by Anniqua Rana
Now, I wished for anyone, even Maria, to tell me that I would not be the second wife of the man who had beaten his first wife so hard that she had never returned to him. That I would not have to live in Zakia’s house and continue working as a servant my whole life.
Saffiya’s damp clothes lay on the charpoy in front of me. I stared at them, not wanting to do anything with them.
The late-afternoon prayer called to the villagers. The maulvi had reached the mosque, no doubt pleased that he had gained a daughter who would bear children to keep him company in his old age.
I was brought out of my reverie by a proposal very different from the one I was trying to avoid.
“I can take you to see the movie tomorrow.” I wasn’t sure how long Taaj had been standing there. He must have ushered the maulvi out and then come out here.
I stayed seated and looking toward the fields. I could see a tiny figure in the distance. I wondered who it was. Could it be Maalik returning from the cane fields, where he had found work making sugar in those large fire pits? Often he stayed in the one-room hovel, keeping watch over the equipment.
“You’ll still be here,” Taaj said, trying to console me. Why couldn’t he understand? I didn’t just want to stay here and have things be the same as always. I wanted things to change. I wanted them to be better.
He moved closer to me. The sweat emanating from his body embraced me. My thoughts blurred, but my intentions were now clear. I would not let anyone control my life. I would do what my mother must have done.
I lay back on the charpoy and looked up at him. I took his hand and tugged him toward me. He looked confused, but I knew now what I would do.
The charpoy creaked as I pulled him on top of me, and his chest covered mine. I breathed deeply and felt a warmth fill me. I was overwhelmed by ripples of euphoria I had never experienced before. Waves of this ecstasy engulfed me, and I wanted them to continue forever.
I shut my eyes and sighed with pleasure. He moved his body on top of mine and began panting. I could feel parts of his body that I knew I shouldn’t feel so close to mine. I wondered if he could sense what I thought, but his gasps seemed to have taken over his body and mind. I decided to stop thinking myself and let my body control my mind. There was so much pleasure in that. A freedom that I had not anticipated.
He looked at me again but remained silent. Confidence had replaced his confusion. He smiled at me.
Anyone could have seen us on the charpoy, but no one was close enough. We both knew that it wouldn’t be long before someone came looking for me, so I pushed him off me and pulled myself off the charpoy. A half-dead fly fell to the hardened ground as I shook the clothes to straighten them. I stepped on it to relieve it of its misery.
Taaj began walking toward the alfalfa fields behind the trees and turned to look at me. He didn’t have to beckon me to follow. I’d already made up my mind. The crop was now knee-high. I knew I had to follow him. I left the laundered clothes on the charpoy.
I was more aware of my surroundings than of my thoughts. The sun had begun to descend, but steam emanated from the fields. Our landscape dissolved as Taaj pulled me down beside him and lay on top of me.
My feeling of euphoria began to dissipate as he pulled at my shalwar. Panic reared inside me. I had lost the pleasure I’d felt a few minutes earlier on the charpoy. I stretched out my hands, unsure of my own actions. I pressed my hands into the ground to propel myself up but ended up with fists full of dirt. A rock stabbed into my back, and my right foot squished something, maybe a frog.
And then something shifted, and again my mind relinquished its power to my body. Taaj’s greasy hair was bobbing above my head. I was choosing to be controlled by him. A few mosquitoes buzzed over his left shoulder and distracted me. Beyond the mosquitoes, the sky was turning a deep purple and I could see a few very dim pinpricks of stars.
I thought I said something, but I wasn’t sure who I was addressing or what I was saying, and since Taaj didn’t respond, it might have been my imagination. His panting became frantic. I might have pushed him away, but my memory is unclear. A searing pain tore me, and I wanted to shout. Maybe I did, but it didn’t make a difference. He kept moving. He kept hurting me.
And then it was all over.
There was silence. And he was no longer on top of me.
