Where the Lotus Flowers Grow

by MK Schiller

  “It’s the story of four young girls who find solace in each other.”

  “Sounds interesting,” I said, not taking my eyes off her. “Perhaps I should read it.”

  Amira turned to Mary. “Have you read it?”

  “I did. You wrote it well.” Mary adjusted her bracelet, something she often did when she was nervous, as if the thin, cheap metal shielded her from the world. “It’s not the kind of book you’d be interested in, Liam.”

  “Perhaps one day, you’ll recommend it to him,” Amira muttered under her breath.

  “Dessert,” Divya said, standing quickly. She hit Amira’s chair. “Come help me.”

  I saw it then. The same burned-flesh tattoo Mary had, but instead of her back, it was on Divya’s arm. I was sure Amira had one, too. I realized this dinner party wasn’t the best idea. They needed time together to catch up and decompress and whatever else without all the interlopers hovering around them, including me.

  “Why don’t the two of you come to the hotel tomorrow?” I suggested to Amira and Divya. “The hotel spa is rated the best in Mumbai. I can set something up for the three of you.”

  Amira smiled for a brief second before she frowned again. “Thank you, but Divya’s house is over an hour from mine. The Wilshire is in the center of the city. It will take at least two hours, maybe three depending on traffic, to get there,” Amira said. “It’s not something I can manage on a day trip.”

  “Then stay the night. I can arrange a room for the three of you. It would give you a chance to properly catch up. I can send a car for you in the morning.”

  Amira and Divya discussed it. Mary stared at me with such gratitude I looked away. The truth was, I wanted to do this for her, but I didn’t at the same time. As selfish as it sounded, giving up a whole day with Mary was a huge sacrifice for me.

  * * * *

  “Thank you,” she said as we headed back to the hotel. “You made plans for us tomorrow, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, but nothing that can’t be canceled. It’s really no big deal.”

  “It is. It’s a very big…deal.” She said the word slowly, as if she wasn’t sure it fit. Mary turned to the window. A steady stream of rain belted against the car. “Amira can come off brash, but she’s just protective.”

  I didn’t want to discuss Amira. “I figured that out for myself.”

  “Did you have a good time?”

  “Yes. Who is Hannah?”

  “My sister. She passed away.”

  “That’s where you’ve been going every morning with the book? To visit her grave?”

  “She asked me once to read it to her, but I never did. It doesn’t make sense, but I wanted to atone for it somehow. So I’ve been reading to her every day. It’s silly, no?”

  “Not silly at all. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “This was supposed to be a fun trip.”

  “Mary, I care for you. Whatever you’ve suffered in the past is part of who you are. You don’t have to hide anything from me.”

  She grew quiet, her hand adjusting the cheap bracelet.

  “I don’t think you should read Amira’s book.”

  I sighed, dragging my hands through my hair. “Fine. I won’t.”

  We remained quiet the whole ride back to the hotel. She was lost in tangled thoughts, and I wanted nothing more than to cut through them.

  Trust me, Mary. Lean on me. Let me in.

  When we arrived home, we retired to our nightly rituals. I knew her routine now. She’d wash her face with pear-scented soap. We brushed our teeth. She used my mint mouthwash. She combed through her long silky hair. She usually slept in one of my T-shirts instead of the expensive lingerie the sales girl had picked out for her. Truth be told, I preferred it as well.

  “I have to work for a while. There are some calls I need to make. It’s daytime in the States.”

  “Of course.”

  She sat on the bed, reading a book while I worked. I glanced over at her a few times. It didn’t take a genius to figure out she wasn’t reading. I could see her working through something. It was in the way she curled a strand of hair around her finger. The rigid way she sat. How she bit her lower lip.

  “Ready for bed?” I asked when I’d finished my last call.

  “Sure.” She placed the book on the nightstand, the bookmark in the same location as when she’d started.

  I switched off the lights. We lay in silent dark.

