The Bones of Grace (21 page)

What did I expect to find? Megna's mother, the room exactly as I remembered? It's empty, not a mattress or a scrap of clothing. Damp on the walls and ceiling like it's gonna fall down. I put my hand on the wall and paint comes off easy. The way Megna had opened her legs for me, the little slut. My mind goes back to all the things we did in that room while her mother was out sweeping the mosque or planting beans in the small plot in the front. At night, I would knock on the window and she would crawl out of the bed she shared with her mother and we would lie down under the tamarind tree and touch each other like it was the end of the world.

I'm dreaming so hard I don't hear the mullah until he's clearing his throat and spitting a big one just next to my foot. I turn around and he's pulling his beard and looking at me, and next thing I know he's holding his arms out for me and I guess it slipped my mind everyone's sweet as candy to me now, so I don't know what to do, then I remember, I play my part and we do the three-time hug you only do on Eid with your brother. I'm a big man now, everyone wants to be related. Now he's looking at the patch of paint that's come off on my hand and he's saying, Shame, that, mosque in such bad shape, you remember this place used to be much nicer. Take a cup of tea with me, son.'

We go to the tea stall, and the tea-wallah pulls out his best stool. I offer it to the mullah and I squat on my heels.
We drink. ‘Village is changing,' he says. ‘Boys are going out, they're not coming back.'

‘Everybody wants to go to foreign,' I say, already tired of squatting.

He slurps his tea with a loud sucking sound. ‘They leave the women behind and that's no good, is it?'

‘I suppose not.'

‘Times like this, mosque is what keeps a village together.'

I nod, thinking, how much longer will I have to stay here? It takes him five minutes maybe to finish his tea, slurping and sucking, slurping and sucking. Finally he finishes and he stands up. I stand up too, my knees complaining. Then he says, ‘Mosque was a place you spent a lot of time in, son.'

He looks at me and for a long time he doesn't say anything, and then I realise he's telling me he knows I used to sneak in here, knows about me and Megna, then he says, ‘We have a fund, you know, mosque fund. Been saving for six years, all the gone-away boys have been sending money.' Then he holds his hands behind his back like he's being arrested and I know what I have to do. I say, ‘I'll pay. Whatever's left, I'll pay.'

I let him grab me again, even harder this time, so I can smell the flower oil in his hair and feel the sand of his beard. ‘Sobhan Allah! You are a true son of the village.' Then he says, like I just asked him a question: ‘That woman who used to clean here, she died. Typhoid, I think. Daughter disappeared, too.' I'm thinking, the bastard was waiting to tell me that. He knew all along that's what I wanted, some information about Megna, but waited till I'd coughed up the money, and then he dropped it on me.

I can't sleep that night. For the first time I wonder exactly what happened to Megna after I left for Dubai. Like a film
I'm seeing it: I leave, I don't even say goodbye. Her stomach starts to give up its secret. She tells her mother. Disgusting girl, her mother says. And then what happens? They leave the village together? They pack up their things and take a bus – where? Who will take them in? Who can I ask, I don't know.

The next day, early, before the mullah has called the village to pray, I pack a bag. Shathi watches me, doesn't say a word. I show her where I put the money, locked in a trunk under the bed. Key is on a string around my neck, hanging next to my heart. I take the string, pass it over her head. Like we're getting married all over again, garlands and all that. She touches my feet. She's like a wife in an old movie, black and white, doesn't say anything or ask any questions, just accepts I'm a bastard and doesn't flinch.

I still have to face my mother. I can't think what to say, so I tell her the truth. ‘I'm going to look for Megna,' I say. She slaps her forehead, like I knew she would. ‘I told you find a new wife, not dig up a girl you threw away.'

I stand quiet, knowing she has to get her words out before I can explain. She stands up. I think she's about to hit me, like before when I was always getting into the sugar, when my father was working in the railroad and we had sugar. ‘Do you know where she could have gone?' I ask, thinking, if she's going to hit me anyway, I might as well get some information out of her.

‘Girl disappeared the day you left for foreign, no one saw her again.'

Her mother?

‘Dead. They said she swallowed rat poison.'

‘Mullah told me she caught the typhoid.'

