ATLAS of UNKNOWNS

by Tania James

  In that moment, the world was in perfect balance, undisturbed. Bird’s sense of smell blossomed briefly so that she could pick apart the layered air—the dull sweat, the sultry perfumes, the sprays and Vaselines, Gracie’s breath. Bird felt the shape of her friend curled into her chest.

  Bird opened her eyes to the sloping curvature of Gracie’s neck, where she could distinguish the finest layer of down. Her own nose was not more than two inches from that shallow. Bird lowered her head and rested her lips, briefly, in that spot. The earth did not shudder. In fact, it was the world beyond these walls that had suddenly dissolved, along with the man Gracie would marry and the sons she would mother, the houses she would have, and time itself. There was only that fine, soft shallow which Bird met once again, for the last time, feeling Gracie’s breath flowing calmly through her throat.

  There was a noise at the door. Gracie sat up. Sharply, she called out: “Who is it?”

  Someone had seen. This much Bird knew. She could not have imagined, then, that the someone was Abraham, with flowers in hand, that he had lingered and watched until, startled by his own sound, he hurried away with his heart full of turmoil and wonder. And what had he seen? An embrace, a kiss, which led him to form a story of seduction and sin, so that when he went to Gracie’s father the next day, he painted a picture much closer to what he believed than what he had seen.

  But now, in the dressing room, Bird could not help but lie, if only to reach for a moment lost. “It was nothing,” she said.

  At last Gracie looked back at Bird and smiled the kind of smile that was tossed off at a glance, brisk and clean. The kind of smile that tidied things up, that took a step back. Gracie slid off the counter and moved to the door.

  “We should join the others,” she said.

  For years, Bird would remember Gracie disappearing through the door, and she would imagine any number of ways that Gracie could have turned, could have come back inside and stayed for longer with her head on Bird’s shoulder, forever ignorant of the world pressing in on them, hovering from the doorway, watching.

  2.

  HAFOOR IS THRILLED at the prospect of having the Apsara Salon featured in a full-length documentary about ethnic beauty salons, but he demands a day’s notice for the shoot so that he can “prepare.” Rohit warned Anju not to confess the true topic of the film while he, in turn, promised not to disclose the name of the salon.

  To Ghafoor, Anju tries to explain what Rohit once told her about the editing process, how all the many hours of shooting must be condensed into a ninety-minute dramatic arc, one that will not necessarily include the Apsara Salon. Ghafoor laughs away her warnings. “Well then, Miss George Lucas, we will have to do our level best.”

  Over the phone, Ghafoor and Rohit settle on a Wednesday shoot, but after Ghafoor hangs up, Bird complains of a burgeoning ache in her stomach. “My appendix,” she tells him.

  “Are you going to the hospital?” he asks.

  She manages to wince and shake her head at the same time. “Could be appendix. Could be something else. I’ll wait it out at home.”

  And while normally Ghafoor interrogates all sick leaves, today he says, “Okay, see you Friday.” He has known Bird long enough to know that she is faking it, that she hates cameras as much as she hates the bearded ladies who come in expecting a face lift from a simple threading session. But he cannot be bothered with Bird’s negative energy, nor does he want an invalid shuffling up and down the aisles, hands on her belly; if he wanted that, he would’ve invited his mother. No, the Apsara Salon must exude cool and comfort, and the employees must be neat, well-chappaled professionals, as close to pretty as possible.

  At the cash register, Ghafoor thumbs through his shoe box of cassette tapes, trying to decide whether old Bollywood music or carnatic music will be appropriate to set the mood. Powder suggests her own bhangrareggaeton remix tape courtesy of DJ Kaur, which he vetoes by ignoring her.

  “Rohit will ask you to turn the music off,” Anju says, recalling one instance when he roamed Bird’s apartment with his headphones on, searching for the vague sonar hum that was ruining the shoot. When finally he concluded that it was the neighbor’s music, he knocked on the suspect’s door, to Anju’s horror, and asked Mrs. Ortiz to turn off her radio for the next thirty minutes. The solely Spanish-speaking Mrs. Ortiz nodded, closed her door, and turned up the radio.

