by Balli Kaur
Mr Rahman handed Amrit back the Science workbook. ‘Buy a new one, and don’t bother handing in your work to me until you’re serious about it again,’ he told her curtly. ‘I’ll see you in class this afternoon.’ He marched off. Amrit flipped through the pages. They were soaked with blue pen ink. Words overlapped each other, just as they had in her mind. They didn’t make much sense but she couldn’t recall what she had been thinking as she filled the entire book. She only remembered the emptiness of the night, and how, when she ran out of pages, she wanted to write across the walls, scrawl across the sidewalks and trees, and cover the blackboard sky.
After school that day, Amrit went straight to the coffee shop and told the boys about Mr Rahman. ‘He said, those boys are bad company. Concentrate on your studies. What a bastard.’
The boys laughed. Seema did as well. She looked at Amrit admiringly as Amrit went on about how pointless everything in school was. ‘It’s all so bloody boring, man. Who cares?’
As she talked, Jaya placed his hand on her knee. He was confident about it, raising it a few inches and then exploring under her skirt as she chatted. The other boys were amused. Even Seema saw what was going on. She rolled her eyes at the boys and got up to buy more cigarettes. When she was out of earshot, one of the boys leaned over and asked, ‘Does Amrit want to go behind?’ Behind was the empty alley in the back of the coffee shop. She smiled and got up. ‘Come,’ she said simply. All five of them followed.
It was quicker than she imagined it would be. Against damp and rough concrete, Amrit leaned and did everything the boys wanted her to do. ‘Relax,’ each one whispered when it was his turn. The others watched and waited. One left and returned with a bottle of whiskey. ‘Give her this,’ he said. ‘She’ll like the taste.’ She noticed vaguely that they spoke as if she wasn’t there at all. She concentrated on the fire in her throat as the third boy pushed himself into her. The taste of sweat, the smell of whiskey, the searing pain of being split in half – she imagined all of it collecting in her throat so that she could scream it out later. She remembered the empty pond and how tangy and rich the earth had smelled; she imagined how the dirt would sink beneath her knees, how small sticks and rocks would lodge themselves in her hair. She pictured the workers standing on the edges and filling in the water while she was still at the very bottom.
This was where Amrit’s mind began to go blank. She clearly remembered returning home and stuffing some clothes into her schoolbag. Then she had returned to the coffee shop to meet Jaya and that’s where her memories became shards: pieces of conversation; a flood of light; his mother entering the room at dawn and staring at her, slack-jawed, before walking out to make tea. She remembered the repetitive croons of birds and wondering if they ever tired of singing the same song. She remembered the pounding in her head and the strange appearance of her flattened clothes on the floor, as if she had melted and dissolved into the floorboards, leaving a shell of thin fabric. She remembered growing frustrated with Jaya when he refused to wake up, and him picking her up and pushing her down on the bed again after she tried to scare him by threatening to call the police. ‘My father is a policeman. I’ll tell him you kidnapped me,’ she said desperately.
‘Shut up, shut up,’ he said roughly, before rising and leaving the room. He returned with water and a kind smile. ‘How do you feel, Amrit?’ he asked, tracing her lips with his fingers. She waited for him to tell her he still loved her – wasn’t that the point of all of this? He said nothing, and she ran out of his house.
Afterwards, she wandered. She walked through Singapore, hiding her face in her hands when she saw other Punjabis. She slipped into underground pedestrian tunnels and emerged on the other side of the street. She lingered at a night market, squatting with the vendors and admiring their goods. There were rows of shallow wooden trays filled with plugs, toy telephones, assorted batteries, nail clippers, rubber balls and wooden clothes pegs. She wandered away from the stalls when the vendors grew suspicious of her. The sweet, smoky smell of roasted chestnuts clung to her hair as she walked through darkened neighbourhoods. The only lights visible were in the small, square windows. She could not stop walking, even when she was hungry; she had to keep going. She breathed in the island air, fresh and thick with dampness. Had it rained just moments ago? Was it raining now? She didn’t know. She stopped when one vendor called out to her. ‘Pretty girl. You can wear pretty jewellery,’ he said. She crouched at the velvet mat on which hundreds of little gemstones shimmered in the waning daylight. He pointed to each stone and explained its particular promise: ‘This one will make you strong. This one will help you in business.’ When she opened her mouth to haggle, muddled numbers and made-up currencies came out. They tumbled into the space between them, bewildering the vendor, who quickly began to search for other customers.
