The Girl in the Road (6 page)

He shook his head and said, Allah go with you, Mariama.

Muhammed turned back to Francis, and they brushed their hands of crumbs and then went behind a truck, not sparing another look for me.

I turned and walked away, looking over my shoulder. When I was sure they wouldn't see me, I hid behind an oil drum. And as I waited, the bite in my chest began to make a sound, a little cry that sounded like
kreen, kreen, kreen.

I'd been hiding on the truck for two hours when I stopped hearing the men's voices and so imagined that they must have gone to sleep. I had made a little house; my roof was a green tarp and my walls were two drums of oil. I didn't have much space to move, but I managed to turn around and face outward in a kneeling position. I rolled up the tarp until I felt fresh wind. I angled my head so that I could look out.

Oh, Yemaya, I saw the most beautiful sight: a full moon blazing over the sea, like a sunrise all in black and white. I could see the ridges of foam rushing and rising as if they were crowds standing to applaud my passage. I was free. This was what was meant for me. I made the sound the waves seemed to make:
sa-ha, sa-ha, sa-ha,
which helped to silence the
kreen, kreen, kreen.

And just like that—
zeep!
—my tarp roof was gone.

I looked up. Francis was looking down at me. He made a squealing sound like a baby goat and called for Muhammed, who came and shined a flashlight into my eyes. Francis was convulsing with giggles, but Muhammed was not amused.

Mariama? he said.

I didn't answer.

Francis said something about guests being gifts from Allah. Muhammed gave him an evil look.

He pulled me up by the elbow and walked me to a pile of grease-stained rags in the corner of the truck, just behind the cab. He sat me down on the cloths and opened a cooler and handed me a packet of glucose biscuits and a bottle of water. He told me to sit and be quiet. He pulled open a sliding door to the cab and climbed through and sat next to the driver. I could hear them talking. I was scared. I knew punishment must be coming.

Francis whistled and then sat next to me. I cringed away.

Easy, I'm not going to hurt you, he said. I guess you didn't like Nouakchott too much. I don't blame you. But now what are we going to do with you?

I'll live in Ethiopia, I said.

With who? Me? he said. My life is no life for a little girl. And Muhammed already has two daughters in Hawassa.

I can live with them, I said. I can wash their clothes.

They have a machine for that, Francis said.

I can cook for them, I said.

Oh? What can you cook?

I can make stew and mashed yams, I said. I can also milk goats and carry water.

Francis smiled, but also looked sad.

The cab door above us opened, and Muhammed climbed out and knelt between me and Francis. He and Francis spoke rapidly in that language I didn't understand. I knew the punishment was about to come. But Muhammed turned to me and said something I did not expect.

We can't take you back, he said. We have to make Addis Ababa in three months' time and we can't go back now. There's a camp for Haratine refugees outside Dakar. They'll try to find your people through the aid groups and if they can't, you'll stay with them.

You're not going to beat me?

He glanced at Francis. He said, No, Mariama, no one is going to beat you.

Nothing was turning out like I expected. But then I remembered that life was different now. I remembered the moon. I remembered
saha.
I remembered I was free.

I sat up straighter. What if I don't want to stay at the camps? I said.

Well, I didn't want you to stay with me, but you didn't give
me
a choice, did you? said Muhammed.

Oh, leave her alone, said Francis. But the reproach hurt me and my chest felt like it was collapsing all over again, the noise
kreen, kreen, kreen
drowning out the
saha
.

Francis patted my back. What do you want? he asked.

I want to go to Ethiopia, I said.

But how will you ever get back home?

I don't want to go back home, I said.

Francis looked up at Muhammed and said, Something bad happened to her.

What happened to you? Muhammed asked me.

I looked down at my glucose biscuits, Yemaya, and didn't answer. I didn't want to tell them about the sky-blue snake. I didn't know how to talk about it.

Bad things happen to millions of children, Muhammed said to Francis. Why is this one any different?

