Disobedient Girl: A Novel

by Ru Freeman

  “Get out,” Thara repeated.

  “Thāththa! Tell Latha to stay!” Madhavi cried, holding on to Latha’s waist.

  “Madhavi,” Thara said, striding up to where they stood and disentangling her daughter from Latha’s body, her fingernails drawing blood on both her daughter’s hand and Latha’s as she struggled to separate them. “Let her go. She is a serpent. You are old enough to understand what she has done—”

  “I hate you! Latha is the one who has looked after us! She’s the one who has helped me and listened to me. She’s the one who bathed me. She’s the one who gives me money when I want some. You didn’t even buy me a present, and she bought me shoes!” Madhavi sobbed, pushing past her mother and going back to her grandfather.

  “Where is she supposed to go?” Mr. Vithanage asked Thara. “She doesn’t have anybody in this world.”

  “This is what we should have done the first time,” Mrs. Vithanage said.

  “She can learn what it is like to live without anybody,” Thara said. “I’m not having her in this house.”

  “I have lived without anybody all my life in your houses,” Latha said. “I know just what that is like.” She turned away from them and tried to speak to Madhavi, but when she touched the child, Madhavi flinched away from her and pressed into her grandfather’s arms. Latha didn’t even try with Madhayanthi. She stood there for a moment, then walked deliberately to the opposite side of the table. She swept to the ground everything that was still remaining on it, sending curries and glasses of water and the cut-glass bowl full of bought flowers in the middle sliding across the table and through the open space between the dining room and the sitting room beyond. She went to the dining room cabinet and pulled out whatever was left of the wedding dishes and smashed those too. “Now all your bad karma is gone,” she said. “You can start again.”

  On her way out, she picked up the purple sari from the chair onto which she had flung it. Back in her room, she threw everything she owned into two suitcases—the one she had brought back from the convent, and another she had bought not long ago to use as a storage space. She put her books, her pictures, and all of her best shoes into one bag, wrapping each pair carefully in a piece of clothing. She put the rest of her clothes in the other, along with her Buddha statues, which she wrapped in her blouses. Into her brown handbag, she put her passbook with the careful numbers of her bank deposits recorded in a blue Pilot pen. She took three of the photographs. The rest she tore into pieces and left on her table. She lit a match to the sari and sat down on the edge of her bed to watch it curl and burn, slowly, like a long tale unfolding inexorably, meticulously, and without fuss, turning its beauty to ash.

  Biso

  She won’t let go of me, this girl. “Go!” I tell her. “Go inside and ring the bell. When the nuns come, tell them that they have to keep you here.”

  “I don’t want to go inside, Amma! Amma, come with me!” she begs. “I don’t want to go alone!”

  “I can’t come,” I tell her. Then I add the lie she needs to hear. “I have to go and see your brother and sister. Tell them inside that your big sister is already here; your mother dropped her off to the nun at the station just yesterday morning. See this dress you are wearing? That’s your big sister’s dress. She’ll recognize it as soon as she sees you. Tell her I gave it to you already, before you got big. Go!” I push her, but she hangs on to my hand, her eyes terrified.

  “Amma, don’t leave me here. I’m scared. Stay with me. We can both stay here.”

  “Then how will I go and find Aiyya and Akki? You tell me that. Your akki was very brave and went with him to keep your aiyya safe. Isn’t that good? Now you must be good too. Like your akki, okay?”

  She begins to cry loudly. “Then I will call the taxi uncle to take us back to the hospital,” she says and starts to walk down the road. I grab her hand and bring her back to face me.

  “Shh! Don’t make a noise,” I whisper to her. “I don’t have money for the taxi uncle. I have to walk. I am going to walk. It is too far for you to go, my little one. That is why I have brought you here. To be safe. Now I want you to go inside. Let go of my hand, child, let go!” I shake her off me, but she keeps grabbing at other parts of my body. I slap her face, hard. See what she made me do now. I want to cry, but I must not. No, no, I must show her how to be unafraid. How to turn around and find a better place for herself.

