Mohamed was talking in his language, showing the man, who was dressed in a dark-blue uniform, into the house. He and a helper were carrying a crib. They brought other boxes to the back of the house. None of them looked at us while we stood there. When they were done, Mohamed showed them out, signed a paper, and shut the door. I moved closer to him, thinking he might want to see his daughter. He pointed his finger at me and firmly said, “No” in my language. He then pointed to the back of the house, as if he wanted me to return to my room. His face was stern and cross; the gentle look he had presented when I’d first arrived had vanished. His bare feet were silent as he walked through the house, inspecting the ledges of the paneling on the wall, running his finger across them, then looking closely at what had come off. He found a nook, a small shelf with a crystal elephant on it. When he ran his finger across it, it left a mark in the dust, and he held it up to me as incriminating proof, then made a sound of disgust and stormed off.
I opened the door to my room. The crib was where the dresser had been at the end of my bed, and the boxes were stacked on top of the mattress. Diapers, wipes, bottles of formula, clothes, and a few baby toys. My dresser was in front of my bathroom door, which prevented me from entering it. I laid Maryam on the bed and pushed the dresser into the bathroom, where it fit behind the door. I unpacked the boxes and stored the supplies under my bed. Maryam slept while I organized the room. I moved her to her crib, then pulled the door almost closed so I could clean the kitchen. The house felt uneasy, as if it tilted with worry. I ran a mop over the floor, polished the quartz counters, hunted for specks of food I knew Mohamed would find. I’d only been here a few days, but I wanted to avoid running into him. I cleaned the outside of the cabinet where the safe was, where my book was. I wondered why he had locked it away. It didn’t feel right.
…
Ousha lay outside next to the pool, a green umbrella overhead, bathing her in hot shade. Mohamed had left. The shelves were finished, after which he counted off bills of money, like I might rifle through a stack of leaves, to pay the men. A flood of new workers had invaded the house, carrying tables and food, shimmering decorations, and lights. All of them were dressed in white uniforms with a palm frond of rainbow colors over each of their right chests.
They chattered among themselves, again in a language I didn’t understand, shuffling around me as though I were a piece of furniture. I tried to clean, but they shooed me away. I opened the glass doors to the pool area and quietly approached Ousha.
She was reading and she looked up at me. “What is it?”
“Can I get you anything? Would you like to see your baby? Your husband is gone.”
“I can’t now. It’s too hard.”
“But I know about this. I have seen this before. It’s best to see your child.”
She pulled her sunglasses down. Her left eye was swollen and purple. She let me take an extended look before she pushed them back up. “There’s a party tonight. It’s for Mohamed’s father. His birthday. You should make yourself useful wherever you can. Keep the baby in your room.”
“Is there something else I should know?”
“Not now.”
“I want to send a letter to my children,” I said. “Can you help me?”
“Not now.” Her eyebrows rose from behind the dark lenses; she seemed surprised I had children.
The Party
In every family, there’s a hierarchy. In this family, I was at the bottom. I heard the first guest arrive. Hearty greetings and laughter outside the kitchen door. It reminded me of the days when my parents were alive and they’d invite the entire family to the house to celebrate special occasions. The lights twinkled outside the kitchen window; the other homes were starlit wonders. I wanted to bring Maryam out, but Ousha had warned me not to bring her into sight.
Earlier in the day, when I was washing laundry, behind a stack of filled storage crates I noticed the back wall of the room had a cutout and a flat metal handle that popped out when pressed. I twisted and pulled the handle; the door opened a few inches before it pressed against the crates stacked in front of it. Maryam had begun crying and needed attention then. But now, discouraged from showing myself, with the baby fully fed and asleep in her crib, I went back into the laundry room.
