The Girl in the Road (22 page)

She finished the story as if to say, See, that explains my feelings.

I said, If you must know, Mohini has never worked as a sex worker.

Muthashi shook her head. She said, I'm only bringing this up for your own benefit, Meena. You must think these things through. You're like your father. Very impulsive.

We stood on the footpath for a few minutes, quiet, looking at the river. I spotted a turtle on the other side but didn't stay anything. It was motionless in the sun, waiting for the monsoon to come so that it could swim in a fresh river.

It's good to have you home, Muthashi said, starting back up the footpath to the ghats. I can use you. Mrs. Nair just went into labor. She and her husband will be arriving from Alleppey within the hour. You remember what to prepare for a birth?

I wagged my head without looking at her.

Now I'm hanging like a Christmas ornament in the middle of the Arabian Sea, riding out a cyclone. I could sit here and indulge in thoughts that my grandparents might be dead. I could ideate the manner and timing of their deaths for maximum pathos. They're the only relatives I have left. But they're one step removed from me, a secondhand report on my nature. I want real parents. I want to know firsthand.

Mohini and I start talking again. The part of me that is her is very useful to me. She always has helpful things to say, especially because she lost a parent too; though she always displayed a casual relationship to the loss that was hard to believe. I thought it should manifest as a major dysfunction and was always waiting for it to do so. But in the meantime, at least she had the vocabulary to understand me. I return again to our conversation of how my mother is like the goddess in the innermost chamber.

You're seeking your mother on the Trail itself, she says to me.

What do you mean?

You don't think of the Trail as a temple because it's not enclosed. But you're passing through chambers. You're penetrating deeper.

It doesn't feel that way.

I know.

It feels like I'm doing something incredibly unnecessary.

And what would you rather be doing?

I don't know. Being in Africa.

But you'd have to get there first, and that's what you're doing.

All right.

Meena, what do you want to find at the end of this journey?

The woman who killed my parents.

This is important.

I imagine so.

No need to be sarcastic, Meena. What would you do if you found her?

I don't know. Ask her why.

Be honest.

I'd want to kill her.

That's understandable.

But there's no point because my parents are dead.

Being dead and being findable are not mutually exclusive.

So what would I be finding?

You're your mother's issue. She made you. So whoever she is, is also you.

I wouldn't know how to begin.

You don't have to know how. You're already deep in.

When I open my eyes again, I'm in complete darkness. I forget where I am. I'm cool, damp, naked. Then I remember: I'm underfuckingwater. I feel in the dark for my bag, pull out one of my sunbits, and squeeze it. The gentle yellow light fills the pod. But outside there's nothing but blackness. I wish I had a mother. The mothered never get into situations like this.

I don't know how long I've slept. Anywhere from two to six hours. Enough for Geeta's arm to pass, I hope. The cord is at its end and the polymer plug is tight against the sphincter. I touch the skin of the pod, and it's much harder, which means I must be down a full seven meters.

A grid of silver shoots by. It was probably a school of fish. If I sit still and watch, my mind's eye makes a composite of what floats by, filling in what I can't see. What if I just stayed here and enjoyed the view of the abyss? One day, they'd find a cord attached to a sphere seven meters deep and pull it up and find my body curled in the fetal position. I'd chosen to lie down in the road.

Something big moves past and I jump back violently. Stupid. I could still split this thing open if the pressure's concentrated enough so I have to be fucking careful. I try to reconstruct what I saw: a dolphin or shark, maybe. I had an impression of bulk. It was not a fish.

I squeeze my sunbit again but it does nothing except reflect back the walls of the pod. I hold my hands around it to concentrate the beam outward. I sit still. And then again, something bulky passes by and this time it actually hits and indents the skin. I kneel into attack position, which doesn't strike me as illogical but rather simply that if this thing is going to make another pass I have to be ready. I keep the sunbit trained into the darkness.

