Island of a Thousand Mirrors (16 page)

We lie wide-eyed in the darkness, empty stomachs rumbling. Appa is quiet, suddenly
ashamed of himself for calling forth the ghosts of the lagoon. When we fall asleep,
it is to the imagined fragrance of prawn curry, the fat white flesh, sweet as fruit,
spilling from the hard crimson shells between our grinding teeth.

*   *   *

One day there is an uproar in the schoolyard. Trucks and motorcycles raise clouds
of maroon dust and Tiger-striped men and women flood the classroom. They carry a television
and video, run cables to the generator in their truck, give us sweets wrapped in little
pieces of colored paper. Then they show us videos of what the Sinhala soldiers do
in the villages. We see bodies, burned red and black, beaten into shapelessness, hung
by the feet. Men slashed across the neck, limp women with babies crawling on them.
An old man with a flap of skin, pink as a dog’s tongue, hanging off his scalp, white
bone underneath.

They show us burning houses, burning kovils, burning churches. This is what the Sinhala
soldiers do, the men say. This is the way they enforce their brutal domination over
our Tamil people. The images make last night’s food rise in my mouth. I, too, hate
the soldiers, but I cannot bear to look at these piles of bodies, the blood staining
the earth like spilled chili powder, the faces that look like broken masks.

The Tigers say, “It is your duty to fight for your Motherland. Only by taking up arms
can we save ourselves. A separate country, Eelam, is the only answer.”

From my desk, I can see Miss’s face. It is twisted up, her knuckles pressed against
her mouth. There are big tears in her eyes about to fall. She looks my way and makes
the tiniest of gestures, an almost imperceptible shake of the head. It comes to me
that she is afraid of these men. I want to speak to her, reassure her that despite
their hard eyes and their guns, these are our boys. They are my brothers who went
away to fight, they are the boys on the street, the boys that she teaches now. They
are forced to fight because of what the soldiers are doing. They are standing up for
our ways, our lives, our culture. But Miss has been away in Colombo. She doesn’t understand
these things, the way the soldiers move in and treat people worse than animals, bomb
us, and set us on fire.

After they leave, Miss tries to calm the children. She tells them that they should
study harder, try to get into university, help their people in other ways. But she
knows that by morning, more of them will be gone, gathered up in the trucks that wait
in the shadows just beyond the schoolyard.

*   *   *

I sit cross-legged as Amma’s deft fingers rake my scalp. She lets my hair fall across
her arms, says, “So beautiful. Like the new monsoon clouds that the poets sang of.
It will bring you a husband who will want to wrap himself in it.” I imagine this,
a young man, as straight and slim as a sapling, the taut muscles of his arms wrapped
in the winding tendrils of my hair, thick ropes binding him to me. A man who will
hold me and keep the terrors outside far away as I rest my head upon his beating heart.

But we both know that in this place an eligible son-in-law is rarer than gold, as
precious as clear water. I say nothing as she spins beautiful lies for me.

*   *   *

One night as we unroll the sleeping mats, Snowy, staring into the night, bares his
eyeteeth, makes deep wounded noises in the back of his throat. The hair on the back
of his neck rises in a sharp porcupine row as twin Tiger women materialize out of
the darkness. They are dressed in striped shirts and baggy trousers, their waists
cinched in belts. They wear their hair cropped short, close to the skull, a little
jagged as if they have taken knives to it themselves. They are not like the other
women of the village. They walk with a different rhythm, their backs straightened
by AK-47s. Their bodies betraying a certain muscularity brought on by years of training
and fighting.

Appa rises slowly, reluctantly. He calls to Amma, “Make tea, visitors have come.”
Under his breath, he hisses at Luxshmi and me to stay inside. But the women know we
are here. They sit in the low chairs and ask Appa how things have been, whether he
has had any problems with the soldiers, if they may help him in any way. They tell
him that the present campaign is going well, that major battles have been won. They
say that it is only a matter of time before the military forces concede defeat. Finally
they say what we have all been waiting, breathless with fear, to hear. “Uncle, bring
out your daughters. Let’s see how they have grown.”

