Beyond Molasses Creek

by Nicole Seitz

  “That sounds swell,” I said, dismissing him. I smiled and pushed him out the door. He kissed me on the lips before he left and, honest as a heart attack, I felt nothing for him. Nothing at all. It was like kissing a brick wall.

  FORTY

  The In-between

  Kathmandu, Nepal

  Sunila

  “I’M AFRAID WE’VE RUN UP AGAINST A BIT OF A BRICK wall,” says Mr. Assai. He is holding a file and tapping it.

  “Please,” I say, “sit down.” There is a balcony outside my hotel room at the Shangri-La. Over the rail I can see the gardens and hear the water trickling in fountains. There are tourists to Nepal, Americans, sitting at a table below us eating lunch, and I want to run to them and ask them if they know my mother.

  “I’ve spoken with the police about you. We have confirmed our records. In December of 1972, a woman by the name of Alicia Green worked with the embassy, with Kathmandu police, and with the Nepali military to try and find her baby. Flyers were put up all over town near the Malla Café where the alleged kidnapping took place. She and her father—apparently he came here after the event—offered a reward of one hundred thousand Nepali rupees to anyone who had any information that would lead to the return of the child.”

  I straighten my back and shift in my seat. This is painful to my ears. I am picturing this woman and her father frantic to find her child. “And did anyone come forward?” I ask.

  “No,” says Mr. Assai. “No one came forward. The money was never paid out. Nothing ever turned up. And I need to be honest with you. In the beginning of the search, the police suspected the mother was lying. So did embassy officials. You see, Americans are supposed to register themselves and their children with the US Embassy upon arrival for many reasons, for safety, mostly, but she did not. She admitted she was here in Kathmandu, running away from something in the US.”

  “Running from what, exactly?”

  Mr. Assai opens the file and flips through pages. He stops on one and looks at me before he reads. “Ms. Green claims to have come to Nepal for rest and to get away. When asked what she was getting away from, she replied, ‘A broken heart.’ Then she erupted into tears.” Mr. Assai closes the file. “Apparently, this woman was troubled when she came here. Perhaps the father of the child had left her, abandoned her? There isn’t much else in the file.”

  “So the brick wall—is this the brick wall you mentioned?”

  Mr. Assai sets the folder on a little table between us. He leans forward and clasps his hands.

  “Actually, Ms. Kunari, the issue I’m finding is . . . Well, without speaking to your mother and father here in Kathmandu, without getting a confession from them, I’m afraid everything is just hearsay. There are no facts. Surely your story has merit and it certainly seems to be true, but I’m afraid that without some facts, everything in this case is coincidental. I certainly cannot try to contact Ms. Green in South Carolina—”

  “Wait. You have found where she lives? You have found her?”

  Mr. Assai’s mouth falls open and he does not speak. Then he nods and says, “Yes, I have located this woman.”

  “And she’s still alive?” I ask, hopeful, heart racing.

  “Yes. She is. Though her father is recently deceased. The one who offered the money for your return.”

  “Deceased,” I repeat. I breathe in deeply and picture his ashes swirling up into the air, being released into the Baghmati River to flow along the water until transported to the holy Ganges.

  I stand and look out over the trees. The sky is dark and bringing more rains. I do not want to cause more trouble for Amaa. I do not want her arrested. I am torn. I clutch my sari and feel my heart beating.

  “Ms. Kunari, I must tell you that I have looked over this woman’s sketchbook. I believe that she did indeed have her child stolen from a café in Kathmandu. I believe this woman has suffered immeasurable loss. As have you.” I turn to look at him and a tear escapes. “We need to gather some evidence, Ms. Kunari. We must now talk to your parents and get the truth from them. If your mother loves you, as you say she does, she will do this for you. Only then will justice be done.”

