“I wish I could sew,” Alicia says one afternoon while Leon is away in Brickaville. “Did someone teach you?”
I say my mother taught me to use a sewing machine in middle school. I describe how I’d had to sew my prom dress because there was no money to pay for a real one.
“You and your mom are tight?”
“Not right now.” There’s an awkward pause, but I say it anyway. “She wasn’t such a big fan of me coming here, giving up my job, my independence.”
“Neither were our parents,” Alicia gestures at Brian, who is reading on the divan. “Mine were hoping I would have two point five kids and settle down in the suburbs. But I love it here so much.”
Brian glances up. “Mine want me to be happy, but I think they thought I’d be doing something more lucrative with an engineering degree.”
“Tell me about it,” I say. “My dad grew up in a village with too many siblings, and his mother was constantly strapped for money to feed all the kids. He made me start working at age fifteen, hoping to make sure I wasn’t ever dependent on a man. He was so disappointed in me for choosing to do this.”
For a moment, I’m scared I revealed too much and embarrassed them with yet another shameful fact about myself, yet another stupid faux pas—I reveal myself, which is to say I blunder so frequently out here. But Alicia says her Midwestern mother is one of ten siblings and talks about how easy it is to get lost in a large family and to feel like you want to do things differently in your own family. “Yet somehow things turn out the same.” Brian chimes in with a story about the Irish potato famine, and how the stress of poverty can pass from generation to generation, even after the threat of starvation subsides. Maybe it’s epigenetics, I suggest, and they nod, like maybe they agree with me, and we chat for a minute about how confusing it is to tease out what’s caused by nurture or nature. Soon, Alicia resumes her typing, and Brian goes back to his book and the afternoon disappears in the now companionable sound of hunting and pecking, the sewing machine’s whir.
***
One morning, Solomon and I are roaming the woods to gather Howl’s food when I make an offhand, disloyal remark about Leon. I know I’ve started to make these remarks a little too often, but I can’t help myself. I feel guilty, but increasingly, I also feel justified in my distaste for Leon, even if he’s the only reason I’m here. “He doesn’t really understand why the villagers might see him a certain way.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, he doesn’t give much thought to colonialism.”
Solomon kicks a pebble. “Do you?”
“Me? I think about it all the time.” My cheeks get hot, and I gather a handful of leaves so he won’t see.
“But you are American in many ways.”
“Not at all. Nobody else thinks so. Why do you say that?”
Anger streaks across Solomon’s face. “Like with your lemur. You took it as a pet, even though I told you it’s illegal. This is not how Malagasy people behave. This is an American thing to do, isn’t it?”
“But he was hurt,” I protest. “He would have died! I was saving him.”
“You ignore the traditions of the local people in favor of what you think should be done—I tell you it is bad for that indri, for our way of life, but you insist that your way is the only right way. This is what imperialists do . . . and I care for this job, but you and Leon are barely paying those boys anything. Oh, they appreciate the pay, I’m sure! But you can’t say you are different than Leon when you are making money from our land and barely putting it back.”
Solomon sees me as an outsider, as an enemy, as a cog in the very wheel I’d come here to escape. I don’t know how to respond to his accusations and fall silent in shame and anger. Am I going to give up Howl? No; I’ve resolved to keep him. So anything I say will be inadequate to fix this new ugliness in our relationship. And who is Solomon to tell me about Howl, anyway? He’s the only creature I feel close to. I cross my arms. “I don’t feel powerful enough to be what you say I am.”
“How you feel about it doesn’t change what is.”
Some part of me believes he is right. The rosewoods loom overhead, impossibly tall. The wild forest shudders.
***
Within a few weeks, the vanilla pods, dark green and oblong, tremble on the vines. “You’ve got to brand the pods,” Brian insists. He demonstrates by pricking a pod with a piece of bamboo, creating a kind of Braille on its surface. “There was a village a few miles away where they didn’t bother, and bandits came by. They depleted the crop.”
