Disobedient Girl: A Novel

by Ru Freeman

  Thara, who had risen with her, sat back down. “Sandals? What are you talking about? You have a room full of sandals! Why, even Madhayanthi is always talking about them!”

  Latha did not trust herself to speak. She simply stood there, swallowing the salty water that rose up from somewhere deep within and filled her mouth over and over again. She could not tell if Thara was doing the same, only that she, too, was silent.

  “You ruined my life, Latha,” Thara said, eventually. “This is not the way my life was going to turn out. I was going to finish school, go to university, be a lawyer. You knew that. You knew what plans I had. And Ajith and I were going to get married and have children together. Instead, look at me now.” Thara began to cry, and Latha forgot herself again as she watched the sad woman on the bed, her heart alternately expanding and hardening with everything Thara said. “I am here in this place, no proper education to speak of, no job, married to that idiot and with two children who belong to him. Yes, to him. You can think the worst of me if you want to for saying that. Those children have never felt like they belonged to me. And what about Ajith? A good man like that, not married because I’m the one he wants. People talk about him. They say he likes boys…” She spat again and said no more.

  “Thara Baba, don’t cry now,” Latha said, feeling sorry for Thara, a wife and a mother with neither husband nor children she could bring herself to love. How much worse was that than her circumstance? At least she was a woman whose only challenge was how many she could love: Leelakka and Podian and her girls and Gehan. And Thara. She loved Thara despite everything. For the years they had spent orbiting the neighborhood hand in hand, one way of looking at the world, one world to look at. And for a moment she felt again that, if there had been no Gehan, no Ajith, no men at all, it would not have mattered if they could have continued that way. She and Thara, loyal to each other, picking flowers, staging their small insurrections, growing up.

  “All I have is the time I spend with Ajith. That is all.”

  “Forgive me for saying anything, Thara Baba,” Latha said. And she wanted to say more, and perhaps Thara did too, but they both heard the sound of the car in the quietness between them. Gehan was returning and no more could be said.

  For a few months after that, they were, indeed, good to each other. Latha cooked dried fish only thrice a week, every other day, favoring Thara’s preferences over Gehan’s. She bought seer fish and even chicken sometimes from the supermarket. Thara joined in the cooking on the weekends, and they made old recipes, the birthday-party-only food that everybody craved the rest of the year: Chinese rolls and patties and cutlets stuffed with their savory fillings and served with chili sauce. They went to Veytex together to buy new lengths of fabric for the girls and for themselves, and Latha shared in Thara’s excitement when they stepped into the Majestic City and shopped for the foreign food that Gehan hated. They ate lunch together once, Latha moving her chair so that she faced away from Thara, perching on the edge of her seat and continuing to clutch the bags so people could tell they were not friends on equal footing but rather had an understanding that, by its very tolerance, favored one over the other. And when a few young men whistled at them, Thara laughed and acknowledged that it was Latha they had been looking at, not her.

  It was like the time before the end of flower picking. It could not last. Not in a house with so much to hide and so many being loved by the wrong people. And the end, when it did arrive, came about because Latha, newly and completely loved, was filled with generosity and suggested to Gehan that he make peace with the Vithanages and invite them to his home for a meal. And because he was happy and fulfilled, with his wife for appearances’ sake and his woman to love, he did. It might have been all right if they had been free to come right away, but by the time all the negotiations had been done, and all the arrangements made, Latha had confirmed, without medical assistance but by practice, that she was pregnant, at the age of thirty-three, for the third time. And because she had hope, this time, to keep this child, a perfect one with two parents who had come together in love, she bloomed.

  “Latha, I wish my skin was like your skin,” Madhavi said, peering at an adolescent blemish on her cheek.

  “Latha, I wish I had never breast-fed. Then my breasts would look like yours,” Thara said, peering down the top of her dress as Latha sat on the hiramané and scraped coconuts, the white flakes falling onto the rising mound beneath.