  “Are you angry with me, Liam?”

  “Not angry. I understand your need to hide away from the world. I wish you wouldn’t hide from me, love. We both agree there is no future for us.”

  “Yes.” The simple affirmation cut me. Maybe because I wanted her to argue. “We’re from different worlds. We are just two people crossing each other’s paths and finding a little happiness in the short term.”

  “Right. I mean, I have a life in New York. And you…well, you’ll find the place where you truly belong. I have no doubt about it.” I rolled over to her. Stroking her hair, I laid myself bare. “But baby, just because we don’t have a future, doesn’t mean I don’t want all of you in the present. Maybe it’s reckless of me.”

  “It is.”

  “I’ve let you see me…the real me. Even the not-so-attractive parts.”

  “There is nothing unattractive about you, Liam.”

  “I’m certain I was unattractive when I was puking in a bucket.”

  She laughed. “Not even then.”

  I suppose it was easier because we exist here, but not anywhere else. Maybe it would help you to talk about your secrets.”

  “Why is it important to you?”

  “Someone hurt you once. You carry the weight of it. Perhaps it would lift some of that burden to talk about it.”

  She pressed a hand to my shoulder, easing me on my back. She straddled me, her hair falling over us like a canopy. I sat up, unsure if I had the strength to push her away. She kissed my neck. I turned on the light. “Am I just your fuck toy, Mary? Is that what I am?” I took her wrists and held her back. “Answer me, please.”

  “No, Liam.”

  I wanted to wipe off the look of rejection on her face, kiss it away, because the very last thing I was doing was rejecting her. I sighed. “It’s neither here nor there because I made a promise to you. I intend on keeping it. So here we are Miss Costa. You ready to fuck? Isn’t that your preference?”

  “Are you complaining?”

  “Not at all. Your appetite matches mine.”

  Really, this was the part where I would have returned her affection. This was how we communicated best maybe. She still straddled my lap. I could feel her pulse quickening as I held her wrists. I let go. She reached over and turned off the light. Neither of us moved, though. The sounds of our heavy breaths filled the space between us.

  “I’ll tell you what it’s about if you’d like.”

  “What?”

  “Amira’s book.”

  What the hell was this? I was trying to have a real conversation with her, not a book club discussion. “I’m not interested.”

  “It’s based on a true story.”

  “Did you not hear what I said?”

  She pressed her forehead against mine. “I heard everything you said. You need to listen to me now. I’m really good at telling stories. And I want to tell you this one. For God’s sake, Liam, please shut up and let me talk.”

  The rain pelted against the building, a drum sounding some kind of warning. But the time for warnings had passed, hadn’t they?

  “I’m listening.”

  Her voice broke through the steady beats of rain that mingled with late-night Mumbai traffic. “Amira’s book is about four girls who end up in a place with no hope. A place that catered to wealthy men who would pay a premium for well-bred, intelligent girls. They actually had a business model. They posted random photographs of young girls walking to school or shopping. They sent them off into
the world for their clients to peruse like a catalogue. ‘Made to order’ was their motto.” She laughed, cynical and bitter. “When someone was chosen, they plucked them right from their safe lives. One of these girls was supposed to be taking her little sister to a music class. But this girl was selfish. Even though the music lessons were her sister’s favorite activity, she didn’t care. She skipped them, dragging her sister to the movies instead. Of course, her sister would never complain. She had this spirit about her. All she wanted to do was make people happy. Even selfish people.”

  I wasn’t sure if Mary hugged me or I hugged her, but we stayed in each other’s arms. I wanted to offer the right words to comfort her, but Mary wanted to finish the story. She’d asked me to shut up, and I did just that.

