On Sal Mal Lane (21 page)

“I told you to stay,” he said, making one last effort, this time to place himself alongside the older Heraths, to speak as an older brother might.

And in response, instead of an explanation as to why she had left, her eyes welled up at his having betrayed her to her siblings. This confused Sonna so deeply that he took to his bed for the rest of the day, refusing food until his mother suggested a doctor, at which point he sat up in bed and yelled at her and everything went back to the way it had been before.

Even the Silva boys who had gathered, along with Rose and Dolly, as Sonna spoke, were shocked.

“Even I don’t cross the main road without Mohan,” Jith said, as he bounced their ball on the ground.

“It’s hard even for me. Even I’m scared when I cross that road,” Mohan conceded, and when all the children seemed taken aback by this statement, he added, “Even for you, right, Suren? You’re scared too, aren’t you?” All three of the older Heraths nodded in agreement. Yes, yes, yes.

“Did you really go to all those places?” Dolly asked. She caught the ball when it bounced out of Jith’s reach and smiled at him as she returned it.

“Mad Raju’s house, that’s the worst,” Mohan said. He would have said more but he saw Mrs. Herath walking up the road and so he only said, in warning, “Your mother’s coming,” and the children dispersed and resumed their game, for no more could be said in her hearing.

The kind of end that might have awaited their youngest sibling from the wheels of the buses and cars that traveled at such speed around the blind bend to the right of their lane, or the ingestion of water not sufficiently boiled, for they assumed that it had been tea that had been served to her by Lucas, and Devi would share no details, were as dire as what they feared might have happened to Devi should their mother discover that she had visited any of these places without a chaperone.

“Why would you do such a thing?” Suren asked as they took up the issue again the next day. He looked particularly serious with his hands tucked into the pockets of the khaki longs he was wearing, having just returned from a dress rehearsal for a school production of
The Sound of Music
in which he was playing Friedrich.

“You know none of us is supposed to cross the road!” Nihil said, his voice close to tears. He was so glad that she had returned to them intact and safe that he stroked her head, but roughly, his anxiety about her obvious disregard for what might have happened getting the better of him and making him want to pull her hair instead.

“You are not to leave my sight,” Rashmi added sharply, wondering simultaneously how this was going to be arranged and whether she should have said “our,” not “my.”

Suren joined the older Herath children. They were united in their disapproval as they sat in a row on his bed, which had been freshly made with sheets that the
dhobi
had brought just that afternoon in a crisp stack of starched laundry, all of it tied up in newspaper and twine. Devi glared at them from Nihil’s bed, where she, defiant though she was, could not help caressing the yellow-and-white-striped bedding; it was so smooth and clean and she needed its tactile comfort. Rashmi, observing, knew that this lack of repentance was not to be taken lightly. She turned to her brothers.

“We have to make sure that she is never away from us,” she said. “Never. When she’s in school, I will watch her, when we are home, we will all watch her.”

“You can watch all you want. I’m big. I can also walk up and down the lane. Just like you,” Devi said, crossing her arms in front of her chest and scowling.

Devi was the picture of impenitence as she sat before them, her eyes set, but Nihil could tell that tears were being held back though she would never let them fall, not in the face of this kind of berating by her siblings. He wanted very much to help her out of the corner into which she had painted herself, to say something kind, maybe take her hand and say
it’s okay,
so she could cry and promise not to disobey their rules, but he held firm.

“No,” Nihil said, thinking only of her safety, “you are
not
allowed to go anywhere without us.”

“You can’t stop me,” Devi said. “I can go right now!” And she stood up. Nihil stood too, and pushed her back down onto the bed, his palm on her belly.

“No, you can’t,” he said. “If you do we will tell Amma and Tha what you did and then you will be in real trouble. Do you want to be in real trouble? Because even I won’t help you if that happens after this.”

Rashmi looked approvingly at Nihil, whose contributions to these kinds of discussions usually led to his taking Devi’s side so she ended up feeling championed rather than punished. “Yes, that’s exactly what we’ll do,” she said. “None of us will help you.”

Suren laced his fingers together in his lap as though in meditation. He said, “We are proud of you and your report card, but you are still small. You cannot run all over the place without telling us, okay? Okay?”

