This Innocent Corner

by Peggy Herring

  I dismiss shame and guilt, and decide to go to Amma’s. In the lobby, Falguni rises with a warm smile. It’s been an hour since I sent her away.

  “Mrs. Robin, you want go out?” She reaches for the box. I pull it away.

  “Yes, I do – no, no – Falguni, why are you still here?”

  “This my duty. You give me box.”

  I hold fast. She assumes the stance of a football player about to snatch the ball from an opponent. “It’s alright. Please go now. I can take care of myself.”

  “But I am junior protocol officer, Bangla-American Women’s Friendship Society. I take care of you.” She reaches again for the box.

  “I don’t need anyone to take care of me, thank you.” Her eyes grow big and wounded, but I walk away with my box.

  Three glass doors lead back into the heat. One by one, I push against them. None opens. Where is the doorman? I try again. But I can’t get out of this eyesore of a hotel.

  “What you want?” Falguni asks. “I help.” She pulls the handle and the door wheezes open.

  I give up and hand her the box. “A taxi. I need a taxi.”

  The driver leans on his horn and squeezes into a tangle of traffic. He skirts around a rickshaw laden with burlap sacks, then narrowly avoids scraping the side of a multi-coloured lorry carrying potatoes.

  Whack. Someone slaps the back of the car and I jump. But it’s nothing. The driver honks his horn again. The roads are much more crowded than I remember, with cars, trucks, buses and motorized rickshaws, still called baby taxis, though now they seem to be everywhere, trailing noxious black fumes. The garishly coloured bicycle rickshaws weave throughout the fabric of traffic as they always did. Cows, goats, pedestrians, beggars, and hawkers with their goods spilling onto the streets, continue their fight for space.

  “This the jadugarh,” Falguni points to a broad-faced building looming behind a brick wall. “National museum. I take you tomorrow.”

  “Please. No need to go out of your way.”

  But she dismisses my words with a wave that looks too senior for her years. The junior protocol officer is practicing for bigger things.

  We stop for no reason I can detect. Move ahead a few feet. Stop again. We crawl through a crowded roundabout. I look for landmarks, which should be easy to spot at this speed. But the entire city is under construction. Rickety scaffolding fronts every building. Iron bars and stacks of red bricks are heaped on the roadsides, and seem to go on forever. Workers with baskets and tools crawl over them. I wonder if the Chowdhury home exists anymore.

  One thing becomes clear, however, as we creep along: the Bangladeshis won the language war. There’s no Urdu, and very few signs in English. A green sign points the way to the airport and the prime minister’s office. I see Coca-Cola. Pepsi-Cola. Some wars never end. A billboard for a brand of prophylactics called King Congdom hangs threateningly over a bus stand. Otherwise everything’s in Bangla.

  “This the New Elephant Road. You buy jamdani saree? New shoes? I take you.”

  I sit up. A small woman with a long braid and a woven shoulder bag crosses the street. I am about to call out. But she turns and pulls the end of her long dupatta off the dusty road, and I realize it isn’t her. Of course, it would be impossible. Like me, Luna would be grey and haggard now, her simple beauty faded.

  And then, I twist my neck to see again the corner we rush by – a familiar face, I was not mistaken. A poster of Sheikh Mujib, the Chowdhurys’ adored Bangabandhu, hangs crooked from a utility pole, the same picture from thirty years ago. I’m confused by this flashback, glance at the driver, who surely must be Mr. Chowdhury, then to Falguni who, for an instant, I am also certain will have transformed into Luna or Amma.

  “He the father of our nation,” Falguni says. “His daughter is our leader now.”

  “Really?” It should have smoothed with her explanation, but instead time warps into even loopier shapes and I am left more confused than ever.

  Finally, we ease down a street lined with trees whose leaves resemble hearts, feathers and bayonets. The driver, who has resumed his rightful identity, slows.

  “Here,” Falguni points.

  We’re in front of an old white bungalow that I’ve never seen before in my life. I look around the street. I don’t recognize anything.

  “This is not it,” I say.

