Apart from the plant growing out of the kitchen sink, everything in this house is proper. The tenants are in love, their dog is aged 2, and their bookshelves are dusted every other week. The wind that blows through the bedroom window brings in the smell of jasmines at night and filter coffee in the morning. As Rhea turns on the radio at 7, the sound of a honey bee buzzing spreads through the house. They drink their coffee while listening to new indie music and a spread of three Indian newspapers. When they leave the teapoy, Oliver reaches into the fridge for a jar of overnight oats and hands Rhea a yoghurt. When she gets back from walking the dog, he’ll be working on their thrifted work desk.
Everything is proper, but the body in the attic is a map. If you follow the blue lines – the ones that look like veins – you’ll reach where I’m telling this story from. I am old and wrinkled, like history, but I hold certain whispers in the folds of my clothes. This one, I had tucked between two silk sarees. Now that you’re here, let me show you around.
There’s a body that’s dead but not rotten, and it belongs to the couple. When Oliver oils Rhea’s hair in the evenings, a cigarette between her lips, it stays forgotten here – the body, with its long hair and manicured nails. On its neck is a silver chain with a rose pendant, studded with cut diamonds.
In the kitchen, Rhea pours a spoonful of ghee onto the dosa she’s about to flip. Sambar’s boiling in a steel pot on the stove and coconut chutney is already on the table. When she winds it up, Oliver will be out on a lunch break, and they’ll enjoy a good meal, followed by a glass of masala tea. Rhea puts away the dishes and Oliver washes them before heading back to work.
Usually, this is the time of the day when she reads a book, scrunched up on the bean bag next to the bookshelf, but today, she’s taking a walk.
“I feel like I need some air,” she says as she slips a bag onto her shoulder, but that’s a lie.
Oliver, with another meeting to get to, nods. “See you.”
She kisses him on the cheek and steps out. The streets are deserted at this hour, with only an occasional rickshaw or scooter passing by. The hotel down the lane is packing up leftover lunch and preparing for the evening, frying banana fritters and uzhunnu vadas in hot coconut oil. Further down is the salon where Oliver cuts his hair. Rhea hasn’t touched hers in years. It holds memories that she’s not yet ready to let go of, like the touch of her mother who used to braid it when she was still little. She now runs her fingers through it, closing her eyes to the recurring image of her mother in a field of daisies, surrounded by a thousand dragonflies. When she opens them, the sky is blue with puffy clouds chalked onto it. It is a beautiful day to have your mother by your side, so she puts her hair up in a bun.
While she walks to where she needs to get, let’s get to this body’s skeleton. Five letters, two syllables – that’s all that it has ever been; all that has been murdered. That’s all that’s been abandoned in the attic with its hands and legs untied, free to breathe. A name – something to mean something – a metaphor. But the body in the attic is not just a name. It’s an atlas of trauma, diphthongs muted where latitude meets longitude. In time zones that do not cross the couple’s, she remains dead – Esther.
Rhea pushes open the door to the café and sits down next to the window. She takes out a book from the shelf and flips through the pages, waiting impatiently for someone. The coffee she ordered arrives in a ceramic cup. The couple at the farthest end of the store shares a slice of red velvet, spooning out bite-sized portions from two corners.
It was at a café like this that they had met. Oliver had been there to cover a book launch for the literary agency and Rhea, to attend it. He snapped a picture of the girl frantically scribbling notes onto the margins of her book, and under the guise of wanting to share it with her, approached to ask for her number. Rhea, already falling for the woman in the red tank top, asks her out for coffee.
And like that, over coffee, their love builds, and in a few months, they move into an apartment. Over the years, Esther changes multiple jobs and Rhea shifts entirely to freelance. They move to a bigger apartment and then to a house. They buy, thrift, and craft it into a home. And then, Esther buries the body that she doesn’t need anymore – her name – because a name is a body with hands that touch and feet that don’t move.
When the receptionist walks in, Rhea jumps out of her seat and rushes to the counter. She hands her a package that she carries out with a swelling heart. Today is the day.
Her mother used to say that her relationship was wrong; that it wasn’t proper. But she loved him and he loved her, and they had made a life together. Today, she will propose to Oliver with a platinum lapel pin, and ask him to be her partner for life. She will say, “I know we can’t be married in this country, not yet, but I hope this is forever. You and me.”
He’ll take the pin, wrap his arms around her, and say yes because what is more proper than a love that feels right?
