A Disobedient Girl (15 page)

“I have to eat for two, that’s what the books say,” Thara responded, packing well-mixed rice and curries into the puffed belly of a papadam. It finally burst, and they both laughed.

“That’s what’s going to happen to you if you keep eating like that,” Latha told her.

“What do you know about anything?” Thara said, still giggling, poking at her papadam.

Latha said nothing. Thara stopped laughing. She pushed the papadam to the corner of her plate and played with the murunga, splitting them with her index finger and then scraping the flesh out with the side of her thumb. Not eating any of it.

“What was it like when you…when you…had that baby?” she asked finally.

“Like nothing,” Latha said. “The nuns took me to the expecting room, that’s what they called it, and I had a comfortable bed where everything smelled clean. There was an older girl who tended to me there and brought me food.” She stopped and began to clear the table, remembering Leela’s face, her competent hands, the insistent voice that had coaxed food into her, and later, most of all, Leela’s soothing quiet, which had put an end to her own silence.

Thara put her free hand on Latha’s arm. “Did you have the baby at the convent?”

“No, they took me to the hospital.”

“What was the hospital like?”

Why was Thara asking these questions now, after more than two years of no letters, after her return, after all the chats about her wedding, the moving, the decorating, the announcement of her pregnancy, after all that, why only now? Yes, Thara hadn’t cared for a long time. Latha was under no obligation to confide. She felt angry.

“Are you done with the fruits?” she asked, and when Thara did not reply, she said, “I’m taking these away.” She put one hand on the plate of salt-and-pepper-flecked sliced pineapple, looking straight at Thara the way she did when she wanted to threaten her with something—stubbornness, disobedience, insolence, pride, one of those things.

But Thara did not flinch. “I’m done with the fruits. What was the hospital like?”

“I didn’t like it. It was cold and hard,” Latha said. But after she had said that, the rest came back and she could not stop herself, so she tried to make it brief and factual. “I was high off the ground and I felt lonely and I shivered all the time and it didn’t feel safe. The doctor barely looked at me, and the nurses had masks over their faces so all I could see was their eyes, and none of their eyes were kind. And when…when they took the baby from me…” And there she stopped, feeling the sadness untying itself easily, like it had been waiting for this moment, funneling up through her body, reaching her heart, her voice, her eyes.

“Sit, Latha, sit here,” Thara said, standing up and guiding her to
a chair at the dining table. It was the first time Latha had ever sat at a real dining table in a respectable house. She felt awkward.

The houseboy peeped around the door leading to the dining room from the kitchen, and Thara shooed him away. She poured some water for Latha and then held out a serviette. It was orange, but Thara had used it to dry her hands after she had washed her fingers in the bowl of water next to her and so the cloth was already damp and had
indul
on it from the curries, and the chili got in Latha’s nose and made her sneeze six times in a row, as she did whenever she started sneezing. She giggled nervously and peered at Thara, who stood watching her.

“They took my baby from me,” Latha said, this time with no tears, “and I never knew what happened to her.”

“You had a baby girl?” Thara asked, and there was a sweet reverence in her voice, as if she, too, would want a daughter.

“A daughter, yes, but they didn’t call her that. They called her ‘the infant’ and never spoke to me about her or answered my questions. They just left me there. It was still and silent, and much later, it seemed, a nurse came by to clean me up. She was older and she asked me my name, but I didn’t say. I didn’t talk after that for a long time.”

She looked up at Thara, who said nothing. She stood, one hand on her belly, one on the edge of Latha’s chair. She seemed far away, probably in a place of romantic imaginings about daughters, lost and found. Then, just as Latha was about to stand up, Thara reached out and stroked her shoulder.

“We’re having a baby now, Latha,” she said. “Don’t worry about it any more. Forget the past. There will be a new baby in this house, and you can share.”

Latha nodded, but she knew that sharing willingly was a concept that did not apply to the living beings that spring out of a woman’s body. Thara was talking about things she did not understand. But she would. And what would happen then?

