by Leah Franqui
26
Pival’s heart was pounding so loud that she was sure everyone in the hotel, a strange place in the strangest city she could have ever imagined, could hear it. She put down the phone, but her heart didn’t calm. If anything, its beating grew only more frantic in the silence of her room. She hadn’t meant to call him, really. She didn’t know why she had. She had taken the name from her phone’s display on the day that the call had come, and when she had searched the numbers on the Internet it took her to a website where people rented out their homes for weekends. She had written down the address and kept it tucked away, not knowing what she would do with it. But today she had simply picked up the hotel phone and called. It was like her hands were moving outside of her body’s control.
She had hoped, for one wild, desperate moment, that Rahi would pick up the phone. But it was him instead. His voice had sounded like the voice of a normal American person. She imagined him speaking to her son. She felt sick. She had hung up the call and thought perhaps she should kill herself now, right now. The pain throbbing in her body was so sharp that it didn’t seem worth trying to bear. She had wanted to talk to him first, to blame him for what Rahi had done, but if she couldn’t do it over the phone, could she even manage it in person? The thought that Rahi awaited her in Los Angeles felt like ever more of a delusion, and what would she do if that was all it had been, a delusion? If she ended her life now she could save herself from the certainty. It would leave a mess, but what did that matter? She wouldn’t have to clean it up. And if her body didn’t make it to the Ganges, that would be all right, too. She didn’t want another life. It would only go wrong, just like this one. She could run the bath and slit her wrists and be gone.
A knock on the door interrupted these thoughts. She straightened her skirts and smoothed her hand over her hair, and went to open the door to Rebecca and Satya, who were ready to take her to the city tour. Something of her thoughts must have shown in her face, no matter how well she had learned to protect herself over the course of her marriage, because Rebecca laughed and laid a hand on her shoulder.
“It won’t be that bad. It’s just Vegas, right? We don’t have to gamble and we certainly don’t have to strip. Unless you want to!”
It was a joke, Pival knew, but she couldn’t help flinching at the girl’s touch. She had never met anyone who touched people as much as Rebecca did. Being touched made her nervous, but it also felt nice. Her body had been so useless to others for so long now.
“She is joking, please, madam.” Satya looked worried.
“I understand. I would not, I think, be very good for stripping. Too much cloth.” Rebecca snorted with laughter as Pival gestured to her sari. She felt absurdly happy that she had made Rebecca laugh. She was not a funny person, she knew, and this was not a time she had thought she would develop a sense of humor. She was amazed she could make a joke five minutes after considering suicide.
“Shall we?” It was Rebecca, gesturing out the door. “Oh, sorry, Satya, that’s your line.”
“You are the actress,” he said, giving her a small smile. Whatever was growing between these two, she liked it, although she wasn’t sure that Mr. Munshi would approve. But it looked like a genuine friendship, not that she would know. After her marriage, her friends had faded away, as they often did at home when a woman got married and her life began to revolve around her own home. After she got married, the closest thing she had had to a friend was Rahi. Ram met his friends at his club, and Rahi had never brought boys home, although Pival wondered now if that was because he hadn’t wanted to or because he wanted to far too much.
She followed her guide and her companion out of the hotel and into the baking heat, which felt more oppressive than it had in Phoenix, although she knew the temperatures were the same. Perhaps it was the harsh sun bouncing off every sharp angle, every hard surface and colored sign. Everything was already too bright, and it wasn’t evening yet, when every step would be lit up like a fireworks display, as Pival had seen in photographs. She was not comfortable in this city, but it was the opposite of how she had felt in Washington, surrounded by tombs. Here there was too much life, too many people who looked desperate. She could see groups walking and driving, counting their money and staring at the casinos hungrily.
The city tour was not particularly interesting to Pival, as she had no desire to know more about a place she immediately hated. All the buildings looked like blocks of foam. The heat blurred everything in the corners of Pival’s eyes, and she blinked them quickly, wincing at the sand caught underneath her eyelids.
The bus jolted to a stop and suddenly Pival, who had been rubbing her eyes fiercely, realized that they were in a small parking area outside of a massive, brightly colored welcome to las vegas sign. All the other guests were filing off the bus, so Pival followed them dutifully. Always dutifully, she thought, and it filled her head like a bitter cloud. She stopped at the doorway of the bus. People were waiting to have their photo taken with the sign, though she didn’t really know why. She supposed it was attractive but she didn’t think this would be a moment she would want much to remember. If she hadn’t wanted photographs anywhere else, she certainly didn’t want one now.
Rebecca and Satya stood, looking up at her.
“Are you coming to see the sign?” Rebecca asked.
“I think I would prefer not. I do not like it here,” Pival said. Color flooded her face. She had not expressed any kind of opinion about their tourism activities before this point. She had not dictated anything at all, not even in planning the destinations. It was funny, now that she thought of it. The point of the trip, the exorbitant amount she had paid, the stipulations she had made, all of this was to ensure that she was in charge of what happened, and yet she had been in control of nothing. Ronnie had told her what was done, and she had done it. Parts of it she’d liked and parts she hadn’t, and she had thought that this was the way things were, but now she knew, it was the way she was. Ram had been in charge and she had accepted it. She had never realized that had she not accepted, he could not have remained in charge. Things might have been different. And the reason that they weren’t came from no one but herself.
