Garden of Dreams (6 page)

He couldn’t believe his parents hadn’t come for him. Twenty-five days. Eli had marked them off in vertical and diagonal lines, on the wall by his bed, the way prisoners did on cell walls. He lay there in the purple room, the colour of bruises, and touched his jaw, wincing, experimenting with the pain. It hurt to breathe. As the morning light filtered through the two barred windows, prying his eyes open, he squinted them shut and saw again Anand, the beast coming towards him, charging like an elephant, swinging his arms and knocking him flat.
Shoot me now
, he thought.
Finish it.

No, he had to believe his parents would find him. They knew people, didn’t they? His mother even knew India, a little. What were they doing, without him? If his father could help end wars he could find his own son, couldn’t he? Write about
this
for
The New York Times
, Mom, he thought. On the dark screens of his closed eyes he had a vision, a recurrent nightmare from childhood: running, running, a huge black bird, talons extended, chasing him. His parents nowhere in sight.

In the nightmare where he actually was, morning was stirring outside: the shouts of the shopkeepers as they lifted their metal doors, the toots and bells and big horn blasts of the traffic, the early-bird girls on their balconies – didn’t some ever jump? He dragged his sore body out of bed and went to stand at the window, gripping the iron bars, pulling on them as hard as he could; how many times had he tried to move them? There had to be another way out of there. He had to find it, soon. Who knew what else they were going to do to him.

The pain drove him back to bed, and he lay there, time hovering over him like a cloud. A timid knock on the door. It opened, and the scent of jasmine wrapped around him as the grass-green and silver sparkles of a sari brushed his face.

‘Poor you …’

He felt a warm cloth on his face, steeped in eucalyptus or some other healing agent.

‘Sanjana?’ She was kneeling by the bed now, comforting him with her deep, sad eyes.

Aside from a flicker of faith in his parents, Sanjana – even just the knowledge she was near – had kept him going. Since that first time in the bathroom, he’d seen her only a handful of times more, ‘off-duty’, passing in the hallways or for chai in the kitchen, when Anand let him out. They had talked; she seemed interested in him. Her English was pretty good; in the three years she’d been at the kotha, she’d told him, some of her clients had taught her the language. Or a certain vocabulary. She still had a strange way of saying things, much of the time, which made them both laugh. From a small village in the Terai, the jungle part of Nepal, she said. She’d been sent to Delhi by her family, promised a job in a restaurant, but it was a trick. She’d been brought here, along with all the other Nepali girls who ‘belonged’ to the kotha. To that bitch Auntie Lakshmi. But somehow Sanjana had stayed strong, in spite of all the drugging at the start and the dozens of clients forced upon her daily. Lakshmi owned her body but not the rest of her.

‘You’ve got a key to my room?’

‘I got it from that dog-man …’

‘Anand?’

Sanjana lowered her eyes but then looked up at him. ‘He gets me whenever he want. Part of what Auntie-ji pay him. Last night he very drunk, so key was too easy to steal. Must give it back before he wake up, or …’

Eli felt his insides twisting. ‘Does he beat you too?’

‘Not much …’

He watched Sanjana, calm as she dabbed his cheek.

‘I hate him!’

‘I also hate.’

‘Sanjana,’ he said, raising himself on one elbow, ‘it’s not safe for you to be here.’

‘No problem. Both Anand and Auntie-ji still sleeping. Let us go for chai in kitchen. Other girls are there – and Ojal. Hijra.’

‘Hijra?’

‘A man-woman. She come every month to fetch clothes for sewing. And to tell fortune. Maybe yours will be good.’ Sanjana stood up and towered over him like a flowering tree. ‘Get up.’

He took her hand and was on his feet, swaying a bit; she steadied him by the arms. They were nearly the same height, she a shade shorter. Everything felt off balance. ‘He became a she or what?’

‘You see yourself. Come with me.’

As he followed her, barefoot and dazed, out the door, he looked warily towards Lakshmi’s door, closed, and down the empty hallway towards Anand’s room. Hoping they would sleep forever.

