What You Are

by M G Vassanji

  Sushila.

  “It’s a Hindi name?”

  “Indian. Hindu, yes.”

  I was born an Indian, they brought me up as African American. I was born a Hindu, I am now a nonpracticing Muslim. What name would she have had in mind? Is this why my shoes never quite fit, are too narrow or too big?—reminding me that I don’t quite belong? I look at this willowy woman with greying hair, preferring long dresses in retirement and the colours orange, black, and green; and this man who calls himself Baraka because he loves her, preferring his old grey cardigan unbuttoned, and his ghost pipe at his mouth, my mom and dad. They have stepped back a little. And I feel strangely alone.

  I book an Acela to New York for the afternoon.

  * * *

  —

  Sushila

  I was the precocious one. Hormones, they call it now. Wanting to be loved by a man, like in the movies. Romance. The manager at Odeon Cinema would let Ma and me sneak in sometimes, because Bapu was the one who made his shoes. They fitted him just right, he said. All his customers said that; they called him Fit-right Mochi.

  First there was that Ashok, whom I would meet on the roof of their building down the road after school in the afternoon. The adults would be relaxing having tea in their shops downstairs and the coast was clear. It was a quiet hour. We would play all sorts of romantic games. I will be Dilip, you Madhubala. Like this. Let me touch you here. They will grow soon. And then, They do it like this in English films. Lip-touch. Tongue-touch. He was a sly one, but I let him. And what a whipping he got, and the whipping I got, when a servant saw us and reported. He was sent to India to get himself cleansed. Bathe in the Ganges and so on.

  What brought this on? This memory of Ashok? Oh yes, a letter from an American girl who’s just returned from Tanzania. Jogging another memory, one I could do without.

  It happened a year or two after Ashok and was the silliest thing a girl could do. The riskiest thing. Suicidal. One Sunday in December, the sun beating down without mercy, I was returning home from Urmila Auntie in Upanga, carrying a basketful of shoes to be repaired by my father. It was a lonely patch of road, and a boy went racing past me on a bicycle, coming quite close. He suddenly braked up ahead, and I remember his bicycle wobbled as he did so. He turned around and came back towards me. A handsome boy, hair like Elvis, fair-skinned. He had come to our shop to have his feet measured for shoes. “Cobbler’s daughter, no? Do you want a ride? Lovely girl like you, baking in this sun? Do you want to look dark like an African? Hop on.” I did just that, knowing I shouldn’t. I sat at the back, but crafty fellow, after a short distance he says with a grin, “The carrier isn’t good, the wires will only poke your bottom. Come sit on the bar here in the front.” And this silly girl obeys. He took a long route, rubbing me shamelessly from behind, squeezing me tight with his upper arms, I can still picture it, and we stopped at a large shady tree. Behind it, facing away from the path.

  And then mysteriously, the following months, no periods. Ma, what’s wrong? Bapu comes inside and interrogates me, demanding the name of the bastard who did this, and he beats me with a shoe. They give me a pair of kitchen tongs to insert and remove the fetus, as if it was a piece of charcoal. But I am three months and showing a little. Ma sees the panic on my face, and says, “No. Stop. Don’t make her put anything inside her that will poison her. We’ll keep her in hiding.” For six months I was a prisoner in the back room, along with old discarded shoes and clothes and scraps of leather, cans of glue, and rats and cockroaches. How it smelled. There was an old shoemaker’s last that I played with and spoke to and used to beat down the cockroaches. I could come out for washing only at night and dawn. I remember reading scraps of old newspapers. Mantras were said on me. Ma would light incense and recite aartis. A priest came late one night and spent hours reciting over me, even when I had fallen asleep. Bapu lost weight. And I wanted to kill myself. Just let me walk down to the seashore, Bapu, it’s only half a mile away, and I will drown myself. All our troubles will be over. He looked at me. Seemed to contemplate. “Perhaps when you were born,” he muttered, “we should have done that. A big mistake.”

