A Disobedient Girl (36 page)

“I don’t need to rest, duwa, tea is enough. But I am very grateful
to you for all this concern. Now I must go. I have to go.” I pour the rest of the tea back into the cup and put it down on the floor under my chair. I stand up.

“These are police orders. You have to give them a statement. In any case, where can you go in your condition? Do you know anybody here?”

“Amma and I, we don’t know anybody,” the girl says to the nurse before I can answer. “We live near the sea.”

“Then it is best that you stay. I will find a bed for you.”

“No, please, let me go now.” I start to walk away, but she grips my elbow.

“You have to stay here or go with the police. The chief doctor is trying to do you a favor. Which do you prefer? The hospital or the police station?” she asks. Her tone is no longer gentle.

My daughter whimpers beside me. “Amma, don’t go with the police. Police people are bad people.”

I touch her face. “There’s nothing to worry about, my little one. I won’t let the police or the nurse or anybody take you away,” I say, and she presses against me.

“I must go and see if there is a bed available,” the nurse says. She looks at her watch. It has a gold, oval face and a thin, dark brown strap. My mother had a watch like that. I don’t remember who got that wristwatch when she died. It wasn’t me. Maybe it was burned with her. My mother’s body went up in flames. What was it that killed my mother? All I see is the smoke of her funeral pyre. “It won’t take long. Baba, can you look after your amma until I come back?” she asks, and my little girl nods.

“Don’t ask her to do anything,” I tell the nurse. “She’s too small. What does she know?” But she pays no attention. She gives my daughter a piece of paper and a pen to draw with. When we are seated again, she leaves.

People take turns staring at us from a little distance. One woman with a child about my Loku Duwa’s age comes over and strokes my Chooti Duwa’s face. She tells me that I should go to the temple and do a pooja for my children, to ask the gods to help me find them. Another woman sits down next to me and tells me that the police
will never help, that I should call the government agent. A few people talk about us as if we are not there, and almost everybody with a child holds their son or daughter close to them as they pass by us. I say nothing to anybody. I cannot absorb anything more. Not advice, not kindness, not even disregard; all I can do is sit and dwell on the fate of my poor children.

The gate to the hospital is visible from here. Beyond that is a row of low buildings, and through an arched opening I see rows and rows of white nurses’ uniforms drying in the sun. From this distance, they look like the flags that mark the road to a funeral. They sway in the breeze, and I find that I am rocking myself, forward and back, the way I used to do to put my children to sleep, long ago, when they were infants. And now my daughter lays her head in my lap. I feel the heat of tears soaking through my sari. I stroke her head, over and over. Because she is here, because that is what good mothers do. I cannot comfort her with words, for what would I say? There is nothing left but this child. How safe is she with me? I must protect her somehow, but I do not know how.

After a while, she stops crying and sits up. She begins to draw. I watch as her picture takes shape: an ocean with coconut trees and the shape of a Dagaba with a house in the corner and a very small, smiling sun, whose rays come all the way and touch the sand. It is a last communication from the gods. Looking at that picture, seeing what it is she associates with happiness, I know what I must do. I must keep her away from that place, from me. I stand up.

“Come,” I say, “let us go.”

“Where, Amma? Where are we going?”

I say it gently. “I am taking you to a nice place.”

“But I thought you said we had to go very far to get to your aunt’s house. And Aiyya and Akki are lost…”

“Shh. Yes, that’s too far, I should have known it. See all the trouble we have had trying to get there? We won’t go there. This new place is not so far.”

She looks reluctant, but she stands up. “Nurse Aunty told us to stay here till she comes back. She said Police Uncle will help us to find Aiyya and—”

“No, no, we don’t need to wait. I will leave her a note.” I write in English on the back of her drawing:
Dear Lady Nurse, Thank you for your help. Now I am going. Yours sincerely, Mrs. Biso Menike.
Then I show it to my girl; even though she cannot read my writing, at least she can see that I have written something important in English. “See? Now she will know what we did.”

I take her hand, and we walk outside. The day is bright and hot, and I shade my eyes. In which direction should I go? I feel unsteady on my feet, my body weighed down by my losses. Two vendors sell
Elephant House
drinks,
Necto
and
Orange Barley
and
Cream Soda
, and foreign fruits, grapes and apples, and newspapers from their stalls by the gate. I wish I had time to buy my daughter something special, some taste that would soften the hardships of this day; her hand in mine is so small. Among the people coming in and going out of the hospital, I and my sorrow are invisible. As I stand, an older woman pauses and looks straight at me and then at my daughter. Her scrutiny strengthens my resolve. I straighten my spine and walk faster.