The kotha’s kitchen was the colour of turmeric, smelling of spices, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, all glazed over with the scent of grease. Long ago someone had hung cheap pink curtains in the windows, meant to be silk but fake, and speckled with bits of food, dried grains of rice. Eli imagined that people had food fights in here; he wished they did, at least. He’d love to dump a steaming pot of curry on Anand and Auntie, see them turn orange and sizzle.

Around the bright green wooden table in the middle of the room sat four girls, one of whom he didn’t recognise; he wasn’t even sure she was a girl. Very dark with dangly earrings and brilliant white teeth, she was laughing and waving her hands as though dancing sitting down. Picking up her teacup and putting it down again, without drinking. She had a husky, nasal voice trying too hard to sound female, Eli thought.

As Sanjana went towards the table and took the last empty chair, he hung back in the doorway, with all the girls’ eyes on him.

The dark one leered at him, making him squirm. ‘Who’s this you girls have been hiding from me?’

Lola, Danita and Parvati scolded Sanjana, then him.

‘Auntie-ji won’t like it …’

‘You’ll be seeing the worst-bottom side of Anand after this …’

‘Say your prayers, silly …’

‘What’s the problem?’ said the dark one. ‘Won’t the boy sit down with us?’

Sanjana looked at him and motioned towards a small red stool by the sink. ‘Sit.’

‘Leave the darling alone,’ the dark one said, standing up in a swirl of sapphire blue. She was tall and slender, and reminded him of a snake, slithering towards him. ‘Leave him to Ojal.’

She, he, whatever, led him to the stool, picked it up and placed it next to her at the head of the table. He felt woozy from her perfume, a heavy musk. She sat down on the stool and guided him into the chair. ‘Sit, boy.’ She grabbed the teapot and a glass and poured the amber liquid so it splashed over the sides. ‘Whoops, sorry,’ she said, wiping up the spill with the corner of her scarf. She winked at him. ‘Now girls, what were we talking about?’

‘Poor Gita,’ said Lola, her dark curls hiding her lowered face.

‘She didn’t deserve it,’ said Danita, luscious and jolly in spite of the pall that seemed to have descended on the table.

Eli remembered Gita, the girl he’d seen just once on his first photo shoot, blue on the bed, pricks all over her arms. He hadn’t seen her since. ‘What happened?’

‘Drug overdose,’ said Danita, as though it happened every day.

‘That not right,’ Sanjana said, ‘you know that not right.’

Ojal waited for dramatic effect and then opened her palms, like a book. ‘Well then, genius-brain, how did she die?’

Sanjana had her fingers over her face and was shaking her head, refusing to speak.

Eli could see by Ojal’s face that she did know. Sombre, jaw set, mouth clenched, and definitely a flash of hatred in those pitch-black eyes.

As though their mouths had been taped shut, they sat in silence for a few minutes, even Ojal, who bent down to search inside a huge plastic bag of clothes – multicoloured saris, scarves, slips and harem pants – mended for the girls. Nothing for Sanjana this time. And Eli wondered what had happened to his real clothes, his Guns N’ Roses T-shirts and skinny jeans and Converse sneakers. In these stupid Indian clothes that Auntie Lakshmi made him wear, he felt as if he was in his pyjamas all the time.

The other girls left, waved goodbye, chattering like birds. He and Sanjana were alone with Ojal, who kept eyeing him as if ready to pounce. He took a chair vacated by one of the girls, across from Sanjana; Ojal resumed her place, in his chair. ‘Oooooh, still warm,’ she smiled.

‘Can you tell our fortunes, Ojal-ji?’ Sanjana asked, splaying her hands on the table as though she meant business.

‘Why not?’ Ojal said. ‘For the rest of the week or the rest of your lives?’

Eli was shaking his head but remembered it meant the opposite. But he felt silly nodding when he meant no. ‘Uh-uh,’ he said. ‘Not for me.’

‘You don’t want to see your future?’ asked Sanjana.

‘Why would I want to?’

‘Courage, my young ones,’ said Ojal, grabbing both of their hands simultaneously. ‘Tell me your birthdates and we’ll see what the stars have designed for you.’

‘Falgun 26, 2050,’ Sanjana said.

‘These bloody Nepalis,’ Ojal said. ‘Those mind-boggling calendars of theirs, they always throw me. Better you first, American.’

