by Susan Conley
Sam started making Jesus pictures in Magic Marker after we’d been together for two months—the bright blue robe, dark brown hair parted in the middle. Lots of pictures. It became an obsession. What he was really afraid of, he told me, was dying. I couldn’t go to class without him worrying when I’d be back. He moved in with me and cooked Sara and me meals—hummus and thick vegetable stews. What was this trend of people I knew giving themselves over suddenly to God?
Sam graduated and moved to Nepal with the Foreign Service and sent an airmail: “I want to marry you.” I wrote back that a man should never wait for a girl who was still in college.
Now there was Ned. Had I made another bad choice? Did I do it on purpose? Sara thought I intentionally chose the wrong ones. The complicated boys. I didn’t dare psychoanalyze myself. I followed my mother back to the kitchen and sat on the metal stool at the counter and waited for Ned to call. Or Betsy. I would take Betsy. I thought she and I had bonded that semester when we’d stayed up until three in the morning drinking Kahlúa and reading our sestinas out loud. But no one called.
After dinner I transferred the mashed potatoes into Tupperware. Sara poured me a big glass of chardonnay and said the words “lose him” to me. She was very over Ned by then, partly because I’d pined for him in the truck all morning when we weren’t practicing our French verbs, and partly because she was pissed at him. Deep in the languor of turkey hangovers, we managed to eat pumpkin pie, propping ourselves up against the kitchen counter. Then Dad clapped his hands. “Into the living room. Everyone. You haven’t seen my August slides of the desert. You haven’t seen the water holes I found.”
A group of men still lived off the land together out there in the Sonoran Desert—academic dropouts, environmentalists, leftover war protesters, gold miners, and people who just wanted off the grid. That was what Dad always called Sausalito and our house there: the Grid. He had one of the few actual paying jobs in the desert. He loved to catalog what he saw—red-spotted toads, kangaroo rats, desert tortoise, big-horned sheep, coyote. We followed him down the two steps, into the cantilevered living room. The walls were overcrowded with maps now and the Indian weavings. “Everyone thinks they know where the biggest water holes in the desert are. But how hard are they to get to? Extremely difficult, people. Very damn hard. So to find this water I had to follow my nose.”
“Did you use the latest geologic survey?” Luke asked. He and Dad were working together on Water Trust projects by then. One small village project at a time. Sometimes it took Luke a year or more to make local connections that would allow pipes to go through the village. Sometimes he had to abandon projects because they couldn’t get the local Communist Party’s support.
“That last survey doesn’t go as far in as I went last month.” Dad smiled. “The elevation rises too fast, and the topography lines stop. They vanish into nothing. But I kept going, and that’s why I found the secret trove of water. I understood the land. I understood the place. I say this all the time, people. You’ve always got to know your place. Where you’ve come from and where you’re going. Always ask yourself, What are my coordinates? If you go off the grid, how can you get yourself back safely if you need to?”
Then he turned off the lights. I sat on the cold tiles next to Sara and Rajiv and watched the slides on a white bedsheet Dad had hung on the far wall. Landscape photos of the washed-out desert and the lusher canyons. I was back there with him, hiking for hours in the sun. Was that time really over? Were Luke and I really so far on our way to being adults? Was it normal to long for the past like this? To parse it and physically miss it in a way I didn’t know I ever would? In the desert everything was distilled into a series of simple questions: Would we have enough water to make it back to the truck alive? Would we find new hidden sources?
Dad narrated the slides in the darkness and his voice came alive. The Sonoran Desert was the place he liked most in the world, perhaps besides my mother. And he didn’t fight with the desert so it was easier maybe than living with my mother. He didn’t try to change the desert. He accepted it on its own terms.
9
Guardian: one who has the care of a person or the property of another; a superior at a Franciscan monastery
It’s Thursday. Macon sits on the flowered couch in the common room talking to Sophie. She’s brought a pot of black Assam and vanilla biscuits and a small white pitcher of cream. I squeeze past her in the doorway and sink down into one of the blue chairs. “My goodness.” I smile. “No one asked you for tea service, Sophie. You have enough to do in here already.”
