The Girl in the Road
Read The Girl in the Road Online
Authors: Monica Byrne
This is an uncorrected eBook file. Please do not quote for
publication until you check your copy against the finished book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Monica Byrne
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of
the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC,
a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
Crown and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of
Random House LLC.
ISBN 978-0-804-13884-0
eBook ISBN 978-0-804-13885-7
Printed in the United States of America
Book design by Ellen Cipriano
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First Edition
For my mother and father,
the two greatest loves of my life.
Meena
The Third Flight
The world begins anew, starting now.
I pick my kurta up off the floor and put it back on. The blood makes it stick to my skin. This is a soap opera. It can't be real. I walk back up the hallway toward the kitchen and press the wounds to see how deep they are. I feel panicked. I need to find a knife and break more glass with it. Instead I remember that I dealt with a wound like this at Muthashi's clinic, once, when we got a little girl who'd been bitten by a snake in a strange place, her solar plexus, down in the hollow between the shells of her breasts. I helped apply ointment and white bandaging in a cross. She looked like a little Crusader.
I become calm. This is what happened to me, too.
I don't know who put the snake in my bed. I just know I need to leave home right now because someone here means me harm. It might be Semena Werk. They say they're a humanitarian organization and not a terrorist one, but I've heard of them migrating south, targeting Keralam, though never so creatively, a snake in a bed, that's new. And already Mohini's voice is in my head, scolding me for blaming Ethiopians because of my family history, before I know anything, really. Her voice is so strong. I have to remind myself every few seconds that we're not together anymore. We'd been planning a hero's journey as lovers, Sita and Rama, Beren and Lúthien, Alexander and Hephaestion. Instead I'll go alone.
I'm already at the kitchen counter and pick up my satchel, which contains my scroll, mitter, and cash. I walk out the door and around the pookalam we've been growing by adding a new ring of blossoms for each festival day. The steps lead to the iron gate, the gate unlatches, and then I'm by the road, which is steaming from the monsoon.
I hear gunfire in the distance.
Mohini says: Calm yourself. It's just the firecrackers of children celebrating Onam early.
You're right, I say. I'm not in my right mind. I know this. My heart is pumping adrenaline instead of blood. I start walking and physical realities calm me: mist rising from the asphalt. Then the rain starts again and I withdraw back into my head. I have to get used to being solo again if I'm going on this journey alone. I like company, but only the kind that doesn't ask me to explain myself. I'm simple. Do good, be good, feel good.
I pass the cathedral and the stone wall of the old town rises up on either side of the road. I pick up to a jog. My satchel bounces off my butt. I'm soaked. I can't get any wetter than I am. Gold and pink bougainvillea get in my face and I raise my arm to protect myself. Here's another good reason for leaving home: there's so much shit blocking me down here. Like vines. And even when it's not raining, the air is so thick in the South. It's like breathing coconut juice.
My initial path is clear. I need to go north, to Mumbai, and given the concentration of Ethiopian migrants there, do some research. I have friends from college in the cityâMohan from the Campus Alliance for Women, Ashok from Indian comp lit, Deepti from rugby. I think she lives in one of the fancy high-rises near the Taj that collects rainwater for showers. I'm thinking of Deepti, muscled and dripping in her shower, when I realize I'm already approaching Vaddukanatha at the center of town. I don't remember the last ten minutes. I digress, especially in crisis.
I reach Round East, the road that surrounds the temple complex at the center of the city, and slow to a walk. I'm ringing the heart of the world. There are bright banners arching overhead to celebrate Onam, the end of the monsoon. It's Uthradam Day. We're supposed to buy vegetables today. I see a vendor I talked to just an hour ago and turn away before she sees me. I shouldn't speak to other people right now. I know I'm in a manic state but it also feels like a sanctified state.
I turn onto Round South and there's a parade of children coming toward me, defying the rain, like me. They're dressed in white and gold. They're not well organized. Some boys in the front are carrying a banner that says
thrissur special primary says welcome and bless us king mahabali,
but some rowdy girls are breaking rank and rushing forward, touching the ground and darting back in a game of inscrutable rules. I have to change my course to avoid them. One of the girls hails me and I don't answer, so out of spite, she calls me Blackie. Lovely. Another reason to leave.