  I know what he is saying is correct. I excuse myself, leaving him on the balcony, and walk into the hotel room. I splash water on my face in the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror. My cheeks are fuller. They have been feeding me well here. I do not look like Amaa or Buba. I look like her, the woman in the drawings. She, too, looked at herself in the mirror. Only she drew what she saw. She saw sadness and loneliness, confusion. I see it in my own eyes. Perhaps she saw me in the mirror the way that I see her in mine.

  I pat my face dry with a clean towel and firm my shoulders. I am not the same woman who left the quarry. I am like a spirit who has left a body. I am in that in-between when the spirit may choose to return to the body, to linger here on earth. Mr. Assai is like the loved ones holding vigil over my death, encouraging me to go on to my ethereal next world.

  Yes. I will go. I will not return to the quarry the same as I was before. I will go with Mr. Assai and we will speak to Amaa and Buba. The cruel man is no longer there. I have nothing to fear with Mr. Assai at my side. We will go and I will continue my metamorphosis. I am changing into someone else.

  “I will take you to the quarry, Mr. Assai. You may ask the questions you need to ask.”

  “Good,” he says. “Very good, Ms. Kunari. You are a very brave woman, the likes of which I have not seen. We will do this thing together, you and I. We will find the truth. You deserve as much.”

  My old life is dead to me. I turn and picture my white ashes falling onto the Baghmati riverbed, commencing their long, winding journey to the Ganges. Flowing home.

  FORTY-ONE

  Falling in Love

  Ally

  I WENT HOME TO LIVE WITH MAMA AND DADDY IN January of 1972. I told AirAmerica that I was expecting a child just fourteen months after starting that job, and of course, they let me go. I had broken “airline policy.” I did not say who the father was; I simply apologized, packed up my belongings, and came home to live with Mama and Daddy on Molasses Creek. I was doing the right thing, keeping my baby, no matter how difficult it was making things. A single woman having a child was frowned upon, but not altogether unseen in those days. The free love era had brought with it some children, and I was beginning to see there was nothing free at all about love. Love was about sacrifice and giving and loss. I could see that now.

  My parents were gracious, as I knew they’d be. They never condemned my choices; they just remained quiet for the first few weeks. I remember going to the grocery store with my mother and hearing her whisper to an acquaintance she’d run into that my husband had gone off to war. I knew the depth of her shame in that moment, listening to those lies, but I understood she was doing what she needed to do. As was I. Mama never said anything negative to my face, and I acted as if I didn’t know how hard she was working to cover up my indiscretions. Daddy kept on working, seeing his patients from a little office he kept now near Shem Creek with another doctor. I didn’t see him nearly as often as when he was visiting patients’ homes, so Mama and I spent time together. It went something like this:

  “Honey, have you had enough breakfast? I can make you some more toast.”

  “No, I’m fine, Mama.”

  “How about some grits. You don’t need to be getting hungry. You feelin’ all right? You’re looking kind of pale.”

  “Mama, please, I’m really fine.”

  She would stand there, rubbing her apron nervously. “Well, it looks like it will be a nice day. How about I set you up some cushions on the porch chairs and you can read or draw. Whatever you like. Get some fresh air.”

  “That sounds fine, Mama. Thank you.”

  I can’t say there was any substance to our conversations. I can’t say that Mama seemed comfortable with me being home. She just doted on me to excess. A few months into living there, when my belly was swelling, I understood she was acting this way
as a comfort to herself, so she could act and not have to talk her way through this pregnancy. But as time wore on, I realized Mama was actually getting excited about the baby. I had been an only child, and now there was going to be another one in the house. Mama, I realized, was nesting, something I had not quite begun. It seemed our house was too small for two mothers, and she was doing a fine job for both of us.

  Robert knew I was keeping the baby. It was my body and I was doing with it what I wanted. He was nice about it, albeit scared to death, but I assured him no one would know the truth about his involvement. He relaxed in this and told me what a brave little girl I was. That he would be there to help out in whatever way he could. At about six months my stomach was the size of a small basketball and my limbs and rear were growing in proportion to the food Mama was feeding me. I hadn’t seen him since I left Atlanta, but it was then Robert decided to pay us a visit.