“It’s Macon who does too much. I’ll make him tea until God decides to close this place from lack of need.”
Macon blushes. “Sophie, you are killing me with kindness.” He flashes a huge grin. It’s a real smile. Genuine. Sophie rolls her eyes at him. There’s good history here. Then she waves and leaves. His hair is all messed up. He’s wearing jeans and hiking boots and a loose turtle-neck sweater. “Sophie is extraordinary.” He keeps speaking English. There’s a picture of a bright red soccer ball on his mug. VIVA MÉXICO! WORLD CUP 1986. He puts it down on the tray and bends his head to study the file in his lap.
“Mr. Ventri.”
“Please. There is no need for formalities. Please call me Macon. No one calls me Mr. Ventri.” He’s inclined to precision. When he smiles, he has surprisingly small, perfectly shaped teeth. The bones of his face are delicate too, small hollows under the cheekbones, and then the honey-colored beard. “Willow Pears, what do you do for a living when you are not with the girls here on Rue de Metz?” He closes the file and looks up.
“I teach. I’ve written a book about one of your French poets, and I’m about to start another. This one about an Indian poet.” I’ve never kissed anyone with a beard before.
“The girls in your class are lucky to have someone with your background.”
“What are any of their chances, really? What, for instance, are Gita’s chances of getting asylum?”
“Well, we need to go about securing her the best chance she has.” He reopens the file and reads in silence. We sit like that, while French motor scooters buzz past the window, a swarm of mutant mosquitoes. I don’t think he notices the noise. He’s weighing Gita’s chances, as if he’s the only one who can save the girl. He closes his eyes and rubs them with his hands. Then he opens them and leans forward on the couch so that he’s as close as he can be to me without getting up. “This system is intricate. Elaborate. With politicians breathing down its neck of late. Thanks to Le Pen.” He puts his hands back on the tops of his kneecaps like he might stand and leave any moment, and in this way he also reminds me of Gita—both of them with this urgency.
He’s not wearing a wedding ring, but I already knew that. Today I just double-check. “Here’s how it works. Most people awarded asylum are flown into France after they’ve already been designated. It is much harder to apply for asylum status once you’re already inside the host country. Plus, the government doesn’t give out as many asylums now, and the process is too quick for girls to get their feet on the ground and establish a good case here before they’re sent back home. There’s no quota in France for asylum seekers and no lottery for asylum, and there are tens of thousands of applicants. Gita hardly has a claim. There is no war in Jaipur that I am aware of. No famine.”
“Sometimes there is famine.” I don’t know this to be a fact. “There is a man in India who’s raped her and will hunt her down if she goes back.”
“The one who brought her to Paris? But he is on this continent, and France is planning to send her back to the continent she came from.”
“I am talking about a different man. Manju’s brother. An arranged marriage has been planned.”
“How do I convince the judge not to send her back? This is my question every day. There is an Air France flight to India that leaves Charles de Gaulle at four-fifteen.” He begins putting his things back in his saddlebag—the file on Gita, two pens, a small pad of notepaper with
a bright orange cover and doodles on it that look like they’ve been done by a small child.
“The brother-in-law is the reason she’s here at the center.” Maybe if I keep talking, he will stay. “Yes, he lives here. In Paris. But he has arranged for his own brother in Jaipur to marry Gita.”
“That won’t be sufficient grounds for asylum. I’m sorry.” He isn’t interested in making me feel good, and I respect and resent it. “Here is what I have.” He reaches for his tea and seems to relax again and relish his work. “A girl who by all accounts is remarkably bright. With a broken family that is probably all in Paris illegally now—tourist visas that have each expired, except for the brother-in-law, who’s on a work visa and comes and goes as he pleases with the jewelry. There is a grandmother we think might still be in India, but we are not sure if she is alive. This will be a sticking point. There is also a nasty arranged marriage waiting for her in Jaipur. Lastly, I want to point out a small passage in the French Asylum Long Brochure—”
“I know this clause. I’ve read this part!” My voice rises. I can’t help it. “I’ve read the brochures! They say defendants can be protected by asylum from their own family members when those members mean to hurt them.” I’m so sure this is the statute that will save Gita, because it clearly states that you can be awarded asylum if your family is a threat to you.
