The Bones of Grace

by Tahmima Anam

  Dolly answered the door herself, wearing a spun-sugar concoction of a sari that seemed to make her seem perfectly round from almost every angle. She was beautiful in an exaggerated sort of way, with big, bulging eyes and a full mouth. Behind her, the hallway was lit by a giant chandelier. She stood back and looked me up and down. ‘Oh, I’m so glad you wore the pink jamdani,’ she said, ‘it goes so well with the set.’ Earlier that day, she had sent over a rectangular red box that contained a pair of bell-shaped gold earrings and a matching necklace, the arrival of which had prompted a trip to the beauty parlour. ‘You can’t see the earrings if you don’t put up your hair,’ Ammoo had said. Dolly led us up the stairs and to the roof terrace on the top floor, where her husband was sipping whisky with his feet submerged in the swimming pool they’d had installed earlier that year. The floodlights and the water enveloped us in a pulsating blue gauze.

  Bulbul called out to Abboo. ‘Come, Joy,’ he said: ‘nothing like soaking your feet in this muggy weather.’ It wasn’t muggy at all; in fact, it was almost December and even a little chilly, but Abboo obliged anyway, edging his way to the swimming pool and rolling up his trousers.

  ‘Zubaida, dear, will you join us?’

  ‘Thank you, uncle, but I should probably—’

  ‘You ridiculous man,’ Dolly said. ‘She’ll ruin her sari. Let’s go inside.’ She pointed to a glass-walled room next to the pool, decorated in orange and gold. We sat down on the sofa and I looked up at the ceiling. I had been here before, but the house was strange to me now, all buffed up and shining, flowers wrapped around the banisters and bowls of potpourri on every tabletop. My mood turned sour. Dolly had sprayed the room with a heavy dose of rosewater and it was reminding me of a funeral.

  ‘I’m so glad we decided to keep it small,’ Ammoo said. She liked to reinforce the fact that she was in the throes of a good decision.

  ‘I did have a lot of trouble keeping out the crowd,’ Dolly said, ‘but you’re right, I’m glad it’s just us.’ She screwed up her face, delighted, then immediately frowned. ‘Only thing is, my other darlings are not here.’ Rashid’s younger brother Junaid was away at boarding school in Singapore, and his sister Ruby lived in New York.

  ‘Where’s Rashid?’ I asked. He had sent me a text message an hour ago and signed it Your future hubbs, which had made me feel slightly sick.

  ‘He’s gone off to get something or other. What will you have? Spring rolls? Fried shrimp? Coke, 7 Up?’

  ‘Anything’s fine with me,’ Ammoo said. ‘Zee?’

  I didn’t reply. I kept my eyes on the ceiling. ‘I’ll have a Coke,’ Ammoo said, her voice high and bright.

  ‘Are you nervous, my dear?’ Dolly asked me. ‘How about a drink?’ And she winked.

  ‘White wine?’ I suggested.

  ‘Zubaida, really,’ Ammoo said, because I had ignored her look. We both knew Dolly didn’t mean it when she offered me alcohol, but I stood my ground, watching while Dolly walked over to a polished wooden cupboard and turned the lock on a small refrigerator, returning with two glasses and a sweaty bottle of Chardonnay. ‘Now, first things first. Do you want Army Golf Club or the Radisson?’

  They were going to host a joint wedding reception. I turned to my mother and said, ‘You want me to get married at a golf club owned by the Bangladesh Army or at a five-star hotel?’

  Ammoo got up, moved to the seat next to mine and squeezed my elbow. I turned my head away and found myself looking at a cabinet crammed with porcelain figurines. ‘Radisson,’ I said. ‘The food’s better.’

  ‘Only thing is, they won’t let you bring your own biryani,’ Dolly said, ‘which is so annoying. Hotel biryani is never as good.’

  Ammoo nodded vigorously. ‘You’re absolutely right. It’s more expensive too.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that.’

  ‘What I mean is, it’s more expensive but it’s not as good. Of course, the Radisson ballroom is very nice.’

  I snapped to attention. ‘I hate biryani.’

  ‘Rashid adores biryani,’ Dolly said. ‘But never mind, we can do it at the Radisson.’

  ‘Oh, I guess I don’t mind, then,’ I said, pretending as if Rashid’s love of biryani was news to me.

