Nilanthi laughed again.
“You don’t know what you’re laughing about. Never mind. Just go give the boys their biscuits,” Sunitha said.
Nilanthi took the platter off the counter. “I was just teasing, you know.” When Sunitha didn’t respond, she added, “I’d like to see more of the dance when I get back.”
Sunitha shrugged. She didn’t like making Nilanthi feel guilty, but she had felt mocked and criticized and wanted her friend to know it.
When Nilanthi returned, she wore an apologetic expression. “Do you want some tea?” Her voice was little more than a whisper.
Sunitha quickly reminded herself that it had been Nilanthi who had waited for her after class today, who had invited her home, who was always doing all the hard work to make Sunitha feel welcomed and appreciated. She pushed her hurt feelings away and asked Nilanthi if her mother would let them try on her saris.
Nilanthi turned from the teakettle, a smile spreading over her face. “I’ll go ask!” she shouted as she dashed out of the kitchen.
NILANTHI’S MOTHER WOULDN’T let the girls wear her new saris, but she let them try on some of the older ones. Sunitha had to help her friend into the long piece of yellow fabric. She wound it three times around Nilanthi’s waist, the third time pleating the material five times, then folding four pleats into the train, pinning it onto Nilanthi’s left shoulder. Sunitha stepped into the sweep of a green silk sari with hints of gold in its border. She kept the train long so it almost grazed the floor. In front of the mirror, Sunitha felt regal and tall.
“I look like I’m playing dress-up and you look ready to go to a wedding,” Nilanthi said as she admired her friend’s reflection.
“You study algebra; I study how to look good in the clothes of a wife.”
“You can be other things, too,” Nilanthi said.
Did her friend really believe this? Sunitha wondered as she approached the closet. Nilanthi’s mother had what seemed like hundreds of saris, lined up by color, light to dark. Sunitha stroked the ends of a red sari of thick cotton, starched as if it had been worn only once or twice. The memory of her mother arrived so swiftly, she didn’t even realize she had begun speaking. “It’s the last image I remember of her. My father had forced her to put her homecoming sari on, the one that had announced the success of their wedding night. It was bright red, like her lips. Her face was painted with makeup, her eyes lined in black.”
Nilanthi sat silently, playing with the ends of her sari train. She met Sunitha’s eyes and nodded.
Sunitha took the red sari out of the closet and draped it over her shoulder. The memory was taking a clearer shape—her mother clutching the bedroom curtain to prevent Sunitha from seeing her, begging Sunitha’s father not to make her watch this. “My father just kept on yelling, saying how she had made him into a fool and that she was a whore.” Sunitha looked at Nilanthi. “He kept using that word.”
This was the story that had circled Sunitha for years. In some rumors, she had heard her parents’ story begin with her parents’ marriage, far more showy than was appropriate to their caste. Her father was able to provide a feast of vegetable cutlets, lobster and shrimp, three kinds of rice. There was arrack and wine and even coffee brought in from Colombo. Though her mother had only a very small dowry, her father had bought her a silk sari with pearls up and down the train—the most beautiful sari for the most beautiful woman in the village, he was said to have announced at the ceremony.
“But I think the story starts with the envious men.” Sunitha looked carefully at her friend. She wanted to be sure that it was all right to tell her, that she could share this secret, which wasn’t really a secret, knowing that once it was spoken, it might change things between them. Nilanthi nodded again and Sunitha continued. “They played a trick on my father to punish him for his boasting. They knew his jealous nature, so they spread rumors about my mother. They accused her of infidelity, of sharing the bed of a retired army colonel.”
Sunitha paused again. She was trying to keep the story straight. It had come to her in so many different forms over the years, in so many strangers’ whispers, that she wasn’t sure of the exact truth, but the story was taking shape on her lips. It suddenly felt as if it belonged to her. The gossip about her mother must have wound its way through the village and the marketplace, down to the temple, beyond the bus stand and the school, and eventually to the tea estate. Sunitha took a deep breath. “My father didn’t bother to confront the army colonel or the men at the estate who brought the rumor to him. Instead he returned home.”
