The Girl in the Road Page 26

  Mariama

  Awara

  That night, Gabriel and I couldn’t let go of each other. It was like our hands had magnets in them. And not just one pair, but both, which sometimes made it hard to walk forward! Outside the Sheraton we boarded the el train for Medhane Alem. We sat on the roof deck, not speaking, faceup to the stars. Our hands fumbled for one another in the dark until the foursome lay at rest.

  When we came to his flat, he became nervous. He turned on the light overhead, but it was garish and fluorescent, illuminating everything. He locked the door behind us, saying, I have to make sure I do that because I always forget to lock the door. Amma says I’m too trusting. He apologized for the mess, though everything looked tidy to me. We both stood there, not knowing what to do.

  Then the kreen itself whispered into my ear: turn the light back off.

  So I reached behind us and turned off the light again. And in the dark, I felt for his face, and my hand found the curve of his jaw as if I knew it by heart, and I opened my mouth to kiss him.

  All the nervousness went out of him. I could feel it draining from his body. He caved to me, cupping the back of my head and pushing his fingers into my hair. When we drew apart and tented our foreheads together, we knew what to do again.

  I’ll make better light, he said, but he couldn’t see in the dark. So he turned on his sirius and we both laughed, and I cupped his head in my hand and pressed my lips to his temple. Our bodies could not separate. He had me sit down on the same couch he’d sat on before, during the jazz-listening party. But now it was just me here alone. With him.

  Using his sirius as a light, he found matches, and lit candles. By the light, I saw pictures of his parents on the table, his mother stern and handsome with large square glasses and salt-and-pepper hair bound low at the nape of her neck; his father sweet and guileless, with caved-in shoulders and the smile of an embarrassed schoolboy.

  When Gabriel was done, there were twelve points of golden light glowing around the room. He saw me getting up but he told me to wait. He disappeared into the back room, his bedroom. Golden light began to glow from that room too.

  I became aware that soft music had begun to play, of a nature I’d never heard before, gentle and spectral, with sparkles of sitar against a drone, a woman’s voice sliding up and down a scale that felt at once ancient and familiar. Gabriel reemerged from the bedroom, and put his sirius down on the table, and then offered me his hand.

  Yemaya, where is it written that virgins are shy? And where does it say that they are unskilled? Gabriel undressed me and I undressed him as if we had shared a bed for all time past, and would, for all time to come. I ran my hands down his throat like a potter shaping clay, then down farther, one hand along his spine and the other passing through his solar plexus. I thought his body was much bigger than mine, but with our clothes off, we seemed to be the same size.

  He laid me down on peacock-blue sheets like a baby, and covered me with his body like a blanket. And into that space where only you had been before, he came, bringing necessary pain, feeling like the burn of cayenne I remembered from your finger, but wider and hotter. He saw the look on my face and moved very slowly. He rained my face with kisses. And as I willed my body to accept him, the cayenne burn melted into something else, like honey.

  The kreen uncurled from its lair in my solar plexus and descended down to meet him.

  Gabriel was completing what you had begun.

  Election Season

  In the morning, I was woken by a ray of sunlight that fell across our chests and warmed our bodies. Gabriel was sleeping like a child. His black hair was loose. In the sunlight I could see the reddish tone underlying the black. Strands waved in the air like live wires.

  I felt that the moment was so perfect, I didn’t want to even take the chance of ruining it. I would see him again soon. I would send a message to him later. But right now, oh, I wanted to step back into Creation as the changed woman I was! Gabriel didn’t stop slumbering even as I dressed and let myself out. Not even the doorman’s condescending look could dampen my spirits. Outside, the blue vaults above Addis were scented with eucalyptus smoke, a salt-and-pepper incense I still miss. I didn’t take the train. I wanted to walk everywhere. I saw ARAP posters and PEP posters and students marching in the street, though I didn’t join them. It wasn’t that I believed any differently. It’s just that my constitution was bigger now, and given to joy, a new garden of feelings I wanted to explore. The movement could do without me for a while.

