Disobedient Girl: A Novel

by Ru Freeman

  There were many children near the fountain, and some, like her girls, clad as they were, stood out from the others. There was that air of goodness about them, the inner quiet that stemmed from the things they never had to miss in their lives, like three meals a day and school supplies and places to go to on holidays. Yes, an air of charity and calm well-being; but even she could see the most minuscule breach in the way Madhavi tugged her younger sister’s hand just a little too firmly, in the slightly more frequent irritations that seemed to plague Madhayanthi. Latha tilted her head a little, remembering that same resentfully concerned feel of an older sibling’s hand on her own. But when had that happened? Or where? There was only Leelakka to think of, and she had treated her with such gentleness. Latha could not have annoyed her if she had devoted herself to the task, and Leelakka would never have touched her roughly. Who, then, had held her hand that way?

  Latha shook her head free from that faint thread of memory and sighed. It was nonsense, the stuff she made up to convince herself that she knew how to raise children. There was only this, these children, almost hers, hers, really. She should do more to keep them from the new miseries that had come to call with that one furious airing of all grievances between the Vithanages and the Pereras. So brief and vicious, as if both sides had known this would be their one chance. Yes, she should keep the kitchen free from penance and unhappiness for her girls. And then she remembered what she had meant to add. She looked back and was glad to see Ajith still standing by the stone foundation of the pillared monument to the country’s independence.

  “Poddak inna, Madhavi baba. Watch nangi for a little. I will go and come soon.” She crossed the short distance to Ajith and spoke without preamble.

  “You be good to Thara Madam,” she said, “because she doesn’t know whose baby I had, and I won’t tell her unless I have to,” and she stared at him until he dropped his gaze. “Do you understand?”

  He looked up at her. “I understand. My fate is in your hands.” He made a gesture with his right hand as he said that, waving his fist and opening it out, palm upward like he was begging for something.

  “Her happiness is in yours. This time at least, don’t forget that.”

  He didn’t even have the decency to look ashamed. All he said was “You are in charge,” and there was a trace of bitterness in his voice.

  “Only if I have to be,” she said. “If you make her unhappy one time, just one time, I won’t hesitate.”

  “I wonder what that would do to her relationship with you,” he said, and there was a cruel gleam in his eyes. “I wonder where you would go. Back to the estates?”

  “I won’t hesitate,” she repeated and returned to the girls. Again, she watched them, but what she saw was herself and Thara, not that much older than Madhavi, five years old, perhaps, and playing at this same fountain, together. They had been brought here only once or twice; the Vithanages thought the whole place was a little vulgar—all those half-dressed joggers and couples fondling each other under umbrellas—except when it was used for state funerals for a national leader called N. M. Perera, whom she did not know but was told had been important enough to lie there in state when he died. But on those rare occasions, she remembered that she and Thara had stretched their arms out to each other, across the falling, colored water, and that they had been so young that they had had to reach out of their legs to touch each other, getting their dresses wet in the process. Their fingers had caressed and grasped, and they’d held on because, if they didn’t, they had known, something bad would happen. And the bad they had imagined then was falling in, or falling away, nothing more.

  Despite her having brought them about, even Latha was taken aback by how swiftly the new arrangements took root and held. There was a new script, and all three of them got comfortable with it as if they had always known that this was how things would go for them: Thara and Ajith as old lovers turned new, and Latha as the go-between, communicating times, dates, and places to Ajith, and delays, postponements, and cancellations to Thara. During that month of December, the two met so frequently that Latha was afraid they would be seen by some mutual acquaintance, or a relative, or a friend of a neighbor, and all would be lost. But it was Christmas season, and everybody was caught up in the madness of shiny things and love cake sold by the pound even on street corners in Nugegoda and Wellawatte, where Latha sometimes went with Thara. Nobody had time for idle people watching, and Thara and Ajith reaped the fruit of their negligence. They met at bus stops and parks and under umbrellas on the Mount Lavinia beach, at the last remaining cafés inside the formerly impressive plaza, and once even on a train, which they rode all along the seashore somewhere toward the South and back between the time Gehan left for work and the hour of his return.

