A Disobedient Girl (19 page)

He has left his basket unattended to look for me, and that touches my heart. The children look from his face to mine, waiting for permission. I nod.

F
or months after that fight, Thara did nothing but eat, Christmas and New Year and then the Sinhala New Year coming and going in a blur of food, food, and more food. She was constantly hungry. She ate mountains of string hoppers from the carryout joint on Jawatte, sending the driver out for three bundles all for herself. Every morning Latha had to boil eggs and make white curry and sambol for her strings. She ate fruits and
Chicken in a Biskit
from the boxes that had been bought for Madhavi as snacks and huge piles of rice and curries for lunch. In the evening the houseboy had to go and buy the vegetable rôti hot-hot from the saiwar kadé all the way near the cricket grounds so she could have them with tea. She demanded steamed bread every night for dinner, still warm from the bakery, and devoured at least half a loaf at each sitting. She did not serve Gehan, nor did she wait for him. She ate alone. And in that time, her voluptuous curves turned into matronly spreads.

Latha, the guilt of those unpinned belly wraps still prickling her conscience, felt duty bound to stop Thara’s descent. Not only that, she had her own guilt to nurse. On the one hand, she felt vindicated by Thara’s defense of her, of Gehan having clearly lost the battle to evict her from their home. That served him right, she thought, because in all his dealings with her, he had not given her any indication, not once, that he remembered their past. It served him right, then, to know that Thara cared more about her than she did about
his feelings or the visits of his mother. On the other hand, she felt it only right that she repay Thara with some tangible gift, something to replace the regard she had lost from her husband at least in part on her, Latha’s, account.

But in the end, she had to postpone her intervention because not long after the New Year, an opposition political leader, a relative of the Vithanages, was murdered at a rally and even Thara was moved to action and went to protest and mourn and came back haggard and shocked after the funeral procession, in which she was participating, was teargassed by the police. That meant that Latha had to spend days listening to her, comforting her, and agreeing with her that the whole country was a disaster because of the corrupt president and finding creative ways
not
to agree with her that the reason for his corruption was his fisher caste. Mercifully, he was killed too, just a week later, because by that time Latha had no more excuses left and felt that soon she would have to say yes, yes, his caste was the reason for his deviant and morally repugnant behavior, and she didn’t want to do that. And although that second period of bedlam also had the effect of giving Thara reason to fret and fume, at the very least she seemed to gather in strength every time she could say,
“Bloody low-caste bastard, he had it coming,”
which she did quite regularly, particularly when Gehan was within earshot. And by the time things had died down and even Thara had stopped passing on all the ugly rumors and crude remarks about the dead man to her friends on the telephone and Gehan seemed no longer to care what she said about any caste at all, Latha was glad to be able to offer Thara something more uplifting than the timely death of her love-to-hate president.

Latha had known how things would play out when she told Thara about her meeting with Ajith. Of course she would want to know everything, all the details, from that logo on his shirt pocket to the leather of his sandals, the still-the-same questions that would come tumbling out of her unloved body and heart. What Latha hadn’t anticipated were her own feelings: the strength of her motivation to
help Thara, to effect her happiness. All she needed to see was the light unfurling inside her friend, from an ember so well hidden that it barely gave out any warmth at all until her mention of Ajith ignited it and warmed Thara from inside so she shone, from her eyes, from the suddenly girlish corners of her mouth, from the very tips of her fingers as they grabbed Latha’s hands and squeezed them with excitement. It made Latha feel young again, too, and important in that youthfulness, a sensation so different and so satiating and quite unlike the responsibility, and therefore importance, she had as the de facto manager of a household. Yes, there was no reason to resist the tug of Thara’s call for help. Who could be harmed?

