Disobedient Girl: A Novel

by Ru Freeman

  “Did they tell you the name of the hospital?”

  “They said they had to go to Hatton, I think, to find a hospital.”

  “Did they say this hospital? Do you even know the name of this hospital? Tell me then, if you know. Tell me.”

  I stare at him. It is useless. Nothing I say will make any difference to this man. He doesn’t want to help me. He doesn’t believe me. He wants to punish me for having left the train site. He wants to make an example out of me. He doesn’t care about my children. Or me.

  The policeman stands. “I can’t help you if you won’t tell the truth. If you had not left the station when I told everybody to stay there, these things would not have happened. But you fought with the people there and you left. Didn’t I tell you to stay? I know I did.” He turns to the other people there and talks to them about me, and they murmur as a group, commiserating with him. That is all right. I forgive him for that, for enlisting strangers against me; isn’t that what I have done too?

  “Yes, she was very headstrong. She fought with all the others there too. I told her to stay there. But she wouldn’t listen. I was still getting the details down, of the other passengers, and she took her bags and those three children and she left. Now see what has happened? Now she has lost her children. I don’t know whether she gave them away or sold them or they were kidnapped. We are never going to be able to find out. And by now it’s too late anyway, even if they did take her children. This is what happens when people don’t cooperate. It’s a good lesson for everybody.” The people around him agree with him; every single one of them, it seems, believes that I am somehow at fault.

  He turns back to me. “We are the police, after all. We are here to help you.” And now, to the nurse, “Nurse, see if you can get her to talk. Otherwise I will have to go back to the station and write an independent report of this. I can only hope that they find these foreigners from the alert we sent out. Of course now I’m not so sure that we should be harassing them. Sounds like this was an agreement and now she’s regretting it and making a fuss about it.” He mutters the last words to the crowds, but I hear him: “Might end up having to arrest her.”

  He shuts his notebook. It doesn’t make much of a sound, but there is finality in his gesture. He is right: I am responsible for what has happened. There is no forgiveness for me. I own all my crimes. My journey to safety was a journey toward endings. Had I not seen it along the way? I had chosen to ignore each intimation of what lay in wait for me, for my beloved children. I had spent innumerable hours asking for help from deities, but I had missed the signs that the gods had strewn in my path. How could I have held on to hope so strongly that it blinded me to what they were saying? No, you will not reach your destination! Go back! Go back! That was their message, and I had not heard it. I deserve their justice. I let their verdict wash over me, and it is unlike any pain that I have ever known, a thousand sharp knives scraping my body from the inside out.

  Somebody puts a cup of tea in my hands. It is plain and sweet and very hot. I pour it into the saucer and blow ripples across the surface for a few seconds; then I sip the tea from the edge. I notice that my little girl is doing the same beside me. I feel my strength returning. My mind is clearer now. The nurse comes back before we are done.

  “Ammé, I want you to rest here for a while. After that the constable sir will come and talk to you again, do you understand?”

  “I don’t need to rest, duwa, tea is enough. But I am very grateful to you for all this concern. Now I must go. I have to go.” I pour the rest of the tea back into the cup and put it down on the floor under my chair. I stand up.

  “These are police orders. You have to give them a statement. In any case, where can you go in your condition? Do you know anybody here?”

  “Amma and I, we don’t know anybody,” the girl says to the nurse before I can answer. “We live near the sea.”

  “Then it is best that you stay. I will find a bed for you.”

  “No, please, let me go now.” I start to walk away, but she grips my elbow.

  “You have to stay here or go with the police. The chief doctor is trying to do you a favor. Which do you prefer? The hospital or the police station?” she asks. Her tone is no longer gentle.

  My daughter whimpers beside me. “Amma, don’t go with the police. Police people are bad people.”

  I touch her face. “There’s nothing to worry about, my little one. I won’t let the police or the nurse or anybody take you away,” I say, and she presses against me.

