There was her grandmother, perfecting her card shuffling skills on her lap over the fleece throw blanket of dinosaurs, cards and compass. She paid no attention to Misha walking on the hardwood and sitting across her on the old violet canapé sofa, the music was so low in sound that Misha could almost hear her breathing.
Only when Misha kept the rainbow foiled box of candies and the bundle of paintings on the glass coffee table, her grandmother stopped the flow of cards and looked at Misha holding half the deck in her hands, and said in a raspy speculating deep voice, "You are crying."
Misha touches her cheeks and realises she is. "It's the snow," she lies.
"It's not the snow." Her grandmother quips, puts the deck on her lap, bends to the coffee table, opens the box and unwraps two candies, eats one, gives the other to Misha and starts shuffling the cards again.
Misha takes the candy and puts it into her mouth. She knows what's coming next, the blast of sourness, acid and then that sweet little taste. She closes her eyes and makes the 'taaaa' sound when her tongue feels burned and she asks her grandmother with a contorted face, "Why do you eat this?"
"It's real." Her grandmother says, shuffling and spreading the cards over her blanket. "Nothing in the world tastes sweet without it being sour first."
Misha exhales a deep breath, "What do you know about my paintings Gem?" She calls her grandmother with the nickname she gave her grandmother, based on her real name Anmol which meant priceless.
"That you painted them Misha. Pick one up," her grandmother quirks her brow at the cards on the blanket.
Misha stands and walks to her grandmother, knows the tone she is using on her, then she detours and goes to the blue attic solid wooden cabinet and stops the old records, she doesn't like the romantic lines that keep making way inside her ears, her grandmother keeps looking at her when she picks one card from her lap. "What do you know about the smudged ones Gem? When did I paint them?" Misha asks her grandmother, motioning towards the card.
Her grandmother folds her arms, doesn't even look in the table's direction, leans back on the chair and closes her eyes, "Read the card out loud."
Misha wants to throw the card on the burning fire, and shake her grandmother for answer. She takes a step back.
Gem smiles as if she heard Misha's thoughts out loud and says breezily, "Read out the card."
Misha looks at the card, "Six of hearts."
Her grandmother nods from her recliner "Pick up another."
Misha bends down and picks one up, this time she knows she is crying, her voice is pleading when she says, "Gem do you know someone named Aakash."
Her grandmother's eyes open, and she looks at Misha so sharply, that Misha's hand stills. And Misha knows, she knows from her gut and from the gray in her grandmother's eyes.
"What's the card?" her grandmother asks, as if in daze.
"Seven of spades," Misha whispers looking at the card with blurry eyes, "I don't remember anything about him Gem." She can't stop, "He, we.... met this Friday. And he asked me, you don't remember me? And Gem, I don't, but I can't forget his black gold eyes, I can't forget the way he looked at me, I can't forget his voice when he asked me that. I don't remember him but something in me does. And it aches in me Gem please tell me you know him Gem. Please Gem."
Her grandmother looks at her with wide grey eyes, her lips quivering, and Misha waits for the answer with her breath held.
"I have been dying for you to ask me this question Misha." Her grandmother whispers finally, "I have been trying for four years."
Mitzi mews and magically erupts from behind the recliner chair's back, and makes her presence known by jumping on Gem's lap, spilling half the cards on the floor, and sitting on the other half, as she narrows her eyes at Misha.
"What do you mean by you have been trying for four years?" Misha chokes, her heart is erupting out of her chest, and she has no idea what her grandmother is trying to say.
Gem's black painted nails lands on Mitzi's furry full neck and she rubs slightly making Mitzi purr in delight "I have...." she says, and her voice sounds heavy, "I used to take his name in front of you and you stopped responding....as if you didn't know someone named Aakash, and the next day when I used to ask about him, you didn't even remember me asking you." Gem looks towards Misha so sorrowfully, that the blow that comes next lands on Misha's heart before her grandmother even says, "You both were thirteen when you got separated."
The six of hearts and seven of spades falls from Misha's hand and a pain so sharp goes through Misha's chest that she stumbles down to the floor near her grandmother's feet.
Gem yelps and Mitzi in fright jumps on Misha's lap. Mitzi's red eyes evaluate Misha's face, and whatever she sees there makes her do the thing that she never did before, it makes her curl up on Misha's lap.
She doesn't know what she is feeling, there is confusion and there is ache, but there is also Mitzi, Gem and Aakash, and she wants to know, needs to know.
Her grandmother gets up from the chair and more cards fall on the floor, she sits beside Misha and touches her hair gently, "I don't know what happened darling and why did you forgot, sometimes I even thought that you did it willingly, maybe to ease the pain over phone, but when you came back to India and not asked about him once, I knew something was very wrong." She keeps her hand on Misha, "Before going to Australia, you made me promise that I will tell you about how he is, and even let you two exchange letters on my name. You both started to write each other a letter and the next month your mother opened the letter and caught you, she called me and you were crying so much. I was so scared and she didn't let me talk to you for months after that. Aakash," Her grandmother's hand tightens on Misha's so much, she doesn't know if it's for her or her grandmother herself, because her heart is agonizing and her mind is blank, where are the pages of her story? Why doesn't she remember one thing her grandmother is telling her?
Her grandmother grey eyes look sad and pained, and Misha knows she is hurting for her, for the parts Misha can't remember and her Gem does, she is hurting and Misha is so angry because she wants to remember. "Aakash... he came every other day, asking me about you, and I had no answers." A single tear falls down her grandmother's eyes, Misha inhales a shaky breath, she doesn't see her grandmother cry often, it's the second time in her life that she is seeing her grandmother cry, "You should have looked at his face that kid was so sad, lighting up like a lamp even if I took your name. When your mother gave you the phone after three months, I was so relieved and I told you Aakash would dance in joy, and you said, who was Aakash?"
Misha's heart rumbles, her chest gutters to her stomach, and her abdomen hurts, You really don't remember me? Her eyes meets with her grandmother's and her heart breaks, "But why?" it's all she can choke out of her abraded throat.
Her grandmother shakes her head fiercely, and Mitzi clings to Misha even more, mewing and rumbling on her sweater. "I don't know, you just stopped Misha. I tried, I promise."
STOPPED.