She gave Thara an ultimatum: two months to make up for the damage she had done to her own body and mind, and then she would do it: she would get Ajith back for her. And when the months had passed and Thara had adhered to Latha’s prescriptions for the entirety of it, all of it, including nothing but fruits and a single pol rôti and tea for breakfast, one cup of rice and only vegetable curries for lunch, and thambung hodi and plain bread without even
Astra
margarine for dinner, Latha did it. She strapped Madhayanthi into Madhavi’s old pram, took Madhavi by the hand, and—dressed in the new green midi-skirt she had asked Thara’s tailor’s assistant to stitch for her, and the recently donated hand-me-down black cotton blouse from Thara, and her new open-toed sandals with a heel on them—she went back to the Independence Square Park for a walk.

Ajith was there, as he had been nearly every evening for the past year or so, and this time, unlike all those other evenings, Latha stopped in front of him without being asked. And he must have known that she finally had the news he’d been hoping for, because he stood up and there was a mixture of gladness and hope in his face that touched Latha, albeit fleetingly, and made her believe that even he could change.

“She wants to see you” is what Latha told him, requesting discretion with a glance toward each of the children.

“When? Where? I can come anywhere she wants,” he said.

Latha unstrapped Madhayanthi and told Madhavi to take her sister to the rectangular ponds where the fountains were lit by colored
lights. “Go and watch the water, my little pets,” she said, “but don’t lean over the sides. Madhavi Baba, look after your nangi, okay? I will watch from here. Hold her hand and go.”

“Latha, come with us,” Madhavi said, tugging at her hand, her eyes wide and clear as she looked up at Latha, though not with much expectation. “Latha, you have to stay with us. We’re too small to go alone.”

“I have to talk to this nice uncle, baba. Go, I will be right here,” she said, unclasping the fingers that held hers, one by one, and then giving the whole hand a last kiss of apology. “Don’t worry. I’ll be watching.”

“He’s not a nice uncle, he’s a bad uncle,” Madhavi said, not looking at either of them; she took Madhayanthi’s hand and walked away.

“Walk slowly, petiyo,” Latha called after Madhavi. “Nangi can’t walk that fast!”

Ajith laughed. “What a precocious child! Just like Thara!”

Of course he had it wrong. Madhavi was like her father; she objected to Ajith for reasons that were innocent in their clarity: he was preventing Latha from taking care of them. It was Madhayanthi who would be like Thara, that much was clear even now, when all she could say was “Amma,” “Thāththa,” “Latha,” “Kolla,” and, of course, “no,” “can’t,” and “won’t.”

“Madhavi Baba is right,” Latha said, frowning at Ajith, “but her mother thinks differently, so that’s why I’m here talking to you. Thara Madam said she would meet you on Saturday at the Plaza in the coffee shop downstairs. She said nobody goes there anymore and Gehan and his friends will all be at the cricket match.”

“What time?”

“In the morning, at about ten thirty,” Latha said and, her work done, began to walk toward the children.

“I am in your debt, Latha…,” he said, his voice following her.

Latha shook her head. “You are indebted to her, not to me,” she said over her shoulder.

“I just want to say—”

“For what purpose, to say anything after all this time?” Latha said,
turning around fully and facing him to deliver her reprimand and to preempt the easy apology she knew was on his tongue, waiting to deliver him from his guilt. No, it was better that it be stopped before it could be uttered; apologies like his only passed over the insult of the original injury. She walked on, frowning now. There was something more she had wanted to say, but it hovered just out of reach of her vocal cords.

At the fountain, she watched the children for a while. She had dressed the girls especially well, matching their ribbons to their dresses, puffing up their cotton skirts. She took care with them every day, indeed, all day long; she wanted them to look the part of good children from a decent family, of course she did. But more than that, she wanted to teach them to care about how they looked, how they appeared to the world. She wanted them to learn the value of such things early, before they became corrupted by Thara’s haphazard way of dressing, her mood sending her out either dressed to the nines or thrown together like the half-breed Lansi girls, careless and unkempt. No, that would never do for her girls. They had to learn that mood had nothing to do with presentation and that presentation was the foundation of everything.

