What Lies Between Us (6 page)

“You must be mad. What shall I wear ah? A small-small bikini like a sudhi woman?”

“Wear anything. Wear a sarong like a village girl if you like. Just come. I'll teach you.”

“Don't be crazy. I'm not ready to die.”

I stand on a rock in the middle of the water. The sun beating down on my shoulders, the river parting around my tiny island, dashing silver droplets onto my feet and legs. I listen to the banter flowing like sweet honey between them. I can taste it. The sound of my parents' mingled laughter. The most beautiful sound in the world. I am willing to do anything to hear this sound again and again.

*   *   *

We swim together, my green one-piece bathing suit tight against my body. The dogs wait for us on the bank, their tongues lolling. Somewhere I know Samson is hiding and watching us. But I know this with only a corner of my mind. In the river with my father, I am safe. He holds me up against the tug and flow and then slowly lets me go as if the water is a bed that moves and rolls. I dive down to the sandy bed, see smooth stones, my father's legs magnified, silver bubbles caught in the hairs. Some terror rises into my throat and immediately slips away.

We swim every day. Downstream, women bathe and men cast fishing nets. Our swimming for pleasure is rare and precious. This is an island of people who don't know how to swim, who are suspicious of the rivers and of the sea. My father defies this fear. It is his greatest legacy to me.

*   *   *

Shorts! My American aunt Mallini, my mother's sister, who got married to a rich man and moved abroad a long time ago and who now lives in California, a place that I know from the song we all sing about a mysterious hotel, has sent a box as she does every three months or so. Shoes, lipsticks, and cast-off purses for my mother. Books and clothes for me from her daughter, Dharshi, who is only a few months older than me. And shorts! I've never had a pair of shorts before. I pull them on, look at the reflection, my legs long and exposed from the middle of my thigh down.

My mother says, “Okay, but only here. Only in the house. Not out on the street where anyone can see. I won't have people saying vulgar things about you.”

There are other magic objects in these boxes that come smelling of abroad, magazines from America called
Tiger Beat
and
Teen Beat
. Amma doesn't like these, but she lets me have them because they are from her sister and therefore must be safe. I hurry to my room and pore over the boys with big hair and eyeliner, read every article about makeup and clothes and haircuts over and over. I take them to school hidden at the very bottom of my bag, and all the girls gather together to pore over these pictures, rushing to hide them under textbooks when someone raises the alarm that a teacher is near. They make me special, linked to something glamorous. At home I keep them in a box under my bed, pushed as far back as I can. They are precious, evidence of some other magical but faraway world.

*   *   *

I am at Puime's house. We are doing math problems at her table when I get up to go to the bathroom and she furrows her brow and says, “What's that? Did you sit on something?” And then her expression changes and she says, “Oh my gosh! Look, you've attained.” I twist around and there it is, on the back of my white school uniform like a small blooming red frangipani. I know what is happening. Amma has described blood flowing, pain, pads, the whole thing. There are older girls at school who have gone through this, so I'm not scared. I walk stiffly into Puime's bathroom and lock myself in. I'm not some village girl whose mother never warned her, but I still panic when I see the thick blood. I stuff my white handkerchief between my legs, twist around to wash it off the back of my uniform, and wait. I feel my pulse burning. It had to happen at Puime's house. Even now her mother will be calling all the other women to tell them that I have become a big girl. They will all look at me differently now.

Puime's mother calls Amma, and she is at the door very soon. She hugs me tight and whispers, “You're a big girl now.” There's such excitement in her voice. She says, “No one can see you. If a man sees you, it will be bad luck.” She throws a white sheet over my head. I can't breathe well, but she holds me tight. Her strong, slim arm is around my shoulders and she says in my ear, “Hush, girl, hush, shh. We'll be home soon, very soon.”

She leads me out of Puime's house, thanking them as we walk, my steps stumbling and hesitant. We go out to the car, where my father, embarrassed, nods at me. We get in the back, she and I, and she pushes my head down against her lap, my arms around her waist, so that I am hidden under the sheet as we drive through the churning streets.

