The Bones of Grace (33 page)

The logic was faulty, of course – I have told you before, there had never been any explicit demands, no ultimatums or threats. And yet I felt as if they were all holding my life to ransom. What would I ask for in exchange? What could be as big as this? Even as the question was posed in my mind, the answer came catapulting back: I would seek out the woman who had eluded me my whole life. This was the only reasonable exchange, the only bargain I was willing
to strike. And with this resolution firmly lodged in my mind, I fell into a thick sleep.

A few hours later I woke to find Rashid packing for an overnight trip to the factory. He was rolling his socks into cylinders and while he was placing them in a corner of his bag, I told him I had decided to find my birth mother. He paused, a pair of trousers folded over his arm. ‘How does that make anything better?'

‘I've decided,' I said.

‘Look,' he said, ‘you're confused. I can see why you think looking for your – for this woman – is going to help, but it won't.'

‘How do you know?'

‘Because there are probably things you would rather not know.'

I recalled our trip to Savar, his proposal by the rectangular pool. ‘What are you trying to say, that I'll find out I have adulterous genes or something?'

‘Zee, don't bullshit me, I know you know what I mean.'

‘What, that I couldn't help myself so I cheated on you?'

‘What the fuck do I know why you lied, cheated, whatever the fuck you did with whatever fucked-up stranger you met in America?' He turned away from me and I saw he had an old scar just below his cheekbone on the left side. I had never noticed that scar before. What kind of a wife did that make me? I was a poor companion to him even before you came along. Then he said, after a long time, ‘Are you in love with him?'

It was the first time he had asked me, and I knew it wouldn't be the last. I was tired and my head was heavy. I leaned against the soft upholstery of our bed. I considered telling him the truth, that not only was I in love with you, but that there was something out there called love, something
I had never believed in because I thought it was beyond me until I met you, and now that I had, this did not make the love more desirable – perhaps even less, because of the wreckage it would leave in its wake – but unassailable, something enormous and fixed, a piece of architecture that would remain in my consciousness no matter how hard I tried to deny it.

‘No,' I said.

‘Thank God for that.'

‘No,' I repeated. He asked for assurances, and I gave them to him. I swore up and down the walls and past the corridors, and my sorrys spilled out into the garden outside, where the thick-leaved trees stood still. But I was resolved, and his resistance had only made me more determined. I was full of rage, against him, and Abboo and Ammoo, Dolly and Bulbul and all the other people who knew and had refused to talk to me all this time. The rage made it so that giving you up was the best thing I ever did, Elijah. Do not allow this to wound you, because in my anger – at my own cowardice, at the chain of events beginning with my birth that had conspired against me, against love, against all that I longed for in my body and breath and soul – I was finally released. I would do something, I would jump out of my own scissored self and traverse the difficult and treacherous chasm of history, and though I didn't realise it at the time, because all I could feel was the missing-limb ache of your loss, the start of this journey prompted a small, electric joy.

To find my mother I would start with my mother.

I called Ammoo and found she was on her way to a sari shop in Gulshan Two. I asked if I could meet her there, and, always suspicious when there was a spontaneous change in plans, she asked me repeatedly why, and when I refused to
say, she relented and gave me the name of the shop. ‘Fifteen minutes,' she said. ‘Unless the traffic is bad.' When I arrived she was already there, sifting through a pile of printed saris. I observed her for a minute before entering the shop, noticing how, lately, she had become more beautiful, something in the way her face had settled into middle age made her appear gentler, almost placid. She had chosen a sari now, a blue cotton, and the shop attendant was opening it up to show her how the pattern changed across the six yards of material.

I pushed open the glass doors, slipping into the cool of the shop and remembering a joke I sometimes shared with my father about Ammoo's moods, referring to her as a thermometer. ‘What's the reading today? Fever?' ‘No,' he would reply, ‘chills only.'

Ammoo spotted me, leaned back and frowned. ‘This was a strange place to meet. Is something wrong? Where's Dolly?'

