This Innocent Corner

by Peggy Herring

  I curse war for what it has done to all of us. Loss and injury. All in the name of the pompous notions of liberty, independence, and security. Settling things. As if war ensures any of that. As if combat has no consequences other than the ones we seek. I contemplate my part in these wounds. All the time I thought I was not part of the war; I was not involved. Such delusions. As if having the best of intentions is always enough. As if doing the right thing is so obvious. As if involvement is something one can choose. I know its face now, its jaws. It is a hungry animal, devouring first those who claim to be above it all.

  I roll over, exhale, and stroke further out to sea.

  Hasan and the others got what they wanted, didn’t they? The right to manage their own affairs. Dignity. Freedom. But then, there are the ghosts – ghosts that wander the rice paddies at night, trace the rivers with feet that leave no prints in the sand, cling to the silty, shifting chars. The living ghosts are worse – doomed to eternal anguish even two generations later, driven by fantasies of revenge, finding collaborators in every corner of the country.

  The darkness flows, and what life remains in motion is being lulled into sleep. I list my own wars. With arrogance and domination. Injustice and violence. With Hasan, the American government. The Chowdhury’s rigid social rules. With death’s inept sense of timing. And with my own daughter. Those are only the major ones. There have been many more skirmishes. More than thirty years of wars, and what have I to show for all that bloodshed?

  The casualties of my war are still being counted. Relationships have fallen, some only injured, others mortally wounded. While violence, brutality, bungled foreign policy-making, social conventions that stifle, early and accidental deaths continue. And so do longings – longings seared into the heart, irrefutable and never satisfied. I have gained nothing.

  Loss is one constant in these wars. The other? Me.

  I know one trick in the water, taught by my father when I was only six. How to sink. Once more, I plunge. Trace an arc, until I am completely submerged. Head down, I release air. It bubbles up along my cheeks, my ears. I imagine the trail of it leading to the surface. It knows only one way to go. Not me. I kick, and push myself further down.

  Not deep enough, not yet, Roo. Dad always told me I could go even further if I wanted. I push air out – what is residual in the third of the lung humans supposedly never use – and with my arms and legs, dive even deeper. My hand hits something. A rope of kelp. I sense the bottom near. I pull myself all the way down to the kelp’s root.

  The world’s best breath holders clock in just under nine minutes. They’re relaxed, meditative – aware of and trusting the mammalian dive reflex. It slows their breathing, their heart rate, too. Their bodies divert blood away from their extremities. These adaptations, nearly forgotten, mysteriously resurface in water, putting to rest any questions about our origins. Most people can manage a minute or two. How long have I been? Thirty seconds? Forty? I have much further to go. I summon the reflex; demand it conquer my urge to surface.

  Graham went down too, but not with this resistance. His body accelerated effortlessly. God I miss him. God I will never get over him.

  The sea bottom is sludgy. But I expected stones, like the beach. I am startled. Thrown off track. The flow of my concentration flickers for an instant. Then a disobedient nostril – or perhaps it is my diaphragm tightening to a different impulse – disobeys the dive reflex. Opportunistic water fills the hole. I release the kelp and choke. This is not the dive reflex. This is a survival reflex – and I cannot stop my body from wanting to breathe any longer.

  I fill with, and am in danger of becoming water. I must rise. But I have no air left to buoy me. I thrash. But the kelp has metamorphosed into a jungle of ropes that wrap around my ankles, or is it my wrists, my waist, my neck? Then I forget where up is. I open my eyes, thinking I will see light. But there is none. And my eyes become another opening into which water floods.

  Graham, Graham, I am coming to you. All the years since you left, I have longed for this, prayed for it, and now the moment is here. Where are you? Come out of the murk.

  My mouth opens – voluntarily or involuntarily, no part of my brain can figure it out – I scream no. I am not ready for you Graham. Not yet. Water rushes in, just as into the murkiness flows a stunning alabaster cliff face that I have seen once before and I know one thing for certain. I am dying. In one minute, I will be dead.