  “We went to Matara on the train,” Thara said, coming back with hair sticky from the salt spray and sweat of public transport, but flushed with pride as if she had conquered some new territory, which, in a way, Latha thought, she had. “We didn’t even get down to the water when we got there, even though the beaches looked so nice. We decided to go back another time. To spend the day.”

  “When?” Latha asked, alarmed at the thought of lying to Gehan about an overnight absence.

  “I don’t know when, but someday. I think if we got up early and went then we could be back before dark, or maybe even a little later. You can say I went to dinner with someone; Mahaththaya will believe anything you tell him about me,” Thara said, laughing at her gullible husband, which made Latha regret her culpability in getting Thara started down this road in the first place. Now, the more she lied to Gehan, the more she sympathized with him, seeing not the set of his features against any intimacy with her but rather his solid loyalty to Thara, his wife.

  After the first rush, though, and to Latha’s relief, they settled into a calmer routine of meeting once a week, sometimes only once every two weeks. Either way, Thara was blissfully happy, and though Latha hoped that Thara’s newfound elation would infect her with some deeper maternal feeling toward her children, so far, nearly a year later, there had been no evidence of that. Thara’s happiness was invested only in herself, and so, while Madhavi was at the Montessori school, Latha’s job became to carry Madhayanthi around and accompany Thara to Janet’s beauty salon for manicures and pedicures and threading her eyebrows, and on shopping trips to Daffy’s and NeXt and the glass monstrosity called the Palace of Fashion, which had no dressing rooms and only male attendants, who in appearance and size and demeanor (not to mention their dull green uniforms), looked like an army of emaciated, heads-cast-down robots. Everybody in town shopped there, including foreigners, because of the prices. It was the great equalizer. It seemed only fitting, therefore, that they would meet Gehan’s mother there, for the first time since the fight. “Āchchi!” Madhayanthi said, taking her fingers out of her mouth to point excitedly at Mrs. Perera, who, dressed in a dark gray and blue sari, was taking the stairs up to the floor they were on, stopping every third step to catch her breath.

  Mrs. Perera looked up and caught sight of them. Her mouth pursed and she looked away, holding on to the railing and not moving any farther.

  “Āchcheee!” Madhayanthi yelled and tried to leap out of Latha’s arms.

  “Chooti Baba, you will fall! Here, I’ll put you down, and we can go and see Āchchi,” Latha said, not knowing what else to do in such a public place. She put Madhayanthi down, and the child toddled a little ways, still holding on to Latha’s fingers.

  “We’re not going down to that Padhu woman,” Thara said.

  Latha did not think that the Pereras were Padhu, or Karā or Berava or any other caste that she had heard mentioned with this same bite by Mrs. Vithanage and now Thara, only that Mrs. Perera had spat at her, and dishonored Mr. Vithanage, and that these two things made her a worthless human being. Thara abandoned Latha. One second she was next to her, the next she was absorbed by the crowds and sucked into the Women’s Dresses section. Latha would have liked to follow, but
Madhayanthi was tugging at her hand.

  “Come, Latha! Come!” she was saying, her eyes on the grandmother she and her sister were taken to see, religiously, every other Saturday by her father (which meant, usually, that Thara was free to see Ajith and Latha free to drink lime juice with the houseboy). She clung to and pulled at Latha’s fingers.

  What could Latha do? She picked up the child and started walking down the steps, protecting Madhayanthi from the elbows and bags and umbrellas of the other shoppers. Mrs. Perera was waiting.

  “Come here, darling!” she said, opening her arms to Madhayanthi, who leaped out of Latha’s arms and into the soft folds of the older woman. Latha felt considerably irritated by this. Madhavi would never have done such a thing, she said to herself; she had second sight. She knew what was what, that little girl. Not wanting to participate in their affection-filled meeting, she held on to the railing and looked around at the shoppers while Mrs. Perera cooed and cuddled Madhayanthi.

