*
In the living room is a small, slightly moldy taxidermied leopard. There are very much alive dogs in the house, but the leopard is my infant obsession. This is because the leopard lets me ride him, while the dogs do not. Amma says I should call him Bagheera, for Kipling’s black leopard, but the name Kaa, for Kipling’s Indian rock python, is what I choose. The sound is easier and there is something slithery in his yellow marble eyes. Exactly between these eyes is the neat bullet hole that my father’s father put there. The hunting guns are locked away in a chest in my father’s study, but the leopard is here as evidence of their presence.
A formal portrait of my grandparents hangs above the leopard. My mustachioed grandfather is in a three-piece suit, my grandmother in a Kandyan osari over a Victorian blouse, ruffled and buttoned against the tropical heat. My father is a boy in short trousers, the only child of the five my grandmother gave birth to to have survived the ravages of malaria.
*
The house is a kingdom divided into dominions, inside and outside, and ruled over by the keepers of my childhood, Samson and Sita. In the kitchen, Sita shuffles about in her cotton sari, her feet bare. She has been with my father’s family since he was a baby. She and her sister came as young girls. Her sister was my father’s ayah, while Sita set up court in this kitchen, which she has never left.
Samson is Sita’s nephew. His mother has returned to the village down south they came from so long ago, but Samson stays to wrestle our garden. Once a week he cuts the lawn, balancing on his heels, sarong pulled up along his thighs. He swipes the machete back and forth as he makes his crab-legged way across the grass. His skin shines like wet eggplant, and at his throat a silver amulet flashes in the sun. “Inside this. All my luck!” he says. He has pulled it open before to show me what it holds, a tightly rolled scroll of minuscule Sinhala script, a prayer of protection bought by his mother from the village temple at a great price. She believes it will keep him safe from the malevolent influences, the karmic attachments that prey upon the good-hearted.
*
I am eight years old, tiny and spindly, and Samson is my very best friend. After school I race to throw off my uniform, kick away my shoes, slip into a housedress and Bata slippers, and escape into the garden. The red hibiscus flower nodding its head, yellow pistil extended like a wiry five-forked snake tongue; the curl of ferns; the overhead squawk of parrots—these are the wonders that welcome me home.
Samson speaks to me in Sinhala. He says, “Ah, Baby Madame. Home already? Come!” He swings me onto his shoulders. My thighs grip the sides of his throat, my legs hook behind his back. I reach both hands up into the guava tree to catch the orbs that are swollen and about to split, a wet pink edge in their jade skins. I grab, twist, and pull. The branches bounce and the birds rise, squawking in loud outrage. His arm reaches up to steady me. When my pockets are bulging he gently places me on the ground.
I bite into sun-warmed guava, that familiar sweet tang, small gemlike seeds crunching between my teeth. Samson is cutting away dead leaves from orchids suspended in baskets from the tree trunks.
I ask, “Why do they call these flowers Kandyan dancers?”
I already know why. These small yellow orchids are named for the dancers of this region because with petal and stamen the flowers imitate perfectly the headdresses and the sarongs, the drums and white shell necklaces that the twirling dancers wear. But I ask because I want to hear him talk and also because I want to show off what I have learned in school. I want to show how much more I know even now at eight years old because I have gone to school and he has only ever been a servant in our house.
He says, “This is the name. No? What else can we call them but their name?”
“No! I mean, did they call the flowers after the dancers or the dancers after the flowers?”