Alwis’s lips, close to her ear, whisper, “Look down. Glass, madam, all over the road.”
She trains her eyes on her swollen feet in their tight rubber slippers. Watches them
curiously as they step carefully over broken glass.
They move with a will she cannot recognize as her own. She marvels at these feet,
at their earnestness in moving away from loss. At the biology in her that has so assuredly
chosen her unborn child over her dying husband.
At the head of their lane, a bus on its knees, front tires exploded, hemorrhages thrusting,
pushing passengers. At the far side, a particularly jovial mob gathers. Reaching high
above their heads the men pull a woman out of the small side window. They catch her
sari pallu, pull, jumping and climbing on each other’s shoulders. Mala has stopped
in the street, turned to salt, Lot’s wife, despite Alwis’s panicked urgings. She sees
the woman’s open mouth, her arms flailing in this most exposed and air-bound uncertainty
between the bus and the men. A long streak of red bisects her forehead, and then like
a cork out of a bottle the woman is dislodged. She falls into the circle of men, streaming
to earth, sari fluttering like a parachute. A roar of delight drowns the woman’s screams.
Then, again, the sound of gushing gasoline. And finally Mala allows herself to be
pulled away, down the street, into the quiet of the lane. Her red gate within sight.
The scent is rising again, the thick fragrance of charred flesh like that which wafts
from the Muslim quarter during Eid, the festive roasting of animal flesh.
She whispers to Alwis, “Not blood. On her forehead. It was her
pottu
. She must have tried to rub it off so they wouldn’t know she was Tamil. It wasn’t
blood. It wasn’t blood.” Her mind turns over the image. The woman falling, the
pottu
streaked across her forehead, the waiting men. She knows this fixation is just another
trick of her biology to keep the other images far away.
* * *
Later that day, Mala lies writhing in her bed. Poornam’s delicate hands attempt to
soothe her mistress but Mala cannot be soothed, is muttering through clenched teeth,
“Nonono, no.” Her breath coming in jagged panicky gasps and sobs. Because something
catastrophic is unfolding and Mala is feeling the thick cold fingers of it caressing
her calves, moving upward along her thighs, into the secret places of her. The large
cruel knuckled fingers of fear and grief are forcing apart her labia lips, reaching
into pink, then breaking into red, tearing through her smooth curved cervix into the
sealed chamber where her forming child lies dreaming. Cold fingers wrap around a tiny
ankle, start tugging. First gently, then insistently, so insistently that she kicks
frantically at the sodden sheets, and despite Poornam’s desperate attempts to still
her, falls heavily to the floor. She holds her contracting belly, willing it to remain
peaceful, patient. But she is gushing salt water and other hands are pulling downward
and now she must tighten up, grow rigid, all energy and attention focused on keeping
herself inviolate, unbroken. Her knees locked together, thighs clenched because she
will not allow the child to emerge because it is too soon, too soon, and there is
still time for hope, for birth. But relentless gravity is pulling, legs are kicking
in blood, knees are parting, thighs are being pulled asunder and slowly she feels
it sliding, slipping out of her. So small, yet so painful, and in a final rush she
has delivered something minute and malformed.
Knees slipping, she rocks the amphibious creature as it gasps for air, tiny eyes blinking,
a deep-sea fish hooked and dragged too quickly into light. Its gills fluttering as
it drowns in air. She holds it until dawn, the girl’s arms tight around her.
When the light comes, she feels Poornam’s hands pulling at the baby. “Under the plumeria,
by the pond,” she says, and Poornam is gone, bearing away the tiny corpse.
* * *
And then, it is all over. The mobs, red eyed and weary in the manner of holidaymakers
at the end of a vacation, head home to the villages as if they, too, are waking from
a dream, returning to human form after a brief demonic possession.
Behind them, they leave burned cars, shattered glass like ice on the streets, looted
textile factories from which bolts of cloth lick the sky like dragons’ tongues, towers
of garbage, bodies blackened beyond recognition, orphans, torn women, and destroyed
men.
Arteries, streams, and then rivers of Tamils flow out of the city. Behind them they
leave: looted, soot-blackened houses, the unburied or unburned bodies of loved ones,
ancestral wealth, lost children, Belonging and Nationalism. It is a list that stays
bitter on the tongue, giving birth to fantasies of Retribution, Partition, Secession.