  And then the time came. Flutters in the belly. What shall I do, Ma? Bapu went and pleaded with Dr. Malek, swore her to secrecy. “Where can we take her, Doctor?” “Don’t worry, Jairam Bhai,” she told him. “These things happen. You made such good shoes for me to take away to college in Poona. You brought them to my home just as I was leaving for the airport.” She had a room prepared for me at the European Hospital, facing the sea. And she delivered the baby herself, and this baby came out almost painless, and she held it up and handed it to my mother, and I never saw it again. A nice couple wanted a child, they were desperate. “Boy or girl, Ma?” “It’s better not to know more. Think that nothing happened. It was all a dream and it has gone away.”

  And so it did. Whenever the thought came, of that baby, an image of that little curled-up body and that scrunched-up little face, I would push it away. For the shame of it. For my stupidity. For that little bit of anxiety pushing itself out: Is he all right? Alive? Now I know he was a she, and she is all right.

  Was it all that stupid? For the time, yes it was. Nowadays they go about freely, the youngsters, expressing themselves. There are precautions. There is advice.

  After that…time…with the boy with the Elvis hair, the sweaty smell…he was handsome, strong, and murmured all kinds of endearments as he took me…I imagined, hoped and dreamed he would come for me, send a marriage proposal. But he didn’t even pick up his shoes, Bapu sent them with our servant, who returned with the money. Bapu could have guessed, but he was a bit of a coward. Cobblers had no status. But the boy never showed up. And strangely, I never saw him again…Did I enjoy it? It was a sensation, yes, though it hurt. “Your husband will not do it with such love,” he had panted into my ear. And then, as he dropped me off, “Use Vicks if it hurts.” He had called me darling in English! The cheek.

  What do I tell this American girl, who claims she is my daughter and wants to come and meet me? It’s not worth the trouble. Her real mother and father are the ones who brought her up to be as clever as she seems to be. What would I do with this new complication? Her name is Zakia.

  SPEAK SWEET WORDS, SOFTLY

  1. DAR ES SALAAM.

  The girl.

  Meet my loving gaze, Raheem, show me that compassion that is your name. I’ve fallen in love, young man, with your mischievous gait and alluring face. Oh darling, dearest, my body quivers with desire, have mercy on me. I will walk a thousand miles for you, I will write a hundred love letters to you, all the time I sing this song to you.

  * * *

  —

  He is eighteen years old, they say, the young lord arrived from abroad, newly anointed, his face beaming grace, his voice smooth and foreign, his enunciations clear, his advice to young and old intelligent and compassionate. He is the one I want to love, he is the one I want for my husband. But he is God, how can you say that, that’s blasphemy! You’ll burn in hell. But I’m already burning, can’t you see, I’m in hell until he comes and picks me up and rescues me.

  I see him walking on air over the ground in his white suit and white shoes, his gait light as a feather, the angels shower him with glitter, women in white throw red and pink petals upon him…he is the holiest of the holy and he sees down through the seven earths and up into the seven heavens and he can see my sin, but I see him step down and I desire him, I cannot sleep and desire him, I sweat and wet myself and desire him, I am in his arms and he caresses me and…what can I do? For God’s sake, for his sake, what can I do?

  The parents.

  “We will send a plea to him, he is all-knowing and in his mercy surely he will cure our daughter.”

  “We will send offerings to the prayer house, and every Sunday we will feed fourteen girls and wash their feet and give them each a gift of a handkerchief and a coin, we will
be generous to the beggars. We will feed the kids at the orphanage. Every day at noon, standing on one foot I will pray to him. Lord, only preserve my daughter. Save her. Keep her pure and sinless.”

  “And if she is cured I will pick a Friday and give one shilling to everyone who sets foot in our shop that day.”

  “But why this test upon us, what have we done to deserve this curse? After years of want and struggle, when finally we were beginning to do well, now this calamity.”

  “He knows best, we cannot know his ways. It’s a test. We can simply pray.”

  The maalim.

