The Beach at Galle Road

by Joanna Luloff

  The nurses helped Sam write a letter to Janaki and Mohan. He told them not to worry, that the doctors were taking good care of his mother, that he was making sure he and his father were getting enough to eat. As he narrated, Sam let his imagination drift toward Janaki’s kitchen. He thought about Rohini’s clumsy hands turning his scissors over paper fruits and Mohan’s boisterous friends dropping off their weekly trophy. He wanted to be home with them. He could get on the next intercity bus and just go. He could leave a note for his father with directions for how to get back to Colombo once his mother was well again. There is something wrong with me, Sam thought to himself as he glanced at his mother’s sleeping face.

  INSTEAD OF ABANDONING them there, he called Nilanthi. He hadn’t planned to do it, but he needed to talk to someone; he needed some help. She didn’t sound surprised to hear from him. After he said her name into the phone, she had just simply answered, “Yes, it’s me,” as if no time had passed since she had left him her number. “Your parents are here?”

  “We’re in Kandy.” Sam’s voice was barely a whisper. “My mother is sick. We’re at the hospital.”

  “Let me speak to one of her nurses.”

  Over the phone, Nilanthi’s voice had lost all its shyness. Sam found one of the nurses, and then he watched from a distance as the phone was handed from the nurse to one of the doctors and then back to the nurse while the doctor made another call. When the phone was finally handed back to Sam, Nilanthi said, “The doctors think your mother is well enough to be moved. There is a private clinic near our school and they are going to arrange for your mother to be transferred there. You and your father should gather your things.”

  Sam wrote down the address of the clinic and hung up the phone. As he went to the waiting room to find his father, he couldn’t be sure if he had even thanked Nilanthi. He remembered, though, that she had said she would come over and check on them after they arrived.

  After four days in the hospital, Sam’s father looked haggard. Fear and anxiety had carved circles under his eyes. Sam had been trying to distract him, insisting that they take breaks in the waiting room, playing hand after hand of euchre. The cards were old and soft from humidity, and stuck together when Sam shuffled them. That morning a small crowd had gathered around them in the “visitors’ lounge”—a tiny room of four wooden benches. At first, Sam’s father seemed irritated by the spectators, but he grew used to them eventually, even smiled at one of the strangers every once in a while.

  “Looks like we’re celebrities,” he said. “Not too surprising that a country that covets cricket would be mesmerized by a game of cards.”

  Sam laughed but couldn’t help feeling offended. From the moment his father had gotten off the plane, his observations had expressed only criticism. I can’t breathe in this heat. This food doesn’t seem clean. Never knew how much you could miss a sidewalk. Eventually the crowd had dispersed, leaving them alone. Though Sam’s back was starting to hurt, he continued to shuffle, deal, sweep up the cards, and shuffle again.

  When Sam returned to the waiting room, his father was alone, staring at the floor through his entwined hands. As Sam sat beside him, he looked up and forced a smile. “What’s the word?”

  “We’re moving her to a clinic in Colombo. The ambulance van will be ready to go in a few hours.”

  Sam’s father jumped to his feet. “Who decided this? What do you mean, we’re moving her? You decided this without me?”

  “Dad, please.” Sam put his hand on his father’s shoulder, but his father pushed him away. “My friend and I talked to the doctors. They said she was well enough to be moved—”

  His father cut him off. “What the hell do they know? She’s not moving; she’s not going anywhere. Who decided—”

  Sam felt all the tension, all the fear and anger of the past several days, draw up inside him. He watched his father pacing the small room, kicking at the benches, and all he could think was that this was his parents’ fault. They had decided to come here. They should have known it was a bad idea. They were the ones who were selfish. “I decided!” he yelled. “I decided. We are going down to Colombo to a clinic where Mom will get good care. She’ll rest and get better and then you’ll both get back on a plane and go the hell back home!”

