Disobedient Girl: A Novel

by Ru Freeman

  “Daniel? This is Latha. I can come and stay in the night,” she told him. She felt dangerous and worldly, and as if she, like Gehan, was staying true to the life that they were being forced to live by finding a way to make it tolerable. But though Daniel seemed thoroughly pleased, she didn’t feel good inside, because however well he treated her, and he did treat her well, he was not Gehan. He was like Ajith, only foreign.

  Biso

  I quiet the fleeting sense of shame I feel for having lied about my status. It is easy to do; now that he believes my husband is dead, the policeman is particularly considerate of me. And why shouldn’t I exploit that? This is the first time I have had that experience with someone in a uniform like his, with that kind of power, and I am alone with three children, a smoldering train blocking my way backward or forward. Secure in the knowledge of preferential treatment, I walk away from the crowd, trying to make myself inconspicuous so as not to rouse their ire any further than I already have. There is a noisy disarray to their voices, now that hierarchies have to be negotiated.

  I gather the children close to me in a footprint of shade offered by a small bush scrambling out of the earth over our heads. Removed from the breezes that blow through open windows in a moving train, and with our subsequent agitations, we have all grown sweaty and uncomfortable. The heat from the burning train is unbearable. I fan the children with the end of my sari, but they are too wilted to benefit from my efforts. Their hairlines are damp with perspiration, and, with their eyes squinting beneath childlike frowns against the sun and their mouths pushing up toward their noses with fatigue, they are the picture of discontent. Our feet are dusty, and we look bedraggled. I gaze up at the sky and wonder if there is any hope of rain before I realize that, but for cleanliness and refreshment, rain would be an additional inconvenience in our present state. I wish that I could recover our bags, for if I could, I would be able to take out a sari and construct some sort of shade for the children.

  “Raji, my Loku Putha, could you look after your sisters while I go and get our bags?” I wait for his nod before I set off toward the train.

  “Where are you going?” the policeman asks when I pass him.

  “I’m going to try to find our bags, rālahamy,” I tell him.

  “The bags are still being examined. There may be more bombs. They won’t let you touch them. Wait until the examination is over, and then you can get your bags.”

  “When do you think it will be over, sir?”

  He sighs in exasperation. “Do you see that?” He gestures toward the smoking train, the chaos from which we are shielded if only by distance. “They are still trying to put the fire out and get the injured people to the hospital. Be grateful that you are not lying there with the dead and wounded.”

  I feel chastened. I walk quietly to the back of the crowd, which has now swelled to accommodate the people from around here who have joined us to listen in and report back to their neighbors. I squeeze my way past them, imagining the story percolating through the hills and being handed away like a sin with each fresh cup of tea. The children are waiting for me.

  “Mata choo barai,” my little one says when I reach them. Indeed, clutching herself between her legs, she personifies her need, the urine heavy inside her.

  The policeman is still writing down the names and addresses of the other people; he has a long way to go. We have time. I take her by the hand and beckon to the older children to follow. We walk for a few minutes down the tracks until there’s a bend. I stop at a clearing on a gradual slope beside the tracks and flatten the grass with my foot by stamping on it several times. Then I help her to squat. Watching her, listening to the gush of urine, both siblings decide they need to relieve themselves too. They make a game of squatting, one behind the other, and attempt to create a rivulet. Finishing first, Chooti Duwa picks a leaf and uses the stem to divert their collective output in a jagged path down to the tracks. They shout and laugh together as they follow their stream until it is absorbed into the red earth and disappears. They pick a few more leaves and mark the place where it ran dry, memorializing the spot like a grave. Finally I, too, squat at a little distance and pee while Loku Duwa keeps watch. Even my urine feels hot as it comes out.

  But it is as if the walking has revived them; their steps are light as they go back to where the others are, balancing on the smooth metal of the tracks, the littlest behind her brother, Loku Duwa alone. After a few steps I join this age-old game, my arms spread out, teetering now to one side, now to the other as I try not to fall off. What is it about us human beings that compels us to do this? The children look back at me and giggle. I smile, sheepishly. A few of the people hear the children’s voices and glance back at us and then at one another. Let them think what they wish. I am free.

  As we draw nearer, I hear fragments of conversation.

  “…probably dead by now…”

  “…in the basket…”

  “…two others…nearby…”

  I realize what those looks meant: they were not judging me; they were simply asking me to hurry, wordlessly telling me that I was missing the story. I glance back at the children. They are still playing but safe. They chase one another up and down the tracks; my Raji tries to knock his sisters off balance by rushing up, tickling them, making them laugh.

  “Don’t go beyond the bend!” I shout, then turn my attention back to the crowd. A newcomer from the area tells me that the police believe the bomb was planted in the basket of an old man selling buns and rolls. “The old man was still alive when they pulled him out,” he says, “but he was severely burned, along with two others with whom he had been talking.”

  “How do they know?” I ask, drawing the fall of my sari over my upper body to settle the hairs that have stood on end from my wrists to my upper arms. I could have been standing by that basket when it exploded. What would have happened to my children then?