It seemed strange that her first assertion of authority came at such a stupid time, in such a silly way. Pival sat inside the bus, fanning herself, as the rest of the group took turns taking photos. They posed in strange positions, contorting their faces and bodies like dancers on a stage. She watched them, smiling. She was cool and content where she was. A feeling of certainty filled her like honey slowly drizzling into a bowl. The bus departed again, through the sun-baked streets and past building after building coated with opulence and built at an increasingly overwhelming scale. The bus stopped over and over again, at this point and at that, but Pival remained on it the entire time, resting and relaxing against the plush seats and watching the world go by.
As they were deposited back on the curb of their hotel, a Comfort Inn, Pival actually did feel comforted. She was ready to go to Los Angeles. She would inform Satya and Rebecca that she did not plan to see that city, either, that she had other plans entirely. Until now, she had not known how she would do this, but now she did. It would simply happen. It didn’t have to be difficult. She would tell them and they would agree. She had never known how easy it was, telling people what she wanted. If only she had done it long before.
It had started in the teahouse with Rebecca. Or had it begun at Niagara Falls, watching the water pour over and all around them? Or back in Kolkata, defying her servants, sneaking out of the house, doing something she had never done? She felt a surge of love and gratitude for Ram. After all, he had had the kindness to die.
They left Las Vegas at first light the next morning. She felt faint on the bus ride to Los Angeles, a long ride through a never-ending desert. It had been quite a while since she had last eaten. Food had made her stomach twist in knots as the mixture of fear and hope bubbled up in her more with each passing mile. It was not as if they had ea
ten much that was good here, anyway. What a strange place, she thought, with so much space and nothing good to eat.
She had agreed to a bus and not a plane because she had thought she might need more time to prepare, but now she was impatient. Every bump in the road seemed personally directed at her; every jolt and sway of the bus only served to make her angry. Good, she thought. Better to be angry. Feeling so inconvenienced renewed her hope, and she prepared to find Rahi with a resurgence of vigor.
Next to her, Satya was sleeping. He could sleep anywhere. Rebecca was looking out the window as the same view kept passing by. She had headphones in her ears and her mouth moved gently with whatever song she was listening to on her phone. Pival had not known that one could listen to music on one’s phone until Rebecca had shown her. Rebecca had played a sad song for her, something sweet and slow. The singer was a woman, but her voice was low, and there was so much of her in the music, so much of her pain. The new songs from home were never so simple; they included so many instruments and melodies that chased each other into new places with every verse. This was repetitive, boring almost. It reminded her of the old songs, of the hymns. She couldn’t understand English when it was sung. She had felt Rebecca’s disappointment when she had described the thing as nice. Rebecca had asked her why she used the word nice so much, and she had been ashamed at her vocabulary, once so rich in English, now diminishing to a few overused words. She had thanked Rebecca for sharing the song with her. She wondered if she was listening to that same song now.
Rahi had been crazy for music. Every movie that came out had sent him into a new tailspin of devotion, of humming and singing the latest hit, of dancing through the house with the joy of it. Pival had learned many songs without ever seeing the films that they were meant to accompany, just from Rahi’s constant repetition. The high piercing voices of female playback singers and their husky male counterparts had formed the theme songs of his life. She had always been so amazed that he could remember so many things, keeping them all in his head at the same time. It’s music, Ma, it’s supposed to stay in your head! he had told her, laughing at her wonder. Sometimes she would be in a store or a cab and start crying and not know why until she realized that there was music playing, something he had loved.
What did Rahi listen to with this man? Had that person been like Rebecca, forcing his own music onto her son? Had he banned Bollywood from the house in favor of sad songs with tunes that went in a circle? She forced herself to think about them together in torturous detail. She tried to imagine what they would be like in bed, but there her imagination failed her; she wasn’t sure how any of that worked. She had thought about asking Rebecca, who had seemed like she might know when she mentioned Lincoln, but she had lost her nerve, and now it was too late. She thought of the most disgusting thing she could think of and assumed it must be like that. She would tell this man all the things that he was, and she would know when she died that she had done one thing with her life that was right; she would have defended her son’s honor.
After encountering traffic jams on the road, they reached Los Angeles by nightfall. The smog in the air hung around the city like a dirty gray halo, making everything look grimy and sad. Good. She needed no affection for Los Angeles.
That night, entering her room in yet another Best Western, she nodded back to Satya and Rebecca, explaining that she would be having room service. Her voice was firmer than it had ever been, giving Rebecca no room to ask if she was sure. She shut the door and turned on all the lights. She carefully unpinned her sari from her shoulder. She gently unbound it, unraveling every layer, everything that shielded her from the world. She remembered the story of Draupadi, the princess who, when about to be stripped and dishonored in public, was saved by a never-ending series of saris, winding away into infinity. She was not that princess. Her sari ended, leaving her bare. She took off her petticoat, her choli blouse, her bra, and her underwear. She unpinned and unbraided her long hair, letting the graying waves hang to her waist. She turned her eyes to the mirror, looking at her naked body.