  “Akka, you look especially happy these days,” Podian said, bringing her chocolate biscuits twice in a single week.

  “Renu Renu mal mité renu…,” the paper man sang as he handed her the daily paper, making her smile, his own smile broadening in turn, the song getting louder as he cycled to the next house.

  So it was only natural that, by the time the Vithanages arrived, Latha’s pregnancy, though not obvious, was abundantly clear to Thara’s mother.

  How much better if she had stayed hidden in the kitchen and kept away from the reconciliations going on at the front of the house. Thara smiling, Gehan welcoming his estranged in-laws on bended knee right there on the floor that Latha herself had forced Podian to polish not once but twice with coconut refuse laced with kerosene to keep away the ants, and then again with red Cardinal polish. But no, she had to watch. She had to see how the years had changed the old couple, whether they had been mellowed or embittered by their differences with Gehan.

  Well, she saw all right. There they stood, their faces decked with hope, the gladness banishing whatever traces of regret remained. They both kissed Gehan, embracing the son-in-law they had, finally relinquishing the kind of son-in-law they had hoped to have. Mrs. Vithanage in a baby blue sari—Gehan would approve, Latha thought, of a sari purchased at the Lanka Handloom Emporium—and Mr. Vithanage in a matching light blue shirt. Both of them were more gray-haired than black, and Mr. Vithanage stooped just a little, as if he were trying to catch himself from falling down. Mrs. Vithanage stood as she always had, straight and solidly, her body balanced perfectly over her two feet. The girls too, dressed up for the occasion in their idea of good clothes—blue jeans and bright store-bought T-shirts, long hair brushed to shining by Latha—were delighted. And in that colorful scene, with all the tangled joys that were being created, Latha saw there was no space for her. But she parted the deep green curtain that hung between the living room and the pantry and peered out anyway. She and Podian, one on either side.

  “Latha, kohomada?” Mr. Vithanage said. “After a long time, isn’t that so?”

  Mrs. Vithanage turned to look, and the expression on her face, witnessed only by Latha, since she was the only one who was looking at Mrs. Vithanage, the others all staring at her like they had just remembered she lived in the house with them, left her in no doubt that the old lady had seen what even Gehan, with his palms on her naked body, had missed.

  Latha smiled with genuine happiness at Mr. Vithanage, if for no other reason than that she was not sure when that opportunity would be hers again. She smiled at him for not having been unkind to her, for being bullied by his wife, for having noticed her and spoken to her, for having brought her into this family, which had, in turn, led her to Gehan. When he turned to Madhavi to ask about her studies, Latha dropped the curtain and went back into the kitchen.

  Biso

  Where is my son? Where is my girl? Who will help me? I want to scream these questions, but the words will not come. Why didn’t I keep him with me? I knew it. I knew it was the wrong thing to do and I let myself be persuaded. How could I have listened to two old people who have never been anywhere? How could I, who have known foreigners, known what they are like, who have always been suspicious of them, how could I have trusted them with my own children?

  One of the nurses kneels beside me. She looks too young to be working. “Ammé, come, the police want to talk to you,” she says.

  “The police? Do you think they will help me, child? They only help rich people. They must be here for something else. They will never help someb
ody like me. I know the police. They never do what is right for us. Please, duwa, find somebody to help me. I have to get my children back. My son needs a doctor!”

  She takes my arm and lifts me to my feet. “No, come with me. These are good policemen. Come, I will take you there and we will go and try to explain what happened.”

  I want to trust her. I must. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe the police here are different and they will help. I have been wrong about so many things. But I cannot forget how they sided with the foreigners any time somebody complained back at the hotels. Always the suddhas’ side. That was the side they were on. And even though these are up-country policemen, they might be the same. Still, I go with her. I have to. There is nobody else to go to for help now.