  “Rohit is his name?” Nandi asks, combing the finished eyebrows of her client, who is gripping the arms of her chair as if it might launch her out. “You know this man?”

  “He is not a man,” Anju says quickly. “He is student only.”

  “How did you meet him?” Lipi asks.

  “At a social function.” For the past six months of her employment, she has kept her personal life as shrouded as possible, which usually means listening to other people’s stories and contributing very little of her own. “In the park. A church function in the park.”

  The other stylists seem doubtful.

  “Enough dillying and dallying,” Ghafoor says. He tells Powder to buy some flowers tomorrow morning, before work. “Cheap and colorful. Now who is going to dye my mustache?”

  Just then a mother and her teenage daughter walk through the door, faces that Anju does not recognize. The mother looks around, unsure, while the girl gnaws on her fingernails. “May I help you?” Anju asks.

  “I would like brow and lip threading. And she,” the mother glances back at her daughter, lowering her voice, “wants the bikini wax for some reason, godknowswhat. She says swimming, but I tell you, children are crazy these days—”

  “Mom,” the girl says. “It is for swimming. I swim. God.”

  Anju seats the mother with Lipi and guides the girl toward the back. She has had several girls like this, those who claim the same official alibi—swimming—and who demand the kind of waxing that Anju has unofficially termed the Eve.

  “Really?” Lipi asks, after the girl and her mother leave. “At her age?”

  Anju shrugs, expertly pulling off her gloves. “Not even a fig leaf.”

  ANJU CANNOT BLAME Ghafoor for ecstatically assuming that the salon will appear in the film. She herself had a difficult time understanding that the past two months of shooting, from February to March, would mostly be discarded on what Rohit calls “the cutting room floor.” It never occurred to her what it meant to condense so much time in such a way, until Rohit showed her a scene that he had edited on his computer, from the first time they met for dinner at the Solankis’ home.

  What Anju remembered as lasting two hours had been chopped down to six minutes. The discussion was not just shortened but shaped beyond recognition, airbrushed and paled to a bleak semblance of its previous self. In the scene when Rohit announced to his parents that he was going to be a filmmaker, the subsequent shot showed Mr. Solanki refilling his glass of wine and giving his wife a look that, after any other shot, could have conveyed his curiosity or indigestion, but its placement after Rohit’s announcement sent the story in a different direction than Anju remembered. And as well, there were many close-up shots of Mr. Solanki pouring red wine into his glass, more than Anju remembered having occurred in so short a space of time. Gone was the discussion about Rohit’s supposed gayness, and Mrs. Solanki correcting Mr. Solanki’s grammatical usage of “gay.” Instead, the scene clumsily jumped to Anju asking Rohit questions about his film, and Rohit answering that he didn’t know what exactly the film would be about, a much more reticent answer than the one Anju recalled. Cut to: Mr. Solanki refreshing his glass yet again, before adding, “Why don’t you finish a film? Now that would be a revolution.”

  This Mr. Solanki was not Mr. Solanki. This Solanki was mean and abrupt and alcoholic, shooting stiff looks at a soft-spoken wife who, likewise, was wholly unlike the version Anju knew. They had been edited into neater, simpler paper-doll versions of parents, dressed in outfits of frustration by the son who wielded the narrative scissors. And the problem lay in this—that time, once pruned and r
eordered, could tell a different story entirely than the one that Anju remembered. Was the scene Anju remembered even the one that had occurred? Did it matter? The only story that mattered was the one told by the very person who was doing the pruning and shuffling, and for the first time, Anju began to wonder what outfit he was designing for her.

  WHEN ROHIT ARRIVES the next day, the salon is waiting for him. Mismatched bouquets of long-stemmed carnations and peacock feathers sit in vases at every stylist’s station, and the movie star posters that used to panel the walls have been replaced by Rajasthani tapestries of garba raas dancers and one long panorama of a Mughal emperor on a royal hunt, loaned by the trinket store down the street. For the first and only time, Ghafoor demands that everyone leave their shoes at the door, not for the preservation of the motherland’s customs, but for the preservation of the Oriental rugs that overlap all the way to the back of the salon, and are also on loan. If an employee should spill on the rug, Ghafoor calmly threatens to extract a sum from her paycheck. He has also directed everyone to wear salwars of “the red and marigold color palette,” and Anju, having none, borrows one from Lipi. “Spill on this,” Lipi says, “and I extract it from your paycheck.” Anju cannot tell if Lipi is joking or serious, so limited is her palette of facial expression.

