Empire of Mud
A Novel
James Suriano
Copyright © 2020 James Suriano
All rights reserved.
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For Nosipho Mnisi
Your bravery runs deep in the blood of your son.
Also by James Suriano
“We are not put on this earth to see through one another. We are put on this earth to see one another through.” – Gloria Vanderbilt
Contents
Also by James Suriano
Mud
Offer
City Life
Slice
Family Expansion
The Party
Post Office
Gossip
Wicked Return
Dark Places
Restore
Sea Change
Custody
Parents
Abandoned
Willing for Change
Chilled Mud
The Bridge’s Secrets
To Kumzar
Sea Tight
The Ways of Kumzar
Pakistan
Missing Pieces
Machete
Split
Court
Needling
The Book of Mohamed
Enslaved?
Neighborly Friends
Meetings of Unintended Consequence
Spite
The Boat
Transitory Additions
Plan B
Watery Tension
In Sickness and in Health
Against the Tide
Three Tickets, Single Journey
To Take
The Edge
Refuge
A Beginning and an End
Lessons
About the Author
Mud
Balapitiya, Sri Lanka, 2004
The wave was on top of me, swirling violently, heaving up and down, a type of schizophrenic tide. The latest swell of water pummeled at the back of my head, dragging debris over me, burying me in destruction. Clawing toward what instinct told me was the sky, I could not hold my breath much longer. I broke through, my head ramming a board and pushing to the surface of the watery mix with every possible piece of our village. I gulped air. The life that left me for at least a full minute crashed back, invading my mouth and lungs. The momentous impact of the wave left a hissing whine in my ears. There was a cow beside me, with its nose packed full of mud and in the last spasms of life. Ruka, my daughter, had been holding my hand and Mewan, my son, was standing in front of me when the tsunami hit. Our backs were to the ocean and smiles danced on our lips. I squeezed my hand, she was not there. Mewan had vanished in front of me like a cruel magic trick. I could only process what had happened in slow motion. I tried mightily to push my mind from one assumption to the next but they came in baby steps.
Until my eyes locked on Mewan. The red belt I’d tied around his waist a few minutes before the impact was the only remaining thing on his body. He was lying with his face in the mud, his back arched and lifeless. His hands were somewhere beneath him. None of this made sense. My mind deteriorated into a thousand pieces and memories as I imagined my life without him. I focused on him, and harnessed the fear that another wave might come, to propel every muscle in my body toward him. I leapt over the cow, a bathtub, and car door until I reached Mewan’s small body and pulled him out of the mud. He was limp. The way he looked when I birthed him, until my neighbor had whacked him on the back and he wailed his way into this world. I hit him with the force of life and then sucked at his face, frantic to pull out the sediment. He was suffocating or maybe he was gone already, on to his next incarnation. I spit rocks, hit him again, and screamed his name through the grit of my mouth, commanding him to come back to me. His face was losing color.
“Mewan please. We need you.”
His arm sputtered to life and he wiped at his face. He struggled with the uncomfortable condition of his body, coughing and then vomiting out the ocean.
“Mama’s here.” As I put one hand to my body to reach for my sari, I realized my clothes had been pulled from my body and I had nothing to wipe him with but my muddied embarrassment.
Where was Ruka among the jagged posts of painted bamboo, sheared-off palm trees, and thatched roofs flipped on end as if a giant wandering child had stampeded with abandon? The tourist shop we had been in front of, full of bright handicrafts, knitted fabrics, and small treasures made of palms and coconut husks, had slid into the ocean and was floating intact. Around us, drowned bodies lay like turned pebbles, tumbled repeatedly by the tremendous force of the water. I pulled Mewan close to my body. If another wave came, I would squeeze him to death before I let him go.
A single cry broke through the awed silence. I searched the faces of the people who were with me, immobilized in the mud, bewildered, and trying to process why so few of us stood over so many. Then there was a second cry and a third before a rising orchestra of small voices gurgled against the silent shock. I caught the sound of a breathy whimper, which I recognized as Ruka. My eyes swooped over the dead bodies. Ruka was there, bent backward over branches, themselves twisted and broken by the current, hovering above this display of hell. I pulled out my left leg; it was stronger than my right. The polio from my childhood had left my body as two different people sewn together in one. I willed myself closer to her, forcing my body through the liquefied earth. I took a few more steps, my heart pumping under a weight I was sure would collapse it into a flat piece of worthless muscle from the fear and exertion.