A
fter we pass Ambewela, the landscape gives way to dense forest. I miss the open hills of tea, but the children welcome the change, their eyes watchful for what is new. It is still relatively early in the morning when we reach Pattipola, at the very least, and the children have not tired of their mountains and the cold air. Between stations, I let them sit on the steps, Chooti Duwa in my lap, my boy and Loku Duwa next to me, my arm stretching across their chests to the opposite side so I can keep them out of danger. I imagine that this immersion in the chilly gusts of wind that catch their hair and make their eyes fill up clear and constantly, the way they do only sitting on the steps of a train climbing up the hills, will cleanse their lungs of all the grime accumulated in Colombo during our trip and the stench of fish before then and even the uglier, psychological dirt that stains their insides. When we get up and go inside, the gentleman is preparing to leave.

“I will be in Pattipola for a week,” he says as he gathers his belongings, and then, I must go back to Colombo.” He sighs.

I don’t know what else to do but thank him for the sweets, which seems insufficient, even though he has not done anything further for me. Something tells me gratitude is called for. Then I remember the number. “Thank you for giving me your phone number, sir. I will keep it safe.”

“You are a good mother, Biso,” he tells me. “Your children should
be proud of a mother like you.” He looks over at them, but only the littlest hears him, so he speaks to her. “Look after your mother, little daughter.” Her brother and sister continue to hang out the window, looking up and down the platform, pointing to odd fruits on the thorny bushes in pots beside the station walls. There is only one vendor here, a child about my son’s age, selling
Uswatte
chewing gum and
Delta
toffees, and even he appears to have got off the train. The toffees are in the center of a white basin, with the packs of gum stuck like a bordering wall all along the sides. My mouth waters and I am distracted.

“You are a good mother,” he repeats, talking as if only to himself.

I turn away from the sight of the sweets. “It is kind of you to say so, sir; they are good children.”

“Yes, I can see that,” he says. Then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his purse. He hands me three crisp two-rupee notes. “Give these to your children to keep for an emergency,” he says. I shiver a little, feeling the cold. I’m not a beggar, and I don’t need money from strangers. I say nothing. I pull the fall of my sari over my other shoulder and tuck it into my waistband, busying myself so as to avoid his eyes.

“Just something to buy
Panadol
or a sticking plaster for a wound or some pori…something if they need it,” he says, noticing my distress. “It’s only what I give my little girl once a month. Here, please take it.”

I take the money and hold it in my hand, wanting to hide it but not wanting to offend him. Besides, the notes are new, and if I fold them I’d have to use them. I have always liked to save new things, at least for a little while. Bright rupee coins, unopened bars of soap, and new money. Even though I do not want it, the smell of it tempts me. I look away.

“Can I smell the money, Amma?” Chooti Duwa asks, and her voice seems out of place in the midst of this adult interaction. I smile at the way she has picked up my habits, and he laughs, relieved, perhaps, of his embarrassment.

“Yes,” I say and give her one of the notes. She sniffs at it, her eyes shut. She does not open them even when he pats her head. He nods in my direction and gets off the train.

“He’s leaving!” my son says, turning around to me. “That gentleman who was talking to you has got off the train. Look!”

So I look just to please him. How strange it is that a man so young should look so tired even in such well-made attire, nice khaki trousers, and respectable dark brown shirt, and with such a light bag to carry. I wonder what had made him want to offer me his help when, by the look of him, the stooped conduct of his life so apparent in his gait, it is I who am the stronger of us two strangers. Perhaps it was nothing more than chivalry: I am a woman with children, he is a man. When Loku Duwa announces that we are now all alone, it feels more frightening than it had before Thalawakele, when he had walked into our compartment and joined me. To comfort myself, I explain the station sign to Chooti Duwa, who has opened her eyes, drunk with the smell of new money, which she gives back to me for safekeeping. Pattipola is the highest station in the whole country, I tell her, and its summit is at 6,226 feet. Of course she does not know what that means.

“As tall as the Colombo buildings?”

“Taller,” I say, holding her close as the train begins to move again, and frowning at my son, who, I can tell, is about to call her stupid. “So tall that they don’t need those big buildings up here. They just climb the mountains when they want to see far away.”

