Part 14 of 17 · 2 minThe Rota

The chart appeared on the fridge on a Saturday, in two different handwritings, on the back of a piece of chart paper left over from a school project about the water cycle.

**AMMAMMA — WHO IS WITH HER**

6 to 8 — Amma

8 to 9 — **Nanna (only sitting)**

9 to 10.30 — Chinnu

10.30 to 12 — Bujji

12 to 4 — Amma

4 to 5.30 — Bujji

5.30 to 7 — Chinnu

7 onwards — everybody

Underneath, in Chinnu's writing:

*If you cannot do your slot you have to SWAP it with someone. You cannot just not do it.*

Underneath that, in Bujji's:

*NO DOING THE VOICE.*

Amma stood in front of the fridge for a while with a bag of vegetables still in her hand.

The thing that undid her was not the chart. It was **only sitting**. They had given their father the shortest slot in the day and they had written next to it, in brackets, that he would not have to do anything in it, because they had worked out between themselves — without asking her, without asking him — that Nanna was the one who was breaking, and they had built him a shift he could survive.

She did not say anything about it to them. She put the vegetables away.

"What is this?" said Nanna that night, at the fridge, with his tea.

"It is a rota."

"I can see it is a rota. My name is on it."

"Yes."

"They put my name on a rota."

"Eight to nine," said Amma. "Only sitting. That is their handwriting, not mine. I did not know about it until three o'clock this afternoon."

Nanna stood there in front of the fridge for what Amma later said was the longest she had ever seen him stand still.

Then he said, "Only sitting," in a strange voice, and went out onto the veranda, and did not come back in for some time.