When they slept in it, sheer white draperies enveloped them, like mosquito netting. Neither one of them had ever left America—in fact, before now they had never left Chicago. But they imagined what it must have been like in Sri Lanka, the mosquitoes buzzing around the curtains, the world shut out of their small white enclosure.
It would have been practical to keep the bedding simple: barren, dark. Instead, the drapes enclosed many soft pillows, a lush duvet, and cotton sheets in the pale colors Savitha loved: mint and ivory and ice blue. The sheets were washed daily, replaced as needed. New sores sometimes developed on her body during the night. Thayalan did all of their laundry, the sheets as well as their T-shirts, jeans, socks. Savitha did what dishes there were, took out the trash, and tried not to think about the soiled sheets.
She asked him to tie her to the carved bedposts, with beautiful lengths of sari fabric: rose pink, sea green, gold embroidered. Thayalan had no desire to hurt her, but he made love to his wife that way, bound, with his hands tight around her thin wrists. He bit her neck, her breasts and nipples. He dug his strong fingers into her flat buttocks, hard, until Savitha was finally wet for him, open and arching. Thayalan closed his eyes as he sank into his wife; he imagined that he was touching her gently, feather-light.
THE FIRST NIGHT OUT OF CHICAGO, THEY STAYED IN A MOTEL NOT far from the city and had sex for the second time, his second time ever. They celebrated their escape the next morning with greasy sausage biscuits and drove ten hours west. That second night, Thayalan woke in the dark. His body was curled around hers, spooned, his arm wrapped tight around her shoulders. His hand was cradling hers, nestled between her small breasts, sticky and wet. Thayalan almost pulled away, forced himself to hold still instead. Savitha had woken already, had lain there in the dark, aching, waiting for him to wake. When she realized that he wasn’t going to pull away, wasn’t going to run screaming into the night, she started to relax.
Savitha told him everything then, the long history of sores, of wounds opening on her body, slowly healing, only to open again. She told Thayalan everything she knew, everything she guessed, everything she believed. It wasn’t much. There were mysteries in her family, secrets that went unspoken. Maybe if Savitha had stayed, had been a good girl and married a boy they chose for her, maybe the aunties would have revealed all. That was how it was supposed to go—girls were kept innocent until they married, or at least everyone agreed to keep up the pretense that they were. It was only after marriage that the women spoke freely, pulled out all the dirty laundry, discussed it over the plates of steaming rice, the endless curries.
Savitha hadn’t been willing to take that route, hadn’t been capable of it. She had never been interested in innocence, or pretense.
BY THANKSGIVING, THEY HAD TIRED OF TAKEOUT FOOD. THAYALAN bought a cookbook, started teaching himself to cook. He didn’t attempt curries. They contented themselves with simple American dishes. Spaghetti and sauce, hamburgers, mashed potatoes—all with extra crushed red pepper sprinkled on top. Savitha helped with the chopping, but didn’t understand how Thayalan could take so much pleasure in preparing food. The tasks seemed dull and repetitive to her, but he claimed he enjoyed watching the meal come together from so many small parts.
Savitha enjoyed watching her husband move, the muscles of his arms flexing as he lifted pots or poured cream into a bowl. The curve of his back as he bent to taste a sauce, hot from the pan. She got into the habit of sitting at the kitchen table watching him stir and sauté, her mouth wet. Savitha asked him, Is it ready yet? Thayalan said, Soon, soon. Sometimes he paused in his cooking to bend over, spoon in hand, and kiss his wife. Savitha kissed back, eagerly, her hands coming up to cup his face, pulling him to her until, laughing, he pulled away, turned back to the pot, saying gently, Later—do you want me to burn down the house?
She ate everything he prepared, asked for more. Thayalan learned to make other dishes—rich cream sauces, roast beef, chicken pot pies. They didn’t try to work while eating those meals. They sat across from each other and talked instead. Talked about family, work, the future. The sores had been appearing less frequently; a week or more would go by without an incident. Savitha had moved on instinct, running away, bringing him here, hadn’t known if it would help. But recently, she had started imagining a future.