  Sam walked out of the waiting room and out the front door of the hospital. He couldn’t catch his breath. He kept walking until he found a trishaw to take him to their hotel, where he packed their bags and signed his father’s name on the credit card bill. At four o’clock, they were in a hospital van heading south. His mother was strapped into a gurney behind Sam and his father, who sat silent and motionless beside him.

  SAM’S MOTHER REMAINED at the private clinic for a week before she insisted on being released. Nilanthi called a couple of times each day, but she seemed to be waiting for Sam to actually invite her to visit before she would come. Each time he thought he would ask her to stop by, he just couldn’t muster the words. He didn’t want her to see them like this, unraveling and tensely polite.

  His parents had missed their return flight, and his mother had talked his father into booking them on a departure scheduled for a week later. “I’ve come all this way, I at least want to stick my toe into the Indian Ocean,” she said. If she sensed any tension between Sam and his father, she did her best to ignore it. Sam could tell she felt guilty, and he wished he could just tell her that none of this was her fault; it wasn’t anybody’s fault.

  Once they checked into a hotel overlooking the ocean, Sam’s mother pulled him aside. “It was stupid of me thinking I could handle the trip, but I needed to see you. I needed to know you’re all right.”

  “I’m all right, Mom.” Sam wondered if his resentment showed on his face. He forced himself to offer her some sort of kindness. “Do you want to head to the beach?”

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Sam guided his mother to the water. “Go ahead, stick your toe in.” He was holding the underside of his mother’s arm. They had left his father in the hotel.

  “It’s like a bathtub. I had no idea it would be so warm.”

  While he watched his mother slipping her feet under the wet sand, Sam coupled her presence with her upcoming absence. He knew that the moment he put his parents on their plane, he would feel relief. He would return to school. Rohini would sit in his room and help him with his lesson plans. He would see Nilanthi on the weekends. He imagined his nervousness receding. He imagined sleeping through an entire night. As the sea slapped his feet, he imagined a lot of things he doubted would actually happen. Even in his imagination, he felt that something had been ruined.

  AS HE HELPS his mother farther into the water, he knows what’s coming. But he will be stubborn; he will stay. The next day his father will ask him to think about what he is doing. Hasn’t it been long enough? he’ll ask. Every time your mother reads another article about the bombings, she worries. Why don’t you come home, Sam? But Sam won’t give his father an answer; he won’t make any promises.

  And next week, instead of taking them to the airport himself, he will put them in a taxi and wave good-bye from the hotel entrance. His father won’t look at him, and his mother will press her palm against the window and wink. He will convince himself that she is telling him that it is all right. He can stay. He can stay as long as he likes.

  LET THEM ASK

  Achala watched Chamila closely from the first moment he entered their O-level cram class. She already knew she would outscore all the other prefects from the girls’ school, but they had all heard rumors that Chamila’s English scores were the best of Christ Church Boys’ College, their brother school across the river. Achala felt the gaze of the other girls studying her as Chamila joined the class. It took all her concentration to keep a fixed gaze on her notebook, on the neat script of the English letters making up her name. The A came up to a determined point that she liked. In English, her name announced itself on the page with strength, like a ladder climbing skyward. In Sinhala, her name began in the shape
of endless loops, constantly circling themselves, leading nowhere.

  After Chamila’s first class, the other prefect girls gathered around Achala, asking her impressions of the new arrival. Their voices were friendly enough—they had learned the art of maintaining an innocent pitch—but she heard the layers of taunting beneath their lilting inflections. Achala felt hopelessly inept at these games of disguised jealousies and multilayered loyalties. She was a smart girl with large ambitions, and her good grades and social unease set her up as a target when she was away from home or the safety of the classroom.

