‘At this rate you will not study anything tonight. Come we will go to your room until your father comes. Take your books and I will sit by you,’ I lured him to his room.
He sat close to me and took his work book. At the top left hand corner of each page of his book had a caricature of me. It was surprising.
‘What is this?’ I asked.
‘Every page of my book begins with your face,’ he said offering me his books.
‘How do you do it?’ I wondered aloud.
‘It is easy,’ he took his pen and scribbled on a paper, ‘your are very much in my mind, you are at the tip of my pen.’
With a few diligent strokes my face and bust appeared on the paper.
‘But my bust is not this big,’ I protested.
‘No, I will show you,’ he drew out a larger picture of mine on an A4 sheet and urged me to stand in front of the mirror. He placed the caricature close to the image and asked me to compare.
He was right, my bust was indeed as rich as he had represented it. I admitted my mistake with a acquiescing smile.
‘You are the very paragon of womanhood, there is nobody like you. I will worship your bust all through my life.’ I was terribly confused but elated. I travelled along a treacherous line between right and wrong. Love became a heady obsession. My body became a musical instrument, it hummed an inaudible celestial music.
‘You are surprising me, my child,’ I said with a profound passion.
‘There is nothing surprising in it. I am filled by the love for you, you are my idol, my deity, my salvation and my eternal consolation. I keep coming back to you because you are my sole link to this world. This world becomes livable to me because you are here with me. As the bible says where your wealth is there your soul is. My soul is here with you.’
‘You are frightening me by squandering precious words. We should not go astray in the wave of passions.’
‘In love we are never wrong. I have long ago placed you in the sacred niche of my mind, long long ago, even before I could put words together.’
‘Your father will come any time and I am distracting you in the studies. Let me go,’ I got up and walked out.
‘Mommy,’ it was a heart rendering call. I turned back. He came to me and we embraced again, our lips sought each other. After a while he whispered in my ear: ‘mommy, can you do a great favor?’
‘What it is dear?’
‘Do not hate me if I am asking too much.’
‘I can never hate you, you can ask me anything.’ I encouraged him.
‘Could you be, could you be as kind as to, could you b e as kind as to lend me the panties you are putting on, I shall return it in the morning clean and pure.’
Our hands slackened on each other. I violently debated in my languid mind.
‘We cannot do that dear, we cannot do anything which might make us remorseful at a later stage,’ I said.
‘Please, it means no harm to anybody.’
I walked out with an anguished mind. It is pernicious to see my child disappointed for my sake. I walked out of the room in a hurry. I saw the head light of Thomas’ moped streaking in.
In a frenzied impulse, I pulled down the panties I had put on and rolled it into a ball. Then I called my son out of the room. I forced it into his fist and darted away to receive Thomas. I knew that the panties were unusually wet, I had been moistening them from the moment I had put them on.