“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” Leon says. “We should focus on expansion, not protecting ourselves against some imaginary threat.” I sigh and look at him pointedly, but he ignores me.
***
One night, Leon clears his throat, shuts his book on curing techniques, and turns to me. “We aren’t much like each other, are we?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, we see our lives here in completely different ways.”
Taken aback, I let my book drop.
Leon continues, “Even back in San Francisco, we knew it would be a big risk coming here together. Starting this whole new life.”
“It was an adventure.” For a moment, I think he’s about to dump me, and I’m surprised to realize the thought worries me. But I look up, and there’s a certain gentleness, a summer in his eyes.
“Of course, but it’s frightening for you, too, isn’t it? To depend on someone like me so completely? I’m more money-minded. And I can be kind of self-involved and egotistical and pigheaded. Or what was it you called me? A robber baron! Well, I’m sorry for that.”
I wonder if Alicia and Brian have revealed something of our conversations, but Leon takes my hands in his with the earnestness of someone who wants to truly understand me. Where this insight has sprung from doesn’t matter, at least not in this moment.
“I would do it again.” I fall into him.
As our breath mingles, I feel myself sinking into his recognition, the sweet, shimmering mirage of being seen, of being exciting, of going back to the way I’d felt those first few elaborate dates in San Francisco, before I’d started to feel inadequate and ashamed, before I’d started to feel like a ghost, an idea.
***
One July at daybreak, we erect my set design in the old colonial marketplace building. The village president is thrilled the building is finally being put to use. The players, a mix of teenagers and adults, arrive in a haze of excitement. They try on their final costumes, squeezing into tight mid-century British attire.
As the drama begins, Howl is sitting on my lap. Solomon plays the most critical role, the part of the judge. When Howl watches the scene where the group finds the judge dead—executed by an unknown murderer, dressed up in judicial robes—he bounds onstage. Squeaking, he seizes Solomon’s face between his black paws. Solomon extricates himself and tries to resume his death stare, but Howl jumps on his head, steals his silver-grey wig, and dashes around the stage. The audience whoops and laughs. The atmosphere of menacing gloom is ruined. I suppress a laugh.
Leon storms onstage. “Tarini! Grab that fucking lemur!” His voice shakes with rage as he continues. I chase Howl. The laughter grows deafening. Finally, the lemur pivots, wig in mouth, and leaps into my outstretched arms.
“Désolé a propos de ça,” Leon says to the audience. He whispers to me, “Get him out of here.”
Afterward, the actors and the audience join around a long table at a wealthy villager’s house to eat. Leon sits down across from me with his plate of food, leaning forward with an accusation. “Why’d you have to bring him? You couldn’t leave him home even for a few hours, could you?”
“I didn’t want to leave him alone there in the house for so long.”
“You wanted this to fail. You were against the play from the start.”
“You guys worked so hard. Why would I want it to fail?”
“I want that lemur gone.” Leon wags a finger at Howl, w
ho shrinks back against my breasts.
“It wasn’t so bad.” Alicia slides into the seat next to me. “He’s a wild animal, it was natural for him to be confused.”
“Are you kidding me? It was your script—you should be more upset than anyone.”
Alicia shrugs. “It was meant to be fun.”
Leon shakes his head.
***
The following sunrise, I’m jogging hard to forget the mayhem of the day before, when I notice something is different. The vines are naked, shorn of ripened pods. At first, I think I must be wrong, but as I run between the dim rows, the rising sun illuminates the empty vines. I race back to the house, anxious and disbelieving.
When I tell Leon, my voice tentative, open to the possibility I’ve hallucinated this loss, he streaks out of the villa. Not sure what to do, I fetch bath water from the well. From a distance, I can hear his cries of anguish. I take my bath in the barrel and try not to panic.
The kids show up at their usual time, but I tell them they should go.
As they turn to shuffle out, Leon storms into the villa. “Do you know who did this?”
“No sir,” they answer.
“You must know. Was it Solomon?”
