Paper Flowers And Me

• Caroline Noronha, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2019

I felt beautiful until the age of twelve.

The cluttered crush of suburban Delhi; its rooftop lines strung with the omnipotent psalms of merchantmen and a panorama of freshly-washed sarees, concealed by their dark squalid secrets. Green and yellow beetles of numbered drivers manoeuvred amongst the dissolving lanes; pacing luringly with smiles that looked as though they were dipped in ghee. Faces of men with inherently crooked noses and hungry eyes, starving eyes, maintained bones with a few wedding rings mixed up in their dust and the gold stoppings of innumerable decayed teeth.

Behaviour associated with that of paper flowers, like momma would always say. When I was younger, I never knew why.

Hidden circumstances revealed like the darkened storm clouds in late February, or perhaps the way the air would shift into a thickened haze, those close by, dipped in grey. My mother would always complain about how the weather would wreak havoc with her hair in a matter-of-factly way. Stitching her eyebrows up in a cohesive slant, whenever I told her that I preferred her hair when it puffed out in the rain. Apparently it was not nice to tell people exactly what you were thinking all of the time.

It was on one of these particularly blue-grey days, my walk home from Sunday School was — different. The men powdered reddish-brown with drumhead skin and untamed clippings which occupied their top lips, leaned against each other in a lethargic lilt; glaring down at those who walk their street corners. Unbearably delightful cheer. My skin felt as though it was being peeled back, layer-by-layer, to reveal its ripened bud beneath its tainted petals. Sweet and fragrant. It’s as if they knew. All the new and unfamiliar parts of me accentuated; the parts I didn’t know how to wear, didn’t know how to carry.

Buried deep into my rib cage.

The dirt swept up under windshields of those passing-by, settling on the marigolds strung across the dashboard. They were my favourites; ones like my nanna once grew just before she passed. Identical paper flowers crumpled scrupulously against each other in the wet heat. The golden hue from the ornamental blooms as though drained from its softly wilted edges, desperately clingy to the yellow tint which bled on to your fingertips.

How I loved them.

Outside the rickshaw windows, people, like cut out paper-puppets, went on with their paper-puppet lives. Sometimes, I would turn the volume of the radio up louder when business was quiet. It was often a news broadcast; a poor girl in Mumbai had walked home alone after class and ran into some trouble with a bus driver. My mother never hindered to give her opinion on things. She’s quite the hypocrite. The gap between her saree was too wide or perhaps, her eyeliner was one shade too dark.

A slight breeze brought promises of refuge from the cloying warmth of the air, only to take it away as quickly as it arrived. The marigolds mourned on the dashboard; as if its conscience had tears so unending, I wonder if it was some sign of its tincture bleeding out. Coiled amber bloom, as though dipped in an iridescent brown.

Poor girl.

I remembered the masked uneasy horror expelled on mother’s face when I told her on my arrival from school; from learning about God and sin and living and stuff; but this never seemed to come up. A look as though someone had died, or perhaps if someone took the last of her cake rusks from the bottom of her tiffin tin. Her priorities were never quite in order. She proceeded as that shade of red was the inner workings of the devil; my mother was good at that; Indian guilt. When my body began to ripen like new fruit, suddenly, the men looked at my newborn hips with that sort of, look and the boys didn’t want to play tag at recess, but, they too had unknown intentions.

They tell us that we should be learning about Maths and Science and Religion, but instead, I’m busy learning about the consequences of my garments. I like cartwheel and gymnastics so I can’t imagine walking around with my thighs pressed together. As if the acceptance of my skin will invite thoughts of lust into their heads.

Behaviour associated with that of paper flowers; the life draining slowly out of me, like a trickle from the end of my fingertips.

But it was me, my fault, I was obviously asking for it. I felt beautiful until the age of twelve.