  When Rohit begins to shoot, it seems fairly obvious that the film is not, as Anju claimed, about beauty salons. Rohit follows Anju up and down the floor, even when she is doing nothing more than taking a box of Kleenex from one end of the store to the other. He lurks behind a vase of flowers and feathers to film her while she answers the phone. He zooms in on the notebook where she writes “CANCEL” next to her two p.m. appointment. This was her only appointment for the day, so she spends the rest of it thumbing through the notebook, trying to look diligent, which is even more difficult than actually being diligent.

  Meanwhile, Ghafoor is roaming from station to station in a khadi kurta pyjama as opposed to his usual brown slacks, arms crossed, feigning expertise. He looks in on Nandi’s work, nods approvingly. He meanders over to Powder’s station, where she is blow-drying straight a client’s unwieldy shrub of curls, and points at the curly half of the client’s head. “You missed this section,” he murmurs and walks on, oblivious as Powder cuts her eyes at him. Sensing drama, Rohit goes over to film Ghafoor and the others.

  Anju watches Rohit sidling about, zooming in on a face, drawing back to include Ghafoor’s directions. Today, she feels a kind of camaraderie with the camera and almost takes pleasure in the importance that it gives her. She wishes she could rise to the occasion by doing something of use, weaving brows like Nandi, the thread between her teeth. Already Rohit has documented her descent from student to illegal, but now she wants as much attention given to her ascent, from hard worker to citizen.

  In the early afternoon, Anju receives a walk-in client, a white girl with long orange hair. White girls are rare but not foreign to the salon. This girl seems to thrive on her rarity, wearing a belted shirt that stops a few inches below her rear, tall burgundy boots, and nothing resembling pants.

  “I’d like a bikini wax,” she says to Anju.

  Rohit moves close to them, but the pantless girl does not turn her head. Anju writes down her name—Jaclyn—and says, “Come with me.”

  Still filming, Rohit steps aside, then follows Anju and Jaclyn to the back room. Anju stops short of the door. “What you think you are doing?” she asks Rohit.

  “I’m filming you work,” Rohit says. “Otherwise it’ll just look like you sit around all day.”

  Though this is exactly what Anju does, she prefers not to emphasize that fact. “This you cannot film.”

  “Oh no, it’s cool by me,” Jaclyn says. “Ro and I go way back.”

  “You know each other?” Anju asks while Rohit brings the camera down and nods impatiently. She glances at the burgundy boots. “You are his Ex?” she asks Jaclyn.

  “Um,” Jaclyn says, as if trying to decide from a menu. “Yes and no.”

  “I asked her to come,” Rohit says. “As a favor.”

  “And I’m about due for a wax anyway.” Jaclyn punches him in the shoulder. “He’s paying for it, though.”

  Anju looks from the camera to Jaclyn to Ro.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Rohit says. “But all documentary is a form of manipulated reality. As long as you conform as much as possible to some skeleton of the truth, it’s fine.”

  Anju notes how Rohit expands his vocabulary whenever he is trying to convince her of something. The only argument she can depend on is this: “I don’t like some man in the room when I am trying to wax.”

  “Look, I’ll keep my distance. I’ll even lock it down on the tripod, no handheld. It’ll be totally tasteful and artistic, not like a porno at all.”

  The sudden presence of the word “porno” in the conversation makes Anju ill at ease.

  Jaclyn steps in with a carefree laugh. “Oh, if you’re worried about me, I honestly don’t care. I mean, Ro has seen, like, all of my student films. If that’s not naked, I don’t know what is.”

  AT THE END OF THE DAY, after Rohit, the stylists, and a freshly waxed Jaclyn have left, Anju helps Ghafoor put the place back in order. She refills the water in the vases, though the carnations have already begun to sulk. She unpins the tapestries while Ghafoor rolls up the rugs and slumps them against one another in the corner. He whistles an off-key rendition of “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” from The Sound of Music, happy with his performance earlier in the day. “Do you think he liked us?” Ghafoor asks.

