A Disobedient Girl (37 page)

The words escaped from her. “Gehan Sir, he is the father of my child.”

“Who?” Thara asked, her eyes glinting. She hesitated for only a moment before she continued. “Gehan? You have the nerve to accuse my Gehan?” She strode up to Latha and slapped her. “This man who has tolerated so much from my family, who married me when nobody else wanted to, who has stood by me through all the abuse I pile on him? You think you can point a finger at my good, decent husband now, you common tart? You think you can do this too?”

Latha could see what was happening. There she stood, Thara, giving away for free the love she did not feel for Gehan, not because she wanted him but because she hated her, Latha. Thara was lifting Gehan up, placing him high, excusing, forgiving, elevating him in the eyes of her parents, sowing doubt, reaping loyalty in a single statement of deceit. It made Latha stumble for the first time in her life; that Thara, whose girlish precociousness had been lost when she lost Ajith and returned to her only as bitterness toward Gehan, had taken that rage and transformed it into this performance, into uttering such a preposterous lie.

“He is the father of my child,” Latha repeated, against her better judgment, knowing that only he could redeem her now. “Tell her you are the father of my child!” she said to Gehan, her voice rising. “Tell her! Tell her!” But Gehan would not look at her. She fell to the floor and kissed his feet, more out of despair than out of hope, and still he stood. “You should have been my husband,” she pleaded. “You told me this. You said you should not have married her…You said this to me every time…every time we were together. You told me you had been wrong to marry her!”

He did not move, and she stayed there, holding those feet she had first noticed so long ago, their shabby lower-class wear and tear, the way they had never matched hers. They had not changed, those feet, and now she took stock of them, refusing to let go even when he tried to lift her off with hands that were neither kind nor cruel,
simply impassive, refusing even when Thara hurled more bile at her, even when Mrs. Vithanage joined in, even when she kicked her in the ribs. She stayed there until Thara dragged Podian, crying and pleading, into the room by his ear, screaming at him to confess that he had “fucked this bitch.” Then, in one swift movement, Latha stood up.

“Oyay balli,”
she said to Thara. “You’re the bitch who is married to him and has spent the last twelve years fucking Ajith.”

And not Mrs. Vithanage’s flailing blows at her head or Mr. Vithanage’s pleading or Thara’s horror could stop her from telling them everything, from the first meeting she had orchestrated to the meetings at the De Sarems’ house, to their room at the hotel, and to the lie after lie after lie she had told for Thara.

“Stop!” Gehan said at last. “Stop it! Why are you telling all these stories? In front of my children! Latha, you are not a bad woman, you don’t have to make up lies.”

“They are not lies, and you know they are not,” she said, her voice cold.

Gehan stared at her for a long moment. In the background there was only the sound of the girls crying, and Podian too, whimpering like a child, in sight but beyond their reach. Then, Gehan went up to Thara and put his arm around her.

“She is lying, Thara, I know that. I don’t believe what she’s saying.” He turned her face to his with his palm and spoke so clearly it was like he was reciting something memorized by heart. “She is lying because you know it was Ajith who made Latha pregnant the first time. You would never go with a man like that. I am not the person you would have chosen, but you knew what he did. You would never have forgiven him for that.”

And there, revealed to Latha, was Gehan’s price, repaying Thara for her deceit with some of his own. That he believed her, knew that what she had said was true, was unimportant to him right then. This was a negotiation to decide who owed what, and to whom. He was going to make Ajith pay through Thara for what he, Gehan, had lost, twice now, to the same man. That was that he was thinking of, not her, Latha, not how he felt about her or their unborn baby. And by giving Thara that reason for why he did not believe Latha, and using
it to tell his wife about Ajith and how he had once betrayed her, Gehan was felling both Thara and her family, severing everything, exposing all the lies, laying waste to the whole of it. Something in him wanted that just as furiously as she had wanted her own revenge so many years ago.

She listened and she knew, Latha did, that, when all was said and done, when spite and revenge had fizzled out, as they always did—didn’t she know it?—he would want to return to her, later, when his life with Thara had coalesced into a meaningless series of smaller wounds, inflicted ritually and relentlessly. But it would be too late.