  “The show got out much later than she expected. If the stupid girl had done what she was supposed to, her sister would have been at home in bed where she belonged, not walking the streets late at night. They were trying to hail a cab when a van pulled up. A man jumped out and held a rag over the girl’s mouth. She woke up with a horrible headache and no recollection of how she got there. The girl prayed her sister had escaped, but she hadn’t. No one even had to drug her. She came willingly because she didn’t want to leave her older sister’s side. There were other girls there, too, all kidnapped right off the street, drugged, and taken to a huge house far from their homes. The inside of it looked like a king’s castle, but this was no fairy tale. They were stripped of their identities, treated like products. Their flesh was marked with the corporate logo. They had to act out certain scenes, requests from the customer who chose them. Sometimes, the guards were asked to act in the scene as well. Sometimes the actual customer would show up.”

  She blurted out each sentence, as if she’d been trying to get the story out without thinking too much about it. God, I’d asked her to tell me, but now I wanted her to stop. I had suspected, but imagining the truth and hearing it was the difference between seeing the sharpness of a blade and feeling it pierce your skin.

  “How is it possible to get past something like that?”

  “They helped each other. They came up with places where they could go when they didn’t want to be present. The mind is pretty powerful. It lets you escape even when you can’t move. They trained themselves to do that. It helped. That, and the youngest among them, the selfish girl’s sister, still had joy in a place where joy shouldn’t exist. It spread through all the girls.”

  “Stop referring to her as the selfish girl. It wasn’t her fault. The blame isn’t hers to bear.”

  “Part of it is.”

  I held her back. “None of it is, Mary. Not any of it.”

  “Amira would agree with you. She didn’t call the character a selfish girl either.”

  “How long were they there?”

  “A few months. It didn’t seem like enough time to blur the past and erase the future, but that’s what it did. Eventually, they realized that despite how hard their families were looking, no one was going to find them. They formed a plan. Looking back, it shouldn’t have worked. But it did.”

  I swallowed the rage threatening to consume me. Mary didn’t need my rage. She needed my comfort. Still, I couldn’t avoid asking the question, so I blurted it out. “The men who did this? What happened to them?”

  “They were punished with lengthy prison sentences. But during the escape, the girl killed one of them. She took a hot poker they had used to mark her back and beat him with it. She had a fury in her. It was destructive and took root inside her.”

  “He deserved it and a lot worse, too.” God Mary, let me take this hurt from you. Let me carry it off your shoulders. But as much as I wanted to, I knew I couldn’t. “The…the…” I couldn’t use the word customer. “The men who made the requests?”

  “Everything was handled with privacy, hidden behind layers of code and data. These were powerful men. They protected themselves.”

  I wanted them to meet another end. I wanted to be responsible for that end. Maybe she sensed that, because she ran her fingers though my hair.

  “It’s okay, Liam. Don’t waste your time being angry with the monster you can’t see.”

  “Tell me the rest.”

  “That’s the end.”

  “It’s not though, is it?”

  “No. The fourth girl, the one who gave them hope at the darkest times, caught an infection in her lungs from the damp room they were kept in. She died a few months after.”

  “I’m so sorry, Mary.” The rain thundered against the building. I held her closer.

  “With therapy and help from their families, the surviving girls were able to regain their lives. Remarkably, none of them carried any diseases from the experience. Coming back to their normal lives was difficult, but they managed it. It was a miracle in a way. No matter how dark their pasts were, they were able to find a future. To rise clean and free of any of the filth that once surrounded them.”

  She’d buried her head in my chest. I stroked her hair, my thoughts running rampant. “Except for one. She wasn’t free, was she?”

  “Yes, except for one. One of the girls could never get the stain of what happened off her. She blamed herself for her sister’s death. Her father blamed himself for what had happened to both his daughters. When his already broken heart finally gave out, the girl buried him next to his youngest daughter. All she wanted was to lay beside them. She had escaped, but not survived. The other girls, the ones who treated her like a sister, suspected. They found her, still breathing, in a bathtub full of blood. It was too late, though. She was dead inside.”

  “So she ran away to Jaipur and became a maid.”