  Dolly took a sip from her glass. ‘We don’t have to. We like to be a bit different.’

  ‘How about an afternoon wedding?’ I said. ‘We can have lunch. Fish, even. That’s different.’

  ‘Oh I don’t know, darling.’

  ‘Zubaida,’ Ammoo said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What’s gotten into you?’

  ‘I don’t want to change my name,’ I said, choosing one of the many things that had been bothering me.

  ‘But sweetheart, won’t it be nice to have the same last name as all of us?’ Dolly said.

  I waited for Ammoo to come to my defence. ‘I suppose it’s my fault,’ Ammoo said, ‘since I kept mine.’

  ‘Well who knows what my name really is anyway,’ I said. All the sound went out of the room.

  A man entered with a tray of fried things. I picked up a spring roll.

  ‘Of course you don’t have to change your name,’ Dolly said.

  I tore my eyes away from the cabinet and found Ammoo struggling to retie the bun at the back of her neck, pulling out and reinserting a series of black pins.

  ‘Okay,’ Dolly said, smiling. ‘Problem is this. Children should not be involved in the planning of weddings. Why don’t you go and see what the fathers are doing, Zubaida? Babu will be here any minute.’ Dolly liked to call Rashid ‘Babu’ and sometimes ‘Baby Babu’.

  Abboo and Bulbul were drying their feet by the pool. ‘Is that wine in your hand?’ Abboo asked.

  ‘Transgression,’ I said, raising my glass.

  Rashid appeared, holding a small rectangular packet and looking pleased with himself. I was struck by his confidence, as if there was no chance of things not working out as they should. For the twentieth, hundredth time that day, I pushed aside the thought of your voice and what you would have said about this party, my pink sari and my lacquered hair. ‘Where were you?’ I asked him.

  ‘Getting my secret weapon,’ he said, leaning in and kissing me on the cheek. He smelled strongly of cigarettes.

  ‘So, uncle,’ he said, turning to my father, ‘how’s the garment business?’

  ‘Good, good.’

  ‘You know the other factories are always complaining that you pay your people so well you make the rest of us look bad.’

  Rashid passed the packet to his father, who unwrapped it carefully. Abboo sat up on his pool chair. ‘You know what a full wage costs? Only three crores more per year. Nothing. It’s the least we can do for taking the sweat from their backs.’

  ‘You’re still a leftie,’ Bulbul said, rolling a cigarette.

  ‘Something like that.’ Abboo turned to me. ‘Now I’m mostly handling domestic crises.’

  Rashid put on a Beatles compilation and the two older men wiggled their ankles. The cigarette went back and forth.

  ‘They’re smoking pot,’ I said.

  Abboo passed the packet to Rashid. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘you have my blessing.’

  Rashid pulled a few leaves apart and shredded them between his fingers.

  ‘This isn’t going to end well,’ I announced.

  ‘Don’t worry, be happy,’ Rashid said, turning towards me with a pipe and a lighter. He leaned in, cupping his hand over the pipe and lighting the small brown tangle.

  I inhaled. ‘I love you,’ I whispered, thinking I might like to get my feet wet after all.

  It was time for the ceremonial part of the evening to begin. Dolly called me back inside and summoned her maid, who appeared with a garland of lilies and roses. The garland glistened, heavy with petals and the water that had been sprinkled on to keep it fresh. ‘Wear this,’ Dolly said; ‘it will make you look like a bride.’ I was intimidated by the word ‘bride’, so I obeyed, dipping my head and allowing Ammoo to drape the garland
around my neck. Then Dolly, working quickly, slipped a veil over my head, securing it with a hair pin. We made our way downstairs, the veil and the garland slowing me down, Dolly’s hand grasping my elbow, the rosewater smell fading as we descended.

  Downstairs, in the vast living room, I saw both my grandmothers: Nanu, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief, and Dadu, my father’s mother, sitting erect and formidable with a plate of pistachios on her lap. Sally stood up when she saw me, and I gave her a small wave. The other assembled guests were a blur of silk saris and dark jackets. Dolly led me to a sofa and told me to sit down. Rashid appeared beside me. He had changed into a blue kurta, a present from my parents. He kneeled in front of me and held out his hand. I was moved by the tremor in his fingers as he removed the ring box from his pocket. It was the same ring he’d brought to Savar, but I had to wait until the ceremony to start wearing it. Now he held the velvet box in his hand and said, ‘Will you marry me?’ and I nodded, and everyone clapped, and he slipped the ring on my finger, and Dolly handed me a glass of milk with crushed almonds. Then Bulbul led us in a short prayer, which ended with everyone passing their palms over their faces, and Rashid sitting beside me, nudging me with his elbow the way he used to when I was a kid and the thought of touching him made my stomach tighten.