  “They can’t be sure, but they found bits of the charred basket closest to the explosion,” the young man says. “There were no other bags or boxes or anything else that could have contained a bomb to be seen, they say. They have a bomb expert there. That’s how they know.”

  “And the old man told them he had left the basket to give some food to somebody,” says another.

  “He hadn’t got back to it when it exploded. He was on his way back, but he stopped to talk to an older couple. They were not near the basket, but they were near enough. They’ve been taken to the hospital.” The white-haired woman who says this clucks her tongue and shakes her head. She wipes her eyes surreptitiously with the side of her index finger, as if afraid to show that she is scared or that she is upset.

  “Did he say to whom he gave the food?” I ask this, trying to sound as if the answer is not important, as if I am merely curious about the details.

  “No, he didn’t say much. Even that part they gathered from the few words he did say. He was nearly unconscious.”

  “Maybe he was lying,” says the young mother, suspicious of the world now that she has something to protect from it.

  “Yes,” agrees the father, taking the baby from her, full of wisdom about the world now that he has contributed to it with a child. “Maybe he was the bomber. Maybe he was a terrorist.”

  “Probably a Tamil,” says someone else nearby.

  I do not cry easily. I cried for days when my mother died. I cried when I heard of my father’s suicide, knowing that there was nobody left to affirm the source of my pride: that long-ago upbringing, a parental blessing for a good life. I cried the first few times my husband beat me. Since then I have found that swallowing that salt water brings me strength. But this journey has tested me. It forced those tears from my body when I saw the dead mother and her children. And now, I feel them rise again. How vile that these people who know nothing, who never spoke to that man, feel they have the right to judge him.

  “He was not a bomber or a terrorist,” I say, my voice trembling despite my effort to keep it steady. “You shou
ld be ashamed of yourselves for saying such things about him.”

  “How do you know?” someone asks me, some man in the crowd, and the voice is dismissive of me. As if I am foolish and ill informed. As if it is presumptuous of me to even speak, let alone have an opinion.

  “How do I know? I know because he came to give some bread to me and my children because they were hungry. It was his goodness that saved him from dying with his basket. He was a poor, old man.”

  The reaction is instantaneous. It is as if I am bathed in some kind of contagious misfortune or have been found to have poisoned a common well. One by one they look at me and back away. I don’t understand at first, and then I do. They blame me. They blame me for the untended basket, for the opportunity for someone to place a bomb among bread rolls covered in plastic. I want to protest, to insist that some karma brought me and that old man together, to save my children from hunger, to save him from death. I want to say that people who plant bombs would find a way to do it no matter what. That perhaps they would be dead now had the bomb been elsewhere. But I realize it is of no use. They blame me. I stare at them, one at a time, and maybe they can feel the curse that I put upon them with my furious eyes; they avert their gaze and clump together. Even the policeman. At least I am not surprised by that.

  I turn to my children. Loku Putha must have heard the commotion, because he has stopped walking and stands, wobbling slightly with one foot on the surface of the track. He has taken his sandals off and wears them on his hands, the toe loops snug between his index and middle fingers. The others have done the same. They are all barefoot. The girls come to a stop behind him. There is no use in lingering here. If we stay, there will only be more of this kind of ignorance and accusations, and nothing will change. By nightfall, when those who are familiar with these parts have left, accepting the generosity of nearby strangers, we will still be here, or worse, at the mercy of the constables at some police station. The solace that I had counted on earlier, that fortitude in the face of shared misfortune, would be gone along with daylight, and what would I do then? No, my first responsibility is to take my children to a safer place, not to clear up misunderstandings or worry about people who want to invite the wrath of the gods with bombs.

  “Come,” I say, walking up to them, “we’re leaving this place.”

  “Where are we going?” Loku Putha asks, still not moving, still on that one foot.

  “We’re going to get to the road and walk home.”

  “All the way to the sea?” Chooti Duwa asks. She takes my hand and traces her own eyebrows with the tip of my index finger. It is one of the tricks I use to soothe her when she is crying, and it touches me, her unconscious request for comfort.

  “No, not there, to the new home,” Loku Duwa tells her and turns to me. “Right?”

  “Yes,” I tell them. I bend down and kiss Chooti Duwa on each closed eye as a payment for letting go of my hand. “But first, wait here. I’m going to try to get our bags.”

  I turn around and walk past the crowd, and this time not even the policeman attempts to stop me. The closer I get the more smoke there is, and I hold the edge of my sari over my nose and mouth, squinting to keep the smoke out of my eyes as best as I can. I see the stack of bags on the side. There are two policemen dressed in bulky armor made of stretchy plastic, going through each bag. The first policeman has equipment strapped over his shoulder and below his hips, large, unwieldy boxes with tubes attached to a long pole. At the end of the pole are two circles, one inside the other. He brushes the rings over and along the sides of each bag. As he moves on to the next bag, the second policeman opens the one behind and goes through the belongings inside. I am amazed at how many bags and boxes there are; there were so few passengers left on the train by the time we had to get off. I search for our bags and see that they are among those with which they have finished.

  “Sir,” I say, approaching the two policemen, “please, sir, could I take my bags?”

  They look at me, then at each other, unsure of what to do.

  “We’re not done yet,” the first policeman says.

