On Sal Mal Lane (6 page)

“No,” Jith said, his eyes never dipping below the hem of her tank top and the effort making him tip his head back and look bug-eyed. He tugged at the hem of his own shirt, a washed-out blue plaid hand-me-down from his brother. “Going to Koralé’s shop to see if he has got new marbles. Couldn’t go earlier.”

“Show us when you get,” Dolly said. “Las’ ones you got were so pretty. I liked the purple-an’-yellow one the best.”

Jith grinned and started to speak but Mohan cuffed his brother on his head and Jith’s smile vanished. He followed his brother down the driveway and they disappeared from view. Dolly turned back to Mrs. Herath.

“That Mohan, he doesn’ like us, not like Jith, the younger one. Jith is nice. He always talks.”

“Talks to
you,
” Rose said and smiled at Mrs. Herath. “Jith likes Dolly, that’s why,” she explained.

“What do you want, girls?” Mrs. Herath asked, feeling just a little overwhelmed by these complexities that were being inflicted upon her and hoping against hope that these urchins would ask for a handout of some sort, something manageable like ice cubes or a telephone call.

“Wan’ to play with your children, Aunty,” Dolly said, glancing at the house.

“Nice house you have, Aunty,” Rose added, “nice chairs an’ everythin’ no?” She lifted up on her toes and, balancing herself with a hand on her sister’s shoulder, peered into the house.

“Do you live here?” Mrs. Herath asked, softening just a little, though she left one hand on her hip, the other keeping the
ekel
broom at arm’s length for balance and, also, as a stand-in for her feelings about the girls.

Rose waved her head back over her shoulder, gesturing down the street, “We are Bollings, from down the road. First house on your right when you come. Big fence? Daddy’s father and Raju’s mother were brother and sister an’ when property got divided, our gran’father got more, that’s why we have the big piece. That whole fence, behind that is all ours.”

“We’re the second house,” Dolly corrected. “First house is Bin Ahmeds, Muslim people right near the big road. Mr. Bin Ahmed is retired and Mrs. Bin Ahmed never worked but makes very tasty
watalappan
at Ramazan. They have a grown-up daughter who works in a bank. They’re nice an’ all but don’ talk much, that’s why Rose din’ count them. We’re next. Our fence is aluminum, can’ miss.”

Mrs. Herath digested all of it: the girls, their garb, their terrible English, that staccato speech, and, worst, their proximity. She knew the place and she knew the story. Mrs. Silva had told her about the Bolling children and their parents and all of their doings after she had finished her lecture on the Tamils down the lane, but, unfortunately, Mrs. Silva had also warned her about them, and Mrs. Herath did not like to be warned about anything. So though she did not like the look of the girls, nor their apparent disregard for social norms, and though something told her that encouragement was the last thing that should be given to them, she decided to be kind.

“So, Rose? How old are you?”

“We’re almos’ ten. Nex’ month. How old are they?” and she nodded back toward the Heraths’ house. Rose spoke through her nose as though she had a very bad cold. Her words sounded thick and after every two or three, she made a snorting sound as though she were clearing her sinuses. Mrs. Herath’s regrets began to mount. Now she was going to expose her children to sickness. She made a mental note to ask her servant woman, Kamala, to put some
kottamalli
on for the children to drink instead of evening tea, as a prophylactic.

“Well, we have four children. The oldest is Suren, who is twelve, and then we have Rashmi, who is ten, and then Nihil and Devi. Nihil is now nine, and the little one is seven and a half. I’ll call them.” She turned to go, then paused and faced them again. “Girls, wait right there. I’ll go and get them.”

The twins looked at each other and then back at Mrs. Herath. She had an elegant line, Mrs. Herath did. She was not tall, but she was lean and compact, like a small animal with well-exercised muscles. She moved up the steps straight and deliberate, holding the front of her sari away from the mud with her fingers. Her hips did not sway and tempt a smack the way their own mother’s bottom did; Mrs. Herath’s backside was a well-brought-up one, they could see. Still, despite the evidence of her sensibilities and refinement, they figured she must have a good heart, for hadn’t she almost invited them in? Nobody had ever invited them into their home down that lane. Even Old Mrs. Joseph, their own grand aunt, even she shooed them away when they came begging for ice. Now they would have friends, fresh new ones, and their own age, too.