“What do they see in Colombo?” she asks me.

“More buildings,” her brother says, his voice full of condescension toward the city he has passed through only this once, all of a sudden sounding like he had always lived here, among these greens and brights and close skies. Before I can consider the change in my son, or my uncertainty about our safety now that my last adult companion has left us, we enter another tunnel and are plunged into darkness. The train seems to veer suddenly around a corner, and I feel terrified that we might crash into the side of the mountain. My children squeal with delight, and this time there are far fewer voices to echo theirs. Someone yells out that there are bats in the tunnel, and another voice, male, says that when we come out at the other end we will be in the dry zone of our country. I do not believe him, but when we emerge into daylight again, the air seems different, less cold, and the foliage is not as dense as it had been approaching Pattipola from the other side.

It feels like an omen to me, this darkness that we have gone through only to arrive in a climate less refreshing than the one we had climbed toward from the moment we left Colombo. I shake these thoughts and try to reclaim my equanimity; it is foolish of me to give in to such imaginings simply because I have taken leave of a stranger. I give the other two children their two-rupee notes. Loku Duwa opens our bag and puts hers away inside a math textbook I hadn’t noticed she had tucked in there. My son folds his in half and puts it into the pocket of his shirt, away from the other, contaminated, money in his trousers, and again I rejoice at the progress I have made since we left Matara.

But it is as if the train wishes to prove me wrong, or some deity is offended by my pride, because just as I reach forward to gather my three children to me in an embrace of gratitude, we are flung away from one another: they against the seat opposite mine, and I to the floor. Loku Duwa begins to cry, so quickly that it is almost as though her crying caused the train to pitch and stop. Her forehead has a small cut from where her head hit the edge of the window, and, when she brings her fingers to it and then sees the blood, she starts screaming. There are shouts up and down the train, loud from the adjoining carriages, fainter in the distant ones. I get up and tend to her: we have no more water, so I pour some thambili water from one of the bottles onto the edge of my sari pota and wipe the wound; I bunch up another corner of my sari and blow several times into it, then press the warm fabric to her head, soothing her, telling her that it is only a scratch. She continues to cry and I try to placate her further; I rub the tips of my middle and index fingers in the center of the palm of my other hand until I can feel the heat and press my fingers, too, to her forehead.

My son has his arms around the little one, who seems oddly at ease in the midst of the chaos around us. She smiles at her brother and snuggles deeper into his body, as if her thoughts are only on enjoying the rare pleasure of being in his good graces.

“Amma, what has happened?” he asks me.

“I don’t know,” I say, and then, because he is looking to me for further explanation, “but there must be someone around who can
tell me. It won’t take long to find out. Can you look after your sisters until I go and see?”

He nods. I dislodge Loku Duwa from my body and settle her into the seat, her head to one side, resting on the outer edge of the window. She pouts, and so I take one of my son’s banians from our bag, blow, again, on a corner several times so that it is warm and moist, and give it to her.

“Here,” I say, “hold this to your head, my pet, and it won’t feel so bad.” Then, with another glance at my boy to confirm that he is now in charge, I leave before she can plead with me to stay.

When I get to the steps we had been sitting on earlier, I see that we are between stations. There is no platform to stand on. There is a man about my age on the opposite set of steps. I decide to be safe and refer to him as a younger brother.

“Do you know what is going on, malli?” I ask.

He looks back and down at me, taking in my age, verifying that I am indeed older than he is or, perhaps, my status; I am better dressed than he is; we are clearly not of the same class. My feet are clean, shod; his are cracked and bare of coverings. “No,” he says, slowly, drawing his lips down and shaking his head, disappointed that he lacks the necessary information. “I was just wondering if I should get down and see.”

“Is there room to walk on this side?” I ask, not wanting to get any closer to him but just as curious about our derailment.

He peers down. “Yes, there’s a little bit of space to walk on.”

“I will come with you,” I say, then I add, “I told my children that I would find out what is going on.” This seems to reassure him, that I have children, for he agrees.