They flee to ancestral villages abandoned decades ago, and it is in these northern
places that the events of this July will make them the most militant and determined
of separatists.
* * *
As the smoke clears, we realize we have lost more than we thought possible. In the
midst of these nightmare days, the Shivalingams have packed their few bags and scattered
far into the wide world, leaving the house, above us, empty and echoing.
In those first months, I wander upstairs, listen to my footsteps ringing through the
haunted rooms, and am inconsolable with the loss of Shiva. His voice comes to me on
the staircase. I spill hot, angry, secret tears. It is impossible to breathe in this,
our shared atmosphere, without him. I lie awake at night wondering where they have
gone, that large and riotous family who shared our lives so intimately. But then my
attention is taken because Amma has started agitating for leave-taking and exodus.
I hear her and Thatha in their bed. “I won’t bring up my children here,” she whispers.
“What sort of place have we become that grandmothers and children get burnt in the
street?”
“But where to go?”
“America,” says Amma with finality. “My brother can sponsor us, give us jobs, put
us up.”
I turn to La lying next to me, whisper, “Amma wants to move to America.”
“Ammmerica,” La sighs as she slips into sleep. I know what she means. We have seen
its glittering image in countless movie versions. But how can one actually live inside
it? Like moving into a dream. Unreal, impossible.
* * *
The following days are eclipsed in white. The white of flags flapping across front
gates, the white of mourning saris and of shrouds wrapped around the bodies fed to
the funeral pyres.
Our uncle’s broken, burnt body is brought to the Mount Lavinia house, enclosed in
a tight-shut coffin. La and I huddle together, wearing saris for the first time. Unsure
how to move in the yards of cloth that engulf us.
“Inauspicious. Wearing a sari for the first time to a funeral,” Amma muttered as she
dressed us that morning. But what to do? These are the dictates of the time.
Mala, somnolent, leans on our father’s arm, her stomach noticeably smooth. La grasps
at Amma’s own white sari, asks, “What happened? The baby?” In a hiss she is told to
be quiet, not to ask rude questions. People gather in Mala’s darkened living room.
They sit cross-legged against the wall. The row of saffron-robed monks enter in single
file, line up against the opposite wall, hide their faces behind their splayed fans,
and begin to intone in a deep-throated rumble. The coffin sits in between the mourners
and the monks, a dark rectangular presence. It absorbs the light in the room, a single
hideous reminder of what we have all gone through, the price that some of us have
had to pay. The mirrors are turned to the walls so that Anuradha Uncle’s spirit will
not linger here, see itself, and become attached to this place. This is stupid, I
remember thinking. If Anuradha Uncle’s spirit was here it wouldn’t be his own ghostly
face in a mirror that would keep him, it would be Mala Aunty’s heartbroken sobs.
The back of the room spills commotion. A sharpened finger points straight at Mala
Aunty’s heart and like an uninvited fairy, Anuradha Uncle’s mother lurches forth,
screaming, “Bad luck woman from somewhere!” Shocked relatives look up. Everyone suddenly
wide awake and alert to scandal. “This happened because of your ill-fated stars.”
A vast intake of air and then, “I should have locked my son up when he came to me
with stories of falling for a black-black
yakshini
. Some witchery you did to catch him. Yes, don’t think that we don’t know about you!
No one would even look at you! Only my so innocent son, and now your evil stars have
killed him!”
And Mala, breaking free from our father’s grasp, eyes spitting fire. Now she does
resemble the dread demoness Kali, hair flying, a dance of wrathful limbs and stomping
feet. “My fault! Hag! Old woman from nowhere. Did you see what happened that day?
Did you see the men pulled out of their cars? Did you see the women being burnt? Is
that my fault also? Did I give the mobs their knives and hoes and machetes? Did I
give them the burning tires? Did I gather up the men and put knives into their hands?
Me and my bloody stars! If I had the power I would have burnt you up, not your son!”