  From where she stood on the curve of the wide spiral staircase, Latha could see hundreds of black heads, dotted here and there by colored ones from abroad. Red, yellow, light brown, even painted heads. One looked up at her: a brown-haired man with dark eyes; his smile was so wide she was sure it was meant for someone he was well acquainted with. She looked around her, then glanced back at the man. He was still smiling, and this time he waved. Mrs. Perera must have been watching because she muttered something about Rodi whores who were just the type to lick the arses of the Suddhas, and about mistresses who allowed their servants to dress like the lady of the house. Out of spite, Latha let an initial no-teeth smile blossom into her chin-dimpling, three-cornered grin at the man. Gehan had once commented upon that smile, and how endearing it was to him. But she had been just a girl then, and thought her smile was controlled by him, not naturally hers. Now, she knew better. She smiled, and then she waved, surreptitiously, with her arms still at her sides, so Mrs. Perera wouldn’t see it. The man laughed and gestured for her to come downstairs. No, she said, with her head, but smiled again.

  Latha looked away from him to see if Mrs. Perera had noticed. She had not. She continued to talk to Madhayanthi at her side. When she looked down again, Latha was disappointed to see that the man had disappeared. It had given her a quick thrill, that look of appreciation, even from a foreign man. Of course other men looked at her, but that was different. Those men belonged to the group Mrs. Vithanage disparagingly referred to as the Servant Class. They were hired help, drivers, day laborers, vendors at the butcher shops and markets where she went to buy provisions with the houseboy. Gehan had been her sole exception; the only equal, in her mind, who had paid her any sustained attention, who had known her for more than what she did for room and board. And Ajith, she didn’t know what it was that he had told himself, but over the years she had a story to fit that year of madness, one that excused him as best as she could, if for no other reason than that Thara saw something in him to love: he had wanted to know a woman sexually and she had been vengeful enough to be that girl. The simple truth was that they had both been too young to think about each other.

  Now, Gehan’s friends—never Gehan—would look her up and down when she poured water for them, served them a cup of tea, or cleared the dishes, but those looks never rose to the level of true admiration. They were the disappointed if-only variety; if only she wasn’t a mere servant. The admiring kind was what she had once got from Gehan and, fleeting though it might have been, from the foreigner. She straightened up, happy that she had stuck to her guns when it came to her attire. No wonder the foreigner had given wing to his approval of her, of her motherhood. She would never dress like a servant.

  She could spot servants from a mile away. There were several right here: they wore shabby clothes that were clearly hand-me-downs or, if they were new, in a cut that simply aped a current style but did not suit them: ankle-grazing dresses on short, stubby women, tight printed T-shirts on chesty ones in colors not picked up by their skirts; they wore Bata slippers or sandals that did not match their clothing; their hair was bunched together and frizzy; they didn’t smell fresh like she did; there was no mistaking the servility in their manner. Latha smiled to herself, feeling particularly lovely in her calf-length denim skirt, the pin-tucked white cotton blouse, her brown sandals. She felt the soft edges of her hair hanging long and loose down her back, and readjusted the coconut-shell hair grip with its matching pin, which kept the front from falling over her face. She touched her earlobes. She looked regally around at the crowds, thinking of Leelakka, how she had promised her that she would shine again when she was back in the city. Somewhere in the future there was a life beyond all this for her. She was absolutely certain of that.

  Mrs. Perera broke into her daydream.

  “Let’s go and find this poor child’s mother. God knows what she is up to.”

  “Thara Madam is shopping for clothes in the women’s section. I can take Chooti Baba to her,” Latha said, knowing that Thara had no intention of making this pleasant for anybody, even in the presence of her daughter.

  Mrs. Perera snorted. “Clothes? What for? In my day we stopped shopping for clothes after we got married. After that we only shopped for our husbands and children and the servants at New Year. But what can you expect from her type…” And she blew another audible gust of air out of her nose.

  “Thara Madam has very important functions to go to,” Latha said. “She has to be properly dressed for these things, that’s why.”

  “Functions? How can she have functions now that she doesn’t even work?” Mrs. Perera said. All her comments were to the air on either side of Latha’s head, not directly to her. It was as though Latha was a visible apparition sent to save her from the embarrassment of talking loudly to herself.

  “Thara Madam is a secretary now at the Old Girls’ Club at her school, and she is an important lady at the Colombo Tennis Club and at the Lionel Theater, too,” Latha told her, trying to make those activities sound as dignified as she could. She wished she knew what duties were attached to such memberships. She made a mental note to ask Thara when they got back in the car.

