The little girl woke up with a feeling of dread. Her mind was still fuzzy and she did not remember the events of the day before but she knew that something was off. She sat up in her bed and as she took in her surroundings, the memories flooded her mind and she remembered how her mother had lain in a pool of blood and urine with her father attempting to bandage the wound in her head. She jumped out of bed and ran to the room next door to catch a glimpse at her mother through the square but there was nobody in there. She found out from the maid that her father had taken her mother to the hospital where she would stay a few days until she was healed.
The little girl turned her head towards where she sensed the Bogeyman was forming. As usual, none other than her could see the Bogeyman. She slipped her hand into his and tugged it in the direction of the lion’s den, her father’s favourite room in the house. They had called it the lion’s den because her father would bellow out of it for them to stay quiet when he was in there meditating and they were making a lot of noise. His bellowing strangely resembled the roar of a lion. Her father never bellowed against the whimpers or screams of her mother though. She wondered why. Did he not hear them or did he choose to ignore them? There was nobody in the lion’s den either.
The maid came out of the kitchen and chastised her for not listening. “Did you not hear when I told you that your father has taken your mother to the hospital?”, she said. “I thought it was already done before and that he was back”, the little girl said. The maid frowned, displeased, and went back to the kitchen to cook the first two meals of the day. She always cooked the first two together, breakfast and lunch, so she had time on her hands when she had to tend to the chores in the house. The dinner was always cooked fresh as her dad was back from his work and he did not like re-heated food. Normally, in their family tradition, the maids never cooked as it was always the lady of the house who had to cook and the maids only did the chores and especially the cleaning. It was considered very low class to allow the maid to cook for the family but they had no option as her mother was unwell and her father would not be able to cook as he worked.
Several days passed and her mother was back home. She seemed healthy and happy and the little girl was beyond herself with happiness as she had her mother back like she was before. Before she had claimed that her in-laws were poisoning her, that is, and she had been extremely ill, vomiting and feeling feverish. Her dad had given her mother pills to vomit and once her stomach was empty she seemed to feel better but she had never trusted the maid or her in-laws again, so much so that she became totally paranoid and would only use vegetables that she herself bought from the market. The little girl shook off those sad memories and clung to her mother with renewed happiness. Her little brother also joined in although the maid had been trying to keep him away from his mother since he came back from his time at his grandmother. The mother beamed at her two younger children and held them tight against her bosom and the little girl squeezed her younger brother’s hand. She was so happy he was back and that her mother was alright.
After a few days that her mother had been back home, her health started worsening and she had spells of vomiting as well as episodes of deep paranoia where she would clutch the maid by the shoulders and shout at her that she would kill her because she was poisoning her again. She mostly did this in the morning after the father had left but once she started screaming and punching the maid before the father had left. The maid was wailing and asking for help from the neighbours who had come down to see what was causing the ruckus. The father shut the door after asking the neighbours to let him settle the family problems on his own. He turned towards the mother and dragged her to the room where he had kept her before. She started screaming and trying to pull away from him but he kept his grip on her. He opened the door, pushed her in unceremoniously and locked the door behind her. The mother started pleading to be let out but her husband stayed inflexible. The maid gave her a wicked triumphant smile and went into the kitchen sniggering.
On his way out, the father gave the maid the key to the room stating that she should accompany his wife to the toilet whenever she needed to go there and that she must allow her to shower every morning and every evening if she needed to. It was so hot outside that the mother usually preferred to shower twice a day. The maid uttered a low hmpf in consent, not daring to say anything to the father even though she doubted her capacity to handle his wife on her own. She thought that she should ask the older girls to help her with their mother rather than handle things on her own. She went to them and told them they needed to help her with their mother as she was too strong and it would be risky for the maid to let her out on her own. The little girl stayed in her room, listening to everything that was being said.