I had thought about it on the way over, rehearsing the scenario in my mind. ‘I wanted to buy you a gift,' I said.

‘Why?'

‘Because I've saved some money, and I thought I should get you something. How about this one?' I said, pointing to the blue cotton.

‘Are you all right?' she asked again. She held my elbow so she could face me fully.

I went on the offensive. ‘What, I can't buy my mother a present?' I glanced at the price tag. I wanted to buy her something expensive, something flashy that would glint every time she opened her cupboard, but I knew she would never go for that. ‘This one's too cheap. Won't you buy a silk or something?'

‘Jaan, really – this one will be fine. Something wrong with Rashid?'

The short drive to the sari shop had given me a chance
to rehearse what I was going to say, but I wanted to begin the conversation on my own terms, and Ammoo had a habit of unsettling me. Already the energy of the morning was starting to dissipate. ‘While we're at it, let's get something for Nanu too.'

We chose a grey pastel for Nanu. I paid. ‘Now,' I said, ‘there's a café next door, and I'd like to go there, and I'd like to talk to you about something serious.'

I led us out of the store and down the narrow street beside it. A metal staircase bolted to the side of the building led to a café on the second floor. Inside, the room had a curved wall on one side, and a set of tall windows on the other that looked down at the traffic on Gulshan Avenue. We sat down on a pair of soft armchairs with our backs to the view. The menu listed a variety of cupcakes and fruit juices.

We ordered coffees. ‘I'll have the chocolate soufflé,' I said to the waiter, ‘I hear it's very good.'

Ammoo leaned back in her chair, slipped off her sandals, and tucked her feet under her. I had rarely seen my mother sit any other way – sometimes even at her office, she led meetings in bare feet, crossing her legs over a conference chair or leaning a bent knee against a boardroom table.

‘How are the trials going?'

‘There are twenty-seven Birangona women at the centre in Sirajganj. One of them told me the people in her village still won't let her draw water from the tube-well. It was supposed to be a name that helped them, but it's become a label for life.'

‘Will there be more convictions?'

‘Sometimes I think it's a pointless exercise. But then I meet these women and at least I can look them in the eye and tell them we're doing something. That we haven't forgotten.'

‘We haven't,' I said. I was beginning to understand why she had pressured me to change my major in college. My mother went to sleep every night knowing that she had played her tiny part in making the world turn. I had always told myself that
Ambulocetus
was no different, but I knew now that it was. Mo had taught me that, the way he had attached himself to you and me and made us feel that we belonged together, and to him.

‘So, what was it you wanted to talk to me about?'

The coffees arrived, and I busied myself with a packet of sugar. Of course now that I was here, in this moment with my mother, I didn't want to do it. ‘There's a boy who works at Prosperity. Can't be more than eight or nine. His parents are both dead, or missing, I can't be sure. I've been teaching him to read.'

We'd had three lessons before everything fell apart. Mo quickly memorised the alphabet, and his hand was steady as I had him trace over the letters. I had even gone into town and bought him books, with simple words accompanied by images: ‘ma', ‘kak', ‘bok'. Late into the night, the light remained on in the kitchen as he placed the book on the floor and squatted over it, not touching the pages, just leaning forward and mouthing the words. ‘Those men at Prosperity, they need people like you,' I said. ‘People who care what happens to them. I'm trying to understand you. And I wish you'd try to understand me too.'

‘Is that what's bothering you? I'm sorry, you're right. I never really got my head around your studies. I won't complain about the whales any more. But what's going on? Are you finished with Rubana's project? You come and go without explaining anything.'

I had rarely seen my parents argue. Sometimes I would
notice a brittle silence between them, or my mother, hypertensive, would put a large pyramid of salt on the edge of her dinner plate. I don't think either of them was used to apologising, at least not overtly, though perhaps something passed between them when I wasn't looking, a pattern of recriminations and sorrys that occurred behind closed doors.

‘You know your father and I are proud of you. We thought you'd be a professor one day.'

