The Girl in the Road Page 13

  We came to Agadez at sunset and camped on the outskirts of the city. Francis went into town for food while you searched on your sirius for information. Apparently the festival, called Gerewol, was already in progress, and we could only hope to catch the last day of it. You told me that most Gerewol ceremonies had been taken over by the government for tourism purposes, and that it was hard to find a “pure” one, still, which was why we weren’t attending the big famous ones in Agadez or Ingall. The locations were secret, but by the time we went to bed, your sirius had given you coordinates.

  Francis slept in the cab, up front, with a woolen blanket he’d bought in Agadez with the money you’d paid him in advance. You and I slept as we always did, closer-than-close, like one body. I traced your face with my finger.

  Mariama, you said, catching my finger.

  Yes?

  Did a man touch you? Is that why you ran away?

  (What bold questions you asked, with no preamble!) No.

  Do you know you could tell me if it were true?

  Yes.

  But it’s not?

  No.

  You pointed to the little mound between my legs that was split like a camel’s lips, and at once it felt hot, like it was coated in cayenne.

  Promise me something, Mariama. Promise me you will never give this away easily.

  Give what away?

  You paused, then said, Your golden meaning.

  How can I be sure when to give it away?

  You’ll know. You’ll receive a sign.

  From Allah?

  No. Don’t think of Allah. The divine is energy itself, pouring from one vessel to the next. Energy is holy. You’ll know when you feel it.

  I feel it with you, Yemaya, I said.

  You sighed and rolled onto your back and said, You’re like I was, when I was a child.

  So why can’t I give it away to you?

  You inhaled sharply. That’s not right, you said.

  It’s yours, I said. You can have it.

  Mariama, don’t say that.

  But wouldn’t it be safe, to give it to you?

  You don’t know what you’re saying.

  I was quiet. But after you fell asleep I cupped my hand over that place, and wondered whether the hot feeling was the holy energy you were talking about.

  We were already under way when I woke up the next morning. You and Francis were in the cab, and you’d rigged your sirius to play Angélique Kidjo. I asked you how much longer we had to go, but strangely, Yemaya, you didn’t answer. You just kept staring out the window as if you hadn’t heard me. You were in one of your moody moods.

  Francis noticed. He turned around to wink at me and wish me a good morning. Then he patted the seat next to him and told me to come up. So there I was, sitting with my legs dangling between the two of you, barely able to see over the dashboard, and we were quiet because you were quiet, but then the Afrika song came on, and Francis began to hum to it, and then sing, and by the end all three of us were yelling shae Mama, shae Mama Afrika! along with Angélique.

  When your sirius told us we’d arrived, Francis pulled the truck alongside the nearest encampment. There were camels tethered, blue tents pitched, and women sitting on woven mats. Francis parked and asked you, What now?

  Now we introduce ourselves, you said.

  Do you speak their language?

  No. But I have Polyglotti on my sirius.

  Francis and I hung back as you marched forward to greet three older women who’d stood at our arrival. First you gave them all calabashes, beautifully decorated, and boxes of tea. They seemed mollified but not quite won over. You spoke into your sirius and then held it to them to listen, which immediately the women seized and passed among themselves and said things into it and then smiled when it talked back. I didn’t blame them because I’d done the exact same thing when you first showed me your sirius. They all had mobile phones, I saw later, but nothing like this.

  When you came back to us, you related that we’d been given permission to watch the Gerewol finale, despite being tourists. They’d said, At least you’re African.

  One of the women led us to a mat where we had a good view of the men performing, all lined up in a row. Yemaya, I had never seen men like this. Slim as reeds, bare-legged, bare-chested, crossed with straps, faces painted red, lips painted black, wearing feather crowns, wreaths of beads, rings of gold in every ear, and bright skirts of mirrors and metal that clinked as they stepped. And across from them, fingers to lips, the women paced, smirked, evaluated, and commented to their sisters about one or the other man. I couldn’t believe my eyes. How could I have known that humans were made like this? That all of my ideas about how people were, or looked, or acted, were such a small drop in the ocean of how they could be? How could I have known any of this, Yemaya, unless you showed me?