With the washer, dryer, sink, and cabinets on the right, I pulled the crates and pushed them against the door so no one would walk in. When I got the door open, it was dark inside. I worried about scorpions or spiders as I reached my hand inside, trying to find a light switch. My fingers ran over a button on the wall, and I clicked it. Pipes and electrical wires were neatly tucked into the wooden framing of the walls. I stepped into the narrow passageway. It was much warmer than the crisp coolness of the house. From the lightbulb, I could see every few feet between the mass of wires. The floor was bare concrete, and there were building tools, extra tiles, and stacks of paint cans along the wall. Everything was covered in thick dust; this room hadn’t been disturbed in some time. I spotted a door at the end of the hall, where a silver knob caught the light. I walked through, looking up; the space must have gone up the full height of the house, because I couldn’t see where it stopped. As I got closer to the door, I heard pumps working, and the passageway got wider. Machines sat inside the space, hooked into the pipes and wires of the wall. Some of the pipes went into the concrete floor, while others snaked back into the walls. Wondering what each of these boxes of technology did, I unlatched the bolt on the door and twisted the knob. The heat from the outside air rushed in, and I was facing the water behind the house. A hedge about chest high surrounded the pool area where Ousha had been laying earlier. Round stone pavers formed a path from the service door to the seawall. When the glass doors from the main sitting area pivoted open, I ducked back inside, closed the door, and secured the bolt. I could hear sounds now, from the other side of the wall, which must have been the kitchen. I studied the wall as I walked back, and then it made sense. Clusters of wires terminated at the places where the appliances were on the other side of the wall. This was the access hallway.
I returned to the laundry room. I hadn’t noticed the cross pieces of wood that were nailed into the studs next to the door; they formed a ladder. I followed them with my eyes into the darkness above. I wanted to see what was up there, but Maryam could wake at any time. More than an hour had passed since her last feeding. On the other side of the door was a space I could fit into if I turned sideways between the wall of the laundry room and the exterior of the house. I sidestepped into it to see how far it went. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but it didn’t take long to first see there was a hole behind the shower faucet, and when I looked through, I saw the whole of my bathroom. I wondered if this was a standard feature of the building or if the design was intentional to allow spying.
I stepped to move back toward the opening; it was dark except for the light coming through the small holes. My bare feet touched folded pieces of paper. I remembered the note behind my mirror. I dragged my foot forward; there were a few of them. My nerves prickled. The darkness, the holes in the wall, the space I occupied made me feel as though I’d stumbled into a quiet yet nefarious place. Keeping my back straight, I picked up the papers and put them in the pockets of my uniform. I returned to the bright whiteness of the laundry room and shut the door to the hidden access hallway. The act of moving the crates into place calmed me.
When I opened the door into the kitchen hall, I heard Maryam crying. Ousha was in the kitchen, and when she saw me, she charged.
“Where have you been? The baby has been fussing.” She glared at me.
“I was doing laundry.” I didn’t want to lie. She had been mostly kind to me. My hand instinctively went to my pockets and touched the folded papers.
A woman older than Ousha in a black suit with cut stones adorning every part of her body entered through the kitchen door. She spoke in Mohamed’s language to Ousha and kept looking at me as she talked. Maryam cried again; the woman heard it, then pushed past me to look
for the baby. Ousha shot me a scalding look and pointed to my room. I rushed to the woman’s side.
“I’m sorry if the baby has disturbed you,” I told her.
She looked at my mouth, but I could tell she didn’t understand what I said.
Ousha quickly translated.
The woman said something else then pointed to Ousha, who told me what she’d just said.
“She wants to know how old your baby is.”
I began to wave my hands and shake my head to tell her it wasn’t my baby, but Ousha was directing me otherwise.
“Two weeks,” I said. I’d thought I was beginning to understand what was happening in this house, but now the picture had gone fuzzy again. Why would anyone disown their baby in their own home?
Ousha spoke and pushed at the door to my room. I stood back, letting the woman invade my space. She turned the light on and pulled Maryam from her crib. She stuck out her lips, made baby words, then cradled her in her arms. I got a bottle and handed it to her. The woman fed her and walked by me. If she’d genuinely thought I was the mother, why would she act as if I weren’t there when she was holding my child?
