A Disobedient Girl (32 page)

“Latha,” he would call to her, “could you make me some tea?”

And there was a delicious thrill that crept up her spine when he said her name with Thara in the house, wrapped as it was with the danger of being found out and, she had to admit it, the insolence of carrying on in this way right under Thara’s nose.

“I’m coming,” she would say and arrive with the required lowering of her head, her hands firm on each side of the tray, but her fingers soft around the fine porcelain cups she held out, wordless utterances melting in her eyes.

“Mahaththaya has really taken to drinking tea these days, hasn’t he?” Thara said one evening. “Gehan, better stop drinking so much tea. Once in a while, at least in the evenings, wouldn’t it be better to invite some of our friends over for a proper drink?” They were sitting side by side on the veranda. Thara was reading a book, and Gehan was making notes on a stack of papers in his lap.

“I gave up drinking several years ago,” he said, cocking his head to the side and looking Thara full in her face while Latha stood at hand, waiting for the right moment to set the tray down on the side table and pour the cup of tea for Gehan the way she had learned to do: fingertips on the lid as she poured the fragrant amber brew from the swanlike spout of Thara’s wedding tea service.

Thara raised her eyebrows. She had taken to plucking her eyebrows at the same time as she had got the burgundy hair. It made her face more severe, the way those sharply defined brows drew attention to the harshness of her appearance, magnified all the more by the tight ponytail that left not tendrils but a frizz over the entirety of her head.
Sunsilk, Sunsilk,
Latha thought. She should use
Sunsilk Egg Protein.

“Really? Hmmm,” Thara said. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“You don’t notice much,” Gehan said, still looking at his wife but in a way that communicated to Latha that he was really looking at her, offering his face up for her to look at. So she looked at it, the beloved ordinariness of it. If he had no driver and no car, if he sat on a bus, would she be able to tell him apart from all the other men who went about by public transport? Which reminded her that the only times she had ever ridden a bus in her life had been to deliver food to Thara and Ajith and to try to run away with the girls and the house
boy somewhere south; Gehan had never asked her to take public transport anywhere for any reason, not even when the driver was on leave. Yes, she thought, she would be able to tell him apart. Not because he looked any different, because he didn’t—with his thick head of common, wavy hair, the clean-shaven face but for a thin mustache over his weak and effeminate mouth, his height unblessed by a corresponding broadness to his shoulders—but because he felt different. Something in him was the same as what was in her, and those things, unnameable, intangible, would arch toward each other the way they were doing now in this room with his wife between them.

“Well, we haven’t invited anybody to this house for years, so what is there to notice? If we had people here more often, maybe there would be something worth looking at!” Thara retorted, not losing a beat.

“What do you want to have for dinner?” Latha asked, hoping to avoid an escalation. There had been such an absence of conflict in the house ever since Gehan had spoken to her that first time, each of them, Thara and Gehan, seeming to turn away at the last instance from the usual confrontations, that she was loathe to have it return.

“Cook anything you want. I don’t care,” Thara said. “I’m going out to
Banana Leaf
with some friends.”

“Ask the children, Latha,” Gehan said, turning his eyes slowly to meet hers. “Maybe they care.”

Thara pressed her lips together and looked away at the insinuation. Latha backed out of the room with one last glance at Gehan and went to the kitchen to cook noodles. That’s what the children liked. Madhayanthi smelled the garlic and ginger frying and came running to the back door, taking in great gulps of air and yelling for her sister.

“Ooooh! Noodles! Akki! We’re having noodles!”

“Are you going to make salmon curry to eat with that?” Madhavi asked, tripping over herself in her rubber slippers, which were wedge-heeled according to the latest fashion and whose height she was practicing getting used to.

“Yes, Loku Baba, do you want to watch? You should start learning how to cook now that you’re a big girl,” she said and chucked Madhavi under her chin.

Madhavi was a proper young girl now; she stood up straight, wore
a real bra, and even knotted her hair on occasion. At the last wedding the family had attended, she had gone in sari. Both girls had. They had looked so different to Latha, like ladies. Ladies who would grow up and make marriages and have homes of their own. Who would look after them then? Whom would she tend to besides Podian? It had taken all her effort to step away from those thoughts, to tuck a pleat in here, a stray hair there, rub soft powder into their supple skins, attach thin, real gold chains with gold pendants of their names written in Sinhala script (Gehan’s choice) around each slender neck, and simply enjoy gazing at her girls, at who they had become, who they might yet be. At times like these, though, when they came rushing into her kitchen screaming like urchins, she could pretend that their leaving was a long way from coming. She could pretend that there was still a lot more to do in order to raise them right, in order to teach them how to go about in the world.

