The Girl in the Road Read online

  I was deeply impressionable, then, and I could remember each of those programs years after I saw them. We watched a rerun of Durga X, about a woman who fought crime lords in Kolkata, and killed them by twisting their heads completely around their necks. We watched a documentary about a Mexican woman, Inés Ramírez, who delivered her own baby by Caesarean section with a dirty kitchen knife because she was too far from medical help. We watched two straight episodes of Extreme Weather! that documented all of the terrible things going on around the world. The first episode was all about the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Scientists said the sediment underneath would cause a massive landslide, or that the ice itself would melt to inundate the world up to four meters in sea level someday. That didn’t sound like much to me, Yemaya, but the next episode was about all the drowned communities around the world, the islands and villages that had been lost even after half a meter’s rise. They showed ghost-blue underwater footage of boardwalks, shopping malls, office parks, houses, grocery kiosks, playgrounds—now empty, and slowly becoming the territory of fish, corals, and thin aquatic spiders. They told the story of people who had chosen to stay while their homes were slowly drowned. They would calmly climb to the second floor, then to the roof, over a matter of months or years. The narrator focused on one couple on a South Pacific atoll, Julia and Julio Legazpi-Sanchez, who had attracted media attention; journalists paid them to keep a video diary, documenting their day-to-day ascent to ever-higher ground. Then one day, they were not heard from. The producers took speedboats to the location of the house and found it already ten centimeters underwater. They sent divers to look for the couple in their bedroom, fearing the worst. But they were not there. Where had they gone? It was an unsolved mystery to this day.

  When I felt my eyelids begin to droop, I called to Tigist, but got no answer. I suddenly feared she was dead and the chaperones would blame it on me. But then I crept forward on the bed far enough to peer into her pillow cavern, and saw she was fast asleep. I whispered Off as the card on the bedside table had instructed me to do, and the wall went black.

  We were both very tired in the morning. We were scolded by the chaperones, and tucked in early the next night, to be rested for our reading the next day.

  When I began attending university in Addis, I would come alone to the Sheraton to walk the grounds once a week. The hotel staff was used to me. The bartender would nod to me as I passed through the lounge where diplomats sipped Joburg vintage and stared into space, scrolling newsfeeds in their heads. Over time, what had once been so astonishing to me—the marble walls, the majestic columns, the sparkling fountain, the reflecting pool, the arbor walk—became the familiar fixtures of a second home. I bought overpriced Norwegian water at the bar and stood in the doorway of the ballroom, hoping for a wedding in progress. Or I sat by the reflecting pool and trailed my fingers in the water. In fact, I liked to imagine that it was your palace, and then when I visited there, I visited you.

  Thus it was of great import that I was bringing Gabriel there. I see now that I was too greedy: I wanted too much. I wanted both to float above the earth, to be nearer to you, but also to bind myself to the earth, to be with Gabriel.

  I led him along the arbor walk that looked down on the Somali quarter. We talked. The stars came out. The security guard, making her rounds, came to ask us to leave, but then she recognized me and apologized.

  You brought a friend this time? she said.

  Yes, I said, and my face was hot.

  I’m glad to see it, she said. And she said it in an approving, loving way, as if she were my aunt who had been looking after me all this time.

  Gabriel told me about his life. I’d known it in sketches before, but now he painted a complete and colorful mural, and even showed me the plaster and the foundations underneath. What I’d suspected was true: he would never want for love, having the easy confidence of an only son. But despite this, or strangely because of it, he sought approval constantly, because his parents (his mother, chiefly, I could tell) had instilled in him a strong sense of moral duty, to use his birth and standing for the betterment of the world. She was a famous Ayurvedic doctor, trained also in Western medicine, and Gabriel’s childhood was filled with memories of reading books on the woven rug that covered the floor of his mother’s study.

  Am I telling you too much? he said. I’m probably boring you.

  Not at all, I said. Your stories are like music to me.