And then right in front of my face a handprint appears in the skin of the pod.

I scream.

But the handprint is gone, as soon as it appeared.

A hallucination from oxygen deprivation. It must be. I need to get up to the surface because suddenly I feel like I'm in a black womb swarming with ghosts.

I reach up to take hold of the plug and encircle my other hand around it to push up against the sphincter at the same time. I pull the cord down and so pull the pod up. After a meter, my arms ache and I have to stop. I shake out my arms. I take a deep breath. I reposition the sunbit in my lap and grab hold of the cord again.

After sixty seconds I can see the water above me lighten. It looks blue, which is a good sign because it might mean the sun is out. I want to go quickly because I feel like I can't breathe even though I can.

A circle of white opens at the top of my pod. It's air. I stop myself from rending it open immediately. Instead I pull the pod up flush with the Trail so that it's hanging off of it like a bubble on the edge of a wand. Then, in my greatest feat yet, I pull myself and my bag up onto the Trail while still inside the pod like a fetus in an amniotic sac.

I peel the pod open with my thumbnail and climb out with my bag and set it down on the scale and crawl out naked into the wind. The clouds are ragged, low, and moving fast overhead. I take out my scroll to check that the cyclone is past (it is—spending itself against the Iranian coast now, only a Category 1) and then set it down on the scale while I pull the rest of the pod out of the sea. The sea is still choppy and the Trail is still bucking and the hinge nearest me snaps up and my scroll spins into the water.

Immediately I know it's gone.

I can't go after it. I have to attend to my desalinators, my kiln, and my pod, without which I would literally die.

So my scroll is gone.

I stick my knife blade-first into the scale so hard that it stays there. The gusts are lessening now, and there are patches of sunlight on the ocean. I can see them far away like oases.

I search for my scroll so that I can make a list of what I've lost and then realize I don't have anything to make a list with.

I have to tick them off in my head, in order of threat to corporeal survival.

1. The ability to visualize where I am on a map. I still have my pozit, which can give a position and calculate the distance between two positions, like between here and Nariman Point. But it's a simple numerical display. It doesn't show whole maps.

2. Information on oncoming weather, e.g. cyclones. Now I have to prove my Keralite blood by intuiting all things maritime.

3. My Element Diary. Which seems like a juvenile exercise in this light.

4. My survival guides. I'll have to get by on what I remember and by what seasteaders tell me.

5. My equipment manuals. I'm glad I read the pod manual three times while I was underwater. As for the kiln manual and the solar plate manual and all the other manuals, they're gone.

6. My music and literature. I've lost everything of entertainment value, which I'd been considering my umbilical cord to sanity. No more Mahabharata or poetry of Kuta Sesay or essays of Reshmi West.

The last loss is the least threat to corporeal survival but it hurts the most. I'll have to make other connections to sanity. I'll have to work harder to take care of myself. I'll have to generate my own mother like a blow-up doll and make her tell me stories.

The night we left for the Ethiopian border at last, you couldn't sleep. You whispered to me, pouring all your thoughts into me like I was a jug.

I'm not sure where we'll live, you said. We'll have to stay in a hostel and explore Addis for a few days, get a feel for the place. Piazza is supposed to be best, for character—but then there are all these new developments nearby, just outside the main city, and they have Internet and air conditioning. But then I keep reading that Bole Road is still the best place to get a flat. I have enough money for a few months. Then I'll have to find a job. Maybe in one of the art galleries or English-language bookstores.

I just liked listening to you talk, Yemaya. Your voice was fluid and deep, like the lowermost current of the ocean. It made me thirsty. I still felt terrible about what I'd said that had made you hit me, and so I kept looking for a way to bring us back together, to make us whole again.

You said, Will I actually be able to make a home? I'm only twenty years old. What if I'm discriminated against? I look Oromo, and the Oromo and the Amhara have a bad history. Maybe it'll be different because I'm Wolof. I need to find Amharic language classes. Till then, I can get by on my English. I need to take care of myself.