Ruka was upright, a strange angle inhabiting her dangling arm. When she saw us move toward her, she looked for a way down from her unnatural perch. A body lay impaled on a branch beside her, already gray, its fingers in a final grasp for safety. A sight a six-year-old shouldn’t see. Mewan quieted. His head was on my shoulder, his breaths calmer in my ear. I reached the tree, the muscles in my legs burning. But an indefatigable intent drove me, I would save them both if it was my last act in this life.
“Ruka, jump. Jump to Mama,” I urged her.
She looked at her broken arm. I saw a finger twitch. There was nothing to lose; I could see it on her face. Our world was fractured; our only hope was to advance beyond it. She jumped and splattered in the mud. Ruka was strong, stronger than any six-year-old girl I knew. She pushed back her wet, black hair and strained until her hand was in mine. Some miracle had assembled the puzzle of our lives.
We reached the end of the muck by sheer will. The villagers stood at its edge, some with their arms out, pleading with the mud to return their loved ones. Others were digging aimlessly, and a few frantically ran from spot to spot, unsure what do to. Female elders touched us as we walked past them. I felt a piece of cloth draped over my head, hanging down to cover my body. The air held a tight weave of moisture and heat, and insects began to congregate. I didn’t want to imagine what would be here in a day. Ruka tried to pull away and walk ahead, but I held her tighter. I was not ready to separate from my children. I’d felt in that minute the sensation of losing both of them, an agony which shredded me. She ground her teeth in frustration of being restrained. I would not let her go, not yet.
Someone called her name. Ruka didn’t turn. She kept going, mud flaking off
her legs and feet, her torn orange sari dusting the ground. She pumped her arms like a determined rhinoceros. My vision began to open up, and I could see outside my immediate surroundings. My brain gave a reprieve from the protection of devastation; I could handle this. The small lanes and houses now gone, we charged into an obliterated landscape. The forest still stood but at an artificial height on the hillside. Our house stood above the line the greedy ocean had reached. I was grateful.
I had survived the first of many attempts the gods would make on my life.
Offer
Two Years Later
I walked the lane we stood on when the tsunami had enveloped our lives. I imagined even my husband, Pramith, might walk up to me and nuzzle his face in the back of my hair, as he always had done. This was the last place I’d seen him, and the trick of my mind was that he was somehow still here. The mud had been cleared, and the buried coconuts now sprouted into small trees. The buildings made of palm boards and thatch roofs were built to look like tikis; a fresh woodsy smell emanated from the shops. They sold trinkets to tourists and food to locals. Baked goods, vegetables from the ground, but the busiest of all of them was empty, with people lined up for Ravantha and his son to come in from the ocean at five o’clock to sell their catch from a splintery board with dried fish guts. There was an earthenware pottery store and an artist selling photographs of our everyday life. No one minded playing the exotic destitute local if it meant money came to the village from far away. Tourists were gold, and one of the small blessings of the disaster was that it brought more of them.
Mewan ran ahead, bumping into people, tumbling backward among the milky-white people. They arrived like gods, with their stacks of luggage and shiny accessories strapped to their body. We were happy to sell them even more at ten times a reasonable cost; they gobbled up everything my people set in front of them. The money never did more than enrich the person selling, though. We needed Sri Lanka to give us electricity and clean water. We always heard a familiar refrain answering our calls: In time.
Mewan toddled into a man in a white robe. His skin was light, but not like the other tourists, and his hair and beard were as black as my hair. I noticed his white leather shoes with a green crocodile on them. He looked impeccable. He picked up Mewan, held him in the air until Mewan giggled, and set him back down. Although it was unusual for foreigners to pick up children, it wasn’t completely unheard of. I raised my hand at the man, and his eyes looked in my direction. Holding Mewan’s hand, he approached me.
“What a nice young boy. But he looks hungry.” He looked me up and down. “As do you. I’m Khalid.” His hand was out, ready to embrace mine.
He spoke Sinhala, which was very unusual for a foreigner.
“We don’t have much,” I said. “It’s been hard since the tsunami. Only they have been lucky to rebuild.” I gestured to the new business. I was hoping he would offer me money or food, both of which we could use.
“You should come work for me.” Khalid pulled glossy images from his bag and waved me closer to him. The first page was a map. I recognized my island nation and a green line with an airplane arcing over the waters between my country and India, then a long flight line arriving at a country jutting into the Red Sea. He tapped his index finger on the starred destination, then opened the pamphlet. Inside were pictures of gleaming towers and rooms filled with polished stones, precious metals, and furniture covered with the skins of exotic animals. Apartments with expansive views of the city appeared below: more towers, more sparkle, crystal-blue water in the distance.
“These are common apartments of the people you could work for. They’ll pay you handsome wages, give you a place to live, provide you with as much food as you need.”