Here is where her own memories overlapped with the rumors. She always struggled to keep them separate, keep what she knew from what she had heard. But now they had blended into one story, partly borrowed, partly remembered. “My mother was surprised he was home early. She must have looked guilty to him, her eyes large and fearful of bad news. I was seven years old. He took her by the elbow and they disappeared behind the bedroom curtain.”
Sunitha fumbled with the train of her sari. She could feel her neck burning, but she wanted to finish telling Nilanthi the whole of it. “I didn’t follow them out of the house, but I’ve heard about what happened next from village gossip. My father brought my mother to every door in the village, informing the neighbors of her infidelity.” My wife is little more than a cadju girl. She offers herself to an old colonel in exchange for who knows what paltry gifts. She has shamed me and our family. Sunitha had heard that their neighbors looked on until a large crowd began to follow her parents through the village. For several hours they walked, until Sunitha’s mother was barely able to stand on her own, her husband’s arm around her in a half embrace.
Sunitha was certain Nilanthi had heard all this before, even though she had been careful not to mention it. She wanted to release both of them from their silence. “My mother drank poison a few days later. When I returned from school, her body was already gone; my grandmother was in her place, preparing the afternoon meal.” Sunitha remembered that the air had smelled of burnt lentils and the rice tasted like dust.
Her grandmother had helped her into a white frock and braided her hair into two neat plaits. “My grandmother told me, ‘You can cry for your mother today, but from tomorrow it will be your job to separate yourself from her and the past she leaves you with.’ ” Sunitha replaced the sari in the closet and tried to meet her friend’s eyes. Was this too much of a burden for Nilanthi? The weight of all this memory?
Nilanthi took Sunitha’s hand. “And what about your father?” she asked.
“A coworker told my father that the rumors had only been gossip. My father tore through my mother’s possessions, searching her jewelry box, the back of her wardrobe, under the mattress. Nothing.”
Sunitha believed that her mother’s innocence became the weight of her father’s guilt, and he wasn’t strong enough to carry it. She finished the story quickly. “They can’t prove that he set the fire at the tea shop, but he disappeared soon after—to India, we found out, when his first letter arrived several months later.” Sunitha sank onto the bed next to her friend. She rested her head on Nilanthi’s shoulder.
For a while they listened to the sounds of the cricket match and the boys’ cheers trickling into the bedroom. Eventually, Nilanthi raised Sunitha off the bed. “C’mon,” she said. “Let’s go join the boys and have something to eat.”
Sunitha followed Nilanthi out of the room, though all her energy had drained away. A little while later, she was sitting on the couch between Nilanthi and Lalith. The older boys were sitting on pillows closer to the screen, and Sunitha heard Nilanthi’s mother humming in the kitchen. Soon the television was drowning out her thoughts as she let her attention turn to the cricket pitch, to the sounds of muted, faraway cheering, and to the plate of rice and curry on her lap.
Lalith leaned over to her. He had bisquit crumbs in the creases of his mouth. “You see, Sunitha? They don’t stand a chance against Mahinda.”
“Which one is Mahinda?�
� Sunitha asked.
Lalith groaned.
“Lalith can’t believe it when people haven’t heard of his hero,” Nilanthi teased, tickling her brother.
“Quit it!” he shouted, slipping onto the floor. “They shouldn’t let girls watch cricket,” he complained from Sunitha’s feet.
Sunitha and Nilanthi laughed until the older boys told them all to be quiet. Sunitha let herself be calmed by all these distractions. She let herself sink into the familiarity of this family, who had always welcomed her and made her feel a part of their everyday things. She felt Lalith’s small body relax against her leg and felt the warmth of Nilanthi’s arm resting on top of hers. When the cricket game ended, she knew she’d have to go home. She would return to her grandmother, who would always be there to remind her of who she was and where she belonged. But now here was Nilanthi, too, who knew her secrets and would still ask her back, making her feel safe and at home.