She always avoided her body. She had ignored it for years as a child, and then as it had begun to change it had scared her, the hair that flourished in between the folds of things, the crevices of her armpits and the world between her legs that no one would ever tell her about. The plumpness of her breasts, and the way men looked at them. The curves of her hips and how they seemed to move without her even noticing. All these evolutions had concerned her, so she had ignored them. She had grown up knowing that her body was something to be covered and concealed, or it would tempt men and doom her to shame. When she had married and her body had become the property of Ram, he had used it and enjoyed it and stopped enjoying it and she had rarely wondered why, because it wasn’t hers anymore. It never really had been. When Rahi was born he had needed her body, too, so it had been joint property, food for one, use for another. Now it was truly hers. There was no one left to take possession of it. But it had changed. It had sagged and shifted, it had weakened and thinned. The hair had changed color and density, the breasts had shriveled, and the hips had shrunk.
Still, she thought. I am beautiful. I am almost done with life and I own myself and that, somehow, has made me beautiful. I am happy to be beautiful before I die.
She ran a bath as she waited for her food to come, food she would likely ignore. Ram had always encouraged her to be thrifty. It felt blissful to spend his money, to waste it. Slipping into the warm water, she wondered how the Ganges felt to the ashes of a corpse. Was it like this? She hoped so. If she did make it to the Ganges, she would want it to be like this. This was heaven.
She did not sleep that night. She kept herself from sleep, turning the air-conditioning panel down to a number she did not understand, because it was not in Celsius. It did not matter what it was, it made the room as cold as ice, and she lay like a corpse, still and careful, waiting for the morning.
On the horizon she watched the sun as it rose, marveling at its endurance against the smog and smoke of the city. It shone on everything, no matter what it was. It illuminated people, good and bad, kind and cruel, in the same light, with the same clarity. What a martyr, she thought with something like contempt.
The planned schedule was a tour of Universal Studios. She wasn’t sure what Universal Studios was, but it didn’t matter; she wouldn’t be going. She wondered when she should say something to Satya as they loaded into the cab to meet the tour bus. The driver was on the phone, and to her surprise, she knew what he was saying. He was speaking in Bengali, not the Bangladeshi Bengali that Satya spoke, but her Bengali. He was from her world. It had been a long time since she had believed in a sign, but belief or no, this was an opportunity and she would take it as she had taken nothing before. She felt the way she had the day she met Ram, the day Rahi was born, that same sense of being on the edge of something, only this time she knew what it meant.
“Hello, boss, we’re going to—” Satya began to say, but she was ready.
“Hello, sir. Pleasant to make your acquaintance.” She spoke Bengali the way she had been taught, carefully and well. “We are for . . .” She reached for the slip of paper tucked neatly in her purse and showed it to the driver. He nodded, repeated the address once, and started driving, as Pival leaned back in her seat.
“Madam—” Satya began, confused. Pival merely smiled. “Madam, that is not the place we are going.”
“Yes. It is. I don’t care about the tour. I want to go there, instead.” She would say no more. They would go where she wanted to go. It was her trip. The car drove on. She thought she saw them look at each other with questions on their faces, and so she closed her eyes. They were nice, and she cared for them in a way she could not have imagined, but they were no longer important.
It took them longer than she would have thought to get there, but then, she did not know where they were going. And perhaps anything would have felt like an eternity, or too soon.
Eventually, however, she was arriving
at a house that looked small and new and flat like a village hut. Everything here was flat, she thought as she looked around. There was so much space here. It was the opposite of New York. She paid the driver with a one-hundred-dollar bill, wrapped up in a roll in her purse. She refused change. She left the car with Satya and Rebecca still in it and walked up to the address. It matched the one on the envelope she’d received long ago, she knew. She rang the bell. It was Saturday. He would be there, she thought. He had to be.
Suddenly she wondered if he wasn’t. It had been so clear in her mind; she would ring the bell or knock and he would be there, the bastard who had taken her son, and she would know him by the sin in his eyes. But what to do if he wasn’t there? Wait for him? Sit on his lawn, or stand, planted like a tree? Her heart began to sink in her chest and she struggled to feel again the power she had had, the fury, the confidence in herself. Where was her beauty, that great and terrible thing she had seen only the night before? She had felt like a goddess. Now she was a demon, or worse, a ghost.
“What is happening, madam?” Satya stood behind her, with Rebecca next to him. Pival had forgotten anything existed outside of the man’s door.
She rang the bell again. The door opened.
27
When they were driving, Bhim would always ask him how he got anywhere, how he knew where things were in a city so large. Jake asked Bhim about Kolkata; didn’t he know his home? Bhim laughed. He had never driven before arriving in the United States, and he never looked out the windows of cabs at home. He had never seen most of the city. After learning that, Jake would take Bhim to places “just to see them.” They had driven all around Los Angeles together and Bhim never knew where he was. Jake didn’t mind; he enjoyed driving. He felt most calm behind the wheel of his car.