Three Ways to Disappear

by Katy Yocom

  “What? India? Me? No.”

  “You should go. You’ll do a better job representing the operation.” She gave Quinn a sympathetic look. “Tell your sister bags and scarves are the way to go, not clothes. I’ll send you some photos of designs I can sell.”

  Quinn thanked her. Representing the operation. Was that what she was doing? What did she know about the world of import-export? She was an artist, which made her an entrepreneur of sorts. But she was no Jane Spencer. And she hadn’t painted anything worth keeping in six weeks.

  .

  “How did the meeting go?” Pete asked when she got home.

  She took an apple out of the refrigerator and rested her hips against the counter. “She told me I should go to India.”

  Pete laughed. “She doesn’t know you very well.”

  “I could go if I wanted.”

  He opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of beer. “You’ve told me a million times you’d never go back. Besides, there’s the kids,” he said, as if he couldn’t take care of them himself for a couple of weeks.

  “Mother wants to borrow some money.”

  He opened the bottle and took a swig, asked how much. She told him. “You told her no, right? She needs to get over the idea that we’re her personal bank.”

  “Well, she—”

  “Well, nothing. She manipulates you. She does nice things for the kids and makes you feel indebted, and then she mismanages her money and wants you to bail her out. She’s a financial chaos machine. We don’t need to be part of her drama.”

  When she’d been in therapy for the eating disorder, she’d learned how to take care of herself emotionally. The art, of course. Meditation, though she hadn’t practiced in years. When she’d married Pete, he’d been the kindest man she’d ever met. In their relationship, she had found a place to rest. Until this past year.

  “I’m kind of excited about this project with Sarah,” she said.

  He nodded, but there was something abstracted about it. A pang of loneliness shot through her. They’d lost each other somewhere along the way. Something was going to have to change, but she didn’t know what, or how.

  It occurred to her now that she’d lost some skills. She set down the apple and left the room.

  Sarah

  “Vinyal?” Sarah said dumbly.

  “Vinyal.” Geeta sat behind her desk but seemed to take up most of the space in the room.

  “Why Vinyal?”

  “Can you think of another village where we need to make inroads more urgently?”

  “That’s not the question. They’re dangerous people. They killed a forest guard two years ago.” Actually, it was precisely the question. The other question was whether Geeta had singled out that particular village as punishment for Sarah’s crimes. If Sarah was going to head knowingly into risky territory, she wanted to know why.

  “Why do you think they killed that forest guard?” Geeta said. “Because all along they’ve felt the tiger conservation effort has undercut their livelihoods.” She lifted a book off the shelf behind her. Sarah recognized the cover: Tiger-Wallahs: Saving the Greatest of the Great Cats.

  Geeta flipped to a bookmarked page and read aloud, glancing up for emphasis as she did: “‘No one asked them whether there should be a park here. No one warned them that entering the park to graze their herds or gather firewood as they always had would suddenly make them criminals. They’re right that the park does not benefit them, at least not in the short run. It’s our job to change that, to help them see that their survival and that of the park are linked, that if the forest is destroyed, their lives and all our lives will be destroyed, as well.’” She looked up. “That’s a quote from Valmik Thapar. He’s talking about Ranthambore.” She thumped the book closed. “That’s why Vinyal.”

  They stared at each other. “It’s ambitious,” Sarah conceded.

  “There’s a lot to be gained. You’ll need a translator. Sanjay will be your partner on this project.” She nodded briskly. “Any questions?”

  That was the end of the discussion.

  .

  “The women already have jobs,” the sarpanch said. “They work in the fields. They raise their kids.”

  “This project would inject cash into the village’s economy,” Sarah said. “The women’s husbands and sons will have less incentive to break the law and do ecological harm by poaching tigers.”

  Sanjay translated. Around them, a crowd of men and children watched the conversation with great interest.

  The sarpanch laughed without humor. “What economy? There’s no infrastructure here. Half the homes don’t have electricity.”

  “The income will let them send their children to school. Educating the people of Vinyal is the most important step you can take to lifting them out of poverty.”

  The sarpanch was not one for eye contact with a young white woman, but he conceded that point with a penetrating stare at her left shoulder. “How does the money work?”

  “We extend small loans to the women to buy materials. They make the goods, and we facilitate exporting the textiles for sale,” Sarah said. “The proceeds will be wired into bank accounts set up in their names.”

  “It’s better to put the accounts in the names of their husbands and fathers.”

  “No,” she said. “The women do the work; the women get paid.”

  The sarpanch grunted. “We have our traditions, you know. Let me think about this. Come back next week.”

  On the way to their vehicle, Sarah asked, “How do you think that went?”

  Sanjay moved his head noncommittally.

  “I feel like a politician,” she said.

  .

  A week later, they found themselves sitting in a dirt-floored room with four of the village’s best seamstresses, including Padma, Sunil’s widow. She kept her head down, but Sarah thought she saw a scab at the corner of Padma’s mouth and a bruise on her cheekbone. Her sister’s husband had done that, Sarah guessed. Not happy to find himself housing a widow and her four children. She wondered how long it would be before he came after Padma sexually. If he did, how could Padma refuse? He had all the power. She had nothing.

