by Susan Conley
“A back door.” My hands are shaking. Gita’s been denied. She could be sent to India any day.
“That judge is a hard one,” he says. “It went very badly.”
I’m so disappointed that I feel short of breath. There’s no air in my lungs. My throat feels hot and scraped. In a way, my disappointment makes no sense. I knew Gita had a thin case, but I’d been able to trick myself into thinking that the system would pity her.
“Did the judge read the testimony? Did she read Gita’s whole story? We worked so hard on it.”
“The testimony is not why Gita didn’t get her ruling today. The people at OFPRA made a verification that Gita’s grandmother was alive. I didn’t know this when the hearing started. But that was all the judge needed to send her back to India. I told you to prepare. The hearing was over before it started.”
“I still don’t understand. It doesn’t make sense. Why is she any safer from Daaruk at her grandmother’s?”
“This is the problem with the fucking system. You cannot understand it because it is cold and capricious and you are of the warmhearted species.”
“Gita has to marry her rapist? Because that’s what’s going to happen in Jaipur.” My voice begins to rise. “They’re going to fly her back and she’s going to land in a random town they happen to have a seat on a plane to. Somehow she’ll make it back to her house, where her grandmother may or may not be. Daaruk will be there within a day or so. She’s better off dead.” I’m screaming now.
“Stop what you’re saying. She’s not going to die.”
“Don’t you get it? She’d rather die than live with that man! Why didn’t you fight harder for her? Why didn’t you explain it more to the judge?”
“Merde, Merde. Willie, I am trying to make you understand. You act like this is the only case that was tried all day in the Paris immigration courts. There are hundreds. I’ve had twelve already this week. This is how it works. The judge looks for some way to comply with the laws, and when they find a living relative in the home country, it’s finished. Gita didn’t have a good case, can’t you understand that? You are not a lawyer.”
“But I was her guardian.” I start crying again, only this time it’s not those quiet sobs I could swallow in the courtyard at the palace.
“That doesn’t mean you’re a legal expert. Christ, Willie. You have to trust me. Don’t you think I tried?”
“Why didn’t you talk more about the rape!”
“They never want to hear about rape in court if they can avoid it. They want to talk about illegal entry into the country. You don’t see it. Do you know how high the numbers of girls are who have been assaulted and raped? It’s too much emotion in the court, so they avoid it. Don’t you think I wish it had ended differently?”
“But did you want it for Gita?” I raise my voice again.
“I always work as hard as I can for my clients.” His voice is very low, his face like a mask. Only his eyes move.
“You have no idea, really. You have no idea what it’s like to be a woman and be raped.” I start to cry again.
“Christ, Willie. Am I missing something here? Have you been raped?”
“I’m not saying that. I’m saying you don’t know about Gita’s fear. It’s sick that the court is sending her back. I’m ashamed to be a part of the process. There’s nothing fair about it. This is what you do for a living every day? Send people back to the places that almost destroyed them?”
“You need to go to sleep now. You’re saying things you don’t mean.”
“But I do mean them.” I sit on the floor by the door to the kitchen, and I let the tears come down.
“Then you’re cruel. I don’t want to be anywhere near you.” He turns and walks past me. “I’m sleeping on the couch.”
“Do that. Sleep there.” I stand up and walk past him and slam the bedroom door. Then I lie on the bed and fall asleep with my clothes on.
21
Flight risk: someone with a likelihood of fleeing before a sentence can be carried out
I wake up in the middle of the night full of regret for what I’ve said to Macon. He didn’t deserve it. I spend the rest of the night on an inventory of my weaknesses—why I led Gita to believe she might win asylum; how I didn’t allow myself to see Luke’s HIV so now we’re caught on our heels, only waiting for more drugs. Macon’s gone when I get up and walk into the kitchen. I don’t call Luke to tell him about the disaster at the palace. He doesn’t need any of my bad news. Let him sleep. Let him sleep as much as he can.
