Disobedient Girl: A Novel

by Ru Freeman

  “I will, I will, my son, my golden son, my Loku Putha,” I promise, grasping his hand and kissing the fingers, though I know I cannot reach the hospital before they do. “Putha, Nangi will be there, and you stay together. She will look after you till I can come. Tell the doctor that your mother is coming. Tell the doctor that we are at this shop—” I look back, but there is no name written over the store, nothing to identify it by. “Tell them your mother’s name, Biso, Biso Menike Samarakoon, make sure to give the whole name, and that I am coming.”

  “Now enough! See how you’re upsetting this boy?” the driver says. I look up at him and see that the two foreigners have got down and are pacing on the other side of the car, discussing something in low voices that sometimes seem angry, sometimes pleading.

  “Is that boy his son?” I ask the driver.

  The driver looks at the two men and then back at Loku Putha. “Yes, they are father and son,” he says, but he’s lying. I can tell because he doesn’t look at me when he speaks.

  “Why are you lying?” I ask.

  Veere’s Father hushes me. “Don’t ask all these questions, duwa. It doesn’t matter. They don’t matter, nor even who they are. The only thing we need to worry about is getting our Raji Putha to the hospital. That is all, isn’t that so?”

  The driver nods. “Yes, listen to what this uncle is saying.”

  But I ask again, as if it makes a difference, “Why are you lying?”

  And now it is Dayawathi who tries to soothe me with her mother’s voice and care. “They must be. Only parents talk like that to their children, shouting at them. Don’t you know? Isn’t that how you talk to your son and daughters when they don’t want to listen?” She smiles. “This driver unnahe has been traveling all this time with them. I am sure he knows everything about them. All their troubles too. Even though they are suddho, I am sure they have the same kinds of problems we do with our children.”

  And now the driver says something else. “Listen, I don’t want to get in the way of anything, I just do what I am told to do. This is my first hire in months! The suddho don’t come to the country much now that the Mathiniya has taken over everything, all the corporations and all. I picked these people up in Nuwara Eliya. And I don’t know if they are father and son,” he says, “and I don’t care if they are father and son, and neither should you. They are going to help your son. That’s all that should matter. That’s all I am trying to arrange for you.”

  He sounds kind, and I know he is right, that there aren’t as many foreigners coming to our country now, but I feel that he is keeping something from me. I want to press him further, but then my boy, my baby boy, screams again as they try to lift him off the stretcher, and my heart tears open and I cannot think. The driver puts him back down and says something to the young boy, and he gets in. Then it is Loku Duwa’s turn. She smiles encouragingly at me, as if she has taken her brother’s place as the child in charge during emergencies. She gets into the car with great care, smoothing her skirt under her as she does so, the way she has been taught to do in school. She straightens her dress over her knees and puts the siri-siri bag near her feet. Then she looks out and grins at me again.

  “May the blessings of the Triple Gem…,” I begin, but the words are swallowed along with my fears and my desperation. I say them again and again to myself, murmuring all kinds of prayers, snatches of one thing and another until there is nothing left that I remember except a fragmant of a hymn I learned as a child with the nuns, which I repeat now to myself, help us in all times of sorrow virgin help us help we pray. And once more I think of the pregnant girl, which reminds me of our journey.

  “Stop! Wait!” I yell and run back inside the house to find the name and number for the man we met. Near the entrance to the store is a long coil of rope with a flickering ember at its edge and a stack of small squares of paper, torn from school notebooks and skewered untidily onto a wire, for the beedi smokers to light up. I tear a piece off, find a corner, and copy the information down onto it. I call my Loku Duwa back and put the piece of paper into the pocket of her dress. “Keep this just in case,” I tell her and bend down and kiss her head. Her braids still have the yellow bands I put on to match her other dress. Maybe she should wrap the purple ribbons that go with this dress around those. I am about to suggest it when she asks me about the paper.

  “What is it, Amma? What is this paper?”

  “The name for that gentleman on the train. You won’t need it, but it’s good to have somebody’s name in case they ask.”