“I don’t want to peel or cut onions,” Madhayanthi said, wrinkling her nose and pouting, managing to look disgusted and beautiful in her tiny denim shorts and tank top.

“I’ll do it,” Madhavi said, taking the five small red onions from Latha’s hand. Madhavi no longer wore shorts; everything she wore had to be below the knees, a self-imposed virtuousness having taken her over the day she had her coming-of-age celebration.

“Podian, go and sweep the outside,” Latha said, reminding him as she had taken to doing that he should not be found anywhere near the girls; it was her way of protecting him. She felt a quick twinge of guilt that she had forgiven Gehan for Podian too, and she frowned.

“Latha, why are you angry?” Madhavi asked her. “Don’t you like Podian?”

“Of course I like him. Podian is a good boy. He just sometimes forgets to do his work, that is all,” she said. She pried three cloves of garlic from a bulb and put them in front of Madhayanthi. “You can peel and cut these,” she said.

“You’re just trying to get us to do your work,” she protested, but set herself to the task. After a few moments she looked up. “Latha, do you know that Soma still cuts onions and chilies on the floor?” Madhayanthi said. “Can I try?”

“No, Chooti Baba,” Latha said.

“Soma taught me how the last time we were there,” Madhavi said. “She said I’m old enough to learn it. See? I’ll show you.” She took out a knife, turned it blade side up, and squatted quickly on the floor, gripping the handle with her toes, trying to keep it steady as she held an onion over the sharp edge.

Latha sighed, bent down, and took the knife away from Madhavi. “I said no, and that means no to both of you, I don’t care how old you are,” she said, firmly. “That’s the old-fashioned way. You don’t need to learn to cut like that. You’ll only end up slicing your fingers. You can stand and cut on the board, like me.”

Madhavi shrugged and began chopping the onions. Latha watched the girls work. Madhayanthi was in her kitchen now only because Madhavi was there. She wanted everything her sister had, every part of what her sister did. Latha sighed. What would it have been like to grow up in the same house with an older sister? she wondered. With a sister like Leelakka. A sister and a brother. Podian. She would be the middle child, cared for by one sibling and taking care of another. Where would they have lived? She sighed again. Whose children…

“Latha is thinking of boys!” Madhayanthi exclaimed in a singsong voice, giggling into her shoulder.

“Nangi! Don’t talk of things you don’t know,” Madhavi said, but she was smiling.

“What boys for me? I’m an old woman now!” Latha said, turning away from them, suddenly afraid and ashamed.

“You’re not old! I heard the paper man ask Podian about you,” Madhayanthi said. “He told Podian that your face was just like some Indian film star called Maduri. And he said that if you were Indian you would be in a film too.”

“Stupid paper man. I should tell Podian to stop talking to that crazy man. Maduri indeed.
Kolang.
”

“What is nonsense?” Thara asked. Latha hadn’t noticed her come into the kitchen. She stood by the door, leaning casually against the frame, taking in the scene. What it must have looked like to her, Latha didn’t know, but she wasn’t about to alert her to anything they had discussed.

“Nothing,” Latha said.

“Latha is like an Indian movie star,” Madhayanthi said, looking from her mother to Latha, “someone called Maduri.” Her childish face was alight with that inner power that Latha hated to name, knowing too well how easy it was to abuse it once it was acquired: the power to start fires whose strength she could not gauge nor understand how to put out.

“The paper man is interested in Latha, Amma,” Madhayanthi continued.

Thara stared at Latha until she looked up at her. “Is it true, Latha? Now the paper man is interested in you? First Podian, now the paper man?”

How could she say such a thing, about a boy who was like her brother! “Madhayanthi baba was just making it up,” Latha said, shaking her head and trying to look as elderly and unworthy and unwomanly as she could. She looked at Madhavi. “Wasn’t she, Loku Baba?”

