by Ru Freeman
But he is still alive, lying there, his back turned against me. The warm-cool air of the ocean lifts the voile curtain from the window and sucks it back again: a disclosure and concealment to the outside world of our parting. I bought him that green sarong for a long-ago New Year. Strange that he still wears it. He’s forgotten, I suppose, the things that aren’t worth remembering in the face of things that cannot be forgiven.
My husband stirs in his sleep, restless. It is not me that he cannot forgive, it is himself; the way he suffers by comparison with a man who could make me love him in life and also in death, by comparison with me, with my better caste, my better upbringing, my dignity, my where I’m from far better than his. In a last moment of grace, with gratitude to the gods for the life I am setting out to build for my children, I cover him against a sudden chill with the sheet off my side. Then I turn my back on him.
Outside, I go ahead of my children, carrying both bags. Along the way, I consider this road I have walked almost every day since I arrived here in Matara as a bride. The shops, with their walls covered with peeling white paint and covered again with years of advertisements; there are still a few old posters from a recent visit to this area by the prime minister, sticking out from underneath the new ones advertising the first English film that is showing at the town cinema. Low to the ground, I notice one complete poster in the blue and white of her ruling party. Were I not raised to be better, I would spit as I walk by the face on that poster, on the woman on whom Siri and his friends had pinned their hopes. So many times I have tried to be grateful for the semblances of equality, for ration cards and news of nationalization and independence and self-sufficiency and the larger wealth of our island, but all that cannot erase the other picture in my mind, the way a woman like her, a mother, a widow, presided over destruction the way she did. How she withstood news of the massacres that took place that year, of the numbers of the dead that rose and rose like there would be no end, all in her name.
I am not sorry that Siri was gone before that April insurrection four years ago, only days before our Sinhala and Tamil New Year, when his daughter was born. I am only sorry that he did not live to see her, that he was not there beside me in an almost empty hospital with only a skeletal staff as people stayed home to fast and tend to their hearths and cook oil cakes and milk rice, to prepare their oldest relatives to feed the younger among them with their own fingers and to bless them, to light their fireworks at the auspicious times and to pray for peace. He was not there when I pushed her out of my body and reached over to touch her wet head as she lay there, screaming the first and sweetest song of survival. He was not there to hear that, or to share in my delight over the treasure the gods had allowed me to keep. And because of all that, too, I am not sorry to leave this place.
As soon as we reach the bus stop at the old Dutch fort, I see her: Siri’s mother. She stands under the arch with its painted lions and swords and crown as she has done every day since he was killed. She is dressed in a clean white sari, her hair is combed, and she clutches her handbag to her side. I am surprised to see her so early in the morning, the sun barely risen.
“Soon he’ll be here,” she says to me, smiling happily.
“On which bus is he coming?” I ask her, as I always do, not willing even now to disabuse her of her insanity, to say to her, like the cruel do, that her son is dead.
“Maybe today, maybe tomorrow,” she says. “It doesn’t matter.”
“You can come back tomorrow,” I say. She nods, but then she seems to notice who we are and frowns. She stares at my children. Once or twice she has spoken to me as if she knows; she has asked about my health, or uttered those words we Buddhists cling to at such times, using them to keep ourselves from succumbing to the blows that life deals us: What is to be done? I must have sinned in a past life. This is how it is.
Last year, as I was returning from the dispensary, Loku Putha and Loku Duwa beside me, my little one in my arms, her legs dangling down my side, my own back arched with the effort of holding her up, Siri’s mother had stopped me and asked to hold her. I had given my daughter to her, to her unknown grandmother, knowing that she knew. Right then, she knew who it was she held. She had stroked my Chooti Duwa’s bandaged head, swaying from side to side, her eyes closed, hushing her though my daughter was not crying. When she gave her back to me, she asked me to promise her that I would take good care of the little one, that I would keep her close to me, promise her not to lose my daughter. Then she had looked down the road, consigning herself back to the life that had been left to her, and asked me if I thought Siri would arrive that day.
Now she looks and looks at my children, at our bags, at me. “You are leaving,” she says. “You are taking them all away.”
I say nothing. Perhaps she will wait for me, too, at this same place, wait in vain for her dead son, for the one he loved, for his daughter.
“Yes,” she says, sighing. “I don’t think he’s coming today. I’ll come back tomorrow.” I watch her walk away, and her body gives off the scent of grief and of the curse of having endured the loss of a child. I cannot bear to watch her go, so I turn away.
“Will that āchchi come back tomorrow looking for Siri Māma?” Loku Duwa asks. Even she knows of this ritual, young though she is.
“She always comes here,” my son says. “I feel sorry for her.”
“Let’s hurry. We need to catch our train,” I tell them, not wanting to dwell on the things I cannot change, not wanting to feel too much for her, to feel anything that would prevent me from leaving. I walk the rest of the way without looking to either side, lest some familiarity trip me and cause us to tarry too long. I do not want to miss our train.