  The constable in the admissions room looks disapprovingly at me. A group forms around us while I stand, clutching a useless parcel of food, still hot, hugging it to my chest as though it is a poultice to drain a poison out of me, or a bandage to stop my heart from bleeding to death. Oh, I can feel it in my very bones, this flame that is lapping at my heart: my children are lost for good. They are gone from me. And it is my fault. I have lost them. I have lost them.

  “Ammé,” he begins; I can see in his eyes that I am common now, in the way I look, my concerns, the impossibility of recourse. “We have put out a police alert for a red car with foreigners and two of our children. When did you last see your son?”

  “Son and daughter,” I correct him, and in saying those words aloud, I make my loss unalterably true. I feel as though my legs will give way under me as I say those words, but I cannot let them. I must keep standing up; I have to find my children somehow.

  He sighs. “Yes, son and daughter. When did you see them last?”

  “I last saw them when I gave them to the foreign men,” I tell him. “They were so clean…”

  People stir around us. “What are you saying? You didn’t give them away to the foreign men, correct? They took them from you?”

  “Yes, yes, they took them afterward. But first, I was the one who asked if they could take my children, not me, I didn’t want to, but Veere’s Father, the people we were staying with, they asked if the foreigners could take them, my children…” People start crowding forward and talking loudly. I can’t think. They are accusing me of selling my children. “No!” I say. “No! I didn’t sell them! I only asked the foreigners to take them—”

  “So then why are you asking us to find them? If you gave them?” The constable interrupts me in a loud voice. “Why are you wasting our time like this?”

  “Please, rālahamy, my children are lost!”

  “But you wanted to lose them, right? You sold them. That’s what you said just now. You said you gave your children to the foreigners.”

  I shake my head. “I shouldn’t have let them go, but I did. I thought they would help us. I had a bad feeling about them, about those foreigners, but I let them take my children because the driver said they were a father and son. I didn’t think a father and a son would do such a thing. Would steal my children! I put them in the car and sent them away with the foreigners because my son…my son…he was injured…his leg was broken. He was in so much pain, and I thought that they would get him here fast…They wouldn’t take me, and I had to find another way to get here. I came as fast as I could. You must believe me. Please help me, rālahamy…I couldn’t come any faster…I promised him but I couldn’t…” My body starts heaving despite my best effort to keep it still.

  The policeman stares at me. “You must stop crying and listen to me now. Listen. Try to stop crying. Crying is not going to help…Nurse, help her.”

  The nurse gives me a handkerchief. I wipe my face. I wipe it, but the tears won’t stop. I press the cloth into my eyes until all I see is red. He is right. I do not deserve the solace of tears, no. My guilt should stay trapped inside me, it should burn me from within like the fires of hell.

  “Do you remember me?” the policeman asks when I look up again. I feel my mouth trembling, but my face is dry. “I was one of the policemen at the bomb site. You came and asked to take your bags,” the policeman says. “You had all your children with you. I recognize you because of this one.” He points to Chooti Duwa. “I remember her very well because she was the youngest child there, except for that baby.”

  I had forgotten her. Where had she been all this time? Her face is tear-streaked, and her eyes are edged with fear. She tries to put her hand through the bend of my elbow, but I hold myself tight because I am afraid to feel that childish touch. If I do, I will come undone, and who will find my children then? Her hand slips away.

  “Yes, this one stayed with me,” I tell him. “My daughter didn’t, my older one. She wanted to go with her brother and I let her. I was foolish. I should have known. Please forgive me. Can you find them?”

  The policeman gestures to a row of chairs and sits down next to me. “Yanna! Yanna!” he yells at the spectators around us. “Why are you all crowding here? There’s nothing to see. Give these people some room to breathe!” They back away in a single movement, glancing at one another, and inch back again. Like flies at an open plate of rice. Shoo. Return. Shoo. Return.

  “You have to tell me the truth now. Otherwise I cannot find your children for you,” he says. “Tell me the truth. When did you meet these foreigners?”