I tried to wrap my arms around your body, but my arms weren't long enough. You rolled on your back and I climbed on top of you and laid on your chest, and tried to encircle my arms around so that they met underneath you.

Finally your eyes closed. You didn't lift your arms to hold me; they splayed out to either side. While you slept, you muttered Francis's name, but as much as that roused the jealousy of the kreen, I didn't wake you. I understood that it was my time to take care of you.

We crossed into Ethiopia at Gallabat. I was clutching the railing and trying to memorize every detail, to understand with my own eyes what sort of place Ethiopia was, and how to distinguish it from all the other places I'd seen, but it was too late and I was too sleepy to make any real conclusions. Then I slept from Gallabat to Shihedi—I remember Shihedi only by the dim yellow lamplights that measured out my sleep—and from Shihedi on to Gonder.

You hardly slept at all. My body could sense that, because we had come to know each other's rhythms so well. When the trucks finally parked in a dusty lot, you were already sitting up, staring into space. Then you saw me and said, We're here, little girl.

Ethiopia!

Yes, you said. You weren't as excited as I thought you would be.

But I told myself it was because we weren't in Addis yet. We were first staying in Gonder, and then heading to Lalibela, and then finally to the capital city. Our long journey was almost over. I wanted it to be over but at the same time I wanted to relish every last moment of it.

It was almost dawn. Some of the drivers, still tense from the overnight drive, stayed behind to find food on the street and then sleep on the truck bed as usual. But Muhammed decided to rent a hotel room for the night, on account of wanting to rest his leg properly, and you said that we would also get a room. You said we deserved a special treat after so many weeks of sleeping on the truck.

You took my hand and we walked with Muhammed away from the lot and up to the town center. We had to move slowly because Muhammed was still using crutches. He told us he knew where to go; there was a hotel on the piazza with a beautiful rooftop restaurant that might be seating customers already.

I gripped your hand. The essential Ethiopian-ness I was trying so hard to discern from the truck was clearer to me here. I saw women covered in gauzy white fabrics, edged with deep jewel trim. Many of them looked different from us—their faces were colored lighter and yellowish, like mustard. Their noses were narrow and their lips were thin. Many of the women had dark blue tattoos of big crosses on their foreheads, or little blue crosses all along their jawlines. They didn't smile. I imagined myself as a grown woman and thought, This is my future: regal and fierce.

Muhammed was clearly glad to be back on his home soil. He pointed to this and that, proudly narrating his homeland. I think he mentioned the Battle of Adwa three times, how the Ethiopians beat back the Italians, and how Ethiopians alone among all Africans had never been conquered, never been colonized. He pointed to a thick stone wall along the road. That's the Royal Enclosure, he said. The castles where the great kings of Ethiopia ruled.

Do we have time to see it? you asked.

Yes, said Muhammed. We'll be here all day, leaving at dawn tomorrow.

But first you need to sleep, I said to you, touching your face.

You laughed. You were taken aback. How do you know me? you said. Are you the one taking care of me, now?

I nodded and then buried my face in your side.

The manager made us wait on a padded white bench for half an hour before she was ready to seat us. Then she showed us to a beautiful table, wicker with spotless white cloth draped over it. After the waiter took Muhammed's crutches and laid them against a nearby pillar, we ordered food, like a little family again, except with Muhammed instead of Francis as “the man.” I remember your being pleased that the restaurant took “cards” so that you wouldn't have to “change money.” (It was years before I understood what all that meant.) The food arrived swiftly: a cup of fruit and yogurt, a plate stacked with gummy bread bent sideways, and a smoothie with four bands colored green, yellow, pink, and white.