“They don’t know.” Dread blossoms inside me. “Look at their faces. They worked as hard as we did. They were looking forward to a bonus from the sale. And Solomon is our friend.”
Leon grabs the ebony figurine of a woman and throws her across the room, where she smashes into a ceramic vase. Shattered pieces of the vase fly everywhere, but the figurine remains hard and intact and unyielding. Howl jumps into my arms.
The boys flee.
“Solomon knew, the boys knew, we had no guard,” Leon says. “We hadn’t finished marking the beans. They resent us, you know. They really do.”
I’m surprised Leon has considered their feelings at all. “I promise you, they don’t.”
“What the fuck? Are you defending him? It’s outrageous! I’ve lost everything, and your only concern is them.”
“Maybe we deserved it. We should have gotten guards, like he said.”
Leon looks at me with so much hot contempt in his eyes, I feel I might burn. “We? We? What have you contributed? You’re a freeloader. Practically a squatter. Come to think of it … were you in on this too? Did you steal from me?”
“No.” In spite of everything, I’m shattered.
“I want you gone. Get the fuck out.” Leon stomps out of the villa.
Hours pass. I see Leon wandering among the ravaged vines, shouting and distraught, a madman. He paid significant sums for the farm, but the financial loss is less significant than the loss of time—years of work gone, our lush and voluptuous dreams ripped from the vines without a single return. Finally, he walks to the car in a determined huff, his body leaning forward, pushing against some invisible wind.
I hunch forward on the divan, my nose against the glass of the window. I strain to see the car as it heads down the hill. It isn’t wise for Leon to talk to Solomon in this state—I’m sure this is where he’s going. My whole body is shaking, and I can’t seem to stop it. Perhaps I should chase him, perhaps I should say something, but there’s nothing more I can say, is there? Perhaps I’ll pack my bags and find a way to Tana alone. I’ll hitchhike.
An hour later as I’m stuffing clothes into my suitcase, heavy with disappointment, I smell something acrid. The air is smoky. I check the stove, but it is off. I walk outside to look beyond the escarpment at the plumes of black smoke. I jog toward the precipice. Shading my eyes from the sun, I squint over the vista I love. All this time, its titanic beauty has made everything seem possible, and in this moment, it’s no different. What should have been impossible has happened.
The village is burning. Long red houses with fine white trim set ablaze. From such great heights, it is horrifyingly gorgeous, how the orange flames caress the painted wood, and the smoke swirls into the sky, nearly obscuring the tremendous clouds.
I sprint to the road with Howl. Past rice paddies. Past two men peeling cinnamon from trees. I veer downhill to the shortcut. I’m not sure what to do, but something has cracked open inside me. I must do something. Halfway downhill—my nostrils flaring, my lungs expanding—I can smell everything in the rainforest with preternatural acuity. Wild apples, acacias, lichen, black-scarred clearings for farming rice. My nostrils flare. I brush a hand across my face—the softest fur. Climb higher, farther from the red soil leeching into creek water, ever closer to the scorching white noon light.
Howl and I follow running blood through shadows. Yaw around a rosewood, tear to the end of one bough before swerving onto the next, and the next, driving ever higher, ever closer to the village, nearly flying. As we swing through branches, approaching the gyre of smoke and flame, an aria stirs within my ribcage.
Watching flames destroy the land I love, it is Howl, my familiar, my double, my twin, who starts to sing for the first time. The sound escaping his body is magnificent and otherworldly, telling of ghosts and cities and sirens—an unyielding green scream.
By her twenties, Susannah had come to believe that pain was a kind of currency. Everyone had something they always wanted to do someday, and most people were willing to pay for their dreams with pain. Once she realized this truth, she saw it everywhere, even in the places she’d least expect.
