ATLAS of UNKNOWNS

by Tania James

  Fortunately Miss Schimpf does not seem bothered by the poster. She is a confident pixie, dressed in an out-of-fashion salwar, too short for the times, with a shawl bound about her neck like a noose. Her green glass bangles clink when she presses her hands together in Namaste. “What a lovely home,” she says to Ammachi, bowing low like a geisha girl. After a moment’s hesitation, Ammachi tries to bow even lower.

  Only then does Linno recognize the awe in Miss Schimpf’s gaze, unnaturally bright and bursting with empathy. It calls to mind a celebrity she once saw on the news, an American socialite crouched in the dim hut of a Rwandan family of eight. The socialite was on a two-day mission, her publicist said, “to draw attention to a growing crisis.” Miss Schimpf’s eyes move slowly over Ammachi’s cracked toes, the starved mattress across the daybed, the stuffed animals trapped in curio cabinets, and Linno’s knotted wrist, before returning to Ammachi’s elastic smile. Perhaps Miss Schimpf sees something authentic in the shabbiness, the possibility of what could be, a future for which she can pave the way. Unmet need is standing directly in front of her, in the form of a girl, her handicapped sister, and a virtually toothless old woman who pelts Miss Schimpf with her limited English: Havar you? … Es, es, Iyam fine.

  Miss Schimpf is ready to give.

  While Ammachi takes Miss Schimpf on a tour of the curio cabinets, Anju dumps spoon after spoon of Tang into a pot of water, clouds of orange swelling and settling to the bottom. “Stop it!” Linno whispers. “You want her to pee orange?”

  “Which cups, which cups?”

  Under normal circumstances, they would provide their guest with the fancy Pepsi glasses from Jilu Auntie, which read on the side: YOU GOT THE RIGHT ONE, BABY, UH HUH. But this time, Linno insists on using their humbler cups, primitive-looking and made of steel.

  Linno unscrews the Nescafé jar which has stored sugar for far longer than it has stored coffee, just as the apricot jam jar now preserves pickle, every vessel possessed of an afterlife. Through the jar’s glass, she can see a few ants tunneling paths; she spoons around them. A drowned ant floating on the surface of one’s tea is exactly the type of thing that might push a woman like Miss Schimpf from pity to revulsion.

  Anju whisks the tray of Tang into the living room. From the kitchen, Linno can hear Ammachi saying, “Velcome my house,” as she exits the room.

  As soon as Ammachi enters the kitchen, she lets loose a battery of whispered curses, lamenting her idiotic granddaughters for using the inferior drinking vessels, thereby compromising Anju’s chance at America. All because of a glass. The idiots.

  LINNO CAN HARDLY BELIEVE IT. Anju’s interview is going terribly wrong.

  From behind the curtain that separates sitting room from kitchen, Linno spies as Anju fumbles over her English, continually asking for questions to be repeated. Over and over, Miss Schimpf reassures her that everything is okay, that they are just having a chat. Is this the same girl who kept Linno awake at night, contentedly purring over her future American adventures? “Why are you so quiet?” Anju whispered. “You know I’ll come back for you.”

  “So what makes you different from all the other candidates out there?” Miss Schimpf asks. “What makes you stand out?”

  Anju crosses and uncrosses her ankles. An errant piece of string is caught in the hair at her temple, resembling a patch of premature gray among the black. Her voice issues forth in robotic monotone: “I have made excellent marks in all exams and have made top rank in all subjects such as in maths, English, all these things, and I also was winning many Bible Bowels throughout Kerala—”

  “Bowels?” Miss Schimpf repeats.

  “Bowels,” Anju insists.

  They go back and forth like this, until Miss Schimpf brightens and says, “Oh, you mean bowls.”

  “Yes, this, and also I am leader of my school’s band.”

  “It’s amazing how accomplished all of you are, the candidates I mean. We’ve got one boy in Malappuram who started his own Koran Competition.” Despite her smile, Miss Schimpf’s tentative tone expresses that the question has yet to be answered properly. “I guess what I mean is, what makes you unique? You know that word—‘unique’?”

  “You-neek?”

  “Yes! Exactly. What is it about your personality, not just your awards and your grades, that makes you unique, different, special?”