She walked into a crowd standing near a makeshift stage on an open field. A travelling Chinese opera troupe was performing. The actors’ faces were painted white, their features ghastly and exaggerated – long chins, severe cheekbones, eyebrows drawn to sharp peaks. Their long robes brushed the stage as they made their sweeping gestures and wailed along with the plucking music. She wanted to join them. She opened her mouth and sang, but her song matched theirs so perfectly, nobody heard.
Amrit did not think about going home. Home was miles and miles away now, after what she had done. I am different now. They would see it on her face; they would smell it on her. She bought food and vomited later, when she remembered how she had afforded it. She lay in the hollow cavity of a drain when it became dark, amazed that time was passing so quickly. Her thoughts began to speed up again, invading her body and making it difficult to be coherent. The occasional passersby asked her what she was doing sitting in a drain and where she was from but her responses left them confused and they edged away nervously.
‘Don’t you know how worried your family is?’ the policeman who eventually found her had scolded as he roughly led her into his car. She did not want to think about her family.
She wanted to make her family disappear now, too. They were staring, waiting for an answer that she could not provide. Father moved towards her, then shook his head and retreated to his bedroom. In a small voice, Amrit heard herself ask for a glass of water. Nobody moved, then Gurdev went into the kitchen and brought one out for her. She placed the tip of the glass on her parched lips, letting the water soothe them. She decided that they could keep on waiting. She could sip the water slowly while the seconds and minutes and hours shed away.
Part 2:
1977
Father
The notice of his father’s condition came by telephone one evening. Harbeer heard the strained voice of Rabinder, a distant cousin in Punjab, mumbling the details of Papa’s weakening heart. He knew that any matter necessitating a long-distance phone call was grave. Rabinder made every effort to use euphemisms in describing Papa’s illness and the doctor’s diagnosis but Harbeer knew that his father would die soon.
He thanked Rabinder and returned to his bedroom to retrieve two pillows and a sheet. The next telephone call from India might come at an odd hour and he couldn’t miss it so he set the rattan sofa up as a bed. Each night as he tried to fall asleep, he felt the immovable weight of his father’s impending death, as if time was also running out for him. He ached to speak to Papa but how was that possible? Even if Papa was conscious, it would be disrespectful to a dying man to hold a phone to his ear and compel him to speak. Harbeer had always known such a time would come. It was the migrant’s sacrifice – a distance so vast it seemed immeasurable. For comfort, he sought the image that had always soothed him – his father’s lush farmland in Punjab. Instantly, his square eighteenth-storey flat was transformed, with wild stalks of green grass, and cattle roaming between clouds of golden dust.
One night as he tried to sleep, Dalveer came in for a secret visit. When he, Amrit and Narain had first moved into this flat two years ago, he thought it would be the end of Dalveer’s appearances.
She would not favour the tall concrete building, and discrete entrances would be impossible without a back door. These government housing blocks were built to prevent secrets. At dusk, the fluorescent lamps in the hallways blinked on and stairwells and corridors were exposed. Yet Dalveer’s visits continued. She entered through the front door late at night, knowing that Harbeer did not lock it in case Amrit returned without her key.
