The Girl in the Road (5 page)

There's so much I want to tell her. But I can't get it out of my mouth. So instead I just splash my heel in the water.

The lifeguard smiles, rescues me. “What's your name?” she asks.

I pause, then remember to say “Durga.”

“I'm Lucia,” she says. She gazes into space. “I'm studying nano because I want to learn how to make things like the Trail. Did you know that metallic hydrogen is what they use as the superconductor? Amazing. Fifty years ago they couldn't even produce a stable sample.”

I stare at the pool surface. “I think some people are like superconductors,” I say. “They have no resistance to the energy they receive. They just convey it.”

Lucia looks at me and reaches out her hand toward mine.

At that moment, a Chinese couple comes down the stairs. They're wearing kurtas and jeans. They seem embarrassed to have interrupted us. They begin apologizing in English.

“No, it's certainly all right,” says Lucia in English. She jumps up. “Would you like to try it?”

As they come forward, I get nervous and step away and raise my arm in farewell to Lucia. She looks sad that I'm leaving. “Durga,” she calls, “it was nice talking to you.”

I wag my head and begin up the stairs. Leaving so quickly feels wrong but I didn't even know what to say to Lucia when we were alone, much less with other people there.

I come up to the ground floor and see Arjuna at the desk. He is talking to the attendant.

My blood turns to adrenaline again. I turn around and go back down the steps. Back to Lucia. Back to the Chinese couple. They're standing by the side of the pool, looking doubtful.

“Oh, hi again!” says Lucia, brightening when she sees me. “Did you forget something?”

I speak in Marathi, hoping Lucia knows it, hoping the Chinese tourists don't have their glottis turned on. “May I go into the changing room? There's someone upstairs I don't want to see and I'm afraid he's going to come down here.”

Lucia sees the look on my face and replies in Marathi, “Yes, of course. I won't say I saw you.”

As I head toward the changing room, I hear her say to the couple in English, “She needed the bathroom.”

I close myself in. It's clear to me now. Arjuna did recognize me from college. He's part of the conspiracy. He means me harm too. The walls are painted with blueprints of the Trail. I stare at them to calm myself. I hear Lucia encouraging the Chinese couple, but as far as I can tell they both just step on the first scale and then back to safety. They thank her and ascend the stairs.

Then a new, manly voice. It's Arjuna. I can hear Lucia greet him but I can't hear what they're saying over the hum of the pool.

He asks her a question, sounding agitated.

She answers, sounding soothing.

He mumbles.

I hear steps.

I brace myself.

I hear an outer door open and close.

Then bare feet padding on concrete over to me. The door swings open.

“Accha, are you a runaway or what?” says Lucia, looking flustered.

“Is he gone?”

“Yes, I said I saw you heading to Churchgate. Cousin?”

“No.”

“Husband?”

“No. I just shouldn't see him right now.”

“He was hot.”

“Yes.”

“Are you married?”

“No.”

She raises an eyebrow. “This sounds like a juicy story. At the very least you owe me dinner. You can tell me then.”

“OK.”

“Want to stay in here a little longer? It's slow today. If anyone asks I'll say the changing room is out of order.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

She eyes me over, smirks, and shuts the door.

We never make it out to dinner. First she insists on making me chai in her tiny Colaba flat in the old bus depot, cooled only by a ceiling fan, and I tell her that Arjuna's a man I met but don't want to talk to now, which is true, and she seems satisfied.

Then she brings out a box of hashish. I feel anxious but I tell myself that even if Arjuna is part of the conspiracy with Semena Werk, there's no safer place I can be at the moment, and I can use tonight to decide what to do next. So I let my guard down and we smoke. Then we're hungry, so we order tiffin, and when the delivery boy knocks on the door, we scream, and then can't stop laughing when we open the door, and give him a big tip for putting up with us. Then we eat. Then we get in bed together.

She's not like Arjuna. She's very present. She traces my lips and tells me my mouth is shaped like a cowrie shell, which I've heard before. And when we've taken off each other's clothes and her hand passes over the patch between my breasts, she rests her hand back on the spot where I was bitten and asks, “What happened here?”

“Somebody tried to hurt me.”