  A short but tortuous silence as Anju waits, leaning forward, straining her neck as if to peer into Miss Schimpf’s mouth, where the definition of “you-neek” lies. She sits back and takes a sip of her Tang, and then, the final blow.

  Just as she blurts the first words of her answer (“I think”), out comes a spray of spittled Tang onto the back of Miss Schimpf’s hand.

  “Oh!” Miss Schimpf gives a small, tense laugh. Anju mumbles “Sorry” over and over, attempting to wipe the Tang-laden hand with her own. “It’s all right, it’s all right. Let’s just take a deep breath …”

  Linno takes a deep breath. Last Sunday, she woke from a dream wherein Anju failed her interview, a dream whose aftertaste, in the morning, was strangely sweet. She both wanted Anju to go and wanted her to fail. Not only to fail, but to know the lasting heaviness of failure. Guilt-ridden, Linno spent an hour with Ammachi’s prayer book, summoning up long, sorrowful prayers, and for the rest of the day she went on with her chores, taking special care when ironing her sister’s school blouse.

  And now, her prayers have been answered with this.

  “Get away from there!” Ammachi whispers, then begs: “What is happening? What?”

  “They are almost finished,” Linno says.

  LINNO SITS on the back step just as Rappai’s rooster struts into the yard, eyeing her as if she poses some sort of challenge. She hates Rappai’s rooster. It boasts all the lesser qualities of its owner: knotty legs, a bulky middle, pecking after ladies in a way that sends them skittering off. Its feet are surprising—large, taloned, and violent—recalling the mightier pterodactyl from which it has descended, disappointingly, into Rappai’s yard.

  Rappai lives in the house behind theirs; she can see him gawking from his doorway, craning his neck. He wears his usual off-yellow mundu tied far too high above his knees, exposing thighs barely wider than his calves, and a towel over his shoulder. He works in construction, laying down brick and mortar for the new consumer store that is rising up in Baker Junction, and he walks as if he were still supporting an invisible basket of brick on his head.

  “Eddi, Linno!” he yells from the doorway. “Did she get it?”

  In an effort to quiet him, Linno shakes her head furiously, waves her hand No.

  “No?” She can see the dark shadow of Rappai’s mother inside the house, lying down on her mat, lifting onto an elbow to hear.

  With her finger to her lips, Linno makes a hissing noise. Finding this attractive, Rappai’s rooster swells its chest and shrieks while flapping its wings. She claps it away.

  Through the space between Rappai’s house and an adjacent banana tree, she can see another ola roof and another farther back, all of these and more homes making up Kumarakom, a village at the delta of the Meenachil River, a dot not even mapped on a globe, unlike New York, which seems almost a nation unto itself. The whole family was assuming that Anju would win the award and go traipsing off to that glittering place like Raj Kapoor, whistling with her stick and bundle as she sang her way into the Technicolor hills. Linno even allowed herself to fantasize that she might follow, one or two years from now. But true life, hers in particular, will require far less color, very little imagination.

  She wonders sometimes, not often, what it would be like to be married to a man like Rappai, someone whose matinal nose blowing can be heard from the next house over. Maybe after a while, the wife’s subtle disgust settles to the bottom of her being, like a sediment, allowing her to wash his underwear, hang his sheddi on the line, and spread Tiger Balm across the shallow basin of his chest without dread, without any feeling at all. It seems quite probable that were Linno ev
er to marry, her husband would have to be someone poor or ugly or both. Even then, she would have to supply a substantial dowry, though less than what would be required for someone not so poor and not so ugly.

  Who has the stomach for this kind of math, when the result—a vaguely repulsive housemate—amounts to so little?

  Three days before, Rappai’s mother hobbled over to Ammachi, who was hanging damp bedsheets on a laundry line. From the kitchen, Linno listened as Rappai’s mother said that she had suggested Linno to a woman whose brother was looking for a wife.

  “Is the brother old?” Ammachi asked, already used to and suspicious of these rare inquiries.

  “No,” said Rappai’s mother. “He is from a good family, very upright. A church man. Only thing—he is blind. Pagathi, not fully. He can see colors and shapes but someone has to help him with stairs.”

  “Hm,” Ammachi said, her lips tight.

  All this time, Rappai has been lingering in his doorway, arms crossed beneath his chest, gravely waiting for news. At last, he goes back inside, and his rooster, eyeing her for a moment, also loses interest and struts away.