  “In case who asks?” she inquires, shielding her squinting eyes with her palm against the glare of the late morning sun.

  “The doctors or nurses or anybody. Just keep it. Even the foreigners. You can tell them, too, that this is your uncle from Colombo. I don’t want them to think we are homeless like the ahiguntakayo. We are better than that.”

  She shrugs and shakes her head. She goes to the car and then runs back to me and wraps her arms around my waist, burying her face in my belly. I can feel her cool cheek against my bare midriff.

  “Amma is warm,” she says. “Amma might be getting fever. You should ask that seeya for a Disprin,” she finishes, and she runs to the car.

  Dayawathi comes up right on her heels and gives my son another dose of the kasāya she had made earlier. It is good that she does this, to bring the numbness back, because they are unconcerned with his pain and take no care. They lift him into the car so swiftly and I am too agitated to beg them to be careful; I simply want his pain to end. I want them to get to the hospital as fast as they can, I want him to stay, I want to go, I want to make him believe that it is all right to go with strangers, I want to reverse time, I want, I want…When they are done he lies with his head in his sister’s lap, her arms cradling his face; his right foot is firm on the floor, but his left is bent and laid on the lap of the young boy. At least I can be proud that I have always taught my children to maintain clean feet. My son’s slipperless foot is scrubbed clean; they are the feet of a decent boy. I kiss it once more before the driver starts the car and I must shut the door.

  Even my kiss causes him pain. He winces. “Come quickly,” he says between clenched teeth. I note with relief that already his eyes are beginning to droop. Silently I give thanks to Dayawathi for her native skill.

  “Yes, Loku Putha, I will come soon,” I tell him, and then I turn to my daughter. “Duwa, Mala, go safely and take care of your brother,” I say and close the door as gently as I can. The car pulls away while my hand is still on the door. And already the other two women and even my youngest are inside, cooking. The air feels dry and cold around me, and the road dusty and uninviting.

  “Sumana and Veere’s Mother will finish getting the food ready for you to take,” Veere’s Father says beside me, rubbing one forearm with the palm of his other hand. “Don’t worry now. Putha will be all right. They’re foreigners, after all. They will admit him before all the other patients. It is good that you sent him.”

  I say nothing, trying to hold on to the sense of what he is saying. It is true. Then he says, “You will have to get going quickly to make it to Hatton and meet them.” I am startled out of my inner worries and brought face-to-face with a new one.

  “Hatton…yes…How will I get there?” I ask him, feeling utterly helpless. “I cannot walk all the way to Hatton. Is there a bus that will come this way?”

  “Usually there’s a bus, but there has been a partial strike locally so we can’t tell when the next bus will come…Putha?” He looks over at the teenager, who is still standing there after all the commotion of the morning.

  “All right, uncle, I will go and come,” he says, before Veere’s Father can even finish, and disappears around the corner of the house.

  “Where is he going?” I ask. “Do they have a vehicle?”

  Veere’s Father shakes his head. “But they have a bicycle. Maybe he can take you at least part of the way, until you can find a proper vehicle. Maybe there will be some
others on the road who might be able to help you. These days are not so good for traveling anywhere, even up in our hills there is all kinds of trouble. Didn’t used to be that way, but now…Anyway, come, let’s go inside and get things ready to take.”

  Dayawathi urges me to change into a better sari. My little one takes my orange sari out of the bag; it’s her favorite of all my clothes. I used to entertain her for hours as a baby, showing her the tiny pink and green and white flowers on it. It is not the one I would have chosen, it is made of a synthetic fabric, but I change anyway, because it makes her happy as she watches me, coming near to feel the silky cloth against her face.

  After what seems a long time, the teenager returns, wheeling a bicycle, and there is space only for me and a single bag, or me and my little one. I refuse to leave my Chooti Duwa behind, and as it is, the boy is going to have to struggle to get us any distance. I have to leave our bags behind.

  “It’s a good thing you will be going downhill, not up. At least that will make it easier,” Veere’s Father tells the boy.

