by Shobha Rao
2
They left the next morning. He picked her up at seven o’clock and they drove east. Poornima packed not just a bag but all her few things, as if she was leaving for good. They took Interstate 90, and Mohan explained the numbering of the interstates to Poornima, though they couldn’t find much else to talk about. They drove toward Mercer Island, and Poornima thought they must be going the wrong way, going as they were over water, but Mohan told her it was right, it was east, toward South Dakota. They then drove over the dense, green Cascades, on through Cle Elum and George and Moses Lake, and then came into the eastern part of the state, the hills now spread before them like immense reclining women. At Coeur d’Alene, there were more mountains, these not as lofty as the Cascades, but sloping gently, forested on either side of the highway. The sky now, Poornima noticed, opened like a curtain, stretched endless and blue. Silver-tinged clouds, wispy at their edges, dense and gray at their centers, floated eastward. She pointed up toward them and said “Maybe rain.” Then she said, “Lolo. That’s a funny name.”
Mohan seemed deep in thought, and the wordless music in his car, the same kind of music she’d heard when he’d picked them up at the airport, played on and on, and she grew drowsy.
They passed through Missoula and Deer Lodge and Butte and Bozeman. At Livingston, they stopped for coffee. Without ever discussing it, they both understood they would drive through the night. The sky clouded over some more, but Poornima looked into the horizon and thought she could see to the ends of the earth, its curving unto itself, feminine and aching. Cattle grazed in the far, far distance, sprinkled on the golden and green rolling grasses like strewn mustard seeds. Ranch houses and trailers dotted the hills at long intervals, set deep into the tapestry, and she thought them lonely, though defiant in their small conquering. They’d bought sandwiches at a gas station in Garrison for lunch, but for dinner, Mohan said they should stop, and pulled into a roadside restaurant outside Crow Agency. They ordered coffees, which were hot and had a thick, mineral taste. After she asked what various items on the menu were, never having seen the words steak or meatloaf or burger, Poornima ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and mashed potatoes. Mohan ordered a cheeseburger and french fries. They ate to classic cowboy songs playing on the restaurant’s jukebox, and though Poornima was grateful to finally hear music with words, she couldn’t understand a single one. They filled up again after dinner and drove on as the sky behind them bruised pink and orange and gray. Before them, the blue deepened, widened like water.
It was only then, once they left 90 and got onto the 212, that Mohan mentioned Savitha again. He didn’t look at Poornima but spoke into the dark of the road. “What if she’s not there?” he asked.
It was such a simple question, yet she had no answer. She could feel the fury moving up her throat. The frustration that she’d pushed back these last few days. All this way, and for what? Two days. Two days. She grimaced. What if she wasn’t there? What then? She looked for her all along the highway, as they passed through towns, into the hills and the vast ranches, as if life granted such a thing. As if life granted such a thing so lovely and effortless and miraculous as seeing Savitha standing on the crest of a hill, or ambling along the street in one of those small towns. “I don’t know,” she said, and she didn’t know: in this whole wide world, after all this searching, she no longer had a place to begin.
She began to cry then. She hadn’t cried in years, but now she began to cry. As if all the ravening of all her years had, in that moment, come down upon her. She choked for breath, sobbed. “I don’t know,” she said, unable to stop the tears, and buried her head in her hands. She felt Mohan’s hand on her arm, and he held it like that until she raised her head, wiped her tears.
“She couldn’t have gone much farther,” he said.
“How do you know?”
He paused, still staring unblinking at the road. “Because I only had about a hundred dollars in my wallet.”
Poornima looked at him. She wiped away tears. The wind, howling past the car, ceased.
“And she had to have gone east.”
“Why?”
“Or south.”
“What about the others?”
“Puget Sound is to the west. Maybe there, but probably not. Water is too uncertain. And Canada’s difficult without a passport.”
She didn’t take her eyes from him. “You’ve given this some thought.”
“No,” he said, smiling weakly. “None at all.”
* * *
After the Crow and the Northern Cheyenne reservations, the road veered south-southeast toward a town called Broadus. They were nearly there. Hardly two more hours, Mohan said. “We’ll wait till morning,” he added, “to go to the canyon.”
Poornima turned. “Morning? No, as soon as we get there.”
“What’s the point? It’ll be dark.”
“Dark is the past four years,” she said.