  “I must go and see if there is a bed available,” the nurse says. She looks at her watch. It has a gold, oval face and a thin, dark brown strap. My mother had a watch like that. I don’t remember who got that wristwatch when she died. It wasn’t me. Maybe it was burned with her. My mother’s body went up in flames. What was it that killed my mother? All I see is the smoke of her funeral pyre. “It won’t take long. Baba, can you look after your amma until I come back?” she asks, and my little girl nods.

  “Don’t ask her to do anything,” I tell the nurse. “She’s too small. What does she know?” But she pays no attention. She gives my daughter a piece of paper and a pen to draw with. When we are seated again, she leaves.

  People take turns staring at us from a little distance. One woman with a child about my Loku Duwa’s age comes over and strokes my Chooti Duwa’s face. She tells me that I should go to the temple and do a pooja for my children, to ask the gods to help me find them. Another woman sits down next to me and tells me that the police will never help, that I should call the government agent. A few people talk about us as if we are not there, and almost everybody with a child holds their son or daughter close to them as they pass by us. I say nothing to anybody. I cannot absorb anything more. Not advice, not kindness, not even disregard; all I can do is sit and dwell on the fate of my poor children.

  The gate to the hospital is visible from here. Beyond that is a row of low buildings, and through an arched opening I see rows and rows of white nurses’ uniforms drying in the sun. From this distance, they look like the flags that mark the road to a funeral. They sway in the breeze, and I find that I am rocking myself, forward and back, the way I used to do to put my children to sleep, long ago, when they were infants. And now my daughter lays her head in my lap. I feel the heat of tears soaking through my sari. I stroke her head, over and over. Because she is here, because that is what good mothers do. I cannot comfort her with words, for what would I say? There is nothing left but this child. How safe is she with me? I must protect her somehow, but I do not know how.

  After a while, she stops crying and sits up. She begins to draw. I watch as her picture takes shape: an ocean with coconut trees and the shape of a Dagaba with a house in the corner and a very small, smiling sun, whose rays come all the way and touch the sand. It is a last communication from the gods. Looking at that picture, seeing what it is she associates with happiness, I know what I must do. I must keep her away from that place, from me. I stand up.

  “Come,” I say, “let us go.”

  “Where, Amma? Where are we going?”

  I say it gently. “I am taking you to a nice place.”

  “But I thought you said we had to go very far to get to your aunt’s house. And Aiyya and Akki are lost…”

  “Shh. Yes, that’s too far, I should have known it. See all the trouble we have had trying to get there? We won’t go there. This new place is not so far.”

  She looks reluctant, but she stands up. “Nurse Aunty told us to stay here till she comes back. She said Police Uncle will help us to find Aiyya and—”

  “No, no, we don’t need to wait. I will leave her a note.” I write in English on the back of her drawing: Dear Lady Nurse, Thank you for your help. Now I am going. Yours sincerely, Mrs. Biso Menike. Then I show it to my girl; even though she cannot read my writing, at least she can see that I have written something important in English. “See? Now she will know what we did.”

  I take her hand, and we wa
lk outside. The day is bright and hot, and I shade my eyes. In which direction should I go? I feel unsteady on my feet, my body weighed down by my losses. Two vendors sell Elephant House drinks, Necto and Orange Barley and Cream Soda, and foreign fruits, grapes and apples, and newspapers from their stalls by the gate. I wish I had time to buy my daughter something special, some taste that would soften the hardships of this day; her hand in mine is so small. Among the people coming in and going out of the hospital, I and my sorrow are invisible. As I stand, an older woman pauses and looks straight at me and then at my daughter. Her scrutiny strengthens my resolve. I straighten my spine and walk faster.

  “Don’t pull, Amma, you’re hurting my hand. I am coming,” my little one says, her voice trembling.

  I stop. I take her chin in my palms and stroke her cheeks with my thumbs, marveling at the strength and softness of children’s faces. “My Chooti Duwa, don’t cry. Amma will get you something to eat as we go, okay?” I pick her up and rock her in my arms for a few moments, then I put her down again.

