by Marisa Anaman

He didn’t think about it much, but in the back of his mind, she was the baby of the family. Not that he felt much responsibility for her. He never was told that he had to take care of her – nowadays, older brothers don’t really need to look out for their younger sisters. Girls, he mused, managed their affairs efficiently on their own. At least his sister did. He glanced at her sitting on the floor beside the sofa. She was irritably stitching the side of her kameez that had ripped while getting off the neighbors’ trees a few days ago. Looking back at the television, he saw an eavesdropping girl with bangles and earrings the exact shade of her sleeveless short kameez. Or was it a slightly long spaghetti strap top? You couldn’t tell the difference nowadays. He squinted. How the hell did he reach Star Plus anyway?
   ‘Are you going?’ she asked neutrally. She yanked at the string, frowning.
   Remote batteries must be dead, he thought, as he pressed 5 again. ‘What? Going where?’
   ‘To the Sundarbans reserve, dummy. It might be fun – I mean, the parents are meeting with other weirdoes like them. What do they do?’
   He shrugged. ‘Hey, they’re wildlife biologists. I’m guessing something to do with the animals in the reserve.’
   ‘Meanwhile, tigers are still facing extinction. But you didn’t say. Are you going? Or do you have to be with her?’
   He shrugged again. ‘We didn’t plan anything. I could go; it’s just a week, isn’t it? I can use some time off.’
   ‘Hello, you’ve had months off, while I’m still dragging my way through school?’
   ‘Suck it up,’ he said lazily. ‘I went through the whole twelve years, you haven’t. And in case you haven’t noticed, you’re on vacation.’
   ‘For two weeks! Why can’t they split it so winter and summer break’s one month each?’
   ‘Dunno…did we have dinner?’
   She raised her eyebrows and began sewing again. ‘Yeah, but there’s some leftover pizza in the fridge. And if you’re going you better tell the parental units because they only have reservations for one room, and no way in hell am I sharing with our mother again.’
   ‘There is no way in hell I am sharing a room with him,’ she said flatly.
   ‘Language, young lady,’ said their mother in a warning tone. ‘What did you expect, a five-star hotel with unlimited space? This is a tourist lodge within the reserve, you ought to be grateful we’re so close to the tigers!’
   ‘Like a tiger’s going to come up to a noisy horde of people,’ she said disdainfully. ‘But it’s not right! I’m a girl! I deserve some privacy!’
   ‘She has a point,’ her brother added. ‘Why aren’t we on a tour boat or something?’
   ‘We’re not on tour,’ their father said dryly. ‘And you really haven’t got much choice – it’s either this room or the dormitories. You should have told us earlier that you both wanted to go.’
   His sister glared and marched off.
   He didn’t see her until he went to the lodge dining room where she sat glowering in a corner, typing an SMS. He sat beside her. ‘You could share with mom instead,’ he suggested.
   ‘And have her go berserk over how I don’t fold my clothes? I don’t think so!’
   ‘We might as well make the best of it – I mean, there are separate beds.’
   ‘Well, I’m still kicking you if you snore.’ She pocketed her cell phone.
   ‘Same goes for you,’ he replied.
   They left the dining hall and went up to their room. She sat down cross-legged and brought out her cell phone again.
   ‘You spend way too much time with that,’ he said, not so much to be reproving as to see how it sounded to be reproving.
   ‘I saw your bill for last month,’ she said, not looking up. That shut him up.
   He began rifling his hand luggage in search of his toothbrush.
   ‘Left side pocket,’ his sister told him.
   He frowned at her. As he brushed his teeth he peered at his hairline in the small mirror. Spitting into the basin, he examined the Pepsodent foam. It didn’t seem to be colored much by the highly flavored dinner. The bubbles slid towards the little holes of the drain. He began unscrewing the blue-lined handle, and when that gave no results, twisted the red one, which immediately spouted a burst of water that splattered his shirt. He could hear his sister’s voice speaking to someone. He wondered who it was this time. She was reluctant about introducing him to her string of admirers. He wasn’t sure why. She didn’t interfere with his relationships, so he was perfectly prepared to extend the same courtesy to her, so to speak. Looking up, he saw her standing in the doorway.
   ‘Are you done?’ she asked.
   ‘No.’
   ‘Well, hurry up. I’m tired.’
   He patted her on her head.
   ‘Cut it out,’ she said crossly, and walked out.