I could see the sky more clearly now, and it had grown darker. The mosquitoes had disappeared, but somewhere in the distance I saw a firefly. It blinked a few times.
I don’t know when Taaj left my side. I only remember returning to the charpoy under the shahtoot tree and picking up the now-dry clothes and returning to the kitchen and seeing Amman Bhaggan preparing the evening meal.
“Where have you been, my child?”
Could she know? I thought. I remained silent.
“I needed help with the onions.”
I held the bundle of clothes in one hand, straightened my dopatta with the other, and walked into another room.
“You can get some rags from under my bed,” she said.
And I didn’t know why I would need them, since I’d just had my monthly bleeding two weeks earlier.
Solace
A dull glow spread across the horizon as I walked toward Maria’s house in the village. Darkness and the night wails of hyenas followed close behind. I was waking up into a nightmare of my own creation. I realized why Bhaggan had thought my monthly bleeding had started. The pain I had felt with Taaj had injured me, and she had seen the bloodstain on my kameez. I should have changed my clothes before returning to the kitchen. The mud stains on my back from lying in the field would not have alerted her as much as the blood evoking my impurity for the week.
I had left the clean laundry outside Saffiya’s room in a pile, and before I could be called to iron it or do any other petty chore for her, I decided to find Maria. I wouldn’t tell her everything I had done, but I needed her to help calm me down so I could think clearly, to get myself out of the mess of marrying an imbecile.
Maria rarely came to Saffiya’s house anymore, now that Stella had left. She spent more time with her parents. I never knew how she could stand to spend countless hours with her complaining mother, but she kept their one-room home spotless and cooked all the meals.
I needed Maria now.
I had defied my elders and knew there would be a price to pay. As I walked, the soreness inside me became more pronounced. How could I have lost control of my own body in that way? How could I have let what had happened transpire? Had I asked for it? And if I was seeking out Maria now, whom would Taaj tell about what we had done? I tried to piece it all together.
I couldn’t recall past the frog under my foot and the deepening sky above me and Taaj’s head and then the pain. The sharp pain. How had the pleasant beginning ended in such agony? I wondered if I had started something that would grow to overshadow my whole life. Why had I not given it more thought?
Maybe it was Taaj’s fault and not mine. Could I blame him? I had wanted him to do something, and I hadn’t even known what it was or where it would take me. But he should have known. He would have known. Taaj had never cared much for anyone other than himself.
I began to pick up my pace as I became more alert. In the silence of the night, I heard the distant drone of buses on the main road and thought of Taaj. He had said nothing to me before we parted. I, too, had been silent.
He must have bolted in the opposite direction to the house. He would have scampered past the cane fields, outrunning the wild boar, and scrambled over the canal bridge, scaring the snakes slithering beneath it. He would have reached the main road by the time I had returned to the kitchen. There, he would have jumped onto the first bus heading toward the coolness of the mountains, away from the heat of the flatlands.
As with all the previous times he had disappeared, he would be gone for a while, only to be missed by his mother, wondering and worrying about where his next meal would come from and where he would rest for the night. He would no d
oubt return. Maybe in a week, maybe in a month, or maybe, this time, in a few years.
But I knew I should stop thinking about him, because even if he were thinking of me, he was gone. He had left me. We might have shared that brief intimacy, but he wasn’t going to admit to his share of guilt. He would say I had enticed him. Bhaggan had always told me that women led men astray. Men had weak minds and strong bodies. Women had weak bodies but strong minds. Had I proven her right?
I had to think about myself. About what I had done. What we had done. There would be consequences. But who knew what?
My confusion was bubbling over and steaming up my thoughts. I would explode like the pressure cooker Bhaggan had hidden behind the flour drum, for fear of another explosion. It had taken me a whole day to clean the pieces of meat spattered on the wall, and even months later, I had found desiccated bone fragments behind the lentil boxes in the far corner of the kitchen.
Taaj was gone, and I would have to clean up.