  I pull my sari pota over my head, and we walk more slowly toward the stall to the right side of the gate. The vendor asks for three rupees for a single apple. I must have left my handbag somewhere, because what I have with me is a parcel of food and my coin purse. When I look in there, all I have is one two-rupee note, the slip of paper the gentleman on the train gave me, and thirty cents. I shake my purse over his hand and beg him for the apple. He complains over the coins and shoves the paper back to me. He gives me an apple, a smaller one, but at least it is red and ripe.

  When I give it to my little girl, she beams. “It smells nice,” she says, her eyes shut, breathing the scent of the fruit. “Amma, do you want to smell?” she asks, but I shake my head. Why smell it? My own mother had bought me an apple once when I was sick, an apple and ten grapes. I can still remember how it all felt in my mouth, the crisp bite of the apple and then the gush of flavor, and the grapes, cool and sweet. No, my sweet little one, she should enjoy this apple all by herself. She chews it happily as we walk, and I try to concentrate only on the way she looks, happy to enjoy her treat. If I think of my lost children, I will do this little one harm as well; I will make some bad judgment the way I did with them, and she, too, will be lost. I must make sure that she will be safe.

  Outside the hospital gates, there is a row of cars of various sizes and makes for hire. The drivers stand as if by prior agreement, perched against the hood of each car, one leg propped on the front bumper, each one picking at a tooth or biting a nail, bored. I go up to the oldest one.

  “You can’t pick one from the middle,” a young man yells at me. “We are in order here! You must go to the first one!”

  I ignore the commotion around me. I ignore my child’s tugs on my sleeve, her murmurs of concern. “How far is it from here to the convent near the railway station?” I ask the old man.

  “From here it is about ten minutes by hiring car. If you wait for a bus of course it will be longer, and you have to walk from the stop. That is if a bus even comes. With the strike…”

  “How much?”

  He looks from me to my Chooti Duwa. “About two rupees. But you have to go with that blue car,” he says, spitting some bark out of his mouth and gesturing with his head to the man at the front of the line.

  I don’t want to go with a young man when I don’t have any money to give him, but what else can I do? They all watch me walk with my daughter to the first car.

  “Take us to the Hatton convent near the railway station.”

  “Five rupees,” he says dismissively.

  “Get in,” I tell my daughter, without even looking at the man.

  He smiles at one of the other men and gets into the front seat. “You visiting somebody at the convent, or were you visiting one of the estate patients from there?” he asks after we are settled into our seat. I don’t say anything, and he sucks at his back teeth in reply to my silence. “Hmmm. Must be another one of the girls with no father, then. They are regulars at the hospital. They all come from the cities. How many of those children are working at the bungalows around here now only the gods know.” And he sucks his teeth again. Such disgusting manners. It is too bad that we have to travel with a man like this.

  “Amma, what is the convent?” my Chooti Duwa asks.

  “That’s where we are going, petiyo,” I tell her, keeping my voice low, my face close to hers, murmuring against her ear. “Remember that nice akki we met on the train?”

  “I remember the uncle. He gave us money.”

  “There was a girl, a good girl. She will be at the convent.”

  “What is her name?”

  I don’t remember. We had shared so much, and yet I had not asked for her name. Perhaps the nuns will recognize me. “She is a good girl,” I repeat, “a really good girl. I am sure she will be happy to see us again. I gave her my earrings, don’t you remember? You asked me why. She is staying at a convent called St. Bernardine. Isn’t that a nice name?”

  She fondles my bare ear. “Are my Mala Akki and my Raji Aiyya, are they there too? Is that why we’re going there?”

  “No, shh, they are not there. Don’t talk about them. Now why are you crying? Don’t cry now, don’t cry.”

  “Is that your daughter?” the driver asks me, his eyes on my baby. I fold her to me so he cannot see her. What liberties his sort takes with people like me.

  “What business is it of yours whose daughter? Your job is to drive!”