Shortly after the father’s departure, the mother said she wanted to have a shower. The maid went fearfully to the room and called the older girls but only the eldest came together with the little girl. “Go get your older sister”, said the maid to the little girl who just blinked at her quietly. The maid yelled for the second sister but there was no response. The mother started yelling that she needed to go shower so the maid opened the door cautiously letting the mother out. As soon as she was out, the mother tried to catch the little girl who ran away as her mother’s eyes had turned ablaze. She was yelling at the maid but also at her daughters. She kept saying that the household had turned wicked and everyone had to run away or die. The little girl saw from the corner of her eyes her little brother crawling towards her mother. Before she could do anything, the mother had grabbed her brother and was holding him above her head in an attempt to throw him on the ground.
Suddenly the little girl felt the neighbours brush past her and swiftly retrieve her brother from her mother’s arms. The neighbours ran with the little boy upstairs while the mother turned her attention to the eldest girl and started dragging her outside the house, saying that they should all die. She attempted to clutch the little girl too but the second sister who had run in hearing all the shouting grabbed her younger sister and both of them ran towards the house of the neighbours on the other side of the street. None of the neighbours had, however, thought of retrieving the eldest girl from the clutches of her mother who was now dragging her towards the pond next to the railway station. The little girl looked back at her eldest sister who was squirming, screaming and trying to escape the clutches of her mother. She called to the Bogeyman and there he was, right next to her eldest sister, forcing her mother’s hand open and freeing her eldest sister. She looked on as the Bogeyman gave way to her father who seemed to walk through the Bogeyman and rescue his oldest daughter. Her eldest sister was sobbing in the arms of her father while the Bogeyman looked on seemingly undecided on what to do. The little girl called to the Bogeyman and he flew towards her. As he reached her, she raised her arms and embraced him. Slowly the Bogeyman returned her embrace before softly dissolving into her…
The little girl went to sleep shortly after the Bogeyman had led her to her bedroom and hovered above her as if he were tucking her in. She slept a solid 8 hours without waking up even as the voices outside her bedroom had increased in their pitch before becoming unintelligible murmurs. There were neither dreams nor nightmares to trouble her sleep. She woke up the next day much later than usual and it seemed like the subdued voices of the night before had really picked up a lot. She raced into the hall towards the next room to check the square from where she kissed her mother daily but her mother was nowhere to be seen.
As she approached the square, she could smell the stench of urine mingled with the sickening smell of blood that she would later identify as two types of smells of blood, one from menstruation and the other from cuts in the skin. She tried to look through the square but the maid grabbed her arm and pulled her away. Her mother was whimpering most of the time but would also emit from time to time a terrible wail. The little girl was struck with fear, not from her mother but about what had happened to her mother. She tried to run towards the square again but the maid pulled her harder, tightening her grip on her arm, which would later cause bruises that the maid did not own up to.
The little girl’s heart began to hammer in her ribs and she felt like wailing together with her mother. She wanted to know what had happened and could not understand why those horrible smells emanated from her mother’s room. Her dad usually unlocked the door and accompanied her mother to the bathroom whenever she needed to so she could not understand why there was so much urine in the room. She could feel the Bogeyman forming next to her but she was too distraught to talk to him. She tugged again trying to free herself from the maid’s grip and felt her relax her hold on her. She rushed to the square and peeked through. On the ground, her mother lay whimpering and wailing, blood running from a gash in her head. There was blood all over her mother’s thighs and all the bloods mingled with urine that lay in a puddle in the middle of the room.
The little girl’s heart beat so much faster she felt like it was in her mouth about to come out with the vomit leaving her lips that had turned white. In one corner of the room she had seen her dad who seemed to be opening a box of band aids to put on her mother’s head wound. He also had big wads of cotton and she was not sure whether that was for her mother’s wound as well. On the side of one wall, where the windows were, she could see streaks of blood and bloodied footsteps. It was as if her mother had climbed trying to escape out of the window. Her dad was yelling to the maid that she should not have let her climb and throw herself from the window onto the floor. He seemed cross that the maid did not realise what was happening and had not heard all the ruckus as she was the one who slept closest to the mother’s room. The little girl wondered why her mother had tried to throw herself from the window onto the floor. It made no sense. Why was she doing that?