Thara cried out. The pain in her voice was palpable. Latha looked from Thara to Gehan, wondering if now, hearing his wife’s hurt, watching her break, he felt adequately rewarded for what he was losing. Still standing within the safety of Gehan’s arms, Thara turned to her mother. “You told me it was the driver, Amma, that’s what you told me! You told me that our reputation had been damaged and that’s why his family didn’t want to marry into ours. You didn’t tell me it was him.”

“I am not the one for you to blame, Thara, she is!” Mrs. Vithanage pointed to Latha.

Thara turned to her. “You forgot everything, didn’t you? You forgot how I treated you, how you were like a sister to me. You forgot how I stood up to Gehan’s parents, to Gehan, for you. I kept you here when nobody wanted you to stay. I trusted you with my children—”

“You kept me because I was a way for you to show how little you thought of your husband,” Latha said. “You needed my help in carrying on your affair.” She was playing Gehan’s game, but she knew that her fires weren’t the kind to be put out. What did it matter that they had once been friends? No, this room had no space for love that was not made impure by secrecy. These people did not know how to keep love, and now, neither did she. She would set it ablaze and watch. “And you didn’t just trust me with your children. You didn’t have time for them. You
gave
them to me! You don’t know them. You told me they weren’t yours. You wanted sons, you said, you wanted sons with Ajith.” Latha went up to the girls and took them from Mr. Vithanage, who let them pass from his arms and into hers. He looked
like he might faint. “These poor girls, look at them now. Soon they will leave this house, and you gave them nothing!”

“You get out of my house,” Thara said. All that was left in her voice was hatred.

The girls clung to Latha. “Don’t go, Latha,” Madhavi said. “I don’t want you to go. Please stay here with us. Amma, please let Latha stay.”

“Get out,” Thara repeated.

“Thāththa! Tell Latha to stay!” Madhavi cried, holding on to Latha’s waist.

“Madhavi,” Thara said, striding up to where they stood and disentangling her daughter from Latha’s body, her fingernails drawing blood on both her daughter’s hand and Latha’s as she struggled to separate them. “Let her go. She is a serpent. You are old enough to understand what she has done—”

“I hate you!
Latha
is the one who has looked after us!
She’s
the one who has helped me and listened to me.
She’s
the one who bathed me.
She’s
the one who gives me money when I want some. You didn’t even buy me a present, and
she
bought me shoes!” Madhavi sobbed, pushing past her mother and going back to her grandfather.

“Where is she supposed to go?” Mr. Vithanage asked Thara. “She doesn’t have anybody in this world.”

“This is what we should have done the first time,” Mrs. Vithanage said.

“She can learn what it is like to live without anybody,” Thara said. “I’m not having her in this house.”

“I have lived without anybody all my life in your houses,” Latha said. “I know just what that is like.” She turned away from them and tried to speak to Madhavi, but when she touched the child, Madhavi flinched away from her and pressed into her grandfather’s arms. Latha didn’t even try with Madhayanthi. She stood there for a moment, then walked deliberately to the opposite side of the table. She swept to the ground everything that was still remaining on it, sending curries and glasses of water and the cut-glass bowl full of bought flowers in the middle sliding across the table and through the open space between the dining room and the sitting room beyond. She
went to the dining room cabinet and pulled out whatever was left of the wedding dishes and smashed those too. “Now all your bad karma is gone,” she said. “You can start again.”

On her way out, she picked up the purple sari from the chair onto which she had flung it. Back in her room, she threw everything she owned into two suitcases—the one she had brought back from the convent, and another she had bought not long ago to use as a storage space. She put her books, her pictures, and all of her best shoes into one bag, wrapping each pair carefully in a piece of clothing. She put the rest of her clothes in the other, along with her Buddha statues, which she wrapped in her blouses. Into her brown handbag, she put her passbook with the careful numbers of her bank deposits recorded in a blue
Pilot
pen. She took three of the photographs. The rest she tore into pieces and left on her table. She lit a match to the sari and sat down on the edge of her bed to watch it curl and burn, slowly, like a long tale unfolding inexorably, meticulously, and without fuss, turning its beauty to ash.