The station is crowded when we get there. I recognize a few people from the village, and I wonder if they will tell him. Why worry about that? By the time they do, it won’t matter anyway. We’ll be too far gone for him to touch us. But I don’t like the crowds; they make me feel like my plans are weak and ordinary. Loku Putha must have noticed my frown because he reassures me.
“It’s a Poya weekend, Amma,” he says. “That’s why there are so many people here. But don’t worry. I’ll get you a seat.”
“Oh,” I say, relieved, remembering the visit to our temple in the light of the full moon just the night before. “I forgot. Could you go and get the tickets?” I unwrap the edge of my sari and take out two of our ten-rupee notes; six of those and a few coins are all I have managed to hide from my husband without arousing his suspicion in preparation for this trip, and almost all of it will have to be spent on the trains. I give the notes to my son, and he folds them into his palm so quickly it frightens me. It’s the swift, stealthy movement of the drug dealers and pimps who frequent the beaches near the tourist hotels. I grab him by his arm. “Where did you learn to hide money like that?”
“Like what?” He grins, boyish and pleased. “Like this?” And he does it again.
“Yes.”
“Don’t worry, Amma, I’m just hiding it so the pickpockets won’t try to take it from me.” His hair sticks up in various directions, and I smooth it down. His hair has always been uncooperative, just like the boy himself.
“There are no pickpockets here. You can worry about them when we change trains in Colombo. Just go and get the tickets and be quick about it. The train will be here any minute.”
He runs away from me, and I wish I could follow him, just to make sure that he knows where to go, that he won’t leave me stranded with his two sisters and our bags and nothing left to do but return home. I bite my lower lip and try to find him over the heads of strangers. I want to trust him, to be confident that he can look after himself, that he will come back, but I can’t. He is too young for that. Too young to be sent away for errands like this in such busy places.
“Amma, I like this sari,” my Loku Duwa says, pressing her face into my waist and distracting me. “It’s soft and clean.” Instantly, I forget my son’s youth, consider instead my older daughter
’s age: seven, almost eight. I stroke her head and kiss it.
“And yellow and white,” Chooti Duwa adds, joining her sister and rubbing her face on my sari. My little one’s eyes shine with excitement. She has never ridden a train, only counted carriages as they whipped by the shore and practiced balancing on the looping tracks that carried other people to adventures somewhere that required speedy travel. Her sister, too, is smiling.
“Amma, where are we going?” Loku Duwa asks, her fingers caressing the fabric of my sari, judging by my expression that it is safe, now, to ask me such a question.
“We’re going to my mother’s sister’s house in the hills,” I say, proud of the words: my mother’s sister’s house. They sound rooted and safe.
“Where are the hills?” she persists.
“Up-country, where the tea is grown.”
“But you never took us there before,” my little one says, her voice a perfect illustration of the innocence of the question. “How do you know it’s there?”
“Oh, the hills are always there, baba, just like the sea is always there. It’s people who move about.”
“Like us,” she says. She grins at her older sister and takes her hand. “Like us, Akki. We are moving to the hills.”
“We’re visiting,” Loku Duwa says, looking up at me.
I return her gaze. She looks good, my older girl, in her pale yellow dress with the embroidery on the white collar that I had to pay extra to have done. Apart from the money, that had cost me another beating, but it was worth the price: with her hair combed back into the two plaits I put in and tied up in matching ribbons before we left, she looks clean, from a good family.
“We’re visiting, aren’t we, Amma?” she says.
“No, we’re moving,” I say, taking her chin in my palm, bracing for the reproach in her eyes, for the protests, but they don’t come. Instead she shuffles her feet and tucks a stray hair behind her ear.
“Do you want me to hold the bag?” she asks me at last.
“No, just keep Nangi close to you. I should go and see what Aiyya is doing.”
But I don’t have to. When I turn around, I see him coming toward us, the tickets in hand. Just in time. The train howls around the bend, long and insistent, then comes into view, the smoke spewing from its chimney, the wheels turning slow and slower till it comes to a looming halt with a final belch: mphghhww…hiss…hiss…
We join the surge of people. My son picks up the baby, and she holds on with arms tight around his neck. I take Loku Duwa’s hand. We are absorbed by the machine, and it leaves the station before we can even find seats, while we are still figuring out how to stand in its juddering belly.
Latha
She knew why she did it. She did it to show them.
“What do you need your money for? It’s safer in the bank.” That was what Mrs. Vithanage had said when she’d asked for her money. She had worked it out in her head: after ten years of paid work with them (she didn’t get paid those first two years, when she was four and five and still considered a child, even by Mrs. Vithanage), and with the New Year and Christmas bonuses that she had been told she was given, she should have eleven thousand and seven hundred rupees in the bank.
“I want to buy some sandals, madam,” she said, assuming the position least likely to offend Mrs. Vithanage: looking down at her feet, her hands clasped in front of her.
It was Sunday, and Mrs. Vithanage was sitting on the front veranda, having already read both the weekend papers, the Silumina and the Sunday Observer, and measured out the rice and dhal and dried spices for Soma so she could get started on cooking lunch. She was waiting for the fishmonger to come with the daily catch. She wore her morning look: authoritative yet calm, the weight of household matters heavy on her mind, but more than equal to the task.