  The other women laughed over the glasses of tea and plates of namkeen that Sarah had arranged for them. They passed textiles hand to hand, talking of the embroidery and mirror inlays they’d do if they had the materials.

  The past few days had given Sarah and Sanjay their first extended exposure to Vinyal women. It surprised Sarah how readily the women let go of their initial suspicion once they’d heard the proposal. Now Sarah and Sanjay were actually welcomed. So Vinyal women were a different story than Vinyal men, maybe.

  About the sarpanch, the women agreed he could be rigid or he could surprise you. “He’s leaning toward saying yes,” said Anju, a graying woman with webs of wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. “Otherwise he would have told you not to talk to us. He knows we’ll come around pestering him if he doesn’t allow it.”

  “I’ll pester him,” said a younger woman named Rohini, raising her voice to be heard over the rain. “I want to buy a water buffalo. That old bag of bones isn’t going to stop me.”

  “If I had the money,” Padma said quietly, “I would like to buy a cow.”

  The conversation flowed fast, especially once Sarah got down to the business of information gathering. Where did the women get the cloth they’d be embroidering and dyeing? How much did they pay for the fabric and fasteners? Were they interested in creating new types of products they could sell outside the village, outside India, to women in America? Could Sarah buy a few fabric samples to take with her now?

  At that, Sanjay stopped translating. “Geeta Ma’am will kill you if you spend money on this and the project doesn’t go.”

  She gave him a conspirator’s grin. “I’m not using Tiger Survival money. If it d
oesn’t work out, I’ll just keep the fabrics for myself. And if we do get the okay, I want to be ready to move fast.”

  He gave her a sidelong look. “My mother would have called you a ‘leaper-inner.’”

  She laughed. “I’m just ready to roll.”

  “I can see that.”

  The women watched them. “Laughing at us?” Rohini asked.

  “Not at all,” Sanjay said.

  “We have a question for her,” Rohini said, nodding toward Sarah. “Does she have children?”

  Sanjay translated, and Sarah smiled. “No, but I have a niece and nephew. They’re about this tall.” She held out her hand. “They’re missing their front teeth.”

  The women laughed in recognition, and the atmosphere grew light with conversation. Sanjay turned to Sarah. “They all have children. Anju has seven grandchildren. Padma says your niece and nephew are at a good age.”

  “They’re pretty great,” Sarah said. “Really funny. Curious about the world.”

  “She says at that age they can help with work.”

  “That, too,” Sarah said, though she was certain Nick and Alaina weren’t expected to do more than simple chores. Sarah had been there one day when Quinn showed the twins how to use a dustpan. They’d gathered around, watching seriously as she demonstrated how to nudge dirt over the lip of the pan with gentle strokes. The moment had seemed sweet to Sarah.

  At the end of the visit, they stepped outside to find a lanky teenaged boy hovering nearby, wet to the skin. He stared openly at Sarah with something darker than simple curiosity behind his eyes. It wasn’t until Padma spoke to him that Sarah recognized him: the boy she’d seen sitting on the ground the day of Sunil’s death. His face and posture had hardened since then.

  Sarah namaskared and asked his name.

  “Om,” the boy said. Water dripped from his shaggy hair.

  “Mera naam Sarah hai.”

  “I know who you are.” He made it sound ugly.

  “I will punish him for his rudeness,” Padma said. “Such a naughty boy.” Mother and son exchanged a complicated glance.

  Sarah and Sanjay walked back to the SUV. Once out of earshot, Sanjay said, “I don’t like that boy. He’s too bold.”

  “I don’t like teenaged boys, period,” Sarah said.

  He gave her a surprised glance.

  “Too harsh?” she asked over the hood of the Sumo. “All right. Let’s say I’m wary of them. I’ve seen boys that age all over the world, and they’ve got a dangerous streak. Especially the ones who know they don’t have much of a future.” She lifted her camera strap over her head and set the camera on the seat. “We’ll keep an eye on that one.”

  “Achchha. But I’ll tell you the truth. I don’t trust men from Vinyal.” He slid into the driver’s seat and shut the door.

  “So you’ve said. I kind of like the women, though.”

  A knock at Sanjay’s window. Padma. Sanjay killed the engine and got out, and the two spoke intently. When they finished, Padma walked away, glancing back a few times.

  “She’s worried about her son,” Sanjay said as they left the village. “The uncle won’t let him go to school. He’s making him work in the fields. It’s humiliating to the boy, doing women’s work. Padma says the uncle doesn’t want competition as the man of the house.”

  “That’s big of him,” Sarah said.

  “Om has gotten several years of education. He’s been taught he can have a better life. But now, with this uncle … Padma wants to use the money from the collective to pay off her debt to him and send Om back to school.”

  “First we have to get the sarpanch on board,” Sarah said. She sat silently, watching the muddy fields. “And there’s one more complication. I want to add Nuri to the collective.”

  He glanced over at her. “The girl from the hospital? The other women won’t want her.”

  “She’s from Vinyal. And she could use some help putting her life back together.”

