Gossip - 3

The advantage of having a twin, Chris thought, was that you sometimes escape from sticky situations while your dearest twin brother gets caught, but again that could also work the other way round. Sometimes it feels weird looking at someone who looks exactly like you, well not completely like you but most people couldn’t tell. What irked him the most was people always saying how similar he and Charlie were, and he was fed up of having to always clarify who was who. How could they confuse him with Charlie? Look at him, lying on his bed, reading an X-Men comic book without a care in the world, while he, Christopher, even though he was younger by a good half an hour, had to think of his family’s welfare, had to live away from home and attend boring coaching classes so that he can hopefully become an IAS officer and take care of his parents in their old age. Their older brother Mazuala was a complete and utter waste of a human being, according to Chris. No job, no wife, no girlfriends, no ambition at all. What will he do when their parents were gone and everyone was left to fend for himself? Would he expect the twins to feed him and care for him? Charlie can do that if he wants to, but Christopher will not entertain such ideas. Look at Charlie now, he had closed his comic book and was opening the old family album, Cecilia’s album, to be precise; next thing you know he would say something about her.

“Do you know 16th is Cecilia’s birthday? “ Charlie said, as if on cue.

“Is it? I thought her birthday was somewhere in June. How old is she going to be? Nineteen? Twenty?”

Charlie slid out an old photo from its plastic pocket, looked at the date behind it, and said “It’s written here – Cecilia at 5 months, 16 September 1985. That means she would be twenty-two in a week.”

“I can’t believe it. Do you remember the day she was born? It was bright and sunny in the morning….”

“… and without a warning it suddenly poured. I don’t remember anything except that it rained,” Charlie said.

Chris took the album, and started taking out the photos one by one, making an untidy heap on the bed. “We were over at grandma’s place, and Ni Mateii was told to watch over us, I remember, and you cried because you wanted to go to the hospital, and Ni Mateii danced that funny dance and you laughed again,” he said.

“I don’t really remember.”

Chris got up, went to his parents’ bedroom, and came back with his arms full of old albums.

“Do you know that people born during a rainstorm never get hit by lightning?” he asked Charlie, who by now was back on his bed, reading his comic book again.

“Cecilia was always lucky,” Charlie said to his comic book.

“And that afternoon U Mama came home from school but nobody was at home, so he left his schoolbag near the door and went off to play. When he came home after dark completely wet and with a big hole in his school pants Dad didn’t say a thing, he was so happy to finally have a daughter. I bet if I had committed murder that day he would've just smiled and said “It’s all right.””

He made room for himself on the bed, pushing Charlie to the corner, and continued dislocating the photos from their albums. His intention was to rearrange every album, everything was so unorganized. What he would do was sort all the photos according to person, and then arrange them in chronological order. Look at this, his old album, and the first page was full of Mazuala’s school farewell party, a bunch of young boys in a classroom, “30 Nov 1992” written on the blackboard behind them. And on the second page, his parents on their wedding day, his dad with his long hair and moustache, and his mother with bangs that almost completely covered her eyes; he laughed out loud.

“What's so funny?” Charlie asked.

“Did you ever notice that Dad’s hair was longer than Mum’s on their wedding day?”

“What's so funny about that? It was the fashion back then, that’s all.”

“And look at Ni Mateii, she must have been just fifteen or so here.”

“Why are you at home tonight?” Charlie wanted to know, “By seven you are almost always out of the door, visiting one girl or the other.”

“It’s Monday night, and the girl I want to see will still be at church and she said she had to attend a committee afterwards. But tomorrow night she will be at home.”

“Who is this unfortunate girl, is it anyone I know?”

Chris collected all of Cecilia’s photos and was now arranging them in her official album.

“Marini from Mission Veng, works at Synod Press,” he said in reply to Charlie’s question.

“I know her; she is a member of Synod Choir, very decent, too good for a guy like you. But doesn’t she have a boyfriend, that guy from Ramhlun, the one with the red Pulsar bike?”

Chris put down the photos, snatched away Charlie’s comic book and threw it on the bed (Charlie didn’t even protest, the guy had no energy at all).

“How did you know so much about Marini?”

“She came to the wedding.”

“So? Did she even speak to you? If she did it was probably because she thought you were me.”

“She didn’t speak to me.”

Charlie sat up and tried to take back his comic book, but Chris quickly grabbed it and stuffed it inside his T-shirt. Charlie flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.

“Then how did you know about her boyfriend and the colour of his bike?”Chris asked.

