On Sal Mal Lane (33 page)

“We can make more paper boats then,” Devi, who had accompanied her mother, said, hopping on one foot as she chased a smooth stone across the short paved walkway to the Bin Ahmeds’ bright-blue front door.

“Hope there is no trouble for us, down our lane,” Mr. Bin Ahmed said, though it was not just a wish, it was also a request, and they both knew it. “Government and Tamil party both wanted the District Development Council elections and the TULF won, even though the government’s representative, Thiagarajah, was killed by the militants. But the Tigers don’t want any political negotiations and they opposed TULF all the way. Lot of violence on every side. Now the Tamils don’t know whom to believe, the Tigers or the TULF. I am afraid that eventually somehow they will bring all these troubles here.”

Mrs. Herath took in Mr. Bin Ahmed’s small frame, his comb-over, the graying threads of hair glistening with oil to keep them in place. He was a short man, just about an inch taller than she was, a man at ease with his aging, but a frail-looking one. She felt sorry for him.

“Why should there be, Mr. Ahmed? We haven’t caused any problems for anybody, after all, isn’t that so?” Mrs. Herath said, inhabiting her Buddhist upbringing for a while, and thinking about karma. She reached behind her and tugged the fall of her sari away from Devi, who was trying to fix it to her own head like a veil.

Mrs. Bin Ahmed came out and Mrs. Herath thanked her for the dessert. “That’s a lovely color on you, Mrs. Ahmed,” Mrs. Herath said, fingering the pretty orange sari that Mrs. Bin Ahmed was wearing.

Mrs. Bin Ahmed smiled. “It belonged to my mother’s mother!” she said. “In the old days they made things to last.”

“Yes, you are right. One of
my
best saris is one that belonged to my great-grandmother,” Mrs. Herath said.

They continued to talk for a while longer about preferred fabrics, favorite colors, the impossibility that anything they bought during their lifetimes could be good enough to last and be handed down to a third generation.

Mr. Bin Ahmed waited until they finished exchanging pleasantries and then said slowly, “It’s not that we have caused problems, it’s that other people want to cause us problems. That’s the real issue here. Look at all of us, living peacefully down this lane. Look at our family. We don’t bother anybody.”

Just at that moment Sonna strode out from the Bolling house, kicking the door shut behind him. He looked over at them, and hacked and spat into the dirt. Then he stopped and lit a cigarette in full view of the three adults. They watched him until he had walked to the end of the road and turned the corner.

“Yes,” Mrs. Herath said, “we live well here, for the most part, but there are bad eggs everywhere. Whatever our differences, our lane is a safe place. We should try to be careful and keep to ourselves, stay away from all these problems that are going on in other places.”

That
we
was a charitable inclusion. Mrs. Herath knew that each family shared a different physical and emotional reality and that, between them, her family name made her less uncertain in the face of the news from the North. Still, despite their many differences, until now they had all found a way to balance their own rituals and devotions and languages with those of other people. Soon it would be time for Deepavali again and, this year too, Mrs. Herath was sure that Nihil and Devi and perhaps even Rashmi would go over to the Nadesans’ house to help them decorate their home and light oil lamps around the designs they painted on the ground. Later in the year, her children would surely be asked to help with Kala Niles’s preparations for Christmas, Suren would play carols on the piano in the evenings, and all of them would sing. Wasn’t there harmony in that?

“We are the first house down the lane,” Mrs. Bin Ahmed said, finally. “If people come to attack, ours, here at the bottom of the lane, will be the first one they’ll take.”

“War is for soldiers. We shouldn’t worry. We are simply living our lives,” Mrs. Herath said. “Don’t worry about these things now.”

Devi, who was still playing some game that involved hopping, chimed in with “Only Mohan and Jith are going to join the army down our lane,” but the adults paid her no heed, which made her stop moving so she could listen more carefully, to see if she could gather anything worth sharing with her brothers and sister.

Mrs. Bin Ahmed spoke up, taking Mrs. Herath’s hand to emphasize her point. “Last time when Lucas gave the alert we were all prepared to defend our lane. But this time I have heard the lane is dividing into separate groups and we are being put into the Tamil group.”

“Nonsense. We are united as always, Mrs. Ahmed. Nothing has changed.”