“Okay,” Devi said, still pouting.

“And you can’t go and visit that half-naked Raju,” Rashmi added. “Okay?”

Devi did not agree, no matter how many times Rashmi said “Okay?” and this, too, was troubling to her. If Devi hadn’t agreed to this specific demand, she clearly did not feel bound to obey, and if that was the case, what was the point in the larger promise of curtailing her activities?

Despite their initial reaction, with Suren increasingly wrapped up in his rehearsals, maths tutoring, and music lessons after school, and Nihil satisfied, it seemed, to gain a confessional relief from sitting with Mr. Niles and unburdening all his worries and tales about Devi’s bad behavior to him, Rashmi felt decidedly alone in her crusade against the relationship between Devi and Raju. Over the next months, she had many chances to be reminded of her failure to elicit the right response from Devi—yes, she would not visit Uncle Raju—as Devi was located and hauled back home, the last time by her ear as she yelled
Uncle Raju is my friend!
as she was dragged away from Raju’s garage, as soon as he had shut the door, and toward their own front gate. Which is why Rashmi felt that the matter had to be taken to the source of their troubles.

Visiting Raju was not something Rashmi would willingly have undertaken unless every other avenue had been explored. While all of them either knew or suspected that Raju was that curious mix of kind but mentally disabled and, therefore, untrustworthy adult, it was Rashmi who was comfortable with the idea of rejecting Raju wholesale. Something about his unaesthetic physicality and sense of coming undone irked her orderly mind. She was only willing to concede good so long as its human form stayed far away from herself and her siblings. After Raju had come to hang over their decorative white gate, bordered on each side by a high-growing hedge, and talk to their mother while she watered her plants in the evening, Rashmi had to fight the urge to send Kamala out to wipe down the gate. When he was served tea, she made sure that it was poured into a special cup that she had marked on the bottom with a smear of red nail polish she borrowed from Rose. When he stood just inside his gate and watched them play French cricket, she tried as often as she could to hit the ball hard and fast toward his gate until he backed away and went inside his garage to lift weights. To realize then that Devi was so pleased to disobey her older siblings just so she could spend time with Raju was more than Rashmi could bear.

“Uncle Raju gave me sugar sticks from Koralé’s shop,” Devi boasted. “I sat in the swinging chair and ate them.”

“Why did he buy you those things? You aren’t a beggar. You don’t need things like that from people like him,” Rashmi said.

“Rashmi, you are jealous because he likes me best and won’t bring sugar sticks for you. Next time I’ll save one for you. Uncle Raju is a good person.” And Devi skipped away up the road, her rope snap-snapping in time as she relived the sensation of the chalk-shaped sweet in her mouth, the way it dissolved in sections as she sucked on it, the taste of sugar lasting until the very end.

Well, there was not going to be a next time, Rashmi decided, as she sat Devi down between her brothers, whom she had summoned from their respective preoccupations for this occasion, and left to go and speak to Raju herself.

The thuds from inside the garage were now muffled by a thick length of foam that Raju had secured from somewhere to line his floor. The foam was yellow with brown stains and gave off an impression of damp that nauseated Rashmi as she stood at the door, staring at Raju’s surprised face.

“My goodness! New visitor today! Come come come. I will have to make a nice place in this corner now for all you children,” Raju said, backing away from Rashmi and pointing to the corner where the swinging chair hung motionless and expectant. Rashmi pictured Devi curled up into that seat. Underneath the chair there was a fine dusting of powdered sugar and, already, a row of ants were marching toward it from a crack in the floor by the door to the garage. One wall was dedicated to posters of Bruce Lee and Muhammad Ali, a particularly large one of the latter with the phrase
flies like a butterfly and stings like a bee
written in a white flourish over his black body. They, like Raju, were bare-bodied. Unlike Raju’s, their lower garments were decorous.

Rashmi put out her hand, palm up. “Raju . . . Uncle Raju, I have come to discuss something important.”