‘I don't know if I should have married Rashid,' I said. It was as good a place to start as any.

Ammoo reached out and touched the edge of the table. ‘You can't say that. Don't say that.'

‘He's suffocating me.' There, it was out.

‘You don't know that for sure. You haven't given him a chance. It's hardly been two years.'

‘Why are you defending him?'

‘He's always been like a son to me.'

It was just as I'd suspected. That Rashid was the child my mother had never had. ‘He's your son more than I am your daughter?'

It took a moment for her to realise what I meant. Her face fell as if I had hit her, her gaze dropping to her lap, her mouth twisting and drawing inwards. ‘I can't believe you said that.'

‘It's true. You love him more than you love me, I've always known it.' I had started in this brutal vein, and found I couldn't stop.

The soufflé arrived. I broke the surface of the chocolate and plunged my spoon inside. It was burnt and dry. Ammoo started to cry.

‘I don't know what you're talking about,' she said, pulling a tissue out of her handbag.

I dipped my spoon into the dessert again. ‘This is disgusting.'

Ammoo carried the soufflé away. I watched her arguing with the man behind the counter. A few minutes later she came back, removed her sandals again, and sat cross-legged on the chair. ‘They're bringing another one,' she said, her voice clogged with tears.

‘I need to know more. About my adoption. We never talked about it and you never told me anything. It's my fault too. I never dared to ask.'

We looked at each other. For an instant, I thought she might reach across the table and hold my hand. We would stay like that for a long time, talking about everything. Then we would walk out of the café with our arms intertwined, the burned soufflé forgotten, perhaps even having neglected to pay, no words, only the heavy truth hanging like a hammock between us.

Ammoo started laughing, a hollow, sharp laugh. ‘I have no idea what you're talking about.'

‘You're saying it's not true.'

‘I'm saying I don't know what you mean. We told you and then there was nothing else to talk about. I can't believe it. My own daughter.'

That's just the thing. Not your own daughter. ‘I'm just asking to have a conversation.'

‘You sound so American,' Ammoo said. That meant I was cold and heartless, that I didn't care about hurting my mother. That I wanted to talk about things. ‘I want to stoke the American in you,' you had once said. Well, maybe that's exactly what you'd done.

‘I want to know, Ma.'

‘Why don't you ask Dolly?'

What was this obsession with Dolly? ‘Because I'm asking you. Don't pass me off to my mother-in-law.'

Ammoo was shaking her head. ‘Dolly arranged everything. She brought you to us and had us sign the papers. She told us your mother had abandoned you and wouldn't come looking, that's it.'

The replacement soufflé arrived and when I took a spoonful I discovered it was identical to the first, grainy and overcooked.

‘Why you insist on bringing me to these pretentious Gulshan-type places, when you know they can't even make a decent cup of tea?' Ammoo said. ‘Let's go.' She pulled a note out of her handbag, flung it at the table, and marched out of the exit, not looking back to see if I was following. I took another spoonful of the soufflé, then another, scraping the sides until it was reduced to a rubble of chocolate crumbs at the bottom of the dish and my mouth was filled with the taste of burned chocolate.

The driver opened the car door and I got in beside Ammoo. As we were about to pull away, we saw the waiter rushing towards us. He tapped on the window. ‘Madam,' he said, ‘I'm very sorry, but bill was eight hundred and sixty taka. You only gave five hundred.' He held his hands behind his back while Ammoo counted out the money and passed it to him through the car window.

We were silent until we reached the Gulshan roundabout. ‘So you're telling me that Dolly and Bulbul brought you a baby and you didn't bother to find out where I'd come from?'

‘It was a mercy,' Ammoo said, wiping her face with the end of her sari. ‘You wouldn't understand.'

Outside, it began to rain. Abul Hussain turned on the wipers.

‘You don't know what it's like to want something so badly, to try, and keep failing. Your father and I – we couldn't bear it. Thank God for Dolly and Bulbul.'

‘I'm in love with someone else.'