By the time I reached Maria’s house, darkness had enveloped me. As if sensing my arrival, the bare lightbulb hanging outside the front door lit up, and as I opened the door without even knocking, the aroma of freshly baked bread greeted me.
In the courtyard, Maria was seating herself in front of the stove, having just turned on the light switch.
She looked up as I entered, and I held back my tears. She would not see me cry.
She pushed back the stool, stood up quickly, and began walking toward me, now that I had lost the energy to move any farther.
She hugged me, and my hands fell limply to my sides. She took my right hand and pulled me toward the charpoy in the courtyard and sat me down. Still holding my hand, she sat next to me.
I needed her to be the Maria who couldn’t stop talking, but she wasn’t, and maybe I respected this new Maria more. She stroked my hand and looked at me.
“I’m waiting for my meal!” Jannat called from inside the room.
“Okay, Mother. Give me a few minutes. It’s nearly ready.” She didn’t tell her mother about my arrival.
I whispered to Maria, “You know the night we went to the canal to hear the babies cry?” She said nothing, and I couldn’t continue.
Her mother coughed. Maria got up and prepared a plate of spicy potatoes and roti and took it in to her. She then made another plate and brought it to the charpoy where I sat. She made a morsel and placed it in my mouth, and I began to chew. Then she put one in her own mouth, and we shared the meal until she wiped the plate clean.
“I know how much you hate washing dishes. Now I’ve made it easy for you,” Maria said. Then she smiled. “Don’t worry. I wasn’t going to ask you to wash it.” I couldn’t answer, as it took all my effort to hold back my tears.
“Who’s there? Who are you talking to at this time of the evening?” Jannat shouted from within.
“No one, Amman. It’s just Tara. She came from Bibi Saffiya’s house to ask after you.”
“She’s never cared for me before. Did she bring my wages?”
“Not today,” Maria responded.
I couldn’t trust myself to speak. Not yet.
Maria returned to her mother to take her empty plate. Her mother’s voice emanated from within. “Your father will need a plate.”
“No, Amman. Not tonight. He went to the shrine tonight. He will eat there and sleep there, too. He has gone for blessings.”
“What blessings has he got that haven’t reached us?” Jannat responded, and Maria busied herself with washing the dishes.
I got up from the charpoy to help her.
“What would Bibi Saffiya say if she knew we ate from the same plate?” She laughed.
“I’ve done much worse than that today,” I responded.
She looked at me questioningly. “You?”
So I told her. I told her how my marriage was being arranged and how I had chosen to respond. She kept washing the dishes and wiping them and putting them away, but she heard me.
“Now what?”
“Zakia will no longer want me to marry her nephew.” At least there was some good news to come from all of this.
“How will she know what happened?”
I sat silent. I hadn’t thought that far. A heaviness began to descend on me again. I had taken a step, a leap. I had crossed a chasm, only to be surrounded by quicksand. I was sinking.
“Who will you tell? Amman Bhaggan? Bibi Saffiya? They will tell you to stay silent. And then your nikah will be done to Zakia’s nephew sooner than anyone had expected.”
When had Maria become smarter than I?
I stood up and then sat down again.
“I need tea.” Jannat’s voice sounded sleepier now.
“What does your mother do inside all day?” I asked Maria in a whisper, choosing not to answer her question.
“She comes out during the day, but in the evening she stays on her charpoy. And she dreams. She says her babies come to her at night, looking for her. One day she said Stella had also come, and that scared me. But I reminded her that we had received a letter from her just a week earlier and that she was all right.”
She moved the embers in the stove and kindled a new fire to make some tea. I stared into the sparks, looking for a way to escape. My mind was searching for ways that I had seen or heard about. What had other village women done? What had I seen in the movies and soaps on TV?
“Will Amman Bhaggan wonder where you are?” Maria asked.
“Probably.” Outwardly, I was calm, but the smoke of the dung fire had seeped inside me, blurring my thoughts. I didn’t want to admit to Maria that I had not anticipated my quandary.