  Falguni and the taxi driver begin to argue. I wonder if the Chowdhury’s house and entire neighbourhood were destroyed in the war. What about the Chowdhurys? No. I just saw Hasan a few hours ago. I refuse to believe everyone else is dead.

  Finally Falguni turns to me. “Apa? You saying Road 14. Taxiwallah want to know: new or old?”

  I shake my head. “What do you mean?”

  They confer once more. At the end, Falguni says, “He think you meaning new Road 14. Now we go old Road 14 and see.”

  The taxi driver turns the car around and heads back from where we came.

  “The addresses changed?” I ask.

  “Only some,” Falguni says. “Sometimes we using old numbers, too.”

  So the Chowdhurys couldn’t have received my letter. But what about the one I wrote soon after I’d gone home?

  “When did they change the addresses?”

  Falguni shrugs. “Few years back.”

  I shudder now. Perhaps they did receive my first letter. But then, why didn’t they write back to me?

  The taxi turns onto a much quieter street. And I recognize this one right away.

  It is still standing. And still mildew-spattered. The brick boundary wall is twice as high as it used to be though. And from the little I can see, something is missing. A flower bed? A big tree? And yet, it is exactly as I remember: pale yellow, lumbering at the back of an impressively smooth lawn, surrounded by greenery. When Falguni and I step out of the cab, three green parrots squawk from a neighbour’s papaya tree whose trunk is laden with tiny fruit that resemble light bulbs.

  Otherwise, everything is hushed.

  A shrunken man, wobbly on his feet, opens the door to our knock. For an instant, I think it is Shafiq, and again, time mysteriously freezes thirty years back. Then I recognize the eyes. Rheumy now, but familiar. This is most definitely Luna’s beloved Abba.

  “Salaam aliekum,” I say.

  He sighs weightily, and runs the back of his hand across his mouth and chin. “Yes.” His eyes close. “Hasan warned us, isn’t it?”

  He opens his eyes, glances at Falguni, then stares beyond. I am tempted to turn around to see what he is looking at. But his eyes are vacant. He is not looking at anything. I see now where Hasan learned this technique.

  “Did you get my letter?” I ask. But he does not even blink.

  I hold out the box. “I wanted to return this to Amma – Mrs. Chowdhury.”

  His eyes dart to the box, then back to the beyond.

  “It’s hers.”

  The box is heavy but I continue to offer it.

  “Is Amma home? I’d like to see her.” My arms begin to ache, but I will not pull the box back. “Where’s Luna?”

  In the hush of their garden, the tension which has taken root since I arrived suddenly flowers. “You shouldn’t have come,” Mr. Chowdhury finally says.

  Even Falguni, obtuse as she is, understands this. “Baba,” she begins, then a deluge of Bangla gushes forth. Like the Buriganga when it breaks its banks in the late summer monsoon, her words flow on and on. Mr. Chowdhury lets her talk. Finally, she seems spent. She sputters out.

  Mr. Chowdhury ignores the speech. He inhales deeply and coughs. “Please. Don’t disturb us again.” He steps back into the house.

  I shift the box under one arm, grasp the frame with my other hand before the door closes. “Can I see Luna? Amma? Will she at least come to the door?”

  He shakes his head. “She is bed-ridden. It is her wish that you lea
ve us alone. Good day.”

  I am forced to pull my hand away as he closes the door. Falguni and I face grainy wood. The box pokes into my hip bone.

  Before I get into the taxi, I glance at the windows. Where is Luna’s wave calling me back?

  “We go to hotel now?” Falguni says.

  “No. Sidheshwari.”

  I hadn’t communicated with Beth since I left, though she’d be the only one who’d have listened. Whether or not she agreed with what I had done, she would ask questions, measure her words, speak carefully. I should have sought her understanding right away, but it felt pointless during those early months when I first got back to Lansing. She seemed so otherworldly. It would be like trying to contact Pluto.