  “I…want…to…go…home…,” she sobs; big, heaving sobs that tell me how frightened she is, how much she wants to convince me that I am wrong. “I…want…the…sea…” I want to comfort her, but I know I should not. I have made up my mind, and this time I know that I am right. I want her to be strong. My Loku Duwa was right. I have spoiled this one. Yes, my big girl was better served by my neglect. I am glad they are together, my Loku Putha and she. For better or worse, together. She will be able to look after him.

  “Be strong!” I tell her, firmly. But then I relent. I go to take her face in my hands, but she flinches from me. I drop them to my sides. Yes, I have no right to feel that soft skin in my palms, or trace that heart shape again. I have no right at all. I should be going. I turn and walk away.

  “Amma! Amma! Come back!” she cries. “Amma, don’t leave me!”

  I stamp my foot at her. “Shh! I told you not to make a noise. Wait until I am gone, and then ring that bell. That is all you have to do, child.” I go back to her and sit her down on the top steps. “Here, take this parcel of food. Take this, and you can tell the nuns you have to eat it as soon as you get inside, while it is still warm, okay?” I stroke her head. She has stopped crying. Even her eyes have settled down. She takes the parcel. “Now I have to go. Don’t worry about anything. Things will be all right.”

  This time she makes no sound. She just sits there, looking up at me. What a picture. She sits with her knees drawn up to her face, her chin resting on them. She is clutching the parcel of food to her chest with one hand, and I can imagine the soft heat making its way slowly through her white dress to her bare skin. I remember that particular bolt of skin, how small it once was, holding all of her inside a length only thirteen inches long. Small, she used to be. Her whole body curling toward itself, only the head even then tilting backward. As if her thoughts were heavy, or she wished to be warned of what was coming at her from the places she could not yet see with her newborn eyes. She seems to have resigned herself to staying there, on that step, forever. There she sits, my last child, the only one left to take care of. But I’m choosing how to lose this one. This is my only good decision. This is what the gods wanted from me. Their price. And I will pay it.

  “Chooti Duwa, my little one, keep this,” I tell her. I take her right hand and press my coin purse into it. It is made of some kind of fur, and she rubs her face on it. “Inside this is the name of the uncle we met on the train. You can tell the nuns that he will know what to do with you. If they need money, he will give it to them. You tell them that. Tell them…tell them…that you don’t have a mother…that you are an orphan. That is what you will have to say so they will look after you. Don’t shake your head. Yes, it’s not true. It is not true at all. You have me. You will always have your amma. But you need to say that to them. No mother. No mother. Will you remember? No mother.”

  “Don’t cry, Amma,” she says, which is when I realize that I am crying. I wipe my face with the edge of my sari pota. It’s not good to cry. I must show her that this is a good place, that I am glad to be leaving her here. I try to smile, but I must have failed because she repeats herself. “Don’t cry. It doesn’t matter. I will stay here and be good and wait for you to come back, Amma. I will do everything right. Don’t cry.”

  And I cannot resist it, so I take her face into my hands and feel its weight for a moment. So delicate, so perfect. I kiss the top of her head. “May the blessings of the Triple Gem be with you, my daughter,” I whisper these words over and over. Then I walk, run down the road. I don’t look back at her. I run, and I cannot stop myself from w
eeping.

  “What are you crying about?” the taxi driver asks when I come around the last corner. “Where’s that child?”

  I walk past him, sobbing harder than I ever have in my life. Lost now, all lost.

  “Wait! Where are you going? I have to get paid. Where’s my money?”

  “I have no money. I have no children.”

  “You have to pay me!” he shouts.

  “With what? With this?” I take the fall of my sari off my shoulder, and he stares at me.

  “Stop that! You madwoman. Only I would get stuck with a madwoman. Put your clothes back on. What are you doing?”

  I fling the pota back over my shoulder. It is half undone, my sari. I am undone. The taxi is alongside me now, the driver staring at me.

  “I’m going to the railway station,” I tell him. “It must not be far from here.”

  “It’s not far if you go from behind the convent, but it is far on this road.” He indicates the convent with his head. “If you go to the back, there’s a path down to the station from there.”