Because God sent us this one to take care of.

Muhammed regarded me. Then he said something to Francis, got up, and climbed back into the cab.

What did he say? I asked Francis.

He told me to sleep on it.

What language was that?

Amharic. What we speak in Ethiopia.

Then how do you know how to speak my language?

I don't, very well, he said. Just enough to rescue little girls.

(That made me smile, Yemaya.)

You sleep here, he said to me, indicating the pile of rags. We'll think of something else later. I'll sleep over there—he pointed to a crawlspace made by three crates—and if your hair is on fire, you can wake me up, but otherwise not. Okay?

I nodded.

He crawled away. I lay back on the pile and looked up. I could tell we were going very fast, but the stars hardly moved at all. They too whispered
saha, saha, saha
.

I shove myself away from the barefoot girl, which means I slam into Lucia and our heads knock and she sits up and screams and I climb over her body to drop to the other side of her bed. Lucia is calling my name and asking me what's happening and I can tell she's fighting to stay calm, to be reasonable, to assume the best of me. But I can't pay attention to her now. The barefoot girl is hugging her elbows and swinging them back and forth.

“Who are you?” I say.

She stops swinging and says a single word. My glotti says:

LANGUAGE UNKNOWN

I've never seen that error message before.

“Speak fucking Hindi. English. Anything else. Why are you following me?”

She seems scared. She shrinks back. But again she whispers just one word and this time I can hear it, it sounds like
sa'a,
but my glotti reads again:

LANGUAGE UNKNOWN

“Durga,” says Lucia, “who are you talking to?”

“The girl standing right fucking there, Lucia.”

Lucia gathers up the sheets around her body and goes to look out the window.

“That's not funny, Lucia.”

“What's not funny? I'm just—I don't understand—who are you talking to?” Her voice is breaking now and she's near tears.

And I realize that Lucia is part of it.

She is such a good actor. She's part of it, and so was Anwar, and now they have me.

I address myself to the barefoot girl.

“So who sent you? Semena Werk? The police? If I walk out this door, I walk into a dragnet, right?”

The girl squeezes her eyes shut and takes a deep breath and opens them again and says
saha
.

I'm fucking done with this. I take up my satchel and make for the door and fumble with the locks and wrench open the door, all while Lucia is yelling that I'm naked, but I don't care, I'll walk into a dragnet naked and make the morning news all over India. I slam the door behind me. There's no police in the hallway. Okay, so they're outside. I reconsider the nakedness bit and find an empty stairwell where I can put my clothes back on. My bandage has come loose, so my snakebites are bleeding again. I press the tape back in place for now.

I go outside. There's no dragnet, no police. Just hovercarts gliding down the street with breakfast, roti and vada and chai. I start walking toward the sea because I don't want to be still in any one place for too long. I look behind me and no one is following. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the barefoot girl is acting alone, or just she and Lucia, or maybe a bigger force is arriving soon. I need to go somewhere no one will expect and ideally where no one can follow. Not Mumbai, a city every square inch of which is filmed all day and night.

Not even India.

I start walking north on Marine Drive, on the seawall. I pass men in dhotis promenading up and down, hands clasped behind their backs, and businesspeople standing still, talking to the air. There's a yoga class on one platform and a tai chi class on the next. Young women are drinking cups of coffee in the pearly orange morning mist. I could be one of them, but I'm a human scanner, back and forth, looking for the barefoot girl, looking for any other sign of being followed. I have to get out of the country and make my way to Africa. I've been lazy about the journey so far and now I need to be serious. But how will I go so that I won't be followed? I don't know my enemy's resources. I don't even know my fucking enemy.

Then I see two little girls spread a sarong on the seawall overlooking drowned Chowpatty Beach. They're wearing school uniforms of navy and cream. The younger one sits with her legs folded, and the older one takes a place behind her, and begins to braid her hair.

The elder notices me looking. “Namaste,” she says.

“Namaste,” I say.

“The Trail is very pretty at dawn.”