When Dalveer sat down next to him, the stench of dirt and sweat that clung to her clothes drifted through the flat. She must have been searching for cures for Amrit again. This had become Dalveer’s mission since it had occurred to her that Amrit was possessed by a stubborn and tenacious spirit. He pretended to share her faith in the supernatural only because he had run out of explanations for Amrit’s behaviour. On those evenings, Dalveer had blended an oldfashioned potion – turmeric, fennel seeds, mashed red dates and holy water from the temple. Then she instructed Harbeer to visit Amrit while she was sleeping, stand over her and chant a prayer, sprinkling the liquid over her mattress. She had collected Amrit’s hair from the bathroom sink and wrapped it in a small package with seeds and sticks, which she handed to Harbeer. Together, they had said prayers before going outside during a rainstorm. He had twisted the package into the earth, feeling Amrit’s curse lifting as his fingers sank. Once, Dalveer was even bold enough to go to Amrit’s door while she slept, and listen to her unsteady breathing. Afterwards, she had mixed holy water and mint leaves into her morning tea and left Harbeer with detailed instructions. That day, Amrit did not wake till noon, and while Harbeer was in his room, writing his letters, she left the flat and did not come back for three days. After that day, Harbeer ordered Dalveer to stop with her cures, but, of course, she defied him and searched for them in secret.
Now, Harbeer waited for Dalveer to settle into the flat and then he told her that his father was dying. Her face softened with sympathy and she reached out to stroke his hand. At her touch, he began to weep. Within moments, he was wiping the tears away, embarrassed at his grief. Dalveer stayed at his side until he finished crying and then she let herself out of the flat as swiftly as she had entered. He remembered how, when they were first married, she would trace the rungs of his spine with her fingers as he fell asleep. He always thought this was something she had learned to do, some soothing massage her mother had passed down to her, until he turned to her one night and saw on her moonlit face an expression of pure wonder. He had realised only then that he was married to a child; he was just eighteen and she, fifteen.
The phone rang the following night when Harbeer was fast asleep.
‘He has passed,’ Rabinder told him. A respectful pause, and then, ‘You will receive the land papers in the mail. He left everything to you.’
Long distance phone calls, Harbeer had to remember, were still expensive in the village. Telephone connections from India were poor, so any news or information had to be crammed into one conversation. Had there been an upcoming wedding in the family, it would have been announced in the same breath as the death. Nevertheless, both announcements arriving at once gave Harbeer the sensation of his limbs being pulled in opposite directions – the grief of his father’s passing and the joy of his new wealth. He cleared the living room methodically, picking up the pillows and folding the sheets before he changed his mind and decided to strip them all and put them in the wash. A plump moon dangled low in the window like a pendant. Harbeer settled at his desk with a pad and a pen. He wrote the estimated amount of the land’s worth at the top of the page and then listed his children’s names in a column on the left. Gurdev, Narain, Amrit, and then he wrote Karam’s name. Wasn’t it only fair that Karam received some of the money as well? He would receive the same amount as Gurdev, Harbeer decided.
He stared at Narain’s name. The boy had yet to pay him back for the years of tuition spent on that university education in Iowa – and for what? He had graduated three years ago and he had a job as a civil engineer with a private company, but Harbeer suspected his habits had not changed. Lately, he had been coming home late in the evenings, stinking of sweat, with no apologies or explanations as to his whereabouts. Sometimes Harbeer wanted to ask Narain whether his stay in America had done him any good – had the independence of living in a new country turned him into a man? But somehow Harbeer knew Narain’s answer and he couldn’t bear to hear it. Harbeer expected a bigger payback than just the tuition money: Narain’s job was to protect the family’s reputation by making sure that Amrit stayed on the right path. Six years had passed now since Amrit’s first disappearance and Narain had failed in these responsibilities as well. Amrit drank whiskey with strange, classless men. She had no qualifications. She was not able to hold down a job.