At home Amma closes me away in my room for the traditional seven days. She hangs her thickest saris across the windows so that no man's lust or woman's envy can find me. She rubs my back. She tells me stories of the village, tells me how dangerous I am, how if a man sees me at this moment when my first blood is coming, even my own father, I can make him vulnerable to demonic possession. I can cause calamitous karmic shifts within my own fate. I listen to her, but I am also bored sitting here alone, missing school. I reread every book I own, go through my pile of American magazines over and over.

In the mornings when Amma takes away my soiled pads, she says, “In the old days, we had to use cloths and take them to the river, wash them in the water. How things have changed! Now we have maxi pads. No mess, no fuss. Just use and throw away.” She unfolds one for me like a flower, hands it to me with a flourish. “No one has to stoop in the river washing away blood. Now everything is modern.” I understand how happy she is to be the mother of a grown-up girl. When she leaves the room, it is with a dance in her step. She brings me trays of food, roti with eggplant and potato curries, nothing fiery, nothing with garlic or onions that could awaken desire and lust. She watches while I eat.

I'm not supposed to bathe during this time, so I become used to the scent of my body, like some small rooting animal alone in the dark. I wonder what is happening in the world. Has Puime gotten a new cassette? Has she invited someone else to come and dance around her room with her? Has the boy she has been in love with for the last three months, Suresh, talked to her? Is Thatha even now down at the river swimming, missing me? When Amma comes, I beg her to let me out, but she says, “Don't be silly. You have to stay here until you are finished bleeding and can be bathed properly.”

I say that this is old-fashioned, not all families follow these traditions anymore. I tell her that I am missing schoolwork; my exams are coming soon. But she is adamant; she is doing the best possible thing for me. She will secure my future, my chastity and marriage to a good boy from a good family. She says, “If you aren't properly looked after now, no man will take you for his wife. You will stay here with us until you are old and dried up. All alone without a husband or children.” She strokes my hair and says, “You don't want that, do you?” and I have to shake my head.

On the fourth day, I can't stand it anymore. I go to the window and tug aside Amma's old red sari. A blade of sunlight falls onto my face and across the room. I stretch my arms overhead and look out onto the garden, down the sloping lawns and to the river. There with his back to me is Samson, and even as I am pulling the sari back, he turns as if pulled by my gaze and looks straight at me and his hand goes to his gaped mouth. I twitch the sari down, blocking out sunlight and his shocked face. I stand there, heart throbbing. What have I done? What demons have I called forth? What pollution have I allowed to pass from me to him? I walk to the bed, sit down carefully. I have unraveled all of Amma's plans, all of Thatha's trust. It feels as if someone has pierced my skin, pulled back the plunger on a syringe full of shame and shot it deep into me. When shame reaches and floods my heart, I know I have done what cannot be undone.

*   *   *

I try to forget his eyes. The old fog descends. Everything is cloudy.

On the seventh day, Amma wakes me at dawn, says, “Come, come. Quickly, it is your auspicious time. Come before we miss it.” I get up, bleary-eyed, dry-mouthed. She leads me outside, her arm holding my elbow. The nerves in my toes are alive, feeling cautiously along the ground, trying not to stumble. She leads me to the well, and I stand there blinded in the pink-lit dawn. The dhobi woman is there, an old woman with breasts like wrinkled fruit in her sari blouse but smiling as if it were her wedding day. Amma gives her a package: my uniform, my destroyed panties, the small gold earrings, everything I was wearing when the blood first came.

The dhobi woman has filled a tub with well water, floating jasmine, cloves, and sticks of cinnamon. She pulls my nightdress over my head and pushes me down into a crouch. I wrap my arms around my knees. Her clawed fingers undo the ends of my plaits and rake the hair down my back. She fills a small earthen pot, pours it slowly over my head. The shock of cold water is electric against my skin. Jasmine flowers cascade onto my head, tumble down my back, land in the groove between my thighs and on my small breasts. I open my nostrils wide to catch their scent. The dhobi woman moves my head this way and that, scrubbing my scalp with expensive-smelling shampoo. She pulls me up to standing, soaps each of my limbs until every inch of me is covered in frothy white suds. She washes away the suds in streams of water. I am reborn, embraced by the light, the old woman's hands, and my mother's smile.