  “The other women will think the whole project is inauspicious. They’ll want nothing to do with that kind of bad luck.”

  “She’s been through hell. She needs help. There’s nothing to discuss. What are you smiling about?”

  “You’re starting to sound as opinionated as an Indian woman.”

  She grinned. “You want to argue with me?”

  “Not at all. If Sarah DeVaughan says that’s the way it is, then that’s the way it is.”

  She sat back in her seat. “I’m glad we understand each other.”

  His laugh sounded like a door swinging open a crack.

  .

  “What drew you to the Bengal tiger?” the talk show host asked.

  “It’s the most beautiful animal in the world,” Sarah said. “And one of the most threatened by human interference. Tigers are amazing survivors, left to their own devices. And we need them.”

  The host interrupted her. “Isn’t it true that you have an Indian connection?” He seemed very aware of his physical presence: well-built and high-cheekboned, impeccably groomed. When he spoke, his teeth flashed unnaturally white.

  Sarah paused, careful to keep smiling. “My parents brought me to Ranthambore when I was a little girl. I suppose that was the beginning of it.”

  “In fact, you grew up here, didn’t you? In Delhi.”

  “I did. I count myself lucky.”

  The host turned to face the camera. “Sarah DeVaughan, a child of India, now the face of the tiger conservation movement.” He paused. “We’ll be right back.”

  “This isn’t about me,” she said once they’d gone to commercial.

  He shrugged. “Human interest. It’s what makes the world go round.”

  Quinn

  On a Friday afternoon, Quinn sat down to check her email. A message from Sarah waited, with photos. Anju, Padma, Rohini, Sapna, and Nuri. They wore thin cotton dupattas loosely covering their hair, some of them shot through with gold-colored threads, some patterned with paisley or plaid. Every color—indigo, sugar pink, forest green—fully saturated. Beneath their dupattas, each woman’s face revealed something a little different, an expressiveness or a reserve. Nuri’s photo, taken from a high angle, emphasized her eyes, as if asking the viewer to consider that the burns around her mouth weren’t the whole story.

  In her email, Sarah reported that the other women hadn’t objected to Nuri’s presence as much as Sanjay had feared. Some were concerned about upsetting Nuri’s family, who had refused to take her back after the attack, but Anju had convinced the women that, by disowning Nuri, the family had given up any right to be considered in matters concerning her future. “We all have to find a way to live,” Anju had said, and the other women had conceded she was right. And that, apparently, was that.

  Quinn knew enough to draw a general picture of what life must be for the women who lived there: early marriage, no access to birth control, raising child after child while working in the fields. Hauling water, cutting fodder grass, cooking every meal, keeping the house and children clean. She tried to imagine the arguments they had with their husbands: Yes, we are sending our daughter to fifth grade, because girls deserve education just as much as boys do. Quinn studied their faces. Rohini would be the one with the backbone to fight that battle. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on Quinn’s part. From what Sarah had told her, even boys got yanked out of school on a whim, and their mothers had no say in the matter at all.

  The next day, she and the twins met Jane at her import store. Quinn set the children up in the pillow-and-blanket aisle—nothing breakable there, though plenty of things were knock-overable. She opened her laptop and turned the screen to Jane, who scrolled through the photos, flipping past the women’s faces, lingering on the pictures of the wares they’d created.

  “They’ve got the right idea, but they’re going to have to up their quality,” J
ane said. “These purses need to be lined, for one thing. Have you sent them any samples? They need to really see the construction up close.”

  “Not yet. I’ll buy a few things to send them while I’m here.”

  Alaina appeared at Quinn’s side and tilted her bright face up at Jane. “Have you seen the video of my aunt saving the baby tiger?”

  “Not yet,” Jane said.

  “Can we show her, Mom?” Alaina begged, and Nick joined in.

  “Why not,” Quinn said. The twins crowded around as Quinn searched for the video. When the search results appeared, Alaina read aloud, “Tiger Woman foils would-be poacher.” She pointed at the headline. “Can we read it?”

  It sounded harmless enough. Quinn clicked the link.

  The web page clearly belonged to a tabloid. The familiar photo of Sarah from the tiger rescue dominated the screen, but the text had to do with a dramatic confrontation in the forest that ended with Sarah saving the day. Quinn skimmed the article. “This is just a story somebody made up about her.”

  “You mean she didn’t really foil a would-be poacher?” Nick asked. “What does foil mean?”

  “To foil someone is to ruin their plans. And a would-be is someone who wants to be something but isn’t really.”

  “So she caught somebody trying to be a poacher but made him stop?” Alaina asked. “What’s a poacher?”

  “If you poach animals, it means you—”

  “Boil them in water till the whites firm up,” Jane said. “Oh wait, that’s an egg.”

  Quinn laughed. “If you poach an animal, it means you kill it illegally.”

  “Is it ever legal to kill animals?” Nick asked.

  “Yes. But not tigers. They’re endangered.”

  “We learned about endangered species in school,” Alaina said.

  “This website is kind of like those little newspapers you see in the supermarket checkout lines,” Quinn said. “Most of the stories are made up.”