“Don’t pull, Amma, you’re hurting my hand. I am coming,” my little one says, her voice trembling.

I stop. I take her chin in my palms and stroke her cheeks with my thumbs, marveling at the strength and softness of children’s faces. “My Chooti Duwa, don’t cry. Amma will get you something to eat as we go, okay?” I pick her up and rock her in my arms for a few moments, then I put her down again.

I pull my sari pota over my head, and we walk more slowly toward the stall to the right side of the gate. The vendor asks for three rupees for a single apple. I must have left my handbag somewhere, because what I have with me is a parcel of food and my coin purse. When I look in there, all I have is one two-rupee note, the slip of paper the gentleman on the train gave me, and thirty cents. I shake my purse over his hand and beg him for the apple. He complains over the coins and shoves the paper back to me. He gives me an apple, a smaller one, but at least it is red and ripe.

When I give it to my little girl, she beams. “It smells nice,” she says, her eyes shut, breathing the scent of the fruit. “Amma, do you want to smell?” she asks, but I shake my head. Why smell it? My own
mother had bought me an apple once when I was sick, an apple and ten grapes. I can still remember how it all felt in my mouth, the crisp bite of the apple and then the gush of flavor, and the grapes, cool and sweet. No, my sweet little one, she should enjoy this apple all by herself. She chews it happily as we walk, and I try to concentrate only on the way she looks, happy to enjoy her treat. If I think of my lost children, I will do this little one harm as well; I will make some bad judgment the way I did with them, and she, too, will be lost. I must make sure that she will be safe.

Outside the hospital gates, there is a row of cars of various sizes and makes for hire. The drivers stand as if by prior agreement, perched against the hood of each car, one leg propped on the front bumper, each one picking at a tooth or biting a nail, bored. I go up to the oldest one.

“You can’t pick one from the middle,” a young man yells at me. “We are in order here! You must go to the first one!”

I ignore the commotion around me. I ignore my child’s tugs on my sleeve, her murmurs of concern. “How far is it from here to the convent near the railway station?” I ask the old man.

“From here it is about ten minutes by hiring car. If you wait for a bus of course it will be longer, and you have to walk from the stop. That is if a bus even comes. With the strike…”

“How much?”

He looks from me to my Chooti Duwa. “About two rupees. But you have to go with that blue car,” he says, spitting some bark out of his mouth and gesturing with his head to the man at the front of the line.

I don’t want to go with a young man when I don’t have any money to give him, but what else can I do? They all watch me walk with my daughter to the first car.

“Take us to the Hatton convent near the railway station.”

“Five rupees,” he says dismissively.

“Get in,” I tell my daughter, without even looking at the man.

He smiles at one of the other men and gets into the front seat. “You visiting somebody at the convent, or were you visiting one of
the estate patients from there?” he asks after we are settled into our seat. I don’t say anything, and he sucks at his back teeth in reply to my silence. “Hmmm. Must be another one of the girls with no father, then. They are regulars at the hospital. They all come from the cities. How many of those children are working at the bungalows around here now only the gods know.” And he sucks his teeth again. Such disgusting manners. It is too bad that we have to travel with a man like this.

“Amma, what is the convent?” my Chooti Duwa asks.

“That’s where we are going, petiyo,” I tell her, keeping my voice low, my face close to hers, murmuring against her ear. “Remember that nice akki we met on the train?”

“I remember the uncle. He gave us money.”

“There was a girl, a good girl. She will be at the convent.”

“What is her name?”

I don’t remember. We had shared so much, and yet I had not asked for her name. Perhaps the nuns will recognize me. “She is a good girl,” I repeat, “a really good girl. I am sure she will be happy to see us again. I gave her my earrings, don’t you remember? You asked me why. She is staying at a convent called St. Bernardine. Isn’t that a nice name?”

She fondles my bare ear. “Are my Mala Akki and my Raji Aiyya, are they there too? Is that why we’re going there?”

“No, shh, they are not there. Don’t talk about them. Now why are you crying? Don’t cry now, don’t cry.”

“Is that your daughter?” the driver asks me, his eyes on my baby. I fold her to me so he cannot see her. What liberties his sort takes with people like me.

“What business is it of yours whose daughter? Your job is to drive!”

“Not my concern who she is, but I am not getting mixed up in any strange business. There have been plenty of stories about children from other places. We have all heard. Don’t think we don’t know these things just because we’re from up-country. You people from the low-lying areas come here to hide all your sins. Don’t we know it.”