  That Ammachi has not mentioned the blind man indicates that she has not dismissed the possibility.

  As it did that day, panic flaps in Linno’s chest.

  LINNO RETURNS to the kitchen to find that Ammachi has taken up the forbidden post by the doorway. Ammachi’s eyes are closed, head bowed as she listens through the curtain, gleaning what she can.

  “What’s happening?” Linno asks.

  Ammachi whirls around, caught but triumphant. “You were wrong. Something good has happened.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I can tell. Lots of ooooh and aaaah.”

  And though Ammachi flutters her hands to shoo Linno away, Linno spies through the space between the curtain and the door frame.

  The two cups of Tang have been abandoned on the table, still sweaty with condensation. Miss Schimpf is now standing in the middle of the room with her back to the kitchen. She is looking down at something cradled in her arms, speaking in a low murmur while Anju nods like a desperate, loyal child. Before Linno can make out their words, Ammachi pulls her from the curtain and forces her to sit at the kitchen table, beyond hearing, lest Miss Schimpf suspect them of being unmannered.

  WHEN THEY GATHER on the front steps to bid Miss Schimpf goodbye, Linno finds it strange that Anju is sweating so much. Dark splotches have appeared under the armpits of her white blouse, which will turn yellow if Linno does not wash it tonight. She nudges a handkerchief into Anju’s palm.

  Wiping her brow, Anju looks ahead without seeming to see the leaves, the moat, the bridge, or Miss Schimpf. Nothing at all. It is Linno who rushes over to help Miss Schimpf across the twin trunks of the bridge, her eyes on the water not two feet below her, trembling as though she were several stories higher. On the pretense of hospitality, Rappai and his mother come to watch as Linno leads her safely to the other bank, where a driver is leaning out of his auto-rickshaw.

  Before Miss Schimpf climbs into her seat, she embraces Linno and says, “Your sister truly has a gift.”

  TWO WEEKS LATER, the Malayala Manorama publishes a photograph of Anju receiving a plaque the size of a small window, with her name yet to be engraved. The article explains how she will be given the opportunity to study in New York City for the fall and spring semesters, at the Sitwell School, all expenses paid.

  In the picture, Miss Schimpf and Anju are underexposed, their faces smudgy with gray smiles, joined by the plaque between them. The paper quotes Miss Schimpf: “Anju is a true Renaissance woman: an excellent student, a leader, and a brilliant artist. I am especially thrilled about displaying her artwork during the Student Art Exhibition.”

  OVER THE NEXT TWO MONTHS, friends and acquaintances ask Linno about every detail of Anju’s itinerary, and jot down phone numbers of their second cousins’ neighbor’s niece who lives in New York and would be happy to help her. No trouble at all, they say, patting Linno on the back, quick to claim their New York connection. Anju is not the only one, ha ha.

  “We hear your sister is an artist now!” they say, smiling.

  “Of course,” Linno says, attempting an equal measure of joy, as though she were the one awarded. “You never know with her. She can do anything she wants to do.”

  Except draw.

  But there is hardly time to speak to Anju about such things. She is never at home, rushing around to obtain a student visa, a letter from this school to that embassy, transcripts of school records. Just yesterday, she and Melvin arrived home from an overnight trip to the U.S. Consulate in Chennai, another city that Linno has never visited. And even when Anju is home, she isn’t. She casts her eyes around the walls and ceilings, grazing over every possible object before fleetingly meeting Linno’s gaze.

  And Anju is not the only one. Even Melvin takes care not to mention the scholarship in Linno’s presence, except for one evening, when he returns home late from a celebratory night with his friends at the toddy shop. He sits in the good chair, eyes closed, as Linno puts a bowl of banana chips on the coffee table, something to soak up the liquor pooling in his empty stomach. The first drink always goes slowly, harmlessly, but Melvin downs every one after that until he begins to squint, as if caught in his own mental fog, which means that he has long lost count. He squints at the chips, dreamily surprised by their existence, then slowly his gaze swims up to her.

  “Abraham Saar says congratulations.”

  “Why?” she says sharply. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “To all of us.” He stares at the table, then abruptly straightens up. “There is good and there is bad, Linno. And then there is bad for good’s sake.”