  I told myself, surely things between Gabriel and me are altered now, and I mustn’t pretend otherwise. But I knew, just as surely, that I wanted to see him again. I waited a day for the exhilaration to settle, and then, standing by a lamppost in Arat Kilo, sent him a message in Amharic saying Hello and The Sky Is Full of Eucalyptus Incense, which I hoped would at least inspire him to study the translation on his glotti and educate himself, so that he could respond in Amharic, the tongue of his new home.

  But there was no reply that night. Nor the next morning.

  I told myself: you’re learning a new person and his singular ways! He is Other, he is a mystery, he is a delicate puzzle not to be rushed. Was not Yemaya Herself temperamental at times? You must have patience. Or perhaps he was put off by my use of Amharic? It was rude of me to presume.

  So later that day, I sent another message, this time in Hindi. Greetings Friend and I Hope You Are Well.

  There was no reply to that, either.

  Oh, Yemaya, the kreen began to stir within me.

  But then I cupped the embers of that night again: the stars: the candles: the sitar: the rain of kisses. Such beauty cannot amount to nothing or the universe would not cohere.

  The hours turned into days. The kreen had stirred, before, but now it began to writhe in its nest.

  I began to look up Gabriel in the cloud, even though his aadhaar was limited; he was not very active. This made sense to me. He wasn’t the sort of person to groom a public profile. So I looked at past pictures of him, taken by other people. Gabriel at university, president of the Society for Bioethics. Gabriel in secondary school, running backward in a red cricket jersey. Gabriel as an adolescent, not long after the incident with the snake, I imagined, posing in the brown-and-khaki uniform of his new private school in Madurai.

  I began to blame myself. I realized it was because I’d left in the morning, not saying good-bye, just slipping out—my intentions had been good, but what if that had been an unforgivably rude gesture? I didn’t know what Indians were like. I didn’t know what they expected. I was so inexperienced.

  So I sent him another message, again in Hindi, that said: I’m So Sorry I Left. Spend Time Together Soon?

  And again, there was no reply.

  The days turned into weeks. I kept thinking, Surely there must be a mistake, an explanation. I found myself loitering in favorite places of his, or places dear to his friends, or places frequented by medical students. But it was as if he’d disappeared from the earth. The kreen made it difficult for me to sleep. I had little appetite because the kreen took up so much room.

  Then one day, I realized: a family emergency must have occurred. His dear father had fallen ill, or his brilliant mother had broken a leg, and he’d had to vacate Addis suddenly, too suddenly to send me a note. I decided that this must be the case and so I sent him another message: I Hope You and All of Your Loved Ones Are Well. I considered my interpretation of his situation as good as confirmed when I received no reply to that, either. After all, the alternative was not possible, not from the sweet golden boy who’d cried about injustice to a snake.

  For the next few months I threw myself back into the election. I made calls for ARAP. I drew posters and canvassed and organized street teams. I rode the train south to camp at the reservoir near Koka Gidib, recently taken over by Indian contractors. We sat in a human chain in the soil, linking our arms in the face of an oncoming tractor. Again, Al Jazeera was there. Again, the pictures went viral all ove
r the world. I sent one of them to Gabriel to remind him of how we met on the march through Addis but again there was no reply.

  Poor boy, I thought. I hope he and his whole family are all right.

  Then we learned of an all-new travesty: an Indian corporation’s plan to build a wave array across the entire Arabian Sea, which would ostensibly benefit Djibouti. But how was India going to benefit, in ways it wouldn’t say? How was Djibouti going to suffer, in ways that wouldn’t be made clear to them? They wanted to use metallic hydrogen, that mysterious substance I remembered from our journey, Yemaya. How much clearer that whole situation, including Muhammed’s moral quandary, became to me in retrospect! Metallic hydrogen was known to be an unstable substance, introduced by Indian contractors before being properly vetted, and had resulted in African deaths, most notably when it escaped containment in a Zambian plant and killed two hundred workers in 2035. If metallic hydrogen could cause such destruction on land, what would it do in the ocean?