  Rashid and I sat in one place while people came up one by one and congratulated us. We ate fried bread and sour potato curry. Sally, who had pinned her sari under the swell of her pregnancy, came to tell me I looked beautiful but also like I had been given a cancer diagnosis. ‘What’s wrong, bitch?’ she said. ‘Supposed to be all happiness and sugar.’

  After most of the guests left, dinner was served in the dining room. Dolly’s sister Molly, her husband, their son Faisal and their daughter Eliza were there, as well as Bulbul’s mother. Everyone hugged each other again and said congratulations. The long mahogany table had been laid out in red and gold. Bulbul took the head of the table and invited my father to sit at the other end. ‘Oh no,’ Abboo said, ‘I couldn’t,’ so Rashid took his place instead, leaving me between Molly and her son, who had the habit of drumming on whatever surface he could find, in this case moving between his knee and the gold-trimmed plate that he found in front of him. Having accepted my father’s invitation to get stoned, I was extremely hungry. It occurred to me that this may, in fact, be a regular habit for Abboo – how else did he manage to appear so relaxed under any and all circumstances? Yes, of course, he must be a habitual smoker – why hadn’t I seen it before? Good for him, I said to myself, he deserves it, it’s not as if he gambles or stays out late or is ever mean to anyone. I looked over at my father and gave him a meaningful wink, then tuned into the conversation. Bulbul was making a toast, welcoming us into the family, and then we all raised our water glasses.

  ‘So,’ Molly said, ‘Rashid told me you study physics.’ She had applied orange nail polish to every other nail, and French-manicured the ones in between.

  ‘No, not really – I’m a marine palaeontologist.’

  ‘It’s all the same, no? Microscopes and all that.’ She picked up her fork and dipped it into the salad that had just been served by a waiter in white gloves.

  ‘Sure,’ I agreed. I looked over at Ammoo, who was sitting next to Bulbul. She was flanked on her left by Rashid’s uncle. After the salad we were served roast duck, followed by mini tarte Tatins, which were warm and delicious. I kept myself entertained by asking Molly about her beauty regime, which consisted of daily facials with various fresh fruits and vegetables, a weekly wash and blow-dry, and special treatments such as bleaching her face and neck when she had somewhere in particular she needed to be. ‘I used to go to Dazzle,’ she explained, ‘but the girls were getting too smart. They know everyone by name. I said na, none of this friendliness. So now I go to Neelo’s.’

  I nodded. From across the table, Dolly called out to everyone, ‘I’m getting another daughter!’ She curled her hand around her mouth so her words would travel to the other side of the room.

  ‘Poor Dolly, always wanted more girls. I tell her, boys are better, no talk-back. My Eliza, she has such a mouth. But Alhamdulillah, she is a good girl.’ Molly, like a lot of women of her stature, used religious words like punctuation. When someday Molly’s children got older and started taking drugs, or if she ever had a health scare, or her husband started fooling around, she would start peppering more of her speech with God words, Alhamdulillah, Mashallah, Inshallah, etc.; then she would start praying conspicuously, tucking a mat under her arm whenever she went to a party, then maybe she would take a five-star holiday to Mecca, uploading photographs of herself smiling in a burkha, to which her friends would comment, ‘Mash’Allah’, using the apostrophe in the appropriate place to show that they too understood God’s punctuation. My father, still an atheist, had explained this to Ammoo and me numerous times, and we had all giggled about it, sitting around the table on the balcony and wondering what people would say if they could hear us. I let out a small laugh now, but Molly didn’t notice, she was telling me how well Eliza was doing in school, that all the teachers loved her and that she had even received a prize for attendance.