“Shut your mouth! Can’t you see you’re upsetting my daughter? Just keep your opinions to yourself. I have a lot of things to do now, a lot of things to think about.”

“Would have been better if you had thought earlier, from the looks of it. Up to no good, I can tell.
Chih!
I should have refused this hire.”

I ignore him and talk to her instead. “See, petiyo? See how we are getting closer to the convent? See that sign? Look how they have planted beautiful flowers all along the road. Don’t worry, my little one. I’m going to make sure that everything is done right this time.”

The road is like a lullaby. It rocks us back and forth in its curves. I feel like I am drugged, numb to everything but this moment of quiet, this moment of holding my daughter, her damp face drying in the flower-decked breeze that visits us through the open window. The driver drops us off at the gate, and I ask him to wait. We have to walk up four more bends to get to the top. I take Chooti Duwa’s hand and start climbing. At the end of the last turn I see it: my refuge. The convent is stone. I had not pictured it being made of stone. I had imagined it to be made of brick, with white paint. But the stone makes me hopeful. This building, with its high center and low bordering walls, with all this apparent abundance of space, of growing things, will stay still, keep its secrets, be unassailable. I will leave her here. It will be a fine gift to her, yes it will. After all my guarantees, at least this one will be true. This place will keep her safe from me.

T
he meal Latha prepared had been delicious, full of the flavors she had learned to create with the use of smell and intuition, elevating traditional dishes to culinary art. Moreover, the food had been suffused with the inimitable essence of goodwill, served at the perfect temperature, neither too hot nor already cooling, the curries reaching just so up the sides of dishes wiped clean of stray drips.

But none of it, not the food, or the good plates with the trailing vine pattern that Latha had learned to tolerate, taken out of the teak and glass display closet and warmed, or the plantain leaves heated and placed over the plates for a special touch and, secretly, to please Gehan, or the expensive table linens, or the cut-glass vase of fragrant pink dahlias and white orchids that Thara had brought home in an arrangement from the flower shop, or, at the very least, the auspicious occasion of this reunion could prevent the fallout.

“Latha, go and bring my camera from the almirah,” Thara said, after everybody had been served and they were about to begin eating. “I want you to take a picture of all of us at this table after all this time.”

“No need right now, Thara,” Gehan said. “Let’s enjoy the food that Latha has cooked before it gets cold.”

“This will only take a few seconds. Latha, quickly! Go upstairs and get my camera. I think it’s with my good saris.”

Latha went to bring the camera, which was, like Thara had said,
nestled among Thara’s manipuris and silks and hand-loomed cotton saris. It sat, in fact, on top of the hastily folded deep purple silk sari in which Thara had dressed her. That sari, its color, the memory of why it had been so swiftly taken off her, their intimate evening ending with the sound of Gehan’s return, and the way the actual photographs had made her feel, who had handed them to her, made Latha hesitate. Downstairs, she could hear Gehan still trying to dissuade Thara from trying to take a photograph. Perhaps she could hide it. She reached out to take the camera and stuff it somewhere else, buy Gehan a little time. Under Thara’s shoes, maybe?

“Latha! What is taking so long?” Thara came into the room. “What are you doing staring at the camera instead of bringing it to me, you silly woman? Give that to me. Honestly, I don’t know how I’ve put up with you this long. You have become just as foolish as that mad Podian. Two imbeciles. That’s what I have.” And she laughed.

Latha listened to Thara’s heeled shoes going down the staircase. She didn’t follow her. She took the purple sari and folded it neatly. The blouse allowance slid out from the folds. She picked that up and tried to smooth it without much success: it was far too crinkled from the twisting and tying that Thara had done to create a blouse for her. She was still standing there holding the sari when the fight erupted.

“There’s no film in here! Where’s the roll of film that was in here?”

“Maybe you didn’t put any film in, duwa,” Mr. Vithanage said soothingly.

“I bloody well had film in here. I know I did. Someone took the film out. Who touched my camera?” Thara’s voice rose. Latha listened to the tremulous high notes that took flight from among the usual tones of Thara’s voice, like miniature birds scared from their nest by some hostile creature. That voice was directed only partially to the girls, Latha could tell. If Thara had truly suspected them, her voice would have grown deeper with the assurance of nothing changing. Latha turned to look at herself in the long mirror. She held the sari up to her face, admired herself fleetingly, then pressed her nose into its folds, breathing in the scent of something lovely and sweet, a blend of Thara’s fragrances, of unused things, and of
her own jasmine soap and her sweat. It was the smell of irretrievable time, falling back from her even as she tried to inhale it into her very bones and keep it.