Another older woman, who looked closely related to Mohamed, came into the kitchen and beelined to us, doting on Maryam. The door opened a third time; it was Mohamed, and when he saw what was happening, he exchanged a look with Ousha that was nothing short of fury, but he said nothing. He merely walked around the island in the kitchen three times, appearing to have lost his way, then left.
Maryam was passed to the first older woman and then to Ousha, who seemed uncomfortable holding her. She thrust her at me, and they sauntered off, laughing and lightly touching one of the other women. I went into my room and closed the door. I sat on the bed; this dear baby was asleep again. I closed my eyes and thought about Mewan and Ruka. I wondered what they might be doing. I imagined them in our house, Ruka keeping it as clean as possible, or Mewan climbing the coconut palms. Something he’d taken a fancy to since I’d told him his father could climb to the coconuts in under a minute, and on our first date, Pramith had done just that and offered the rich fruit to me as a gift.
I set Maryam beside me on the bed and pulled the papers out of my pockets. The first one was written in Sinhala. It was a desperate love letter. Another was a picture, poor quality, of a young handsome Sri Lankan man, not even twenty, the next a copy of his passport; the words were in Mohamed’s language. They were on the bed in front of me, with the fold and dust marks of having been behind that wall. When the party was over, I would ask Ousha; maybe she would know why they were there.
A knock came at my door. “Yes?” I called, not wanting to get up.
One of the workers from the party slowly opened the door and waved me out of the room to follow her. Maryam was dreaming, her eyes moving back and forth under her lids and her body twitching. She would sleep for at least an hour, with her full belly and clean diaper. The woman pointed to a stack of dirty dishes and cups next to the sink, pointed to me, and made a cleaning motion. I filled the first sink with soap and water and got to work. As the dishes kept coming, I imagined who the boy in the picture might be. I gave him the name Kasun and watched him walk around this house. He felt trapped; the more I thought about him, the more I felt I couldn’t breathe, as though someone were squeezing my neck.
Post Office
Mohamed left early the next morning. I’d watched through the front windows as he departed. A car was waiting for him and he had a suitcase.
When the car pulled away, the house immediately felt lighter. I was barefoot, standing on the deep-pile smoky orange carpet that extended under the dining table. I turned my feet side to side, the silky, sturdy fibers caressing the soles of my feet. It was a piece of divinity, and I allowed myself the pleasure. A few moments later, I went back to the kitchen and made the breakfast I knew Ousha would like. Strong tea, almost black, with a touch of cream, and then a fine pastry, warmed but not hot, with a dollop of strawberry jam. I put them both on a tray and took it upstairs to her room. I knocked and waited. She said something in Mohamed’s language, but it was in a tone that told me it was okay to enter.
She lay in bed, her hair pulled back, a tank top exposing her arms. They looked shadowed, and I searched for what was casting the darkness over the top half of her arms, but nothing was blocking the light. I approached her, and she held her arms out to take the food and tea from me.
“Thank you. This is a very nice surprise.” Her mood seemed relaxed.
When I was next to her, I saw her arms were the color of mine when I didn’t go into the sun, and then it abruptly stopped. From half her forearm to her hands and also above her neckline, the color was gone. She had the color of an Emirati.
I reached out and let my finger hover above the transition mark on her arm. “What is this?”
I sensed she would be open to my question today. Mohamed’s departure had released us from convention.
Ousha laughed, first at me, then at herself. “I bleached my skin.”
I didn’t need to ask why. I had seen women in Colombo powder their hands and faces white. An affliction of being human, always wanting something you don’t have.
“I need to mail money home to my family.” I struck while there was some camaraderie between us.
“Give me the money. I’ll mail it for you when I go to the post office. You just need to tell me where it goes.”
“What do you mail?” I was curious.
Her eyes squinted. “Don’t think because we’re from the same place that we’re the same.”