  It certainly didn’t help that her mother insisted on keeping Achala’s hair cropped short rather than letting it grow so she could wear it in thick plaits like the other girls in grade nine. Achala suspected that her mother was using her as a replacement for Lakshmi, her aunt who had disappeared over a year ago. Lakshmi had returned from Saudi with her hair jaggedly short, styled in angles around her delicate forehead. But it was there that their physical echoes ended. Achala was never allowed to go near Lakshmi’s pointy-heeled shoes or vibrant scarves. She knew from her mother’s disapproving glances that her aunt’s possessions were associated with shame as well as with rarely spoken-of loss. Despite this, her mother seemed unable to throw them away, and at times Achala would approach these abandoned ornaments and try to smell ghostly traces of her aunt.

  “Mr. Illepumera complimented Chamila twice on the pronunciation of his w’s,” Chitra began.

  “And during the lesson on weather and seasons, Teacher praised him again for his explanation of cold and snow,” Devika offered into Achala’s other ear. The two girls were pressed into Achala on either side, jostling her back and forth with every new comment about Chamila.

  Despite this, Achala managed a few nods of praise. “Yes,” Achala agreed, trying to match Chitra and Devika’s singsong tone. “He speaks very well and confidently. He is a very good student, especially considering how hard these years must have been for him.” Chitra and Devika stopped their jostling and stared at her. Achala never intended her words to silence the girls, but she had a habit of saying inappropriate things without knowing what exactly had been so insulting or improper about them. Her mother often scolded her for these graceless moments, warning her not to speak of things too private or shameful. “You need to be extra careful,” her mother often warned. “Girls who are trying to win scholarships shouldn’t risk offending the wrong ear.”

  After many years, Achala was still trying to keep a mental account of the inappropriate territory. So far, she knew not to speak of her family’s financial worry since her father had lost his job at the tea estate. She wasn’t supposed to talk about boys, politics, the war, or her aunt Lakshmi’s sudden return to, and almost as sudden vanishing from, the village. She also knew she wasn’t meant to brag, or show vanity or pride. But despite her careful efforts, Achala’s world had consistently shrunk. Girls who had been her friends in lower school blocked her entry into their lunch circles, and Achala often found herself walking home alone. Her best friend was the American boarder who had moved into their home less than a year ago. At first, Achala had resisted Lucy. She missed Sam, who had learned Sinhala so quickly and spent hours keeping her mother company in the kitchen. Sam was the one who got her mother smiling again after Auntie left. But Achala had slowly warmed to Lucy. With Lucy, she allowed herself to giggle. She relaxed and sank into the easiness of being an expert without eliciting jealous or judging eyes. Lucy was at least as lonely as Achala, and Achala suspected that this balance brought comfort to both of them.

  Chitra and Devika quickened their pace, leaving Achala to finish her walk home alone. Perhaps her comments about Chamila had come too close to a reference to the war. The details hadn’t been uncovered, even by the nosiest neighbors or the sneakiest classmates, but Chamila’s arrival in Baddegama came with rumors of his parents’ death during the insurgency in Colombo. What the village did know was that Chamila’s grandparents had adopted him as their own, referring to him as their son rather than their grandson when they first brought him to temple and to his first Vesak Poya Day parade in town. And Chamila had seemed to blend seamlessly into this role, too, as the villagers heard him refer to his grandmother and grandfather as Amma and Tata. Perhaps then it had been a mistake to have brought up his secret unhappiness or the losses associated with the war. Achala could already hear her blunder being whispered among her classmates, giving them yet another reason to snub her. At least Chamila would be safe from the gossip, which had little chance of crossing the gates of the boys’ school.

  OVER THE NEXT weeks, Achala allowed herself an occasional glance in Chamila’s direction. He was a tall, lanky boy, fourteen just like Achala, and his ankles jutted out of his perpetually too-short pants. He walked with his hands tucked into his pockets, his hips pushing forward, a swagger that suggested a kind of studied toughness Achala found comical, and she often wondered what he was hiding underneath all his theatrical movements. Achala also noticed that his schoolbag was a mess—disordered papers and broken pencils worn down to the nub—though he did take good care of his cricket bat, which never seemed to leave his side. In fact, Chamila had none of the characteristics of a serious student, chewing his fingernails and offering a snide remark to his neighbor whenever Mr. Illepumera praised his work. Achala began to realize that Chamila was just as concerned about fitting in as she was, but while Achala did everything she could to avoid notice, Chamila seemed to court it, strutting like a famous cricket bowler or a Bollywood star.