At eight I go down to the street and find a cab. I can’t decide how far the hand of OFPRA reaches into France now that Gita’s appeal has been denied. I don’t know, for example, if she’s technically allowed to leave the center with me today and go to the academy for her job. Maybe Truffaut will consider her a flight risk and refuse to let her. By the time my cab turns left on Rue de Metz and stops in front of the wall of graffiti, I’ve decided to try it. Maybe Gita and I will get at least one more trip across the city together. And I owe her an explanation.
There’s a man waiting at the door in a blue nylon windbreaker. Kirkit. I can’t believe how glad I am to see him. “Is that you, Kirkit? Do you remember me from the kitchen the other week? I’m one of Gita’s teachers.”
“How are you, Ms. Pears?” He smiles. I’m surprised he remembers my name.
“Well, I would be better if Gita had been granted asylum yesterday. I’m sure you’ve heard the news?”
“I waited here all day yesterday to find out, and I got to speak with her when she returned. It’s not fair, what the court has decided. Gita isn’t safe in India.”
“It’s hard news, Kirkit.”
“What you don’t know,” he looks at me, “is that I intended to take care of Gita once she was released. I have an aunt here in the city. She is like a mother to me. I have told her about Gita, and she has made room in her apartment for one more person. Indians need to stick together in France.”
“I knew you were friends. It’s a very special thing, your friendship. I didn’t know you had made plans.”
“Yes. We share the same dreams. Do you know what I’m saying?” The buzzer zings, and I smile at Kirkit and say nothing. But I nod. And when I do this, he smiles back at me and holds the door open. Gita is standing inside the hall in her green sari. She gives Kirkit a small fierce look as he walks past her.
Sophie steps out of her office then and puts her hand on Gita’s shoulder. “Good morning, Willie,” Sophie says. “We have a girl here who is trying not to despair. I tell her that you never know what God has in store. I tell her that you always have to hope.”
“Hope,” I say. “It’s true, Gita. Hope never stops.” But I feel that distance again between the sound of my words and what I really want to say. I tell Sophie we’ll be back by four-thirty. Then Truffaut buzzes us out from his command central. The locks release and Gita’s in my custody again. Yesterday I couldn’t touch her in the courtroom, much less get the handcuffs off. Today we walk slowly, freely through the city. We walk down Boulevard de Strasbourg, past Boulevard St. Denis, until it turns into Boulevard de Sébastopol. There’s a luggage store called Amigo, with hard suitcases wrapped in clear plastic out on the street. The theater is showing a new Bollywood film.
We pick up the No. 4 line at a stop called Réaumur—Sébastopol. The glass sign above the stairs is shaped like a scallop shell and spells out MÉTROPOLITAIN. Gita doesn’t say anything. I don’t want to talk to her about the hearing—it’s too big a disappointment to try to put words to, but it sits between us on the train. “Gita,” I finally say, “you’ve become so good at helping in the office at school.”
“I saw the job of answering phones as something that would lead to something else.” She speaks flatly and stares out the window.
“Maybe it will.”
“Where, Willow?” She turns and looks at me fiercely. “Where will it lead in India? Do you think that I’ll be offered a job in a school there
? In an office? This is not true.”
We get off the train at Rue St. Sulpice and walk past the dark shadow of the church to the academy. “Tell me about Jaipur,” I say. “Tell me who you know there and where you could live so Daaruk won’t find you.” We have very little time to get her ready for India.
“I know many families in my neighborhood, and they all understand that Morone and I left with Manju. They know everything about my family and my engagement to Daaruk. They will think it’s their job to reunite me with him. They won’t know what he did to me. Or they won’t believe me or they will think it’s part of marriage. I cannot hide in my own city. The people I need to help me are the people who would also bring me to him. But you can help me if you are willing. You can take a risk.”
The students come and go on Rue St. Sulpice, pushing the heavy door open and letting it slam behind them. “I’m trying to get you flown to a different city where you know someone. We can get you money. Enough to start a new life away from Daaruk.”