  He smiled. He said, I feel like I can tell you things and you’ll understand. Things no one else can understand. I hate how my country is treating your country and I wish I could find a way to stop it.

  I placed my hand over his. It’s not your fault, I said.

  He nodded. He said, My mother says I have too much of a sense of justice. I get angry and it gets me into trouble. She always reminds me of the story of the snake.

  What’s the story of the snake? I asked.

  Gabriel looked down and closed his other hand on top of mine. He said, When I was in primary school, my teacher introduced a snake to the classroom as a pet for everyone to take care of. One of my classmates provoked the snake and it snapped at him. It wasn’t poisonous, and it didn’t bite, it just frightened him. I said, The snake was just trying to take care of itself. The boy told me to shut up and went home crying, and then the boy’s father complained, so the teacher had to remove the snake from the classroom and let it go into the wild. But the boy and his friends must have found it. The next day, walking home, I saw them sitting in a circle around the snake. They were taking turns torturing it. One of them took out a knife and began to cut into it, like cutting a cucumber but not all the way through. I started throwing rocks at them and yelling at them to stop, but they wouldn’t stop. They started doing worse things, because I was watching.

  Gabriel stopped to wipe the wetness from his face, and then returned his hand to mine. This time, he didn’t apologize for sharing too much. We had entered a new and wordless intimacy. I was taking care of him, like I had once taken care of you.

  We had named the snake the Sanskrit word for powerful, he said. She was indeed powerful, but not in the way we intended.

  What is the word?

  Saha, he said.

  And I remembered, Yemaya! Saha! I remembered that word from so long ago, when I was just a child hiding under the tarp on the truck, and I hadn’t even met you yet, and Francis and Muhammed didn’t even know I was there, and the only one who knew I was there was the full moon, lighting up the rushing sea and spreading surf, and the sea gave me a word to calm me, and that word was saha!

  And I knew too that this was the sign you had taught me to look for, when we were on the truck on the way to Agadez and you touched me for the first time and told me not to Give This Away Easily! I had always considered my maidenhood yours, Yemaya, but perhaps I had been wrong in my interpretation—maybe, all along, you had wanted me to be with a man when I was a mature adult woman, and you had simply prepared me in that hotel room in Gonder all those years ago. Yes, this was the sign indeed!

  I had difficulty not betraying my epiphany to Gabriel. I was glad it was dark! Now there were hot tears in my eyes to match his!

  So I lifted his hand to my mouth and kissed it, and then told him, just as I tell you now:

  I ran away from home when I was little. I hid on a caravan of trucks headed east. When we stopped in Dakar, a beautiful woman appeared and joined us. She began to take care of me. She fed me, clothed me, taught me how to read, and told me stories about her namesake, who was a goddess. But she wasn’t just her namesake. She was really Her. After we had crossed the desert safely, She went back to heaven.

  Gabriel nodded and in his eyes were only belief and acceptance.

  What was her name? he asked.

  Yemaya, I said.

  What a beautiful word. What did she look like?

  It’s hard to remember now. I don’t have any pictures of her. I only have an image in my mind, and a feeling. But her hair was wavy, like she
had some European blood. She tied it back in a headwrap. And she had big bright eyes. Like yours.

  Tell me more, he said. I want to listen to the sound of your voice.

  I never looked for her, I said. I knew I wouldn’t be able to find her if I did. She would only come to me when I was ready. So I’m here, in this life, for now. But I don’t feel I belong here. I’m on loan.

  Why did you run away from home in the first place? he said.

  This was the one question I was afraid he’d ask, Yemaya. No one had asked me that question for thirteen years. And yet tonight, I’d received the sign that all would be well. Tonight was a night for breaking the habits of years and breathing free air.