S
he won’t let go of me, this girl. “Go!” I tell her. “Go inside and ring the bell. When the nuns come, tell them that they have to keep you here.”

“I don’t want to go inside, Amma! Amma, come with me!” she begs. “I don’t want to go alone!”

“I can’t come,” I tell her. Then I add the lie she needs to hear. “I have to go and see your brother and sister. Tell them inside that your big sister is already here; your mother dropped her off to the nun at the station just yesterday morning. See this dress you are wearing? That’s your big sister’s dress. She’ll recognize it as soon as she sees you. Tell her I gave it to you already, before you got big. Go!” I push her, but she hangs on to my hand, her eyes terrified.

“Amma, don’t leave me here. I’m scared. Stay with me. We can both stay here.”

“Then how will I go and find Aiyya and Akki? You tell me that. Your akki was very brave and went with him to keep your aiyya safe. Isn’t that good? Now you must be good too. Like your akki, okay?”

She begins to cry loudly. “Then I will call the taxi uncle to take us back to the hospital,” she says and starts to walk down the road. I grab her hand and bring her back to face me.

“Shh! Don’t make a noise,” I whisper to her. “I don’t have money for the taxi uncle. I have to walk. I am going to walk. It is too far for you to go, my little one. That is why I have brought you here. To
be safe. Now I want you to go inside. Let go of my hand, child, let go!” I shake her off me, but she keeps grabbing at other parts of my body. I slap her face, hard. See what she made me do now. I want to cry, but I must not. No, no, I must show her how to be unafraid. How to turn around and find a better place for herself.

“I…want…to…go…home…,” she sobs; big, heaving sobs that tell me how frightened she is, how much she wants to convince me that I am wrong. “I…want…the…sea…” I want to comfort her, but I know I should not. I have made up my mind, and this time I know that I am right. I want her to be strong. My Loku Duwa was right. I have spoiled this one. Yes, my big girl was better served by my neglect. I am glad they are together, my Loku Putha and she. For better or worse, together. She will be able to look after him.

“Be strong!” I tell her, firmly. But then I relent. I go to take her face in my hands, but she flinches from me. I drop them to my sides. Yes, I have no right to feel that soft skin in my palms, or trace that heart shape again. I have no right at all. I should be going. I turn and walk away.

“Amma! Amma!
Come back
!” she cries. “Amma, don’t leave me!”

I stamp my foot at her. “Shh! I told you not to make a noise. Wait until I am gone, and then ring that bell. That is all you have to do, child.” I go back to her and sit her down on the top steps. “Here, take this parcel of food. Take this, and you can tell the nuns you have to eat it as soon as you get inside, while it is still warm, okay?” I stroke her head. She has stopped crying. Even her eyes have settled down. She takes the parcel. “Now I have to go. Don’t worry about anything. Things will be all right.”

This time she makes no sound. She just sits there, looking up at me. What a picture. She sits with her knees drawn up to her face, her chin resting on them. She is clutching the parcel of food to her chest with one hand, and I can imagine the soft heat making its way slowly through her white dress to her bare skin. I remember that particular bolt of skin, how small it once was, holding all of her inside a length only thirteen inches long. Small, she used to be. Her whole body curling toward itself, only the head even then tilting backward. As if her thoughts were heavy, or she wished to be warned of what
was coming at her from the places she could not yet see with her newborn eyes. She seems to have resigned herself to staying there, on that step, forever. There she sits, my last child, the only one left to take care of. But I’m choosing how to lose this one. This is my only good decision. This is what the gods wanted from me. Their price. And I will pay it.

“Chooti Duwa, my little one, keep this,” I tell her. I take her right hand and press my coin purse into it. It is made of some kind of fur, and she rubs her face on it. “Inside this is the name of the uncle we met on the train. You can tell the nuns that he will know what to do with you. If they need money, he will give it to them. You tell them that. Tell them…tell them…that you don’t have a mother…that you are an orphan. That is what you will have to say so they will look after you. Don’t shake your head. Yes, it’s not true. It is not true at all. You have me. You will always have your amma. But you need to say that to them. No mother. No mother. Will you remember? No mother.”