I played her words over in my head, trying to understand what she meant. The same place. Did she think I was from here? A servant class of this country? Then I looked at her skin again, and her nose, and the artificial way it pointed up, and the texture of her hair, and the smooth spots behind her ears, where a surgeon had hid his handiwork. I understood. She was my country’s blood.
“I’m sorry … I was just … I didn’t mean …”
Ousha reached out to me and took my hand. “We all have to play our parts or things will unravel.” There was sadness in those words. “I’ll go to the post office before Mohamed comes back; he’s gone for two nights.”
I had so many questions for her. It was better to sprinkle them on her one by one, though. I heard my mother say, Shula, no one likes a nosy girl.
I left Ousha to enjoy her tea and pastry and floated through the house. At the bottom of the stairs, a terrible thought stuck to me: Where would I send the letter to? My house in Balapitiya didn’t have an address because it wasn’t an actual house. It was something we had built on someone’s land, a place no one had forced us to move from. If I sent it to the post office, Ruka wouldn’t know to pick it up and they’d likely not give it to a poor village girl without charging her. What good was it that I was here if I couldn’t send my money home to help? Ruka was resourceful, but would she think I abandoned her for this better life if she never heard from me?
As my mind ran away with unlikely scenarios, I stepped outside onto the patio. I looked first at the bushes that separated the small pathway from the place where I stood. It was unnoticeable; the hedge extended all the way to the seawall, blocking the path of stones. The door was painted the same color as the house with no exterior handle, and the bright-orange chairs, green umbrellas, and blue pool drew my attention only to the immediacy and luxury of this house.
Ousha was beside me; I hadn’t shut the door. “It’s beautiful, no? When we first bought this house, I thought Mohamed had made all my dreams come true. Did you know we have a boat too? Big, like that one.” She pointed to one of the larger boats wandering over the blue water. “I have everything.”
I found it odd for her to make the declarative statement. She did have everything—it was clear—but the way she said it sounded like she didn’t believe it, a repeated mantra someone else had forced her to utter.
“Do you have family at home?” I asked.
Her arm was still
extended, pointing to the boat; she wasn’t done showing me what was in the distance. “When the gulf is calm, we take the yacht and leave the Dubai coast and sail to Kumzar. It’s a different world there—the landscape, the people; we might as well be on the moon. I always imagine where the water would take us if we kept going.”
I wondered if I would ever get to go on that boat.
She let her arm down and turned, with tears in her eyes, and went inside.
I wanted to tell her I was sorry for bothering her with asking about a letter this morning. But she didn’t bring it up.
An hour later, she left the house. I checked on Maryam. I would bring her outside but while they were gone there was more I wanted to see in the passageway. I gathered up dirty laundry in a basket and brought it to the door of the laundry room, in case Ousha came back early. I left it outside the door, then moved the crates inside the room to expose the door I would pass through. I opened it, stepped inside, and clicked on the light; this time I also brought a flashlight. I shined it down the narrow space that went behind my room. Magazines were stacked at the end; I couldn’t see what they were, but right now I was more interested in what was above. I shone my light up, following the cross-wood slats that formed a makeshift ladder. Then I put the flashlight between my teeth and climbed. When I was above the first level’s ceiling, there was an opening I could reach my hands into and pull myself. It was unfinished, but the floor was a solid piece of wood I could stand on. The walls were the same as below. I saw the back sides of rooms, as well as wires and studs, and small lights flashing green, indicating the house’s systems were working.
I stepped carefully, making sure there was more floorboard ahead of me. When I was at the end, the space continued to the left; I imagined I must be over the dining room. Between the studs, I saw shoeboxes. I bent down and took the lid off one of them. Dried leaves, rolled cigarettes, and money, held together with paper strips. I felt wary of touching any of it. I closed the box, careful not to disturb the contents. The passage zigzagged. In front of me now, a new door. I turned the handle and pushed. It moved heavily into the room.
Empire of Mud Page 4