  Oh, I wanted to talk to Gabriel about these things! For me, he was the human face of India. I felt that the answers to everything, even international peace, lay in a loving and rigorous dialogue between the two of us. I cast us as the heroes of warring cultures. I wanted to understand his country, so I began reading everything I could about India; I even sat in on a special seminar called “The Indian Mind-Set.” I started watching streams of Indian dancers: Bharatanatyam, Theyyattam, and Mohiniyattam. I found a program to teach me Malayalam, which was Gabriel’s mother tongue. I learned a few words so that I could surprise him when he came back. I even learned how to say I love you, so that I’d be ready when the moment came.

  What an odd feeling: that India had invaded my country and oppressed it, but as I read more about them, Yemaya, part of me wanted it to happen! Just as easily as I had identified with Ethiopian culture when I was a young girl, I was beginning to dis-identify with it. Though I believed in fighting the exercise of the strong over the weak, I came to feel that one cultural identity was as arbitrary as another. Maybe I was really Indian. Maybe I was transracial, like the transsexuals who underwent expensive treatments to change their body to reflect their soul. Maybe I was beginning my slow transformation into an Indian woman.

  I confided this to Dr. Kebede, the faculty adviser to ARAP on campus. She was not happy with me.

  Mariama, I’ve been watching you, she said. I’m worried about you because you have no kin. Who takes care of you? Do you have any real friends? Do you date anyone?

  I met an Indian man, I said.

  An Indian man? Do you know how Indians see Ethiopians? Indians can be very racist. Especially the wealthy. They regard Africans as beneath them.

  Not this one, I said. Not him.

  Is it serious? she asked.

  Yes, I said, even though I hadn’t seen or heard from Gabriel in months.

  Has he told his parents about you yet?

  I don’t know.

  That’s the test, she said. Even the most progressive Indians still have parents stuck in the past, and they’re helpless to stand up to them. When is the last time you saw him?

  I didn’t answer.

  Ah, I see, said Dr. Kebede, victorious. What is he then, a crush? Wake up, Mariama. It’s time to stop acting like a child. There’s important work to do in the world.

  I got very quiet and the kreen got very loud.

  Dr. Kebede looked frightened. She raised her voice as if in defense against an invisible threat. She said, I’m just being honest with you. I’ve seen it happen. Too many times. They pretend to be equals but really regard us as a resource. They need energy. They’ll take it from us. I want them out, Mariama. You must want it too. You must forget this nonsense.

  I walked out because the kreen was thrashing so hard I was afraid it might do violence and I wasn’t ready for that yet.

  I couldn’t put my faith in a bitter old lady. I still believed that I had to put my faith in love. Gabriel had told me about the snake, and I had told him about my mother, and that had to mean something.

  Even though I’d convinced myself that Gabriel was out of the country, I began, again, to haunt the places he might be. School let out and the rainy season came. I drank buna in Meganagna and watched the entrance of Our Lady of Entoto Hospital. I found an excuse to wander down Medhane Alem, to the apartment complex where Gabriel’s flat was. When I asked the doorman whether Gabriel still lived there, he said no, he’d moved before Christmas.

  Ah, back to India? I said, sad but accepting.

  But he said no. That he’d moved somewhere farther east in the city, in the more modern developments.

  The kreen snapped up this information and gobbled it down.

  I thanked the doorman. I started walking east.

  Meena

  Onam Satya

  “What do you mean?” I ask Subu.

  “A snake has two fangs. So if the snake struck you, there should be six bites.”

  He reaches forward. I slap his hand away.

  “Meena,” he says.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  He turns around and walks back to his kiosk. He sits at the stool at the counter. He raises his hands to either side. “I won’t.”

  I turn around to walk forward but my foot slips and, because there’s actually no glass tunnel containing the Trail, I fall into the ocean. I scream into the water. I beat my fists on the Trail and shed the robe because it’s pulling me down and lift myself up all the way up to my feet. I’m back, soaked.

  “Meena,” he says again, more softly.

  “Don’t touch me,” I say.

  “I won’t,” he says.

  I take a step toward him.

  “I said I won’t,” he says again.

