by Aimee E. Liu
Lawrence scanned the legalese. It was, on the face of it, straightforward. Only one statement caught his eye. It had been typed in as an addendum.
If the insured is found to have been missing for nine months, and all good-faith attempts to locate the insured have failed, then at the survivor’s request the Company will deliberate whether it is reasonable to conclude that the insured is dead and if so decided, full benefits will be payable. Such request should be directed to the Bethesda address listed below.
Lawrence heard a splash outside the window as Musai emptied his pail in the yard. The evening chatter of bicycle bells was reaching a fever pitch, and from the kitchen came Nagu’s voice softly berating the cook for some marginal offense. At the other end of the hallway Simon cajoled Kamla to sing with him “Three Blind Mice.”
“Nine months.” Joanna looked at him sharply. “He knew before he ever came to India that something like this—”
“Jo, you know as well as I, Aidan never wanted a desk job. He came here expecting to go out on assignment. Up into the war zone in Kashmir. To the Khyber Pass. Dangerous territory. No-man’s-land.”
She pulled away from him. “But what if he knew he was going to disappear? What if he planned this?”
“Insurance is only a precaution. It shows he loves you. It shows he’s responsible.”
But he couldn’t keep the doubt from his voice, and one look told him she heard it.
9
In late September an unseasonal heat wave swept over Delhi. The entire city slept outdoors, and the household on Ratendone Road was no exception. The servants arranged their charpoys in the driveway outside their quarters. The family took theirs to the roof. These nights Lawrence would stay through to morning. The children loved this, of course. As Joanna came up the stairwell, arms stretched around extra pillows, she could hear them crying out, “Scorpio!” “Cancer!” “Virgo!” “Orion!” It was a game that Lawrence had spun in the mountains, back at the start of the trek, when Kamla, in spite of her fledgling English, had bested Simon every night. Now, after a summer of practice with Ralph Milne, Simon was intent on reversing the score.
But the third night, as Joanna was about to step out onto the rooftop, she heard Lawrence counsel her son, “Waste of breath to compete with a woman smarter than you. Smart thing is to bring yourself up to snuff and climb along onto her team.” Then he sighed and clapped Simon on the back. “Enough now. Lie yourselves down, the both of you, get to sleep.”
The charpoys’ wooden frames creaked obediently. The children lapsed into silence. But Joanna hung back inside the stairwell. Lawrence’s words taunted her. Smart thing is to bring yourself up to snuff and climb along onto her team.
Could this have been what he himself was doing when he high-tailed up to Kashmir to help her search for Aidan? Had he used Kamla as his foil? Was it all some sort of scheme? What was Lawrence doing here…really?
The unexpected force of her suspicion hit her like a blow. A most unwelcome blow. The mystery of that insurance policy was making her paranoid! The real question wasn’t what Lawrence was doing, but what was she?
With vicious clarity she remembered another night—early March, more than six months ago now. Only six months ago. The temperature had shot up wildly through that late afternoon and evening. Of course, it was nothing like the coming heat of May or June, but this had been Joanna’s first taste of India’s summer. She’d been bewitched by the idea of sleeping on the roof ever since their October arrival in Delhi. In fact, this private enclosure with its waist-high parapet and pitched tile flooring was the main reason she and Aidan chose this house. She’d had Nagu move up the wood-frame charpoys as soon as the dry chill of winter eased off. Then she’d waited for the first onset of true warmth with a sense of anticipation she knew would wilt the instant summer descended in earnest. But that March night she put Simon to sleep in his room and dismissed the servants early. Then she made Aidan close his eyes and led him up this same dark stairway.
“Now we’re really here,” she said tugging him across the roof terrace and down onto the big double charpoy.
“What makes you so sure?” He’d played his fingers up the back of her neck, refusing to open his eyes. “It feels the same to me.”