Raju’s face recreased to depict both alarm and concern. “Why why? What has happened? Tamil people coming? Mama said they are going to start a big war in the North! She said they’ll come here too. But how to come? We’re already here, no? But your daddy, he must be knowing something else, no? Government and all? Tell tell, Uncle Raju will put on a shirt and come.” He took a few steps and then came back and smiled at her, a little sheepishly. “Now that I am friends with your family, I don’t go anywhere without khakis and short-sleeved shirt, you must have noticed, no? Only inside I dress like this. For the body building.” He laughed and disappeared again, calling out over his shoulder, “Wait here, wait here.”

Rashmi imagined him wagging his head as he went. She smoothed the back of her skirt before she sank into the hanging chair; it was one of her best skirts, a maroon velvet one, and she had put it on with the hope that it would make her seem even more stern than she planned to be. Carefully avoiding the ants, she left her feet, safe in their black ballet flats, on the ground, so the chair did not make its rocking motion. She also did not lean against its back. She fiddled with the white silk collar of her blouse.

It was true that this was the first time in a long time that she had seen Raju in his barely dressed state. She thought about that for a little while, then wondered what Raju meant by Tamil people coming. Where were they coming to? Perhaps she would ask Mrs. Niles if she knew anybody coming from the North. Then again, maybe it would be better to ask her father, as Raju had suggested. Outside, there was a sudden clap of thunder and she stood up, went to the door, and looked at the darkening sky. There was no rain yet. She hoped it would stay dry until her mother returned home from school. Now that she had taken over additional duties as the teacher in charge of several clubs, she was rarely home before three thirty or sometimes four o’clock. Rashmi sighed, wishing that her mother could just be an ordinary teacher again, the kind who boarded the school buses when their students did at the end of each day and went home to their families. Why did her mother spend so much time in school? Why did she have so many places to go to even on the weekends? If she stayed home, perhaps Devi would too. When she became a mother, Rashmi decided, she would be less careless. She would have both money and children, prestige and domesticity. All it would require were a few good choices.

Raju appeared in the doorless frame of the entry to the garage from the backyard. He was dressed in khaki longs and a yellow short-sleeved shirt. “Now better,” he said, “washed up also a little.”

Rashmi felt that, indeed, things were looking up. When he put his clothes on, Raju became the good adult, not the half-mad one. Her spirits lifted and she felt slightly kinder toward him. “Uncle Raju, I have come to ask—”

“No, no,” he corrected, his eyes grave, his palms out and facing down, “Not to ask, to tell. Because Uncle Raju doesn’t know anything. I only know when your mummy or daddy tell me. Or Lucas. Sometimes he tells also. And Mama, but she doesn’t know much about important things, about the government and all. About the neighborhood, of course, I can listen to Mama. She knows everything.”

Rashmi cut in and spoke as fast as she could. “I have come to ask you to tell Devi not to visit you here anymore,” she said. “We don’t like it.” She crossed her arms in front of her, bracing for the protest she was sure would come.

What Raju might have thought of her request, however, was not immediately shared because just then there was the sound of voices and Devi burst in, Nihil and Suren swift on her heels. Rashmi stood up and went over to them. Devi’s eyes were full of tears and the boys were simultaneously berating her, pleading with her, and attempting to console her. Devi ran over to Raju and wrapped her arms around one of his.

“Uncle Raju is my friend!” Devi wailed. “He always has time for me. He never tells me to be quiet or go away!”

To Rashmi’s surprise, Raju’s own eyes became moist. “Don’t cry, darling, don’t cry. Uncle Raju is always your friend. Come now, you sit on the chair and I will rock you,” he said, his voice reverting to its usual mellifluous cadences. Devi let herself be led to the chair, where she sat and regarded her older siblings, tears still sliding down her cheeks in erratic rivulets.

“We don’t want her coming here by herself,” Rashmi repeated with as much resolve as she could muster under the circumstances. “It is not appropriate for a little girl like her to come here. It smells bad here. Besides,” she added, “when you are in here, you are never properly dressed!”

Raju seemed to take in Rashmi’s own formal attire for the first time. He looked up and down each child in turn, then glanced around the garage as if realizing, at last, the incongruousness of the room in which he was entertaining well-dressed people like them. He shook his head from side to side. “Rashmi, you are right. This is not a place for you children. Especially not a little girl like Devi. Next time she comes, I will make sure that she sits in the veranda,” he said.