“I want you to help me here in Paris, Willie. I am asking you to do this for me. I could walk and you could turn your head and pretend you didn’t see me.”
I stare at her. “The police will find you in a number of hours.”
“I am nothing to them. They won’t spend one day searching for me. There are so many Indian girls in the city who look enough like me.”
“You need to do your job today for Luelle. Later we can talk about your flight back and about books and things like shoes. You need another pair of shoes.”
“I need you to listen.” She’s gotten bold now.
“I know what you’re asking, and I can’t do it.” My students are all gathered in the room upstairs by now, wondering where I am.
“Oh, Willie, you are so serious. You are so good at rules. Kirkit and I have made a plan for today, if you would just let us do it.”
I’m the one who’s gotten permission for her at the academy. I’m the one who helped her write her testimony. I don’t say anything after that. My feelings are hurt, and I savor it—like I’m the one who’s at a disadvantage.
I realize how cruel I’m being before I deliver her to Luelle. “Gita,” I say when we’re at the door to the main office. “I would do almost anything for you. You have to know that.”
MY FIRST CLASS is on the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. We’re reading her poem “Requiem,” in which she waits outside a Leningrad prison for seventeen months to get one glimpse of her son. The government took Akhmatova’s husband from her after they took her son. She risked execution to write about it. The government didn’t kill her. But it killed the people she loved.
And somehow she distilled Stalin’s reign down to five lines of poetry. I am still in awe of this every time. I ask Virginie to read a stanza out loud.
It isn’t me, someone else is suffering. I couldn’t.
Not like this. Everything that has happened,
Cover it with a black cloth,
Then let the torches be removed …
Night.
“Maybe this is all we really need to know to understand love,” I say. “A mother who stood outside that prison every day in the freezing cold winter just to see her child’s face.”
“I think this poetry is all about death,” a tall African-American boy named William says in French. “It’s about hope, too.” I nod from my seat, hoping he’ll continue. “Or at least the human condition.”
“In a way, perhaps.” I stand and walk around the chairs. “Akhmatova says what is unsaid. She lets go of convention.” I let this last sentence sink in. Several students smile. “So perhaps,” I look at each face, “she’s able to say things in poetry that can’t be said any other way.” I almost have them. Poetry. Transmitter of the inner life. Then it’s twelve-thirty. Class is over.
They stand and wrestle with their notebooks and knapsacks. I go downstairs and wait for Gita. She puts the phone on the receiver and stands and pushes the chair away from her desk. Then she says good-bye to Luelle. Rue St. Sulpice is cramped with cars and Vespas. We move single file on the tight sidewalk and don’t speak until we’re past the church.
“I have an idea.” I can’t believe what I’m saying. “I talked to Kirkit this morning, so I know something about your plan.”
“He is waiting for me. He is also hoping that you will do this for us. Please, Willow. Please.” We keep walking, and I can’t come up with any other way that she can be free. At some point Gita says, “There are not any Indian people on the street here, Willow.”
“I know that.” I’m tense and short with her now. Nervous. “There have never been Indian people on this street. You’re only just now noticing it.” Some internal switch has been flipped. It’s the court hearing that’s made me furious. It’s Akhmatova’s devotion. It’s the state lawyer’s unwillingness to talk about rape because it’s too emotional. It’s my remorse and my shame for trusting the system. For getting her hopes up. I haven’t slept. “I’ll go into the market on the corner of Rue de Tournon to get the apples, and you will walk away.” Now it’s decided.
This has been our routine whenever she’s worked at the academy. The apples. The cheese. The bread. The chairs at Luxembourg Gardens. Then back to school, where I teach the second class and she transfers calls to the different department offices. We’ve been constant with the picnics. So no one will suspect us. “You will do this for me? I am beyond words to thank you with. I am crying inside.”