“No.” She leaned into him impatiently. “Look! Look at this sky, this moon. It’s a mango. And listen. You can hear the wheels of the bullock carts, tonga horns, bicycle bells, and there—hear that jackal? No other sky has stars like these. They’re the color of marigolds. You just won’t admit it, you cynic. This is India. And it’s wonderful and awful and I love it, and I’ll make you love it, too, if it’s the last thing I do.”
“I love you,” he said, stunning her. Then he turned her head in a single movement and pulled her into a kiss, which lasted, it seemed in retrospect, the full length of the night. Later, when she ran her hands over his back and buttocks, she could feel the marks the charpoy webbing had made in his otherwise sleek skin. “You have them, too,” he’d said and traced the grid of indentations along her arms and hip, the side of her left breast. It was as though they were bound together by a contraction of longitude and latitude.
What had become of that loving young wife, and where had her capacity for happiness—and trust—disappeared? Climb along onto her team. What team was that, she wondered, and what game were they playing? That night with Aidan she had not yet met Lawrence, and so much had happened since. Comparisons were futile and cruel. But she stopped short of assuring herself that if Aidan reappeared right now he would find her blameless.
He is not going to appear right now. The words banged inside her skull. Years are passing each day that goes by. He’s not going to reappear. Ever.
Those words drove her from her hiding place. They propelled her past Lawrence as he stood beside the low block parapet. They burned her lips as she kissed Simon, her fingertips as she stroked Kamla’s hair. They stung her eyes as she lay down on that same double charpoy. They were words she needed to tell herself, the way a tightrope walker needs to know the exact play of swing and tension that would plunge her to her death. But she could still smell Aidan as he’d smelled that night, every night. A smell like warm sage.
The wood frame and jute strings creaked as Lawrence lay down beside her. He turned onto his side, placed a hand on her belly. She could feel the effort with which he held his arm so the full weight of the limb would not fall on her. The way Aidan had touched her when she first told him she was pregnant with Simon. Aidan had run his hand over her abdomen as if to check the truth of her claim, and when he was finally convinced, he hardly spoke to her for two weeks. When he did, his tone was as distant as she’d ever heard him. After those two weeks were past, he admitted he was worried—money, the war, her health, the idea of parenthood—but now he became extraordinarily attentive, even surprising her with impromptu purchases of baby clothes, a cradle, and antique high chair. When Simon was born, Aidan exulted—filling her hospital room with massive bouquets of daffodils and white roses.
Lawrence smelled like dark, loamy earth.
At length he removed his arm.
Ten minutes or four hours later—who knew?—he was whispering in her ear. “You awake?”
“No.” She opened her eyes. He was standing over her, lifting her hand.
“Come here.”
“What is it?” Against the moonless night Lawrence’s pale shirt seemed to float above the black of his trousers. Her own loose white kurta made her feel equally ghostly. She wished he would slap her to prove they both were real.
Instead he drew her to the parapet and pointed across the desert. Where they stood the air was hot and still, the sky variegated as onyx, but in the distance that same sky turned opaque, starless, and, though she could only sense this dimly, it seemed to be roiling.
“Listen,” he said.
“It’s too late for dust storms,” she protested vaguely, but she could hear the signal pulsing like a long lamenting sigh.
“It’s a raga
.” He placed his hand on the small of her back. “With each repetition you can hear it building, coming closer and gathering strength.”
“Sounds like it’ll be on top of us soon.”
“Sometimes it changes course.” He released her. “Or weakens unexpectedly.”
“Or simply stops,” she said.
“I don’t think that’s going to happen tonight.” She was conscious of his voice inside her own head.
“What should we do?” she asked.
He bent down and kissed her roughly. “Enjoy it.”
Then he strode over to Simon and shook him by the shoulder. “Wake up!” he scolded, laughing. “Kammy, you, too! Dust storm’s coming.”
The children bolted upright and in the next seconds, in a frenzy of enthusiastic alarm, the four of them whipped off their bedding and pillows and tossed them down the stairs. Nagu and the sweeper came racing from the servants’ quarters. They helped Joanna and Lawrence flip the charpoys so they wouldn’t blow away. Then they all followed the children into the house, bolting the door to the roof behind them, and ran from room to room slamming shutters, wedging rags into cracks beneath the windows.