  “Not my concern who she is, but I am not getting mixed up in any strange business. There have been plenty of stories about children from other places. We have all heard. Don’t think we don’t know these things just because we’re from up-country. You people from the low-lying areas come here to hide all your sins. Don’t we know it.”

  “Shut your mouth! Can’t you see you’re upsetting my daughter? Just keep your opinions to yourself. I have a lot of things to do now, a lot of things to think about.”

  “Would have been better if you had thought earlier, from the looks of it. Up to no good, I can tell. Chih! I should have refused this hire.”

  I ignore him and talk to her instead. “See, petiyo? See how we are getting closer to the convent? See that sign? Look how they have planted beautiful flowers all along the road. Don’t worry, my little one. I’m going to make sure that everything is done right this time.”

  The road is like a lullaby. It rocks us back and forth in its curves. I feel like I am drugged, numb to everything but this moment of quiet, this moment of holding my daughter, her damp face drying in the flower-decked breeze that visits us through the open window. The driver drops us off at the gate, and I ask him to wait. We have to walk up four more bends to get to the top. I take Chooti Duwa’s hand and start climbing. At the end of the last turn I see it: my refuge. The convent is stone. I had not pictured it being made of stone. I had imagined it to be made of brick, with white paint. But the stone makes me hopeful. This building, with its high center and low bordering walls, with all this apparent abundance of space, of growing things, will stay still, keep its secrets, be unassailable. I will leave her here. It will be a fine gift to her, yes it will. After all my guarantees, at least this one will be true. This place will keep her safe from me.

  Latha

  The meal Latha prepared had been delicious, full of the flavors she had learned to create with the use of smell and intuition, elevating traditional dishes to culinary art. Moreover, the food had been suffused with the inimitable essence of goodwill, served at the perfect temperature, neither too hot nor already cooling, the curries reaching just so up the sides of dishes wiped clean of stray drips.

  But none of it, not the food, or the good plates with the trailing vine pattern that Latha had learned to tolerate, taken out of the teak and glass display closet and warmed, or the plantain leaves heated and placed over the plates for a special touch and, secretly, to please Gehan, or the expensive table linens, or the cut-glass vase of fragrant pink dahlias an
d white orchids that Thara had brought home in an arrangement from the flower shop, or, at the very least, the auspicious occasion of this reunion could prevent the fallout.

  “Latha, go and bring my camera from the almirah,” Thara said, after everybody had been served and they were about to begin eating. “I want you to take a picture of all of us at this table after all this time.”

  “No need right now, Thara,” Gehan said. “Let’s enjoy the food that Latha has cooked before it gets cold.”

  “This will only take a few seconds. Latha, quickly! Go upstairs and get my camera. I think it’s with my good saris.”

  Latha went to bring the camera, which was, like Thara had said, nestled among Thara’s manipuris and silks and hand-loomed cotton saris. It sat, in fact, on top of the hastily folded deep purple silk sari in which Thara had dressed her. That sari, its color, the memory of why it had been so swiftly taken off her, their intimate evening ending with the sound of Gehan’s return, and the way the actual photographs had made her feel, who had handed them to her, made Latha hesitate. Downstairs, she could hear Gehan still trying to dissuade Thara from trying to take a photograph. Perhaps she could hide it. She reached out to take the camera and stuff it somewhere else, buy Gehan a little time. Under Thara’s shoes, maybe?

  “Latha! What is taking so long?” Thara came into the room. “What are you doing staring at the camera instead of bringing it to me, you silly woman? Give that to me. Honestly, I don’t know how I’ve put up with you this long. You have become just as foolish as that mad Podian. Two imbeciles. That’s what I have.” And she laughed.

  Latha listened to Thara’s heeled shoes going down the staircase. She didn’t follow her. She took the purple sari and folded it neatly. The blouse allowance slid out from the folds. She picked that up and tried to smooth it without much success: it was far too crinkled from the twisting and tying that Thara had done to create a blouse for her. She was still standing there holding the sari when the fight erupted.