I pass Melody Corner, where Mohini gives voice and dance lessons, and take a left onto Kuruppam Road. Distance grows between me and the heart of the world. Now there's the march of devotional icons all the way down to Station Road. Shiva and Jesus wear gold to see me off.
I turn into the train station lot. My blood still feels like lemon juice. The autoshaws sidle up to me, warbling, and I wave them off. I go to the counter and ask for a ticket to Mumbai. I don't make eye contact, which makes it hard for people to hear me, weirdly, always, so the teller has to ask me again. Then he holds out a scanner for my mitter. I hold it out then snatch it back as if I've been burned. I can't use my mitter because I might be being tracked, either by Semena Werk or by the police, or both. I can't rule it out. Nobody can know I boarded a train to Mumbai.
The teller is startled.
I say, “I'm sorry, I forgot, I need to pay in cash.”
He rolls his eyes and fans himself while I dig in my satchel for the wad of rupees. I hand them over. They're soaked. He tells me to look into the retinal scanner. I'd forgotten this, tooâall the new security measures. I'm flustered. I tell him I have an eye condition and that I'm sorry I'm such a bother. He reaches under his counter and pulls out a stamp pad and stamps my hand with a bar code and waves me on. An express maglev train leaves in fourteen minutes. I'm fleeing in style.
The platform is sheltered so I can step out of the rain, finally. Once there I realize I haven't eaten since breakfast. I walk to one of the hole-in-the-wall kiosks, where a man looks out from under hanging metal spoons. I order idlee and sambar and hand over a five-hundred-rupee note. He takes it by the corner like it's a rotten sardine and calls a boy to take it and store it in the special box they keep for paper money. I'm lucky I have cash on me at all. I only carry it to buy spices from Sunny, the spicewaala on the corner of Palace Road and Round East, whose cardamom seeds are the freshest because he picks them in his mother's garden. He wasn't there today, though, so I had to go to somebody else. I still have six plastic baggies full of spices for the Onam feast I'll no longer be making.
There's no one to take care of now, and no one to take care of me.
It's clear that life continues after trauma. What's not clear is whether it's worth continuing to live.
A horn sounds in the distance. I look south. The train is coming, saffron yellow, with its silver emblem, the Lion of Sarnath, and its triad of lights, the top one shining like a third eye.
I have thirty seconds to end this story.
Everyone is crowding the platform. Everyone ignores the safety line. Everyone is so close to death. I move through them, toward the track. Some are closer to death than others. I move my right foot forward and then my left. I repeat the motion. Now I'm closer than anyone. I repeat. I repeat again. Now I'm in the track. I repeat. I repeat again.
The train triples in size.
My legs go weak.
I hear a shout from the crowd. The shout multiplies into many shouts and a thicket of hands pulls me forward.
I close my eyes and feel a great wind at my back, so close it makes my muscles itch.
So the dream continues.
When I open my eyes there's a crowd of people reproaching me with big angry eyes and I know I have to offer some explanation and so I emit lies that I hope will mollify them. “Thank you. I wanted to cross the track but I cut it too close. Thank you. I have a blind spot in my right eye. Thank you.”
I'm a minor celebrity on the platform now, which is the last thing I wanted. Stupid, chutiya, stupid. I can't draw attention to myself.
I board the train and take my seat. Back to the dream, back to business. I watch the parking lot for another attempt by Semena Werk, a bomb or an assassin, or for a sudden burst of police saying, Wait, Stop This Train; we need to question one R. G. Meenakshi, also known as Meena, Meerama, Mimi, Nini, Kashi, or M.
I don't see any police. But I do see a girl on the platform, staring at me.
