The Girl in the Road (27 page)

At sunset I see a boat coming up from the south. They're on an intercept course. This doesn't feel like a film set. This has the ring of a dream.

A beautiful bare-chested man at the bow waves to me. I return the wave. The boat slows down as it approaches the Trail and I see it contains two other people, a woman and a man. They make a radiant trinity. The woman has planted her foot on the starboard railing and her long hair ripples in the wind. The other man is carrying two palm cameras and turns both his hands gently back and forth like he's waving in a beauty pageant.

The first man says,

ENGLISH
:
Do you speak English? Or French?

“You can speak whatever you want,” I say in English. “I have a glotti.”

TAHITIAN
:
Oh, thank goodness. I only have to use a tenth the brainpower. Greetings to you, traveler! Could you use coconut milk? We just restocked at Soqotra.

Yes, I think, this is not quite real somehow. But it's another chamber, like the pirate radio station. I have to pass through it.

“Sure,” I say. “My kiln can't program that.”

The boat sidles up to the Trail and the two men moor it with a magnetic anchor. Then the woman hands me a cup of coconut milk and I drink it. They stare at me as I drink.

TAHITIAN:
Look how big her eyes are.

TAHITIAN:
Idiot! She can understand you.

“My eyes are big?”

“You look like you have too little flesh for your frame,” says the muscled goddess.

“I've been walking a long time.”

“All the way from Mumbai?”

“Yep.”

“Smashing! May we join you for a rest?”

“Sure.”

Their faces light up and they scramble onto the Trail. All of them are adept at balancing. I sit down cross-legged on the Trail and the three of them sit down across from me, the same way, the woman in the middle. I feel like I'm sitting across from three life-sized action figures.

“I'm Milton,” says the first man.

“I'm Aish,” says the woman.

“I'm Greg,” says the second man.

“Durga,” I say.

“May we film you?” asks Greg, the one with the two palm cameras.

“What for?”

“We're making a documentary about our quest.”

“Wow. First tell me what your quest is.”

Aish nods to Greg and Greg turns off his palm cameras and folds his hands in his lap.

“We're watching for the wave,” says Aish.

I wait for more words that don't come. “Just one?”

“The signs are very clear. The tipping point is near. A time bomb could go off any day: the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The collapse of La Palma. An earthquake anywhere in the world, which will trigger a tsunami of unimaginable proportions.”

“And you want to see it happen.”

“We don't just want to see it happen. We want to surf it.”

Milton offers his hand to me. “Nordi Team Number Fourteen, Arabian Sea. Pleased to meet you.”

The dream gets a dash of reality, now that they mention something as concrete as Nordi, the Norwegian bottled-water brand. These days they add ingredients that make your whole gastrointestinal tract feel icy, then warm. Mohini couldn't drink it because it gave her a rash.

“You're all going to surf it?”

“No,” says Aish, “Just Milton. Greg is our cameraman. I'm the captain of Team Fourteen. There are other teams scattered all over the world.”

“North Pacific, South Pacific, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, West Indian, East Indian, Mediterranean,” says Greg. “And the poor shivering bastards patrolling Antarctica.”

“Though they may well be the victors,” says Milton solemnly.

“If the glacier goes? You bet,” says Aish.

“Imagine it,” says Milton, gripping my forearm, a gesture that seems too familiar for our acquaintance. “First you hear a peal of thunder that never ends. It just grows, getting louder and louder. Then you feel a trembling in the waters and the surface begins to vibrate even though there's no rain or wind. Then the thunder dies away and the vibrations settle and you hear and feel nothing. And then the wave appears.”

Greg has started filming again. “That's beautiful, beautiful,” he says, interweaving his hands.

“Don't point those things at me,” I say.

“No, of course not,” he murmurs, not looking at me.

“How do you know when and where it'll be?” I say.

“We don't,” says Aish, who is now drinking her own cup of coconut milk. Where did it come from? It seems like I have gaps in my memory. “But we have access to the earthquake warning grid on the seafloor. Certain predictive factors can tell us when and where a major quake is about to happen. Then we model where the water's going to well up, and speed like hell to intersect it.”

Milton stands, feet braced, gazing west. We all look up at him. Greg positions his hands so that he looks like a medieval shepherd worshipping the Baby Jesus of Milton's ass.

“I saw it in a dream,” says Milton. “The epicenter off the coast of Kerala, the sea bed thrusting up beneath the subcontinent, the displacement of new water up, up, up into a wall a thousand meters high, and we gun our noble little craft right into the swell, and Aish runs the tow rope with superhuman agility, and I let go and then I surf down, down, down the face of the great wave, riding over sea and reef alike, entire islands drowning beneath my feet, one long ride at the speed of sound, until at long last I surf ashore in Karachi or Mogadishu or whatever port dare remain in the face of this wave.”

