by Gayle Forman
Twenty
Mérida, Mexico
Mérida is a bigger version of Valladolid, a colonial pastel-painted city. Kate drops me off in front of a historic peach-colored building that she has heard is a decent hostel. I book myself a room with a balcony overlooking the square and I sit out and watch people taking shelter from the afternoon sun. Shops are closing up for siesta and though I’d planned to scout out the area and find some lunch, I’m not actually hungry. I’m a little wrung out from the morning’s drive and my stomach still feels as if it’s on the bumpy highway. I decide to take a siesta, too.
• • •
I wake up covered in sweat. It’s dark outside, the air in my room still and stale. I sit up to open my window or the balcony door, but when I do, my stomach heaves. I flop back down on the bed and close my eyes, willing myself back to sleep. Sometimes I can trick my body into righting itself before it realizes something’s wrong. Sometimes that works.
But not tonight. I think of the pork in the brown sauce I ate for dinner last night and the memory of it makes my stomach wave and flutter, like there’s a small feral animal trapped inside.
Food poisoning. It must be. I sigh. Okay. A few hours discomfort, and then sleep. Then it will be over. It’s all about getting to the sleep.
I’m not sure of the time so I don’t know how long it takes for the sun to come up, but when it does, I haven’t even touched sleep. I’ve puked so many times the plastic wastebin is almost full. I tried, a few times, to crawl to the shared bathroom down the hall, but I couldn’t make it past my door. Now that the sun is up, the room is heating up. I can almost see the toxic fumes from the wastebin spreading out, poisoning me all over again.
I keep throwing up. There’s no respite or relief in between bouts. I puke until there’s nothing left: no food, no bile, none of me left, it seems.
That’s when the thirst hits. I’ve long since drunk the rest of the water in my bottle, and thrown that up too. I start to fantasize about mountain streams, waterfalls, rain showers, even the Dutch canal; I’d drink from those if I could. They sell bottled water downstairs. And there’s a tap in the bathroom. But I can’t sit up, let alone stand up, let alone make it to water.
Is anyone there? I call. In Dutch. In English. I try to remember the Spanish but the words get jumbled. I think I’m talking but I can’t tell and it’s noisy in the square and my weak voice stands no chance.
I listen for a knock at the door, praying for an offering of water, clean sheets, a cool compress, a soft hand on my forehead. But none comes. This is a hostel, bare bones, no housekeeping, and I prepaid two nights.
I retch again. Nothing comes out except my tears. I am twenty-one years old and I still cry when I puke.
Finally, sleep comes to rescue me. And then I wake up, and I see her, so close. And all I can think is: It was worth it if it brought you.
Who takes care of you now? she whispers. Her breath feels like a cooling breeze.
You, I whisper back. You take care of me.
I’ll be your mountain girl.
I try to reach for her, but now she’s gone and the room is full of the others: Céline and Ana Lucia and Kayla and Sara and the girl with the worm, and there’s more yet—a Franke in Riga, a Gianna in Prague, a Jossra in Tunis. They all start talking at me.
We’ll take care of you.
Go away, I want Lulu back. Tell her to come back.
Green turtles, red blood, blue sky, double happiness, lalala, they singsong.
No! That’s not how it goes. That’s not how double happiness goes.
But I can’t remember how it goes either.
She left you like this.
I’ll take care of you.
French whore.
Call me if you need anything.
Wanna share with me?
Stop it! I yell.
Take the wheel! Now it’s Kate yelling. Only I can’t see any wheel and I have the awful feeling, like in the dreams, that I’m going to crash.
No! Stop. Go away! All of you! You’re not real. None of you! Not even Lulu. I screw my eyes shut and cover my ears with the sweat-soaked pillow and curl up into a fetal ball. And finally, finally, like this, I fall asleep.