  About a year after I’d arrived home, when the war was over and I thought some semblance of normal life must have resumed in Dhaka, and I still hadn’t heard from the Chowdhurys, I resolved to write her. I went to the plaza to buy envelopes. But the sight of a sack of dog food being loaded onto the roof of a station wagon stopped me in my tracks. Such an ordinary act seemed a symbol of the great divide that separated my life in Lansing from the world I’d left behind in Dhaka. There was no way of reconciling the two, no matter how many letters I wrote. I left without buying anything.

  Besides, the money issue hung heavy and I wanted to wait until I had enough to pay Beth back, having no idea that over the course of my adult life, my financial situation would never improve. While I mulled over my words and counted pennies, I let things drift. And drift some more, until any contact seemed shameful and unnecessary.

  A thin girl answers Beth’s door and although I remember well the corridors and doorways that lead there, she shows Falguni and I onto the terrace.

  The city has mushroomed up around Beth. Where there was once a striking panorama of neighbour’s rooftops, now apartment buildings that climb five and six stories overhead box us in and cast deep shadows over the terrace. Beth has attempted to keep the garden. Pots, lined up in rows angled to catch the slivers of sunlight, contain the marigolds, asters, dahlias and gladioli I remember, though they are pale and stringy from lack of sun. There is one red bougainvillea, thick and florid at the top, the only plant which seems to be winning the battle for light.

  I put the box on a cane settee. The old swing, Luna’s preferred spot, is gone. Falguni stands and waits for me to choose a seat but I can’t. I long for the swing.

  A grubby child grasps iron bars that cover a window in one of the new buildings. From her perch overlooking the terrace, she clocks our movements. I catch her eye, and expect her to look away. But her gaze is steady, disarming.

  A rattle announces Beth’s arrival. She holds herself up with steel crutches. Shocked, already raw from the day’s events, I forget etiquette.

  “My god. What happened to you?”

  Her frown mirrors mine, then settles, smoldering on her face. “Well. I didn’t expect I’d see you again.” She must be more than sixty, an age that once seemed ancient, yet now is right around the corner.

  She hobbles over and sits beside the box.

  “What happened to you?” I ask again.

  “Car accident.” A crutch slides to ground and rattles on the concrete. “A long time ago. What is it you want?”

  “I’m in town for a few days,” I begin. “– this is Falguni.” I don’t know what else to say. Her abruptness distresses me.

  “I from Bangla-American Women’s Friendship Society. I am junior protocol officer.”

  Beth acknowledges her with a small smile, which disappears when she turns to me. “I’m surprised you have the nerve to show up.”

  The child at the window presses her face against the bars. One eyelid is pulled down, revealing anemic pale flesh inside.

  “I tried to see Amma,” I say. “But Mr. Chowdhury wouldn’t let me.”

  “Do you blame him?”

  I don’t remember hearing Beth speak like this. She’s become hard and unyielding over the years, maybe because of her accident.

  “I don’t blame him. I just don’t understand him,” I say. It wouldn’t bother me to see Amma bedridden. I shrug. “I wish Hasan would stop interfering. I don’t know why I thought he’d be any different. But then again, I always was a slow learner.” I laugh.

  No one joins in. We sit and stare at the surrounding concrete.

  Beth breaks the silence. “Not a day goes by that Salma doesn’t pray for Luna’s return.”

  “Return?”

  “She’s never come back. Didn’t you know?”

  “But where is she?”

  It is Beth’s turn to shrug.

  “That’s awful. She’s alive, isn’t she? I mean, she probably just decided not to –”

  “There was a war, you remember,” Beth says, her voice dry as an old stripped bone.

  Now I have to sit. I don’t even bother to brush the dust off the tattered cane chair, though I avoid the rusty nail, its head thick with corrosion, protruding from the broken arm. “I can’t believe it,” I say. Falguni remains standing, looking slightly subservient. “Is that why Hasan is so angry?”

  “Perhaps,” Beth says. “Though it could be the beating he received the night he took you to the airport. He never recovered in time to join the freedom fighters.”

  “Beating?”

  “You don’t remember? All young men were potential targets. When the army picked him up that night – Salma was just happy he came back. He was missing for two weeks.”

