ATLAS of UNKNOWNS

by Tania James

  “Here? You are here?”

  Anju nodded into the phone. “Yes.”

  “Wait inside the grocery store, by the front. I am coming.”

  Anju listened to the shrill purr of the dial tone and then the kindly voice of a woman telling her what to do if she would like to make a call. She felt a sharp hatred for the voice and the phone through which it came, but as much as she would have liked to slam the phone on its hook, she would not. “This is not your house,” Linno once scolded her when she rested her foot on Rappai’s plastic coffee table. The reprimand returned to her now. This was not her phone to slam. This country was not her house.

  ON BIRD’S COFFEE TABLE was a blue glass vase that Anju remembered from her first visit. It held a bunch of dried flowers, mummified in red and orange dyes. They smelled of eucalyptus, almost pleasant, slightly medicinal. For now, this was all she could digest of the room—a flower, a hue, a smell.

  Bird placed a bowl of hot white mush before her and called it Cream of Wheat. When Anju did not move, Bird pushed it closer. “You have to eat something.”

  In a small voice, Anju asked if Mr. Tandon had killed someone.

  “Him? No!”

  “Then what happened?”

  Perhaps it was unwise to receive bad news on an empty stomach, but Anju was quite certain that any Cream of Wheat she ingested would come right back up in the same form.

  “Please,” Anju said with such frailty that Bird sighed in concession.

  TWO WEEKS BEFORE, Bird had gone to work, punctual as always, to find Mr. Tandon frantically making phone calls in his office. She figured that he was working on a very stressful case, though she never guessed it was his own.

  The next day and the day after, she came to an empty office and tried to field all the calls of clients who had heard rumors that Mr. Tandon had been arrested and charged with both fraud and aiding illegal aliens. Bird tried her best to assuage them, but it was impossible to assuage those who had handed over so much money, their thousands of dollars dissolving before their eyes. A Bangladeshi cleaning woman had counted out her entire life savings of $8,000 on Bird’s desk, rustling each bill between two fingers with all the wistfulness of a little girl pulling petals from a flower. After news broke of Tandon’s disaster, the lady shrieked over the phone at Bird, calling her Mr. Tandon’s sister-fucking whore. Bird did not bite back. Where else could these people air their grievances? They were illegals, most of them. They had no voice.

  That same week, the office was shut down and the New York State Bar Association disbarred Rajiv Tandon for “professional misconduct and legal incompetence” involving eight illegal immigrants in Jackson Heights. His was one of several names mentioned in a New York Times article uncovering the duplicities of the illegal visa business called “Dollars and Dreams: Immigrants as Prey.” The article revealed that Rajiv Tandon was raised in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where he had attended a local public school, not St. Albans, as he often claimed. He had taken his law degree from Rutgers School of Law, and after clerking for a court judge in New Jersey, he moved to New York and opened his office to the pool of illegals in Jackson Heights.

  The article went on to report the recent growth of such corruption: “As the number of illegal immigrants in this country has swollen to what the Department of Homeland Security conservatively estimates at nine million, so have the ranks of those who inhabit the immigration business’s underbelly, posing as well-meaning advisers to those in search of a new job, a new home and a green card if not full citizenship.”

  After reading the article, Bird wondered where she figured on the food chain between predator and prey. All those chais she had made just to anesthetize clients before their fortunes were properly devoured. What did she know of what went on behind closed doors? But this was no excuse. She had held the hands of some of those people. She had chased Anju down and forced this predator upon her. The following days led Bird to the certainty that she could do nothing for the others, but if there was one person she had to help, it was Anju.

  “I tried calling and calling you,” Bird said. “I left messages. I thought you had heard somehow and didn’t want to speak to me anymore.”

  THE “DOLLARS AND DREAMS” ARTICLE, which Bird had clipped and saved, lay in Anju’s lap. She could tell that her silence was beginning to make Bird wary, but she could not stop staring at her warped reflection on the curve of the blue vase, transfixed, unwilling to return to the world of sharp angles and dead ends. But it was absolutely vital that she present herself as controlled, rational, aware of actions and consequences and their linear order. She blinked twice in the effort not to look unhinged. She took a breath.