When we come out, slowly, cautiously, they cast their eyes up and down our frames.
The taller of the two says, “Uncle, you have been withholding from us! This girl is
old enough now. You must send her to join the Movement.” She is looking straight at
me. My skin turns suddenly cold.

“The other one you can keep for a small time. But this one, your elder, she is ready.”
Appa looks at the floor.

He says, “I am an old man. Already I have given three sons.” He wipes the corner of
his face with his cloth. Amma brings steaming tea in the two steel cups. Cardamom
dances in the air, making us inhale sharply; Amma must have used the new tea, her
precious store of spice. The women reach for the tea, the tumblers catching and throwing
the lamplight. They are used to tea this rich. Everyone knows that the Tigers are
well fed.

Appa’s voice in the dark, “Please, let me keep this daughter of my old age. Maybe
she will marry, give me grandchildren for the sons I have lost.”

The other woman says, “No, Uncle. This is old-fashioned talk. Women are good for so
much more than getting married and having babies. Our Leader teaches us that women
are as brave as men. We, too, can fight as fearlessly, as ferociously. You must have
greater goals for your daughter. What bigger aspiration could you have than for her
to fight for her people?”

Appa moves his head in small, conciliatory gestures, twists the cloth in his lap.
“Let me keep her for a few more years. She is so small. Only sixteen. Next year I
will bring her to the training camp myself.”

The women laugh. One says, “Sixteen! I joined when I was fourteen. There are martyrs
who joined at the age of twelve. Don’t worry. Just send her to us. She will have a
glorious future. She will help us secure Eelam for the future of our people.”

The other says, “Cut her hair before you bring her. She will not need it when she
is fighting.”

Appa nods. “Yes. We will do as you say.”

The women look placated, they get up, stretch their sinewed, muscled bodies as if
they have been sitting too long. Turn and disappear into the darkness.

When they leave, Amma wraps her arms around me, pushes my head against her chest,
mutters in a choked voice, “What do they want? I gave my sons. Now I must give my
daughter also?”

Appa hisses, “Shhh, woman. They will come back and take not only this one but the
other as well.”

Amma strokes the top of my head. “I won’t let them take you. I won’t,” she mutters,
fierce against my ear.

*   *   *

I am alone. Amma, Appa, and Luxshmi have gone to see Maariyamma, whose youngest son
was bundled into the back of a speeding van last week. Now she lies unmoving on her
bed. If left alone, she makes her furtive way to the well. She has been pulled away
from its dark open mouth, fighting and screaming abuse, twice.

Amma had wanted me to go, but I can’t bear the smell of Maariyamma’s dark room, the
picture of her son in her quivering hands. The sounds of that house remind me of Parvathi’s
house after she died, the weird keening sounds that mourning people make.

So Amma left me here alone. She didn’t want to but I told her I had schoolwork to
do, the dinner to cook. That way she won’t have to come home and cook for us after
the sun has already gone down. By the time they get home I’ll have finished cooking,
laid the food out for us. It’s nice sometimes to be alone. It happens so rarely. When
everyone is gone, there is a kind of peace.

I’m behind the house, squatting over a pot of raw rice. I like the roundness of the
earthen pot in my palm, the harsh scrape and heft of the grains in my other palm,
the coolness of water on this sweating afternoon as I swirl my fingers through it.
With each stroke of my fingers and as it is poured out onto the thirsty waiting earth,
the water in my pot is rendered less cloudy. I like watching the rice settle into
the cleaner water, the white of the grains held in the red of my pot.

A sort of quietness has fallen. My ears open wide to it. It is an unexpected respite
in this place of many loud and unrelenting sounds. I stand and tip my head, hold the
pot against my hip, listening. The hairs along my neck are rising. Somewhere Snowy
breaks into hysterical panicked barking, a shriek of animal pain, something horrible
happening to our sweet, sweet dog, then the crashing of boots and the pot is falling,
smashing, cutting my feet as I fly into the dark house, eyes popping, heart hammering,
desperate for a hiding place, but there is nowhere and I am crouching in a corner
of the back room, arms raised to cover my head, when the soldiers break in.