After eating those heavy dinners, she felt satiated, bloated. After one such meal, Savitha announced abruptly that she was going to go for a run. She had no appropriate shoes, but Thayalan didn’t try to stop her, too startled by the decision. She was out the door before he could protest, running barefoot in the chill of evening, running along the streets where they had walked together. She ran all the way to the campanile and stopped there, gasping, feeling small knives piercing her chest. Her stomach churned and her legs seemed about to dissolve—but Savitha felt good. Felt strong.
The next morning, she joined a gym and started lifting weights.
HER FATHER HAD DIED IN A CAR ACCIDENT BEFORE SHE WAS BORN. Her mother raised two daughters alone, with an overflow of wet kisses and too-tight embraces. Not entirely alone, of course—Savitha’s horde of aunts had come and gone without warning or apology. The uncles had hovered in the background somewhere, drinking sweet milky coffee on the porch, talking Tamil politics in low voices.
Her mother had talked and talked and talked, had always been willing to talk of everything, except her dead husband. Once, when Savitha was twelve, she had asked her mother yet again about the father who had died before she was born. Tell me a story about Appa. Her mother had ignored her, stirring a large bowl of cake batter with a heavy wooden spoon. Savitha asked again, louder, and Lakshmi turned, angry, the spoon in her hand coming down heavy against the side of Savitha’s head, leaving wet batter stuck to her daughter’s hair. Be quiet! Lakshmi said, and turned back to her bowl, stirring the batter once again with the same wooden spoon. It was the only time Savitha could remember her mother hitting her. She didn’t ask about her father again.
Her aunts mentioned him, occasionally, in the midst of a flood of other talk. Savitha stood in the hallway outside the dining room, pressed up against the wall for hours, listening. The aunties talked about folks back home, cousins and second cousins caught up in the fighting. Houses that had burned down in the bombings. They sat over their meal, over a table full of curries, rice, noodles, uppuma, and talked about the shocking scarcities of sugar, of rice, back home. Soldiers on the beaches, on the roads—narrow escapes. Her relatives talked more about what was going on in Sri Lanka, a land Savitha had never seen, than they did about their own lives here, in America. They were obsessed with history.
Savitha couldn’t understand why they cared so. Her skin was brown, but none of the white boys had ever seemed to notice or care. When Tim’s hands had moved on her body, it was just him and her, in their own private world. Nothing else had mattered.
THAYALAN GAVE HIS WIFE BOOKS THAT CHRISTMAS. THE WINTER rains had started—three months of Berkeley rain, not unlike monsoon season on the island, but gentler. He gave her History of Sri Lanka, and Sri Lanka in Change and Crisis. He promised more, if she liked these. Savitha resisted them at first, ignored them, played computer games instead. But eventually she picked one up, started reading.
Ancient stories of kings and wars, along with chapters and chapters on irrigation. An island surrounded by salt water good only for fishing. Water had been terribly important—even in the current conflict, the politicians invoked the ancient king whose chief accomplishment had been to build the great freshwater tanks, the irrigation channels. Savitha imagined streams of cool water, sluicing across her body, washing away the blood and healing the bruises. She finished the books, asked for more.
It had grown too windy for sailing, too cold for midnight walks. Savitha still went to the gym, had even started taking dance classes there. Beginner modern, beginner jazz. She delighted in the growing strength in her limbs, the slow gain in precision, control. When she spun in a pirouette, Savitha felt as if she w
ere flying. But she grew tired quickly, and then the books soothed her body’s aches. Savitha nestled beneath the white drifting canopies, a small figure in the pale sheets of their carved mahogany bed; she read compulsively.
As the winter progressed, she started reading Tamil newspapers too, in translation; Savitha couldn’t actually read Tamil, or speak it, or understand more than a few common words. The translated stories were compelling. Web pages by militant Tamil groups told horror stories of Tamil girls being raped by Sinhalese soldiers. Savitha lingered over these stories, closed her eyes, tried to imagine the scenes. She had never been raped, had never had a man do anything to her she hadn’t asked for. No one, other than her mother with that single strike, had ever treated Savitha roughly at all.
Reading the stories made her own pain easier to bear. Though it seemed like it should be the other way around.