Madhavi, glancing from Latha’s face to her mother’s, chose to come to Latha’s rescue. “Yes, Nangi is always telling lies. She’s always creating problems wherever she goes! Even for me at school—”

Madhayanthi glared at her. “Maybe I should tell Amma who sent you a no—”

Madhavi dropped her knife and clapped her palm over her sister’s mouth. They disintegrated together, laughing and screaming, one trying to be heard, the other trying to drown her sister out. Latha watched them with amusement in her eyes until she realized that Thara was still standing there, still watching her.

“She’s growing up, our Madhavi baba,” she said, trying to change Thara’s mind about whatever it was she was struggling to remember, or trying to say.

“She’s only a little older than we were when we met Ajith,” Thara said, and something crept into her eyes, something that harkened back to that past and brought it, complete, into the present where they stood, each in her own world. “Ajith and Gehan,” she said.

Latha picked up the abandoned onions and garlic and added them to the saucepan, where they sizzled with her green chilies: mouthwateringly pungent and furious.

“Ajith
and
Gehan,” Thara repeated, wonder in her voice.

I
don’t want them to, but they insist, so I must let them.

“It’s just something to cheer him up when you get there,” Dayawathi says. “The foreigners say there is no time to feed the children.”

She pronounces the word with a
p
and the native plural,
la: porinersla
. I want to correct her. At least say she should use the clearer word,
suddho
: white men. Instead I say, “He likes dried fish,” trying to be grateful to Dayawathi and Sumana, who have taken on the role of relatives, fussing over my son, doing their best to smooth the way for him, pushing what is possible within their poverty to the absolute limit. The smell of the frying onions and green chilies makes me feel ill. It is too lush and alive and only reminds me of how broken he is, my son.

I am nothing but a spectator. Everybody else seems to know exactly what to do. All I feel is that I should not permit this. I should keep him with me. But here beside me is Dayawathi, stroking my arm and murmuring that I should not be afraid, everything is as it should be, my son will get help soon. And there is Sumana, smiling and telling my little one to stay away from the stove so the oil won’t get on her baby skin. That’s what she’s calling it, baby skin. And the old man, I don’t know where he is. I can hear his voice somewhere, and he sounds authoritative and worthy of trust. I should be glad, yes, I should. My son will get help. I have been lucky each time on this journey, haven’t I? I
have known what to do, what to keep from my children, what to share, what to escape from. I knew to accept the old couple’s hospitality, to stay here and rest. They are older than I am. I should listen to them.

I wish I had more time to gather my thoughts, to fully examine my fears. But by the time I go down to the back room, the driver and the teenager and Veere’s Father have already lifted my son onto the stretcher and are bringing him up the stairs. His eyes are squinted tight, and the smallest of tears escape from them, the concentrated tears that come from real pain. I step backward against the wall and stroke his head as they pass by.

My Loku Duwa follows them with a pink siri-siri bag. She has changed out of her old dress and is wearing her good one, the dress I had the tailor make for her last year to wear to important functions, like prize givings and concerts at the school. It is the slightest bit too tight for her, the puffed sleeves pinching against her upper arms. The hem, too, is a little short. I want to stop her, to ask her to get back into the old dress, but no, she should wear this one, a clean one, to go with her brother. At least it is made out of good material, and it is a good color for her, that mauve.

“Amma, I’m taking his shirt and the blue school shorts and the small towel,” she says, sounding competent and in control.

“Amma! Aiyya has to take his moon moth!” the little one yells from below.

“Hanh! Hanh!
All right, all right,” I say to both my girls. I hurry them, though what I want is for everything to slow down. Chooti Duwa runs up with the plastic-wrapped dead creature and pushes past me. I follow them upstairs to where they have set the stretcher down to make room in the car for my son. I am glad for this pause; everything seems too fast, too much out of my control.

“Chooti Nangi brought my moon moth,” Loku Putha says with a wheeze, trying to smile at his sister, and then he closes his eyes again, holding in the pain. Such concern, such love that flows between siblings when the thought of defeat draws near, everything sweetened by the horrific possibility of never again. I want to reassure them both, to say, “This is temporary, your brother will walk again,” but they don’t need my promises. Instead, I hold my lips between my
teeth so I won’t cry and watch them communicate with each other in this way that they are doing, without words.

When the back door of the car is opened, it looks so small inside. Pain rushes through the marrow of my bones as I imagine my son having to curl and bend to fit in there. “Please…,” I say again, but the driver intervenes.

“Move aside now, we have to get this boy into the car, and you are blocking the way. Move! Move!”