  I looked up to tell you how I felt, but your face was turned away from me. Your attention was elsewhere. You were conversing with Francis.

  I felt the kreen stir inside me again. I’d forgotten it. Now it was back. I thumped my chest once, to tell it, This is a joyful hour! Now is not a time to start your kreening!

  So I tugged on your arm until you looked at me. Easy, Mariama, you said. You got an ant up your bottom?

  But I just pointed. They’re so beautiful, I said.

  I’m glad you think so, you said. Beauty is precious. I need beauty in my life. The Wodaabe say they’re the most beautiful humans on earth. Which one do you like best?

  I appraised the line of men, all of them rolling their eyes and humming from their throats and peeling back their lips to show their teeth.

  That one, I said, pointing to the man I secretly thought looked most like you.

  Yes, he’s very handsome, you said.

  Which one would you pick?

  Francis leaned in and said, I need to hear this. I need to take notes.

  You swatted him on the head and he withdrew, smiling at you.

  The winners were chosen and the festivities ended. One of the women who’d originally greeted us presented us with bowls of milk porridge as an evening meal, and I took my cues from you on how to thank her. She sat down across from us, then, and indicated that she needed your sirius to translate. She introduced herself as Neneh, and then listed the names of her husband, her husband’s other wives, her mother and father, her six children, and her four grandchildren. Then she said, Where is your family from?

  It was clear that she thought the three of us were a family. You explained to Neneh that you and Francis weren’t married, and that I was not your child. This was not an arrangement Neneh was used to, so she kept asking for clarification:

  So you’re from Ethiopia, you’re from Senegal, and she’s from Mauritania? Amharic, Wolof, and Haratine. All right. Are you all Muslim, at least? No, Francis is Christian. Well, do you get along? That’s good. Why are neither of you married? She’s very beautiful. What are you waiting for? He’s not so bad-looking. How old are you? Do you own any cattle? How old is the little girl? Where are her kin? Where is her mother? Where will she go when you reach Ethiopia? How will she know where to go, what to do, how to behave? Who will take care of her?

  The questioning lasted for well over an hour, and by then, other Wodaabe had joined us to listen. We were the center of attention. Francis was charming and witty, turning the questions back on Neneh and making the girls laugh, making them entreat him to stay and marry one of them. You answered kindly at first, but then I saw your face becoming tight. You wanted to be alone. With us.

  By the time we finally walked back to the truck late that night, with Francis holding one of my hands and you holding the other, I’d begun to think of us as a family, after all.

  Meena

  Fantasy

  My sleep schedule is all fucked up now. It’s almost 6:00 a.m., which is when I’m supposed to stop walking, but now I’m going to walk until it gets too hot and then go straight back to sleep.

  I don’t know whether it’s beca
use my body’s been processing the muscle memory, or because Suri proved that it can be learned, but walking is easier. As the sun dawns I’m in a liminal state. When I close my eyes I can see hills and valleys swelling toward me then passing underfoot. The motion itself is altering my perception. Reality is a wave now, not a solid.

  After I’ve eaten I crawl inside my pod. There are no emergencies. I’m bored. This is the lived reality of adventure.

  I think of Rana. I didn’t even do anything, or say anything, or touch him except with my fingers on his arm, but that scared him and he went away, so I feel like shit. Especially after he was good to me. It was just that I’d forgotten I was a sexual body. Which is the last thing anyone who knows me would think I’d forget. I told Mohini that sex was my mother substitute, but she said that was needlessly cynical, that sex was my dharma, even my art, like performance was to her.

  I said, But my audience is limited.

  She said, No, your whole sexuality is an ongoing performance. It’s just that only a few are invited backstage.

  I can try to reconnect with that dharma, now, even though I’m alone and wounded and sore. I’ll see what happens.