“I took the film out, Thara,” Gehan said clearly. “I took it to be developed.”

“Why did you take it out when it was not finished yet?”

“I finished the rest of it. I took some shots of the garden,” he said. “Of the garden and the house. There weren’t many left anyway.”

Latha went out onto the landing and descended reluctantly, and so slowly that her feet were soundless on the stairs. Something told her this would be the last time she went down that staircase, and she couldn’t yet tell whether that would be a good thing or whether it would be something terrible.

“Since when have you started being interested in photography?” Thara asked and, after a moment or two, asked again. “Why aren’t you saying anything? Since when? I’m always the one taking photographs. This is my camera. Why all of a sudden have you got interested in my camera?”

Latha entertained the thought of telling them. But what could she say? That he had given her the photographs? That she was grateful to have some pictures of herself? That he had only been doing her a favor?

Mr. Vithanage spoke again. His voice had changed over the years, grown even more resigned, but with a small amount of gaining strength, like contentment or acquiescence to the order of things and a determination to inhabit his lot fully. “It doesn’t matter, does it? We can take a picture another time. Come now, let’s eat. I’m hungry. The children look hungry too, aren’t you, darlings? Put the camera away.”

And it might have all subsided there, except that he chose to push his advantage, having been able to get that much out without interruption and, perhaps, feeling that he was, finally, the peacemaker he had always aspired to be. Or maybe he spoke only because Thara had not yet sat down, was still lingering by her chair, camera in hand, as if she needed a better reason to give up and rejoin them.

“You must have picked up the photos, no, Gehan Putha?” Mr.
Vithanage said. “Why don’t you give Thara the photographs and we can all get back to dinner.”

“Yes. Did you pick up the photographs?” Thara asked. “The last pictures I took on this were of no use to anybody. They were of Latha.”

Standing on the bottom step, Latha willed Gehan to lie. To say anything but the truth.

“Latha?” Mrs. Vithanage joined in. “Why Latha? Since when are you taking photographs of the servants? Thara, you really must remember how to keep them in their place. God, never in my day would the servants have even been in the same room with the family—”

“Where are the photographs?” Thara persisted, ignoring her mother. Her voice shook. She was asking the question because she had to now, not because she wanted the answer.

He was going to tell them. Latha knew it by the fact that he hadn’t responded to Thara’s question right away. She knew that lies sprang quickly to lips; the truth was what got caught up in people’s throats, as if it wanted to give them one last chance to save themselves from what was sure to follow. She took that last step and came into the room. They all turned to look at her. She stood there before them with the sari still clutched to her chest.

“What are you doing with my sari?” Thara said, an exasperated shriek, really. “Go and put it back!”

Latha shook her head. “Please, Thara Madam, let me take this sari with me. I will give you money for it. I have enough to pay for it.”

“Take it? Where? Where are you trying to go?”

Mrs. Vithanage rose to her feet. “I might have known it. The little…” She trailed away and yelled for Podian, who came scuttling to her side, his brows knit, his fearful eyes lighting on Latha’s face and then fleeing just as swiftly to Mrs. Vithanage. “Take the children to our house with the driver and then ask him to come back. Old Soma will look after them,” she told him.

“But, Āchchi, I don’t want to go anywhere. I want this food. I’m hungry,” Madhayanthi whined.

“I don’t want to go either,” Madhavi murmured, but with less force.

“Take them and go!” Mrs. Vithanage said again to Podian.

“You can’t boss us!” Madhayanthi said.

“Amma, what are you doing? Why are you sending them to Soma?” Thara asked, turning from Latha to the girls. “Sit down and finish your dinner,” she told them.

“I gave the photographs to Latha,” Gehan said, softly, getting the words in before Mrs. Vithanage could respond.

“What? First you take my camera and then you give the photographs to the damn servant woman? What is the matter with you?” Thara frowned at him, but in her accusation Latha could feel the pulse of postponement. Thara was simply trying to avoid the future that was barreling toward her like a derailed train, with all its sharp edges and bulging suitcases full of secrets, of tired families and things gone wrong, the entire unmanageable weight of it. Or perhaps she was a Vithanage after all. Maybe she would find a way to deflect all of it or, at the very least, ignore it. “What is the matter with you, Gehan?” she yelled, pushing at his shoulder when he said nothing.

“You don’t know anything, do you?” Mrs. Vithanage said. “To think that I raised such a foolish child! Blind as a bat, that’s what you are.”

“You keep out of it, Amma,” Gehan said. “This is between Thara and me.”