But things had. Everybody knew it, even those like Mrs. Herath who wanted so desperately to believe in the continuity of the old order that they repeated such words to whoever would listen. Things had changed. They had changed in these ways:

Rose told Dolly who told Jith who told Mohan that Kala Niles had told Raju not to go and watch TV in the Sinhalese people’s houses, which meant, specifically, the Tissera household, since they were the only ones who owned a TV.

The Silvas added two more feet to the L-shaped walls bordering their property and topped the back one with reels of barbed wire that kept even the birds away.

A young Tamil man who had boarded with the Sansonis after their son left for Australia, and had arrived from the North, roared up and down Sal Mal Lane on his motorbike without checking for the presence of children, making those who were playing outside leap into hedges and scratch themselves in the process.

Mohan no longer spoke to Raju, Old Mrs. Joseph, or any of the Nileses. Lucas told the Niles family that Sunil’s shop would not give them credit. He didn’t have to say why.

Lucas also told the Heraths that the Tamil owner of Sinappa Stores would no longer issue credit to them. He didn’t have to explain to the Heraths either.

Alice would not cook for anybody who had anything to do with Tamils, which meant she cooked for nobody, including, on some days, if she had seen him in active conversation with Raju or the Nileses or the Nadesans, for Lucas, who was forced to walk to the tea shop and ask for steamed bread and sambol.

Mrs. Ratwatte fired all her Tamil girls and sent them back to the estates and replaced them with Sinhalese girls from Kandy who had to be taught the art of batik making from scratch. She considered this a service to her race.

Most telling of all, it became rarer and rarer to hear Tamil being spoken in the streets. It was quite possible that, in all of Colombo, there was only one Sinhalese boy, Suren, attuned as he was to the interplay of sounds, who noticed and mourned the absence.

That year during Christmas time, when the Heraths gathered around the piano to sing the carols that they did not associate with Catholicism, just the season, no matter how many references there were to holy, god, and heaven, the voices that lifted above the top of the hedge and poured into the listeners outside—Mr. Niles, lying on his armchair, Rose, Dolly, Kala Niles, all hidden, and Raju and Mr. Tissera, standing side by side, arms crossed, staring down Sal Mal Lane—filled them not with well-being but with a disquiet at odds with the sweetness of the music.

Sonna’s Birthday Party

As if the disturbances between the families down the lane were insufficient, Sonna, about to turn sixteen, demanded a birthday party, which resulted in an exchange of ugly words that all the Herath children overheard because Francie Bolling, who chose her timing by her husband’s moods, not by her company, decided to broach the subject on a Sunday when Suren was there playing his guitar.

“What does he need a birthday party for?” Jimmy Bolling thundered, when the issue was brought up by his wife, and his voice cut through the music. Suren stopped playing and they all listened.

“Sixteenth birthday is a big one, after all,” Francie Bolling began, her voice cajoling, her eyes on Sonna, who was lurking outside the purple-striped curtain that separated their bedroom from the living room outside. “We had a nice party for Sophia when she turned sixteen even though she had already gone and eloped.”

“Shouldn’t ’ave bothered with that either,” Jimmy Bolling muttered, “runnin’ away like a common tart. Wastin’ all the schoolwork . . .” He petered out into a grumble, then raised his head. “It’s for girls anyway, these sixteenth-birthday parties.”

Francie Bolling shifted a little closer to her husband, rumpling the matching purple sheets on their bed as she did so. “But, darlin’, our only son, after all,” she said, putting her palm on her husband’s shoulder as he sat by her on the edge of their bed. The heavy costume earrings in her ears jingled as she moved.

Jimmy Bolling slapped her hand away. “Only son? Only thug! Only fool! Only idiot! You wan’ to know what sons are like, look at that Mohan Silva! Look at that Suren!
Those
are sons. This one is not a son, he’s a burden. Doin’ nothin’ all day long an’ comin’ here askin’ for birthday parties.”

“Sophia got so I get too!” Sonna shouted, coming into the room. Sonna, wearing his jeans, boots, and suspenders over a thin sleeveless under shirt, looked entirely disreputable and entirely undeserving of attention, let alone a birthday party, even though the shirt had been his way of covering up the worst of the pictures he kept drawing on his body.