  The maalim’s house is a mud affair, I grew up in just such a house. There are people waiting as we arrive, sitting on the ground quietly in the front room, all looking desperate. Most of them women. Why does God affect us women so? We are weak in the emotions…if only I had borne a son instead of this daughter. The maalim sits in one corner, chanting behind a cloud of incense from a brazier. Why does he keep smiling? Doesn’t anything trouble him? Does everything amuse him? The dry, cracked floor feels cool on our bare feet, the wall is rough and scratches the back when we sit down. “Come forward,” says the maalim to her, smelling money, “get up and come forward here,” and she gets up and takes the place just vacated before him and meets his eyes across the smoking brazier.

  “What ails you? You do not look well. Do you speak nonsense at home? Tell me, daughter.”

  “I love him, he’s my lover,” she speaks words I’ve never heard from her before, and the maalim says, “Whom do you love, my daughter?”

  “I love God.”

  “The imam! That is good!—like a husband?—that is bad! You go to pray to the temple?”

  “Yes. To our mosque.”

  “Now, my daughter, I understand, he’s a handsome man, your lord, and he’s rich, but he’s beyond you, far far away from you where he has beautiful white angels attending him, and I must cure you and bring you to the straight and narrow called siratal. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now what has caused you all this trouble? You must have walked under a mbuyu tree. You must have been out at the hour of magharab, when it is neither night nor day and the spirits slip down into the world. And one of them entered this pretty girl and turned himself into a lascivious woman. A woman with desires. Desires that are not appropriate. Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “I will pray for you.”

  He brings out a small book the size of his palm, its pages loose and yellow with age, and starts reciting from it, rocking his head back and forth and he goes on and goes on and I think he’s forgotten himself and my ankle bones are hurting and my daughter looks dreamy but suddenly he winds down to a stop. He gives her some water to drink from a tray. He gives her roots to chew and collects the chewed remnants and puts them aside. He gives her roots to take home to boil in water and drink the tea. He walks her to the door and I follow behind. Outside where it’s brilliant with sun he asks me for his gift. I place in his hand a fat wad of bills that I’ve brought with me.

  The girl.

  Walking, walking I am tired now, I cannot bear this ache any longer. Over rock and thorn, through fire and smoke. My lord, come and save me. Place your hand on my head, embrace me, Raheem, cast your loving gaze upon me and recognize my devotion. Make me your slave, I will sweep the floor under your feet with my hair, I will clean after you, I will lick your plate when you’ve eaten. I cannot bear it any longer. Stay in my breast, my lord. Stay in my soul, my husband. There is no one else.

  The parents.

  “We’ve tried everything. We can only wait for our prayers to be answered.”

  “But I wonder…I fear…”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Is it right…”

  “What?”

  “After beseeching our lord so much for his help, to try other means too? Visiting the maalim. And others. It shows we don’t have faith.”

  “We have faith. He knows. He understands our weakness. Perhaps indirectly it’s he who told us to go to these people. But in the end, it’s all in his hands.”

  “Or the Devil’s. We’ve come under his shadow.”

  “But God always wins. Keep faith.”

  The girl.

  I beseech you, my lord, turn to me with a smile. I humble myself before you, master of my soul, king of my heart, my raja. Show me a glimpse of you, Karsan!

  The potter woman.

  The potters’ colony is a ramshackle compound inside a gate. We enter and we could be in India. Poor and backward.

  “Come, dear,” I tell her, “we’ll follow this man. And don’t look about at the others. They have shifty eyes. Look how modestly the women are covered, going about their work. And you are in a short dress. They are not used to that. Come. But this squelchy mud is like clay, sticks to the chappals—be careful, don’t slip—hold my hand. They must dump their unused clay right here, where people walk, couldn’t find a better place.”

  “Come,” the man says as we reach a shack, “go inside, my mother is there, she will heal you. She has the power.”