  “Putha, you will be blessed many times for all you have done for us,” I say to the teenager, noticing his youth for the first time. His trousers stop a few inches short of his ankles, like he has outgrown them too suddenly for his mother to replace them. He must be about seventeen years old, a faint fuzz growing on his upper lip and his eyes still respectful and full of innocence. Had he not been around, how would the old man have got my little boy up to the house from where he had fallen? How would we ever have found a way to get him to the hospital? Even if they had stopped as they did, I am sure those foreigners would not have wanted to sweat that much. And they wouldn’t have wanted to waste their time. I should be grateful.

  “It’s nothing,” he says and tries to deflect my attention away from him. “Malli was in a lot of pain. We should go soon.”

  “I can walk part of the way if you can just carry my little one,” I tell him.

  “I can walk also,” Chooti Duwa says, looking up at the boy.

  “No, no, baba, I can double your amma on the bar, and you can sit on the back, on the bike rack,” he tells her.

  Her face brightens. “Then I can see everything!”

  “Maybe she would be safer on the bar, Putha,” I suggest, but he points out that I would be too heavy on the back.

  Inside the house the old couple and their daughter-in-law bustle around, getting things ready for us. Sumana is warming a large, flat leaf over the stove, and the woody fragrance caresses my nostrils and reminds me of our hopeful beginning. How long ago was that? Three mornings ago, just two nights; and yet it feels to me as though we have traveled for a week, each day of that week a year or more, a lifetime. I smell the leaf, the dried fish that Sumana and Dayawathi are nestling into the warm white rice, and I see a woman standing there, a woman who is not me. That woman is strong and proud and full of courage, glad to be free at last. That woman’s body is lean and tall. She is capable, trustworthy. I am no longer that woman. I am fretful and helpless, and my mind is laced with the scenes from our journey. I am plagued by the way the gods have turned away from me and from my children, and these things thicken my movements and my brain. How can I think? Tell me. If there is somebody out there who could remain calm in the face of a life like mine, in days such as these last three have been, show them to me, and I would kneel at their feet, for they would not be of this world.

  “Amma?” my little one says beside me, looking concerned. “Don’t cry. This aiyya will take us to the hospital.”

  I wipe my face, ashamed that I have forced adult concerns upon my children, on all of them. First my son, then my older daughter, and now the baby. I stroke her face and smile. “I’m not crying. The smoke was in my eyes,” I tell her.

  When it is time to go, I feel as though I am leaving parents, not strangers. So I get down on my knees, touch my head to the ground, and worship each of the old people, Veere’s Father first, then Dayawathi. They put their palms over my head and bless me.

  “Go now. We’ll be here, you can come and see us on your way back, we will keep your things safe here,” Dayawathi tells me. “Go quickly. Putha is waiting.”

  I nod my head in agreement. I don’t know when I will come back this way. How long will my son have to stay in the hospital for his leg? I shrug inwardly and sigh. Never mind; I will have to find a way to return to these good people, to bring them something better than what I have: starving children, injuries, foreigners, and mounting obligations toward their one neighbor on this lonely road.

  “I’ll go and come back,” I say and walk over to the boy, who is waiting, his foot braced against the first step into the store.

  “You get on, and then I’ll put the little one onto the back,” Sumana says.

  I sit sideways on the cushion the boy has improvised from a towel and look back to make sure that the little one is all right. Sumana has picked her up and is trying to put her onto the rack, but she can’t let go.

  “Can’t you leave her here with us, aunty?” Sumana whispers, a deep longing clouding her eyes. “I can look after her till you get back. She doesn’t need to go to the hospital after all. It might be easier if you go alone.”

  I know that longing. And I know no mother who would abandon her child into such desire. I feel sorry for her, I want to wish her happiness or say something else that is kind, but the words will not be spoken.

  “I can’t leave her, duwa,” I say. “She’s too little to be away from me.”

