely. You know, I never think of you as, you know, foreign. You’re just like one of us.’

My mother would smile and graciously accept this as a compliment. And yet afterwards, in front of the Aunties, she would reduce them to tears of laughter by gently poking fun at the habits of her English friends. It was only much later on that I realised in the thirteen years we lived there, during which every weekend was taken up with visiting Indian families or being invaded by them, only once had any of our neighbours been invited in further than the step of our back door.

The Aunties all had individual names and distinct personalities, but fell into the role of Greek chorus to mama’s epic solo role in my life. Although none of them, nor their husbands, the uncles, were actually related to me by blood, Auntie and Uncle were the natural respectful terms given to them, to any Asian person old enough to boss me around. This was an endless source of confusion to our English neighbours, who would watch tight-lipped as mama and papa’s friends would phut-phut into the communal dirt yard and heave themselves and their several kids out of their hatchbacks, unfurling shimmering saris and clinking with jewellery, holding up their embroidered hemlines from the dirt floor. As I dutifully kissed every powdered or stubbly cheek with a ‘Namaste Auntie, Namaste Uncle’ and led them towards our back door, I could see our neighbours shift uncomfortably, contemplating the apparent size of my family and the fact we had somehow managed to bring every one of them over here.

I did once overhear them discussing me in guilty whispers in the kitchen whilst I was putting my bike away in the shed, my T-shirt stuck to my back in Friesian patches and my healing leg tingling with renewed hope. ‘… used to be such a happy child!’ I froze at papa’s urgent tone, carefully leaning my bike against the wall and deadening its slowly turning spokes. ‘She is happy, Shyam!’ mama hissed back. ‘You still expect her to jump onto your lap and pull on your nose hairs? She’s not a little girl anymore, of course she’s going to get a bit more serious about things, and so she should! We should put the house on the market now …’ ‘Let her pass the exam first!’ papa said, his voice getting louder. ‘She will pass it, no problem. She’s my daughter,’ mama replied. I could hear the grin in her voice. There was a brief pause, some movement and a sigh, I realised with amazement that they had just kissed. Was it like Sam and Anita kissed, mouths clamped together, tongues drilling each other’s cavities? Was it this that endured through fifteen years of marriage and welded people together?

‘But the accident,’ papa said finally. ‘It definitely affected her. And that boy she was sweet on, she’s never mentioned him since. Do you think …’ ‘Oh don’t be silly, Shyam! She’s much too young to be bothering about such things. She doesn’t even know what a boyfriend is.’ Papa’s silence told me how much better he knew me than mama, at this point.

Ah, my darling parents, how much they had tried to cushion me from anything unpleasant or unusual, never guessing that this would only make me seek out the thrill of the dark and dramatic, afraid of what I might be missing, defiant that I would know and experience much more than them. And now I was reaping the karma of all those lies and longings; I had lost a Nanima, a soul mate and temporarily, a leg – enough excitement for a lifetime already. If mama and papa knew the whole picture, they might have called it punishment. But this was the oddest thing, this is what l realised, standing in the yard, a sweaty eavesdropper holding my breath, that at this moment, I was content. I had absorbed Nanima’s absence and Robert’s departure like rain on parched earth, drew it in deep and drank from it. I now knew I was not a bad girl, a mixed-up girl, a girl with no name or no place.