  Inside, an old woman sits on the floor before a fire baking rotla, shaping the millet dough with her hands, each piece a perfect disk as it should be, and throws it on the earthen taawli. My girl looks on in wonder. “Isn’t this how I’ve taught you to make them?” I murmur. “I know,” she says.

  The ma’s wrinkled face glows red, and she’s so tiny.

  “Come, my daughters, come inside,” she bids us and wobbles off towards an inner room.

  “What about the rotla, ma?” I ask.

  “Don’t worry, my daughter-in-law will come to attend them.”

  And I thought I was short, look at her, barely up to my shoulders. And they don’t even have a bed, they sleep on the floor. No chairs, one stool before the mirror. Straw mat on the floor.

  “Tell me, dear,” says the ma, peering into her face. “So what ails you? So pale!” She runs her fingers lightly over my daughter’s face.

  “She eats well. Even meat!” I protest.

  “Even so, there’s a paleness in her. Her soul aches. What ails you, dear?”

  “I love him…”

  “She’s in love. Forbidden love?”

  “Yes.”

  “Father?”

  “No!—she’s in love with our imam, I don’t know which is worse!”

  “Imam? Tch, tch. Not good. Come with me to the back. Not you, mother. You will cast a shadow on her. Stay here.”

  Soon they return.

  “What have you done to my girl, she’s all wet.”

  “I’ve cleansed her and given her some herbs to take. Her there is raw, down below. Her nipples are raw. I’ve given her medicines.”

  The mother.

  “What did she do?”

  “She prayed over me, in a strange language. Like a crazy song.”

  “And? How did you get wet?”

  “She cleaned me.”

  “Where?…Even there? Why did she say it was raw?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What have you done to yourself?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You be careful, or you won’t ever bear children! She gave you medicine for that? I’ll throw it away. We’ll buy calamine lotion. The old Hindu charlatan. Low-caste mischief-maker. Making fools of us. Perverse.”

  The girl.

  The fort is high and strong, it rises to the sky, and I’m a forlorn fish in the moat below. Lord, descend and fetch me, I’m losing my mind with love. My darling, come to me, my husband, come to me, forgive me if I lapsed for a moment…My family are my prison. Who can know the truth of my body’s agony, my heart’s anguish? My darling, come to me, my husband, come to me. Forgive if I’ve offended.

  The parents.

  “No, it did not work. All
the way there for nothing. Who was it that recommended her? Why do you listen to people and send me all over?”

  “What do we do, then? That old woman has cured people of jaundice and the evil eye. My brother’s daughter; both the neighbour’s children, they almost died of blackwater fever. She has a reputation in town.”

  “What reputation. Magic won’t work, I have told you. You want to send her to all sorts of people, Hindus and Muslims and whoever, and what will they turn my girl into? Oh, Lord, what sins have I committed…”

  “Don’t cry now, they’re just trying to help…Listen, they say there’s an American. Don’t look so. A doctor of the mind.”

  “Of the mind?”

  “Yes. Of the mind. The Standard says he’s the only one in the whole country.”

  “How can that be? You need a degree, don’t you, to get into the mind?”

  “He has degrees. The Standard says the whole of Class 12 in a Kampala school fainted last month during assembly. All at the same time. All girls. And this white man was sent there and cured them.”

  The American psychiatrist.

  “Hi…Hello.”

  “Hello.”

  “I’m Dr. Preston.”

  “Dr. Preston.”

  “Yes, and I’m here to help you. Do you understand?…Good. Sit down here, where I can see you. Now tell me, what is it that’s bothering you?”

  “I’m in love with him…”

  “With…your spiritual leader?…”

  He looks at her parents, they’ve told him.

  “You nod, so you agree. That is nothing to worry about. It happens to young people, falling in love with adults. Hey, why are you crying? What makes you so unhappy?”

  “I want him to love me back…”

  “How? Can you tell me how you want him to love you?…You see him in your dreams?”

  She nods up and down.

  “Okay. Do you imagine him? What do you see then?”

  “Kissing his feet…and he lifts me up and looks me in the eyes…and he…”