Loku Putha opens his eyes and looks at me. “Amma, you will come quickly to the hospital, won’t you? You must promise me, Amma. I don’t want to go inside the hospital without you.” And this time the tears are the slow-moving ones of loss.

“I will, I will, my son, my golden son, my Loku Putha,” I promise, grasping his hand and kissing the fingers, though I know I cannot reach the hospital before they do. “Putha, Nangi will be there, and you stay together. She will look after you till I can come. Tell the doctor that your mother is coming. Tell the doctor that we are at this shop—” I look back, but there is no name written over the store, nothing to identify it by. “Tell them your mother’s name, Biso, Biso Menike Samarakoon, make sure to give the whole name, and that I am coming.”

“Now enough! See how you’re upsetting this boy?” the driver says. I look up at him and see that the two foreigners have got down and are pacing on the other side of the car, discussing something in low voices that sometimes seem angry, sometimes pleading.

“Is that boy his son?” I ask the driver.

The driver looks at the two men and then back at Loku Putha. “Yes, they are father and son,” he says, but he’s lying. I can tell because he doesn’t look at me when he speaks.

“Why are you lying?” I ask.

Veere’s Father hushes me. “Don’t ask all these questions, duwa. It doesn’t matter. They don’t matter, nor even who they are. The only thing we need to worry about is getting our Raji Putha to the hospital. That is all, isn’t that so?”

The driver nods. “Yes, listen to what this uncle is saying.”

But I ask again, as if it makes a difference, “Why are you lying?”

And now it is Dayawathi who tries to soothe me with her mother’s voice and care. “They must be. Only parents talk like that to their children, shouting at them. Don’t you know? Isn’t that how you talk to your son and daughters when they don’t want to listen?” She smiles. “This driver
unnahe
has been traveling all this time with them. I am sure he knows everything about them. All their troubles too. Even though they are
suddho,
I am sure they have the same kinds of problems we do with our children.”

And now the driver says something else. “Listen, I don’t want to get in the way of anything, I just do what I am told to do. This is my first hire in months! The
suddho
don’t come to the country much now that the Mathiniya has taken over everything, all the corporations and all. I picked these people up in Nuwara Eliya. And I don’t know if they are father and son,” he says, “and I don’t care if they are father and son, and neither should you. They are going to help
your
son. That’s all that should matter. That’s all I am trying to arrange for you.”

He sounds kind, and I know he is right, that there aren’t as many foreigners coming to our country now, but I feel that he is keeping something from me. I want to press him further, but then my boy, my baby boy, screams again as they try to lift him off the stretcher, and my heart tears open and I cannot think. The driver puts him back down and says something to the young boy, and he gets in. Then it is Loku Duwa’s turn. She smiles encouragingly at me, as if she has taken her brother’s place as the child in charge during emergencies. She gets into the car with great care, smoothing her skirt under her as she does so, the way she has been taught to do in school. She straightens her dress over her knees and puts the siri-siri bag near her feet. Then she looks out and grins at me again.

“May the blessings of the Triple Gem…,” I begin, but the words are swallowed along with my fears and my desperation. I say them again and again to myself, murmuring all kinds of prayers, snatches of one thing and another until there is nothing left that I remember except a fragmant of a hymn I learned as a child with the nuns, which I repeat now to myself,
help us in all times of sorrow virgin help us help we pray.
And once more I think of the pregnant girl, which reminds me of our journey.

“Stop! Wait!” I yell and run back inside the house to find the name and number for the man we met. Near the entrance to the store is a long coil of rope with a flickering ember at its edge and a stack of small squares of paper, torn from school notebooks and skewered untidily onto a wire, for the
beedi
smokers to light up. I tear a piece off, find a corner, and copy the information down onto it. I call my Loku Duwa back and put the piece of paper into the pocket of her dress. “Keep this just in case,” I tell her and bend down and kiss her head. Her braids still have the yellow bands I put on to match her other dress. Maybe she should wrap the purple ribbons that go with this dress around those. I am about to suggest it when she asks me about the paper.

“What is it, Amma? What is this paper?”

“The name for that gentleman on the train. You won’t need it, but it’s good to have somebody’s name in case they ask.”

“In case who asks?” she inquires, shielding her squinting eyes with her palm against the glare of the late morning sun.

