The buffaloes walk into the garden, trampling the chrysanthemums and daisies my grandmother had planted years ago. Ma spots them a fraction too late, and her voice shoots through the kitchen window, frightening the squirrels onto the roof.

‘Dimmy!’

I run from the back of the house, praying she hasn’t used the knives again. Turning the east wall, I collide with one of the buffaloes. It grunts and turns its head to me, chrysanthemums in its mouth.

‘Stop staring and chase them out, you blind bat,’ says Ma.

‘Come on, come on,’ I say, trying to coax them away from the flowerbed.

Ma laughs and climbs out the kitchen window. She jumps over the young bougainvillea tree below it, and picks up a bamboo stick lying nearby.

Thwack!

She aims for the ankles and forces them out of the wicker gate, pulling it shut as they trundle back to the fields.

I watch her as she stares at the animals and then at her fingertip, sucking out a splinter.

‘I told your father to fix the gate but you think he listens…’

‘He’s not here, Ma.’

‘Hush. Don’t talk about your father like that. He’ll be back soon.’ She ruffles my hair and climbs back onto the kitchen window sill. ‘Lunch’ll be ready in ten.’

***

It was a cool Sunday evening when Ma cut her wrist for the first time; the skin below her left forearm, raw and pink, as the blood trickled out. It flowed down her knuckles and dripped around her on the maroon floor. When I entered the bedroom, asking if she’d like to go for a walk, she was swooning in the armchair. I ripped a curtain from the pelmet, wrapped it tight around her wrist, and ran downstairs to the telephone. She rambled on about her schooldays and how she met pa for the first time at an Easter party. ‘We shared a bowl of khow suey,’ she said, ‘this smelly Burmese noodle soup.’ I sat beside her rubbing the sweat from her forehead, the rusty smell of blood in the air between us. ‘Dimmy, I feel drunk and I’m sorry.’ I didn’t know what to say so I asked her about grandma. She tried to smile and talk, and by then we could hear the siren from across the field. They took her away on a stretcher and I was left standing in the courtyard, under the dirty awning, staring at the blue light flash as I thought about dinner.

***

There’s a cup of mashed potatoes, chicken roast in a bowl, a loaf of bread and salad for lunch. We sit across each other and Ma serves me first, piling a plate with my favourite pieces (breast and leg), onion rings, lettuce, and a large spoonful of potato mash.

‘You better fix the gate tomorrow, Dimmy.’

I nod with food in my mouth.

‘If they come in again I’m going to shoot them.’ She holds up an invisible rifle in her hands aiming at imaginary buffaloes in the kitchen.

‘We don’t have a gun.’

‘We should get one.’

‘The knives aren’t sharp enough for you?’ I regret it as soon as the words come out of my mouth. But Ma laughs, loud and clear. She reaches across the table, hand outstretched, to pinch my shoulder.

‘Good one,’ she says, knocking over the cup of mashed potatoes with her bony elbow.

We eat in silence without looking up from our plates. Outside, the mynahs are having a noisy conversation and the sunlight comes sideways through the mesh door, allowing us to keep the lights off until the evening is upon us.

‘No need to tell your father about the knife incident. He’s got enough on his mind already.’

‘I won’t.’ That brightens her mood, and she wants to take a walk down to the lake.

‘Let’s go in the evening, Ma. It’s really hot outside now.’

‘You’re so serious all the time, Dimmy.’

So we step out of our house at three o’clock in the afternoon. Ma wraps a wire around the broken latch and the stake. ‘In case those stupid buffaloes come back. We really do need a gun.’ We keep to the old shadows of the looming trees where the railway creepers slither around the trunks going nowhere. The lake is at the end of the long field, near the kutcha road that leads to the city. Ma is wearing a light blue dress with off-white flowers. She keeps trying to straighten out the collar, but it is stubborn in its wrinkledness. She gives up and begins humming a tune.

‘I think I’ve heard that one before.’

‘No you haven’t, I just made it up,’ she says, sticking her tongue out. ‘I hope we don’t run into your father on the way. You know how he gets about gallivanting in the heat.’

I want to grab her by the neck and shout right into her eardrums that Pa is not coming back, but she hasn’t looked this contended in a long time. And as we get closer to the lake Ma points and laughs loudly. The water is full of changing light—a silent shade of blue, green—and the two buffaloes are lying by the bank, one of them resting their head on the other’s belly. They stare sullenly at us, in a way only buffaloes and urchins have mastered over the years. Ma walks over to them, picks up a flat pebble and sends it skipping all the way to the other side of the lake. ‘Can you do that,’ she asks them.

-x-