“Think they’ll like us?” Dolly asked her sister, spitting out a bit of nail that she hadn’t been able to break down.

Rose laughed, “You? Nobody could like you! Even your face is crooked.”

“At leas’ I don’ have
aluhung
like you.” Dolly laughed also, at their shared misfortunes, the ludicrousness of their hope for solid friendship.

“Anyway, I’m getting better,” Rose said, holding out some hope for the Ayurvedic treatment her mother had found for the patches of discolored skin on her back, their lighter pigment spreading erratically, a tracery of torn lace. She turned away from her sister and as she did so, she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye; it was a movement of color and peace. “They’re coming. My god. Look, Dolly, look how nicely dressed. But why only the girls?”

“Where are the boys, Aunty?” Dolly asked, grinning.

Mrs. Herath ignored her question. “Girls, I am going to give you some extra skirts in case you need—”

“No need, Aunty. We have. We only wear in the mornin’. If we came in the mornin’ then would have had skirts,” Rose said before bursting into a prolonged bout of giggling. “Why? You don’ believe?” she asked through mirthful gusts. “You don’ believe no, Aunty? But it’s true! That’s how we are. Can ask Mummy if you wan’. She’ll tell.” And she laughed again.

“Never mind if you have, but for now, put these on,” Mrs. Herath said, holding the skirts out to them. They hesitated, looking from the garments to the children as if wondering whether the bargain was worth it. Then Dolly stepped forward and took the skirts. She handed one to her sister and pulled one on herself.

“We can return them later,” Dolly said.

“No, no, girls. You can keep those. Just to have an extra one. For the evening, that is, since you already have for the morning.” Mrs. Herath was irritated by the lilt and lapses in her own sentences. She was mimicking them in an effort to influence them and this was not usual for her. Her more common pattern was to say something and have her students and children, and even her husband, simply up and do her bidding. What was it about these girls? She flung a bitter thought toward Mrs. Silva for having forced this course of action upon her. She waited impatiently until the clothes were on, the girls balancing against each other, and then she called out to the boys.

The Herath children arrayed themselves in front of their mother, who rested her palms on the shoulders of the two in each corner, the older ones. They looked like a flock of angels to the Bolling twins, whose smiles rose to the surface and then retreated several times in awe. Rose and Dolly would come to believe that their lives were graced once and only once and that the grace they remembered came from these four children, but for now they were simply dumbstruck.

“Come inside,” Rashmi said, walking over to Rose and taking her hand. Dolly felt her own being held in another hand, the smaller one, Devi. For the first time in their lives, the twins felt shy. They climbed reverently up the five steps to the veranda of the Heraths’ house and wiped their feet with gusto on the coir mat at the front door.

“We can play outside if you like, Aunty,” Rose said to Mrs. Herath, gratitude flowing through her body.

“No, that’s okay,” Mrs. Herath said. “You can go inside.” Her heart swelled as she uttered these words. She felt good. She
was
good. She would do good. She would turn those children around. She watched until the last of the children had disappeared inside and then turned back to her garden.

Telling Secrets

Inside the house, in the girls’ bedroom, the children regarded each other, the Heraths seated on Rashmi’s bed, the twins on Devi’s. Rose breathed deeply, inhaling the scent of the room, a mix of sandalwood soap, a floral powder, and the outdoors. Dolly simply stared at everything: the almirah with its double doors and inlaid full-length mirror, the dressing table with two combs and a small array of Pears products, powders, and cologne, the one desk and two chairs that sat near the window, one half of it pristine, the other a tumble of books and papers, and not a single cobweb or bit of dust in sight, not even in the highest corners of the ceiling. She looked at the Herath girls. It seemed fitting that the room was meant for girls like them, girls who wore skirts and blouses designed to match, with cotton lace edgings at hems and necklines, their feet scrubbed clean and tucked into slippers.