“The doctors or nurses or anybody. Just keep it. Even the foreigners. You can tell them, too, that this is your uncle from Colombo. I don’t want them to think we are homeless like the
ahiguntakayo.
We are better than that.”

She shrugs and shakes her head. She goes to the car and then runs back to me and wraps her arms around my waist, burying her face in my belly. I can feel her cool cheek against my bare midriff.

“Amma is warm,” she says. “Amma might be getting fever. You should ask that seeya for a
Disprin,
” she finishes, and she runs to the car.

Dayawathi comes up right on her heels and gives my son another dose of the kasāya she had made earlier. It is good that she does this, to bring the numbness back, because they are unconcerned with his pain and take no care. They lift him into the car so swiftly and I am too agitated to beg them to be careful; I simply want his pain to end. I want them to get to the hospital as fast as they can, I want him to stay, I want to go, I want to make him believe that it is all right to go with strangers, I want to reverse time, I want, I want…When they are done he lies with his head in his sister’s lap, her arms cradling his
face; his right foot is firm on the floor, but his left is bent and laid on the lap of the young boy. At least I can be proud that I have always taught my children to maintain clean feet. My son’s slipperless foot is scrubbed clean; they are the feet of a decent boy. I kiss it once more before the driver starts the car and I must shut the door.

Even my kiss causes him pain. He winces. “Come quickly,” he says between clenched teeth. I note with relief that already his eyes are beginning to droop. Silently I give thanks to Dayawathi for her native skill.

“Yes, Loku Putha, I will come soon,” I tell him, and then I turn to my daughter. “Duwa, Mala, go safely and take care of your brother,” I say and close the door as gently as I can. The car pulls away while my hand is still on the door. And already the other two women and even my youngest are inside, cooking. The air feels dry and cold around me, and the road dusty and uninviting.

“Sumana and Veere’s Mother will finish getting the food ready for you to take,” Veere’s Father says beside me, rubbing one forearm with the palm of his other hand. “Don’t worry now. Putha will be all right. They’re foreigners, after all. They will admit him before all the other patients. It is good that you sent him.”

I say nothing, trying to hold on to the sense of what he is saying. It is true. Then he says, “You will have to get going quickly to make it to Hatton and meet them.” I am startled out of my inner worries and brought face-to-face with a new one.

“Hatton…yes…How will I get there?” I ask him, feeling utterly helpless. “I cannot walk all the way to Hatton. Is there a bus that will come this way?”

“Usually there’s a bus, but there has been a partial strike locally so we can’t tell when the next bus will come…Putha?” He looks over at the teenager, who is still standing there after all the commotion of the morning.

“All right, uncle, I will go and come,” he says, before Veere’s Father can even finish, and disappears around the corner of the house.

“Where is he going?” I ask. “Do they have a vehicle?”

Veere’s Father shakes his head. “But they have a bicycle. Maybe he can take you at least part of the way, until you can find a proper
vehicle. Maybe there will be some others on the road who might be able to help you. These days are not so good for traveling anywhere, even up in our hills there is all kinds of trouble. Didn’t used to be that way, but now…Anyway, come, let’s go inside and get things ready to take.”

Dayawathi urges me to change into a better sari. My little one takes my orange sari out of the bag; it’s her favorite of all my clothes. I used to entertain her for hours as a baby, showing her the tiny pink and green and white flowers on it. It is not the one I would have chosen, it is made of a synthetic fabric, but I change anyway, because it makes her happy as she watches me, coming near to feel the silky cloth against her face.

After what seems a long time, the teenager returns, wheeling a bicycle, and there is space only for me and a single bag, or me and my little one. I refuse to leave my Chooti Duwa behind, and as it is, the boy is going to have to struggle to get us any distance. I have to leave our bags behind.

“It’s a good thing you will be going downhill, not up. At least that will make it easier,” Veere’s Father tells the boy.

“Putha, you will be blessed many times for all you have done for us,” I say to the teenager, noticing his youth for the first time. His trousers stop a few inches short of his ankles, like he has outgrown them too suddenly for his mother to replace them. He must be about seventeen years old, a faint fuzz growing on his upper lip and his eyes still respectful and full of innocence. Had he not been around, how would the old man have got my little boy up to the house from where he had fallen? How would we ever have found a way to get him to the hospital? Even if they had stopped as they did, I am sure those foreigners would not have wanted to sweat that much. And they wouldn’t have wanted to waste their time. I should be grateful.