All winter she’s been asking me to help her. Guardianship for the court. Yes. I could do that. It was easy. Cost me nothing. Now Luke is dying. Who am I to say who gets to run away and who doesn’t? We take a right on Rue de Tournon. The metal bins in front of the market on the corner are full of green apples and blood oranges. “There are not any Indian people here, so I will be sticking out. I will seem the odd one,” Gita says then.
“We’ve gotten our lunch here before. It’s going to be fine. It’s going to be okay.” I can’t cry. I will myself not to cry. Am I ever going to see her again? I hand her all the money in my wallet, which isn’t enough. Maybe a few days’ worth of food. I rip a page out of the notebook in my bag and I write my phone number on it and I give that to her, too. “Call me. When you are in trouble, you must call me. Now walk away and keep walking to the metro.”
We don’t slow down on the sidewalk. I’m so worried now that my legs shake, even though this part where she leaves is really the easy part. And I know this while it’s happening—that there will be bigger consequences. I just haven’t thought through exactly which consequences will matter. I’m her teacher. What does that really mean?
“Do not stop when I turn and go into the market.” How have we gotten here? I pretend that losing her to the street isn’t a painful thing. I have to give her courage. Or maybe she’s giving me courage. Maybe she’s always been the stronger one. That’s what I think. That she’s the stronger one. “Just keep walking and get to the metro and find Kirkit. He better have more money. If your plan was to stay at his aunt’s—well, you need to change it. Do not stay there. They’ll come for you. Sophie can’t lie, and they’ll find out about Kirkit’s aunt. Not even one hour at the aunt’s. You go back to the metro and you take the train to Dijon and then you’re gone. You need to be far from Paris by the time you sleep.”
I don’t give her time to speak because I’m worried that I’m going to start crying and that she’ll be distracted by me. “Pretend you’re interested in those red shoes in the store window across the street there.”
“But I am not.”
“It’s just a way for you and me to separate. Don’t you see? You go look at the shoes, and I’ll go into the market. Don’t turn back toward me once you cross the street. It’s as if we don’t know each other.” I want to put my hand on hers so badly. But I don’t. She’s leaving without papers—completely illegal. I’m mad at the system again. There’s the thin thread that’s connected me to her until now. A kind of pliant filament. She steps off the cur
b and waits for a tiny black car to pass. “Good-bye, Gita. Be safe. Be very, very safe, my friend. My dear, dear student.” Then she crosses Rue de Tournon and the filament snaps.
I go into the market and pick up a round of Camembert and stare at the ceramic bowls of cured olives. She’s a child. Fifteen years old. What am I doing? She’s taught me about resolve. The money I’ve given her won’t last. Where will she and Kirkit live? I almost leave the cheese and the apples and the bar of chocolate on the counter by the register and run back to the street to look for her. The old woman tallies up my lunch. How is it that our most pressing moments pass invisible to people around us? Can anyone here in the store tell what I’ve just done? How is it we can feel so alone?
When I come out to the street after I’ve paid for the food, she’s gone. I skip my afternoon class. I go back to my apartment and call Luelle and tell her I’m sick. Then I call Sophie on the phone, which is cowardly. I should go to the center and talk to her in person, but I don’t because I can’t imagine lying to her face. She answers the phone in her office. I say, “Sophie, it’s Willie. Gita and I have been to the academy.” I can see the rugs hanging on her wall. And her hair up in one of her scarves. The radio is playing Ethiopian clarinets on low, and she’s probably sipping from her mug of vanilla tea.
“Of course you have, my friend. I just saw you four hours ago. You should be back soon.”
“But that’s why I am calling, Sophie. I wouldn’t call if there wasn’t a problem, but something’s come up.”
“Dear God, what’s happened to you two? Was there an accident? Is Gita all right?”
“She’s gone, Sophie. Gita is gone.” There. I let it sit in the air between us. I have no idea what happens next, but at least I’ve said it.
“Gone? What do you mean, ‘gone’? She can’t be gone. It is a big city out there, Willie. Now tell me where she is.”