“Don’t cry, Amma,” she says, which is when I realize that I am crying. I wipe my face with the edge of my sari pota. It’s not good to cry. I must show her that this is a good place, that I am glad to be leaving her here. I try to smile, but I must have failed because she repeats herself. “Don’t cry. It doesn’t matter. I will stay here and be good and wait for you to come back, Amma. I will do everything right. Don’t cry.”

And I cannot resist it, so I take her face into my hands and feel its weight for a moment. So delicate, so perfect. I kiss the top of her head. “May the blessings of the Triple Gem be with you, my daughter,” I whisper these words over and over. Then I walk, run down the road. I don’t look back at her. I run, and I cannot stop myself from weeping.

“What are you crying about?” the taxi driver asks when I come around the last corner. “Where’s that child?”

I walk past him, sobbing harder than I ever have in my life. Lost now, all lost.

“Wait! Where are you going? I have to get paid. Where’s my money?”

“I have no money. I have no children.”

“You have to pay me!” he shouts.

“With what? With this?” I take the fall of my sari off my shoulder, and he stares at me.

“Stop that! You madwoman. Only I would get stuck with a madwoman. Put your clothes back on. What are you doing?”

I fling the pota back over my shoulder. It is half undone, my sari. I am undone. The taxi is alongside me now, the driver staring at me.

“I’m going to the railway station,” I tell him. “It must not be far from here.”

“It’s not far if you go from behind the convent, but it is far on this road.” He indicates the convent with his head. “If you go to the back, there’s a path down to the station from there.”

“Then I will go that way.” I start walking back the way I have come.

“Wait, where are you trying to get to? Maybe I can help you.”

I laugh. Help me? Who can help me? “Go back safely, Malli, I will find my way.” I don’t hear his engine start up until I am almost back at the front steps of the convent. But then I hear voices, so I stop and peer through the ferns along the road. It’s a nun, a different one from the nun who met that girl at the station. This one is tall and thin and very fair. She looks like a foreigner, but she can’t be, can she? Talking in our language the way she is doing? Probably a Lansi nun.

“Child, what are you doing here?”

Chooti Duwa stands up. She is so small. Far too small to have been left alone like that, on the steps of a building made of stone. How could I have done that? How could I? Bad mother, who doesn’t deserve such a beautiful child. It is right that I should not have her. That I should have handed her over to better people.

“My…sister is inside,” she says, clutching her parcel in one hand like a talisman.

“What is your sister’s name?”

“Mala Akki,” she says, and she begins to cry. My heart. I clutch at the branches in front of me and hold on so I won’t be tempted to go to her. I bite my tongue until I taste the blood in my mouth.

“Where’s your mother? How did you get here?” The nun looks down the road, but I am safely hidden from view. “Who brought you here?”

“Taxi uncle,” she says.

“What is his name?”

“My aiyya’s name is Raji Asoka. They got lost. Foreigners came and took them,” she says now and cries even louder.

The nun takes her face in her hands. What gentle hands they seem, the way they tilt a little girl’s chin upward to look at her, as if she would like to hear the truth but would love her anyway if she lied. “What are you talking about, baba? What foreigners? Where do you live?”

“I’m from the ocean. Near the fishing boats. But my aiyya fell after we came on the train and the bomb blast. And my akki went with him and they got stolen. That’s what the policeman said.”

The nun smoothes the back of her skirt and sits down on a chair. She draws my girl toward her, her arms around her. “And your father and mother, where are they?”

She looks down the path. “I don’t have a mother,” she says after a few moments. She says it. And when she looks back at the nun, she is not crying anymore. She has put her parcel of food down on the ground, and she is playing with the rosary around the nun’s neck. It is a bright blue rosary, and I can see it from where I stand.

“No mother…?”

No. The child shakes her head. She shakes it slowly, from side to side, in big movements. Then she gives the purse to the nun. “Train uncle will tell you everything. Train uncle will give you money to keep me,” she says.

The nun takes the purse and shakes her head like this is not unexpected. She unfolds the paper inside and stares at it. She presses her lips together and looks across the gardens. I am sure she can see me, but she must not because she puts the paper back into the purse and stands up. “What is your name?”