To the twins, the Herath children seemed beautiful if for no other reason than the degree to which they were different from themselves in the most apparent ways: cleanliness and order. Rashmi and Devi had neatly trimmed hair that lifted in waves off their foreheads, offsetting their faces, and the boys wore shirts whose collars were ironed flat, and in which they seemed perfectly at ease with themselves and the world. When they discussed the children later, the twins would diverge. To Dolly, Nihil and Rashmi were the handsome and pretty ones, respectively.
Such nice eyes,
she’d say,
did you see how long their eye lashes were?
To Rose it was Suren and Devi.
Never seen smiles like that,
she’d say,
like the whole world is good.

The Heraths saw scruffy girls, unpolished, unwashed, their fingernails gnawed, their toenails caked with dirt. But they also felt, even though they could not name it, the innocence before them. They saw friends.
If she washes herself better, Dolly would be quite pretty,
Rashmi would say later.
Rose has a nice voice, if only someone could teach her how to sing,
Suren would say.

At last Devi stood up, unable to contain her curiosity, walked over to the girls, climbed onto the bed beside them, and examined Dolly’s hair, which, unlike her own short style, hung down to Dolly’s waist in a brown-tinged matte. She picked up Rose’s hair in her other hand to compare the two. They were both the same, she decided, the same color, the same weight. She ran her fingers through her hair and then tried to do the same to the two heads in front of her. It didn’t work. Her fingers got stuck and the girls winced.

“Can I comb your hair?” Devi asked Rose, who seemed the less intimidating of the two.

“If you wan’,” Rose said, “but even Mummy hates to comb. Always full of knots, my hair.”

Devi hopped off her bed, got her comb, and then, thinking better of it, took her sister’s comb instead; it was bigger and had wider teeth and, in any case, anything belonging to Rashmi was more efficient. She started at the ends of Rose’s hair and worked her way up just as she had watched her mother do when she unwrapped her hair from its bun and let it fall down, down, down to the backs of her knees. Once, when her mother wasn’t home, she had climbed up on the last shelf of her mother’s almirah to gaze at the sad Jesus face on the postcard wedged at the back of the top shelf, and her fingers had caught the fold of one of her mother’s “good” saris and the whole stack had come sliding out and knocked her to the ground. Devi had decided then and there that what she had felt was the sensation of luxury as silk after silk slid out, unfolded like lotuses, and poured over her head and body. She planned to grow her hair long like her mother’s so she could keep that feeling with her and take it wherever she went, cascading and shimmering around her like a special shield. As soon as she turned nine that is, which is when the growing of hair would be permitted by her mother.

Working hard on Rose’s head, Devi realized that some hair could be considered the opposite of silk.
Kohu,
she thought. Yes, that was a good approximation for the strands that lay inert, spiky, and without character in her hand just like the strands that Kamala plucked from the sides of half-bald coconuts or that fell out from the bottom of her kitchen broom. If Rose washed it, though, like she and Rashmi did, using Sunsilk Egg Protein or, sometimes, the special bottle of Finesse that one of her mother’s students had brought back from America, maybe then their hair would be lovely too. She was just about to suggest this course of action, believing as she did in the power of determination to transform the unpleasant into the better, when Rose spoke.

“Y’all don’ talk much, no?” Rose said, smiling good-naturedly at the other three Herath children. “In our house of course, talkin’ all the time. My god, no Dolly? Mummy and Daddy talk talk talk and then they fight. Your parents fight?”

This was not a question that Nihil, for one, could answer honestly. It was not that his parents did not fight, it was the fact that their fights were complicated by alternating and often self-contradicting narratives the following morning. According to their mother, their father was always one of two things: a misguided fool or anyway-a-good-man. As far as his father was concerned, no fight had ever taken place, or if it had, it was merely an exchange of ideas the essence of which led back, always, like some ancient river rediscovering its true path, to the doings of the government, and, after swirling there in furious concentric circles to gather its strength, flowed on to the root of all evil: the CIA. Such evenings were also often punctuated by his mother bursting into “God Bless America,” “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” “God Save the Queen,” and sometimes, for variation, Nihil felt, “The Maple Leaf Forever,” all of which were songs that Mrs. Herath had faithfully strung on the vocal cords of each of her musically gifted children. Could arguments filled with singing be called fighting? Nihil did not have an answer.