Artwork by Sophie Igbinovia
When Nyra cooks, her mind floats away. There is a rhythm to the process: the thump of her knife against the chopping board, the slow spicing of the air, the sliding of cut vegetables into the open pot, simmering with water. It’s a rhythm that sends her back, without fail, to the past. In this past, the house is cluttered with schoolbooks, half-empty lunchboxes and scrapped doodles. It is messy but alive. Her precious babies are amber-trapped versions of themselves, sniffing over their mother’s shoulder, peering into the kitchen as she works. The house is filled with wafting laughter, the gentle touches of people who love each other, murmured odes of thanks. And despite all her desires to freeze time in just this way, to remember Daphne’s gap-toothed grin, Adonis’ cheers as she sets down chicken pilau, his favourite dish, she is abruptly pulled back into the present. The empty house, the messy kitchen, fragments of chicken pilau unprepared and scattered.
Soon, Nyra thinks, checking the time. In five hours, Nyra will leave the house to pick up her son from the airport. In seven and a half, he will be back home with her. By nine pm, Daphne will be over too, and the three of them will eat together, as they once did every night.
As Nyra busies herself with cooking, carefully dicing onions and tomatoes, she thinks back to earlier in the morning. Her grocery bag had torn and spilt, and she had stood there silent, at odds with the mounting rage in her chest. A young man had come up to help her, sorting out the spoiled items from the salvageable, insisting on carrying them for her to the car. There had been something about him, his gentleness, the vibrancy of his every movement that seemed to announce his youth. It had pained her to look at him. Pained her to thank him. She had found herself saying the strangest things. It’s unlike me to make a mess. People call me controlling, but I just want things to be perfect. I have a son, you know, perhaps about your age, his name is Adonis, he’s coming home today. I’m cooking dinner for him… chicken pilau, his favourite. And she hadn’t been able to stop, had kept blabbering and blabbering until she felt as though her throat had doubled in size like a frog. The poor boy hadn’t stopped smiling, but she noticed the deepening lines on his forehead and felt as though her heart would break. As though it already had.
She pushes aside the water leaking from her eyes with a cursory swipe. The onions were making her cry. Nyra has always been careful, has constructed her children's lives around a careful set of rules: only go out with friends twice a week, be home before seven pm, don’t lock the door when using the bathroom, don’t bother your father, don’t fight with your mother, always stand by your sibling, never deny them your love even if, in that moment, all you feel is hate. These days, news channels and media tout the benefits of gentle parenting, but Nyra knows better. She knows that the world is large and filled with little, intricate trappings. Each step has the potential to be a misstep, a slippery slope down which a young child, with all their newborn fragility, will too easily break. She knows that rules mean survival, that discipline and obedience are taught and tested methods for success. That if a child acts as their parents' shadow, stepping into older footprints, there is no chance to slip, no chance to fall.
She closes the pot, trapping the simmering mixture of chicken, rice and vegetables. She has made this dish so many times now that she no longer needs to set a timer or check the clock. Her mind will tell her when half an hour passes, and she will return to the stovetop and find the pilau ready, the rice moist and puffed up, the chicken oozing with juices. She takes a seat in the living room and stares out the window, letting her mind drift. It’s not like I’m a control freak, she thinks. Her children’s names are one example. Adonis and Daphne: famous mortals in Greek mythology. They are remnants of a younger Nyra, a girl who dreamt of becoming an archaeologist, who spent hours upon hours in university libraries, hunched over classics. An odd choice for sure, for Indian kids born in London to be given mythological Greek names, another strange line on their cross-hatched identities. But it proved something, didn’t it? That even Nyra, with all her desire for control and perfection, has the potential to dream.
The doorbell rings. Nyra stands, confused. She walks to the monitor and sees Daphne’s pixelated image through the camera. Already? She wonders, opening the door. A prickle of discomfort runs through her as she observes her daughter. She looks tired, purplish circles tinging her eyes, which are dull and reddened. But, when she sees Nyra, she forces a smile.
“Hey, Ma,” Daphne says.
“Daph?” Nyra says, still confused. “You’re early. I need to pick him up soon.”
