Holes In The Sand and Stories I Told Myself

This was a difficult and painful piece to write but even more so to share…

I have a dream.

I am 6.
I see me wearing my home-made underwear and playing on the beach in front of my ammamma’s (grandmother) house. I have dug a hole in the sand and I am trying desperately trying to fill it up with water but it keeps on draining into the sand. Maybe if I run a bit faster I can fill it up before it empties. I don’t like empty holes.

There are 3 photo albums my mother created especially for us…her three daughters.  The one with the pink orchids on the cover belongs to my middle sister. The one with the picture of a huge tree in the front is that of my youngest sister by 4 years. The one with the 2 puppies sleeping in a basket is mine.  In each album, my mother carefully assembled for us the scenes that would make up the stories she wanted to tell. These are the stories that she wanted us to remember. Pictures and stories that told only half-truths to children who very early on, learnt not to see clearly! The very pictures I used as pieces to fill the holes of my childhood puzzle.

I am 7.
My middle sister and I live with my auntie and amamma. Look, my sister and I have a brand new dress that we can now afford because our father is working overseas. We should be feeling so lucky!

I am so desperately sad. Why did my mommy and daddy leave me here? Did they not love me? It must be because I am ugly. Everyone says my youngest sister is, “the beautiful one,” with the light skin like my mother. “The lucky one!” my mother would say whose birth changed the misfortune and mis-alignment of the stars in the universe for the better, for my family.  Everyone knows it’s unlucky for a Sri Lankan man to have three daughters!  So family and friends alike were convinced! It was her birth that brought about the “good fortune” which serendipitously arranged a promotion for my father and an opportunity to work overseas. It must be so right! Everyone believes it to be the case.

I am 9.
It is my first birthday being home at last reunited with my mother and father in Botswana. Just look at the “Rupenzel” birthday cake my mother took 3 days to bake, sculpt and ice. All my new friends and I are lined up by height to take this perfect picture!  Everyone is waiting in anticipation for me to blow out the candles.  Life is perfect now that I am with my family. I longed for times like during “the separation” when I would struggle to remember what my mother and father and little sister looked like.

I hate this home-made out fit I am wearing. I can still feel the burn from the pinch on my left thigh – a reminder from my mother of what was to come should I not plant a smile on my face and wear the ugly 2 pieced “Punjabi Suit” she picked out for me to wear.  I am ugly and these people around me are not my friends. They are the kids of my parents many friends who have come because their parents have made them. They do not like me.  “Just smile for the photo Pramilda”. You can hide under the covers later when everyone has gone home.

I am 11.
This is such an accomplishment!  I am getting 3 badges as a Girl Guide. In my bright blue Girl-Guide uniform, I am just like the other girls. The labels of “immigrant, Paki, loser” are less obvious for now or so it is my belief. I am part of a larger camaraderie of girls and they like me!  My mother and father are so proud of me.

Wait!  That is not my mother or father in this picture next to me. It is not even anyone from my extended family. In fact, it is a neighbour, a friend of the family. My mother and father were on a trip out of town.

Digging holes on the beach gave me so much pleasure as a child. Funny now digging as an adult only brings up pain.  Pain disguised and called by many names. Fear, anger, envy, lost, emptiness.  Perhaps I have dug too far and too deep!

And so, the waves of the ocean do their thing…waves rise and they fall, they crash into the shores taking out magical sandcastles constructed with wonder and held up by innocence; and the water in its haste to return back to the ocean, filling holes in the sand dug by little girls…like me.

Holes whether empty, full or filled…bother me less now. They are just holes! I no longer try to fill them up with illusions. Time changes nothing and yet everything. While the pictures in my photo album have stayed the same; altered now are the eyes that look through at them.