Francie Bolling got to her feet quickly and tried to shoo him out, but it was too late. Jimmy Bolling stood up and slapped Sonna across his face, once, twice. “Who do you think you are, comin’ in here to
my
bedroom? Who do you think you are demandin’ things from your mother?”

Sonna’s head spun to the right, to the left, but he planted his feet and faced his father. “I’m your son,” he said. “You can’ jus’ give one person a party an’ not give the other one. Sophia got, so I should get too. I have friends I wan’ to have.” He had to stop himself from saying exactly whom he wanted at the party—Rashmi—though he intended to invite everybody down the lane to cover up that fact.

Suren began to strum his guitar to try to drown out the sound of these words, but Rashmi, shocked, put her palm over the strings of the guitar and shushed him.

“Sophia got so you should get? Friends?” Jimmy Bolling scoffed. He laughed. He put his face near Sonna’s and shook it from side to side. “Son, only son, you don’ have friends. You have other motherfuckers in those slums jus’ like you, other fools jus’ like you, doin’ nothin’ but shit all day. You hear me? Do shit, are shit. That’s what you have.”

No amount of pleading from Francie Bolling would change his mind. To circumvent her husband, a few weeks later, Francie Bolling invited the Herath children—and Jith and Mohan, though those two did not come—to a dinner she had prepared.
Just to share a meal with you children for a change,
she said to them, not daring to divulge her intention to celebrate her son’s sixteenth birthday in this fashion. She added turmeric to the expensive
muthu samba
rice she had begged from Koralé, tempered it with onions, called it yellow rice, and served it up with a chicken curry she got Alice to cook and didn’t even mix it all together before she served them her treat on Sonna’s birthday.

Since the children had not been told of the significance of this day, they did not wish Sonna a happy birthday or bring him any gifts, they simply washed their hands and sat on either side of Mr. and Mrs. Bolling, that being the last available seating at the table. Rashmi, seated across from Sonna, tried to smile at him but he would no more meet her eyes than smile at her so she gave up and tended to Devi instead, deboning her chicken and reminding her to keep the
indul
from moving above the second manogamy in each of her fingers as she ate, in the same way her mother had taught her.

“Make sure you use just the tips of your fingers to pick up your rice and curry!” she whispered to Devi and, a few moments later, “Tiny bites! Don’t eat like some ill-bred villager!”

None of the Herath children, not even Rashmi, paid attention to the grime and disarray of their surroundings; all their weekend visits to play and sing in secret had made cleanliness and order irrelevant. Francie Bolling, however, noticed, because when the Herath children were seated at her table, they threw her dining room furniture and her family into unflattering focus. She rubbed surreptitiously at a stain on the red-and-white-checked plastic tablecloth she had flipped over to the cleaner side just that morning; she kept getting up to rewash first one cloudy glass, then another; finally she scooped up all their glasses and went to the kitchen, where she rinsed them again by pouring the water she had boiled for drinking onto them, and carried them back steaming, scalding herself in the process.

“Mummy, why don’ you sit down!” Jimmy Bolling said to his wife. “Been workin’ since mornin’ an’ still runnin’ around,” he explained to the Herath children. “Nice to have you come for a meal,” he added, as he served more rice onto each of their plates. When he ate, his arms concealed in a long-sleeved shirt, both Suren and Nihil noticed that the fact that Jimmy Bolling could only hold his left hand in a fold was not apparent. It rested, like their left forearms did, on the table between his chest and his plate of rice, looking for all the world as though nothing was wrong with it.

“How come we’re havin’ yellow rice?” Rose asked, unable to contain her curiosity. She was sitting across from Suren and trying to be lady like, keeping just the tips of her fingers in her rice, just like Devi and Rashmi were doing.

Francie Bolling did not answer, but her eyes flew to Sonna’s face and then back again.

“Yes, how come? Times are so troubled these days also,” Dolly said, having heard about the troubled times from Jith and assuming that such times must also be associated with a lack of money, since, in her experience, things always became particularly bad in her house when her parents were short of money.

Francie Bolling looked around the table. Sonna was staring at her, but so was her husband, who seemed equally curious about the feast. She said, “No, no reason. Jus’ felt like doin’ somethin’ a little different, keep us all happy.” She looked at Sonna when she said that
all.
“Herath children also here,” she said, nervously, as Jimmy Bolling continued to look at her.