Macon raises his eyebrows at me. “You are shrewd to have already located the statute. But it won’t work for Gita because the person who wants to hurt her is Manju, the brother-in-law, and he is with her in France. She is asking for asylum from India. She is arguing to stay here, in the country where the brother-in-law actually lives, and to not go back to her home country. It’s contradictory.”
“Yes, it’s complicated.” I lower my voice. “But there’s danger in India for her.”
“But can we prove it?” He smiles—a wry, tough smile. “What she needs is a court guardian who can vouch for her in court. This is a new tactic we are just trying. Some courtrooms are open to it. The child lives in foster care with a French family, but the court guardian helps manage the child’s well-being through the hearing and is the court liaison through the foster care. That is the only way they may release her in France. I have been thinking about you.”
I fear I turn completely red. He has no idea how much I’ve been thinking about him. Then he says, “I am wondering if you might consider being Gita’s guardian. There’s a lot of pro forma you’d have to do with the court.”
Guardian? I’m stumbling my way through being her teacher. “Why do you think I’d have any chance of being appointed?”
“You are a great teacher, by all accounts. You aren’t French, and this will be a problem, but you’ve got a work contract, so there might be some room here. You know the girl. I think she trusts you.” He begins packing up again. “What do you think?”
“I think I could try.” What am I doing? “What’s the first step? Maybe I can try it and we’ll see if this is the right fit?”
He smiles again. “Wonderful. Fantastic. This is great news. The first step is the written document Gita needs for court. She will hand it to the judge and she will be asked to read some of it out loud. We’re never sure how it will go. But it’s essential that she know her story well. I will help her with this. It’s part of my job. But if you can do it too, then we might win. She will get about five minutes to speak. Put small things in that you’ve learned about Gita. Things she might not tell me. Please try to stay away from actual interpretations of the law and away from speculation. That’s my job. I will do that. We can meet next week. If you are willing to see me again?” He looks me straight in the eyes.
I’m not imagining things, am I? “I am willing.” My heart beats so hard I can hear it in my ears.
He stands and moves toward the door. “Thank you for meeting me, Willow. Thank you for working so hard on Gita’s behalf.” He smiles, then he’s gone.
I finish my tea alone. Is he choosing me? Am I choosing him? What’s happening? I feel like life’s asking me to be more open in Paris than I’ve ever been before. And when I think I’ve opened enough, it’s asking me to open even more. I hear Esther and Precy talking back and forth in their bedrooms down the hall. Precy’s louder. I can hardly make out Esther because she’s so quiet. “Who has my brush? Did anyone see my hairbrush?” Precy asks. “I need to brush my hair. I have been waiting to brush my hair.”
Gita walks into the room first and takes my hand. “You are back. I never know if you will really be coming back.”
“Gita. I’ve signed an agreement to teach classes here at the center on Thursdays through June. It’s only late February. I so greatly enjoy teaching here with you. I keep my word.”
She sits down on the couch and starts talking without any warning: “My maa and I were sharing a bed in our home in Paris. I cannot tell you where. I cannot have you go there. So I tell my mind to forget. Promise me. Do not make me go back there. I want to live in France. But not with Manju. My pitaa waited for us in India. My maa and I only came to France for a visit. We were not meant to be living here. Maa came because Morone and I talked her into it. I am guilty she is here in France. I am guilty Pitaa is dead. I love all of my family. My mother doesn’t speak French or English. The first day she was here, she packed up the beans and rice and mutton and left the apartment to find a way to climb up to the roof to cook. Morone and I stopped her in the hall. We said, in Paris we use the kitchen stove.”
