ISSUE 41

I met my Mother-in-law when I was eight years old. We met at her doorstep, my left arm resting on my Husband-to-be’s right shoulder. I had hurt my knee.

He pressed the doorbell and we waited in silence.

‘I am sorry,’ he said. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his head dip a little. ‘It’s ok,’ I sniffled. The pain was fading, but I was still annoyed that this new neighbour of mine had beaten me at badminton. It was only right that he should feel bad about it. We could hear Mother-in-law’s voice before the door opened. She was singing. My Ma often sang as she did her chores, but not like this – Ma’s singing was all prayers and hymns. This woman was singing an English pop song!

I looked at my future husband with wide eyes.

He smiled and nodded at me like he had achieved some secret triumph. ‘Mumma plays the English radio station in the evenings.’ I was floored.

Later, I learned this was not Mother-in-law’s normal practice. Husband-to-be had begged her to play the station before sunset, in case I could be persuaded to come to his home for a post-game snack. He always went to great lengths with such things during our courtship.

Mother-in-law played English songs all the time when we left for college, though. They reminded her of us.

Husband-to-be shifted his feet nervously. ‘You can come and listen sometimes if you want.’ When the door opened, I blurted out, ‘Aunty, I love this song!’ She cast a knowing glance at her son and laughed.

When I am old, I want to laugh like Mother-in-law used to laugh. Her voice was always throaty and childish at once; she took her laughter with her. Ma and Daddy kept their happiness in some parts of the house, the dining table, for me, and the living-room sofa for their friends, but their laughter was never everywhere like hers was.

Immediately, Mother-in-law noticed my knee, ‘Poor girl! Come inside, what’s happened to you?’ She sent her son off to wash up and bring some biscuits and then set me on a stool on the porch. She kneeled down to examine the cut. ‘It’s not too bad, beti, but I’ll need to find a bandage.’ She got up to leave and paused, turning to face me with a smile, ‘And I will bring the radio too!’ She went inside, her singing changing to a distracted hum.

That was when I first heard the jingle of her earrings.

I had, at the time, only one very simple pair of earrings. I was a careless child and always muddying myself, so Ma refused to buy me more. Mother-in-law had beautiful earrings. And so many of them. They flowed off her earlobes like a silver-golden waterfall.

I thought about the time Ma had taken me to the mall to pierce my ears. I remember the two sharp flashes of pain, the teardrops, the dull red throbbing on the ride home. When Mother-in-law returned to bandage my knee, I asked her if she had also found piercings painful. ‘You get used to them after a while,’ she said with a laugh. I wanted to have a closer look at her ears, and she crouched down and pushed her hair back so I could see. Her ears were small and delicate-looking, determinedly holding on to the emeralds and rubies that made up the heavy garlands adorning her lobes. Buried between two big rings, I spotted a tiny diamond.

‘That’s the one I have! The small one!’ I gestured excitedly to my own ears.

Mother-in-law smiled and gently lifted a finger to her left earlobe. ‘Yes, I got this pair when I was quite young.’ Her eyes darkened a little.

‘When I am older, I want to have as many earrings as you, Aunty.’

And then, with hesitation, ‘How come you have so many? My Ma only wears one pair.’ Mother-in-law wiped my wound with a biting liquid, patting my arm reassuringly.

She looked up at me with complicated brown eyes. ‘They keep me close to the people who gave them to me.’

I was going to ask her more about the People Who Give Girls Their Earrings, but then Husband-to-be appeared. He was carrying a plate, three-quarters jam biscuits and one-quarter crumbs. His guilt was underscored by his sugar-speckled lips. Mother-in-law tied up the bandage, asked me if I was ok, and then scolded her son. He had ruined his appetite for dinner.

I decided I would be friends with this boy. Maybe Aunty would give me a pair of earrings on my birthday.

Many years later, after I was married, Mother-in-law gave me all of her earrings. She only kept the simple diamond ones. ‘You already have these,’ her laugh was throaty now and less childlike. ‘Let me have one pair!’ We were sitting on the bed in her room with flaking walls. She removed her earrings with a practiced hand, one-by-one, placing them into a wooden box. I had seen her remove them several times like this, but this evening she was slower. Mother-in-law looked at each pair with those same complicated brown eyes, touching them to her chest before she put them inside. ‘This pair, beti, was from my mother-in-law. She gave these to me when I married.’

Her voice had a heaviness to it. I noticed she did not touch this pair to her heart as she put the earrings into the box. She told me the story of each pair as she put them in the box. One pair was from her father. Another one was from her husband; a gift from their honeymoon trip to Thailand. I was lost in her stories and I didn’t notice when she finished.

She waved her hand in front of me to catch my eye.

‘This is all yours now,’ she said, handing me the wooden box, ‘I think you will look good in them. I never understood why your Ma would not buy you earrings!’ She tut-tutted and took her medicines with a glass of water. I had never paid attention to her ears without the earrings, and as I looked at them then, I was taken aback by how changed they were.

The small and delicate shape I remembered was stretched at the lobe, and the tops were leathery and slightly folded. Her piercings had grown wide, so that you could see the yellow light from the fading bulbs slipping through them. The simple diamonds seemed out of place on her bare ears; the glittering remains of a land lost to battle. I looked down at the small box in my hands and felt a little sick. As if she sensed this, Mother-in-law looked at me and touched her left ear lobe. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t feel bad if you don’t wear all of them.’ She said this with a smile and an airiness that felt like relief, like she wished someone had said the same to her many years ago.

Mother-in-law passed away a few months later. My husband found me after the funeral and handed me the simple diamonds. They stared at me from my open palm, heavy and sparkling.

Throaty and child-like.

When I took my daughter to get her ears pierced, I decided to get second piercings for myself. There was less pain than last time. Or maybe she cried for both of us.

I wear Mother-in-law’s simple diamonds next to my own. My ears felt a bit bulky when I first put them on, but now they don’t. I used to wonder how Mother-in-law handled all that heaviness hanging off her head. I think she simply got used to it; the counterbalance to her upward smile, the extra weight on her feet.

She never told me the story behind the simple diamonds. I like to think that’s because they were her own.