BEFORE SAVITHA HAD BEEN BORN, A RELATIVE HAD COME TO JOIN them—her second cousin Kamala, adopted by her aunt Kili. Kamala was sent to them by her parents, sixteen years old, sent across the ocean against her will. Savitha remembered her, a slender woman, who would sometimes play running games with her, chasing Savitha through the rooms of her father’s house. Kamala played, but didn’t laugh—she always seemed angry. She had moved away again, disappeared, when Savitha was still a little girl. When Savitha was older, the aunties would occasionally comment on her resemblance to Kamala—How alike they are! But Savitha couldn’t see the resemblance. She had done nothing with her life, and Kamala had been a soldier in the war. In that war, girls fought too.
Young men and women now needed green cards, were being shipped off to India in a hurry so they wouldn’t join the Tigers, wouldn’t leave school to learn to shoot and kill in the jungle. The aunts discussed young women in America that the boys might marry. They even occasionally mentioned Savitha—but it was too soon for that, too soon even to talk about it. College first, of course, for both the girls. Let the poor fatherless children get a good education, be able to support themselves.
Savitha’s grandparents had both gotten advanced degrees; all of her aunts had finished college, and most had gone further. Savitha’s mother had been the only one of the girls not to go to college directly from high school. She had married young instead, an arranged marriage, and unfortunately to a drunkard. Savitha had learned that much about her father; he had been an alcoholic—sometimes cleaning up for a year or more, but inevitably going back to the bottle. Neriya Aunty, whose husband had killed himself, said more than once that it was God’s will and God’s blessing that had taken Lakshmi’s husband away, though she never elaborated on why. The conversations that mentioned him always switched tracks abruptly, shifted away, elsewhere.
IN FEBRUARY, SAVITHA CALLED HER MOTHER. THEIR CONVERSATION was brief—Savitha was firm about saying good-bye after fifteen minutes and putting down the phone. But it was pleasant nonetheless.
So, you’re cooking?
Thayalan is. But I’m eating.
Good, good.
And I’ve started studying dance.
Bharata Natyam? Your grandmother was quite a dancer as a young girl, you know. If she hadn’t gone away to school, she might have become famous.
No, no—I’ve been studying American dance. Just beginner stuff. I didn’t know she ever danced.
She was really something—or so she said. You should try Bharata Natyam; it is so beautiful. You would be good at it, rasathi. I never studied myself, and I’ve always regretted it.
I’ll think about it, Amma. No promises, though.
There were possibilities in that conversation.
THERE WAS MORE TO HER FATHER’S STORY, SAVITHA KNEW. WHEN she was growing up, there was always something unsaid, something that hovered in the air around her. Leilani Aunty in particular always watched her and her sister, too carefully. Her mother often smothered her against her large breasts, sometimes bursting into tears for no reason. And when Neriya Aunty finally found out what Savitha had been doing with the white boys, what she had been doing for years—when she confronted Savitha and her mother in the kitchen, Lakshmi said it wasn’t true, couldn’t possibly be true. She turned away, turned back to the stove, stirring the onions too hard, so they flew out of the pan and spattered hot oil across the stove, across her bare arms. She’d screeched then, dropped the spoon and ran to the sink to run cold water over what would later become many small circles, a host of scars. That conversation was effectively derailed, and if she ever again discussed Savitha or her daughter’s sex life with her sisters, she didn’t do it where Savitha could hear.
Lakshmi had always been good at keeping silent on the important matters.
SPRING CAME TO BERKELEY, AND THAYALAN TOOK TO LEAVING SMALL carved gifts for her beside the computer. His single flowers grew into garlands, gardens. The miniature animal faces now had bodies attached. He got better and better, and sometimes, Savitha couldn’t help smiling at the lovely curves of the petals, even laughed at the silly monkey faces. Thayalan started talking about making chairs, tables, sofas. They could have an entire forest of furniture, a carved wilderness within their four walls.
It scared her when he talked like this. If she allowed it, they would be doing more than simply existing; they would start putting down roots, trying for something better than a minimum of pain. Savitha didn’t know if it was safe, what he was offering. But she didn’t want to tell him no. She was stronger now, and she wanted that dream. Though sometimes, Savitha couldn’t help wondering—if she weren’t in pain, would Thayalan still find her beautiful? She had shaped herself around the memory, the endurance, the anticipation of pain. She didn’t know who she would be without it.
