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It was often the odd, irrelevant hours of the day that caught Massau unawares. He had stopped wondering why he did what he did. For over forty years, it had stung him and pestered him like an ant bite, insignificant but nevertheless painful and itchy until one day he had stomped his foot near the garden gate holding a handful of tomato seeds, having decided to not spare a thought about it anymore. And all would have been perfectly well if time had frozen. It was only very recently that he had started wondering again. He found himself staring at the ungodly space between the two incisors on Lady Mewa’s face without any perfect reason, and at other times he gaped blankly at the conical tomb of excreta left at his front door by the dog with a patch in its eye. Massau didn’t mind it as long as the tomb remained humble and did not increase in proportion. He had good eyes for his age and with his precision in shapes and distances, he was perfectly capable of managing to step outside without soiling his boots.

I had little interest in Massau when I first moved into the neighbourhood. The neighbours had little to say about him and I kept to myself, shielded away from a luscious world of gossip. Yet over the years few crept into my kitchen through cracks in the wall and I tried to pretend negligence of their stacked up existences against my wall. I was a girl of twenty eight and I hardly had time for gossip then. Despite remaining mostly indifferent, I had made it a point to keep my distance from the old man. I used to see him plant cauliflowers in his garden in the winter, cardigan tied and bunched up around his waist as he squatted to press down the loose soil. Winters were always warm and one didn’t need to put on a sweater during the day. I used to watch closely, the wet patches the sweat left on his shirt and the shaking of his hands. He would catch me staring at times at his beautiful cauliflowers and I would jump back behind the safety of the curtains that threw long shadows across my room. Those moments always left me perturbed. I would bite my nails, an old habit that I never quite got rid off. I crafted in my mind all the possibilities that I had convinced myself were horrid. Would he think I was a pervert, bent on watching him from my shadowy corner? Or would he take me for one of the neighbours who lusted after his garden? My ultimate dread was probably the latter. The thought of Massau showing up at my front door with two cauliflowers filled me with such dread that for fourteen days straight, I did not pull back the curtains. Shadows stretched their hands towards the ceiling and the dampness nurtured the gossip that had remained in the corner. With fits of coughing they came back to life and I lent my eager ears to their musty breath. Fortunately, Massau never showed up. After fourteen days of constant agitation and half expectation, I slowly gave up on the idea, pulling back my curtains. I convinced myself that the spot at my window was sorely missed by the cauliflowers.

Years passed away as they always do, unassuming and snail like. I stopped strolling under the hedges or smelling the rose bushes. Hastily putting together lunch boxes and keeping the laundry from overflowing took most of my day. I hardly noticed or counted when one grey hair became two. The spring I turned forty, my eldest, who I had doted upon turned nineteen and flew across the ocean to pursue what she believed in. For years, the subject of separation had haunted me and when it finally came, I realised that I didn’t have a moment to blink.

My afternoons became quieter then, an uneasy silence growing like a malicious weed around the house. I took to wanderings again except I wandered less and loomed more. I stood at places humming the same tune over and over again until I barely knew what I hummed. Bobby the Babbit tugged at the hem of my skirt at times when he felt the jolt of hunger in his stomach. But I hummed on in the garden under the shade of the rose bushes and kicked him away when he started to scratch my ankles.

Bobby remained the same, not growing an inch since we had found him on a perfectly sunny day. As I began to collect myself like loose sheets flung in the wind, reclining deeper into the shadows of the hedges, the rose bushes and even further into the corridors of my house where light never seemed to reach, Bobby cooked up thousand and one ways to vex me in its wicked little mind. He shrieked louder, smashed china plates, jumped over cartons of milk, spilling them on the floor and ate from the can of beans left open and neglected on the wooden table. “What is it Bobby? Why do you trouble me so?” I cried out in anguish once and smashed some more plates. Bobby shrieked and leapt out of the window before the brutal china pieces could get his tail. And in that alliance of uneasy silence and shadows broken only by Bobby’s shrieks and tantrums, I grew a year older.