  “Then I will go that way.” I start walking back the way I have come.

  “Wait, where are you trying to get to? Maybe I can help you.”

  I laugh. Help me? Who can help me? “Go back safely, Malli, I will find my way.” I don’t hear his engine start up until I am almost back at the front steps of the convent. But then I hear voices, so I stop and peer through the ferns along the road. It’s a nun, a different one from the nun who met that girl at the station. This one is tall and thin and very fair. She looks like a foreigner, but she can’t be, can she? Talking in our language the way she is doing? Probably a Lansi nun.

  “Child, what are you doing here?”

  Chooti Duwa stands up. She is so small. Far too small to have been left alone like that, on the steps of a building made of stone. How could I have done that? How could I? Bad mother, who doesn’t deserve such a beautiful child. It is right that I should not have her. That I should have handed her over to better people.

  “My…sister is inside,” she says, clutching her parcel in one hand like a talisman.

  “What is your sister’s name?”

  “Mala Akki,” she says, and she begins to cry. My heart. I clutch at the branches in front of me and hold on so I won’t be tempted to go to her. I bite my tongue until I taste the blood in my mouth.

  “Where’s your mother? How did you get here?” The nun looks down the road, but I am safely hidden from view. “Who brought you here?”

  “Taxi uncle,” she says.

  “What is his name?”

  “My aiyya’s name is Raji Asoka. They got lost. Foreigners came and took them,” she says now and cries even louder.

  The nun takes her face in her hands. What gentle hands they seem, the way they tilt a little girl’s chin upward to look at her, as if she would like to hear the truth but would love her anyway if she lied. “What are you talking about, baba? What foreigners? Where do you live?”

  “I’m from the ocean. Near the fishing boats. But my aiyya fell after we came on the train and the bomb blast. And my akki went with him and they got stolen. That’s what the policeman said.”

  The nun smoothes the back of her skirt and sits down on a chair. She draws my girl toward her, her arms around her. “And your father and mother, where are they?”

  She looks down the path. “I don’t have a mother,” she says after a few moments. She says it. And when she looks back at the nun, she is not crying anymore. She has put her parcel of food down on the ground, and she is playing with the rosary around the nun’s neck. It is a bright blue rosary, and I can see it from where I stand.

  “No mother…?”

  No. The child shakes her head. She shakes it slowly, from side to side, in big movements. Then she gives the purse to the nun. “Train uncle will tell you everything. Train uncle will give you money to keep me,” she says.

  The nun takes the purse and shakes her head like this is not unexpected. She unfolds the paper inside and stares at it. She presses her lips together and looks across the gardens. I am sure she can see me, but she must not because she puts the paper back into the purse and stands up. “What is your name?”

  “Latha Kumari, but my aiyya and akki call me Chooti Nangi, and my amma calls me Chooti Duwa, and sometimes, when she loves me, she calls me her pet, she calls me petiyo.”

  “Come then, Latha, let us go inside. We don’t have room for grown children, but you can stay with the younger nuns at the sister house until we can find your uncle.”

  My little girl yanks free from the nun’s hand at the last instance. She comes back to the top of the steps and peers down the road, standing on tiptoe, bowing her head, trying to see through all the foliage between her and the bends in the road. No, don’t come down here, child. This is the last thing I can do, and I have done it. Someone at this place will give you comfort and safety and a quiet life. Someone inside this building will do that for you. Go! Go with the nun! And still she stands and stands and stares down this road. The nun comes back to her and puts her arm around her. The girl won’t go with her. The nun takes off her rosary and gives it to her, and at last she stops looking for me. She holds the bright blue beads in one hand and pours them into the other, back and forth, back and forth. She is still doing that when she goes in with the fair-skinned nun.

  I don’t know how long I wait, gazing at those steps. They are empty the way only things that contained too much can be. They are bathed in sunlight, and some of the flowers on either side have lost petals along the far edges. There’s nothing on them. But a few moments ago they held everything. I look at it until my eyes hurt, but nothing changes. Nobody comes back out, and nobody comes up to the door from the road behind me. At last I hear a bell ringing inside. It is a loud, heavy sound, not the kind of peal I imagined I might hear in this place. It sounds dark and foreboding.

