I couldn’t understand why I didn’t say anything. I stood by my mother and looked out of that sun-filled room In the garden I saw the purple bougainvillea and the bright yellow hibiscus flowers. I wanted to be out there playing with Missiya. There was no one to play with except Missiya. And now my mother was telling me I must not play with her!
‘Then who will make me a mud house when it rain?’ I asked my mother, confused.
Mother knew me. She heard the anxiety in my voice and said quietly, without even lifting her eyes from the book she was reading, ‘I will.’
Missiya did not miss me. Shed did not care at all that she had ended a handful of my dreams. She continued to laugh her way through the day, the months. She became more beautiful at the years passed and her lovely body became more rounded. There was a border look in her eyes and a wildness in her movements in the village. Like the night when old Appuhamy’s wife went to search for him and found him inside Missiya’s house, drunk. The whole village gathered to watch and cheer, and the men watched her with a new interest. Missiya did not show the least concern. She apat an enormous mouthful of betel juice towards them and disappeared into the night.
They said that she was a witch. But by now I was old enough to know that was no witch. She was human and soon enough I knew what she was. I began to understand what those violent arguments. I knew why some women hated her and cursed her. I began to understand why women like my mother wanted to protect their daughters from her influence and their sons from her clever tricks.