*   *   *

Amma takes me into her bedroom. I sit on the bed as she pulls out sari after sari. They are silver and bottle green, peacock blue, and every shade of gold. They throw light onto the ceiling and the walls from the reflection of their sequins, crystals, and embroidery, so the room feels like a treasure cave. She says, “All of these will be yours when you get married. I've been collecting them for you. Look at this one. It was the first your father ever bought for me.” She pulls out a sari of faded ivory with a pattern of fine ebony swirls. She shakes her head. “That man. No taste at all.” But the way she fingers the material tells me there is some small tenderness in the memory.

She looks straight at me and says, “You have to be careful from now on. People will make up ugly stories. If they see you with a boy. Even if you are just talking to him. Even a cousin. You have to be very, very careful. You are a big girl now, and your reputation is your responsibility. Do you understand?” I nod. She goes on. “You have to guard yourself carefully. You must make us proud. You know that, don't you?” I nod again. I agree with whatever she says, this beautiful and loving mother. I'd do anything for her. The memory of Samson turning to look straight at me jabs like a thorn. Shame flushes through me while I smile at her. She holds my face in her hands like a flower, brushes my cheeks with the pads of her thumbs, kisses my forehead with the tenderest lips.

*   *   *

At my attaining age party I wear a white dress with a full skirt and puffed sleeves that Amma has made for me. I pull it over my head and it falls perfectly into place around my body. It billows around my legs when I twirl for Puime in my room. We talk and talk. She tells me everything I have missed. Suresh has still not even looked at her. But she doesn't really care because a much nicer boy has started going to the boys' school, and anyway he has much better hair than Suresh.

When I come out, people hug me and kiss my cheeks. Amma and Thatha are beaming. No one can say Amma hasn't done everything the proper way for me. We have dinner, and then I slice into a cake covered in pink-icing roses that tumble down onto the mirrored platter, hold up a piece so that Amma and then Thatha can take a bite. They feed me too, pride and love glistening in their eyes.

Later Puime and I sit with the women as the men go outside. We drink lime juice or Fanta, and the women tell stories of calamity. There are misfortunes of the financial, emotional, or physical sort. But the most important are the disasters of love.

A woman begins: “Have you heard about the Somarathna girl?”

The rest of them lean in, hungry for the tale. “No men, I knew something must have happened with that one. We haven't seen her for months, and she was always a little wild, isn't it? Always people were saying this and that about that one.”

Another chimes in. “Suddenly there was a proposal and a wedding. I didn't even have time to get a proper sari done. Fancy reception at the Galle Face Hotel.” She sniffs so that we all know she thinks the family was putting on airs, continues, “But I always thought something funny was behind it. Aiyo, give us the details, will you? What happened?”

The first woman arches her eyebrow. “I can't tell anything. The mother swore me to secrecy. Absolute”—she puts a manicured finger to her lips—“secrecy.”

A chorus of disappointment. “Aney, please.”

“Come on, you know we won't tell
anyone
.”

“That girl is like a daughter to me.”

“Yes men, we'll protect her reputation no matter what. After all, they are my relatives on the father's side.”

She flaps her hands at them, says, “Okay, okay! But don't breathe a word of this, okay? Any of you. It has to stay within these four walls.” She points at each wall around us to emphasize the secrecy that everyone knows will not be maintained. She says, “I know the whole story. The mother came to me for help. Here's the thing. The girl was carrying on with that good-for-nothing, jobless, no-degree, next-door fellow. And by the time the parents found out, they were in a hotel and the deed was done. Two months later, no periods.”

Delighted, shocked gasps; a collective fluttering of hands to bosoms and throats. Someone says, “And then what?”

“The mother and I had to take her to a clinic. They covered it up. That's why they married her off so quickly and all. Before the proposed family found out anything the papers were signed, the poruwa built. That mother-in-law must be kicking herself. No white sheet at the homecoming, isn't it? Who knows if she can even conceive after what that doctor did.”