  When I saw Sunny and Mohini, I circled around the bed and sat on the chair across from it, the one next to the glass cabinet. Mohini’s eyes were wide. She stared at me. She was terrified. Sunny pushed back using his hands and withdrew from her and his penis trailed white slime and swung to one side and stuck to his thigh. He lifted a pillow to cover his dark black-bear patch. Mohini rolled down her sari and turned over on her stomach and then pushed herself up to a kneeling position.

  “Meena,” she said.

  I was only wearing my bra on top, and my jeans were unzipped. “Yeah,” I said, “I’m here.”

  Mohini saw the smile at the edge of my mouth and smiled back, in something like relief. “Meena, did you know?”

  I heard the quail’s spiral song right outside the window, and I swirled my finger in the air as if to trace it, as if to answer her question.

  “You’re not mad?”

  I wagged my head like a good Indian girl. I felt strong, so full of life, like my heart was made of menthol.

  “Oh. Wow. Meena, I love you. Look, Sunny—”

  “I’m going,” said Sunny, already out of the bed and shrugging into clothes. “I’m going.”

  “Okay, that’s probably best,” said Mohini, turning from him to me and back again. “But Sunny?—Meena—I think we should all sit down and talk sometime. I really want to respect everyone’s feelings in this situation.”

  Mohini pulled up her bra strap. Sunny wagged his head and zipped up his pants. We both watched as he gathered up the rest of his things and made toward the front door, then changed his mind and made toward the back door. He held up his hand in farewell. Mohini and I both did the same.

  Mohini got off the bed and walked toward me. I rose and she reached for my hand and squeezed it hard. We couldn’t look at each other yet. We both looked at the floor. She took a deep breath and said, “Do you know how much I love you, Meena?”

  Yes, I said. She loved me, so all would be well, even though all things were collapsing in flood and fire to form a new world. I still couldn’t look her in the face so I pressed my cheek to hers and squeezed my eyes shut and in the dark behind my eyelids I saw her face take shape again, her skin dewy from the effort of sex.

  At this I became calm.

  W
ith my eyes still closed I hugged her shoulders, swung her around, and shoved her into the glass cabinet.

  It shattered top to bottom. A dog started barking outside.

  I took her by the throat and slammed her head against the broken glass. She was in shock. I pushed her face back again and my hand got into her mouth and she bit me and the slime from her tongue got on my skin. All the glass had fallen now and I was beating her head against the wooden shelf. Then she was pushing back, trying to get me to let go.

  I threw her against the bed. A fan of blood appeared on the sheets and a halo started spreading around her head. I grabbed her throat again. I could see her lips forming my name. She was scraping at my stomach. Her eyes were overflowing their sockets. She tried to push me away but she was getting weaker. I felt a bite at my solar plexus and reared back. She had punctured me with her fingernails. I stretched the skin above it and saw blood swell and run down. I was enraged.

  I punched her in the face.

  She went still.

  When I’m done with the kiosk, it’s a patch of wreckage floating away. Subu got out of my way. He sat a few scales away and watched the whole thing.

  I don’t know how to make amends. I don’t even want to.

  I try to keep walking west but I can’t balance anymore. I’m surrounded by the opportunity to die. The ocean is so much bigger than I am. Mass wins. I should submit to it. I want to drop sideways or just lie down and not move.

  But I act from animal self-preservation. I come to my knees to put my center of gravity closer to the Trail. I imagine a line running straight down the middle of the Trail and focus on putting my hands on it. I crawl forward. I hug the solid.

  Mohini doesn’t talk to me anymore. None of my counselors do. I listen but they’ve all fallen silent.

  There’s only the little woman. I see her from a long way off. She retreats before me, but a little less every time. Even from this distance I can tell she isn’t shifting her weight at all. The Trail is her medium. I imagine it’s the same woman I saw dive into the ocean after the ship crossing, and the same woman I saw crawl overhead on the glass tunnel, and also Bloody Mary, and also the mango-ring thief. She’s the bearer of all phenomena. She doesn’t appear iteratively like the bodies did. She’s one continuous vision.