  *

  On the beach, a girl’s voice calls. Luna. I open my eyes to a spinning universe, and when I am able to roll on my side, water trickles out my mouth onto the barnacle-covered rocks. I become conscious of their sharpness cutting into my back.

  How did I get here? A lifeguard? A passing boat? Dolphins? Mermaids? Who or what was my rescuer?

  Foolishly I sit up and look around. But I am alone. Not a soul in sight. There is no boat. No lifebuoy. No ambulance on the road beside the beach.

  No one rescued me.

  If no one rescued me, then I must have brought myself back to land.

  I dress slowly and wonder how my lost, fragile, death-seeking body managed this miracle without the participation of my memory.

  *

  Alongside the road back to Fee’s, the trees exhibit an extraordinary density I know has always been there, but that has eluded me up until now. When I reach her yard, I stop. Something needs to settle before I step back into my world, something unearthly restored to its netherworld.

  Fee’s door opens with a flood of light. Fee’s body, hands on hips, throws the shadow of a giant that nearly touches me. “Why are you doing lurking out there like a bandit? Come in before some militant from the Neighbourhood Block Watch calls the police.”

  “Give me a minute, would you?” She closes the door.

  I have stuck to my convictions like a barnacle to rock. But all this time, my war has been with myself, on my own turf, dragging innocent bystanders into it, assigning them the ammunition to take me down.

  “Shit,” I say. I kick the earth and the steel toe of my boot digs up a divot. I fall to the ground and nudge it back into the hole with my hands.

  I find the fit. Which is more than I can say about the hostilities that have preoccupied much of my adult life.

  Hasan’s parting words come back. Sometimes drastic measures are called for. Drastic measures like surrender. Only I’m afraid my war’s gone on for so long now, I haven’t got the foggiest idea how to surrender. Or to whom.

  *

  The pick-up rattles down the lane. I hear the familiar clunks, with my new kitchen window open. The rain is misty, pours through a golden light emerging from the patch of clear sky in the distance. My schoolhouse still smells of new carpet, paint and other chemicals, and the cool air flooding through the open windows is a necessity. It will take a few more months of living here for these smells to disappear completely, but when they do, I will remember them fondly. How they signify the freshness of nearly everything in my home. How it feels to be starting anew.

  Mac stops the truck and he and Fee open the creaky doors. “Morning,” Mac calls. “Got a delivery here for a Robin Rowe.”

  “You’ve come to the right place,” I call.

  I orchestrate the movement of boxes from beneath the truck tarps to my home. We scoot through the rain, so it takes barely five minutes. There are two for the bathroom, five or six for the kitchen area. My suitcases go beside my bed. For now, Amma’s box goes on the mattress. I don’t want it misplaced in the confusion.

  I make a pot of tea for us on my new, used stove. While the water boils, I walk from window to door, from sink to fridge. Breaking trails in the new carpet. Automatically I avoid the places on the floor where the sub-floor was rotted through. I must learn the new shape and feel of my home.

  Mac and Fee remain on the small, covered front stoop. He arrived back in town yesterday – alone. Fee and I have yet to debrief on
the subject that hangs heavy between them, but there’s no sign of the pierced nurse. I note their voices are friendly enough. A familiar ease fills their space.

  The rain taps softly overhead. Its whisper on the shingles is the only voice inside. I scan the rafters, look for telltale globules of water forming, hanging precariously. About to fall on my new carpet. Surely I created at least one significant leak when I shingled the roof. But I see nothing up there except rafters. Perhaps the roof is good, though as Ed said, no roof is really done until it’s been tested by a storm. I will have to wait for the windy, rainy weeks of winter before I know for certain.

  A second truck approaches. I know the sound of that engine, too. It’s Ed and a load of furniture – the things I bought second-hand in Ganges. Cast-offs from another family, or families, perfectly worn and used just enough, their dents and scratches an antidote to my unsullied floor and ceiling. There is a bookshelf, a table and chairs. An old-fashioned bed with an iron headboard and a heavy, squeaky set of springs. And a sofa. Big enough for me to lie down on. It’s worn at the arms, but no springs stick up through the upholstery.