When she’d been shunned by both the white and the Tamil Brahmin kids in her class, the elementary school librarian, an elderly black woman wearing chunky jewelry and a heady violet perfume, had given her The Velveteen Rabbit, and it had quickly become her favorite book. She believed it was about how love made you real. But twenty years later, when she read the book to her babysitting charge, she realized that the stuffed rabbit became real not so much because of the power of a small boy’s love, but because, after he endured the pain of being taunted by real rabbits and the small boy abandoned him, a fairy recognized he deserved to be real. So it was the pain perhaps, and not love, that served as a catalyst.
For Drew, the dream was to become a successful marijuana farmer, and it was only late in their relationship that she understood he would sacrifice everything to it.
***
It was 2004, and they’d been together for three years. The grow room had a wild smell, a forbidding swirl of marijuana, fresh paint, and animal droppings. Drew was down on his hands and knees tending to the girls in their white buckets, slowly clipping their sticky leaves with great concentration.
“Done yet?”
“No. This needs to be done right and doing things right takes time.” He wiped sweat from his freckled brow. A dealer Drew had met just days before wanted to pick up a dozen dime bags that night.
“You’re using a shit ton of energy with these lights.”
“Don’t use some environmental excuse to nag me.”
“They’re waiting for us. They don’t like when we’re late.” Trying not to beg, Susannah added, “Come on! It’s a free meal.”
“Look, I already told you I would go, so I’ll go. But I gotta get this done first.” He continued to clip silently. His chestnut brown hair and tiny hoop earrings gleamed. The halide light bounced hot and white off the dimpled silver foil tacked against the wall.
Forty minutes later, Susannah hurried into the dimly lit Thai restaurant, alone and irritated. Her parents were already sitting at a table for four, and they didn’t remark on Drew’s absence at first. But when they finished ordering, pink linen napkins drooping on their laps like injured birds, her father said, “So Drew couldn’t make it, huh?”
“No, he was busy with a project.”
“Isn’t he unemployed?”
“Yes. But he has projects.”
Her father raised his eyebrows.
“I don’t know why you can’t understand that,” she said.
“We’d like to talk to you.”
“We’re worried.” Her mother fidgeted with her napkin and adjusted her batik tunic.
“How serious is this
relationship?” her father asked, the dark orange-pink slivers of his papaya salad hovering near his mouth.
“Serious,” she said, meeting his gaze.
“Like marriage-serious?” Above them by the wall, a giant gold Buddha loomed over their conversation.
“Who knows,” Susannah said. The waiter set tom kha and pad thai noodles on the table. She shoveled the noodles into her mouth—hot and sweet. They felt like slippery worms on her tongue. Her parents disapproved so strongly that there was no room to question her relationship with Drew at all.
“Because he doesn’t act like it.” Her father’s elbows were on the tablecloth and his fingers were clenching and unclenching. Her heart tightened in response to his worry. They had married outside their castes and against their own parents’ wishes, but they thought they were entitled to an opinion about her life anyway. In her purse, at that moment, there was a wedding photo of them that she had taken from their photo album when she went to college and carried around like a sentimental fool to remind herself how lucky she was that they had defied tradition. A bare-bones ceremony, her mother wearing an ordinary sari—as if it were any old day—almost no guests, none of the usual family support and pomp that attended Indian weddings. “He doesn’t act like it’s serious, and if someone isn’t serious, you really should move on.”
“And he smokes,” her mother said, dabbing white soup from her lips with a napkin. She was referring to cigarettes, not marijuana—drugs of any kind would have been a whole other issue. “He’s not very smart, is he? He didn’t go to college. He doesn’t care about his health. You can’t have a family with someone like that.”
“I’m not any better than him.”
Toward the end of the meal, Susannah’s father announced in a more cheerful tone, “I’ve been watching The Bachelor.”
Susannah snorted. The reality show where one relentlessly boring white man was pursued by a bevy of shiny, hopeful girls that usually included at least one sociopath. Her father continued. “And it seems to me that American men are not looking for a commitment with girls who just hang all over them. I mean, it’s disgusting, the way these American girls just throw themselves on this one guy. I just don’t want you to be like those girls.”
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