   She took a lot longer in the bathroom. Lying on the bed, smoking, he looked detachedly at the bathroom door and wondered why on earth it took so long before going to bed. Dressing up to go out obviously took time, he could accept that, but this was ridiculous. He could faintly hear water running. He looked again to see if he’d locked the room door. It would be annoying to get yet another lecture from one of their parents, and more annoying to be deprived of a nearly full pack of cigarettes.
   ‘Put it out, you could set the bed on fire,’ his sister said as she strode back into the room. She tugged at the sheets and climbed in.
   He took a last drag and stubbed it, leaving a small burn mark on an envelope. ‘Shall I turn off the light?’
   ‘Yeah,’ she replied drowsily. ‘How do you know you won’t ever start a fire?’
   ‘That’s bullshit,’ he said as he flipped the switch, ‘like one out of a million people smoking in bed do that.’
   ‘Well you could be that one. It doesn’t matter if the chances are a million to one, if the million is the rest of the world…’
   He rolled onto his side. ‘Night.’
   ‘Night.’
   The next morning they joined their parents for a glacial breakfast. They agreed to go to the Sajnekhali Bird Sanctuary with them, though his sister didn’t seem too enthusiastic about it. She asked if they could go on their own and try catching a glimpse of a tiger, but they refused. ‘You don’t know this place, anything could happen,’ said their mother. ‘We’ll go together tomorrow.’
   The river trip wasn’t as exciting as they’d hoped. Clusters of mangrove trees gleaming rich green glided past them easily, but none of them spotted a single tiger, ‘or anything predatory,’ she grumbled to their parents.
   ‘Where are all the crocodiles and leopards and rhinoceroses? And if you guys are really wildlife biologists, why aren’t you saving them from extinction?’
   ‘Shouldn’t it be rhinoceri?’ asked her brother idly.
   ‘Shut up,’ she replied.
   ‘No, it’s rhinoceroses,’ said their father. ‘It ends with an O-S, you know.’
   ‘Yeah, ignore me,’ she said sarcastically.
   They did obtain permission to go on their own the next day as long as they stayed together and went on the same boat as some newly arrived biologist colleagues, who, oddly enough, didn’t want to examine the state of the birds in the sanctuary.
   ‘So what do you kids do?’ asked one of them as the boat began moving faster.
   ‘Do?’ her brother said blankly.
   ‘I just finished my O levels,’ his sister said, raising her voice a little to pass over his idiocy. ‘And I’m starting my A levels now.’
   ‘Oh, I see,’ said Dr. Mustafa. ‘What about you, what are you studying?’
   ‘Nothing right now,’ he said detachedly. ‘Taking a break before going off anywhere, you know.’
   ‘Uh…yes,’ said Mustafa, a little confused. ‘What do you do all day? Watch TV?’
   ‘I hang around,’ he replied. ‘Right now I’m helping my dad file away some of his old stuff, things like that.’
   ‘He plays the drums in a death metal band,’ his sister added helpfully.
   ‘That too.’ He frowned at her. Sometimes she just couldn’t keep her big mouth shut.
   She was looking at the opposite shore. ‘Look, deer!’
   ‘Spotted deer,’ he told her as he began focusing the lens of the camera.
   ‘Yeah, I spotted the deer.’
   Her puns were silly, and the boat was moving too quickly. He didn’t get a good picture of the deer. Damn.
   Mustafa clearly didn’t get it. ‘No, he means to say that species is called spotted deer.’
   She looked annoyed. ‘I know what he meant,’ she said politely, ‘and I can see the spots.’
   At night they debated sneaking off the next day without Dr. Mustafa.
   ‘Only the parents will probably lock us up if we go on our own,’ she said practically.
   ‘Well, let’s go early, at dawn or something. We could get great photos and get back before they’re up if we’re lucky.’
   ‘If we’re lucky? You said that summer before last when we were taking mangoes from the opposite house, and might I remind you that you left me stuck up a tree for more than an hour!’
   ‘Hey, I got back as soon as possible and you could have made the jump any time, just because I gave you a boost doesn’t mean I have to help you off too!’
   ‘In which case you might as well climb the tree yourself! Why should I have to do it?’
   ‘And would you let me stand on your shoulders – excuse me, if you were physically capable–’
   ‘This is just like you, to make me do everything you don’t want me to do, I even have to go off to university right after my A levels because the parents don’t want me to goof off like you!’