• • •
I wake up. My skin is cool. The sky is purple. I’m not sure if it’s twilight or dawn, how long I’ve been out. I’m coherent enough to know that I’m supposed to be back in Cancún soon to meet Broodje and fly back to Holland, and I need to get word to him somehow, that he might have to leave without me. I swing my legs over the side of the bed. The room teeters before my eyes, but it doesn’t totter over. I plant my feet. I pull to a stand. Like a toddler or a very old man, I take the steps, one at a time, to the lobby.
In the corner is an Internet café where you can make long-distance phone calls. I feel like I’ve been in the dark for months, the lights from all those monitors hurt my eyes so. I hand over some money and ask for a phone and am guided to a bank of computers with a telephone handset. I open my address book. Kate’s card, ruckus theater company splashed across the top in red lettering, falls out.
I start to dial. The digits swim on the page and I’m not sure if I have the country code right or if I dialed correctly.
But there’s a tinny ring. And then a voice: faraway, tunnel-like, but unmistakably hers. As soon as I hear it, my throat closes.
“Hello. Hello? Who is this?”
“Ma?” I manage to croak out.
Silence. And when she says my name I want to cry.
“Ma,” I say again.
“Willem, where are you?” Her voice is crisp, officious, businesslike as always.
“I’m lost.”
“You’re lost?”
I’ve been lost before, in new cities with no familiar landmarks to set me straight, waking up in strange beds, unsure of where I was or who was next to me. But I realize now, that wasn’t lost. It was something else. This . . . I may know exactly where I am—in a hostel, in the central square, in Mérida, Mexico—but I have never been so utterly unmoored.
There’s a long silence on the line and I’m afraid the call has dropped. But then Yael says: “Come to me. I’ll send you a ticket. Come to me.”
It’s not what I really want to hear. What I want—what I ache—to hear is come home.
But she can’t tell me to come to a place that no longer exists, any more than I can go to that place. For now, this is the best either of us can do.
Twenty-one
FEBRUARY
Mumbai, India
Emirates 148
13 Feb: Departure 14:40 Amsterdam—00:10 Dubai
Emirates 504
14 Feb: Departure 03:55 Dubai—08:20 Mumbai
Have a safe trip.
This email, containing my itinerary, comprises the bulk of the communication between Yael and me since I returned from Mexico last month. When I got back from Cancún, a friendly travel agent named Mukesh called to request a copy of my passport. A week later, I got the itinerary from Yael. I’ve heard little else since.
I try not to read too much into it. This is Yael. And this is me. The most charitable explanation is that she’s hoarding the small talk so we will have something to say to each other for the next . . . two weeks, month, six weeks? I’m not sure. We haven’t discussed it. Mukesh told me that the ticket was valid for three months and that if I wanted help booking flights within India, or out of India, I should contact him. I try not to read too much into that, either.
In the immigration line, I’m jangly with nerves. The bar of duty-free Toblerone (meant for Yael) that I wound up eating as the plane descended into Mumbai probably didn’t help matters. As the line lurches forward, an impatient Indian woman pushes into me with her prodigious sari-wrapped belly, as if that will make us go faster. I almost switch places with her. To stop the pushing. And to make us go slower.
When I exit into the airport arrivals hall, the scene is both space age and biblical. The airport is modern and new, but th
e hall is thronged with people who seem to be carrying their entire lives on metal trolleys. The minute I get out of customs, I know that Yael is not here. It’s not that I don’t see her, though I don’t. It’s that I realize, belatedly, she never specifically said she’d meet me. I just assumed. And with my mother, you never assume.
But it’s been almost three years. And she invited me here. I go back and forth through the hall. All around me, people swarm and push and shove, as if racing for some invisible finish line. But there’s no Yael.
Ever optimistic, I go outside to see if she’s waiting there. The bright morning light hurts my eyes. I wait ten minutes. Fifteen. There’s no sign of my mother.
There’s a gladiator match of taxi drivers and porters vying for passengers. Psst, they hiss at me. I stare at the itinerary now gone limp in my hand, as if it will somehow impart critical new information.
“Are you being met?”
In front of me is a man. Or a boy. Somewhere in between. He seems about my age, except for his eyes, which are ancient.