Aish is wiping tears from her eyes. Greg would be too, except he's still angling his palm cameras and can't spare a hand. “Beautiful,” he says. “That's beautiful, Milt.”

“Beautiful?” I say. “With so many people drowning? You sound like an asshole.”

It's as if I started waving a gun. All three of them jump back in an exaggerated but coordinated way.

“How could you say that,” says Greg.

“Our mission is pure,” says Aish.

“Wave is destiny,” says Milton, who seems the most wounded.

“If it's what you want, good luck,” I say.

Milton straightens and brushes off his bare chest as if brushing out wrinkles. “I thank you for that,” he says briskly. And then the three of them jump back in the boat and detach the magnetic anchors, and steer away without a backward glance. It's then that I realize I didn't even see a surfboard.

Performance art, maybe, says Mohini in her golden sari.

I became Gabriel's guide in Ethiopia. But not in the sense that he paid or patronized me. Once he offered to pay for a meal as a way of saying thanks, but I didn't want to feel indebted to him, so I forbade him to. I was with him because I chose to be, because I liked him and liked that he liked me. So he put his money away.

Once I asked him, Do your friends care how much time you're spending with an Ethiopian woman?

The question seemed to agitate him, and he searched the sky looking like he was about to deliver an answer that would take several days, but I watched his face, and after a minute all of his thoughts collapsed in his head so that all he said to me was: Mariama, if they do, I don't care.

And so I left it alone.

Soon after the listening party, we made a holiday of seeing Dinkenesh. As we made our way down Entoto Avenue from the university, the National Museum was on our right, set back from the road. There was a stately green courtyard and hyacinth trees blooming in rows. A woman in blue fatigues scanned us in. Gabriel gaped at the first exhibit, meant to impress, right as we walked in the door: a glorious golden throne draped with a cape and a crown. But I took his hand and led him down a flight of stairs into the darkened basement. Here, the exhibits were more modest to look at, but so much more important: fragments of bones and skulls, like the relics of saints. We were silent, reading each caption, then moving on to the next. There was no one else there.

I didn't rush him. In fact, Yemaya, it felt like the day you and I spent wandering the Royal Enclosure in Gonder. We didn't have to say anything. We just wandered, happy, in a garden of stone.

When we finally entered the room where Dinkenesh was, walking toward us, always in mid-stride, Gabriel pressed his palms together and bowed to her, saying Namaste, Amma.

Then we stood side by side looking at her.

I could feel the thrumming of the power generators below our feet. I felt I could go to sleep in this room. I could curl up on this floor with Gabriel, this strange man who felt so familiar, and hold his hand beneath Dinkenesh's shadow.

Then an Ethiopian man came into the room. He was wearing a name tag that said
adam
and his face resembled a goat skull. He said, May I help you? Do you need a guide? Can I tell you about Dinkenesh?

I said no, thank you. I could see Gabriel also felt that way, but didn't want to be rude to an Ethiopian man.

But how will you know what you're seeing? he said. I can tell you what you're seeing. Only a hundred birr for a guide.

I felt anger swelling in my body. I didn't need anyone to tell me what I was seeing. I said with the voice of the kreen: No, thank you.

He flinched as if I were about to hit him. He backed away. He was halfway out the doorway when he flung his arm toward Dinkenesh and said, That's not really her, you know. It's a replica. They made it out of plaster.

He paused, then added, But you could be forgiven for thinking it's her.

Then he left us alone.

One day, I instructed Gabriel to meet me at Delhi Café on Taitu Street, a magnet for expat Indians that he was sure to know. It was another cloudless, dry evening in Addis, and the sky had turned lilac to match the hyacinth trees. We set off from the café and climbed a steep, winding hill until we reached an asphalt plateau, upon which stood a vast villa in the Italian style, flanked by stately rows of flags.

The Sheraton? he said, with amusement.

I said yes, with a note of reproach that hushed him.

You see, Yemaya, the Sheraton was another one of my sacred spots. It was the place I'd stayed when I won the poetry contest. I had had a roommate named Tigist, and we were both required to write thank-you cards to the Chinese corporations that had sponsored our trips. But it was the first time I really, truly glimpsed the future. I saw how the rest of the modern world lived. There was no television like the one I knew from the orphanage; instead, at the command of my voice, the entire wall became a living screen. The first night of our trip, Tigist and I stayed up until four o'clock in the morning with our backs against the headboards of our beds, watching shows from all over the world, having arranged our pillows into separate “houses,” and only communicating by opening a pillow “window” and speaking through it.

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, like the islands and villages and coastal communities 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.