“Don’t be scared. Don’t be scared.” I was whispering to myself now. I wished the heavy feeling in my head would go away. I kept rattling the doorknob again and again, but the floor felt like water, swirling around my legs as I fell heavily onto my knees.
What is happening? Why are they keeping me here?
I must have been screaming for hours when they finally burst in. Perera sir and Miss Chandra and Upul and, thank god, Lihini.
“Lihini!” I rasped. “Help me, please help me.”
But she wouldn’t meet my eye. She stood behind everyone else and bit her lip, looking like she was trying not to cry.
“Restrain her,” Perera sir ordered, and Upul put his hands in my armpits and pulled me off the floor.
“No! No! Help me, please.” I was still calling out to Lihini as he dragged me over to the bed and pushed me down. My dress rode up to my waist as I thrashed around, but I didn’t care. What were they doing? Why wasn’t Lihini helping me?
He used some nylon rope from the washing line to tie my wrists to the top of the bed. I could smell his body odour as he leaned close to me. He gave me a disgusting smile and stared knowingly at the bottom of my dress.
But Perera sir and Miss Chandra were there. They wouldn’t let anything happen to me.
“Help me,” I called out to them, but they were looking at Lihini.
“You wanted to see her, here she is. I told you, she’s having a bit of trouble after Shanika’s attack,” Perera sir explained to her.
Lihini still didn’t come close. She pressed up against the wall of the room, like she wanted to be as far away from me as possible.
But she was staring at me now. Staring at my face.
Miss Chandra took her arm.
“See, child. See what we meant? You have to do it. It’s the only way.”
Lihini’s hands were shaking a little. They always did that when she was upset.
Perera sir spoke next. “No point feeling bad about this, Lihini. Paloma will understand when she calms down. She won’t be angry with you. She’ll understand that it’s for the good of the home, for all of us.”
Lihini swallowed, and gave a small nod.
43
SAN FRANCISCO, CA
MY HEAD POUNDED AS I peeled open my eyes. This was a giant mother of a hangover. It took me a minute to realize I was in my parents’ garage. What on earth was I doing here? The single bulb from the ceiling cast a murky grey glow around me, throwing deep shadows onto the wall.
Everything looked the same, messy and untouched. My bicycle. The broken freezer. Dad’s tools. Neatly labeled boxes of extra supplies.
My neck hurt like a bitch. I was seated upright, my chin sinking into my chest. I was about to wonder how on earth I managed that, when I noticed I couldn’t move my arms. They were bound behind the chair, holding me straight. My heart started beating fast. What the hell was going on? I tried to stand but my legs were tied also.
I struggled for just a few seconds when I realized that I was not alone.
She sat in front of me, a few feet away, her face grey, like everything else in the garage. Only it wasn’t the Gloria I knew. Her hair wasn’t pink anymore but black and long, and she had slicked the heavy bangs off her face. Her piercings were gone. So were her glasses. She had wiped off the heavy eyeliner and overpronounced eyebrows. She wore a black sweater and jeans. They were my black sweater and jeans.
She looked different. Different, and yet recognition buzzed through me like electricity. Like seeing your reflection in a mirror when you weren’t expecting it. I took me more than a moment to realize it was her, but it was only when she spoke, her Latina accent harshly replaced with a Sri Lankan one, that it felt like a direct punch to my gut.
“Time to wake up, Lihini. Don’t you recognize me yet? It’s me. Paloma.”
44
RATMALANA, SRI LANKA
“LIHINI!” I SCREAMED. I didn’t understand what was happening. Why was she here? What was she agreeing to do?
Why wasn’t she helping me?
Miss Chandra picked up a screwdriver and a hammer and led Lihini to the bathroom.
“Wait,” Lihini said. She held out her hand. “Let me do it myself.”
Perera sir and Miss Chandra stood outside the bathroom door as Lihini went inside. She didn’t shut the door, so I could see her as she stood in front of the mirror. She pulled her lips back and looked at her teeth.
Finally, she took a deep breath and picked up the screwdriver, bringing it to her front tooth.
“No!” I screamed. My strength had returned and I thrashed in bed, kicking and screaming as loudly as I could.
But Upul clamped his hand down hard on my mouth. I tried to bite him but my jaw was locked. I swung my head from side to side, but it was no use. He pushed on my chest with his elbows, using his body weight to keep me pinned down on the bed. He reached out with his hand and pinched hard on my nipple.
“Shut up or I’ll do much worse to you. Really teach you a lesson,” he sneered.
The tears that gushed down my face burned my wound. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t believe this was happening. That she would do this to me.
But through all my muffled screaming and thrashing, I could hear it. I knew.
The sound of a hammer hitting a screwdriver. Lihini’s small scream. The sound of metal clanking against the tile as the tools slid out of her hands, letting everyone in the room know that she was done. That her betrayal was final.
I twisted my head so I could see her. She was looking into the mirror, smiling wide to study her new, chipped tooth.
45
SAN FRANCISCO, CA
THE GARAGE GOT SMALL. The walls started closing in on me. One inch at a time. It was getting dark. Dark and cramped and small and I could hear my heart beat like a frenzied, feral animal all the way from my chest to my ears.