Muhammed acted as if he were greatly impressed with my choices. He explained what each thing was: there were papaya, watermelon, and mango chunks in the fruit cup; the gummy bread was called a pancake, filled with hot guava jelly; and the smoothie was called a mix juice, with layers of avocado, mango, guava, and banana. You spooned little portions of each dish onto my plate and you gave me a straw to drink my mix juice, but I'd never used a straw before, so I sucked too hard and juice came out of my nose. Muhammed laughed, but it was a kind laugh. He wiped my nose for me.

After breakfast, I could see your feet dragging. I needed to get you to bed. When we got our room key, I led you by the hand down the hallway and into our room—huge, splendid, sparkling, like nothing I'd ever seen before. There was a clean bathroom with a shower and flushing toilet. A beautiful painting was on the wall, a portrait of a woman with dark blue crosses on her face, and a black rectangle on the opposite wall, which I thought might be a frame missing its painting, but later you told me it was a flatscreen for satellite television. I couldn't wait to explore everything in the room, but you lay down on the bed and asked me to be quiet so you could sleep. So I did. I sat in a big soft chair and watched you sleep. You said Francis's name only once this time. That was an improvement.

I was still trying to figure out how to make everything perfect, to make us whole again. We were almost there, but not quite. Before long, after all the breakfast sugar, I was asleep too.

I slept even longer than you did. I slept right through the shower you took. When I woke up, you were clad only in white towels, and they didn't even cover all of you!

I hid my eyes and giggled.

What are you giggling at, little girl?

Nothing, I said.

You've never seen a naked woman?

I shook my head.

You were in a high, wild mood. You talked fast. You said, In Morocco, they have common baths called hamams, where all the women bathe together. It's so humane. Every society should have them because then, girls see women's bodies and how they take pride in them. Then they become proud of them, and not afraid.

It had never occurred to me that my body should be something I was afraid of. Something that felt fear, certainly—the kreen whined even when my attention wasn't focused on it—but not something I should be afraid of.

I'm not afraid! I said.

You narrowed your eyes at me. I went still. I understood that you were about to test me.

You took off both towels and stood before me naked. I gaped like a moonstruck goat. You were tall and broad-shouldered, with thin muscled arms and high teardrop breasts, and nipples darker than your skin; your waist was high, and your hips flowed down from it like the hem of a dress.

This is what a grown woman's body looks like, you said. You turned around and slapped your own bottom. I was too dumbstruck to giggle. Or maybe I was in religious awe, suspecting what I now know for certain!

You're pretty, I said.

You smiled and said Thank you, little girl.

And then it became clear to me what I should do, to make us truly whole again.

I pushed myself out of the chair and stood. I took off the plain shift I'd been given at the clinic. I climbed up onto the bed and laid down on my back.

You weren't looking at me. It wasn't how I wanted you to react. I had to be clearer.

Come here, I said.

Why? you said.

I have something to give you, I said.

Still not looking at me, you sat on the edge of the bed. What, you said.

I sat up and took your hand, and laid it over the place between my legs, and lay back down.

My golden meaning, I said, even though I didn't understand what that meant. I just knew you had to be the one I gave it to.

Your hand was light on my skin, but you didn't take it away.

You don't know what you're saying, Mariama.

I do, I said. I want you to have it. There's no one else I want.

You need to be older, you said. It's not for me to take, not even me.

But your voice was getting weaker.

No, I said. I say now.

A command had come into my voice. The kreen was speaking now. It seemed that I was the elder and you were the younger.

This can't be the way to heal, you said to yourself.

Yes it is, I said. We both need to be one and whole again.

How could you know, you said. How could you know.

Your hand became heavier, and then you curled one finger up into my body. I was young, so I thought that's as far as it could go. But your finger wriggled and pushed and made new room as it went and as it went it sucked the breath out of me. It felt like a stick of cayenne. I watched your shoulders rise and fall ten times and tried to breathe along with you. We both knew we had to wait, to count to ten, to make it real.

Then you withdrew and turned me on my side and hugged me from the back, while inside me, the kreen licked up the new flame.