  We were Haratine, which meant we were slaves, I said. My mother and I served the Brahim household. The father was always sending me away to spend time with my mother. When I was a child, we escaped and tried to settle in one of the slums. But somehow he found us. I came back from the beach to the concrete house my mother had made for us, and he was there, and he was wearing a sky-blue robe like the men in Mauritania do. My mother looked at me, and even though she was upside down and I was right side up, she looked at me and said, Don’t worry, I’ll be all right.

  I found myself held against Gabriel’s body. I had never been held in such a way. I was a virgin. But I reminded myself: I had received the sign. This was all right.

  I ran away, I said into his chest. She had told me to, if anything happened to her, because she never wanted me to be enslaved again.

  He held me tighter. His body was warm and hard.

  For so many years, to calm myself, I’d said Yemaya, Yemaya, Yemaya. In the darkness, against his chest, I mouthed it, feeling the way it formed in the back of my throat, touched my lips, and ended with an open mouth. And then I tested the new one: Gabriel, Gabriel, Gabriel. It didn’t feel quite as right as your name did. But for now, for this life, on this earth, it would do.

  Meena

  The Commune

  Mohini, how did I get here?

  The bodies are routine now. They’re always you, in a golden sari, with your head hanging off the edge of the Trail. They never animate or sit up and start talking. I just hear your voice in my head.

  We talk about how I moved to Thrissur when I was twenty-three and got a job at the women’s center, where I worked with survivors of domestic abuse. It was a struggle. Most of the time I just wanted to find the abusers and kick the shit out of them on my clients’ behalf. You know this about me. I’m honest with you. You’re gentle and understanding.

  You say, You’re carrying a lot of baggage.

  You’re right, I say.

  I kneel at the edge of the Trail and empty my bag and, like Jesus separating the sheep and the goats, I put things into two piles. The breakdown goes like this:

  Pile 1: Underwear, bra, sunglasses, desalinators, toothbrush, toothpaste, tongue scraper, kiln, solar plate, filet knife, fishing kit, irradiator brush, medical kit, menses sponge, diaper cloth, pod, ropes.

  Pile 2: Mitter, purse, sandals, soap concentrate, protein packets, broth packets, sunbits, gas capsules, sea anchor, laminated map, pozit, flares, picture of Rana, compass, brimmed hat, sun cap, hoodie, T-shirt, long-sleeved shirt, canvas shoes, thong sandals, and the pair of pants I’m not wearing at the moment.

  Without letting myself think about it I sweep the second pile over the edge. The various items scatter on the surface. My pants bloom to life as they take on water. The hoodie is hardest to sink. I have to tow it back in and hold it under and it accepts this fate, having been long embittered about its role, grumbling as it sinks. The other items are more obliging. One by one, they disappear. When they’re gone, I feel lighter. I’ve gotten rid of a lot of weight and my bag will be easier to carry. Already my body itself is lighter and easier to carry. All my fat has disappeared. My breasts are flat. My bones are prominent. For the first time in my life, it hurts to sit, and so I eat curled up on my side.

  Your golden body appears every thirty meters or so, like a crumb trail. I consider these part of the ordeal. More chambers. They all have some purpose I can’t yet tell, something that will prepare me for the final chamber, the first and the last, Ethiopia.

  Patchwork rafts are lashed together and covered by Persian carpets, their corners wet and dragging in the water. There are half a dozen residents and they all look like Maharishi devotees from 1968. They rouse from beanbags and lurch up, heavy-lidded, like zombies. The nearest one wears a batik robe that pools around his feet and leaves his shoulder bare.

  MARATHI: Who goes?

  “Durga,” I say.

  MARATHI: Whoa. Durga. Do you bring new life or destruction?

  “Both,” I say.

  He gestures to the assemblage of beanbags and the adherents press their palms and bow toward me. But their aim is off. One of them is bowing to the space to my left and the other is bowing to the space above me. Not a film, not a dream. What chamber is this, then? Maybe a test. “Please, partake with us,” he says.

  “What, hashish?”

  “No, seawater,” he says.