I give the area one more sweep. “It appears I’m not.”
“Do you need a driver?”
“It appears I do.”
“Where are you going?”
I recall the address from the immigration forms I just filled out in triplicate. “The Bombay Royale. In Colaba. Do you know it?”
He gives his head a half nod, half shake that isn’t exactly reassuring. “I take you there.”
“Are you a driver?”
He wags his head again. “Where is your suitcase?”
I point to the small rucksack on my back.
He laughs. “Like Kurma.”
“The food?”
“No. That is korma. Kurma is one of Vishnu’s incarnations, a tortoise, carries his home on his back. But if you like korma, I can show you a good place.”
The boy introduces himself as Prateek and then confidently threads us through the crowd past the airport garage and to a dusty lot. On one side are the runways, the other, high-rise buildings and even higher cranes, swinging in the wind. Prateek locates the car—something that back home might be called vintage, but when I compliment it, he makes a face and tells me it belongs to his uncle and one day, he will buy his own car, a good one made abroad, a Renault, or a Ford, not a Maruti or a Tata. He pays the skinny dusty boy who was guarding the car a few coins and opens the backseat. I toss my rucksack there and try to open the front door. Prateek tells me to wait, and with a complicated sequence of rattles and twists, opens it from the inside, sweeping a pile of magazines from the passenger seat.
The car shudders to life and the little brass statue cemented to the dash—a tiny elephant with a sort of smile of the perpetually amused—starts to dance.
“Ganesha,” Prateek says. “Remover of obstacles.”
“Where were you last month?” I ask the statue.
“He was right here,” Prateek answers solemnly.
We drive out of the airport complex, past a bunch of ramshackle houses, before climbing onto an elevated expressway. I tilt my head out the window. It’s pleasantly hot, but not as hot as it will be, Prateek warns. It’s still winter; it will get warmer until the monsoons come in June.
As we drive, Prateek points out landmarks. A famous temple. A spidery suspension bridge crossing Mahim Bay. “Many Bollywood stars live in this area. Closer to the studios, which are near the airport.” He thumbs behind us. “Though some live in Juhu Beach, and some in Malabar Hill. Some even in Colaba where you are staying. Taj Mahal Hotel is there. Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Roger Moore, Double-Oh Seven. Also American presidents all stayed there.”
Traffic starts to back up. We slow down and Ganesha stops his dance. “What is your favorite movie?” Prateek asks me.
“Hard to pick just one.”
“What is the last movie you saw?”
I flipped through a half dozen of them on the flights over, but was too antsy to focus on any one. I suppose the last movie I watched in full was Pandora’s Box. That was the movie that started it all, that led to the disastrous trip to Mexico, which funnily enough, has now landed me here. Lulu. If she was far away before, she’s farther now. Not one but two oceans between us now.
“Never heard of that movie,” Prateek says, wagging his head. “My favorite movie of the last year is a tie. Gangs of Wasseypur. Thriller. And London, Paris, New York. Do you know how many films Hollywood studios produce a year?”
“No idea.”
“Take a guess.”
“A thousand.”
He frowns. “I speak of the studios, not an amateur with a camera. One thousand, that would be impossible.”
“A hundred?”
His smile flips on like a switch. “Wrong! Four hundred. Now do you know how many films Bollywood produces a year? I won’t make you guess because you will be wrong.” He pauses for dramatic effect. “Eight hundred!”
“Eight hundred,” I repeat because it’s clear he thinks the number warrants repeating.
“Yes!” He’s smiling broadly now. “Twice the number of Hollywood. Do you know how many people in India go to the movies every single day?”
“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”
“Fourteen million. Do fourteen million people go to the movies every day in Germany?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’m from Holland. But given that the entire population isn’t much more than sixteen million, I doubt it.”
He beams with pride now.
We exit the expressway onto the streets of what must be colonial Mumbai and turn into an area with an arbor of trees and a line of idling double-decker buses belching out black exhaust.