“All right then, let’s go and see.”

He steps down and respectfully holds on to my upper arm to help me navigate the steps. We walk, one behind the other, clinging to bushes in places so that we don’t have to step on the tracks, which seem somehow more dangerous than they do when hidden by the steep sides of a station platform. A couple of people join us, stepping down from their carriages when they see that it is possible to walk. I am the only woman in the group. Once or twice I look back
and see my son watching us from the window, the front half of his body starkly bright with the red of his shirt against the dull brown and black of the train, and I wave to reassure him. The front of the train is around a corner, and I wonder if, when I cannot see my Loku Putha anymore, I should go back. But I tell myself that the train is almost empty, that my children are safe. I can always step back into one of the carriages near me should the train begin to move.

“Sometimes these factory workers tie things to the tracks,” someone says.

“For a strike,” says another.

“I thought the strike was in Thalawakele,” I say. “How many strikes do they have?”

They all laugh, and the young man in front of me says, “No, Akka, it’s all tea country here. When they strike, they strike up and down this whole area.”

“How long do you think the delay will be, then?” I ask, feeling a little ashamed of my lack of worldliness, yet not wanting to add that I haven’t seen any tea plantations for a while and that perhaps it is they who are misinformed.

“An hour or two maybe,” a man says behind me.

Two hours. That means that it will be late morning when we get to Ohiya. I sigh. If we begin walking right away when we get off the train in Ohiya, and making allowance for my little one, who I know will need many rests, we will not be at my aunt’s house until long after lunch. Maybe there’s a bus now. I am still dwelling on these calculations when I make the turn, and at first I don’t realize that what I am seeing is what it is. There are still several carriages ahead of us, but right next to where we stand are four bodies lying on the tracks. A woman, a man, and two children. I feel my body grow cold and weak, and the man I had spoken to, who had been walking in front of me, turns and catches me as I sink to the ground. There are voices all around. The engine driver—I assume it is the engine driver—shouts at us to leave the scene, but he does so half-distractedly and none of us move.

“Let’s go back to your carriage,” the man says next to me, half-carrying me now.

I am on my knees, and I cannot tear my eyes away from them. There are ropes mixed up with the bodies, and the woman and her children have mangled middles. I can see where the train wheels ran over them. The fabric on their clothes is ground into the train tracks, and pulled away from the tops and bottoms of their bodies. Their forearms and wrists lie on the tops of their thighs as though their hands had been clawing at their own flesh. I cannot see their faces, which are beyond my line of vision, there under the train. The boy wears shorts, and his thin legs are bent at the knees and spread apart as if he had been flailing. The girl’s legs are straight out and together as though she had been asleep. They must be seven or eight years old. The woman’s sari is white and her feet are bare, like her children’s. She wears it the Kandyan way, the osariya, the respectable way. A good woman. I realize they are all wearing white, as though they had been at or were going to a funeral, or to temple. I cannot see their faces. Yes, I can, I can. Just one face, only the man’s.

The man’s body is untouched. It lies on its belly. It rests between two cross planks as though it were on a bed. It is well dressed, also in white: starched, pressed trousers, and a white shirt. The shirt has been pulled out of his trousers, and, above his shoulders, the white collar is soaked in blood. The tracks and line are rust red between his torso and his head, which lies, faceup and close to the steel rail, as if it just fell off him, like a dead, dried flower without the energy to scatter. His hair is parted on the side, and it is smooth and oiled. He has clear skin and a thin mustache. His eyes are shut, his mouth open, as though he were breathing through it as he waited for our train. His head, his body, these things look peaceful, and suddenly I know that he did this to his family. He tied them to these tracks. But why had they not struggled? Why had they not run? Did he trick them? Did he tell them it was just a game? How could she not have known? How could she have let him? I turn my face a little, and I see four sets of shoes arranged in a row by the grass near the track. There are four half-drunk bottles of
Portello
there, and the remains of some meal. He poisoned them. He poisoned them first. I feel relief wash over me, the blood return to my limbs. As if it matters that they were already dying, unable to fight, or if they were already dead, or anything.