  “I have a problem.”

  Bird clasped her hands, her expression eager and anxious. “What can I do? Tell me, I will help you.”

  “Can I stay here tonight?”

  “Of course.” Bird glanced at the large duffel bag at Anju’s feet, confused about its presence. “Do you want to call the Solankis?”

  “No.”

  Anju would not call anyone because with a single word from a familiar voice, she would doubt herself. And doubt would not allow her to soldier on, to operate under the necessary illusion that she was alone in the world and had no other choice but to stay. If she returned home now, her family’s relief would quickly fade against the disgrace that would follow. She could return only once redeemed.

  For now she focused on finishing her Cream of Wheat under the skeptical eye of her new roommate. Bird would not settle for the truth alone. She, like any adult, would demand that laws be obeyed, and if not laws, then fathers. Anju’s mind moved swiftly to the next lie she would tell. Move forward, not back, Ammachi once told her. She had been talking about how to properly sweep a floor, but still.

  THOUGH BIRD IS NOT a religious woman, there are times when she feels that she is truly witness to certain small, divine mysteries. Often she thinks of that day in Tandoori Express, when she happened across the Manorama article that she would normally skip. What were the chances, the series of good fortunes that brought Bird face-to-face with the closest thing left of Gracie, just as Gracie had promised in one of her letters?

  Bird and Anju had met. They had sipped tea in Bird’s living room, so small an event to Anju, so monumental to Bird.

  And now, in the same living room, Bird listened as the girl defined what precisely she meant by a “problem.” Anju explained each step and misstep, from the stealing of the sketchbook to her recent expulsion. She begged Bird to let her stay until she earned back the money she had lost and maybe even worked toward obtaining a green card.

  “Wait, wait,” Bird interrupted. “The school expelled you, and now you’ve run away?”

  “I did not run, I left. After the school’s decision, Mrs. Solanki expected me to return to Kumarakom. What would she do with me for six months, hanging around the apartment all day? I told her, ‘I’d like to stay with my auntie in Queens.’ Mrs. Solanki said okay.”

  “And the school has no problem with you staying?”

  “I am not their responsibility anymore,” Anju insisted. “I’m not breaking any laws by staying. My student visa lasts until the end of June, so I have six months to apply for a visa extension and then residency.”

  Bird made Anju repeat herself. Was it really that simple? Impossible that the girl could tell anything but truth with such weary calm, a calm that came from having no other choice. “What would your father say about all this?”

  “I called him already. I told him all about you.”

  Bird straightened up, her stomach sinking. “You told him my name?”

  Anju hesitated before nodding. “Was I wrong to?”

  “No, no. Go on.”

  “I told him you are a Malayali woman, a secretary and a librarian. An auntie to me here. And that you had tried to help me get a green card. I told him that you might take me in.” She waited for Bird to object, but Bird said nothing. “He was hoping that you would say yes, at least
for a short time. He is afraid that if I don’t finish my student visa, if I am sent home by the school, it will be a black mark on my record and I will never be allowed to return….”

  Bird tried to focus on what Anju was saying, but instead she pictured the Melvin she had never met. She had always imagined him handsome and bearded, muscled and demanding. And what did Bird’s name mean to Melvin? No doubt he had once heard of her; Gracie mentioned as much in one of her letters. (Melvin thinks you are a bad influence. That you are trying to take me away.) But after all these years, it seemed that he had forgotten her name.

  “… And he has heard of many people applying for a green card and getting it,” Anju continued. “So he would like me to stay with you for the time being. Till I get a better status.” Anju met Bird’s gaze. “He said this is what my mother would have wanted for me.”

  Bird looked away, fingering her sleeve. “Does he want me to call him?”

  “Our long-distance connection is terrible. Better to send letters.”