THE CRICKET GAME ended, leaving Lalith to sulk in his disappointment. The girls went to Nilanthi’s parents’ room to gather Sunitha’s schoolbag. As she gathered her things, Sunitha realized she wanted to offer Nilanthi something. When Sunitha had revealed her family’s story, Nilanthi had listened without judgment, without surprise. And by just sitting there beside her, Nilanthi had shown she would always be her friend. Nilanthi was always quietly offering her things, and now Sunitha struggled to identify something she could give her friend in return. She looked at Nilanthi’s clumsy hands fidgeting with her loosening braids and suddenly realized what she could offer. “Can I try to teach you how to dance? I can show you my lesson from today,” she said.
Nilanthi smiled and flipped on her father’s radio. A gentle mix of sitar and flute filled the room. “All right. You can try, but I’m certain I’ll be a disaster.”
Sunitha grabbed two saris from the closet and draped them over the two of them. “It helps if there is some fabric moving along with you.” Sunitha pressed Nilanthi’s fingers into position until her friend moaned and begged her to stop.
“You just need to practice,” Sunitha encouraged. “Let’s try the feet, then.” She stood behind Nilanthi and held her waist.
Nilanthi suddenly glimpsed Lalith in the doorway. “You sneaky little monkey! Always creeping up where you don’t belong!” She giggled, chasing her brother out of the room. “I’m hopeless, I’m afraid.” She laughed.
“You haven’t even tried,” Sunitha scolded, her tone good humored.
“If you force me to dance, I’ll have to force you to study algebra with me.”
“Not likely.” Sunitha grabbed her friend’s hands and spun her around the room a few times until Nilanthi stepped on Sunitha’s foot and both girls tumbled onto the floor.
Nilanthi stumbled up and raised the radio’s volume. “Dance for me,” she said.
Sunitha smiled and took a step back. She pressed her fingers into circles and cocked her head to the side. She saw that Lalith had returned to the room, half-disguised by the bedroom curtain; she gave him a private wink. Smiling broadly at no one in particular, she moved her hips and hands to the song’s melody. Her body felt light as she forced her heel onto the bedroom floor, bending and pivoting around the room while Nilanthi clapped to the music’s rhythms. And as her borrowed sari swept across her ankles, Sunitha performed not only for Nilanthi and mischievous Lalith, but for an invisible audience, for her grandmother and her father, for Dinesh and the envious men, for the market gossipers, and for her mother, allowing grace and beauty back into the place where shame had been.
GHOST NEIGHBORS
Nilanthi woke up in an unfamiliar bed, surprised she was still alive. There were tubes connecting her to beeping machines, and the only thing she recognized was the sour smell coming off her body. She wanted to be dead. The electric sounds of artificial life left her with a dizzy feeling of disappointment.
Drinking lye had worked perfectly well for her friend Sunitha. A fisherman had found Sunitha’s body in the sand and finished gathering his daily catch before piling the dead girl onto the back of his truck along with the dying fish. There had been no family members left to cremate her, certainly no money for a proper burial, so her body had been hauled away in a police van as if she had been a criminal. Sunitha hadn’t said good-bye to her best friend, but she had warned Nilanthi of her plans. I’ll get the lye at the rice estate, and if you want, you can have any that I don’t use. A last act of generosity and friendship that, it turned out, hadn’t been enough.
THE DROUGHT STARTED with the war, or so it had seemed to Nilanthi and her family. As the boys, one after another, left the village to become soldiers, they seemed to take the rain with them. Batticaloa dried out; the dirt became salty. There had always been so little shade, but without the rain, the sea rarely brought its breezes. Nilanthi’s lips, which had always tasted salty and fishy, became cracked and wrinkled.
As a young girl, she had looked forward to the violent outbursts of rain in March and April, when the roads flooded and school would be canceled. All the children came out to splash in the street while their parents brought out bicycles and motorbikes to wash in the rain. The women would bring out their laundry, scrubbing sarongs against rocks, leaving trails of sudsy brown water. Everything softened during those few weeks; the ground would bend and give underfoot, and the children would gaze at their footprints in the mud, comparing sizes, shapes, depth.