‘Same thing, whatever. You'll never find her.'

‘Megna told me her father's people were from the south. Near Chittagong.'

She shrugs. ‘I don't know,' she says, but then she looks down at her feet and I know she's lying.

‘You know something. Tell me. Tell me.' I'm raising my voice.

She puts up her hand up like she's going to slap me and then she says, ‘Village is called Chondonpahar. She had an uncle. Rest I don't know.'

I'm sorry for shouting. I'm going to touch her feet, ask for forgiveness. Then she says, ‘You going to leave me with that darkie again?'

For a change I decide to do something nice. I grab my mother's hand. I take her across to Shathi, who is putting straw into the fire. ‘I've given the key to Shathi,' I say. ‘Go on, show her the key.' Shathi takes the key out of her blouse and holds it up but she looks away, so that Amma can't see the grain of smug on her lips.

‘You see? She holds the money. The food, everything. You need something, you ask her. You need medicine, she gets it for you. If she wants, she can throw you out. Remember that.'

Amma is so shocked she doesn't notice I'm touching her feet and then I'm gone.

Before I go I take some money out of the trunk and leave it with the mullah. A deal is a deal, even if I didn't get shit in return.

It's late by the time I leave. I take a rickshaw to the bus station on the other side of the market. Bus will take me to the ferry, ferry to the other side of the river.

*

On the road either side of me, all the paddy fields are flooded. Why, I ask the boy sitting next to me on the bus. He's hungry, I can tell by the way he stares at my throat, like he wants to take a bite out. I haven't seen winter rice for ten years, but I know what it looks like, yellow and brown and green. And it's dry by now, January when it's cold and there's no rain. ‘That's not rice,' the boy says, with a big sag of his shoulder. ‘It's shrimp.'

I look closer. The water's dark. I try to smell it. The little worms are crawling around in there like a giant itch.

The bus stops and the boy gets up. ‘I work here,' he says. ‘Lot of money in shrimp, if you want I can talk to my boss.'

I was wrong. Boy wasn't hungry, he was looking at my throat thinking, this old bastard needs a job.

I ask a few other people about the shrimp. They say the water's gone salty because the shrimp like it that way. I wonder if that's why Shathi's been complaining about the water in our well. I don't believe her. I think it's as sweet as ever. I tell her, you want to know salty? Stand out in the desert with a basket of sand on your head, then you'll know what salty tastes like – your sweat will make your lips shrink from your teeth. Salt is the sea pounding against the shore, mocking you when you're so dried out you can't swallow and there's an hour to go before the lunch bell. Salt is the tear that humiliates your cheek when you want a woman and you can't go home.

But maybe she's right, maybe the village water is salty and my tongue doesn't know the difference. Another thing those bastards took from me.

An old woman sits down next to me, smelling of mustard oil. After Bagerhat the road is smooth. She takes out a triangle of paan and stuffs it into her mouth. A few minutes
later she'll be leaning over me and spitting out the window. Bus speeds up and I'm feeling the wind in my cheeks, and definitely I think I'm gonna find Megna. Somewhere out there she's been waiting for me with my kid. I'm thinking this and I drift off with my head against the top of the window until sure enough, the old woman wakes me up, sticks her head out into the road, and hacks a mouthful of orange sludge into the shrimpy winter air.

I reach Barisal and from there I take another bus. We cross the Meghna on a ferry in the middle of the night. It's cold and I'm wrapping my arms around myself. I fall asleep with my bag tied around my leg, and when the sun rises, I see the land is different, the trees clumped together, the road going up and down, dark hills on either side. I get off the bus and climb into a rickshaw and head for the village. Now it's early morning and there's a thin fog making everything sad, and for the first time I wonder if I won't find her after all, or, worse, if she's married to some other bastard and he's raising my kid.

Here I come, I say to her. I'm your hero. Bollywood chorus follows me everywhere I go. Clapping and an army of dancers. I'll give you all my money, my sins will be forgiven, we'll live together in peace with our little magic seed.

