The Girl in the Road (8 page)

I blow it out before it can melt the plastic of the Nordi wrapper.

My puja is done. As fine and grotesque as any spectacle in Madurai, the home of my namesake, Meenakshi Devi. My armpit throbs like a supernova and I dress my shoulder. I'm out of the cloud, now, and not physically trackable. The blessing from my offering was received in its making.

Evening falls. Instead of families parading up and down Marine Drive, now it's young couples matching their steps and gazing sideways out to sea. Romance is in the air. My lover is the Trail.

To pass time, I unpack and repack three times to make sure I know where everything goes. I start reading the Mahabharata, which I've never read straight through, and I'm in the mood for grandiose undertakings. But I don't even get past the frame story. I tell myself I'll restart it once I'm on the Trail and I'll read something else for now. Something not millennia old, but still at a temporal distance, a few decades—Kuta Sesay,
Poems for Drowning Ndar,
Senegal, 2026. Some light early-century fatalism.

I wait until midnight, then crawl out of my square and up onto the seawall. A garland of golden streetlights, the Queen's Necklace, rings the bay. It's a lot of light but it can't be helped. There's traffic on Marine Drive, but dilute. Some people walk out to the end of the seawall, but not many. This is as deserted as it's going to get.

I can see the Trail head from here. It's a silver string bobbing on the surface of the water, visible, then invisible, then visible again. All I have to do is walk into the water and begin swimming toward it, and then no one will know where I am, no Semena Werk, no police, no barefoot girl. These are discrete and doable steps.

I drop back down into the jacks unevenly and bash my heel. It hurts but I tell myself it's good luck. I grab my backpack and tie it on, trusting it'll stay watertight. I pick through the tangle of jacks out to open water. My feet are wet, and now my knees are too. The water is warm.

The surf hits my thighs, then my waist.

There's cold water beneath the warm water.

When it gets up to my chest the saltwater stings my snakebites and I bite down to absorb that pain too. I lift my feet and give over to the ocean. My chest is in warm water and my legs are in cold water. I'm doing well. Once I pass the wave breaks, I start a breaststroke, head above water, keeping the Trail in sight. The first scale is about two hundred meters ahead now.

The waves get higher and choppier. I have to time my breaths to their amplitude so I don't suck in seawater. With every stroke my backpack, floating, bangs against the back of my head. I get my first mouthful of brine and cough it out. The Trail is about fifty meters to my left now. Between swells, I see stars.

The first scale fills up my field of vision. It moves like a drunken buoy with a lot more violence than the model at the museum did, where the underwater scales might have kissed each other, but here they clang so loud I can hear it underwater. It sounds like marine bells tolling. I can even feel it, it makes my pelvic bones vibrate. Of course it would be like this. An energy device wouldn't be worth making unless the available energy was extreme, profitable. And now here, up close, understanding the actual violence of the Trail's movements, I can't understand how anyone could ever walk on it. I can begin to understand why no one ever comes back.

But now I'm here and I have nowhere else to go. I have to have faith that it can be done.

I come to the end scale. My leg hits a thick mooring cable under the water, and there must be one on the other side, too. I get between them. Here come more discrete, doable steps. I grasp the side of the scale and my hands slip because it's very smooth. But on the top is the sandpaper, and if I get my hands up there, I can hold on. So I kick in place, right at the caboose of the Trail, and when the scale is tipped down toward me, propel myself out of the water and on top of it. I get my breasts onto it. And then the scale bucks so violently that my body is wrenched in two and I lose my grip and I'm thrown back into the water. Mere fudi kha ley, motherfucking piece of fuck.

My lower back is in shock from the wrench. But I override the pain. Again I tread water and wait for the scale to pitch down toward me, and I throw myself at it, this time getting my whole torso on top of it so at least the edge lines my body's own hinge. To get purchase I reach for the far edge, and then scream when the tip of my middle finger is crushed between the scales. Stupid. Chutiya. I have to act like it didn't happen. Don't reach fingers too far down into the hinge, then. My body is learning. The next time the scale pitches down, I kick hard and push into my hands, and I get my legs on top of the scale too. Then immediately I pitch forward into the trough between this scale and the next. I brace myself with my hands to keep from falling and my pinched finger shrieks a high note.

Walking upright is unthinkable. I have a moment of deep speciatic memory, regressing to a crawl. I balance in beetle pose and then work my way up to my hands and knees. I hate this horrible rocking. I'm incredulous. But I watch for a chance to move forward, and then I do, making sure to avoid the snapping hinge. I've forgotten about the pain in my finger, the pain in my heel, the pain in my back, the pain in my solar plexus. All my concentration is trained on the next movement. The waves make for a fourth dimension of balance. It's like trying to ride a unicycle on top of an airplane, or a pogo stick on top of a train, which strikes me as an especially doomed venture, and I actually laugh aloud before clapping my hand over my mouth. I'm going mad. Is this how adventures begin? With the hero cackling? I remember that after lightning struck his rocket, Pete Conrad laughed all the way into orbit.