  “Did that other police rālahamy tell you to come here?” the second one asks.

  “Please, sir, I am a widow traveling alone with my three children, and we have a long way to go to get home. We are innocent people.”

  “Where are your bags?” the second policeman asks.

  I point to our nylon bag, my mother’s market bag, and my brown handbag. He separates them. Set apart, they look menacing somehow. Even I feel afraid of touching them.

  “You can take them now,” the second policeman says, as I hesitate. “They’re safe. We checked.”

  I shake my head in gratitude. “Thank you, sir. May the blessings of the Buddha be upon you both,” I say.

  The first thing I do is take that piece of paper with the name and phone number out from inside my blouse and put it into my coin purse. Then I put my handbag over my shoulder and pick up the two bags. I walk past the front of the train, past the others, who stare at me and my bags. I can feel their stares on the back of my neck as I continue on down the tracks, the children beside me. I hope I give an impression of resourcefulness. I hope they feel less sure than they were before, less comfortable, less fortunate than I. And though I know it is sinful to wish such things upon fellow human beings, I am beyond being concerned about the checks and balances of karma. From what has transpired in my life, and what I have seen this day, it is a miracle I have not abandoned my faith in prayer altogether. I lift my head even higher, though it is hard to do with the weight of the big bag, into which I put everything that was worth carrying with us.

  “Amma, give me the small bag,” Loku Duwa says.

  “I can help you carry the heavy one,” Loku Putha says. I set it down, and then he and I pick up one handle each. The load feels so much lighter. I take Chooti Duwa’s hand in my free one.

  “Do you know the way, Amma?” Loku Duwa asks, looking up at me, playing with the edge of her collar. I want to take her hand and put it down, to make her stop fiddling like that, dirtying her dress, which is already looking grimy, but I have no free hands left. I sigh instead.

  “Amma knows everything,” the little one says, skipping to keep up with my pace.

  I do not know the way. I know how to walk to the house from the train station in Ohiya, or at least I think I will remember when I get there, but not by road. Yet we cannot possibly walk all the way on the railway tracks. If we can somehow find the road, we can probably ask somebody to help us find the way.

  “Loku Putha, see if there is an easy path to get to the road,” I tell him, after we have walked far enough to put several bends in the tracks behind us. I balance on the rails and watch him, the bags at our feet, the girls, too, with their faces upturned as we wait to see what he might be able to find. I am glad that he has proved to be responsible enough to be trusted alone, young enough to be as sure-footed as he is. I have thought a lot about my children, learned a lot about them during this journey of ours, difficult though it has been. Loku Putha slips a few times as he clambers up the side of the hill, but I am confident that he can make it to the top, and I am proved right when he disappears from view.

  After a few minutes, the girls get tired of watching for him. They wander away to examine the area immediately around us, the foliage, the dried mud. I watch her as Loku Duwa opens each of our bottles and confirms that they are empty, pressing her eye to the opening and then shaking the last drops into her mouth, her head flung back. When I look down, I see that Chooti Duwa is hacking with a stone at the side of a huge, red-brown anthill that seems to grow out of the side of the mountain. It has two uneven round holes. Snakes.

  “Stop that!” I tell her.

  “Why?” she asks, still carving out a picture of some sort on the side of the anthill.

  “Because that’s where snakes live,” I tell her.

  “Can I look inside, Amma? To see if there is a snake?”

  “No! Just ge
t up and come here.”

  She drops her stone reluctantly but continues to squat next to the anthill. I keep watching her to make sure that she doesn’t put her face up to one of the holes or, worse, put her hand down it to see if she can feel a snake. I can tell that she wants to by the way she sits. Her age and lack of experience make her unafraid, of unexplained journeys, of derailments on account of bombs, of snakes. She gives up when she sees that I will not look away. She stands and dusts her palms on the edge of her dress. Red dirt flies off her hands and settles on the dress, and now it is filthy. I sigh. I open my bag and take out the dress that the pregnant girl gave me. I take off the dress Chooti Duwa is wearing, shake it to get rid of the dirt, and stuff it into the bag. I put her in the new white one. It is a little large for her, but at least it is clean, and she looks sweet in it. The only clean one in our group.

  “Amma bought me a new dress!” she tells her older sister in a singsong.

  “It’s not new. Someone gave it to me to give to you,” I say, smoothing the skirt.

  “It is new. It is a new dress for me,” she insists.

  “Promise me that you will never put your hand into an anthill like that,” I say to her, holding her chin in my hand and forcing her to look at me. “Chooti Duwa, promise me. It is not a joke. Snakes are dangerous and many of them are poisonous and you are too small to know the difference.”

  She looks defiant. “Snakes are beautiful.”

  “Where have you seen snakes?”

  “At school, in the teacher’s book.”

  “Snakes in books are beautiful,” I say, stroking the thick hair gathering in waves at the nape of her neck. I should let her grow her hair, now that she is older. I unfasten the two silver-colored hair clips shaped like fish, comb the hair with my fingers, such beautiful hair, like her father’s. I put the clips back in so there are no stray strands covering her eyes. “Snakes in real life are poisonous and can kill you.”