  “I think so,” she says.

  “We looked professional, isn’t it?”

  Tired of these questions, Anju points at a framed poster on the wall. “Where do you want me to put this?”

  “I think it was professional to have everyone’s salwars matching-matching. Like the Air India flight attendants.” Ghafoor sprays Windex onto a paper towel, which he squeaks up and down the glass of the frame in question, the Doll’s House show card Birdie had forbidden long ago. When finished, he stares absently at the words: Apsara Arts Club presents … Kalli Pavayuda Veede. He taps the first and largest in the receding list of cast members, Birdie Kamalabhai. “Good thing this woman didn’t come. If she saw this show card, she would take it down herself.”

  “I never saw it before.”

  “That is because of your auntie. She makes me keep it in storage.” He polishes the plastic frame. “Does she ever speak of those days?”

  “Not really.”

  Ghafoor looks offended. “Did she tell you that I was a director?”

  When Anju says no, Ghafoor grows indignant, gesturing heatedly with his Windex bottle. “Well, maybe she thinks she fell from the pedestal, but I am proud I was ever up there.”

  Still irritated, Ghafoor shifts over to wipe the next frame while Anju gazes at the Doll’s House show card. He remembers the first time he hung it on the wall, which led to Bird’s cheeks turning a rare shade of pink. She would allow any wall hanging but that one, for reasons she would not explain but that he attributed to the nonsensical dramas of the female species. “But it is the nicest decoration I have,” Ghafoor argued. And more than that, these show cards represent the best and purest part of himself, the version of himself that he always aspired to be and now can only look back upon with melancholy fondness, though the world around him has changed absolutely and no one remembers the man he was. If there were some subtler way of reminding the world, he would. Often he wonders: How many like him are out there, behind cash registers and brooms, with the best part of their lives behind them? How do they bear the weight?

  He is mummifying the Mughal portrait in bubble wrap when he realizes that Anju has been asking him a question in the smallest voice he has ever heard from her.

  “Who is this?” she asks again, her finger on the glass of the show card.

  He goes over to her and squints at the smallest name on the cast list, next to Anju’s fingertip.
/>   “Gracie Kuruvilla,” he reads, the name meaning nothing to him.

  “Do you know her?”

  Ghafoor wipes her fingerprint from the glass. This girl has no idea how many actors came in and out of the troupe, not to mention lighting technicians, sound technicians, music technicians, and God knows who else. He was the director, he is about to remind her, sometimes hated but always needed as is the way with people in power, when, with a start, he remembers. “Ah, Gracie Kuruvilla! Of course I remember. Tragic girl. Her part was very small, but her parents were important people—”

  “Where was she from? Gracie, I mean.” It seems to take some effort for Anju to say the name.

  “From some small place in Kerala. Near Kumarakom or …”

  “Chengalam?”

  “Ah yes, she was from Chengalam. Did you know her?”

  “What else?” Anju insists. “What else about her?”

  “Oh, I hardly know. Her parents pulled her out of the troupe all of a sudden, never even made a donation. You should ask Bird; she and Bird were great friends back then.”

  “Bird? My Bird?”

  “Yes, but people grow out of these old attachments. Gracie married some local boy. Bird came here.”

  Anju neither moves nor nods but seems to anticipate every word with unblinking eyes. Her gaze slowly returns to the show card. For years, Ghafoor considered himself an expert in direction, yielding subtleties of emotion from even the dullest actors, but he has never learned how to coach people through the narrows and depths of their actual problems, their true vulnerabilities. There, he does not pry; one’s own troubles are enough.

  “Come, come.” Ghafoor plucks the Doll’s House frame from the wall. “At this speed, we will get home by midnight.”

  AT HOME, Bird emerges from the bathroom, her hair wrapped in a terry-cloth beehive. She is rubbing lotion between her fingers, from one of Gwen’s bottles; the fragrance seems to be blossoming all over the apartment from this single, surreptitious usage. Hearing noises in the kitchen and assuming that these belong to Gwen, Bird almost heads straight into her bedroom before she notices Anju easing into a chair at the table.