“There is the Gateway of India,” Prateek says, pointing out a carved arch monument on the edge of the Arabian Sea. “The Taj Mahal Hotel I told you about,” he says, pulling past a massive confection of a hotel, all domes and cornices. A group of Arab men in billowing white robes are piling into a series of window-tinted SUVs. “Inside is a Starbucks.” He lowers his voice to a whisper. “Have you ever had a Starbucks coffee?”
“I have.”
“My cousin said that in America they drink it with every meal.” He pulls up in front of another graying building, Victorian, and it seems, almost sweating in the heat. The sign, in fading elaborate cursive, reads bo bay ro al. “Here you are. Bombay Royale.”
I follow Prateek into a darkened, cool lobby, quiet except for the whoosh and squeak of ceiling fans and the faint chirping of crickets nesting somewhere in the walls. Behind a long mahogany desk, a man so old he seems original to the building is napping. Prateek loudly rings the bell and he startles awake.
Immediately, the two start arguing, mostly in Hindi but with a few English words thrown in here and there. “Regulations,” the old man keeps saying.
Eventually, Prateek turns to me. “He says you can’t stay here.”
I shake my head. Why did she bring me here? Why did I come?
“It’s a private residence club, not a hotel,” Prateek explains.
“Yes. I’ve heard of those.”
Prateek frowns. “There are other hotels in Colaba.”
“But this must be the place.” This is the address I’ve had for her for the last few years. “Look under my mother’s name. Yael Shiloh.”
At the mention of her name, the old man’s head whips up. “Willem saab?” he asks.
“Willem. Yes, that’s me.”
He squints his eyes and grasps my hands. “You are nothing like the memsahib,” he says.
I don’t have to know what that means to know who he’s talking about. It’s what everyone says.
“But where is she?” he asks.
There’s a kernel of comfort. I’m not the only one in the dark. “Oh, you know her,” I say.
“Yes, yes, yes,” he says, doing the same head nod/shake as Prateek.
“So can I go to her flat?” I ask the old man.
He considers it, scratching the gray stubble on his chin. �
��Regulations say only members can stay here. When memsahib makes you a member, you will be a member.”
“But she’s not here,” Prateek points out helpfully.
“Regulations,” the old man says.
“But you knew I was coming,” I say.
“But you are not with her. What if you are not really you? Do you have proof?”
Proof? Like what. A surname? Mine is different. Photos? “Here,” I say, pulling out the email, now damp and creased.
He squints at it with dark eyes that have gone filmy with age. He must decide it’s enough. Because he gives two quick nods of his head and says, “Welcome, Willem saab.”
“At last,” Prateek says
“I am Chaudhary,” the old man says, ignoring Prateek and handing me a sheaf of papers to fill out. When I finish, he heaves at the opening to the front desk and creaks out from behind. He shuffles down the scuffed wooden hallway. I follow him. Prateek trails behind me. When we reach the elevators, Chaudhary makes a tick-tock gesture to Prateek with his fingers. “Members only in the elevator,” he tells him. “You may take the stairs.”
“But he’s with me,” I say.
“Regulations, Willem saab.”
Prateek shakes his head. “I should probably get the car back to my uncle,” he says.
“Okay, let me pay you.” I pull out a wad of filthy rupees.
“Three hundred rupees for no AC. Four hundred with,” Chaudhary says. “That’s the law.”
I hand Prateek five hundred rupees, about the price of a sandwich back home. He backs up to leave. “Hey, what about that korma?” I ask him.
His smile is goofy, a little like Broodje’s. “I will be in touch,” he promises.
The elevator lurches to the fifth floor. Chaudhary opens the gate onto a light-filled corridor, smelling of floor wax and incense. He leads me past a series of slatted wood doors, stopping at the farthest one, and pulls out a master key.
At first, I think the old man got the wrong room. Yael has lived here for two years, but this is an empty suite of rooms. Anonymous bulky wood furniture, generic paintings on the wall of desert forts and Bengal tigers. A small round table against a pair of French doors.