Thick spittle splatters across the old woman’s face. Mala is pulled away. She goes
quietly limp in our father’s arms. Gentle hands draw the old woman the other way but
she breaks away, throws herself on the coffin, gasping for breath, crying in such
huge heart-shaking sobs that it’s painful to watch. I remember my father whispering
to Mala Aunty, he must have asked if they should try to take the old woman away. I
remember Mala Aunty shaking her head against my father’s throat, him stroking her
hair. I remember Amma’s arms around us, sheltering us from the sound of those two
broken women. It is one of my last memories of the island.
* * *
A few months later we are packed and flying across the world to start a new life,
our hearts thudding fearfully in our mouths. As the plane takes off, I rest my forehead
against the window. Below me the island glistens verdant green. I imagine all that
it holds. Such things of horror and exhilaration as are seldom gathered together.
The striated lands of the north stretching into the sea; the lonely lagoons; the creeping,
fearful soldiers; the firework explosions; the villagers on bicycles; the gleaming
Colombo towers; the high-rise hotels of the tourists and expatriates; the clubs that
boast signs reading
NO LOCALS
; the leprous beggar on the streets, his fingerless palm spread forth in supplication
to the slick fashionistas, the half-naked European women, the foreign men grinding
over the buttocks of brown boys; the serene-faced Buddha statues; the rock fortress
of Sigiriya, with its ancient long-eyed, swan-breasted nymphs; the black shape of
a water buffalo with its ubiquitous shoulder-riding white egret; the jade spread of
paddy; the deep green of tea; the lonely village roads; the dark forests; the wild
elephants; the stick-thin stilt fishermen poised over the surging water, praying for
their next meal while the cameras of tourists click away; the tired housemaid, newly
returned from the Middle East; the spired churches; the scent of jasmine so potent,
it catches the attention of traveling poets and writers, lures them here and will
not let go. And always, always, the ever-churning sea, returning on itself, wiping
away every footprint. These are the things I am saying good-bye to. I turn my head
from the window as fear and liberation beat in equal measures through my bloodstream.
seven
We fly away from the island and twenty-four weary hours later, Los Angeles lies framed
below us. A dry-as-salt landscape marked by rectangles in every shade of blue: cerulean,
navy, baby, aquamarine, turquoise. A desert city of swimming pools.
In a dry-eyed, hyper-vigilant, vertigo-prone state of jet lag, we confront America.
We had expected Amazon blondes and hatchet-jawed cowboy types. Instead there are uniformed
Vietnamese men, Indian security guards, Malaysian Salvation Army workers all speaking
an incomprehensible form of English.
Bored black women glance at our passports. They ignore our staring eyes. We have never
seen black people except on television, and then they are usually stealing things
or running away from white policemen. Perhaps they are used to this kind of racist
scrutiny, the openmouthed curiosity of the newly arrived, because they quickly wave
us into the arrivals lounge, where Ananda Uncle with wide-open arms awaits.
He herds us into his vast, cushioned car. California in December is colder than anything
we have ever experienced. Our teeth are chattering, we cross arms over the thin cotton
clothes we have flown across the world in. Yet, more than the cold, it is the dryness
of the air, a sense of moisture abandoning our skins we feel most immediately and
profoundly. The air is thin; it stretches endlessly blue and parched into the sky.
We shiver and start as if exposed to hoary ice-frost and Ananda Uncle says, “Wait
until it is summer, then it will be hot enough to turn you into dried fish.” He laughs
and in the backseat next to me, La sticks her tongue out at him, pulls it back in
quickly before Amma sees.
He drives through streets as wide as rivers, passes other cars, each a silent moving
island. He calls our attention to various sights. “There over the hills is Brentwood.
And on those hills, the Hollywood sign. But can’t see that now. Too much smog. When
the air clears, eh? On the other side is Disneyland.” He drives with one hand on the
wheel, the other gesturing expansively. “This country. You can be anything here. You
can become president, you know. Here anything is possible. When I came, years back,
I slept on the park benches outside the hospital, made friends with the nurses. Had
them call me in when I was needed. That way I saved on bus money, didn’t have to go
home.” We are mesmerized by the purring embrace of soft leather, his endless narrative,
the blue city unfolding outside the windows. The car eases onto the wide gray roads,
and we fall asleep, exhausted and caught in the octopus coils of freeways.