I awaited her return, the moon of my life, my joy, the sight of whose face I had been so cruelly deprived of. She looked like a moon in a stormy sky, once hiding underneath the clouds and in the next moment, leaping out from under them, a flash of a smile lighting up her face. Her laughter was like the ringing of bells and it reverberated the stony walls and I too like these old walls, shuddered in frightening joy. When she came back to me, I showered upon her all the excesses of love that I could. Every second of every day, I clung to her in fear of losing her again. She sat quietly while I braided her waist-long hair which shone when it caught the light and placed a rose between two curling strands of hair. At last when the love that put the rose in her hair started to bleed her scalp with unforgiving thorns for stifling proximity had given rise to unbearable friction, she sprang up and said hastily, “Mamma, I will go to the market and buy a dress.” I did not want her to leave my sight. “I will walk with you. You will need help picking the dress,” I told her but my moon batted her eyelids. She took me by the hand, set down a chocolate bowl and combed and braided my hair. “You sit here now Mamma and don’t you worry about the dress. Stop pouting like a six year old.” I pursed my lips and ate my chocolate, all the while gaping at her golden face. She turned back once to look at me before stepping out and then rushing to my side, brushed a cloth against the corner of my mouth. Caught up in the beauty of her face, I realised that I had grown unaware of the chocolate dripping from my mouth. “You have grown old, Mamma” she said. I laughed a little and reluctantly watched her go. And then I sat there, chocolate bowl in hand for five nights straight.

Bobby the Babbit tugged at my plaited hair and when his nails freed my curls by force, curls that she had put in place, I screamed in rage. But Bobby was persistent and he would not let go. Jealousy and neglect had turned him vindictive and I too, vengeful, brought my nails out. They got him good, they did! Scratched his face, from eye down to the nose. He shrieked loudly in pain and I flung him across the room. Malicious Animal! Wicked spirit! I screamed, cursing and calling him a thousand names. Didn’t it know that I couldn’t leave the room? Didn’t it know that I could see the night sky from here and here alone and the golden face that peered down and shook with laughter? To my delight, the sun never came up and I continued to stare at my moon night after night, my attention uninterrupted. At times, she grew smaller, her shape uneven and I being the doting mother, complained. “Why do you not take proper care, young lady? Soon, you are going to have boys pestering and fanning over you.” She nodded her head, my moon, but doesn’t she always? Silly girl! I had only started to tell her the story when she first lost her baby tooth when a honk and a screech in the street protested loudly and claimed my attention.

Furious that I had been disturbed, I withdrew further into the shadows and from there I watched the door open as an old man stepped inside. He stood there, his eyes kind, his hands old and shaking. I could see him perfectly in the dark, a shadow of kindness that had started to burn my eyes and I wished him gone from my sight. A little figure peeped from behind him, its face bloody and glistening in the dark. The old man walked towards me and I, frightened yet alert moved in the shadows, backward and further until my shoulders pressed themselves against the wall. My throat felt dry, my tongue curled up and not a word did it utter! He stood close. In the dark, I felt his hands close upon mine. The inside of his palms were moist and it made me feel dirty. I tried to move away but he held my trembling hands in his moist ones and stood in silence. His eyes swept over the room, finally resting on the wall of my open window. Then he did the unspeakable! To my absolute horror, he walked to the other side of the room and shut the window. Oh you Old, Wicked, piece of...! I could wrench his neck from his body. I ran at speed and flung myself against him with all force, determined to take him apart by sheer force, when he embraced me. Like a limb half torn, all the strength seemed to be drained away from me. His arms took me as I fell into him, numb and paralysed with shock.

With the window closed, the darkness had been severed from me and instead of the moon, I caught the light of the dying sun. I collapsed on the floor, motionless. In the light I saw the little pitiful face and a cry erupted from within me. It limped towards me and into my lap. “The wheels almost got me Mamma. I would have died and become an insect if Massau wasn’t there”, he whispered, his frail arms wrapped around my neck. I looked into his big, black eyes and watched the terror slowly slip away. His unruly hair stuck out at odd ends and his face was not a comfort to look at but I held him just fine and for the first time too. He was no golden moon and his laugh didn’t echo like the ringing of bells. He barely laughed and when he opened his mouth, I saw his sticky gums, infested with cavities but I would come to love him, I told myself, I surely would and I held onto him tighter than I ever did.

With years, Bobby who never grew, finally started to measure in feet and inches and he didn’t stop until his head reached the low ceiling of my kitchen. He stopped smashing plates and tugging at the hem of my skirt. I saw him a few Sundays ago, holding a mewling child in his hand. She had his black, unruly hair and I was certain, she would claim my heart too.

Years later, I thanked Massau for shutting the window that has always stayed that way since. Last week, I stood at his door, the unfettered mound of dogshit inches away from my feet, and I begged him to clean it. “It is never too late,” he said half sighing as he held a shovel and stepped out. We spoke about the wild rose bushes then and the changing seasons and Lady Mewa’s gap toothed smile. He told me that he didn’t know why he did what he did. “But you see, I thought you really had to look at him once. Once would do the trick,” he muttered. His voice shook a lot and I shook within. We stood in silence in his garden, watching the street fill up with yellow cars as the air smelled of ripe, ruddy tomatoes.