  All this luxury can’t be good for a person. But I dismiss this austere thought. Too much thinking can also do its share of harm.

  This is Ed’s day off. He is helping me today as Fee and Mac are. As a friend.

  I go outside when Ed pulls up. I confess to being excited to see him. Fee and Mac know this, judging by the way they remain seated, cast significant glances in my direction, then whisper and giggle when I head toward the truck. Ed and I have not had our coffee yet, such as it is. We’ve not set the date. But there is a softness to the way he looks at me now. And though you’d have to drag me across Montana behind a pair of wild buffalo before I’d admit it, there’s a fondness to the way I watch him, too. I am almost always relieved now when Andy’s not around because I don’t have to try so hard to hide it.

  This morning, contrary as always, I try not to smile. But it’s pointless.

  “Where’s Lawrence?” I ask. His son’s been here three days – I’ve met him twice already. They’ve been spending most of their time walking – beaches, trails, little-used roads – and talking. His son is guarded, but not unfriendly, and apparently thinking of staying a few extra days. “Lots to work out,” Ed says. “The jury’s still deliberating.” “You’ll get there,” I say. I try hard not to think about Surinder.

  Ed climbs out and slams the door behind him. “He’s asleep. I didn’t wake him.” He walks around to the back of the truck. “Good day for moving.”

  “Isn’t it?” We reach for the tailgate at the same time, and I feel foolish and insanely happy when my dirty hand brushes his gnarly one. “Oh. Sorry.”

  “No problem.” Is his hand shaking? I can’t believe it. We are like teenagers. I can’t believe this is happening. I glance at Fee and Mac, but have to look away once I see how hard they are trying to conceal their laughter.

  Then I slip on my conductor hat once again. The bookshelf goes over there, against the wall, its empty shelves crying to be filled. The table and chairs are moved into the house, close to the old pot-bellied stove, where perhaps it will be warmer to sit. I can’t decide exactly what to do with the sofa, so they just set it down and wait while I try to picture where it will look best. When I turn back, Ed, Fee and Mac, damp hair, ruddy cheeks, rain drops staining the shoulders of their shirts, are sitting on it, side by side, looking expectant. They’re like an audience at the turning point in a drama that’s spilled off the stage. I laugh. This companionship fills me up. “Leave it for now. I can’t make up my mind.”

  “One more piece,” Ed says. He and Mac go outdoors. I whirl around. What’s left? Everything is here, isn’t it? I run through the inventory – this was it, I am sure, but then Fee’s at the front door. “Careful of the top, boys,” she says, “okay, all clear. Watch the fingers on your right hand, Ed Malone.”

  A huge, wooden wardrobe is being squeezed into my house.

  “Hey. That’s not mine,” I protest.

  “It is now,” Ed grunts as he sets his end on the ground. Thud. Mac bends and gently sets his end down. Thud. The piece comes to rest, imposes itself on the room like a rainforest tree.

  It’s dark and beautiful, the kind of wardrobe a child might like, weaving fantasies and dreams from its deep recesses and secret compartments. I push on it, half afraid it’s going to tip. But it sits solidly, sure of its place on my floor. I open a door. The smell of old wood rushes out – and takes me all the way back to Amma’s, and the almirah I used all year at the Chowdhurys.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “It’s a housewarming gift. For you. Remember Saturna? That artist did a barter. I didn’t mind, it looks better on the books. But what am I gonna do with a locker like this?”

  My dupattas, the two sets of shalwar kameez Amma had made for me, my pink saree. All those clothes I brought from Lansing and then abandoned. The Michigan U. sweatshirt that eventually grew mouldy in the monsoon and had to be thrown away. The flannel pyjamas that the moths devoured because I refused to use the stinky mothballs Amma offered. In my mind, I flick along the bar of hangers and remember.

  “Thanks, but it’s too much. I can’t take this.”

  “You’ll be doing me a favour.”

  I glance at Fee. She about to burst. Mac’s scratching the back of his head like it’s a long-neglected duty, studying the floor like it’s the most interesting thing he’s seen in weeks.