Daphne frowns. “Pick up who? Ma, we’re late. The ceremony starts in thirty min—” she stops abruptly and sniffs. “Is something burning?”
Nyra’s stomach drops. An acrid tang of smoke has replaced the spiced aromas wafting from the kitchen. She curses. Too late, she rushes in, desperately turning off the gas and pulling the dish from the stovetop. Already she can tell the bottom of the rice is burnt to a crisp, the chicken completely dried out. She presses her hands against the side of her forehead, massaging hard. Daphne rushes in after her, peering into the pot.
“Is that…?”
“I wanted to surprise your brother, since he comes back today. I had it all planned out…I...”
Nyra’s voice fades away as she turns to look at Daphne. Her eyes are wide, her face strangely pale. Daphne lets out a strangled sob and claps her hand over her mouth. “Oh Ma…”
Her daughter moves to embrace her, and the prickling sensation in Nyra’s stomach grows stronger. She realises her daughter, who loves her bright pastels and patterns, is dressed in a long-sleeved black dress. From over Daphne’s shoulder, Nyra’s phone buzzes with a calendar notification. In that moment, Nyra hates herself, hates her meticulous planning, her rules, her scheduling. The sorrow rips out of her, a slow, keening wail that only grows. In response, Daphne tightens her grip, although she, too, is sobbing uncontrollably. They must make quite a pair, black-clothed mother and black-clothed daughter breaking down in the smoky kitchen.
Nyra can feel herself drifting again, but this time the past is no longer crystallised in golden amber. She is 33 years old and drowning in mess, in scattered homework books and unpacked bags, scraps of paper and doodles. She is hundreds of kilometres away from the place she considers home, her husband always off on some business trip, and her, alone with two young children, her precious boy and precious girl, who drive her absolutely crazy. She is a woman on the precipice, a singular wrong breath away from losing her mind. Each Wednesday night, she makes the same dinner, a one-pot chicken pilau, a dish she favours purely because it is simple enough to whip up in an hour, and because she can make enough to have leftovers the next day. She doesn’t set the pot down on the dining table because it is time-consuming and messy when Daphne and Adonis serve themselves. Instead, she serves them herself, scooping chicken and rice haphazardly into bowls, dolloping raita on top. When she hands them their food, she is frazzled and irritated, and she can tell they both know from the way they sit gingerly on their seats, careful of their every move. They eat without talking, silent aside from the clinking of cutlery. Adonis shifts and looks up.
“Do you need something?” Nyra can’t hide the exhaustion in her voice. Adonis offers her a hesitant smile.
“Thanks, Mummy,” he says. “Chicken pilau is my favourite.”
There is a beat of silence. Then Nyra is crying at the kitchen table, snot running from her nose, the spoon slipping from her hand. Adonis and Daphne push aside their plates and huddle up close to her, their little voices concerned and insistent in her ear. What’s wrong Mummy? Don’t cry Mummy. And she presses them tight against her, wishing she could consume them, wishing she could hold them inside her forever so that they would grow up knowing her mind as well as their own, knowing she was overflowing with love for them even when she was tired and unhappy and irritated. And then, because she can’t do that, she carries them both to bed and tells them stories of their namesakes. Of strong-willed, independent Daphne, who spurned the love of a God to dance free with her fellow nymphs in the woods. Of beautiful, isolated Adonis, parcelled between a goddess of the underworld and a goddess of Olympus for eight months of the year, more an object of affection than a real, human man.
But in the last four months of the year, Adonis was free to do with his time as he pleased. The myths say he returned to Aphrodite, for what man can refuse the goddess of beauty? But perhaps he never did. Perhaps he burst from the underworld and chose to walk uncharted lands. Perhaps he fell down cliffs and slipped down slopes and bruised and broke his body. Perhaps he got up each time and tried again, because to fall was also to live. Perhaps he grew to love it, grew tall and strong and fierce with adventure. Perhaps he strode across the land with a grin stretched across his face. Perhaps he has gone somewhere Nyra cannot reach, and perhaps he will yet come back to her again. Because, after all, myths are just the oldest, and therefore, most unstable memories.