  I want to be helpful, I must tell the truth. I want to make sure they have all the information. Everything. “I refused money,” I tell him, because I want him to know I am not of that stock. I would not take money from foreigners for any reason. I would never sell my children! “We met them yesterday. They offered us money, but I said no…”

  “Did they offer money for your children?”

  “No! I don’t know why they wanted to give me money. I was on my way to my aunt’s house. I didn’t know the way, sir, from where the train had stopped. I had to get to Ohiya. I asked them the way.”

  “Why did you think foreigners would know the way to Ohiya? Couldn’t you ask one of us?” His voice is scornful.

  “I didn’t know they were foreigners.”

  And now he laughs at me. “Didn’t you see their white skin?”

  He looks around at the crowd for their approval, and they smile spitefully at me. Why are they treating me like this? Perhaps they, too, are scared of people like him, of the police, or his scorn. But I have lost my children! Don’t they have any sympathy for me? I want to tell the nurse that this policeman is not going to help me, that she must get someone else to find my children. I look around for her, but she is nowhere to be found. I turn back to the policeman and try again.

  “Sir, my son and I stopped the car when it was coming. We didn’t know there were foreigners inside it. The driver was one of us. He told us how to get to a tea shop. But the foreigners wanted to give us money. They gave my son a packet of chewing gum. That’s all we took from them, nothing else, not one cent. Then they left.”

  “Did they take your children with them when they left after offering you the money?”

  “No, they didn’t. I kept my children with me. We kept on walking till we got to the shop.”

  The policeman sighs. “I don’t know what you are saying. First you say you gave your children to the foreigners. Then you say they gave you money. Then you say they didn’t take your children. How do you expect me to help you? I can’t even believe anything you say! You sound like a madwoman!” He turns to the crowds. “She sounds like those madwomen who walk about at the bus halts and talk rubbish!”

  “My children are gone, sir. I didn’t sell them! Please believe me. I only asked the foreigners to help them…”

  “Amma had to get my aiyya to the hospital, and the sudhu māmas would not let her come with him. So then my akki said she would go. And they found room for her. Because they said she was small. That’s what the driver uncle said. And then…and then…it was because my aiyya had to get the moon moth for me, but after he fell down I didn’t want to keep it. So he took it. I gave it
to him. I didn’t want to keep it…”

  I look closely at my daughter. Her eyes are large and slanting. Where did she get that slant? Were her father’s eyes slanted that way? I don’t remember. And her skin is like a Delta toffee, firm and light brown. Whose skin is that? My arms are darker. Had I once been fair-skinned too? I think of Siri’s skin, but he is covered in blood. Like the family on the tracks is covered in blood. And now my Loku Putha…

  “They will be covered in blood! Blood!” I scream, the tears beginning again. I press my fingers to my mouth, ashamed of my outburst. More people crowd in. I wait until I can control my voice. “Why won’t you listen to me?” I ask the policeman. “I’m trying to tell you what happened, and you are not listening to me! Listen to me! Listen to me! My children are lost!” I know that I am screaming now, screaming at this policeman, but I cannot stop. The nurse comes back and puts her arm around my shoulder and hushes me. I shake my head. “Dirt from the road and the train got on all my clean children because of me. And now the gods have punished me. They have taken them from me.”

  “We were going from our house to another house in the mountains. That’s why,” my little girl says now. She is trying her best to help me.

  “Where were you going, baba?” the policeman asks her. He takes her hand and draws her near. He strokes her head. Dirty man. I pull her away.

  “I don’t know,” she says, shaking me off, discarding me.

  “Where were you taking the children?” the policeman asks me.

  “I told you I was taking them to my aunt’s house. That’s where I was trying to go. To Ohiya. Then my son had an accident, and the foreigners offered to take him to the hospital. They told me, the driver told me, that they would take my son to the hospital.” I am no longer screaming or crying. There is no use. He is unmoved.