The village is at the end of a narrow dirt road. A cluster of houses in a circle, mud and tin shacks. Villages like this all up and down the country. I'm noticing now the things wife does to make it nice at home, the little border of henna bushes and the pattern she drew on the frame of our door. Without it, a place can look empty, like no one's ever loved it, just used the land for food, the cheap air to keep you from death, the water to drink and clean behind
your ears so you can pray to God without filth in your folds.

I ask around for Megna's people. Two or three can't help me. A kid points me in the right direction. Then I'm standing in front of an open doorway and clearing my throat. A man comes out, old man, long arms and a weak chest, a shawl wrapped around his head and shoulders.

‘I'm looking for Fatema Ansar's people,' I say, ‘from this village.'

‘Who are you?'

‘I'm her cousin – from the other side.'

‘Khulna side?'

‘Yes, Labonchora.'

‘Come in, come in,' he says. Waving me inside to a room so dark I have to close my eyes for a minute. When I open them I can see a bed, a stove, and a pile of cucumbers on the ground. He squats, peels one, and offers it to me. It's bitter but I don't mind. I haven't eaten since last night and I'm hungry as a goat.

‘Labonchora,' he says slowly. ‘You came all this way?'

I had prepared an answer. ‘She owned some things there, a cow, a small piece of land. After she died the land has just been there, so I'm looking for her people. I want to buy the land, make sure whoever is owed is paid.'

‘She owned a piece of land? How much?'

‘A katha. Field next to my own. Wife thinks we should plant sesame, you know how women are. Won't let me forget it.'

He picks up another cucumber and I'm hoping he's going to offer it to me. He looks at me strangely and I know what he's thinking, why don't I just take the land, plant whatever I want on it, who's going to say otherwise? She's a woman, and she's dead.

‘Thing is,' I say, ‘people tell me she cursed the land.'

He looks up at me and nods slowly. ‘I can see she might have been a witch.'

‘So if I till it, nothing's going to come up. I'll break my back and only rocks. Waste of my sweat.'

‘You won't get a single grain of rice out of it.'

‘Not a sesame seed.'

He hands me the cucumber and it disappears into my gullet.

‘You're looking for the daughter,' he said. He stood up and took a few steps towards the bed. ‘She's her only people.'

I don't say anything. I'm holding my breath.

‘That girl killed her.'

I'm waiting for him to get his piece out.

‘Took the life out of her skin.'

I mutter something he expects me to say, ‘God's will' and all that. He wipes his eyes, cloudy anyway.

‘What happened to her, the daughter?' I'm trying to ask it slowly.

‘We weren't going to have her, not with another mouth coming. She came, but we said no. Sent her away.'

‘Back to Khulna?'

‘Tried to convince me. Said she'd work hard, take a job anywhere.' He rubbed his hand over his jaw, as if she was still in the room, trying to get him to say yes. ‘Chittagong, she said. I gave her the bus money.' Maybe he was feeling sorry for her now. Then he said, ‘Carrying around someone's bastard. Couldn't have that.'

‘Yes, you never know with women like that.' The mud floor is freezing and I want something real to eat.

‘Take up with anyone.'

‘No morals.'

‘Whore.'

When I heard him call her that, I wanted to break his arm, but it was only the word I was using myself all this time. Calling her a slut whenever I wanted to forget her, pull her face out of my dreams. So I thought, maybe this is the word people use when they love someone they're not supposed to, and with that I left him, said my farewells and gave him a bit of money, and he took it without saying a word, maybe because he was desperate, or because he could smell I was hiding something, and we both knew that if he took the money, if anyone asked, he would be obliged to tell them nothing, only that a relative of the dead woman had come to pay his respects.

‘Plant a jackfruit tree,' he said, just as I was ducking my head through the sad doorway. ‘They come up hardy.'

Chittagong. It made sense. Big city, she could disappear. But where would she go. And how would I find her? I use my mobile and call Shathi.

‘I'm not coming back right now,' I say. She doesn't ask me where I am, or why, and for a second this irritates me, but then I just tell myself to be relieved because here is one less person I have to lie to. But she says, ‘What do I tell your mother?' And I feel a little bad, so I say, ‘Give her the phone.' I can see my mother holding the phone with two hands. ‘Amma,' I announce, ‘be nice to Shathi. I'll be back when my business is finished.'