“Why would they want to do that?”

“I don't know.”

In the night, it rains again. I'm still too wired to sleep so I lie awake listening. I've gotten maybe four hours of sleep in the last three days. But I don't feel tired. Meanwhile, Lucia passes in and out of sleep, each time with fresh insights from her dreams. Her innocence is starting to grate.

Near dawn, she whispers, “Durga … now we're bound up.”

I clench up. This is it. She's going to cling to me like Arjuna did. “How so?”

“It's like quantum entanglement. Our bodies have exchanged matter and so now we're interlinked.”

She sounds intimate. I deflect. “I didn't get that far in nano.”

“You learn it second year!”

I have to lie again. She's making me lie. “I switched to comp lit after my first year.”

“Oh. Well, it means that if we think of our bodies as particles, our states are the same right now, but then when we separate, we remain entangled. Now it's impossible to describe you without describing me, and vice versa. We tell each other's stories by living our own lives.”

I feel angry. As angry as I felt euphoric six hours ago. I try to control my voice. “That could be scary. Depending.”

“True,” she says. “It means that relationships never end. Once made, they just influence each other backwards and forwards in time, for better or worse.” She nudges my arm open and docks her head against my breast. “But I'd say this is for better.”

So hackneyed. I kiss her head but transfer no love. It's clear she's suffered little in life and it pisses me off. I close my eyes and try to control my breathing. In general I can tell those who haven't suffered trauma from those who have just by looking at them. It's marked on their foreheads and it shows in their eyes. The ones who saw something unbearable and continued living anyway. I'm one of those even though I don't have a conscious memory of it. As a baby I felt my mother die around me. And after a thing like that, why live.

I open my eyes and the barefoot girl is staring down at me with her finger in her mouth.

Yemaya, can it truly be you?

I have only a memory of her face. You look so tired and sad, and how can a goddess be so? Yet you move as she did, and your eyes are just as dark. If you are Yemaya, oh, please come and rest. Please come sit with me. And please forgive me for losing faith. You are, and have always been, my only beloved. I will tell you my story, which you must already know, but in the act of the telling, all things shall be put right between us.

Where shall I begin?

The snake begins and ends all things, of course.

One day, many years ago, soon after we ran away, I came in from the ocean and crouched in the sand near a fire where some women were cooking. They were grilling what looked like a long black whip. A woman wearing a bright green dress with red sunbursts said, Are you back then?

I nodded, busying my hand around my mouth.

We haven't seen you before, she said. Your people come from the south?

I shook my head, looking at the whiplike thing they were grilling.

Where are you from, then?

I stood up and pointed east, toward the city.

El Mina? Kosovo? Arafat?

We used to live with Doctor Moctar Brahim, but we left.

Who's we?

Me and my mother.

Why did you leave?

Mother says we don't belong to anyone. She said she wants us to belong to each other.

Who got you out? SOS? IRA?

We did it on our own.

That's bold. He'll find you.

No, he won't, because we don't have chips, I said.

(That's what my mother kept telling me, Yemaya. I didn't even know what chips were, but I imagined them to be like the gold teeth in our master's mouth.)

The woman cut a portion of the black whip, wrapped it in a cloth and handed it to me. Take this to your mother, she said. It's sea snake. Something we've never seen before. The weather is changing and bringing us new things to eat.

I thanked her and then walked up the bank. I was so excited because I had two whole days' worth of food in my hands, and meat, at that. I started running along the track back to town and I was careful not to step on the plastic, the broken glass, the goat droppings, the metal slices, the wooden stakes, the tires and tanks, the crumbs of concrete. We'd set up on the outskirts of Sebkha in a cinderblock enclosure. My mother had gathered mats, blankets, and clothes to make a roof, which made for a shaded corner at all times of the day. She'd dragged part of a chain-link fence all the way from the beach to keep out dogs. She'd hung a picture of Boubacar Messaoud from a shelf in the concrete so that he watched over us, and she said, Whenever you don't feel strong, look at that picture and then look at me. I've decided that I'm free. You must decide that you're free as well. If the Doctor comes looking for us, we'll travel into the deep desert. If something happens to me, you must promise you will go forth alone and find shelter with kind people and remain free. God will love you more than He has loved me. I will make Him.