  Mrs. Perera sniffed. “Darling, go with the woman to Amma, okay?” “Āchchi come,” Madhayanthi said, taking one hand in each of hers, Latha’s in her left, Mrs. Perera’s in her right. Latha was glad that Madhayanthi’s vocabulary presented slim pickings for the child; even these monosyllabic words created such emotional quagmires for the adults in her life. “Āchchi has to go, darling. I have to get a nice present for Seeya. You go with the woman,” Mrs. Perera said and tried to move down the staircase. Madhayanthi’s mouth turned down. Latha panicked. Unlike Madhavi, who had inherited Gehan’s equanimity and careful grace, or those aspects that he had possessed as a teenage boy who had befriended and loved a servant girl, Madhayanthi was fully equipped with Thara’s sense of entitlement, as well as the wiles to ensure that things turned out her way.

  “Chooti Baba,” Latha said, her voice syrupy, all treacle, singsong, up and down, the whole works, “āchchi has to go and buy you a big teddy bear from downstairs so next time when you go to visit her you’ll have a surprise, so we must let her go now, okay?”

  Madhayanthi, her head hanging down, bit her finger, then let her eyelids open to reveal a mischievous delight. “Baba go Latha,” she said, letting go of Mrs. Perera.

  Latha felt glad at the look on Mrs. Perera’s face. It was written, clear as day: drama had been averted, as had confrontations, thus thwarting what might have been a solid victory for Mrs. Perera, and in a public place; not only that but now she had to buy a big, no, beeeg! teddy bear. It was perfect. Latha hid her smile as she walked up the stairway, glad also to be walking up, and therefore turning her rear to Mrs. Perera, who was, as she had expected, standing there, waiting for them to be out of sight before continuing her own journey up to the third or fourth floor. Latha crossed her feet in front of her as she climbed like she had seen women do on television ads, ensuring the widest sway to he
r bottom.

  Latha hoped that Thara had not strayed too far. It was madness trying to locate anybody in the chaos of the Palace. The only hope was that kindred spirits would find themselves drawn to the same fare. She found herself heading toward the pretty sets of underwear vulgarly displayed for all to see on a wall of racks. There were several men idling within sight. Perverts. She tried to examine the various bras without them being able to derive any pleasure from seeing which ones drew her attention. Madhayanthi stood beside her and pulled at the panties that were at her level.

  The colors! If she could, Latha thought, she would exchange all her underwear for the ones on these walls; but the prices, even on sale at a bargain shop like this, were still too high for her. Seventy-five rupees for a pair of panties, 125 for a bra, or 175 for a set. Perhaps she could afford one this time. She chewed on her lip and debated between a deep purple set and a pale blue one. The purple had a plunging center and hooked in the middle, a version of the bra that she had never experienced, though she had observed on a number of occasions how that model accentuated Thara’s cleavage. The pale blue made her feel virginal and holy, and she couldn’t put her finger on that until she remembered Leelakka and her chaste life conducted entirely robed in a shade of that color. Of course, having remembered that, she could hardly buy the blue; she’d feel like she was committing some sort of sibling-related sacrilege. She extracted the purple set in a size that seemed about right—at the Palace the only recourse was to duck behind a friend or preferably a group of friends when it came to trying on things like bras—and turned to go on with her search.

  There behind her was the man with the dark brown hair who had waved at her.

  “Hello,” he said, before she could even wonder about his presence. “I came looking for you.”

  How bold. And not on the fringes, like those other men with their trousers held up with huge belted buckles over their small waists, but in blue jeans and an untucked cotton shirt right inside the women’s underwear section! Still, he seemed entirely unaffected by the wares that surrounded them on all sides. He could have been at a fruit stand, or a Sunday market with lots of leafy greens that he might say were good for one’s health. He looked like the healthy sort. She imagined that he might drink thambili each morning and have ambul plantains and definitely did not smoke. Yet there had to be a vice in which he indulged himself; every man did. All this passed through Latha’s head, along with the fact that his eyes, though dark, were not black as she’d assumed, but a blue so deep they looked like the Gentian Violet that turned purple over cuts and bruises.