“Paloma?” My voice was steady, even though my whole body was trembling. It felt strange to call someone else that after so long. It felt even stranger to have her seated across from me.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Her lips curved into a smile. A faint scar was visible on her cheek now that her cakey makeup was gone.
“They told me you died.”
“Oh, they did, did they? I’m curious. Did they say that Paloma died, or Lihini?”
My tooth was throbbing like I was being electrocuted. My hair was stuck to my face. I wished my hands were untied so I could brush it away. Or do something.
“I’m sorry. Look, I really am.”
“You’re sorry?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Of course I’m sorry. Paloma, you have no idea what it’s been like. I—”
“No idea what it’s been like?”
Her voice was flat. I was doing this wrong. I spent all my life calculating, measuring the right words to say and now I was doing everything wrong.
Be sweet, Paloma.
“You don’t know what it means to me that you’re alive. I—I haven’t been able to forgive myself for what I did.”
“How gracious of you.”
“Stop it. It’s true. You’re alive. This is—oh god, Paloma, you have no idea how much of my life has been spent wishing I could go back. Wishing I could go back and change everything.”
“You must be used to your wishes coming true, no?”
“It’s not like that.”
“But you got what you wanted, right? A family. A life in America. A life that was supposed to be mine.”
“I’m so sorry. I really am. But I had to leave. It was—she was—”
“She?” Her lips twisted into a mangled smile. “She?”
“You know who. I thought I was going crazy, but I saw her, Paloma, I swear I did.” My voice was shaking. I tried breathing but it felt like I was underwater.
&nb
sp; “Who, Lihini? Who did you see?”
She wanted me to say it.
“T-the woman. Mohini. I saw her. No one would believe me. Only Perera sir. And he—and he gave me a chance to escape her. To escape the curse. I’m so sorry. She—she wanted to kill me, Paloma. I know she did.”
The ugly smile grew wider, until she threw back her head and laughed.
“So this ghost wanted to kill you, huh? And that made it okay for you to take my place? To pretend to be me? To keep it going for eighteen fucking years?”
“But you said—you said you didn’t want to go. That you hated leaving.”
That’s how I had justified it. I mean, I had to fucking justify it somehow. How else was I supposed to live with myself? She said the words. She said she didn’t want to go. So I shut off the little voice in my head that knew it was a lie.
The smile switched to a menacing glare in less than a second.
“You stupid, stupid bitch.” Her voice was steel now. Any trace of laughter was gone. “I only said that shit to make you feel better. So you wouldn’t feel left out, or jealous. How the fuck was I supposed to know that you would stab me in the back like this?”
“But you couldn’t leave! They wouldn’t take you like that. After Shanika—after what she did to your face. If my parents had seen, the whole orphanage could have been shut down. Someone had to go in your place.” I could hear the desperation in my voice. Was I desperate for her to believe me, or for me to believe myself? It was a simple choice when Perera sir offered it to me.
Paloma can’t go, not like that, he had said. You have to take her place instead. If you don’t go, we will lose our funding and they will shut down the orphanage. All the girls will be without homes. You don’t want that, do you? Don’t you want to go to America? Of course I did. I would have gone anywhere where I knew for sure I wouldn’t be seeing that vile Sister Cynthia again. Where I wouldn’t be terrified of a ghost that no one except Perera sir believed I saw. I didn’t know the orphanage would burn down. That I was leaving her there to die. Except, well, she didn’t die. She was here.
Her slap felt like lightning. Years of hate, bursting out of the palm of her hand.
“You betrayed me. You were my best friend in the whole world, and you betrayed me.”
Yes. Yes, I betrayed her. But I didn’t think I was. I didn’t think much at all except that none of the girls would have a home if the NCPA heard about Paloma’s attack. I thought I was helping. That it was for the greater good. I would have tried to help the orphanage even if the reward wasn’t me getting everything I had always wanted. At least, I think I would. I was twelve fucking years old, how the hell could I be held accountable for a decision I made when I was a child?
“I was just a kid, Paloma. I’m sorry. I—I didn’t think. You have no idea how much I’ve regretted it ever since. What it’s been like. Feeling so guilty all the time.”
She snorted.
“What it’s been like? You want to tell me what it’s been like? You have no idea what I’ve had to go through. What I’ve done to survive.”
She slapped me again and again.
I don’t really know how long it went on for, but when she finally stopped hitting me, she hunched over, breathing hard.
I tried again.
“Paloma, I swear. I swear I thought they would find another home for you. That’s what they told me. I promise.” I didn’t believe it then. Not really. But she had to believe me now. My voice had taken on a whiny, needling quality that I would have hated if I heard it on anyone else. “That’s why, when Perera sir offered to help me, I took it.”
“He wasn’t trying to help you, you stupid bitch. He was trying to save his own ass.”
“I was freaked out by this whole Mohini thing. He knew, Paloma, he knew how scared I was. And then when you got hurt they said they needed someone to be adopted. That we would be shut down otherwise. That I had to take your place. I thought it was the only thing to do.” I was repeating myself, but I had nothing else to say.