THE WAR BEGAN in 1983, and it took Nilanthi’s mother first. She came floating down the river with the other bodies from town. Nilanthi saw her before her brothers did, recognized the faded yellow sari wrapped around her shoulders. The village had grown silent and watchful that afternoon, families huddled along the banks of the river, squinting under the sun. Nilanthi had entered the river without a word, felt the water gather around her knees, the soggy squish of the mud between her toes. She placed her wrists under her mother’s arms and tugged her body to the shore. Her brothers had gathered by then, and the four of them lifted their mother onto their shoulders. There were other families doing the same—walking in silence to their homes, weighed down by a dead family member—but Nilanthi hadn’t noticed any of them. She only felt the jagged ankle of her mother’s foot digging into her shoulder.
Nilanthi had come home early from the Colombo teachers college a month before her mother was killed. She and the other students there had been on strike for several weeks after their professors refused to show up. All new teaching placements, and with them her hopes of employment, had been postponed. The bombings in Colombo had increased, and many of the students fled the city and returned to their villages or joined an army—the Sinhalese, the government army, the Tamil boys, the rebel Tigers. Sinhalese girls Nilanthi had been friends with stopped speaking to her, and soldiers kept her at checkpoints, sometimes for hours, when she tried to cross town. The soldiers were rough with the Tamil girls, reaching under their shirts to feel for cyanide necklaces. With those necklaces came bombs, and lately most of the terrorist acts had been carried out by girls. Suicide bombers. Martyrs. Orphaned, desperate, lonely girls. Sometimes the soldiers would pinch Nilanthi’s breasts and wink at her after they were done searching. Once, she had pushed away a soldier’s hand and he had smacked her across the face. It was the last time the taste of blood had surprised her.
At home in Batticaloa, the village seemed quiet compared to Colombo. There were no soldiers around, no grumbling jeeps honking by, no traffic. The fishermen still left their huts every morning before sunrise; the children continued to put on their school uniforms, eat their rice and sambal, and walk to school. The tea pickers went to the tea estates, and Nilanthi’s father continued to rub coconut oil into his hair as he left for the bank where he was a filing clerk. Nilanthi fell back into her former routine. She helped her mother prepare tea and rice for the boys’ breakfast. Later she would read teacher-training manuals and Charles Dickens until her mother interrupted her, asking for help with the wash or the afternoon meal. Nilanthi was a good student, but she
was absentminded when it came to household chores. Too much chili in the sambal, not enough coconut milk in the curry, spilled bleach on her youngest brother’s cricket uniform. She was always being scolded by her mother. She felt like a young girl, although she was nearly twenty-two.
WHEN SHE FIRST returned, she had terrible dreams. They would start pleasantly, like a Hindi movie: Her former teacher, a white man from the West named Sam, who had written her several letters, would appear. Nilanthi would be dressed in a deep red sari, her hair bundled high on her head. And her teacher would sing gentle love songs as they danced along the sea. Her teacher had actually been a sad, quiet person in real life, but in these movie dreams he would transform into a brave hero. But then, quite suddenly, he would turn into a soldier, and his clean hands would become greasy and rough, and he would grab at her under her sari. And then he would find a cyanide medallion around her neck. He would crack open the medallion with his teeth and breathe in the poisonous powder. He would press his lips against hers, his hand cupping the back of her head, and exhale death into her mouth. As he pulled away, the love songs would start again, and the soldier-teacher would dance circles around her as her body dropped onto the sand.
Nilanthi told only Sunitha about the dreams and about having had a man’s hands on her body. Sunitha had never left Batticaloa. She came from a poor family and left school before her O-levels were completed. Sunitha was one of the prettiest girls in the village, though, and her grandmother believed she would marry above her caste. She had the smallest hands Nilanthi had ever seen, but they were fast and strong. Nilanthi and Sunitha had become unexpected friends one day after Sunitha had fallen off her bicycle near Nilanthi’s house, and now, eight years later, she was the only friend Nilanthi still talked to.
The Beach at Galle Road Page 18