I leave bloodied footprints on the deserted road in front of our house, the rifle
butt digs like an animal into the small of my back. Through windows and doors shuttered
against the noon glare, I see the flash of curious faces. I beg with my eyes as I
am hurried past, but no window is opened, no door is cracked, no one shouts and screams
and stops these men from taking me. At the junction, they push me into the yawning
maw of a white van, slam the doors shut, and I am alone scrabbling on my knees, thrown
from side to side on the cold hard metal. They drive for a long time. When the van
stops, I huddle in a corner as the door opens, the sudden sunlight blinding. Two soldiers
come for me, they grasp my upper arms, pull me, my legs and feet dragging useless
against the earth into the burned-out carcass of a house, into a back room with bullet-riddled,
broken cement walls, no roof, overhead only a perfectly framed square of sunlit sky.

They encircle me, shouting questions that pound against my head. “What is your name?
Where is your training camp? Where are your brothers? How long have you been a Tiger?”

I see the rifle butt coming before it smashes into my face. Gushing red, teeth spilling,
I fall hard onto my wrists, then they are upon me.
Tiger bitch
. A many-clawed, many-toothed beast. I try to fight but the dress Amma sewed so carefully
is ripping, exposing knees and thighs, my breasts, my nipples.
Tiger bitch
. The ribbon she tied into my plait is yanked hard so my head snaps, the braid unravels
like a serpent across the cement floor, and hair falls about me like that of the mad
woman in the market. My wrists and ankles are caught in their iron grip.
Tiger bitch
. I am pulled apart, uncovered, exposed. They hold me down. Their sweat falls in shining
drops and they will not let me avert my face. I am drenched and soaked. Their mouths
come down upon me like the salivating tongues of dogs. They tear me open with their
nails, bite me with their fangs, their spittle falls thick across my breasts. They
break into me. Break me. Break into me. Break me. Burying their stench deep inside
my body while they pant like dogs over me. Until I no longer smell like myself. Until
this body is no longer mine. Until I am only a limp, bleeding, broken toy.
Tiger bitch! Tiger! Bitch! Tiger! Bitch!
I pull my eyes onto that perfect square of sky. High above, a crane passes slowly.

Luminous white against the blue, winging her way across the air. I watch her flight
across that square of sky until she is gone and then I, too, am high in the sky winging
my way across space. So high and so far away, reveling in the freedom of air against
my body, cavorting in the pleasure of it, while far, far below, far away, unimaginable
things are happening to the girl I used to be.

*   *   *

I lie on the cement floor, slick with their juices, saliva, sweat on my breasts and
face, liquid seeping slowly from between my legs, the smell of decay rising from my
body. I hide behind the tangled wall of my hair. This is what it means, then, to be
spoiled. It means this thick horrible smell rising from me. It means to be broken.
It means forever.

The men attend to their other needs now. They build a fire in the front room, prepare
food. They are quiet, their anger spent. They speak only occasionally, and then their
voices drift to me from very far away. Sunlight moves slowly across the room, illuminating
first one bullet-splattered wall and then another. I know other people have been hurt
in this room. Many have died.

An older soldier comes and nudges me with the tip of his boot. He says something in
his language, points at the remnants of my dress, pantomimes dressing and then makes
a shooing motion with his hand. I focus beyond him on the sunlit sky.

Later, another soldier comes. He brings food. I lie unmoving. He puts the food on
the ground, leaves. It stays there until the flies come, their buzzing loud, their
wings blue-green and myself, huddled in the corner torn and bleeding, reflected in
their hundred-faceted eyes. I watch them burrowing in the rice. Imagine them mating,
laying eggs, dying. Blood flows from between my thighs, I wonder if the ants and flies
will find this trail, follow it to my flesh, take small bites and then big ones. I
wonder if I will feel it.

It is evening when the soldiers leave. When their footsteps have faded, there is a
rush of pain, a knife stabbing repeatedly at the soft, broken, battered center of
me. I come to myself from far away with great gulping sobs, and then I am shaking,
crawling across the ground, feeling with trembling fingertips for cloth. The bits
of my dress are thick with the mud off their boots. I pull the tattered pieces across
my body. Fumble onto the bullet-splattered wall and stand on shaking, nerveless legs.