Harbeer decided he would give Narain a token amount and no more. He looked over the figures again and, dissatisfied, crossed them out and started over, applying a more benevolent logic this time. Perhaps Narain should get a higher amount as an incentive? Maybe Gurdev deserved all the money because he had two small children? Harbeer grumbled softly to himself and pictured his father’s land scarred and chopped into uneven pieces. He divided the sum again, this time in equal parts for all of his children. The numbers still didn’t look satisfactory. Why should Gurdev get as much as Karam? Why should Amrit get any at all? He flung the pen across the room with a frustrated cry.
Outside, he heard Amrit’s bedroom door creak open and her footsteps shuffling across the tiles. She must have returned while he was asleep, just before the phone call. She stopped at his door. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked. Harbeer recalled an incident a couple of years ago when Amrit came home late, stinking of beer, and passed out on her bed. He had towered over her limp body and slipped off his belt in a rage, ready to teach her a lesson and set her straight. He raised his arm high above his head but when he brought it down, the belt buckle clanged against the bedpost, missing Amrit’s body and waking her with a start. She stared at him, frightened, only enraging him further. He tried to hit her again but the belt slipped from his grip and wiggled to the floor like a fish.
‘It’s nothing,’ he called back when he saw the doorknob turning. ‘No need to come in here.’ He stared down at the sheet, at the numbers. Next to Amrit’s name, there was a blank. What portion did the girl deserve? Any amount would look like a reward when all she brought him was grief. Things were being said about Amrit. At every turn, Harbeer heard jokes about his name and reputation. The early evening breeze carried the neighbours’ collective disapproval into his thoughts. The announcer on the neighbour’s radio seemed to broadcast Amrit’s latest crime and the unfit parenting that prompted her to it. The whole world was talking about Amrit.
‘Can I bring you something? A hot drink?’ Amrit asked from outside his door. Harbeer shut his eyes to banish her voice. Why did she show her concern in gestures like this but then did so much to shame him? He did not answer and eventually she wandered away, her shadow clearing in the gap beneath the door.
Harbeer could only think of one possibility for Amrit’s future. The idea had been brewing for some years now but each time he brought it up with Dalveer, she refused and begged him to let him try more remedies first. He knew why she was so opposed to an arranged marriage for Amrit – he saw the faint disgust in her eyes, recalling that tearing, piggish thing that men enjoyed and women tolerated. Years after they were married, Dalveer told him that her own mother had prepared her for marriage only by alluding to this act, which was a necessary routine to drive the silliness out of a girl and turn her into a wife. Marriage was a proven cure. For a particular type of girl, it showed her that there was no joy in the act, only a routine consideration of her husband’s needs. Harbeer considered the changes in his own temperament after he got married. ‘If you had stayed,’ he once told Dalveer, ‘I might have become an even better man.’
Dalveer was not here to oppose his decision now. He looked at the pad and sprang from his seat to pace the room, allowing his idea to gain momentum. Yes, yes, yes, he thought exci
tedly. He searched the floor for his pen and brought it to his lips for luck before letting it touch the pad. Next to Amrit’s name, he fiercely scribbled the names that came to mind.
Gurdev
At five o’clock, Gurdev completed his ritual of rearranging the items on his desk. On a piece of paper, he had written down the name of the bar Karam had wanted to meet in. The last time they caught up, Karam had just been shortlisted for a position with the Ministry of Health’s committee for the eradication of malaria. ‘They say that one of the defining elements of a developed country is an absence of infectious diseases like malaria. I’d be making history,’ Karam had boasted. Today, Karam wanted to introduce Gurdev to his new fiancée.
The bar in the city was crowded when Gurdev arrived. He pushed through the throngs of office workers holding glasses in their hands. Chatter rose and shot through the smoky air. A firm hand clapped him on the shoulder. Gurdev turned to see Karam grinning. They patted each other on the back, their greeting restricted by space. ‘Sona, this is my cousin, Gurdev.’ Karam said, gesturing to a fair-skinned woman with her hair pulled back, revealing a long, slender neck.
‘Very nice to finally meet you.’
‘Yes, you too,’ Sona said.