Read Online Bone and Bread by Saleema Nawaz - Free Book Online

outside.
    â€œIt’s so hot,” said Sadhana. “We’ll sleep better.” With my help she had already dragged two yoga mats and some blankets onto the balcony. I wasn’t crazy about the bugs I thought might be out near the dumpsters, but it was so still and humid in the apartment it felt like the very air in our lungs might start condensing.
    Even Mama, who tried to drink enough water to slake any heat wave, was looking flushed and a little wilted. She pressed her lips together for a moment and considered my sister in one fractional, holistic squint before saying, “That’s a nice idea. Just be sure to put on pyjamas.”
    Sadhana and I shared a furtive smirk. Mama was under some misconception that the whole world liked to sleep in the buff.
    When the bagel boys came out, we were stretched out on our backs with our eyes on the stars, nestled so closely I could feel my sister’s hair standing on end where our goosebumped arms brushed together on the blanket. As the male voices rang out in French, English, Tamil, and Punjabi, we thrilled to the daring of our own concealment and to another feeling — one that felt connected to the great island of our city and everything it contained, to which we were still hoping to gain admission. An idea of getting older that did not feel altogether like loss.
    When Sadhana got her period, she told Mama not to bother with a cake. She said it wasn’t the kind of thing anyone else made a big deal over.
    â€œHalf the girls in my class have theirs already,” she said. “And believe me, nobody threw them a party.”
    Mama had already measured the flour and the sugar into a bowl, but she didn’t complain. “As long as you don’t feel any shame,” she said. “I want you to know that this is a beautiful, joyful thing.”
    â€œDon’t worry,” said Sadhana. “I get it.” As Mama put away the cake pan and the measuring spoons and stood deliberating over the dry ingredients in the mixing bowl, I saw Sadhana go to the oven to check that it was turned off.
    Mama said, “I didn’t start it preheating.” She took a step back from the counter and watched as Sadhana tapped the dial three more times before joining me back at the table. Though Mama and I had never talked about it, I knew my mother was worried that the strangeness that had afflicted my sister after the fire might have started to return.
    â€œNo cake is one thing,” said Mama after a thoughtful moment. She was still looking at the oven dial. “But what do you say to the three of us going on a little trip?”
    So, one weekend just before I started grade nine, Mama acquired the use of a cottage near the Gatineau Hills, through someone in one of her Westmount yoga classes. When she told us we were going, Mama said, “I want a weekend where I have my big girls all to myself.” She’d started calling us her big girls that year, after the measuring wall beside the fridge had declared in faint but definitive pencil lines that we were both officially taller than she was.
    Sadhana said, “That’s every weekend,” but I knew she was excited. Mama had an elusive way of being around when she was home. There were always people calling or dropping by for advice, or meditation sessions going on in the living room or sewing circles in the kitchen sustained by endless cups of tea. Mama always had us all to herself, but we didn’t always have her undivided attention.
    I liked seeing Mama at the cabin, doing things we didn’t know she could do. Chopping firewood, lighting pilot lights, steering from the back while Sadhana and I sat astounded and life-jacketed before her like two useless orange peas in the pod of the red canoe.
    In the afternoon, while Mama did chanting on the deck, Sadhana and I sat further down the shore on stumps by the edge of the water. Sadhana was bored, and the still water oppressed her. She