  I lie back. I scroll through my catalogue of usual fantasies. There’s the one where the policewoman gives me her baton to use on her and while I do, we touch tongues. The one where blue- and lavender-skinned gods birth the world through their multilimbed lovemaking (though I haven’t used that one in a long time—it’s an adolescent fantasy that doesn’t work anymore). The one where Dr. Sharma, the pediatric specialist Muthashi consulted for my panic attacks, uses my body as his thali, scooping and mixing sauces in my hollows, bringing the boluses of food to his mouth inches above my yoni. We never have sex. He just scoops food off of my skin and watches a cricket game.

  I collected fantasies from my lovers, too. I got them in detail. I got several from Hindus ideating Meenakshi Devi, my namesake, the fish-eyed goddess, who must be the first love of adolescent Hindus everywhere because she has three breasts and lavender skin. If they’re Catholic or Syrian Christian, they have a whole other set of fetishes, like popping Mary’s cherry or confessing dirty thoughts to priests who take an active role in their penance. If they’re Muslim, they’re dealing with afterlife virgins who are made of calligraphy and unravel upon orgasm.

  I increase the porosity of my pod so that more heat gets in, enough to raise a sheen on my skin. I put my hand down my pants and then pull up my shirt so I can see my own breasts. See, I’m just masturbating is all, not hurting anyone, not forcing anyone. Mohini once said to me that we’re all children of rape, somewhere in our lineage, and how did I feel about that? We’re all the result of energy forced, not welcomed. The waves coming whether we want them to or not.

  I wrench my thoughts free.

  I open up my specimen box once again:

  Dr. Sharma.

  The policewoman.

  Anwar panting below me, talking dirty to me in Farsi.

  FARSI: Your breasts and your bottom

  FARSI: So sweet as unto my hands

  FARSI: Dear bitch I am fifty percent

  I switched off my glotti at that point because it was better if I didn’t know what he was saying. I need a better Farsi-to-Hindi module.

  I scroll through memories of other lovers. Dilip is prominent. He was a Bengali sitar player, Aquarius, vata dosha, who traveled all over India from gig to gig, not because he was a poor musician ennobled by the struggle but because he wanted to appear to be. His parents were both members of the legislative assembly in Kolkata. They sent him a weekly allowance via mitter. He was skinny, with a silky beard, silky chest hair, and an unexpectedly huge penis. His favorite color was pink. We didn’t get along well.

  There’s Juno from Shanghai. She was an architect studying the flooding around Kochi, as Kochi had adopted an enlightened attitude toward sea-level rise that other coastal cities were copying. She was girlish, with an athletic frame, and tied her long hair up in a high ponytail. I met her working at the Kashi Art Café in Fort Cochin. She came there to sift the day’s data. I took her home one night, and then every night for a week. She wore me out. She wanted me to choke her because she had father issues. Then one evening she wasn’t at the café as usual, and I never saw her again.

  Neither Dilip nor Juno is working and my hand is getting tired. I have to go darker.

  I pull out Joseph, the married man I slept with at fourteen. The first man I slept with. He was twice my age. I remember how ugly it felt, good and ugly at the same time, descending the first time and feeling like I was sitting on a fist stretching out a new lambskin glove, and then it getting easier, falling on a knob over and over as if it was a stone and not flesh at all. He didn’t even unwrap his dhoti, he just let me push it up. There was no preamble or grace. Just meat and muscle and bone. I remember thinking, This is what animals do.

  My vision dissolves. I come so hard I beat my fist on the floor of my pod. One, two, three, four, five.

  And then like a penance I remember what I kept at bay: the sight of Joseph’s young daughter in the doorway, cradling her own arms, having watched us the whole time, having not been able not to.

  I stop for my Second Meal at midnight. This time I cut up one of Padma’s dried fish filets to stew in the protein broth. Clouds have risen in the west, or I assume so, because I can’t see any stars over there.

  I take capsules again, but at a smaller dosage.