  “You can’t drink seawater,” I say.

  “Ah, but you can,” he says. “Five hundred milliliters a day before your kidneys revolt. We’re here to prove it.”

  “To whom?”

  “To the world. That Bloody Mary is real.”

  “What does Bloody Mary have to do with this?”

  “You call her Bloody Mary, but we call her Mother of the Race to Come.”

  Mohini, this sounds like some bullshit.

  “I’m not keen on giving up fresh water, thanks,” I say. “I’ll be on my way.”

  The batik man moves with surprising speed to block my way.

  “Either you sacrifice your desalinators to Bloody Mary, or you offer a story,” he says. “That’s the bargain.”

  Ah, so I was right, Mohini. This is a test.

  Tell them the one about Parvati, you say.

  I’m sure they know about Parvati, I say.

  No, Parvati Rai, you say. Your first client at the women’s center. Remember?

  Oh, Parvati Rai.

  I tell Batik Man to sit on his beanbag because I’m about to tell a story. My words will get fucked up because I’m me, but there’s going to be a beginning, a middle, and an end. I feel you behind me, listening and supporting.

  “Once there was a slave woman named Parvati. She had been born into slavery, not in the sense of intrinsic worth or karmic reincarnation but in a social construction sense, obviously, and not by any fault of her own but just because people can’t control where they’re born, and then energy flows directionally through the human race because the gradient’s always trying to reach equilibrium. Like the layers of the ocean. Right?”

  You say, Just tell the story and don’t worry about extemporizing. The facts are enough.

  “Okay, so. Parvati’s mother died when she was young, so she grew up in the house alone, as the slave of the family. They called her a servant, but that’s just the kind of bullshit rurals get away with; according to the international definition she was a slave because she never received schooling, was never paid enough to live on her own, was prohibited from forming any kind of relationships that would help her get out of her situation, et cetera. The man she served was violent towards her, especially after his wife left him and took her three daughters with her. So it was just Parvati and him in the house and he raped her a lot. And that was just her normal life.”

  My voice is beginning to shake, but I can feel you behind me, holding me in strength. I stop to swallow and take a breath.

  “Sometimes Parvati thought about killing herself. But she needed to believe that life was worth living if only she could get free. So she ran away to another village, but no one would take her in. Eventually her master found her through her aadhaar. He humiliated her in public and then put her on top of his truck and strapped her down like she was luggage, and started driving back to his village really fast. The bumping
on country roads loosened the knots, and Parvati fell off the truck, into the road. She hit so hard her skull cracked. She was still lying in the middle of the road, bleeding from the head, and she thought, I should just stay here in the road.

  “But she was still alive. And things that are alive need to move, eventually, whether they want to or not, because they still have energy to spend. She crawled out of the road. She was weak, but she pinched the skin of her upper arm and dug out her aadhaar with her own fingernails and left it in a field. She crawled farther to put distance between her and her aadhaar. Then she got up and walked through the night. When it got to be dawn, she found herself on a road high above the plain, and she saw a car passing, and she flagged it down, and it turned out to be a medical student, who took her to the hospital. That student was my father, Ramachandran Gabriel.”

  And after that? you say. Finish it.

  “Parvati got better. She started helping other women. When I arrived at the women’s center many years later, she was its director. On my first day, she told me about how my father had rescued her from the road. She also told me that she went back to her old ‘master’s’ house. She’d forgiven him. She wanted to lay eyes on him again and show herself that she had nothing to fear. But when she got to the house, it was empty. The wind blew through it like the bones of a skeleton. He’d left long ago.”

  “So,” says Batik Man, “what did she do?”

  “She went back to her wonderful life,” I say.

  All of the devotees press their palms and bow to me again.

  “You may pass now,” says Batik Man.

  In answer, I take out my two desalinator bottles, and like a buzzard spreading its wings, fling each into the ocean. They arc to my right and left and drop into the water at the same exact moment.