  “Lawrence might like it. Didn’t you ask him?”

  “Lawrence is twenty-one. He lives out of a backpack.”

  I look inside again, as if the answer might rest there. But I’m really just biding my time. Breathing in the old woody scent that is almost my Dhaka. Trying to find the right words, understand the circles of my existence, the loops that bring me back to where I was before, only to find, much to my surprise, I now know it differently.

  I close the door, the click of the latch a quiet tak. I have exactly what needs to be put in here – at least temporarily. I fetch a tea towel from a kitchen drawer and wipe the rain off the grainy surface. The wood is smooth and still warm from wherever it was.

  “Put it there,” I say when I have finished. “By the window. And thanks.”

  Ed says, “You’re welcome.”

  The rain continues into the evening. I shine a flashlight up into the rafters every ten minutes looking for a leak. In between, I unpack, heat up the dinner Fee brought over earlier, eat, make my bed, and finally wash in the bathroom. There’s no mirror yet. I don’t have to have everything in place before I sleep in my house again.

  When I turn off the light, I listen for the drip, but there is still none. The roof continues to hold. I go to sleep in my innocent little corner, no longer the place it once was, but that’s for the best. Tonight, I am alone but not lonely, filled with a longing but not for the impossible, expectant but not anxious, a little troubled but not afraid to let it be for tonight. The unresolved parts of my life will be there when I awake. Like old friends. I look forward to seeing them in the clear light of day.

  Epilogue

  The cool ocean wind should temper the hot July sun, but today, it’s not powerful enough. My skin burns and crackles. I’m queued up on a scorching sidewalk, and for the past forty-five minutes, I’ve been waiting to get into a shed that masks as a ferry terminal. There’s a problem with the immigration desk, the computers are down, they’ve overbooked – rumours fly up and down the line. “Oh really?” I say to each one, then forget it. I refuse to repeat the hearsay. It will just make me more anxious, and I really need to focus now, to turn within myself and extract whatever strength I possess if I am to actually get on this boat.

  The harbour reeks today. Fuel overpowers the scent of salt. But all I smell is fear. Pungent, messy panic wafts up from my every pore, hangs like a cloud over me, so heavy I am certain others notice
.

  I glance at my watch. We are scheduled to leave in twenty minutes, though that seems impossible. I won’t even have checked in by then. There is time for me to back out. There’s no way Surinder would even have the slightest idea that I had failed. No one except Ed, Fee and Mac will know of my cowardice.

  But I do not leave the line. Not yet. For I understand this much now: staying hasn’t protected me. Venturing out at least offers possibilities.

  I try to visualize the ceremony. I’ll be dressed improperly. My shoes will be all wrong. But Fee only laughed when I told her, then said my work boots, if I chose to wear them, would be good enough, and heaven help the child who rejects a parent come to beg forgiveness based on footwear.

  The theatre will have walls of a colour so plain as to defy description. It will be unnaturally lit, there’ll be a glittery chandelier hanging from the ceiling, an observer to good taste from on high.

  I will enter like it is my business. I will be proprietorial. I will sit behind the row reserved for VIPs, in a chair whose upholstered seat gives, and shake out my hair, which almost reaches the nape of my neck now that I’ve decided to let it grow out. I will force myself to forget about my shoes, ignore the whispers of the people who think a hand-made tie-dyed peasant blouse is inappropriate attire. I will remember what Ed said on our last date. As much as anybody, I have a place in that room. I have a responsibility to be there.

  There’s movement in the line. A few people applaud. One woman bellows, “Hallelujah.” A strident man grumbles, “Incompetent ninnies – it’s about time,” in a voice that we are all meant to hear. Again, I am reminded of yet another reason for staying away from the country of my birth. The national sport, sanctimonious demand-making, is hard to stomach. But I don’t duck out of the queue. I move ahead with the others. I have promised myself that for this one trip, I will look the other way and swallow my distaste. When the line comes to a stop again, I am mercifully under an awning. It’s a bit cooler in the shade.