“Latha Kumari, but my aiyya and akki call me Chooti Nangi, and my amma calls me Chooti Duwa, and sometimes, when she loves me, she calls me her pet, she calls me petiyo.”

“Come then, Latha, let us go inside. We don’t have room for grown children, but you can stay with the younger nuns at the sister house until we can find your uncle.”

My little girl yanks free from the nun’s hand at the last instance.
She comes back to the top of the steps and peers down the road, standing on tiptoe, bowing her head, trying to see through all the foliage between her and the bends in the road. No, don’t come down here, child. This is the last thing I can do, and I have done it. Someone at this place will give you comfort and safety and a quiet life. Someone inside this building will do that for you. Go! Go with the nun! And still she stands and stands and stares down this road. The nun comes back to her and puts her arm around her. The girl won’t go with her. The nun takes off her rosary and gives it to her, and at last she stops looking for me. She holds the bright blue beads in one hand and pours them into the other, back and forth, back and forth. She is still doing that when she goes in with the fair-skinned nun.

I don’t know how long I wait, gazing at those steps. They are empty the way only things that contained too much can be. They are bathed in sunlight, and some of the flowers on either side have lost petals along the far edges. There’s nothing on them. But a few moments ago they held everything. I look at it until my eyes hurt, but nothing changes. Nobody comes back out, and nobody comes up to the door from the road behind me. At last I hear a bell ringing inside. It is a loud, heavy sound, not the kind of peal I imagined I might hear in this place. It sounds dark and foreboding.

I shake my head. I must not dwell on such things, I must not imagine the worst, only the best for that child. That is my work now, to let her be. I make my way around the side of the convent wall until I see the path.

It is narrow, barely wide enough for my feet, and yet it is so smooth, so well-worn. It is as if nobody walks side by side on this trail, only in single file, one of them in charge, another clearly having given up control over the journey. Well, I walk alone, nobody behind, nobody in front.

The grass is thick with nidikumbha. I am hypnotized by the way they close and close and close before me, going to sleep the instant any part of my body or my clothes grazes their leaves. Like the eye
lids of sleeping children. Only the powder-puff flowers, bright pink and tiny, remain erect and facing the sun.

I stumble on a root and fall. I feel a hundred pinpricks upon my exposed arms, on the side of my face, and deep into each palm. I close them tighter over the nettles, but there is only so far they can go, weak things. I sit up and open my hands. Like the beads to a broken necklace, these bits of blood. I rub them together, touch my face. I grind my palms into the skin. My palms are smeared now, but not thick like paint; it is just a brush of red and sweat and green things. Salty and grainy like the earth, on my swollen tongue. Around me there is only the sound of afternoon insects. Nothing that I can recognize as being of my kind.

I crawl for a little while. On my hands and knees, I am almost lower than the nearest plants, like an animal; a light-colored, four-legged creature. This is madness, and I am not mad. I stand up. I am empty-handed, and now, you, O gods, you who have taken everything, I have no more to hold or give or take or lose but myself. I rub the edge of my sari pota in my sweat and clean myself as best as I can. My face and hands will not get clean. Each new bit of cloth I use is smeared with just as much red and brown. Never mind. I will go like this. I cannot undo what has been done or reclaim what is now lost. I am on this path out of choice. I chose this. I chose Siri. Where is he now? Everybody lost and dead because of me, but not her. Not my last one. She is safe.

There it is. I can hear it coming, though it is so faint. Far away, somewhere in the distance, the high-low blast from the train. My answer, my hope. I walk faster, but I trip again, and so I stop and take off my slippers. Barefoot, it is easy to run downhill. After a minute or two, it is almost like flying. Nothing catches at me, no leaves, branches, stones, nothing at all. Only the breeze, and even that is on my back, pushing me forward, a blessing, an affirmation of intentions. I run until the path spits me onto the platform. That is how it is, the path and the platform almost one road, except that one tapers off in dust, the other picks up in concrete. I feel the change on the soles of my feet, abrasive and cold.

“Sir,” I say to the stationmaster, who is standing there like he had never moved.