“Yes, it is.” I feel strange around children. I've never had much occasion to interact with them. I don't know whether to address them as small adults or as intelligent animals.

“I come here every morning before school and watch the sunrise and braid her hair,” continues the elder.

The younger one comes to life. “Are you going to walk on the Trail?”

“Yes,” I say, and the answer comes so easily, an admission of a given, what I knew all along, before I went to the museum, before I even boarded the train to Mumbai, that the seed was there, and the solution.

She wags her head. “Our brother Rana left a month ago. Amma says he went to join the seasteads.”

“Where are you from?”

“Dharavi,” says the elder, more shyly.

“But we go to school at Francis Xavier,” says the younger. “We take the student train.”

I remember Lucia's tale of a special shop for the Trail in Dharavi. I remember the universe is conspiring for me. I ask, “Do you know of a store called the Mart?”

Of course she knows exactly what I'm talking about. “Yes, Amma can tell you where it is,” says the elder. “Her name is Sunita. She has a fish shop in Koliwada. She's famous for her pomfret curry. Tell her that her daughters sent you and she'll give you a discount.”

I thank them and say good-bye. When I turn around to look back at them, their heads are haloed in the sunrise.

It's a long ride north in traffic. I count my cash. Just under two thousand rupees left. That's a day's worth of food before I'd have to start using my mitter again, which would broadcast my location.

But my stomach feels like a black hole and I need to eat. So when I get to Koliwada, I ask around for Sunita, and when I find her, before anything else, I buy pomfret curry with chapati. I lean against a wall and eat out of the paper with my elbows close to my body. Then I go back to her, a barrel-bodied woman in a red sari crouching behind the grill.

“Where is the Mart?”

Without looking at me, she turns the filets out of the heat, gets up, and beckons me back into her shack. As soon as I follow her into the shadows, she snaps at me.

“Madam, you shouldn't say that word so loudly.”

“I didn't know.”

“It's illegal, madam.”

“So it exists.”

“Are you from the police?”

“No.”

“Why do you want the Mart, madam?”

“I heard about it from your daughters on Marine Drive.”

“Chutiyas,” she says, which startles me. “Are you trying to join the walkers, madam?”

“It's not your business.”

“It's so dangerous, madam. It's no place for a woman.”

I'm not going to touch that. “But people survive, right?”

“I don't know, madam. There are rumors of settlements but we never hear back from them. My son Rana left a month ago and I've heard nothing.”

“So I heard.”

Something shifts in her eyes. “If you go, you could find him and tell him to come home, madam.”

“If you tell me how to find the Mart, I might.”

Five minutes later, carrying a picture of Rana and a box of soan papdi she insists he needs, she leads me by the hand through Dharavi. It's like being in a three-dimensional maze. The view ahead is a labyrinth and the view overhead is a labyrinth, too, since Dharavi can only grow upward, not out, because there's no more space, and not down, because all the basement workshops flooded when the sea level rose. When I look up I see children swinging from building to building on a network of ropes, all the way up, ten stories high, until the white of the sky blots them out.

The woman stops at a doorway and greets a well-dressed man in a prayer cap. He turns to me.

“Why are you looking for the Mart, please?”

“I'm interested in looking at your products.”

“For what reason?”

“To go out on the Trail.”

This statement fazes him not at all. “Very good. First we have to know you're not police. Please raise your arm.”

I take off my jacket and do so. He runs a handheld scanner over my armpit, where my aadhaar is embedded, the little almond under the skin. The scanner beeps green.

“Thank you, madam. And thank you, Aunty. Two tiffin for lunch, please.”

The woman wags her head. To me she says, “Tell Rana to come home.” Then she disappears back into the people soup.

“My name is Misbah,” the man says. “Please follow me.”

