A Disobedient Girl (33 page)

“It’s nothing,” he says and tries to deflect my attention away from him. “Malli was in a lot of pain. We should go soon.”

“I can walk part of the way if you can just carry my little one,” I tell him.

“I can walk also,” Chooti Duwa says, looking up at the boy.

“No, no, baba, I can double your amma on the bar, and you can sit on the back, on the bike rack,” he tells her.

Her face brightens. “Then I can see everything!”

“Maybe she would be safer on the bar, Putha,” I suggest, but he points out that I would be too heavy on the back.

Inside the house the old couple and their daughter-in-law bustle around, getting things ready for us. Sumana is warming a large, flat leaf over the stove, and the woody fragrance caresses my nostrils and reminds me of our hopeful beginning. How long ago was that? Three mornings ago, just two nights; and yet it feels to me as though we have traveled for a week, each day of that week a year or more, a lifetime. I smell the leaf, the dried fish that Sumana and Dayawathi are nestling into the warm white rice, and I see a woman standing there, a woman who is not me. That woman is strong and proud and full of courage, glad to be free at last. That woman’s body is lean and tall. She is capable, trustworthy. I am no longer that woman. I am fretful and helpless, and my mind is laced with the scenes from our journey. I am plagued by the way the gods have turned away from me and from my children, and these things thicken my movements and my brain. How can I think? Tell me. If there is somebody out there who could remain calm in the face of a life like mine, in days such as these last three have been, show them to me, and I would kneel at their feet, for they would not be of this world.

“Amma?” my little one says beside me, looking concerned. “Don’t cry. This aiyya will take us to the hospital.”

I wipe my face, ashamed that I have forced adult concerns upon my children, on all of them. First my son, then my older daughter, and now the baby. I stroke her face and smile. “I’m not crying. The smoke was in my eyes,” I tell her.

When it is time to go, I feel as though I am leaving parents, not strangers. So I get down on my knees, touch my head to the ground, and worship each of the old people, Veere’s Father first, then Dayawathi. They put their palms over my head and bless me.

“Go now. We’ll be here, you can come and see us on your way back, we will keep your things safe here,” Dayawathi tells me. “Go quickly. Putha is waiting.”

I nod my head in agreement. I don’t know when I will come back this way. How long will my son have to stay in the hospital for his leg? I shrug inwardly and sigh. Never mind; I will have to find a way to return to these good people, to bring them something better than what I have: starving children, injuries, foreigners, and mounting obligations toward their one neighbor on this lonely road.

“I’ll go and come back,” I say and walk over to the boy, who is waiting, his foot braced against the first step into the store.

“You get on, and then I’ll put the little one onto the back,” Sumana says.

I sit sideways on the cushion the boy has improvised from a towel and look back to make sure that the little one is all right. Sumana has picked her up and is trying to put her onto the rack, but she can’t let go.

“Can’t you leave her here with us, aunty?” Sumana whispers, a deep longing clouding her eyes. “I can look after her till you get back. She doesn’t need to go to the hospital after all. It might be easier if you go alone.”

I know that longing. And I know no mother who would abandon her child into such desire. I feel sorry for her, I want to wish her happiness or say something else that is kind, but the words will not be spoken.

“I can’t leave her, duwa,” I say. “She’s too little to be away from me.”

Sumana lowers her eyes. She settles my daughter on the bike rack, tells her to be careful not to get her feet caught in the spokes, and presses a few sweets into her palm. Then she lets her go.

“Hold that aiyya tightly with both your arms now, okay?” she says to my Chooti Duwa. “The road is bumpy sometimes, and you can fall if you are not holding on properly, petiyo.” She takes my daughter’s arms and wraps them around the boy’s waist. “There, like that. Now you’ll be safe.” She steps away from us and waves. “Come and see me, baba,” she says, trying to smile.

“I’ll come as quickly as I can, and I’ll bring my aiyya and my akki and everybody!” Chooti Duwa says, and her happy, childish voice, raised and sweet, lifts all our hearts. Even the boy laughs.