I try to crawl toward the third scale but fall into it and bang my chin against the surface. I wipe my chin. Blood. So there's Wound Number Five. And there's no hope of keeping it dry, or any part of my body, as half of me is already soaked. I look ahead and keep my focus light, my joints loose, my muscles free. I tell myself I'll cover a hundred scales and then take a rest.

I make it to six before I stop. All my muscles are sparkling with acid.

I rest and then crawl forward again. I'm making better progress.

But then I go too fast. This time the bucking scale hits me so hard in the forehead I lurch backward and almost fall into the ocean. I start crying just from the pain of it. I'm overwhelmed. I haven't slept. I haven't eaten. I've been in a manic episode for three days. I know this, and now it's brought me here, the epitome of madness. No one is taking care of me.

“Saha,” says a voice ahead.

A swell passes and there is the barefoot girl standing on the Trail just a few scales ahead of me. The golden light of Marine Drive outlines her body. Her headscarf is blown back and her smile is white in the dark. She is glad. She holds one hand to her heart and extends the other toward me. From behind her a black fan unfolds, a great circle of wings.

I scream at her to go away so hard I feel my lip split.

When the next swell passes, she is gone.

I woke up before dawn because I could feel we'd stopped moving. I lay still and listened to the sounds of men loading and unloading oil drums. Finally Francis came back with a baguette to share, and the spicy green sauce, again, to dip it in.

I'm addicted to this stuff, he said.

Where are we? I asked.

Rosso, he said. Or Al-Quwarib. It's a border town.

Why are we stopped?

We have to wait for the ferry. They only open at nine.

What's a ferry?

Francis leaned back against a fuel drum and groaned, his mouth full of bread. Don't make me leave you here, he said.

(And then he winked, Yemaya, so I knew it was okay.)

I asked another question: Where did the oil come from?

A Russian tanker in Casablanca, he said, tracing a route in the air with his finger. Then Marrakech, my favorite place! I danced all night! Oh, such music, and such beautiful women—Mariama, you've never seen such women. I have three women there. I can't pick just one.

Then Francis sighed like the life leaked out of him.

And then nothing but wasteland, until we got to Nouakchott.

And then you found me! I said.

He smiled at me. So we did, he said. But you're too young to be my girlfriend.

The truck rumbled to life, and the whole flatbed vibrated. I put down my hands to steady myself.

I can be your girlfriend, I said.

No, you can't! he said. You're too poky. You can't even walk straight when the truck is moving. You're all humbly-jumbly like you're at sea but don't have sea legs.

No, I'm not!

Prove it.

The truck got under way. I took position at one end of the flatbed and Francis arranged himself like a royal audience at the other. I took a few steps toward him, but then, as the truck hit a pothole and tilted to one side, I fell to my knees.

You're hopeless, he said. No one will ever marry you.

But Yemaya, I got better. I kept practicing. I learned to sense when those changes were coming and how to adapt whenever they did. I made Francis watch me over and over—long after he'd lost interest! But he was very patient. How did I find these men, Yemaya? Now that I know more of the world, and how terrible it is, and how terrible people can be, especially to little girls, I am amazed that I had the good luck to find them. I was handed from angel to angel! I think you were with me, even then, guiding my steps.

Each truck in our convoy boarded the ferry and crossed a river of pale brown milk. It took hours. And then once we were all over on the other side, it was early afternoon, and we stopped
again
. Francis asked the driver why we were stopping, and the driver answered in a cheery tone. Francis turned to me and complained, We'll never make Addis in three months. Every year it takes four to six months, because in every place, we have friends and we need to drink tea with them.

Why? I said.

Because if we don't, he said, they will kill us.

He saw the look on my face and fell over laughing.

Yemaya, I didn't even know this, but we were already in Senegal, a country other than the one I'd been born in. I barely even had a conception of other countries, much less of ever going to one! Whenever my mother had spoken of “the world,” I had pictured Doctor Moctar Brahim's house, the houses around us, the mosques at the center of the city, the market to the south, and the stars hanging low, which is where everything we saw and heard on the computer and television and radio and phones came from. But that was all. Now I was getting used to not only being free, but the world being a very big place.

After finally leaving Rosso, we arrived in a new city named Ndar for a teatime that turned into a dinnertime that turned into a sleepover. Francis disappeared into the town for the night, so Muhammed took me. At first I was afraid he was going to take me to a refugee camp and leave me there. But he was quiet. He didn't say anything about the previous night. He seemed resigned to my presence.

Yemaya, even just walking the streets of Ndar, I could tell I was in a different world from where I'd grown up. The air was richer and heavier. There were both men and women walking freely in the streets, the women beautiful and beaming, each one a queen with a bright headwrap. Music floated from windows and open doors—not austere chants to Allah, but rounded drums and lush guitars and strange rhythms with many layers, women and men singing together. And there in Ndar, I could smell the sea again. The word
saha
came to me again and I snatched it out of the air and cradled it in my heart.