Ten minutes later the storm was upon them, wailing and whirling sand and debris and knocking out the power. In the nursery Lawrence led the children through several raucous choruses of “Inky-Dinky Parlez-vous,” “Waltzing Matilda,” and “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” until they sank back in happy exhaustion.
Then he and Joanna crept down the hall, the storm’s raga their camouflage.
The next day she officially returned to Safe Haven.
Vijay spotted her as she entered the courtyard and immediately sent up a cry. “Mem has returned! Our beloved Mem is back!” He hurried forth beaming, fingertips to forehead. “Namaste!” he cried. “Welcome home!”
She was surprised that he looked the same—weak-shouldered, young, eager, black hair shaggy about the ears, arms spindly where they emerged from short sleeves, belt cinched to hold up too-big trousers. It seemed inconceivable that he hadn’t changed.
But the old sweeper, Banda, appeared the same, too. He promptly threw himself at Joanna’s feet so that she had to lift him by the shoulders, scolding and reassuring that yes, she was still the same memsahib who would not tolerate such humiliating customs. To Banda’s credit, he gave her a wink. Just testing, he seemed to say.
Hari had warned her the place was disheveled and underpopulated. Vijay and the elderly ayah, Suman, had done their best, but five girls had run away since May, and unlike the staff, those who remained looked to have aged more than just a few months. Their faces were etched with resignation and boredom. Their hair and clothes were unkempt, and they regarded Joanna as if they had never seen her before, though all had been here when she left.
She found liquor bottles now hidden among the girls’ piles of screen magazines. The books Joanna had ordered from the States moldered in the hall. The four donated sewing machines were rusting inside their housings, and the buildup of grease was so thick in the kitchen that tatters of flyaway newspaper stuck to the walls. Vijay, tagging behind her like a puppy, seemed unaware of the shambles this place had become under his governance.
“Any visits from the police in my absence?” she asked as they entered the dumping ground of papers and files that her office had become.
“Only once,” Vijay said, “a few days after you left. They roughed things up a bit, claimed to be searching for a thief who had disguised herself as a prostitute. They took two girls away saying we lacked proper paperwork to keep them here. It was most terrible, Mem. All they wanted was a bribe, but I had no money to pay them. And who knows, perhaps that was just as well. If I had paid them off they might have returned, but they have not been back since.”
“And how are your studies coming?” Joanna asked to change the subject.
“Oh, most excellently,” he replied, grinning broadly. “I am passing the first round of exams, and Mr. Kaushal has informed me that he will recommend me to the Social Welfare Committee for an advocacy position as soon as I pass my finals. In this case, I would continue working directly with you, Mem. This would be my greatest pleasure. I am assuming, of course, that you have returned to us for good.”
Joanna sighed. “I hope not.” But at this, Vijay’s face crumpled with such guileless dismay that she was forced to take his hand. She rubbed it briskly between her own. “I only meant that I hope far greater pleasures await you in your life. Of course I look forward to working with you, Vijay. And I thank you for taking good care of Salamat Jannat in my absence.”
His dark eyes widened suddenly, as if he had just remembered. “Your journey was successful, then?”
Joanna looked over his shoulder at the array of jaded, only mildly curious faces peering in from the veranda. She caught the ayah’s covert glance, watched the sweeper busily whistling across the courtyard as he crouched over his half-length broom. It dawned on her that not one person here had even a remote idea where she had been these past five months or why she had gone away. All they knew was that she’d returned to pick up where she left off.
“Yes,” she lied to Vijay with an abandon that felt dangerously uplifting. “My journey was a big success.”