  Soon Achala found herself thinking mean-spirited things about Chamila. “He’s got a lot of pride for an orphan,” she muttered to herself after Mr. Illepumera gave Chamila’s essay on the planets a first-place award, which he had to share with Achala, whose essay described the first female Sri Lankan doctor, Dr. Shreeni Gunawardene. When Mr. Illepumera called them both up to the front to receive their prizes—a pencil box with two new pens—he turned them to face their classmates, and teased, “May I present to you the future astronaut Mr. Chamila Prasena and the future brain surgeon Miss Achala Gunesekera!” Achala knew that Mr. Illepumera didn’t mean any harm, but she felt the hostility radiating from the forced smiles of the other prefects and wondered if Chamila, too, felt a similar resentment coming from the boys’ side.

  But if Chamila worried about any of this, he didn’t show it. As he returned to his seat, he whispered something to his best friend, Leel, which made them both snicker and flick bits of paper toward Achala’s seat. Achala felt the growing force of the girls’ jealousy gather around her, and before she could stop herself, she blurted out,“Grow up!” sending another wave of snickering throughout the classroom.

  “Miss Brainiac can’t seem to take a joke,” Leel said as he sent another paper ball in Achala’s direction, while Mr. Illepumera began writing the homework assignment on the board.

  Achala felt a slow burning start at her temples and descend down her back. She felt the boys’ eyes on the nape of her neck, the exposed arc of her ear. She had wanted to simply take this last cram class, get firsts in her O-levels, and win a scholarship to the Galle national school, away from the taunting jealousy of the village girls. But this was too much. The boys made her feel vulnerable in an entirely new way. While it was hard to blame the girls for their jealousy and resentment—there were only a handful of places available at the better national schools, and these schools were the only path to university—these boys had no right to target Achala, who worked so hard to escape notice, to be as quiet and humble as her mother counseled her to be.

  At the end of class, Achala lingered over her schoolbag, rearranging her papers, as the others packed up their pencil boxes and drifted toward the bus halt, gossiping and giggling along the way. Achala didn’t notice the sound of anyone behind her, so the touch of fingertips on her shoulder made her drop her bag and lose her breath. Chamila had suddenly appeared beside her, shadowing her face from the sun. “Sorry about before.” He picked up her bag. “Leel doe
sn’t mean any harm. He just likes attention from girls, especially the snotty ones.”

  “I’m not snotty,” Achala snapped. “And he should learn some manners. He acts like a water buffalo.”

  “All right, Miss Snotty.” Chamila winked, tapping Achala once more on her shoulder before sprinting away. As he ran to catch up with his friends, he yelled behind him, “You’re not so easy to apologize to, you know.”

  At home, Achala couldn’t escape the guilty feeling that had settled on her shoulders. She could have just laughed off Leel’s bad behavior and been friendlier to Chamila. Even if his comments were insulting, he had tried to apologize, hadn’t he? Achala spent so much time preparing herself for others’ unfriendliness that she wondered if she had entirely lost her ability to be kind and generous. When Lucy entered her room, Achala realized she had lost track of time completely, and worried she must look foolish sitting there blankly on her bed, staring at her own thighs.

  But Lucy didn’t seem to notice. “Tea?” she asked as she plopped two cups onto Achala’s desk. For a twenty-three-year-old, Lucy seemed far too clumsy and unsure of herself. Most twenty-three-year-olds Achala knew had the quiet assurance of motherhood. But Lucy still giggled like a girl, couldn’t sew her own buttons onto her sari blouses, and made the most horrible tea. When Lucy had first moved in, she and Achala had worked out a plan: every other day, Achala would help Lucy with her Sinhala lessons, and on the alternate days, Lucy would help Achala with her essay writing.