Muhammed took me to a house with pink and green walls. There were iron bars on the walls, twisted into beautiful shapes. He told me to sit in the corner. A servant came to give me a baguette and a cup of milk. I couldn't believe how much food I was receiving. I didn't even have to ask for it. Yemaya, for a moment I considered hiding some, to send it back, somehow, to my mother. But I didn't know how. So I ate it all myself and felt ashamed.

Muhammed and his friends spoke in low voices. They talked about the rising sea threatening Ndar and Kuta Sesay, the city's poet activist. It was too late to take protective measures, they said, unless UNESCO decided to save it. I thought “Unesco” was their god or at least a very rich man. I wanted to know why anyone who had the power to decide would let such a beautiful city drown. I was young, Yemaya, and had no idea that this city was one of hundreds of beautiful cities all over the world, each with an eye on the rising sea.

One of the men asked Muhammed about me, then turned around on his bench and glanced back at me and saw that I was staring right back at him, which scattered his gaze. He looked elsewhere and pretended he wasn't looking at me at all. But then he said, with pity, That's a black one for sure.

I'm not black, I said.

The man said to Muhammed, She talks too much.

They all laughed.

I think, said Muhammed, Nouakchott will get worse before it gets better. She'll have a much better life in Ethiopia.

Oh, yes, the very trees grow greener in Ethiopia, joked one of the men.

But Muhammed sat up straighter. I'm telling you, he said, Addis is growing.

Safe from the seas, that's for sure.

Yes, it's the highest capital in the world, said Muhammed, not catching the sarcasm in the other man's voice. He continued, Do you know our president was educated in Mumbai? She studied medicine and she's fluent in Hindi. Everyone is in love with her.

The other men teased him, but he said, Yes, I carry a picture of her around in my wallet, and I'm not ashamed! Look. She's a queenly woman.

I'm not black, I said again.

Muhammed looked at me while the others bent over the picture of the Ethiopian president. But you are Haratine, said Muhammed. And that can make life difficult in Mauritania.

I deduced that Mauritania is where I'd come from.

Are we going to Ethiopia tomorrow? I said.

We are, but we won't get there tomorrow. It'll be a long journey. Four months, at least.

I nodded, wanting to appear grown-up, though this was an incomprehensible amount of time to me.

He said, You'll be bigger and taller by then. I know, because I have two girls. Fatima and Rahel. You're going to sprout up like a shoot. We just have to keep feeding you.

I smiled, shy.

Muhammed called his friends' attention to it. Look how she smiles, he said. She understands far more than she lets on. She knows far more than a little girl should.

My smile faded right in front of their eyes.

Through the next day we were always driving, stopping, loading, unloading. I tried to stay out of the men's way. Francis made a pallet for me in the corner, where the pile of rags used to be, but I tried not to lie down too long because then the snakebite in my chest would start burning
kreen, kreen, kreen.
I tried to slap it with the flat of my palm, even punch it, to get it to stop, but it never did. So instead I tried to calm it down by saying the word the sea gave me:
saha, saha, saha.

The air began to change. It got even thicker, and there was more wetness in it, and sometimes I had trouble breathing. Along the road I kept seeing trees. I'd seen trees before, Yemaya, but never so many! In some places there were more trees than there was open space. And then the trees started to crowd up right along the road, leaning in to get a look at us, so that we had to plow through them and branches would rip off and fall right onto the truck bed.

I made friends with the driver, Samson. He let me sit up front in the cab when Muhammed or Francis didn't need to. He had fringed mats on his dashboard, each of them woven with pictures of a woman in blue.

Who is that? I asked him, pointing.

Maryam, Mother of God, he said. (He didn't speak my language very well.) You—Maryam?

Mariama.

It's the same. But you must honor her. Do you know how?

No.

You'll see. In Ethiopia. In the churches, in the street, in the air. She'll show you how to praise her. The woman is in every place.

The woman is in every place,
I repeated to myself. I looked out the window and tried to see every woman's face as my own.

The trees were one thing. But Yemaya, I was not prepared for the big city. I watched from the side of the truck as the buildings thickened around us, and then the people, so much darker, wearing so many varieties of clothing, down every alleyway, churning rivers of people. It seemed to me that they were all going to a party. Or that the city itself was one giant party. It was too much for me!

I crawled back under my old green tarp to limit my field of vision. When Francis walked by, I grabbed at his heel.

What's all this? I said. I was frantic.

We're in Dakar! he said.

Dakar?

The capital of Senegal, he said. Come out here, Mariama—look!

I suffered myself to be lifted by his strong skinny arms. We'd slowed to a crawl in the city traffic. Passing on our right was an army of rainbow women, marching down the street carrying baskets on their heads, full of solar cells, groundnuts, bananas, mobiles, chilies, kola nuts, eggs, and other things I didn't even have names for, their bodies and heads swathed in colors of sunrises and sunsets. Their bottoms alternated, haunch by haunch, the fabric barely containing their flesh.