The Bogeyman turned towards the little girl, slipped his hand into hers and embraced her with the other hand. She felt the cold that had befell her grow stronger. A tight knot was forming in the pit of her stomach and the chill she felt seemed to occupy her whole back, making her shoulderblades stiff and painful.
- Why?, she said. - Your mother is very ill, said the Bogeyman. - I don’t want her to die - She probably won’t - Daddy said that if she causes problems he will take her away - Your daddy will not take her away. He does not know where to leave her - I don’t want mommy to go away. I don’t want mommy to die - This time she has not died but she will do this again. You don’t remember but the same thing happened when you were younger. You might not remember it now but some day you will remember. Your mother wants to die. She does not like being here. She hates the maid and she hates how she is not free to do as she pleases. She hates it here. She might keep doing this until she finally dies.
The little girl started wailing again and her mother echoed with her own wails. The Bogeyman stared from one to the other then wiped the little girl’s tears.
- I will make sure your mommy does not do this again, he offered trying to appease the little girl. - Please don’t let mommy die, the little girl said half whimpering half wailing - I promise you I will watch over both you and your mother - I want to go to bed, I don’t want to see mommy bleeding anymore - I will tuck you in and then watch over mommy. Don’t worry
The Bogeyman took the little girl to her bedroom and watched over her as she slept. He knew what had happened. He had been expecting this to happen again. Everybody else had forgotten but he had been waiting in the shadows for things to worsen and this to happen again. The Bogeyman had always known…
“Mom,” the little girl yelled plaintively. “It’s the evil bogeyman who’s come again to take me far away from you.”
“Don’t worry, go to sleep!” came the reply, articulated by a sweet voice from the next room. “You’ll see he can’t do anything to you. Besides, if you look at him closely, you’ll see he’s quite transparent and harmless. He’s our family bogeyman, and he’s not very bad.”
“I want to sleep with you, I don’t want him near me anymore,” the plaintive voice continued. The little girl risked a sideways glance, and indeed, he did look very pale and unlikely to harm anyone. That said, something in the cold stare he cast—the only thing quite visible in his entire being—froze her.
“You know perfectly well that’s impossible. Sleep now and you can come see me tomorrow,” the sweet voice continued, slightly tense from having to contain itself in the darkness of the night. It then started a chant that would have filled the heart of the happiest with the deepest melancholy, but which, through force of habit, had a profoundly calming effect on the little girl. The quintessence of melancholy was now the only possible representation of peace and gentleness in the little girl’s mind.
“You’re a mean bogeyman, but you don’t scare me because Mommy will take care of you if you bother me,” the plaintive voice continued with a hint of defiance. With that, the little girl brought her little puppet closer to her pillow and fell asleep, absentmindedly twisting its hand while the bogeyman looked at her, contrite and pained. He too, seemed under the very powerful influence of nostalgia from the chant sung by a voice that sought to blend into the night.
The next day, the little girl walked past the next room and, standing on tiptoe, placed a kiss on her mother's cheek through the square that made her accessible. She watched her again as the nanny, with her tentacled hands, braided her and put on her daily school uniform while preparing her takeaway lunch, pausing only to button her top and smooth the wrinkles in her uniform skirt. The uniform was so heavy that she felt like she was wearing armour.
Her mother watched her leave through the square until she was out on the street and out of sight with her sisters. As the door opened, a gust of rain carried by the wind rushed into the cramped hallway, and her mother shivered. She called out to the nanny to lower the screen that separated the entrance from the street. It was a kind of foresail and did a good job of keeping the rain out, but the nanny deliberately didn't use it properly, knowing that the mother couldn't get to the front door to do it herself. This procession of small misfortunes she inflicted on the mother seemed to satisfy her petty spirit, seeking revenge against the life that had made her a servant to families more fortunate than her own.