   ‘I don’t have to live my life differently because you can’t manage your own!’
   ‘Yeah, but your life does affect mine, you idiot! Why can’t you get that?’
   ‘You’re the idiot! It doesn’t have to affect you! You can do what you like, I can do what I like, we don’t have to ‘affect’ each other!’ he shouted, making wild quotation marks with his fingers.
   ‘BUT IT DOES!’ she yelled. ‘Like it or not, we can’t separate ourselves and all I am saying is that you should at least think about it, every time you break a rule and make the parents mad, they don’t just ground you! They tighten the noose around me because they think I’m going to do the same exact stupid thing and they have to prevent it!’
   He turned off the lights and tossed himself onto his bed. ‘Are we going at dawn tomorrow?’
   ‘Do what you like,’ she said in the dark, banging something against the table.
   The alarm rang promptly at 4:00 AM. When he got out of the bathroom he saw that she was sitting at the edge of her bed, wide-awake.
   ‘Coming?’ he asked, as he picked up the camera.
   She nodded.
   ‘Hurry up then,’ he said, tapping out a cigarette.
    They walked out into the misty morning to the edge of the river, water lapping the slushy sand.
   She stopped and pointed. ‘Look,’ she said. The water had left fine long dragging lines on the beach. ‘Like wet uncombed hair,’ she said.
   ‘Come on,’ he said. He took an elbow.
   ‘It smells like fish everywhere,’ she complained as the boat picked up speed.
   ‘Fish live in water,’ her brother informed her. ‘The river is composed of water. Go figure.’
   ‘The river doesn’t smell of fish,’ she snapped.
   ‘When did you smell the river?’
   ‘Come off it, you know the boat smells, not the water—’
   ‘You’re just making excuses to stay away from the water.’
   ‘What? That’s ridiculous, why would I make excuses to stay away from the water?’
   ‘You’re the one being ridiculous. You’re scared of water, admit it!’
   ‘I am not scared of water!’ The boatman was staring at them.
   ‘Oh yeah? You wouldn’t go near the pool last year when we went to that party—’
   ‘What is your problem? What are you trying to prove anyway?’
   ‘You’re hydrophobic, that’s all.’
   ‘Don’t be so smug and superior! Fine, is that what you want to hear? I’m scared of swimming pools and—and rivers, and all large bodies of water! Go ahead, laugh! And be proud that you made me this way!’
   ‘I made you this way? What the hell are you talking about?’
   She was shaking with fury. The boatman was trying to say something, trying to tell them to stop making a scene. The guide had a firmer grip on his rifle than usual.
   ‘You don’t remember? When you were six and you could swim and you were so full of it, you had to drag me into the water and when I told you I didn’t want to play you just left me to go under?’
   He looked utterly bewildered. ‘I didn’t leave you, what are you talking about? Our mother was there, there was a lifeguard—’ He reached out to touch her arm.
   She jerked away and shoved him hard. The boat tipped dangerously. She was stronger than she seemed. He was losing his balance. He was falling. He saw her face change to horror as she realized what she’d done. Still falling. She lunged forward, snatching at his arms.
   He hit the water with a slap. It was a cold harsh embrace and the boat was still moving. He held on to the side and tried getting back in. A lot of hands and arms were painfully grabbing at him, pulling him back in. He fleetingly saw her face blanch as she looked at something beyond him, something in the water.
   He was in the boat, dripping water, shivering. Impatiently he pushed away the guide’s hands clumsily trying to assist him. He could stand perfectly well on his own. He turned to see what had made his sister freeze. And then he saw. The waters had parted for the glistening striped coat swimming away. The majestic head turned, and in the dim morning light they had a brief glimpse of two splendid, luminous eyes. And then there was nothing but the long stretches of mangrove forest.
   On the bus ride back home, he thought about what had happened, what could have happened. Funny how natural it was not to tell anyone. Somehow neither of them was really connected to their parents; when they were small children they had been able to look at each other and know. She was nodding off beside him; he patted her head, out of habit, out of fondness, out of a need to let her know he hadn’t abandoned her when they were children. She smiled slightly and put her head on his shoulder. He looked down at the lines of her face. They had the same straight nose; hers had a tiny glittering nose top. She was right though. Their lives always spilled into each other. Like all the rivers spilling, converging into the sea.