“But Maalik usually returns from the fields at this time and sits with her. He doesn’t say much. She makes him his dinner while he smokes. I usually go in to massage Saffiya and watch my favorite soaps on TV.” I looked around at the simple surroundings. “How can you spend your evening here without a radio or a TV?” I asked.
“Stella has sent me some picture books that I try to read, but I’m usually so exhausted that I go to sleep just after sunset.”
“Are you telling me to leave now?” I responded, knowing what I would do.
The fire was now burning brightly, and the smoke and ashes in the air had cleared.
“Never.” She was the devoted Maria I knew.
Though I had to return, my burden was lighter now. The feeling of dread that had weighted me down as I’d come to my friend had lifted significantly.
Moonlight illuminated my path. Two stray dogs settled into a pile of sand on the roadside, barely noticing me. As I neared the house, I could see the maulvi walk toward the mosque to call for the late-evening prayer.
SIX MILES LEFT
Chosen Destiny
Two pairs of honey-colored eyes looked up at me as I entered the kitchen, one exhausted and the other agitated.
As with most evenings, Maalik and Bhaggan sat on the peerhis close to the ground, their plates on the floor, eating their evening meal. But the meal was half-finished, as if they had been deep in conversation.
Maalik was like his eldest brother, Sultan. He talked less and tried hard, but he never did well in school. As a result, he’d dropped out to work in the fields in the mornings and care for the buffalo in the evenings. He corralled them to the canal with his navigational stick and then brought them home before it got dark. At night he placed his charpoy close to them to guard them from dacoits.
Unlike his older brother Taaj, he did not watch movies, but he also never joined the maulvi at the mosque for prayers, as Sultan had done.
“He’s gone again.” Bhaggan sighed. “My poor Taaj. I don’t know what haunts him here so that he cannot stay. He says life stands still here and he has to move on. Before he knows it, his aging mother will have moved on.” She wiped her eyes with her dopatta, but Maalik kept staring at me.
I could never guess what Maalik was thinking. He kept his emotions to himself, unlike his mother or even his brother Taaj. Even when Sultan ha
d died, he had sat stone-faced, staring at the mourners. I didn’t think much of this behavior even now.
“Maalik said he saw him leaving, just before sunset. Why would he leave at night like a robber? Why wouldn’t he wait till the morning and say farewell and take my blessings with him?”
She picked up the half-finished plates and passed them to me. “Here, my daughter. Wash these plates for me. We are both too worried to finish our meal. I made a plate for you, too. It’s lying near the stove, covered with the bread cloth.”
I busied myself washing the plates with my back to them, but I could feel Maalik’s stare as I sat hunched at the faucet. I then picked up the plate she had made for me and placed it in the fridge. My shared meal with Maria had been enough for the night.
“Take it out of the fridge before Saffiya sees it. You know how she hates to see our food in there. Last time, she threw away a whole plate of my daal in the sink,” Bhaggan cautioned me, and added, “She’s already upset that you left her clothes wrinkled in a ball outside her room.”
Bhaggan pulled herself up, holding the cabinet to steady herself. “Where were you, anyway? She wants to talk to you.”
I feigned ignorance of why Saffiya would want to talk to me. I was no longer certain about what I would do, so I returned to my tactic of avoidance.
“Jannat wasn’t feeling well,” I lied. “I went to help Maria.”
“That poor, crazy woman. For Maria, she’ll have to find a husband who’ll live with them. How will she manage if Maria leaves?”
The talk of Maria’s marriage chafed at the soreness of my own dilemma. Inflammation grew, creating pain and panic. How would I get out of it? The old hag was making it worse.
Slamming the kitchen door as I left, I went outside to breathe under the first stars of the night. I needed a clear mind and silence to sift through the debris of the day.
I perched myself on the low brick wall surrounding the garden and looked up for a sign of respite. A flashing star flew across the sky, and I heard the sound of youthful footsteps approaching. Maalik must have followed me.