  “Two weeks? What happened?”

  “It took the doctor three months to get the wounds on his back to close and to stop the infection from spreading. He’s lucky he didn’t lose a limb. Or worse. Although being alive is in some ways far more painful for some boys like him.”

  Where is the air? I can’t breathe. “But I didn’t know.”

  “No. Of course you didn’t.”

  I choke. But she’s not being fair. She’s forgetting, too. “They were going to marry her off.” Beth shakes her head as though I have said something preposterous. “She was in love with someone else.”

  “Did you live here with your eyes shut? That’s what people do. They marry. Arranged marriages.” I wish she’d shout. The evenness of her voice is chilling.

  “What about the others? Shaheed?” Beth’s face fills. “Did he join the movement or not?”

  “He did.”

  “Then?” I shake my head.

  “No one knows how many people died in the war, but most of us believe three million. He was one.”

  Shaheed dead. I can’t think about it. He should have lived and married and had children and made them all laugh and feel loved, days brimming with joy. Why did he think he had to go to war? He had nothing to prove, not to me, not to anyone who measured him only against his father. My hands feel cold and exposed. I fold them tightly, squeezing out the vulnerable places between my fingers. My eyes fill.

  Somebody must have made it through unscathed. My sanity depends on it. “Ruby?”

  Beth laughs bitterly. “She’s a war hero. She was shot in the face in combat. She’s completely disfigured and earns a living speaking to students about the Liberation War.” Beth turns to Falguni. “You must know about Ruby Islam.”

  Awestruck, Falguni sighs. “She give her future for her country.”

  “She was so beautiful,” I say.

  “Everyone was touched by the war. It was unavoidable,” Beth says. Falguni nods her head.

  Silence wraps around us, interrupted only by noises from the street below. Traffic. Children. The distinctive crack of a cricket bat from some dusty patch of earth the teams were lucky to discover in this dense concrete maze.

  One more time, I grasp for happy, or at least neutral news. “What about Kamala and Shafiq? Surely the military had no interest in old people like them.”

  Beth
leans forward. Her eyes, sharp and narrow, glitter like the inside of a marble. I think she will hiss. “After you accused him of a crime he didn’t commit, Shafiq couldn’t face his family or the Chowdhurys. They found his body hanging from a mango tree in his village.

  “As for Kamala…obviously you’ve never had a suicide in your family.”

  Everything stops. I want to vomit. Tear out my hair. Shriek and cry. I need to run away. Turn back the clock. Disappear. But my body allows no recourse. My brain sends signals which become lost in the web of my nerves. My muscles cannot respond. I am forced to bear witness to Beth’s revelations in their entirety.

  “Maybe now you understand Salma’s reception.” Beth supports herself on the shaky arm of her chair, and reaches for her crutch. Falguni, whom I’d nearly forgotten about, picks it up and hands it to her. “Thank you.”

  What now? What can I say? How did the good act I undertook to save Luna twist into this nightmare? Sorry seems pathetic and almost laughable. I have no idea where to begin.

  We sit there. Sit and sit and sit. How much time passes, I cannot say. Beth finally interrupts, no apology in her voice. “I’m rather busy – ”

  This nudges me out of my fog. “Before I go, I want to pay you back.” A slight gesture, and I still have no idea where I will come up with such money, but it must be done. “Can I give you a cheque?” I fumble for my purse.

  “Forget it.”

  “No. Please.”

  “I said forget it.” The words snap from her lips.

  But I cannot leave without undertaking one act of atonement, however small. “I can help Amma and Mr. Chowdhury. I can pay for a good private detective who will find Luna.”

  “You should discuss this with them.”

  “But they won’t see me. Maybe you could mention it.”

  “I won’t do anything to open old wounds, Robin.”

  “Then tell me. What can I do? Perhaps Kamala?”

  She shakes her head. “You have done enough already.”

  As Falguni and I leave the terrace, I take one last look. The child with her face pressed against the bars is gone. In her place, a thin curtain fades in a shard of hot sun.