There were many children near the fountain, and some, like her girls, clad as they were, stood out from the others. There was that air of goodness about them, the inner quiet that stemmed from the things they never had to miss in their lives, like three meals a day and school supplies and places to go to on holidays. Yes, an air of charity and calm well-being; but even she could see the most minuscule breach in the way Madhavi tugged her younger sister’s hand just a little too firmly, in the slightly more frequent irritations that seemed to plague Madhayanthi. Latha tilted her head a little, remembering that same resentfully concerned feel of an older sibling’s hand on her own. But when had that happened? Or where? There was only Leelakka to think of, and she had treated her with such gentleness. Latha could not have annoyed her if she had devoted herself to the task, and Leelakka would never have touched her roughly. Who, then, had held her hand that way?

Latha shook her head free from that faint thread of memory and
sighed. It was nonsense, the stuff she made up to convince herself that she knew how to raise children. There was only this, these children, almost hers, hers, really. She should do more to keep them from the new miseries that had come to call with that one furious airing of all grievances between the Vithanages and the Pereras. So brief and vicious, as if both sides had known this would be their one chance. Yes, she should keep the kitchen free from penance and unhappiness for her girls. And then she remembered what she had meant to add. She looked back and was glad to see Ajith still standing by the stone foundation of the pillared monument to the country’s independence.

“
Poddak inna,
Madhavi baba. Watch nangi for a little. I will go and come soon.” She crossed the short distance to Ajith and spoke without preamble.

“You be good to Thara Madam,” she said, “because she doesn’t know whose baby I had, and I won’t tell her unless I have to,” and she stared at him until he dropped his gaze. “Do you understand?”

He looked up at her. “I understand. My fate is in your hands.” He made a gesture with his right hand as he said that, waving his fist and opening it out, palm upward like he was begging for something.

“Her happiness is in yours. This time at least, don’t forget that.”

He didn’t even have the decency to look ashamed. All he said was “You are in charge,” and there was a trace of bitterness in his voice.

“Only if I have to be,” she said. “If you make her unhappy one time, just one time, I won’t hesitate.”

“I wonder what that would do to her relationship with you,” he said, and there was a cruel gleam in his eyes. “I wonder where you would go. Back to the estates?”

“I won’t hesitate,” she repeated and returned to the girls. Again, she watched them, but what she saw was herself and Thara, not that much older than Madhavi, five years old, perhaps, and playing at this same fountain, together. They had been brought here only once or twice; the Vithanages thought the whole place was a little vulgar—all those half-dressed joggers and couples fondling each other under umbrellas—except when it was used for state funerals for a national leader called N. M. Perera, whom she did not know but was told had been important enough to lie there in state when he died. But
on those rare occasions, she remembered that she and Thara had stretched their arms out to each other, across the falling, colored water, and that they had been so young that they had had to reach out of their legs to touch each other, getting their dresses wet in the process. Their fingers had caressed and grasped, and they’d held on because, if they didn’t, they had known, something bad would happen. And the bad they had imagined then was falling in, or falling away, nothing more.

Despite her having brought them about, even Latha was taken aback by how swiftly the new arrangements took root and held. There was a new script, and all three of them got comfortable with it as if they had always known that this was how things would go for them: Thara and Ajith as old lovers turned new, and Latha as the go-between, communicating times, dates, and places to Ajith, and delays, postponements, and cancellations to Thara. During that month of December, the two met so frequently that Latha was afraid they would be seen by some mutual acquaintance, or a relative, or a friend of a neighbor, and all would be lost. But it was Christmas season, and everybody was caught up in the madness of shiny things and love cake sold by the pound even on street corners in Nugegoda and Wellawatte, where Latha sometimes went with Thara. Nobody had time for idle people watching, and Thara and Ajith reaped the fruit of their negligence. They met at bus stops and parks and under umbrellas on the Mount Lavinia beach, at the last remaining cafés inside the formerly impressive plaza, and once even on a train, which they rode all along the seashore somewhere toward the South and back between the time Gehan left for work and the hour of his return.

“We went to Matara on the train,” Thara said, coming back with hair sticky from the salt spray and sweat of public transport, but flushed with pride as if she had conquered some new territory, which, in a way, Latha thought, she had. “We didn’t even get down to the water when we got there, even though the beaches looked so nice. We decided to go back another time. To spend the day.”