“The only thing to do. The only thing to do.” She shook her head in disgust. “So, tell me, after all this fucking time, do you still believe that Mohini was after you?”
She was a figment of my imagination, right? There was no way. It felt real then, what I had seen. True, I was scared out of my mind, in the way a twelve-year-old would be. But it was just something the girls made up at the orphanage. And then when I came here, Nina said it was my way of trying to cope with the guilt of leaving. She didn’t know what I had done to get here, of course. Just that I had left my best friend behind, and that she died in a fire.
“You are so much, so much stupider than I thought, you know that?” She stood up abruptly, grabbing the back of my chair and dragging me backwards to the corner of the garage, where she spun the chair around to face the wall.
She stuck up an old piece of newspaper on the peeling paint. It was at my eye level.
“I hope you’re not too drunk to read this,” she said. I heard her footsteps head out of the garage, but I didn’t turn my head to watch her leave. I was transfixed on the paper, on the picture printed on it, smiling at me. It was her. Mohini.
46
SAN FRANCISCO, CA
HER EYES DRILLED INTO me as they had so many years ago. Except they weren’t blank. Her smile wasn’t evil, and her hair fell smoothly away from her forehead. She wore a white dress, but this was no shroud. She was a bride on her wedding day, with Perera sir, a much younger Perera sir, somberly standing next to her.
There was another picture, smaller, and lost amid the columns of text, of a few of the girls playing in the orphanage garden.
Tragedy and Scandal for Internationally Funded Orphanage in Ratmalana, the headline read. It looked like more of a tabloid than a legitimate newspaper.
I had to squint and lean forward to read the rest of the article.
Investigations following a fire at a prestigious girls’ home in Ratmalana have led to a surprise discovery regarding the director of the home, Mr. Dudley Perera.
Perera was, as described by many residents of Ratmalana, a kind and well-mannered man, who dedicated his life to raising funds and running the orphanage. His wife, Mrs. Sandamali Perera, was believed by local residents to have succumbed to a grave illness, the details of which were not publicized. However, investigations after the disastrous fire which claimed the lives of three residents at the orphanage brought to light that Mrs. Perera was residing within the very walls of the girls’ home.
What the—?
“We thought a ghost stayed with us,” a surviving teacher commented. “Many girls reported sightings, and she was named Mohini, after Vana-Mohini, the folktale.”
It appears that Mrs. Perera continued to reside within the walls of the home unbeknownst to its residents. Mr. Perera’s role in these surprising circumstances is yet to be determined by authorities. Investigators have not determined the cause of the fire but have disclosed that they do suspect foul play.
As both Mr. and Mrs. Perera succumbed to their injuries from the fire before they could be questioned, authorities might never be able to find definite answers to this mystery.
I blinked. Forced myself to inhale.
What the hell did this mean?
She was alive? She never died? But then, what was it I saw? Was it her that I saw? The real, very-much-alive Sandamali Perera, walking around the orphanage when she should be—when she should be what? Hiding? Did he hide her? Did he keep her there?
I don’t know how long I sat there, staring at her face. Trying to understand.
“What does this mean?” I asked as soon as Paloma yanked my chair around.
“What the fuck do you think it means? He kept her in the fucking orphanage. I mean, Mrs. Perera was completely batshit crazy herself. They were going to take her away to a mental hospital but Perera sir couldn’t deal
with the fucking shame of that, so he kept her there instead, all drugged up. He told everyone she’d died, but she was trapped in the cupboard in his office the whole time. You know the one. He was letting her out only at night. His little prisoner.”
“But I saw her.”
“Exactly. You fucking saw her. You saw her and thought you saw a ghost and you wouldn’t shut your damn mouth about it. So he needed to get you out of there. Offered you a deal. He wasn’t taking any chances after the close call with Shanika.”
“Shanika? What did she have to do with it? Didn’t she attack you? Isn’t that why Perera sir wanted me to come here instead? Because Mom and Dad would have alerted the NCPA if they saw your wounds?”
She let out a short, dry laugh.
“Even after all this, don’t you get it? Shanika didn’t attack me. I knew it, even then. It was a fucked-up, drugged-up Mrs. Perera that all you morons thought was a ghost. Shanika was just a pawn in this whole thing. A liability after Mrs. Perera attacked her the year before, and Perera sir had to cover all that shit up by claiming that Shanika was crazy and tried to hurt herself. It’s so fucked up. Miss Chandra knew and helped him keep her medicated enough that she could never really talk about it.
“And then crazy Mrs. Perera attacked me too. Fucking tried to bite my face off. Now that would really have been a disaster with the NCPA. The orphanage would have been shut down for sure. The Evanses had to adopt someone, it was all settled. And anyone in their right mind would have alerted the authorities if their brand-new child showed up with chunks of her face bitten off. Someone had to be adopted. It just couldn’t be me.”
No. No. No. This wasn’t happening.
“Oh my goodness.”
“Oh. My. Fucking. Goodness. Does Perera sir’s little angel understand now? How she wasn’t saving anyone? How she fucking betrayed me?”
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