‘How’d you know I’m American?’ Eli asked. ‘Which I’m not. Totally.’ He sounded brash but was spooked, a little.

‘You sound like one. Just tell us your birthdate then.’ Ojal reached into her plastic bag again.

‘November fifteenth, 1994.’

‘Time of birth?’

His mom had told him once, but he couldn’t remember. ‘Nine-thirty a.m.’

‘Place of birth?’

‘Cape Town, South Africa.’

‘How exotic.’ Ojal opened a blue spiral notebook, the cheap kind you’d buy at the pharmacy. It had little stick-on stars all over the cover and on some of the inside pages.

Eli and Sanjana looked at each other across the table and smiled. He shrugged his shoulders and she put her finger to her lips. Wait, she seemed to be saying, give it a chance.

‘Give me your hand, boy,’ Ojal said, and took his left hand in hers. Strong hands with elongated fingers, covered in thin gold rings with different gemstones, finished in long blood-red nails. Minus the nails, the hands reminded him of Hendrix’s. He smiled to himself at the thought of Ojal playing Jimi’s white Fender.

‘What’s so funny, smarty-pants?’ Ojal said, not waiting for an answer. She traced the longest line on his palm with a red nail. ‘What have we here? Perplexing.’

‘What?’ Eli squinted at his palm.

‘Your life line is very long, but splits here, meaning some sort of illness or calamity – from which you recover, don’t look so worried. But this line,’ Ojal said, tracing the shorter line crossing his palm horizontally, ‘the love line – ah, this is not so promising. In fact, pretty bloody awful, I must tell you.’

‘Why?’ He looked at Sanjana, who was chewing her lower lip, her eyes focused on his palm.

‘You will fall in love with the wrong person, it seems …’

‘What wrong person? Can’t I do anything about it?’

‘What can we do about fate, hey, Sanjana?’ Ojal sweetly swept a stray hair out of the girl’s face. ‘Look at us – here we are, on G.B. Road, stuck with all these bloody arseholes and tossed around like bad fruit …’

‘Bad fruit?’

‘They like us when we are fresh and juicy but when we’re rotten – straight into the rubbish.’

Just as Ojal said that, the door swung open. All three of them froze. But instead of Anand’s heft in the doorway, it was a timid intruder, stunted
and very thin, a waif with luminous eyes as large as dates. It was Ravi, ten, the one boy in the kotha who serviced men. Eli felt sorry for him: the poor kid lived his worst nightmare. But he also thought Ravi was a jerk, a snoop, a tattletale.

‘What is going on in this place?’ Ravi asked, twisting one bare foot around his other ankle.

‘I am trying to tell the fortunes of these two,’ Ojal said, ‘but they won’t have it.’

‘Yes, I will, Ojal-ji!’ Sanjana nearly shouted, jumping up from her chair and leaning with her hands on the table. ‘Please, please tell me I have something to wait for in future, tell me what you see!’

‘Poor girl,’ said Ojal, rising, pushing in her chair and sweeping across to the window. ‘Another day.’

At the window Ojal seemed lost to them, drifting away. ‘Ravi, buzz off,’ she said abruptly, levelling him with her gaze. ‘You’ve got a mister waiting in the red room, I saw him come in. A copper, in fact …’

‘A cop?’ asked Eli, in disbelief.

Ojal smiled, and Ravi left the room backwards, like a little cuckoo going back into the clock.

Fingering the bright pink curtains, Ojal met their eyes. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘these ghastly things would take to a match brilliantly.’

Eli looked at Sanjana, solemn now, couldn’t read her. He wasn’t sure she’d understood, if she’d ever considered taking things into her own hands and changing her fate, not waiting for some silly fortune-teller – this strange she-man – to tell her some story about a future over which she had no control.

‘There’s so much grease in this place,’ Ojal said, making for the door with her plastic bag, sagging now, ‘and you know how grease burns …’

‘Ojal —’ Eli wanted to detain her, ask her what she meant.

‘But I’m sure you’ve thought of that.’ The last of her was her brilliant blue sari trailing through the door like the tail of a peacock, or maybe more like a firebird, that strange creature he’d seen in a video once, breathing fire to that Russian’s music, when he was a child.

Whenever that was.