He leads me down a dark hallway, at the end of which is a door that has three locks, one mechanical and two digital. He unlocks all three and then leads me up a flight of stairs. We climb five stories. On the sixth landing he knocks on a door in a syncopated rhythm. After a minute, it opens. A man who looks just like Misbah, except older, taller, and with a cleft in his chin, lets us in. We're in a low-ceilinged room packed with six aisles of shelving under fluorescent light. I see glimpses of merchandise: folded cloth, shiny backpacks. I can see the older one's been watching soap operas in the corner. The holograms are on pause.

“Welcome to the Mart,” says the older man as Misbah disappears behind a curtain. “I am Mehrdad, and that is my brother, and we are the two proprietors of this unique store. We have everything you may need for safe times and a high adventure on the Trail.”

“Have either of you ever been on the Trail?”

“No.”

I stare at him for a moment. Then Misbah reappears, bearing a tray of tea glasses. I thank him and take one. It's cold, strong, and sweet, made with fresh spearmint.

“Do you know anyone who's gone?”

“Oh yes. Several who've passed through here.”

“Define ‘several.' ”

Mehrdad glances at Misbah. “You're the fourth.”

“I see. Anyone who's come back?”

“No, no one has come back, not yet,” says Misbah.

“But give it time! We've only been open a few months,” says Mehrdad. “As the illegal sport grows in popularity, business will boom, and then it'll become legal.”

“So I'm doing it at the right time.”

“Before there are backpackers and weekend strollers all across the length of the Arabian Sea, yes.”

I can't decide whether they're visionary or delusional. “I'm guessing all the things I need will cost more than two thousand rupees.”

Both men laugh loudly.

“Yes,” says Mehrdad.

“I have money,” I say. “I just don't want to be tracked, and two thousand is all I have in cash.”

“We're familiar with that situation,” says Mehrdad. “Our customers wish to maintain a low profile. But all of our purchases are routed through our father's menswear emporium, so you don't have to worry.”

“But I don't even want anyone to know I'm in Mumbai.”

Mehrdad sucks his breath in through his teeth. “That, we cannot help with, madam.”

That makes it simple. If I buy supplies here, I signal to the cloud where I am in Mumbai, and Anwar and Lucia and whoever else is involved will know.

So I'll have to leave tonight.

“Let's do it,” I say.

Mehrdad and Misbah nod to each other.

They lead me to the shelf at the back of the room and we work our way forward. They explain each item to me as they pull it out. I make a mental sketch of each.

Two bottle-sized desalinators that, as a bonus, make sea salt in the top chamber.

A compass.

A sea anchor.

Two nylon ropes with hooks.

All-purpose soap concentrate.

One hundred compressed gas capsules.

A toothbrush, toothpaste powder, and a tongue scraper.

A waterproof, watertight backpack. Color: white. Misbah takes my measurements and then takes it away to make custom adjustments to fit the shape of my back.

Two high-sensitivity sunbits that can be hung from a strap on my bag and charge while I walk.

A state-of-the-art solar kiln that can convert any organic matter. That means kelp, algae, anything that can be broken down into simple sugars. It would take fish, too, but that would use more energy, and why not just eat the fish.

A filet knife and a fishing kit.

For dead zones and other contingencies, a box of protein cubes and a box of broth cubes.

A solar plate that's curved so that it can be used as a bowl, and a miniature irradiator brush to paint my catch before cooking.

A full medical kit, including broad-spectrum nanobiotics for diarrhea, bacterial infection, viral infection, heatstroke, and motion sickness.

A natural sponge for Menses Aunty. That's what Mohini called it.

A few small items to gift or barter: an extra compass, an extra bottle of soap concentrate, an extra tube of toothpaste, and three extra tongue scrapers, which are worth their weight in enriched uranium to a Malayalee without one.

A camo pod made of resealable sticky polymer, also waterproof up to ten meters in case I need to go beneath the surface for a storm. I feel reassured. They've thought of everything. Mehrdad demonstrates it for me: he opens it with his thumbnail and then seals it just by pinching the material together. He urges me to try. It reseals without a seam, like the membrane of an egg.