Chapter 9
1
THE WINTER MONTHS THAT FIRST YEAR came and went in a blur. We were all so busy, so happy together. At Christmas Simon and I decorated a potted fir tree with tinsel and tissue paper snowflakes, and Lawrence bought us each a brand-new Raleigh bicycle. I performed in the school pageant as an angel and Simon as a shepherd, and later we caroled under a round desert moon. I thought, this is what it must mean to actually be firenghi.
On regular days Mem drove us to school, then went on to work at Salamat Jannat. In the afternoons usually Lawrence picked us up in a cycle rickshaw. We would go for a picnic in Lodi Gardens or visit Humayun’s Tomb, or we would explore the shops of Connaught Place, listen to records, or stop for a sweet. Sometimes Lawrence would bring us along when he interviewed someone for his book.
I was impressed by how many interviews his book seemed to require and that his subjects seemed as varied as the children at our school. Though most were men, they were rich and poor, brown and yellow and white. But Simon and I never actually heard what was discussed because Lawrence usually held the meetings at one of the big hotels, and while the men talked, we were sent off to explore the lobby shops and grounds.
My favorite stop was Govinda’s Bookstore in the Imperial Hotel. We would lose ourselves there for hours, and the young clerk never bothered us. With the money Lawrence gave us, we bought so many stories. Later, after Mem came home from work and we all had supper together, she would sit us down on the big sofa, Simon to one side of her, I to the other, with Lawrence across as our audience, and together we would read these stories aloud. Mary Poppins, Robin Hood, Robinson Crusoe. Line by line I discovered the streets of London, the forests of Sherwood, how it might feel to stand on the deck of a ship and gaze out across a glittering sea.
I thought at first that these stories were magical, like the tales of the gods my sister Mira once told me. But no, Mem promised, these places were real. Yes, Simon agreed, he and Mem had crossed just such seas on their way to India. Only, their ship had its own library, tennis court, game rooms, even a swimming pool that floated above the ocean. “And,” he said, “when we go home you’ll see for your very own self.”
I looked up at Mem to see if Simon was telling the truth, but she leaned forward so abruptly that her hair swung down blocking her face. And then before I could ask her, Lawrence suggested we sing a song.
“Waltzing Matilda!” Simon cried, and that was the end of that.
When Mem used the word home these days she most often was talking about Safe Haven. Each night over supper she would tell us what changes she’d made there. How proud she was of her “new girls.” What progress she’d made just in the few months since her return. It seemed that her first act had been to hire a husband-an
d-wife cook-and-ayah team who slept on the premises. Then, through the Catholic charities, she found two lower-caste teachers who were willing to come part-time. By February four girls had qualified for something she called “elevation.”
Now, Simon had never been to the rescue home, and I had not been back since Lawrence stole me away, but Mem decided we all should come to witness this special occasion.
“You sure that’s a good idea?” Lawrence asked.
“Of course it is,” Mem replied. “The girls are always asking about Simon. And Kamla, aren’t you curious to see the old place?”
“They’ll wonder why you don’t adopt them all,” Lawrence said before I could answer.
“I have adopted them all, in a way. And I think Kamla will inspire them.”
Simon’s eye rolling only made her more determined, and although Lawrence still didn’t like the idea, he said nothing more. As for me, I was not particularly curious, but I didn’t mind Mem showing me off. I didn’t mind that at all.
My first surprise was the uniforms. Soft pink salwar kameez with navy trim.
“There was a fight over some clothing,” Mem explained. She touched the shoulder of a girl several years older than I and adjusted the navy dupatta over her shoulder. The girl frowned at me. “Pretty, don’t you think? I keep their other clothes and all jewelry in the safe as long as they’re here. That way there’s no reason to fight.”
She also had taught the inmates to vote. In this way, she said, the majority ruled what games were played each evening, and which girl would serve as house leader each month. “Some rules, of course, are not open to debate. No makeup. No liquor or cigarettes, and bhang—or any drug—puts you back on the street.”
“You run a hard bargain,” Lawrence said.
“It’s for their own good!”
“I’m not saying it’s not. Must take some adjustment, that’s all.”