At first it is almost pleasant, riding on the bicycle. The boy is not tired, and I am moving forward, toward my children, not standing still, and this one fact brings me small, intermittent waves of comfort. The road, too, seems easy, and for a long time the boy barely has to pedal. We reach and pass the sanctuary where we lit the lamp, and we pass the place where the train must have been; the smell of burnt steel and foliage still drifts up from the valley where the tracks lie, hidden from our view. If I am silent for too long my children crowd into my mind—my girl, too young to take care of her brother, and my little boy, his face full of pain—and I have to close my eyes and pretend they are with me again, whole again, just my children, traveling safely within my care. Such thoughts, so different from my reality, from theirs, make me feel weak and desperate and I grip the handlebars so tight that a few times the bicycle swerves to the side and the boy has to work hard to regain control. So I apologize and keep on talking, discussing the things we had passed on our way to the shop just the day before, trying to make it seem as though this is just an ordinary day, a day in which such conversations are possible, a day of which I am still in control, untroubled by the visions of my broken journey.

We stop once to drink from a spout on the side of the road. “Is this water safe to drink, Amma?” Chooti Duwa asks, looking doubtfully at the crude, hewn-out thrust of bamboo that delivers the ice-cold water to us and probably thinking about all the pots of boiled water that I bottled for them back home.

“Yes, Nangi,” the boy answers. “These waters come from the mountains. This is very clean. Much cleaner than the water in our houses even, I would say. Taste it and see. I’m sure you have not tasted water like this anywhere!” he says proudly.

She puts a palm full into her mouth and agrees, nodding her head. “But then why are they wasting it and letting it run down the mountain?”

“It’s not wasting. Lots of people come and get water from here,” he tells her. And as if on cue a group of three women with two children, both boys, come around the corner carrying buckets and pots. “See? People come and get water from here for drinking and cooking.”

But after that rest, we all grow quiet. Chooti Duwa is tired, and I feel bruised from the endless bumping. With long stretches of flat road, the boy has to pedal. But the darkness of my predicament, my children’s, seeps once more into that quiet and I am too terrified of the silence to keep moving within it.

“Putha, we’ll stop here and walk for a bit,” I say, and he stops almost immediately.

“Just for a little bit, nendé, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind. Come, Chooti Duwa, we’ll walk for a bit.”

She gets down, but after a few steps, she bursts into tears. “I’m hot!”

“I know, it’s hot. But we have to get to Aiyya. He’s waiting and Akki is waiting, so we should try to keep walking, petiyo, just a little longer,” I say, even though I don’t know how much farther it is. She wants to sit under a tree by the side of the road, and I agree, noting the relief on the boy’s face. He’s a child too, after all, though he is taller than I am. I try to fan both her and myself with the fall of my sari, to get rid of some of the sweat trickling between my breasts and making patterns on my belly.

All I want is to hold on to my strength until I can get to the hospital. There is still so much to be done for my son: I will have to find a proper doctor, someone to perform an operation on his leg, and where will I get the money to pay for it all? Next to me, my little one starts to play with my bangles; she takes them off and puts them on her own thin wrists and shakes them up and down her arm. They go all the way, almost up to her armpit, she is so thin, and they make a pleasing sound. Perhaps I will be able to pawn them at the hospital.

It almost hits us as we sit there, a motorbike that comes careening around the last bend and toward the next, where we are sitting. The driver stops in front of us, and we all get to our feet. The man gestures to us, and the boy steps forward. I hang back with my little one.

“What is it?” I ask, worried that he brings some bad news.

“Veere Aiyya’s father told me that you need to get to Hatton. You can’t go on this bicycle. Malli, you go back. I’ll take them from here. Hurry up! Climb on! Don’t stand there, get on the bike!”

I run to the motorbike, dragging my girl with me, and I shout my thanks over my shoulder: “Putha, I am eternally grateful to you for your help. Go back safely now. I will go with this aiyya to the hospital. Tell them I’ll come and see them soon.”

“Give that handbag and the parcel to me,” the driver says, and stacks them inside a basket tied to the front of the motorbike.