“But my children …”
“Yes, think precisely of them and the money you could send home. They would be provided for, finally. You could offer them a life you’ll never be able to achieve if you stay here, selling—” He pulled at the masks, made with plastic straws, hanging from my body. My mother had taught me to make them in better times, when she would step away from the business of the tea plantation and construct crafts with me. Years later, when she and my father died from cholera, I made them to remind me of her. This was long before Mewan was born. I wanted to be of use, so I asked the other women to teach me their skills, but they didn’t want the competition. In our village, I was the only person to sell masks. Ruka had the brilliant idea to attach rubber bands from the supply deliveries to them so they could be worn. The tourists’ children loved the way they transformed their faces into tigers, ostriches, and monkeys.
“It would only be for one year, and then you can decide to continue working or come home.” Khalid tilted his head down to catch my gaze.
He pulled out another pamphlet and showed me how much money they would pay me. A number in an unfamiliar currency, dinars. I saw a picture of a small house, with a few rooms, the walls sturdy and even, brightly painted. The roof was intact to keep out the drenching rains. It was in the style of my town, but a home I could never have dreamed of living in. A house with an indoor toilet and kitchen where water ran from the sink. “If you’re smart with your salary,” Khalid said, “you’ll be able to buy a modern home when you return.”
I imagined myself living there, Mewan running on clean hardwood floors rather than packed earth where worms and mites wiggled their way to the surface and crawled over him at all hours trying to burrow into his skin. I saw Ruka with piles of books around her, reading and smiling with a cooling breeze coming from the elevated windows, rather than the stifling wet air seeping from the mountainside that our shack was built into.
“Other mothers from your village are going,” Khalid said. “I’ve already booked their tickets and found them families.” He flipped to the next page in the brochure. A room, with a single bed and a dresser, a bathroom behind it. A white toilet, a sink and shower, all indoors. “This is a typical room where you might stay. You’d have your own bed, your own bathroom.”
“Could I bring my son and daughter? We can happily live in that room. They would be no problem, I promise.”
“Oh, no.” He shook his head and stroked his beard. “That’s not possible. Only you can go.”
My insides felt heavy, while my mind swirled with the highs and lows on the way to the possibilities he was presenting.
“When do I need to tell you by?” I asked. Mewan wrapped around my leg like a snake. He was patient but wanting.
Khalid put away the glossy packet and twisted his hands. “I’ll only be here for a few days, so make your mind up quickly. Many women want these jobs. Many women want to provide for their families.”
I felt the pressure of when there were only three fish left for sale and four people behind me. If the decision wasn’t made, it would be made for me. “Can I tell you tomorrow? I’ll meet you right here.”
Khalid sucked his teeth; they were white and in a neat row, his lips red and full. “Yes, but I hope there are still spaces available.” He tickled Mewan’s belly and patted his head. “He’ll be fine.” He gestured around us. “Look at all the kids he has to keep him busy. And when he’s grown, he’ll thank you many times over.”
He was right; there were many kids who had survived, more kids than parents, their young bodies able to come back from the ocean’s trauma. They ran barefoot, most with shorts emblazoned with advertising from the city. Mewan had been spared the scars; the mud had cradled him.
Khalid bowed and floated off; he seemed light and airy, with no weight of worry. His freshly washed white thawb swayed with him.
…
I ran my fingers over mangoes lined up on a coconut mat, sold by a boy Ruka’s age. She would beam at the purchase, even though she’d know it would cost me three days’ wages. I smiled at the boy. In my head I felt like my mother, who had scoured the markets each day for a boy to marry me to. The possibilities of Ruka’s and Mewan’s futures were stacking up in my head, making me dizzy. I pried Mewan from a r
oot he had fixated on and hurried to our house.
Ruka was on the front three steps, sweeping dirt that trickled down from the mountainside. Occasionally, rocks would fall and strike our metal roof. There were enough dents to remind me of the times my heart had stopped in the middle of the night, fearful another wave was coming. It would be a lifetime before that fear would abandon me.
“Ruka, can you come sit with me? I have to ask you something.” She put her broom down. Calluses on her eight-year-old hands hid behind the stick. She swept wherever someone would pay her. She climbed up the trees at night to pluck fibers from the palmyra tree to retool her broom, readying it for the next job. I was proud of how hard she worked to help Mewan and me.
She sat on the steps and looked up at me. An orange bandana held her hair out of her eyes while the salt of her sweat crisscrossed the paisley pattern like starbursts in ice.
“I was offered a job.” I thought I would present the best news first. For us, being offered a job—picking tea or rocks, shoveling sewage, cleaning anything—were welcome words.
Ruka put her palms together and smiled. She tilted her chin up to me, waiting for the rest of the good news.
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