“We are trying to fix things so you can stay in this country, Gita. I just had a meeting with your lawyer.” Is she starting to lose her mind in here? She can’t slow down. This is what I fear the most for the girls. That the locking up and the faceless days will cause them to vacate their minds. And then they will slowly come apart. It’s what would happen to me quickly. But I’m weak like that. To lock me up would be how to unravel me. I’d crave the world outside.
“He is a good man, Mr. Ventri. I can feel this. But he is very busy with many cases. What I wonder about every day is if Manju slept in that hall of our apartment. Because I am still not sure how he was finding me there every day. I screamed in my head each time. I saw a hammer in my mind while he pulled me on top of him, and I hit him on the shoulder and there was blood. But in the real life I did nothing, because of my sister and my maa and my little brother, Pradeep. The gem shop is the only way for them. Manju and the gem shop.”
“Oh, Gita. They wouldn’t turn on you.”
“They would not believe me, and so they would turn me out. My father is dead, Willow. I cannot go back to India because there is nothing waiting for me there but Manju’s brother, who will be my husband. So I am keeping the blue papers and the pink papers I get from the law people. I am meeting with the lawyer and the caseworker. I am working on the story. I am practicing. I am not going back. Please don’t make me go back.”
“We are working so hard on it. There will be an end.”
She brings out a photo from her notebook and hands it to me. She and Morone and their mother and a younger boy who must be their brother, Pradeep, and then Manju. He’s a short, thick man with a blunt strip of bangs across a broad forehead. Gita points to her mother’s lined face and rests her finger there and stares. The only photo Gita has of her mother also has her perpetrator in it. Then Moona and Rateeka come in and Gita takes the photo and slides it back in the notebook.
The common room fills with girls. “Let’s start right away.” I jump up. “What if the judge in the courtroom asks you to go back in your memory?”
“Chapati and potatoes,” Moona says. “That is my memory of the food in Bombay. The same thing every day.”
“The judge may ask you to tell the courtroom exactly how you left your country—on a train or in a car or in an airplane or on foot. This is when you will be glad you’ve memorized your story.”
Gita says, “In my memory Manju came to our house in Jaipur and sat for the coulis and masala and said that he was moving Morone to France to work at
the gem shop. Then he announced he was taking my maa and me with him to France. We were scared but also feeling the excitement.”
“Is Pradeep still here in Paris?” I ask.
“He is in Paris, yes. My baby brother. The boy who I love so much. But I won’t see him. None of them know where I am.”
“That has to be so hard,” I say.
“Yeah. Hard.” Precy stares at Gita. “I don’t know where my mother is, but you know where yours is. How do you not go back to her? I would go back.”
“Precy,” I say. “You’ve made your decision and Gita’s made hers and both for different reasons. It’s better to stick to your story and not worry about Gita’s.”
Gita’s got her hand over her mouth, scowling. I need to be their teacher. They already have caseworkers. Sophie is Gita and Moona’s. A nurse from Bangladesh named Mrs. Kader is the caseworker for Rateeka and Zeena. I haven’t met Precy or Esther’s caseworker yet, but I’ve heard she is a retired public schoolteacher. “We should do some writing now. Can you open to a blank page in your notebooks? Do you have pencils? Who needs a pencil?”
10
Saint: a person of great holiness, virtue, or benevolence
Winter unlocks its hold on the city. Days grow warmer in March. The daffodils get an early start in the Luxembourg Gardens, where I start taking my lunch at school. Buds on the cherry trees swell and bloom into pink gauze, and everywhere there’s the yellow surprise of forsythia. “I’m not a saint, you know,” Gaird says into the phone on a Friday. Sometimes I only detect his Norwegian accent at the end of his sentences, because they finish on high notes and confuse me with cheeriness. He pauses to inhale his cigarette. “How much longer do I have to wait?”
“What do you mean, ‘wait’?” It’s hard to take off my skirt and change into my sweatpants while I talk. I’ve just gotten home from office hours at the academy, and I’m trying to go for a run. Gaird never calls me. Why can’t he say that he’s worried about Luke? Then at least we’d have that connection. Because Luke still doesn’t feel completely better two weeks out of the hospital.