  I shake my head. I must not dwell on such things, I must not imagine the worst, only the best for that child. That is my work now, to let her be. I make my way around the side of the convent wall until I see the path.

  It is narrow, barely wide enough for my feet, and yet it is so smooth, so well-worn. It is as if nobody walks side by side on this trail, only in single file, one of them in charge, another clearly having given up control over the journey. Well, I walk alone, nobody behind, nobody in front.

  The grass is thick with nidikumbha. I am hypnotized by the way they close and close and close before me, going to sleep the instant any part of my body or my clothes grazes their leaves. Like the eyelids of sleeping children. Only the powder-puff flowers, bright pink and tiny, remain erect and facing the sun.

  I stumble on a root and fall. I feel a hundred pinpricks upon my exposed arms, on the side of my face, and deep into each palm. I close them tighter over the nettles, but there is only so far they can go, weak things. I sit up and open my hands. Like the beads to a broken necklace, these bits of blood. I rub them together, touch my face. I grind my palms into the skin. My palms are smeared now, but not thick like paint; it is just a brush of red and sweat and green things. Salty and grainy like the earth, on my swollen tongue. Around me there is only the sound of afternoon insects. Nothing that I can recognize as being of my kind.

  I crawl for a little while. On my hands and knees, I am almost lower than the nearest plants, like an animal; a light-colored, four-legged creature. This is madness, and I am not mad. I stand up. I am empty-handed, and now, you, O gods, you who have taken everything, I have no more to hold or give or take or lose but myself. I rub the edge of my sari pota in my sweat and clean myself as best as I can. My face and hands will not get clean. Each new bit of cloth I use is smeared with just as much red and brown. Never mind. I will go like this. I cannot undo what has been done or reclaim what is now lost. I am on this path out of choice. I chose this. I chose Siri. Where is he now? Everybody lost and dead because of me, but not her. Not my last one. She is safe.

  There it is. I can hear
it coming, though it is so faint. Far away, somewhere in the distance, the high-low blast from the train. My answer, my hope. I walk faster, but I trip again, and so I stop and take off my slippers. Barefoot, it is easy to run downhill. After a minute or two, it is almost like flying. Nothing catches at me, no leaves, branches, stones, nothing at all. Only the breeze, and even that is on my back, pushing me forward, a blessing, an affirmation of intentions. I run until the path spits me onto the platform. That is how it is, the path and the platform almost one road, except that one tapers off in dust, the other picks up in concrete. I feel the change on the soles of my feet, abrasive and cold.

  “Sir,” I say to the stationmaster, who is standing there like he had never moved.

  He steps back and flings up his hand as if to deflect an assault. “What? What? Where are you running to?”

  “Sir, I am trying to catch the train.”

  “Are you from the convent? Did they send you to meet someone off the train?”

  I suppose I do not look like the woman he met here before. Why would he remember? “Yes. I came from there. I need to fix a tear in my sari, sir. Do you have a box of matches? I can hold it to the flame and fix it; it’s just some kind of nylon…”

  “The train is coming soon.” He checks his watch and glances down the tracks. “It will be here in a few minutes. You might miss it.”

  “Please, sir, I cannot go like this. Can I use the lavatory to fix my sari?”

  He clucks and takes out a key from his pocket. “Here, be quick! You don’t have much time at all.”

  “Sir, matches?”

  He looks doubtfully at me. I look down and away from his feet. He shrugs and gives me a box of Elephant matches and looks away. It feels solid in my hand, a full box. I go into the station and to the bathroom at the back. I can barely see my face in the mirror, but I wash it with ice-cold water from the tap. Why shouldn’t I clean myself up? I undo my sari and drape it again, my pleats neat, the wrap ending straight along the side of my body, the fall touching the ground. This is how my mother wore her sari. This is the way good women wear their saris. And I am not a bad woman.