Webs

When people we trust hurt, what hurts is not the act as much as the fact that it is them and it is us.

At eight, I was a novice to betrayal by friends.

It was the sports hour and it was a monster hour. Not just because Mrs.Mic… (who still nursed an old grudge against me) was acting as a substitute for the absentee tutor; the monstrosity of the hour was because I had pierced the volleyballs stored for senior sports students with an innocent looking nail. And the only two people who knew it was me were San…and Al… But Mrs.Mic… saw in the ambiguity an opportunity to settle an old score with me.

So she eyed the way I held to Al..’s arm and the way the help chain supported itself on San’s trousers. Mrs. Mic… had improved her corporeal strategy for she avoided public flogging. Instead, she stepped into the sports room and summoned us one by one.

We were only 35 that day with just one absentee. She kept us waiting while she finished questioning the first 32. When Al..’s turn came, he turned to look at me before he walked inside. But when he came out he avoided my eyes. Then San… took his turn and did not look at me before and after the summons.

I was called in the last and I knew from the way Mrs. Mic’s eyes shone, that I was the one who had pierced the volleyball. She took her time to execute but she had mellowed in the exhibition of her frenzy. She did not hit me with erratic energy or multi-directions, instead she made calculated well measured hits on my palms with an yellow wooden scale. And the fifth time she hit, the scale broke and flew across the room. The hard thud of it and my reddened face and palms calmed her mind and she let me go.

When I stepped out, I felt 32 eyes on me and two pairs downcast. I did not speak for a long time, and San… tried holding my palm but I pushed his away.

“She knew” he said edging closer, trying to rest his bony little knee against my cushioned one.

“Traitor,” I declared while San… continued a more shocking revelation, “ She already knew it was you before I was questioned. I was second.”

I sat still my little heart skipping a beat, “Traitor you have broken my heart. Go away.” I repeated under my breath.

The second time I repeated, San shouted at me tears streaming down his skinny cheeks, “You know it is him. You know it, you know it” and he walked back alone.

I sat still, felt Al… sit next to me, for the first time since nursery a space created itself between us. He sat quiet, he tried to place his palm over my little hand that clutched at the cemented edges and then said, “I didn’t”. I turned to look at him and for the first time since we were three year old his refused to meet mine and I said, “Liar”

His eyes filled with tears at the word I had used, “I am sorry, did it hurt?” He touched the red marks on my palm but I pulled back my hand and he looked at the way I sat away from him.

“I want to be alone,” I told him, an uncontrollable hurting more inside my head than my palms.

That evening, Dad and ‘silenced’ me sat at the portico and he asked, “What is the matter?”

I narrated it to him and before I completed how the scale broke, he pointed to a corner of the ceiling, “Watch how the spider builds its web. It is art” I looked up to where he pointed, I felt the web glisten less and less, the hurting heart transferred to the curious interest of the mind. And when I at last saw the web clear, he turned to smile at me.

Years later, I stood alone and heard someone tell me, “You know who the manipulator is, but you don’t want to accept it”.

I heard another say, “I didn’t” and then the addition, “I am sorry I misjudged you”

Years down I hear someone term the real as the imagined.  I hear someone who once said"be strong" say "we never shared a friendship"
The broken scale matters less, the palms hurt less than that space where vacuum creeps in to displace what existed once.

I did not have anyone anymore to show me a spider’s art, but I learnt to see art in a honeycomb within my heart.