The little girl had often observed this battle between the two women with a mixture of pity, anger, and helplessness. The nanny knew full well that the price of her defiance would be paid later when the father returned, provided the mother dared to complain, but she probably told herself that just being able to delay the outcome of the punishment was enough to give her the petty satisfaction of being able to have the upper hand, at least for the day. Outside, the trash was piling up in front of Mom's window, another petty act that gave boundless satisfaction to the nanny, who knew Mom was incapable of getting them out from under her window without her help. On monsoon days, all this created a vile cesspool which odours ended up bothering everyone, including the nanny. After the first attempts, which she personally suffered, she had lost her composure and had made sure to ensure regular trash collection during the monsoon.
The daily departure to the Good Shepherd School of the eponymous character, the greatest of shepherds, the saviour of our human sheep souls, or in other words Christ, took place in the early morning hours to avoid the rush that could have contaminated the path that separated the four girls' school from the parking lot, which was quite far from the building, with sweat and foul language. They returned home in the late afternoon, always as early as possible after school for the same reasons.
Everything was proceeding in the same daily routine that offered few, if any, variations on the same theme until that fateful evening. The little girl, after her daily routine with her mother and the bogeyman—who, oddly enough, was developing more defined contours each night except for the non-existent legs—had fallen asleep as usual when she was awakened by a dull thud. She slipped out of bed and found the household in a state of supreme excitement. It seemed that her mother, fed up with the garbage under her window, had thrown all her food and the utensils it was in out the window. This was to create enough anger in the neighbourhood about the garbage left there and the general state of the street. Phrases flew in all directions, and the little girl saw her mother yelling through the door at the nanny who was trying as best she could to justify the whole garbage business.
The little girl slowly slipped back behind the wall to escape all the noise made by these adults, which was causing her intense pain in her head and ears. She felt the bogeyman's presence beside her and saw that his body had now become completely visible except for his legs, so much so that he seemed to be floating. He was no longer just a cloud of water droplets giving the impression of a face like before. He was now a real person with a body that stopped at his hips and a well-defined face. She reached out to him with her hand and he gently took it in his own, which seemed immense. The touch of his skin was cold. Without a word, she followed him out of the room to her bedroom. She turned her face towards him and said in a soft voice, "I'm not afraid of you anymore. You're not that bad, and it's not your fault that I'm afraid anyway." The bogeyman said nothing but simply walked beside her with unsteady steps, the slowness of which tried to match the little girl's short stride. He looked at her with his large, unfathomable black eyes, but she was truly no longer afraid.
"What is your name?" the little girl asked.
"I have several names," several voices emanating from the bogeyman answered her. "My name is Deck Aurum," one replied. "My name is Dess Peration," a second replied. "My name is Disilu Shan Men," a third replied. She lost the rest of the names in the ensuing racket, but suddenly the voices fell silent and from the silence emerged the following exclamation: "My name is Gro Wing Up," echoed by several voices emanating from the bogeyman.
"That's strange," the girl retorted. When Grandma died, they put a fire epita on her stone that said Grandma, Mom, Aunt, and everything, and at the end, Rajambal. For you, that's going to be too many names. There won't be enough room on one stone.
"It's called an epitaph," said the bogeyman in a gentle voice, “but it doesn't matter because, you see, I'll never die and I'll never need one.”
And it was as she followed the bogeyman that evening that the little girl felt how futile it had been to try to make him leave before. That evening, something in her chest had made a strange noise in her head. She had felt, just below the satin band that her mother usually tied for her on holidays in a beautiful, bright white bow, on the left side, a kind of quivering like a bird trying to escape. The pain was very brief but tangible yet it would never equal in intensity what she would feel the next day with the events that took place there and which made her give a permanent presence as well as legs to the bogeyman.
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