Mrs. Vithanage snorted. “If it had been between Thara and you, we wouldn’t be facing this situation, would we?”

“This is not the time to discuss anything,” Mr. Vithanage said, staring at his plate. “There are children here; can you not see that there are children here?”

Mrs. Vithanage made a dismissive gesture with her hands. “You are the cause of all this, Mohan, bringing that creature into our home—”

“She is not a creature, Wimala, she was a child,” he said.

“A monster! She—”

“Thara Baba…,” Latha began, but she couldn’t continue. The scream that came out of Thara’s mouth soaked up every word, every sound, even the smell from the curries laid out, and all the human beings around the table seemed to have surrendered their strength to
that cry. She picked up her plate and flung it to the ground, and Latha found something uplifting in that sound, the brittle smashing sound and the small pieces flying everywhere. Mr. Vithanage, Gehan, and the girls all got to their feet and backed away from the table. Madhavi began to cry.

“You…
ruined
…my…
life
…you…
whore
…you…
bitch
…you…” Thara lunged around the table, smashing one plate after another, gasping out the words with each plate that she flung to the ground, her voice, robbed of its power by her scream, almost a whisper now. Mr. Vithanage tried to hold on to his daughter when she reached his side of the table, but she shook herself free. Latha must have fallen into a trance because she didn’t see Mrs. Vithanage coming until she grabbed hold of her hair and wrenched her head backward.

“It wasn’t enough for you to destroy my family’s reputation once, you had to do it again, didn’t you?” She began to drag Latha toward the front door, alternately twisting her head back and forth and beating her wherever she could. “Get out of this house! Get out! Get out!”

“Let her go!” Gehan yelled, a voice nobody had ever heard before. He strode up to Mrs. Vithanage and, after a tussle, pulled Latha away from her. She thought he was going to hold her, but he didn’t. He merely set her aside, apart, like a piece of a puzzle he couldn’t quite fit into an otherwise still manageable picture.

Mrs. Vithanage spat. “You common thug, putting your hands on me like that. You are unfit to be in our household, do you know that? Even today, I wasn’t going to come here except that Mohan begged me to do this. How humiliated I have been…” Tears began to fall down Mrs. Vithanage’s face, something Latha had witnessed only once before; and then, too, she had been the cause.

Latha staggered back, and they both turned to look at her.

“Latha,” Gehan said, “are you hurt?”

“…talking to her like she’s one of us…,” Mrs. Vithanage said, bitterly.

“She’s a human being!” Gehan said. “Do you think your family is the only one that has been hurt in all of this? You talk about your
family as if they are something special. You are not special. You are no better than any other family!”

“We are better than yours; that much I can tell. Some filth that came crawling into my house through the back door—”

“Filth knows how to find other filth, I suppose,” he said.

“Do you know she’s pregnant?” Mrs. Vithanage asked, and the question managed to cut through the din of Thara’s smashing and breaking plates and dishes and the almost musical clatter of silverware flung to the polished cement floor. Into the noise came the larger one of absolute silence.

“Pregnant?” Gehan said, turning to Latha again. “You’re pregnant?” he asked.

She nodded. “I was going to tell—”

“I didn’t know—” He stopped. He took a step back from both Latha and Mrs. Vithanage and ran both his hands through his hair.

There was a further silence as everybody waited for what would come next. Nobody was looking at Thara, but it was clear it was her turn to speak. Latha was not surprised by what she said. She was a Vithanage, after all, Thara was. That was what her sinews were made of, the Vithanage Way, something tensile and adaptable, a way of realigning, redefining, retelling that made the world livable.

“Podian?” Thara said. “You couldn’t leave Podian alone, could you? You couldn’t have raised your skirt—”

“Come, Duwa, there is no need to talk like this in front of—” Mr. Vithanage said.

“…with the newspaperman or the fishmonger, you had to pick a boy young enough to be your son. Have you no shame? Not one bit of shame after all these years that we have looked after you?”

Latha stared at Gehan, but he said nothing. He simply stood there, shaking his head. His eyes were turned away from her, his body facing his family. She was outside that circle, no matter that she could sense in the curve of his back some sympathy for her, a forlorn wish for a different outcome, tenderness even. But he was not a strong man; he had never been one. Were there strong men in the world? If there were, she had not met them. No, all she had met had been men who ruled small worlds from their perches upon the
backs of strong women. Or who, like Mr. Vithanage, were beaten by one. All she knew were men who had used her or permitted her to use them. But he had loved her, Gehan had, hadn’t he?