  Linno encourages her father to eat some chips.

  Melvin selects a single chip and examines it before placing it between his molars. He crunches with concentration. “Your mother, she always wanted to go to New York. It was the one thing I couldn’t give her. That and a happy marriage.”

  “Did you have dinner?” Linno asks.

  Melvin looks at her. “She is doing this for you too.”

  “Who is doing what?”

  “She. Anju. This …” He shakes his head forcefully, deeply irritated. “This is for the best.”

  The word “this” he pronounces with eyes closed, whether from reverence or need of sleep, she cannot tell. Linno knows, has always known, the definition of “this.” She wants an admission from Ammachi or Melvin, both of whom have gone about the house maintaining the careful pretense that Anju’s newfound artistry is perfectly natural.

  With a hand pressed to the table, Melvin rises out of his incoherence and shuffles to the back of the house.

  Linno wades her fingers into the bowl of banana chips. Is this the moment when she should knock the bowl to the floor, drag Anju out of bed, call her thief? But her rage will not come. Instead, she feels a slow-growing sadness in the pit of her stomach which she has tried, time and again, to uproot or ignore. She collects the few crumbs from the table and takes the bowl to the kitchen.

  SITTING ON THE BACK STEP, Melvin thinks of what he wanted to explain to Linno, about an old friend known as Eastern Bobby. No richer or poorer than anyone else, Eastern Bobby had aspirations that began with a keen sense of destiny, a conviction that he had a starring role to play in the world. So he was disheartened at having to marry a woman double his heft; more than once his friends had asked him if his Dollie ever got tired of toting him around on her hip. But those same friends had no wives with visas, and it was Dollie’s visa that landed him in what he believed might be a dream destination: Normal, Illinois.

  On his first trip back from Normal, Eastern Bobby brought a film camera, a heavy, monstrous machine that he set up outside his parents’ home. He then ironed one of his grandfather’s mundas with a care he had never invested in his own clothes and nailed the munda to the side of the house. At night, he invited all his friends and neighbors to watch the projection. Melvin s
at back, his elbows digging into the hard dirt, listening to the symphony of crickets and camera noise beneath a crackling stretch of black. A huge, blurry eye burst onto the munda, watery and blinking, apocalyptic, but out of focus. More black. And then—Eastern Bobby’s top half appeared, his slight frame huge on the makeshift screen.

  “Namaskaram!” on-screen Eastern Bobby bellowed at the audience. “Thank you for coming!”

  On-screen Eastern Bobby waved the camera into the kitchen, while real-life Eastern Bobby watched with the cool appraisal of a film critic, frowning, his chin in his hand.

  The cameraman followed Eastern Bobby to the refrigerator. Eastern Bobby opened the door to reveal a giant jug of milk, a blue carton of twelve perfect eggs, a brick of yellow cheese, and a box with several sticks of butter. In the freezer: a slab of steak and a whole chicken, beheaded and plucked, sitting upright like the guest of honor.

  “He just bought all that food for show,” someone whispered.

  Another audience member disagreed. “Have you seen his wife?”

  The screening went on for an hour, beginning with bathroom and closet tours, and ending with greetings from various men and women whom Eastern Bobby had visited in Chicago, sending their best wishes to their relatives. Naming the relatives took up considerable time, and all the camera jostling made Melvin slightly nauseated, but still he watched the nouveau celebrities. Thrilled and sick, he imagined himself on-screen as well, with a fridge of his own full of milk and meat.

  This was during a simpler time, when he had only himself to place at the center of his fantasy home in Illinois, with all its wide-open space and stalks of nodding wheat, the Normal supermarkets big as amusement parks. And while on-screen Eastern Bobby pointed out the items in the fridge, Melvin noticed through the window behind him a few children playing. Black children, but still, when Melvin squinted, he could imagine that they were his own.

  THE DAY BEFORE Anju’s departure to New York falls on a Sunday, and despite the many minor tasks that have yet to be completed, the family attends Mass. It is only proper, Ammachi says, though even she harbors doubts about Anthony Achen’s proficiency as a priest. Anthony Achen has cultivated a roundish beard; its pure whiteness disagrees with his black eyebrows, fanning the general belief that he bleaches his beard in order to attain the semblance of divine wisdom. His sermons are lacking in that regard.