  He had flown into Charleston and was on a short layover. It wasn’t as if he made the trip especially to see me. There he was, flowers in hand, as my father opened the door. We’d been expecting him, but I don’t think my parents were quite prepared for how handsome this man was. Honestly, he looked like a movie star, Robert Redford or someone equally as cute, and the baby seemed to be squirming in my belly when I saw him again. I wondered if I really did have feelings for him. Maybe I did. He was coming to see me, after all.

  Mama nearly tripped over her own two feet as she waited on him with iced tea and little cucumber sandwiches. If I didn’t know better, she seemed flummoxed and flirty. I suppose Robert had that effect on people.

  He and Daddy sat on the back porch and talked about airplanes and flying and such. Daddy said he’d always wanted to fly, something I had never once heard him utter, and I remember wondering if he was lying or if there were really things I did not know about my father.

  After a supper of chicken fried steak, asparagus, and roasted baby potatoes, Mama served her famous key lime pie, and with all the fussing and goo coming from everyone’s mouths, you wouldn’t have known there was an elephant the size of Texas in the middle of the room with us—namely me.

  Filled with muscadine wine and key lime pie, the handsome and dapper Robert looked my father in the eyes and told him he thought he and I should get married. He turned to me and said with dimples shining, “How ’bout it, kid?”

  I gasped and Mama grabbed at her chest and Daddy reached out and shook his hand.

  “Is there a ring too?” Mama squealed as if this was happening to her and not to me.

  But I knew there was no ring. This was not a premeditated marriage proposal; it was probably the last thing Robert ever intended to do. And that angered me, seeing Mama and Daddy all happy and hopes up and wrapped up in him. Something in me knew Robert was a fly-by-night. He was impetuous by nature and a true romantic and honestly believed whatever he was saying in the moment. Until he changed his mind later. The problem was he didn’t have a loyal bone in his body. I knew how many girlfriends he had. I knew he couldn’t become a one-woman man overnight. I knew his career and his flyboy lifestyle were too important to him to give up, and so instead of having him break Mama and Daddy’s hearts later, I took the bull by the horns right then and there.

  “Thank you, Robert, but I just don’t think you’re ready for marriage. Or me, for that matter. Thank you for asking, but my answer is no.” Then I stood up and walked away before anyone at the table could utter a word.

  I didn’t cry, but I looked out the window as I walked back to my room. I saw the marsh grass blowing and the water rippling in the current. I saw Vesey’s mother’s house and the permanence it had on the riverbank, in my life. I had given up my career, my body, my dignity by getting pregnant with Robert, and I wasn’t about to give my future and my heart to him too. I could see him for what he really was. Too good to be true.

  Right or wrong, I was going to do this thing on my own, have a baby. I was bringing this child into the world and I vowed, then and there, to do everything in my power to protect it from smooth-talkers like Robert Friedberg. I grabbed my belly and held on tight, and in those quiet moments, I fell in love with my child.

  FORTY-TWO

  Collecting Evidence

  Kathmandu, Nepal

  Sunila

  I AM IN A CAR WITH MR. ASSAI AT THE WHEEL. HE pauses to let a cow cross the road and then manages to ease in and out of people and bicycles and rickshaws. It seems everyone is out in the street tending to work and other errands before the rains come again this evening. I look at his hand gripping the stick shift. I have never learned to drive a vehicle, though I have seen men driving on buses. I always like to see what people’s hands do while their eyes are on something else.

  When I carve, I must look at my subject, but every now and again, when I have done something so many times, I can look away while my hands continue working. I can look away and forget that I am a slave to this piece of stone. Even if it is becoming a beautiful angel with outstretched wings.

  How can I love the stone and hate it at the same time? Because it is a piece of me. I know nothing else. How can the ox stand having the yoke put upon its neck day after day after day? Because it is all it has ever known. Nothing more, nothing less.

