Eight 'O' Clock

[1] Trip

"Definitely not the same as when you went with those boys!', exclaimed my mother, as she strived harder to clean the mess which was scattered with used paper plates, toppled sauce bottles, and leftovers of chicken legs on every inch of the table. The floor was even messier with spits and 'Yucks", uttered by the customers who passed by the reception to pay for the meal. 

I was standing beside this mess, a great distance pushed to the wall by my exhausting mother, so I wouldn't stamp on either of the dirt and grease she was cleaning up. The troubled sighs of the rich in fashioned trendy dresses and a few pitied clicking of tongues just meant for my mother was delivered and gone in a moment. 

Those,  however, didn't give her a genie who would help her clean the twenty tables that surrounded her, after a nine-hour of continuous hard work which would be needed again to wash them.

The smell of burned chicken, dirty bathrooms, and the cold wind which whirred out of a ten-year-old air conditioner, invited me to my second home where I spend weekends and other public holidays. The name itself made me lament.

'Golden Spoon"

The fact it was a great irony as there wasn't any vessel which was made with gold in there but rusted timber like iron would make me chuckle every time my rickshaw driver uncle, Mr. Jacky drove me to those two stairs that shone below the labels, which at least remained clean due to the hard efforts of my mother-the only living waiter there.

Her encouraging smiles and pulled up pink apron left me with a good bit of hope. She was panting due to her asthma, and every bit of breath would take her to more oxygen supply, like how Mrs. Oslo told during our Biology lab, after a carbon dioxide experiment of blowing air into lime water. I had screwed up the moment I took lemon juice, mistaking it for lime water.

"The circular was given today", my fragile, soft voice which barely went above thirty decibels said.

 She began talking after wiping the adjacent table,

"Look Inayatie~~"

I blushed at the way she harmonized my name. It was a lullaby which rang in my every single dream, which scarcely were good ones but of dreaded nightmares mingling with Ecstacy to form absolutely an image I can never make head or tail of.

'I want you to stand up for yourself. Haven't you seen mummy work hard every day and night, here in this shabby one-storeyed hotel, despite the strain of my poor lungs and of course, a long-gone broken heart hard to heal?"

I flinched. She must have had this congenital disease of saying the same exchange of intolerable pain to her family--me, the only one who is left in blood and flesh. She must have for it was the thirtieth time I was hearing it from those sweetened lips. 

To be frank, the former part was a true undeniable fact while the other.......It was a memory, destroyed and buried. Never to be spoken until it had to burn again among the ashes, to devastate its mere existence inside those corners of her heart, where she still recollects the beauty of his creases and his smile as he whispered teasingly,' Your smell makes me want it...tonight"

However, I didn't stop her. After all, she barely gets anyone to talk to.

'So, after all, you need to know I faced these and moved forward. I can understand you more than anything in this world, my butterfly. But you are a long gone caterpillar. Spread your wings and fly when the opportunity comes."

She was right but to accept that, it was deadly.

For she knew very little.

She didn't know about the previous two months at all.

Blood in pee. Lips with stains. Ripped skirts. Juice plunged on my uniform. Curses sprayed like perfumes which I carried as a Yardley spray can, this scent never taking leave of me.

I couldn't tell to a miserable thin fragile body which would come back at ten in a rickshaw, where she bargained with even the auto on a rupee, finally going along with his price after a silly,' I am never riding on yours again..NEVER!', with a smile which would be meant only for me. 

Eventually, there will be some snacks for me from the closeby supermarket, and a Tropicana mango-flavored fresh juice which she adores. After cleaning the dishes and sweeping the floor, she would fall on her pillow dozing off even before she could set the alarm for her next day, which is a daily storm that she has got used to ever since her wedding ring got burned.

I would kiss her sweaty forehead, after teasing her for not taking a shower in a sweet whisper with the hope, it somehow reached her dreams and lay a blanket on her wriggled body. She wouldn't budge, which was a true testimony to her sound sleep.

Little did she know, I would be inside the bathroom, trying not to search for the razor.

"So GO! GO AND HAVE THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE FOR TWO WEEKS!", she exclaimed by fist-pumping in the air, immediately to be stopped by her manager who was throwing glares, after being the cause of disturbance while counting the money.

She didn't apologize, instead, she glared back. After which she turned to me and asked the details which I hesitated to say, with my bitten fingernails searching for lice, while I read the circular, pulled open with difficulty for I had crushed it when Mrs. Isha handed it to me, during the second break.

"Tophill Mansion. Jacobin Fort. Denso Hilltops. Bunchy Bunch Park and Garden. All teachers and students have to come. Teachers have to come because the flood has made it difficult to conduct separate tours for teachers and students. While the students because they need good internals. The bus leaves at five in the morning of August 23, 2020, and we would be back on sharp 12 midnight on 6 September after the fortnight fun. Accompany strictly one backpack with appliances needed. Electronics isn't allowed!"

The signature of the Vice-Principal at the end, which was hardly her name but more of a random scribble was enough to convince my mother when I pushed it across her face while she peeked through her broken glasses, which I had grabbed from the nearby waiter desk.

She would exclaim, 'Woah! Woah! It's a lifetime opportunity" or an "I have never heard of that!' at the end of every mention which drove me insane! Practically speaking, I would have smiled at her if she discouraged the visit like the neighbor's daughter, Unisan, a nerd who had come from Japan to learn hereafter her dad Mr. Tako, became our official Japanese tutor for club activities. Mr. Tako never allowed Unisan to go anywhere except school, where he dragged her off to and brought back home. 

But my mother who had finished the entire twenty tables and the floor which were shining now looked at me and beamed,

'I WILL HELP YOU TO PACK. CALL ALONA OVER IF SHE IS FREE"

I sighed and pulled my hair in frustration, gritted my teeth after she turned her back to me, so she could soak the dirty towels in the water which lay beside the washbasin of the shop. 

For a second, I thought my eyes were playing but when she bent to take the ten-rupee which had fallen due to the whirring fan that stood beside the broken cased TV, I could have sworn her churidar lifted a little, and flew to the side due to the intensity of the cooler, making the curves of her hip visible and vivid.

For a second, I noticed it on the manager's eyes.

Lust.

But it had faded before I could catch a better glimpse of it