  I palpate all my bandages to test for pain. I can deal with wounds. I’m the granddaughter of Dr. Geeta Scholastica, who if nothing else was unflinching about bodies, ooze and fluid, in life or death. I used to bring her patients herbal tea while they waited. She charged half her clients full price, the technocrats and suburban nouveau riche, and the other half she saw for free. So our waiting room saw all kinds. I remember one day a woman wandered in wearing a dirty gray sari. At first I thought she was an ascetic, but then she sat in a chair, pulled up her skirt, and splayed her legs, and she wasn’t wearing any underwear. Her yoni looked like a pink banana leaf laid against her skin. I was a child, so I giggled, thinking this was a daring adult practical joke I was being let in on. But she didn’t close her legs, and her yoni was like the sun. I couldn’t look at it straight-on, even though it was the source of all illumination in the room. All the other patients looked away from it. They looked out the windows. I knew something was wrong with all the silence in the room. The woman was staring at me, tired, waiting. It was left to me to do something. So I brought her a blanket. She looked at me like she didn’t know what to do with it. I placed it on her lap and then patted her knee. Her face collapsed in something like shame and she began to wail. That’s when I ran to get Muthashi. She came out, felt the woman’s forehead, looked at her palm, and told me to help her get her up. The blanket fell, still folded, onto the floor. Muthashi took her by one elbow and walked her to the examination room that was farthest down the hall. I followed. Muthashi’s helpers came to see about the noise, and as she walked, she gave them each instructions in a low voice.

  In the examination room, we laid the woman on a soft cotton pallet. I need to see your eyes, Muthashi said. The woman could barely keep them open for all her crying, but she did long enough for Muthashi to get a good look. When she did, she straightened up and rolled up her sleeves. She took me by the elbow and steered me into the corner.

  This woman is about to die, she said. I have no intention of hiding that from you. It is your choice whether to stay with me and help her pass, or you can leave, if you wish.

  I said I would stay.

  You don’t have to be brave, she said.

  I shook my head. I wasn’t brave, just proud.

  So she sent me to get a blanket, warm water, and lavender oil. One of the helpers massaged the woman’s feet with the oil I brought. Another lifted her neck and pulled her tangled hair out from beneath it and brushed it out gently, and arrayed it around her like a halo. Muthashi herself held the woman’s hand as her breaths bec
ame more and more rare.

  The woman had no chip or other identifying information. We didn’t know her religion. But Muthashi and Muthashan were friendly with the priests at Sri Gowreeswara Temple and arranged with them to have her body cremated and scattered in the Arabian Sea. Little flecks of her might be floating under my feet. In fact, they definitely are, statistically speaking.

  Cecilia’s words come back to me, something like, We never even have to miss each other.

  Song for Aravan

  I feel dawn from behind. My head gets warm, and then my back, and then my feet. I don’t think of my feet as feet anymore. They’ve abstracted into the balled hinges on an artist’s dummy.

  I stop for my third meal of chocolate, rose lassi, and dal. And of course I fantasize about whatever food is not available to me: in this case, heterogeneous foodstuffs: palak paneer, pizza, sushi, bhelpuri, General Tso’s chicken. Sometimes the wires of my sexual and culinary fantasies get crossed and I have brief visions of pushing doro wat up into my vagina as if into my mouth. First an egg, then a savory drumstick. This thought gives me a spicy feeling between my legs and I put in a finger to check and it comes away watery maroon. The lips have spoken. So I pull my sponge from a deep pocket in my bag, wet it with fresh water, squeeze it dry, and push it up with my fingers. There. I’ve taken care of myself.

  I take stock of my accomplishments in general. I can see the tops of the buildings in Mumbai but not the shore anymore. I’ve survived for four nights and days now. I’m not dead. I’m injured but healing. I have a routine. I’ve made positive human contact.

  The imagined reality of walking the Trail and the lived reality of walking the Trail are themselves companions on the Trail, keeping one eye on each other at all times.

  I’m passing out of the crisis phase. Life feels basic and elemental: blood, water, piss, chocolate. This is my leisure time, so I’m supposed to read or relax or play croquet now but instead I open a new file on my scroll. I name it Element Diary. I make categories: Sea, Sky, Moon. I try to describe each one such that I could only be describing this day, and no other.