  After the tarte Tatin, the waiter passed around small dishes of ice cream while taking everyone’s order for coffee or tea. I looked around the room. Abboo was in conversation with Molly’s husband, who owned three garment factories and always wore a Bluetooth earpiece. Ammoo was concentrating on her ice cream, and Rashid was showing Eliza something on his phone. After the waiter retreated, Rashid stood up and called everyone to attention. ‘I have a gift for my future in-laws,’ he began. From behind his chair, he produced a rectangular package wrapped in brown paper and passed it to my father. ‘Be careful,’ he said, ‘it’s fragile.’

  We gathered around as Abboo tugged at the jute string that held the wrapping together. He pulled the paper away. The framed photograph was an enlarged black-and-white, showing two young men with their arms around each other. They looked at the camera and smiled. They were dressed in matching drainpipe trousers and one of them wore a bandana around his forehead and held up two fingers in a peace sign. In the background, grainy and grey, was the ornate façade of Curzon Hall, the science faculty where they studied. When Abboo looked up, his eyes were filled with tears. ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘I met an old freedom-fighter friend of yours, and he had this photograph in his collection.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I never took many photographs with my brother. I will cherish this.’

  A hush fell across the room as my parents embraced. ‘Thank you,’ I mouthed to Rashid. He winked at me and I felt a wave of affection for him. And then Bulbul led us in a round of applause, and the tea arrived, Molly’s phone rang, and everyone leaned back in their chairs and allowed the evening to come to an end.

  And that is how, dear Elijah, I was engaged to be married to someone other than you. I sent you a message without encryption that evening: I am engaged, it said, and, seconds later, you replied: I Hold No Grudge.

  Dolly convinced my mother to take a few days off so we could do the wedding shopping in Calcutta. Ammoo had spent the weeks after the engagement party in Sirajganj, where she had met a group of Birangona women who had been kept in rape camps during the war. The women were in their sixties now, but they still lived together in a shelter that had been set up for them just after independence. She went at first for one night, and then decided to stay for a week because two of the women had recently died of ovarian cancer and she wanted to set up a screening clinic with the local health department. She called and said she might try and persuade the Health Minister to come down. Did you know (her sentences often started this way), the Pakistan Army used to shave their heads because they might use their hair to hang themselves. I did know this, she had told me many times.

  In college, after taking a class on Feminism, Selfhood, and Subjectivity, I had read Andrea Dworkin and decided that I had been the product of rape. My father had raped my mother and my mother ha
d given me up for adoption because the sight of my face made her want to be sick. I walked around with this heavy, sludgy feeling in my bones for a few weeks. I practised saying to myself in the mirror that I was the product of rape, wondering how I might introduce such a subject in conversation, deciding it would most definitely give me some cachet with certain types of people. Sometimes I felt like taking a little razor to my skin, maybe my arm or the inside of my leg. I tried it a few times, but I was disgusted by the sight of my own blood, and the relief was only temporary, and eventually I returned to the thought less and less, reminded only when my mother brought up the subject of rape, which she did more often than you would imagine a person does in the course of ordinary conversation.

  In Calcutta, Dolly got us rooms with connecting doors at the Grand, and I could hear them talking and giggling while I watched reruns of MasterChef Australia. We sat on velvet stools at fancy boutiques and were shown one sari after another, while the word ‘trousseau’ was whispered among the salesmen. Later, over ice cream, they told me that at university they had one fancy sari between them, borrowing it from each other for special occasions. Of course, the sari was Dolly’s – Ammoo couldn’t afford such luxuries – but that isn’t how they remembered it. I guess that is why, after so many years, they were still best friends. Ammoo had risen to the top of her profession – people addressed her as ‘respected Apa’ – and Dolly, in the meantime, had become a rich man’s wife, nothing but the accomplishments of her children to brag about. Ammoo reminded Dolly of the women they had expected themselves to become, back when the war made their dreams expand out of their little lives, and Dolly was the loyal friend who had seen her through a revolution and its aftermath. I finally understood why they were inseparable, why they had been plotting for years to bring me and Rashid together, because together they formed a single set of hopes, and that is why I had to accept the plot so faithfully, why, in my mind, there seemed no alternative. It wasn’t so much doing what was expected of me, like Chandana’s Tam-Bram marriage. For this was no arbitrary match, it was the culmination of decades of dreaming, an erasure of history as much as a mark of victory, and in its shadow, I was insignificant.