But in Sebkha, she'd find work shoveling back the dunes and I'd go to the school at El Mina. Not even the school for former slaves. The real school.

I spotted our shelter and as I half-walked, half-ran toward it, I couldn't help but unwrap the cloth and pry out a chunk of the meat. I put it in my mouth and stopped to chew it. The flesh was oily with a strong fishy aftertaste.

When I got near our shelter I felt that something was wrong, but I couldn't say what. Was my mother within? I peeled back the fence and stepped inside. And there, on the mat in the shaded corner where we slept, I saw a coiled snake, colored sky-blue. When I saw it, many things happened at once: it hissed and struck out at me, I screamed and dropped the food, and then the little bit of meat I'd eaten came up and I had to swallow it again, but it didn't go down quite right, and lodged somewhere between my heart and my stomach.

I remembered my promise to my mother and ran away. I ran toward the city. My throat still burned, and I kept swallowing, but I could only get the spiky bite down so far, and it stuck, festering.

The tracks became roads and the roads became paved streets with checkered curbs. I passed billboards and minarets. I wove between men in robes, all Moors in boubous and sandals, talking to the air. It was just like running an errand for my master—no one bothered me because that's what they thought I was doing, still, running an errand for him while he spent time with my mother. Except this time, I could never return.

I came to a market of arched colonnades and ran down the throughway. Then as I turned a corner, I ran into solid muscle, hard legs under blue jeans. I fell back on my bottom.

Pardon me, said a man with a white beard, who then crouched down beside me. A woman crouched down too, with Western-style hair. They were like buzzards, bobbing, one on either side of me.

Are you lost? said the woman.

I said no.

Where is your mother?

I pointed. They turned to look. I turned to run.

But the woman noticed and caught me by the arm. She was so much bigger than me, Yemaya—so much bigger than my mother, even. It frightened me.

You look hungry, she said. Come with us. We have a tent for children.

The man laughed at my expression. It's okay, he said, you don't have to trust us now. There are people all around us. You just follow us to the tent and if either of us do anything scary, you can leave, okay?

They shuffled their feet in a playful way and looked over their shoulders to see if I was following. Finally I did because it was true I was hungry and also I remembered what my mother had said about seeking shelter with kind strangers. Maybe these people counted. Maybe I could eat something and then tell them about the sky-blue snake.

They led me to a billowing khaki tent at the far end of the market, where two other children sat on a bench, legs dangling. The younger boy was crying in big heaving sobs. His cries wound up and faded, wound up and faded, like the curfew siren. The other boy, older, was gnawing a mango with both hands.

Sit here, said the woman. Have some water.

I drank the water out of a clear jar. It was warm. I drank the whole thing.

The man and the woman were standing off a little ways, talking in hushed voices. Something minor was decided. The woman came over to me.

My name is Doha, she said. Can you say that?

Doha, I said, insulted.

Good. And what's your name?

I didn't answer, even though my throat was softened by the warm water.

Okay, she said. You don't have to answer that just yet. But may I ask you another few questions? I promise you only have to answer the ones you want.

I nodded. The crying child stopped crying. Maybe he wanted to hear my answers.

Doha turned out her arm and pointed to a stitch near her armpit.

This is a chip, she said. Do you have one? If you did, it would probably be here. Or—Baaku?

The older boy looked up.

Can you come here for a moment?

He dropped down and came to us.

I just want to show her your chip, she said. He craned his neck sideways. There was a shaved lump under his ear. It looked like a disease.

I don't have a chip, I said quickly.

Just to be sure, would you mind if I checked a few places on your body? You don't have to take off any of your clothing.

I said Okay. I was surprised when she asked me before she felt each place. She felt near my armpit and the base of my skull. She asked me to pull up my shirt a little, and I did, and she looked at my belly on either side of my navel.

Doha sighed. You don't have a chip, just like you said. But you didn't do anything wrong. It's just a way to get lost children back to their mothers.

I can't go back to my mother, I said.

She smiled at me.

What a thing to say, she said. We'll just have to work a little harder for you. Would you like some mango?

I nodded.