  Mary nodded. “That’s not in the book, but yes, it’s what happened. Her heart turned black, and she kept everyone at arm’s length. She wanted to be left alone with no memories, no expectations, no obligations. She worked at a hotel for years under a constant cloud of despair of her own making. She swore she’d never speak of it again. Not to anyone. She never let anyone in, not that it mattered. No one ever looks at the maid anyway.” She titled her head at me. “Almost no one.”

  She let out a deep breath, which led to a soft cry. Then the dam broke. I held her, cursing myself for not having the right words and for asking her to return to the very place she’d done everything to avoid. She sobbed for a long time, the emotion too great to be contained.

  “Maybe you lost part of yourself, but you were never dead. You are the bravest person I’ve ever met.”

  In the dim light coming through the window, I saw her flinch. “Liam, it’s just a story. You asked what Amira’s book was about at dinner. I told you the story. I’m really good at telling stories. They used to call me the storyteller because I could take other people’s stories and retell them in my own way. It’s a few chapters in a book. That’s all it is.”

  I could see what she wanted from me. She wanted to tell me and ask me not to acknowledge it at the same time. Because if she did give it to me straight out, she’d invite the darkness back into her life. It would hover between us in every breath and kiss and conversation.

  “Okay, thanks for the synopsis. May I ask one thing?”

  “What?” There was an unmistakable warning in her question.

  “Is the girl happy now? Is she where she wants to be?”

  She exhaled a soft breath. “Yes, she is. Happier than she ever thought she could be. But like I said, this isn’t a fairy tale. She’s not looking for a prince to save her. You understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m really tired, Liam.”

  “Me, too.”

  She crawled off me and slid under the covers. I shifted beside her and held her tight.

  “Hey, Mary,” I whispered after we lay down. She hadn’t fallen asleep. Pale light crept though the windows, followed by the sounds of birds with their crazy squawking.

  “Yes?”

  “I understand about the lotus flower now, and why t
hey are special.”

  I felt her smile against my chest.

  “Finally.”

  “Yeah, finally.”

  Chapter 25

  Mary

  I’d had the most amazing day with Divya and Amira. Liam had made sure we’d received the royal treatment. Today, as we were leaving, he’d asked me if I’d finished the book. I couldn’t hide my regret…not from him. Despite my protests, he insisted we come to the cemetery before leaving for the airport. As I read the final chapters to Hannah, I was thankful for this man beside me, who had shown me such kindness and warmth. When I neared the end of the book, my voice grew thick with emotion. The words came out garbled. How many tears could one person shed?

  “Take your time, Mary.”

  “We’re going to miss our flight.”

  “We’ll catch the next one. There are hundreds of flights from Mumbai to Goa. It’s no problem. Finish it.”

  My hands shook, and the words blurred. “I want to, but I don’t think I can.” I closed the book.

  “May I?” he asked.

  I didn’t know what he meant, but he placed his hands on the book to steady it. I relinquished it to him.

  He flipped to the page I had left off. Clearing his throat, he said, “Hannah, I’m not as good at this as your sister, but I’ll do my best.” Liam continued where I’d stopped, his rich baritone voice perfectly matched for Dickens’s prose. He kept his arm around me the whole time. When he finished, I realized I’d never grieved for Hannah or Papa. “Thank you.”

  “Welcome.” He looked at the gravestones. “Tell me about them, love.”

  “We should go, no?”

  He shook his head. “We have time.”

  I told him about Papa and his love of books. About how he made up little games for Hannah and me at the dinner table. Opening my wallet, I pointed to the one picture I had of the three of us. Hannah wore a yellow frock with tiny butterflies around the collar, Papaji was in his sweater vest, and I wore my green plaid dress, my hair in two plaits. Liam sat behind me as I told him about how much Hannah had loved her silly dress. How she wanted to wear it every single day. Then I talked about Hannah. Really talked about her.