“Her family owns the building where U Siama’s shop is, and she goes there every month to collect the rent. They are good friends, U Siama and she.”

“I didn’t know U Siama knew any girls, “Chris laughed at his own joke, “But so what even if she has ten boyfriends? She said it’s okay to visit, so visit I will. Hey you and U Siama can come along; it will make the situation less awkward.” He pulled out the comic book and gave it to Charlie.

“I don’t think so. U Siama’s getting a new computer game from his friend tomorrow and we were planning to play it tomorrow night,” Charlie said, looking for the page where he was before he was rudely interrupted.

“Oh come on, you can play it any other night. You know very well my return ticket has been booked for the 24th of this month. I don’t have much time.”

“What’s the point in seeing her then? You will go back to Delhi and she will forget you, you are just wasting your time.”

“I like to think of it as an investment of my time; I will get good returns on it someday.”

“That I would love to see. Anyway, how did you know Marini?”

“I have my ways and means.”

Now it was Charlie’s turn to be curious. “Did she speak to you on the wedding day?”

“Sort of, she was with that friend of hers, Mimi, if you remember, but they left immediately after the service.”

“I heard Mimi was Zotea’s ex-girlfriend,” Charlie said rather passively.

“She is everybody’s ex-girlfriend. If that girl tries to come in between my sister and her husband she will have to answer to me. For that matter, if anybody tries to harm my sister in any way they’d better think long and hard, because I will not take it lightly, believe me.”

“Well, Cecilia’s got herself a husband now, one she is totally crazy about. And I'm sure Zotea can defend his castle very well.”

The album was almost done, and Chris was starting to get bored.

“Hey when will U Siama be done repairing your computer? I need to get online and get in touch with my coaching buddies.”

“He said another day or two, but you know that means a week. He is a very busy man, you know, and his assistant quit last week.” Charlie said.

Chris went over to Charlie’s closet, opened it and looked inside. It was total chaos; everything was stuffed together and wrinkled, and the empty cloth hangers made clanking sounds every time you made a slight movement. He wrinkled his nose in disgust and closed the door.

“Hey let’s go watch TV.”

“Dad is watching the local news. We’ll go a bit later.”

Chris went back to Cecilia’s album, and looked at her baby photos. She was a very cute baby, but it seemed she was forever wrapped in that yellow blanket. And here she was on her 5th birthday, wearing that princess dress which she refused to take off for three days. She was a very sweet and precocious child, and always got what she wanted.

“What do you think we should give Cecilia for her birthday? Is it still appropriate to give your married baby sister a birthday gift?” he said.

Charlie had finally finished his comic book and was now sitting at his table, trying to sketch the X-men characters from memory but he kept on getting stuck. He opened the comic book for reference. “I was thinking of giving her a hair straightening iron, you know her hair iron got burned on the wedding day,” he said.

Chris shook his head in disgust. “Oh come on don’t be boring! We’ll give her something exciting, something she’ll never forget. Hey how about condoms?”

“That is crude and inappropriate. She will be embarrassed having a brother like you.”

“I know! Let’s order for her one of those Oriflame perfumes,” Chris was all excited, new projects and new things always excited him.

“She might not like it,” Charlie said. He’d decided he would copy the whole comic book, change the dialogue completely, make them say something funny, and he would put it up on his wall. That meant he would have to take down his Calvin and Hobbes sketches, but he can always put them back up later.

“How about a nice dress, then?” Chris would not give up, he never gave up on anything.

“She has more clothes than any girl I know.”

“Is that so?” Chris was surprised that Charlie knew about girls and their clothes. “And how many girls do you know? Four? Five? Seven?”

“A thousand and one.”

“No, tell me, how many?”

“I live with fifty teenagers for the good part of the year, I know what people wear.”

“Ah yes, Sir Charlie, the fearsome hostel warden with his comic books and sketch books.”

“Make fun of me all you want, but those kids like me well enough.”

“Nail polish! We’ll give her nail polish in every colour, she will like it very much.”

“I still think the hair straightening iron is a good idea. I know someone who can give it to me very cheap, on his cost price no less. A very good bargain. It’s something Cecilia needs, and she will always remember it,” Charlie could be very adamant when he decided to.

“Look, let’s sleep on this tonight, tomorrow we’ll discuss it again,” Chris said. He pulled a chair over to the table and sat next to Charlie.

“Here, let me help you with that. I know the funniest dialogues ever.”