  Nodding, Bird stared at the orange flowers, which would live infinitely in their desiccated state, dust gathering between the leaves. Her post-show wreaths and bouquets, now reduced to this. Melvin had been to one of her performances, this much she knew. But now, any conversation between them would lead back to a time that she preferred not to remember, rumors she had left behind, knowingly shrouded in dust. Did he remember the rumors? Did he connect them to the “auntie” Anju had told him about? It seemed he didn’t, but he might, if Bird called. And then this beautiful chance, so fortunate for Bird and Anju both, could be lost.

  “Do you want my father to call you?” Anju asked.

  “No,” Bird said quickly. “No need.”

  “So can you help me?”

  This was the question that snagged on Bird’s heart, an echo of the one she had uttered countless times in Tandon’s office—Can I help you?—all the while knowing that her help would never amount to much. Now she could care for this child, Gracie’s child, whom Melvin was entrusting to her.

  It had taken a day to bury Gracie, but for Bird it had taken no less than a decade. Now it seemed reasonable to wonder if life did not, in fact, hinge on death, and whether the door to Gracie’s life could fall open years later with an inquisitive creak.

  Anju’s hands gripped the sofa cushion beneath her, her shoulders hunched, waiting for the fall of Bird’s judgment.

  “Okay,” Bird said. “Stay with me.”

  4.

  HE DAYS SPEED BY, with no one counting them but Ammachi. The week before, Mrs. Solanki called and only Ammachi was there to answer, resulting in little more than a confused duet of syllables and half sentences. Ammachi could tell that Mrs. Solanki was slightly relieved to find Linno not at home. These weekly calls were becoming a useless routine.

  A month has passed and Ammachi hardly sees Linno anymore—how late that Alice keeps her! Can she not work from home as she used to? Ammachi wonders if it has something to do with their fancy new computers, Linno’s current object of infatuation. Then go marry the computer, Ammachi would like to say. It knows everything about her already—announcing her name in some strange public space where everyone from Bangalore to Brazil can see it. The Web, Linno calls it, a term that does not sound palatable in the slightest. “Everyone is connected this way,” Linno says, making it sound as though everyone around the globe is holding hands. Why would a stranger want to hold your hand? Ammachi wonders. Probably just to yank you in his direction.

  But she does not begrudge Abraham for keeping her son all day. Best that Melvin be made to work, rather than leaving him idle to concoct foolish plans. Ammachi has always felt a great admiration for Abraham, his noble bearing having bestowed him with the quiet force and equanimity of his father. She hopes that he might talk some sense into her son.

  With no one to read to her, Ammachi winces at the pictures in the newspaper, but the quality is so blurry that she must turn on the television, a joyless act, as the newscaster has no time to listen to her disquisitions on current events. Melvin is not home, having abandoned whatever secret plan he has been keeping from her. In his off hours, he visits the invitation shop and helps Linno until they both take the sundown bus home.

  In the meantime, Ammachi has nothing to do but go rustling through Melvin’s room, halfheartedly cleaning. The mattress is buckling in the middle, despite bearing the weight of such a slight, single person. She strips it of its sheets, which smell mildly of fennel, and gathers the four corners into a bundle. Into this, she puts Melvin’s dirty undershirts and goes on to sniff the armpits of those hanging in the closet. She grasps the shirt he wore yesterday and notes the bulge in the front pocket—a beaten package of his beloved bidis kept ever close to his heart. Without a second thought, she removes one from the package and goes to the back of the house for a smoke.

  Throughout her seventy-seven years, Ammachi has smoked a total of three times. The first time was when she was twenty-eight years old, during a walk with her husband to see the construction of the railroad track. It was the first to be built through Kerala, then only a raised vein of earth muscling its way toward the horizon. The tracks had not yet been laid. He guided her down the berm on foot, talking about the railroad as he smoked. He had only recently taken up smoking, and she smiled privately at the way he held his bidi like a pencil.