She went behind a tarp. I could see a fancy solar fridge and a plastic cutting board wet with juice and mango fibers.

I noticed Baaku looking at me.

You don't have a chip? he said.

No.

These people will put one in you. Are you in the HLF?

What's that?

The Haratine Liberation Front.

I don't know.

Did you run away from home?

I didn't answer.

It's okay, he confided. I did too. But now they're just going to send me back.

Why did you run away?

My father wants me to be a butcher. But I want to be a hero like Deepak Tharoor.

Who is that?

You haven't seen
The Tamil Terror
?

No.

I've seen
The Tamil Terror
five times. And
Murder on the Chennai Express
. They're much better than Nollywood. My father says Nollywood makes shit.

I didn't know what he was talking about, and I felt ashamed, so I stopped talking to him.

He noticed. But he pretended not to. He wrapped up the conversation casually, as if it were his idea to end it. He said, Well, if you don't want to go back and you don't have a chip, that means you can keep running. Just pretend like you belong, wherever you are. That's what Deepak Tharoor did in The Tamil Terror after he dug his chip out.

I waited till he went back to his seat. Then I turned around to look for Doha. I could see the shape of her behind the tarp, still cutting mango.

I hopped off the bench and ran back out into the market.

I felt clever, even euphoric. But I was still hungry. The marketplace smells of roasting meat and spices were making my stomach ache. I'd run all the way to the other side of the market, to a side street where big flatbed trucks were lined up along the curb, when I saw two men leaning against the back of a truck, one in a long robe and white cap and one in blue jeans and a T-shirt. They were tearing apart a loaf of bread and dipping pieces into a can of sauce. I wandered closer.

The T-shirt man noticed me.

Salaam-nesh, he said.

I didn't answer because his greeting was familiar, but strange. Instead I pointed to the can of sauce and touched my fingers to my lips.

You're very persuasive! said the white-cap man, and beckoned me over. He dipped a heel of bread in the green sauce and held it out for me. I took it and ate it, watching him.

No ‘thank you'? he said. I could understand him, but his accent was odd.

Thank you, I said. The sauce was very spicy and my eyes were watering.

This is my favorite stuff, said the man in the blue jeans. I'm taking twenty cans of it back home.

Where's your home?

Ethiopia, he said.

Where's that?

Very far away, he said. You want to come with us?

Don't listen to him, said the white-cap man. He's a famous child-snatcher.

I said, Is he still a child-snatcher if the child wants to be snatched?

They laughed. I liked these men. I was popular with them.

Ethiopia is near the other ocean, said the white-cap man. Across the Sahara. Have you learned your geography?

No.

Well, maybe you'll get there one day, he said. But now you need to go back home.

I don't have a home.

Of course you do. What does your chip say?

I don't have one, I said.

No chip? exclaimed the blue-jean man.

Slave, the white-cap man said to him.

The blue-jean man's expression changed. Ah, pity, he said, looking down at me.

What's your name? said the white-cap man.

Mariama, I said.

And where are your people?

I have no people, I said.

You're Haratine, no?

I don't know.

Do you work for a Moorish family?

No. I'm free. I want to come with you to Ethiopia.

Let her come with us if she wants, said the blue-jean man.

Your mother birthed an idiot, said the white-cap man.

The blue-jean man shrugged and dunked his bread.

I'm Muhammed, said the white-cap man, and this is Francis. It's very pleasant to make your acquaintance. But we must take our leave of your company to prepare for a nighttime departure.

To Ethiopia? I said. I wanted to prolong the conversation because in these men, I perceived no harm. These were definitely the sort of kind strangers my mother talked about, and I needed to seek shelter with them like I promised.

Yes. See these?

He pointed to a line of three flatbed trucks, packed with crates and boxes.

We're carrying crude oil all the way to Addis Ababa. We leave tonight. So please, go back to your mother before it gets dark.

I don't have a mother, I said.

Muhammed sighed. I think you do, he said, but maybe you've had a fight with her. You should go back and ask her forgiveness. A little girl like you can't survive without one. And things are not safe in Nouakchott right now, especially for your kind. You know that, don't you?

I didn't, but the bite of sea snake burned in my chest when he said so. I stayed silent.