Sometimes they drove down the coast, to Half Moon Bay, and went sailing on the ocean itself. In the coolness of evening with the sun going down, Savitha always urged Thayalan to go out, go further and further west. Further than was safe. She was terrified of the deep water but couldn’t help herself. She kept urging him to go out, out, out, to where the waves would rise up and overwhelm them, where they would drown in the unknown waters. Thayalan always went only as far as he thought safe, and then stopped and turned for shore. Savitha knew that no matter how much he loved her, there was a point beyond which she couldn’t push him, a point where he would simply stop. His love was not entirely blind. It was the reason she chose him—not because Thayalan was her cousin, familiar. But because he wouldn’t let her throw herself off the boat, into the salt sea. If he lost interest, walked away, she wasn’t sure she would survive it.
THAYALAN KNEW THAT HE WOULD NEVER LOSE INTEREST—HE FOUND his cousin, his wife, endlessly fascinating. Savitha thrilled him, led him closer to the edge than he would have ever dared to venture on his own. What he would never tell her was how often he was tempted to go further, to just follow her blindly, right off the world’s edge.
Often, it was a very close thing.
SINCE HER OWN FAMILY HAD REFUSED TO DISCUSS HER FATHER, Savitha had tried writing to her father’s parents, not long after she turned fourteen. She sent a long, polite letter to her grandparents and received no response for weeks. Finally a letter arrived, a single sheet with a few brief lines from her grandmother, saying only that her husband would prefer that they not be in touch with their son’s family. Savitha had heard that her father had, for some unknown reason, been cut off by his family, but somehow, she hadn’t expected that they would rebuff her as well. She burned her grandmother’s letter and stopped trying to eavesdrop on the aunties. Whatever her family’s secrets were, they were too good at protecting themselves. Savitha wasn’t going to hurt herself any longer trying to fight through to them.
A few days later, she found Thayalan’s letter in her locker.
THAYALAN BEGAN TALKING ABOUT TAKING A TRIP IN THE SUMMER, OF going to Sri Lanka. It shouldn’t be too risky, as they were both American citizens—not completely safe, but if they stayed in the south, safe enough. Thayalan had a longing to see the massive stone carvings at Sigiriya, a desire to run
his fingers along their curves and angles. Savitha was afraid that the trip might disrupt the fragile equilibrium she had gained in the last year, might bring sores back to the surface; she was afraid that her skin would erupt, explode. Savitha wanted to stop, to freeze them here, in this bearable space. But at the same time, her curiosity had reawakened. If the immediate past was closed to her, perhaps the further past was not.
She had relatives in Sri Lanka—many on her mother’s side, of course, but some on her father’s side as well. Her grandparents had brothers and sisters. Savitha knew the name of at least one of her great-aunts, Mangai, whom she believed was still alive. Her father’s father was Sundar, who didn’t speak to their family, but Sundar’s sister, Mangai—perhaps she might. Savitha could write to her, could visit. Maybe Mangai would tell her about her father. And whether or not she was willing, or even could—Savitha had a newfound longing to see the land where the kings once reigned, to trace the paths of the old irrigation canals, where the fresh sweet water fertilized the parched fields. Perhaps Savitha would study there. Perhaps she would learn to dance.
The newspapers made it clear—even in the middle of a war, children were being born there, life was going on. Without sugar, sometimes without even rice—going on anyway, despite the grief and the pain. Sometimes, the blood on the sheets was only from a bridal night. Sometimes, there was celebration, there was pleasure, there was joy.
Epilogue
Monsoon Day
Colombo, 2002
SHE COMES HOME, ROWING THE BOAT WITH STRONG ARMS OVER THE BREAKWATER, JUMPING OUT TO DRAG IT UP ONTO THE SHORE. Mangai was once a curiosity, and beggar children gathered to laugh, to point, to stare at this strange woman in her widow’s white, this old woman who went out alone to the sea, every day, in her battered fishing boat. But familiarity breeds comfort as well as contempt, and they have long ago grown used to her, this strangeness, this madwoman. They have heard her story from their sisters and brothers, their parents, and now no one bothers to tell it. They leave her alone, for the most part. They let her fish.
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