  I study Mr. Assai’s face. He has not spoken in many minutes since we left the Shangri-La Hotel. I want to tell him, Thank you for believing my story. I want to thank the gods for planting this seed in my heart long ago. I’ve always known there was something about me, yet the truth has always eluded me, much like a horse with blinders. The world is there for it to see if it could simply turn and look at it, yet it has not the courage to turn and to look.

  “We are getting near,” I say after a while. The streets are dirtier here. The walls of the buildings grayer. There are children with dusty bare feet standing on the corners, and as we pass them I think to myself: How many of you are meant to be here? How many of these children have no future but to break stones or to be broken? Which of you will be lucky and find favor with the gods as I surely have?

  No, I am not lucky. I have never been lucky. I have been a curse. My throat closes on me and I close my eyes. I breathe in deeply until I am able to open them again.

  “Are you all right?” asks Mr. Assai.

  “Yes,” I manage.

  “You are welcome to wait here in the car if you feel it’s too much for you. They may speak to me on my own. It is a possibility.”

  “No,” I say. “I must go with you. I must be there to see the looks on their faces.”

  “Very well. We will go together, and when we have what we need, I will take you directly back to the Shangri-La Hotel. You are happy there?”

  “Oh, very happy.”

  Yet part of me feels I am being tricked. Mr. Assai is taking me back to the quarry and leaving me there. My parents will never admit to their wrongdoing, and I will appear to be insane. The cruel man’s son will never let me go. I will stay here and die here as we all do. As we all must.

  The sound of pounding greets us, like birds chirping. Some are hard at work already. When the rainy season comes, people are hungry. They cannot make their wages, for the stones are wet and the dust turns to mud. There is a storehouse with some shelter overhead and some stone on the top remains dry. These are the stones fought over in this hungry season. We walk past mothers with naked children strapped to their backs. We pass old men crouched down and talking to themselves. The people recognize me after a few moments, yet they do not recognize me. I am clean. I have no dust on my clothes or hands or feet or face. I am with a man, a very important-looking man. No, it could not be Sunila, they think to themselves. And we walk on toward Amaa’s tent.

  I stand there silently taking in this desolate place that is my home. Now that I’ve seen the Shangri-La and slept in its bed, tasted its fine food, and bathed in its clean water, I am shocked that I have not seen this place for what it is before. I open my mouth and utter, “Amaa?”

  There is a rustling sound within the
tent and when the cloth swings to the side, I see Buba with no tunic, and unkempt, gray taking over his beard. His eyes pierce me. “You,” he says.

  “Namaste,” I say, nodding. My father spits in my face.

  Mr. Assai moves forward and moves me aside. “Mr. Kunari, my name is Mr. Assai. I am with the consulate office with the US Embassy.”

  Buba looks at the man and shrinks. Fear is in his eyes.

  “What is it?” I hear my mother’s voice in the tent and my heart melts. I want to hold her again.

  “Amaa?” I say. “Amaa, it’s me. Sunila.”

  “Sunila!” My mother wails and comes to her husband’s side. She does not pass him, yet falls to her knees, arms outstretched when she sees me. “I thought I would never see you again. Oh, my child, my Sunila.”

  I go to her. Of course I go to her. She is all I’ve ever known about love. She is all I’ve ever had in my life. I love this woman, no matter what she did to have me. She is the only family I have ever known. I bend and pull her to me, fearful at first that Buba will strike my face, yet he is too afraid of this consulate officer from the US Embassy. I have brought a shield beside me.

  Mr. Assai holds out identification for Buba’s eyes and Buba holds his hands to his sides, perfectly still.

  “Mr. Kunari, I have some questions to ask you about something that happened a long time ago. Ms. Kunari, Sunila, here, has come forward with a book of drawings.” He looks toward Amaa. “It is my understanding that you, Mrs. Kunari, told your daughter she was taken as a baby from a café in December 1972. That she was not abandoned but stolen. Is this true? Did you say this to your daughter?”