  Sumana lowers her eyes. She settles my daughter on the bike rack, tells her to be careful not to get her feet caught in the spokes, and presses a few sweets into her palm. Then she lets her go.

  “Hold that aiyya tightly with both your arms now, okay?” she says to my Chooti Duwa. “The road is bumpy sometimes, and you can fall if you are not holding on properly, petiyo.” She takes my daughter’s arms and wraps them around the boy’s waist. “There, like that. Now you’ll be safe.” She steps away from us and waves. “Come and see me, baba,” she says, trying to smile.

  “I’ll come as quickly as I can, and I’ll bring my aiyya and my akki and everybody!” Chooti Duwa says, and her happy, childish voice, raised and sweet, lifts all our hearts. Even the boy laughs.

  At first it is almost pleasant, riding on the bicycle. The boy is not tired, and I am moving forward, toward my children, not standing still, and this one fact brings me small, intermittent waves of comfort. The road, too, seems easy, and for a long time the boy barely has to pedal. We reach and pass the sanctuary where we lit the lamp, and we pass the place where the train must have been; the smell of burnt steel and foliage still drifts up from the valley where the tracks lie, hidden from our view. If I am silent for too long my children crowd into my mind—my girl, too young to take care of her brother, and my little boy, his face full of pain—and I have to close my eyes and pretend they are with me again, whole again, just my children, traveling safely within my care. Such thoughts, so different from my reality, from theirs, make me feel weak and desperate and I grip the handlebars so tight that a few times the bicycle swerves to the side and the boy has to work hard to regain control. So I apologize and keep on talking, discussing the things we had passed on our way to the shop just the day before, trying to make it seem as though this is just an ordinary day, a day in which such conversations are possible, a day of which I am still in control, untroubled by the visions of my broken journey.

  We stop once to drink from a spout on the side of the road. “Is this water safe to drink, Amma?” Chooti Duwa asks, looking doubtfully at the crude, hewn-out thrust of bamboo that delivers the ice-cold water to us and probably thinking about all the pots of boiled water that I bottled for them back home.

  “Yes, Nangi,” the boy answers. “These waters come from the mountains. This is very clean. Much cleaner than the water in our houses even, I would say. Taste it and see. I’m sure you have not tasted water like this anywhere!” he says proudly.

  She puts a pa
lm full into her mouth and agrees, nodding her head. “But then why are they wasting it and letting it run down the mountain?”

  “It’s not wasting. Lots of people come and get water from here,” he tells her. And as if on cue a group of three women with two children, both boys, come around the corner carrying buckets and pots. “See? People come and get water from here for drinking and cooking.”

  But after that rest, we all grow quiet. Chooti Duwa is tired, and I feel bruised from the endless bumping. With long stretches of flat road, the boy has to pedal. But the darkness of my predicament, my children’s, seeps once more into that quiet and I am too terrified of the silence to keep moving within it.

  “Putha, we’ll stop here and walk for a bit,” I say, and he stops almost immediately.

  “Just for a little bit, nendé, if you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind. Come, Chooti Duwa, we’ll walk for a bit.”

  She gets down, but after a few steps, she bursts into tears. “I’m hot!”

  “I know, it’s hot. But we have to get to Aiyya. He’s waiting and Akki is waiting, so we should try to keep walking, petiyo, just a little longer,” I say, even though I don’t know how much farther it is. She wants to sit under a tree by the side of the road, and I agree, noting the relief on the boy’s face. He’s a child too, after all, though he is taller than I am. I try to fan both her and myself with the fall of my sari, to get rid of some of the sweat trickling between my breasts and making patterns on my belly.

  All I want is to hold on to my strength until I can get to the hospital. There is still so much to be done for my son: I will have to find a proper doctor, someone to perform an operation on his leg, and where will I get the money to pay for it all? Next to me, my little one starts to play with my bangles; she takes them off and puts them on her own thin wrists and shakes them up and down her arm. They go all the way, almost up to her armpit, she is so thin, and they make a pleasing sound. Perhaps I will be able to pawn them at the hospital.