Luck. It has found us. He had only stopped by the store to deliver a letter from their son, who is in Jordan and had sent it through this man’s wife, who had just returned from the Middle East. It is so comfortable on the seat of that motorbike after everything. It is hard not to relax just a little bit, my baby’s cheek pressed to my chest, her back against the man, her legs twined around my waist, her eyelids fluttering open and shut against the wind that is suddenly cool now that we are moving so fast, and speed, speed! toward where we need to go.

“Malli, how long will it take to get to Hatton?” I ask.

“We can get there in about an hour and a half,” he says, glancing at me in the side mirror. Although we have to shout above the roar of the engine and make eye contact in the mirror, we talk companionably. The little one falls asleep. I am glad to be in the company of another adult, the way it absolves me of having to be responsible for topics of conversation. I am grateful, too, to be spared my own thoughts by the sound of his voice, and I give myself fully to his concerns. I listen as he tells me about the possibility of unrest on the plantations, the foreigners who are trying to take over the bigger estates, the explosion on the train; most of all he talks about his wife. How they made the decision for her to go, what it cost to send her, the sale of the small plot of land that had belonged to his father to buy her ticket, and the way her departure had clouded their young children’s lives. And had it been worth it?

“She sent back a lot of money,” he says. “After one year we have paid back most of our debts. Even this motorbike I bought mostly with the money she sent from there; the bank gave me the rest. It
is one of the only ones in these parts, a
Honda.
A
suddha
had got it from Japan and I bought from him after he had used it for only a few years. I don’t think they have even in Colombo yet motorbikes like this. And now nobody is going to be importing anything with this government. Anyway, it is a good thing because now I can earn money for the family this way. I load all the vegetables and take them to the markets. It is much easier. Even though life was not easy for her there, she has done her best to make it better for us.”

He is a heavyset man, with rounded shoulders and a matching belly, and a face creased by a well-maintained beard. A capable man, someone who could do heavy work if he felt inclined. I want to think less of him, but I resist. Who knows what ails such men and their families?

“Will she go back again, now that she is home?” I ask.

He turns the corners of his mouth down: regret and inevitability. “Thing is that her sisters need to get married too. She’s the eldest in the family. I can’t pay for everything with this bike and our vegetables. So…
we
don’t want her to go,” he says, and he slashes the air diagonally with his right palm to emphasize his feelings.
“I
don’t want her to go, and the little ones don’t want her to either. They cry all the time when we talk about it. But…family…what to do when the family needs something…That is why Veere Aiyya also went to Jordan. Same time as my wife. To help the family.” And he looks carefully at me in the mirror to see if any trace of judgment has taken over my face.

“That is it,” I say to assuage his guilt. “When family needs something, we have to come forward and do it.”

And we are both silent, thinking of family. We remain that way until we reach the hospital, when I have to wake up my baby, collect her package of rice and curry and my handbag, and thank him for his help. I am so relieved to have reached our destination—this hospital where my children wait for me, and I am so anxious to go to them, that I barely listen to what he has to say and, instead, murmur my thanks repeatedly.

“Akka, I have to get back to Ohiya, but I will come here again tomorrow,” he says. “If you wait by this door around ten in the morning, I will come, and I will bring some food for you too. Or if you call
the temple they can get a message to Veere’s Father. I don’t have the number, but someone here should know. It’s a big temple. Oh, and another thing. Veere Aiyya’s father said he has some relatives not far from the hospital, and he said he will come back with me to take you there after he sorts out some things at the store. They will help you. Don’t worry.”

I thank him again and run up the wide red steps so fast that Chooti Duwa, struggling to keep up, slips and falls on the fresh polish. I stop and help her up with one hand, my feet barely hesitating. The security guard tries to stop me, but I don’t listen and he is not concerned with the likes of me, a little girl in one hand, clearly a mother. I beg and plead my way to the front of the queue and peer through the hole cut in the glass front where the receptionist sits.

“My son was admitted here this morning,” I tell her. “Raji Samarakoon. Raji Asoka. He had a broken leg. Two foreigners brought him in a red car. Just this morning. He fell—”