  She had heard all kinds of things about the railroad. When she was a little girl, she had heard Gandhiji over the radio, deploring the railroad’s construction in the northern regions. Back then, some of the elders claimed that the British were laying the long, looping track across the country like a mechanical lasso, to drag the country back to England. Others ventured that the British were using poor Indian workers to dig up the ground, to steal the country overseas by the shovelful. Why wouldn’t the sahibs do so? They tried to steal everything else. No one believed those theories anymore, but there remained a residual distrust when watching the migrant Tamil workers, glistening and dark, heaving baskets of tiny stones on their shoulders, pouring them over the slender berm. She and her husband sat on a hill overlooking the workers, watching their version of the Golden Colon take shape.

  “Want?” he said, offering her the bidi.

  He was only joking, but she took the bidi between two fingers and, drawing a shallow breath, sent a billow of smoke into the space between them. They had been married eleven years, and whether he loved her or not, she did not know. Nor did she know if she loved him. But she surprised him sometimes and he silently liked it, she could tell.

  Now, at seventy-seven, she holds the bidi in her husband’s pencil grip. She smiles faintly, but the pleasure lasts only so long. Being alone, there is no freedom in it.

  AMMACHI IS APPALLED when Linno insists on missing church the following Sunday, but Linno cannot spare a single hour where work is involved. “Skipping Qurbana at a time like this?” Ammachi asks.

  “Pray for me,” Linno says.

  The very amount of labor and time that Linno is putting into the B-i plan confirms to her that she will get the visa. Work achieves a prayerlike consistency with every cut and fold and smear of paste, and like prayer, her work will be rewarded. It is the purest faith she has left.

  OVER THE COURSE of two weeks, Linno has designed twelve new invitations for the handmade collection. She draws them in pencil, then in ink, and with Bhanu’s help, she scans the designs into the computer in order to add any digital graphics or fonts. Georgie transfers the finished invitations to the website, while Prince and Alice concoct descriptions based on the terminology used in an old American catalog, words like “flourish” and “lavish” and “gaily,” christening each invitation with titles like Blooming Butterfly and Zenchantment. Made with the lovely ivory tones of our Pearl handmade paper and chiffon ribbon, the Spring Riches invitation makes a lavish and gay impression.

  A whole day is required to finish Judy Lambert’s invitations, a task taken up by Melvin and Prince, who despite his usual salesmanship has a
ll the efficiency and humor of a machine when faced with a manual task. For every five cards that pass through Prince’s fingers, Melvin completes one. Melvin moves with care, pressing his fingertip to the knot of red silk ribbon, scraping away the excess threads of glue. At times like these, when the whole shop is humming with activity, Linno senses that her family’s fortune will turn.

  But then there are the nights. Lying in bed, Linno recalls the figures she read in the used New York City travel guide that she bought from an outdoor book table, stacked with a skyline of dismal titles and outdated Time and National Geographic magazines. That she had spotted the city name amid the surrounding titles seemed a promising omen, until she read the introduction: “New York, the fifth-largest city in the world, boasts a population of eight million inhabitants, including all the five boroughs.” The sentence stopped her in the middle of the crowded sidewalk, to the reproach of a bicyclist swerving around her.

  At night, Linno stays up thinking. Even if she gets to New York, where will she begin? How can she know her sister’s mind? It is a maddening circle of questions sometimes leading Linno to the conclusion that she hates her sister, though the hate does not contradict the love. Love and hate, hope and fear, all of these mingle in the same quarters of her heart.

  If Anju met a friend who is helping her, that friend would be living somewhere in New York. Unless she ran off with a lover who whisked her away to another state, as far and as hazy as Montana perhaps. Linno has read stories about abducted young women, bodies turning up days later, tragedies of misguided trust. But Anju would not stray so far; she has the stomach for only so much danger. As a little girl, she once wrapped all the kitchen glasses in newspaper because she had heard of an earthquake that was predicted to hit Pakistan a week later. Anju was a practical girl, Linno thinks before quickly correcting herself. Anju is a practical girl. And she does not, nor will she ever, belong solely to the past.