Mohan shook his head. The first stars blinked awake, though Poornima only glimpsed them through passing clouds, gathering heavily to the east and south. There was a flash of lightning far to the south. It was after midnight when they neared Spearfish. “Are we almost there?” she said, needing to use the bathroom.
“Just a few more miles,” he said.
When they reached the outskirts of Spearfish, she saw a gas station. “There,” she said. “Stop there.”
The lights of the town shone in the distance. And then, she knew, was the canyon.
He pulled in, and Poornima jumped out of the car. A storm was coming. The lightning was close now. There were no more stars. She felt the gray dense weight of the clouds, hanging above yet close to the earth. For now, they held their rain, crouched in place.
She glanced up again and then sprinted into the gas station. The man behind the counter rested his thick forearms on the counter. His left one had a tattoo of a woman in a short dress, kicking up her long legs, reclined in a martini glass. Poornima looked at it, and then at his gold chain. She scanned the room. She didn’t see a bathroom. “Pardon me, please.”
“Around back,” he said, turning away, clearly disgusted by her face. “Might want to wait, though. Some Mexican gal’s in there now.”
Poornima understood that the bathroom was outside the building and raced out of the door. “And bring that key back,” he yelled after her. When she got outside, she tried the handle, but it was locked. She looked around, waiting. She could no longer see Mohan or the car, but she heard it idling. Across the street was an auto repair shop. Next door to the gas station seemed to be some sort of warehouse. The storm clouds were overhead now. The wind lifted her hair, swirled the strands in great and roguish kites. A drop of rain landed near her foot, and then another on her head.
She jiggled the handle some more.
There was a flash of lightning. The gas station went white, bright as bone, and then, as if a light had been switched off: black.
Car lights swung like a cradle. She squinted when they swept over her. She shivered, to be so exhausted, so alive. A car pulled up. It was Mohan. He rolled down the window and yelled out, “Looked at the map. We’re close.”
“How close?”
“Just southeast of here.” He smiled. “You’ve been waiting this whole time?”
The clouds thundered. They both looked up at the boom. Then, in that instant, the clouds broke, and the rain poured down. She raised her face to it, cooling all the fires.
“All this time?”
She nodded. She looked at Mohan. He was shaking his head and laughing. The world felt so slick, as though it had washed over and out of her: time, the organs weighted with hunger, the memory of a slippery hand, holding yogurt rice and banana to her starved lips. Finally the handle of the bathroom door turned. She smiled, suddenly shy, as if she and Mohan were two lovers, come upon each other in a grove, in a garden, under summer showers.
“Not much longer,” she said.
Acknowledgments
My gratitude to
:
Amy Einhorn, Caroline Bleeke, Sandra Dijkstra, Elise Capron, Amelia Possanza, Conor Mintzer, Ursula Doyle, Rhiannon Smith, Rick Simonson, Charlie Jane Anders, Nancy Jo Hart, Theresa Schaefer, Nichole Hasbrouck, Sierra Golden, Mad V. Dog, Dena Afrasiabi, Jim Ambrose, Sharon Vinick, Arie Grossman, Elizabeth Colen, Hedgebrook, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Lakshmi and Ramarao Inguva, Sridevi, Venkat, Siriveena, and Sami Nandam, Kamala and Singiresu S. Rao, and the ones who stood with me on the prairie: Abraham Smith, Srinivas Inguva, and Number 194.
My deepest gratitude to:
Barbara and Adam Bad Wound, for the Badlands.
Recommend Girls Burn Brighter for your next book club!
Reading Group Guide available at
www.readinggroupgold.com
ALSO BY SHOBHA RAO
An Unrestored Woman
About the Author
Shobha Rao moved to the United States from India at the age of seven and now lives in San Francisco. She is the winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction, and her short story “Kavitha and Mustafa” was chosen by T. C. Boyle for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories 2015. Her short story collection, An Unrestored Woman, was published in 2016. Girls Burn Brighter is her debut novel.
Visit her online at www.shobharaowrites.com, or sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Indravalli
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Poornima
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Savitha
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Poornima
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Savitha
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Poornima
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Acknowledgments
Also by Shobha Rao
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
GIRLS BURN BRIGHTER. Copyright © 2018 by Shobha Rao. All rights reserved. For information, address Flatiron Books, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.flatironbooks.com
Cover design by Keith Hayes
Cover photography © Weerachai Khamfu / Shutterstock.com
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-07425-6 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-07426-3 (ebook)
eISBN 978125074263
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First Edition: March 2018