“Are your slippers broken?” she asked, glancing at Latha, then turning away.
“No.” But they were old and her feet were too big for them, and in any case, it wasn’t about what she had but about what she wanted and should be allowed to buy with her own money! Besides, hadn’t she waited for a whole year and a half until Thara’s latest heeled sandals, with the looped clasps on the sides, had long been discarded, for there to be no chance of Mrs. Vithanage mistaking her request for a claim to equality? Even for those kinds of sandals to be out of style? Well, all right, she did have her eye on the ones that were in style now, but still.
“Then don’t waste your money.” Mrs. Vithanage even sounded motherly, the tone she used on Thara when she wanted unreasonable things.
Latha continued to stand, wondering if perhaps Thara could be enlisted on her behalf. Probably not; Thara barely had time for her these days, with the O/L exams looming on her horizon. She saw Ajith with her school friends now, at cricket matches and rugger matches and parties that started at 10:00 PM where they served something called punch and for which Thara left and from which she returned in good-girl dresses but to which she actually wore short red skirts and tight black tops that showed off her new breasts; all of which Latha had heard about from the otherwise-faithful driver whose sworn-to-secrecy lips could be so easily undone by her presence and conversation as he reveled in being able to give her something she truly wanted: knowledge of that after-hours world.
Frankly, Latha was tired of yearning for the things she felt should be hers, like the soap she still helped herself to, or the teaspoons of mango jam she hid on her tongue, scooped as she carried the bottle from the fridge to the breakfast table, or the milk powder she stole for her tea. She hated plain tea. She hated plain anything! And why shouldn’t she? She reasoned that she had acquired tastes, and with those tastes, longings, particularly for the things that were paraded so relentlessly before her day after day on the body of her friend, Thara, the most difficult to resist being shoes. Everything else she could, by careful dressing, by pinning and tucking of hand-me-downs, contrive to present as her own, made-especially-for-her attire. But real brand-new footwear was different: it was what set the blessed apart from the unspared. Her own feet, no matter how clean, how fragranced with Lux, how softened with cooking oil and polished with the stone she kept for that purpose by the well, were no match for the feet that came clad in new shoes. It didn’t matter that nobody else seemed to notice. What was important was that she did. She always looked at feet when she walked; she knew how to tell character from the way people presented their feet, wealth from the cut of their shoes.
Besides, she didn’t want to go back to the cobbler who lived his life, it seemed, crouched into a corner between the People’s Bank and the General Photo place with its glass windows full of black-and-white photographs of radiant brides. How could she? The last time she went there, her old slippers in hand, asking him to paste the sole back again, he had looked sorry for her. He had called her duwa and tried to give her some coins for sweets. Yes, she had gone to him all her life, year after year, holding one old discarded slipper or another, asking for a stitch here, a bit of gum there, a clasp maybe. They were almost friends. But no matter how kind he had always been to her, how amused she had been by his mouth with its few teeth and more betel juice, to think that a man like that, all hunched and as leathery as his wares, his tiny old backside planted in a bundle of cloth, who charged people cents—cents!—to fix their footwear, would pity her? It was too much. No, she would not go back there. From now on, she would buy her own shoes. Brand-new. In style. Today. But how?
Mr. Vithanage came into the room just as she was about to give up hope that the sandal war could be waged and won right then. He had developed some kind of chronic back pain, which, instead of making him curmudgeonly, had only made him kinder; it was as though he believed that meeting the injustice the world had dealt him with an excess of goodwill would somehow relieve him of his pain. Now he eased himself into the chair on the other side of the floor-to-ceiling doors that Latha had to open and dust each morning before leaving for school, the doors to the sitting room that was surrounded by the wraparound v
eranda. They looked like benign sentries: Mrs. Vithanage in her pastel yellow cotton sari, Mr. Vithanage in his worn brown sarong and white shirt. Odd how his clothes always looked old even when they were brand-new. He was the kind of person who had been born looking old and largely unthreatening.
Latha picked up the Sunday newspaper and gave it to him, her left palm holding the wrist of her right hand to signify the correct amount of decorous deference.
“I would like to buy some sandals, sir,” she said, desperate enough to risk raising her eyes to Mr. Vithanage.
“Will you stop talking about the sandals? Didn’t I just tell you there was no need for sandals? What is the matter with you?” Mrs. Vithanage rarely had to raise her voice to reprimand any of her servants; the tilt of her head and the slant of her eyes were quite sufficient to achieve the desired effect. But this time, the first time, really, she was loud. She sounded a little bit like Thara did when things did not go her way.
“Let the girl have sandals. What’s wrong with that?” Mr. Vithanage said, but it was hopeless. He said it so mildly, disinterestedly.
“Go and tell Soma to make tea for the master,” Mrs. Vithanage said, and that was that. There were no possible openings for further requests. And the very fact that she continued talking, that she knew Latha could hear her, effectively ended the argument.
