Grandmother, Who, Me?

Grandmother, Who, Me?"

Chapter 11: The Empty Neck

Shreya’s POV

Ten days had passed.

Ten full days of living with Lakshmi Attai under the same roof.

I sat on the sofa one quiet afternoon, watching her move around the living room. She was folding freshly dried clothes with careful, practiced movements. The soft chink-chink of her silver anklets filled the silence every time she took a step. Her walk had changed completely, a gentle, slightly swaying gait forced by the wider hips and the constant weight of her heavy breasts. When she bent to pick up a fallen blouse, the saree stretched across her soft, rounded backside, and the pallu slipped a little off her shoulder before she adjusted it with that now-familiar motherly gesture.

She still wasn’t fully comfortable. I could see it in the small pauses, the way her hands sometimes hesitated before touching something, the quiet way she avoided looking at herself too long in mirrors. But she tried. She tried so hard.

Every morning she woke early and made filter coffee. She massaged my feet when the swelling started. She cooked the exact pregnancy recipes my mother used to make when I was a child (I had described them to her in detail). When I felt nauseous, she sat beside me and rubbed my back in slow, comforting circles. When I cried for no reason one evening, she simply held me against her soft chest, and the warm, slightly sweet scent of her skin, a mixture of rose talc, light sweat, and the faint jasmine from her hair, made me feel safer than I had in months.

Satish would have done the same things for me. He always had. But this was different. This was a *mother’s* care. The weight of her arms, the softness of her body when she hugged me, the mature voice calling me “ma”… it filled a place inside me that had been empty for years.

I knew I was hurting him. I saw the quiet helplessness in his eyes when he thought I wasn’t looking. The locked frustration. The way he sometimes stared at his own hands as if they belonged to a stranger. Guilt sat heavy in my chest. But every time the pregnancy made me feel lonely or scared, I looked at her and thought, *Just a little while more. Please. Just a little while more.*

That afternoon I went next door for tea with Meena, the young neighbor wife. We sat on her small balcony. Her own mother-in-law was somewhere inside the house, occasionally shouting instructions in a sharp voice.

Meena sighed and rolled her eyes. “My mother-in-law is crazy sometimes. Everything has to be her way. Yesterday she scolded me for not putting enough salt in the sambar. Can you believe it?”

I smiled and sipped my tea. “My mother-in-law is the opposite. She’s… very loving. Sometimes too quiet, but she takes care of everything. I’ve never felt so looked after.”

Meena’s eyes softened with envy. “You’re lucky. I saw her yesterday when she was watering the plants. She looks so gentle. Proper traditional amma.”

Then she tilted her head. “What about your father-in-law? Doesn’t he come to stay also?”

The question caught me off guard. I improvised quickly, keeping my voice natural.

“He’s in our ancestral house in the village. He prefers the quiet life. He’ll come later, maybe after the baby is born.”

Meena accepted the answer easily and continued talking. But the words stayed with me long after I returned home.

What if… I could fulfill this family completely?

I walked into our living room. Lakshmi was sitting on the sofa, resting after finishing the housework. The soft green saree was still neatly draped. Her heavy breasts rose and fell with each quiet breath. The gold chain rested on her collarbone, but her neck was otherwise bare, no mangalsutra, no thali, nothing that marked her as a married woman.

I stood there looking at that empty space on her neck for a long time.

A small, private smile curved my lips.

Maybe…