She's not Indian, too dark even for a Malayalee, probably an African migrant, a rag picker or rat catcher. Her dress is rumpled, once pink, now mottled mustard. Her head is covered like a Muslim, but her dress only comes to mid-calf and she's barefoot. They won't let her on the train barefoot. She fits no prepoured religiocultural profile. She might be a new religion, an immigrant religion. It wouldn't be the first time it's happened in India.
I don't know why she's staring at me. I hate making eye contact anyway so I drop my eyes but I can feel her still staring. What the fuck is wrong with her. Though I could also ask what the fuck is wrong with me, given that I just walked in front of a train.
I'm distracted by a mother and daughter who sit down across from me. They're both immaculately dry and dressed in matching purple saris. The daughter lets her eyes go soft and unfocused around my head because she wants to read my aadhaar, my unique ID and cloud profile, to see what sort of person I am and treat me accordingly. But I keep my aadhaar locked. I'm old-fashioned like that. What you see is what you get. This girl is the opposite. I see her life haloed around her head like a charm bracelet: impeccable schooling, tours abroad, a Brahmin surname. And she's definitely not impressed with me, or with my choice not to display my own aadhaar, or the fact that I'm drenched, or my butch clothes, or my “African” cornrows that Mohini braided and teased me that I was asking for it. For a second I want to turn on my aadhaar just to fuck with her and let slip that I'm Brahmin too. But I stop myself. As Mohini also told me, being looked down upon is good for the soul, good for empathy, good training for a human.
The doors of the train pinch closed with a hiss and a woman's voice tells us to seat ourselves. I switch off my glotti because I'm about to hear the same thing in Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, English, and Mandarin. Now that I know we're leaving soon I feel safe enough to look out the window. And as soon as I do I wish I hadn't.
The barefoot girl hasn't moved. She's still staring at me. She might be twelve and she has baby-fat cheeks and a button nose. Her dress has slipped off her shoulder. She has this expression on her face like I've betrayed her.
I look away. I have other things to worry about than a mentally unstable African girl.
A warm electric hum runs beneath our feet. I hum the same note under my breath until the tones match perfectly and I can't tell one from the other. The note slides up and the train lifts. We're airborne. We slide forward on silken tracks of air.
The barefoot girl is no more.
My hometown, Thrissur, the center of the heart of the world, passes by. The city turns to suburbs, then paddies and fields, then jungle. The train gathers speed. I forget to be vigilant. Mundaneness returns. Banana palms beat by like a metronome. I'm always calmed by being in motion. I feel like a tsunami. I can only go forward. I can't stop until I come ashore, wherever that might be.
The mother and daughter across from me are already asleep, their heads tented together. All my adrenaline retreats from service and leaves me beached and my eyelids begin to flutter.
I dream of an age of miracles, when it only takes two hours to ride all the way from Keralam to Mumbai. And then I wake to find that the age of miracles is Now.
Dusk in Mumbai. There's one star in the sky for thirty million souls.
I'm stepping off the train with seven hundred fellow humans and I don't have a place to sleep tonight. Not that I'll be in Mumbai long. Just long enough to plan for the wheres and the hows of the journey. I think again of Mohan, Ashok, and Deepti, but they'd ask me why I was in Mumbai and so I'd have to tell them about the snake, which would lead to other questions I don't know how to answer yet.
Right now I'm hungry and my wounds still sting, so I have to take care of my body. I still have my white box of food. I sit down on the platform away from the crowds with my back to the wall. I use one hand to break the idlee and the other hand to slip inside my jacket to palpate the bites in my skin. They hurt. It's a bright, prismatic pain that means infection. So after I eat, I have to locate first aid.
Just when I finish eating, I see the barefoot girl get off the train.
At least, that's my first thought. It looks like the same girl, still head covered, still barefoot, still unplaceable. How did she get on the train? We left her behind. There's no way she could have boarded it unless she hitched and then was let on by a conductor who didn't make her pay. Only wealthy people could afford that train. Did she follow me? I watch her. I grind my palm into the cement to feel something, until I feel pain. Then Mohini says to me, soothingly: In a manic state, one sees connections where there are none. You're not usually like this. You're of a sullen nature, certainly, but not paranoid.