The Bones of Grace (34 page)

Ammoo threw herself back against the seat of the car and put her hand over her eyes. ‘I'm not listening to this.' And then: ‘It's that American boy, isn't it?'

‘Elijah. His name's Elijah.' Where had she heard of you? I thought for one paranoid moment that Rashid had told Dolly and that it was all over the family now, but then I realised I had spoken about you soon after I'd returned from Cambridge, using any excuse to say your name aloud. Ammoo had probably suspected something and decided to ignore it.

For a moment I thought Ammoo was going to slap me, but she was defeated, staring up at the roof of the car. ‘Rashid knows.'

‘Oh, God.' I could almost hear my mother thinking, my poor boy.

‘I'm sorry. It was my fault. I take responsibility for everything.' After the roundabout, the traffic came to a halt. A boy with an armful of white roses knocked on the car window, pleading with me to buy a few flowers.

‘You take responsibility, but at the same time you want to blame us for not talking to you about this – this adoption thing?'

‘I'm not blaming you, I'm just saying, a little transparency would have gone a long way.'

‘What's wrong with Rashid?'

‘I can't stand being in that house. I can't breathe. They're just like any other rich family. The kind of people you taught me to laugh at.'

‘I don't recognise my own daughter. Why are you talking like this?' She pulled out her phone. The little boy knocked again, and Ammoo waved him away. ‘I'm calling Dolly.'

‘I don't want to talk to her.'

She put her phone away. ‘Do what you like, but please, don't tell her about this other boy, it will break her heart. And she'll never forgive me.'

The traffic eased and we pulled away from the little boy and his flowers, passing the market and turning left at the park. The collective disappointment of everyone I knew pressed down on my chest and made it difficult to breathe. And yet at this news of my adoption – could it be true? Was it really all Dolly and Bulbul? – I felt a small lifting. Now that my mother and Rashid knew, even though things were messy and they were all about to gang up against me, at least it was out in the open, and things that should have come out many years ago were finally being said. I would ask Dolly for the whole story. I hadn't given up my right to know.

When it came to it, I didn't have the courage to confront Dolly. I woke up every morning and promised myself I would ask her at breakfast, but then Bulbul would be at the table, or Rashid's brother would walk in just as I was about to bring it up. I saw her ordering the servants to tidy up the garden or organising menus for dinner and decided she looked tired, or busy, and I would put it off. The questions gnawed at me, but my mother's look of disappointment reverberated in my mind, making everything seem impossible.

Sally came over one day with her baby, her second (as she had predicted herself, she'd had two in quick succession). They had named the girl Nadia. She passed him to me as soon as she walked in the door, blowing on her freshly painted nails. ‘I just got a manicure,' she said. ‘I think of that as winning. Today is a winning day.' She had tried to
cheer up her skin with a heavy coat of make-up, but underneath her eyes were dark and sunken.

‘I'm so fucking tired,' she said. I offered her a coffee. ‘I can't drink caffeine,' she sighed. ‘It goes into my milk.'

The baby stirred in my arms, batted a hand against my chest, and fell back asleep. I lifted his head to my face and kissed the mellow indent at the top of his head. He smelled fragrant, yet unperfumed, a kind of sweet loaminess that came from deep within his skin. I inhaled and inhaled.

‘There's a rumour you and Rashid are on the outs,' Sally said, leaning back and putting her head against the rounded armrest of the sofa.

‘People are always trying to break us up,' I said. ‘Remember a few years ago, when there was a rumour he was sleeping with you?'

Sally blew on her fingertips again. ‘Assholes.'

‘And then there was another story about him and some Indian girl who worked in garments.' I was getting a little agitated, remembering all the rumours about Rashid and other women.

‘So there's nothing to it?' Sally said.

The baby stirred again, his mouth opening and closing, so I stood up and shifted my weight from one foot to the other. I considered telling her everything, wondering whether she would laugh it off and declare me finally – finally – human, capable of making mistakes like everyone else, or whether she would hold it against me for ever, even if she pretended to take my side. ‘No, there's nothing,' I said. ‘Just the usual. Marriage isn't easy.'

‘You're telling me. I married a man who still calls his mother every night before he falls asleep and tells her what he ate and how many shits he did.'

I laughed. ‘Seriously?'

‘No fucking joke.' She sat up, pulled a cigarette out of her bag and clamped it between her teeth.

‘You're smoking?'

‘No I'm not fucking smoking. I'm just holding onto my brain by chewing on a Benson's.'

The baby screamed. I swayed more aggressively but I was ineffective, so I passed him back to Sally. She swivelled around to check that no one was looking, pulled at her kameez, and guided a dark, enormous nipple into the baby's mouth.

‘Yes, I know. My tits are fucking incredible, but Nadeem won't even touch them. He says they're for the baby and that creeps him out. I'm so horny I could screw the driver.'

‘It was never true, was it? About you and Rashid.' My eyes were lemony with tears.

Sally drew the baby closer and looked up at me, the unlit cigarette still dangling from her lips. ‘I'm going to tell you something honestly. Don't be mad.'

‘Okay.'

‘I would have. Seriously, I would have. We're all a little bit in love with Rashid. You know that.'

I did know that. Everyone, my mother and my friends and random people I had never met, telling me how wonderful he was, what a perfect man. The baby suckled fiercely, his cheeks pulsing as he swallowed.

‘Did you do it?'

‘No. But not because of you. Because he wouldn't. He would never touch anyone but you.'

I let out a breath, letting the tears fall freely against my cheeks. We didn't speak after that. Sally held her baby upright until he burped wetly and softly on her shoulder, and then she left, leaving behind the fragrance of curdled milk and tobacco.

That night, I examined Dolly as she ate, careful to open her mouth just wide enough to prevent her lipstick from smudging. Bulbul was narrating a story about a telecommunications secretary who had asked him for a bribe that morning. ‘Nowadays they don't dance around the subject,' he said. ‘They just put out their hands and tell you how much.' Rashid complimented the lamb chops, and Dolly said it was all down to the meat, which she had procured at great expense from the German butcher. Who by the way, Rashid interjected, now sells bacon. Bacon? The eyes of the assembled group widened, even mine, more out of surprise than horror. ‘What's the country coming to?' Dolly lamented.

‘I actually like bacon,' I said. Rashid swung his knee towards me under the table.

‘Tawba, tawba,' Dolly said, slapping her own cheeks.

Bulbul pushed his chair back and said, ‘Every time I go to Bangkok, we eat the noodle soup. Then someone told us it's made of pork.'

‘We had to stop eating it,' Dolly said.

‘But we haven't,' Bulbul said. ‘We had it the last time. And you know the sausages at the breakfast buffet aren't chicken.'

‘Of course they're chicken. Five-star hotel is full of Arabs.'

‘Everyone pretends they don't know what's in it.' Then he pointed at me and said, ‘Just don't go telling everyone your secret.'

After dinner, instead of following Rashid up to our bedroom, I lingered at the table and asked Dolly if I could borrow a necklace. Rashid and I were invited to a wedding the following night and I wanted something to go with my sari. Her annoyance at my pig-eating dissipated and she led me up to her bedroom, where, inside a panelled
bank of closets, she turned the combination lock on a safe. ‘Do you want just gold, or some kind of colour? Ruby, emerald?' Her voice was high and melodic and I realised she was practically giggling with joy. So this was what she had envisioned when she thought of my future in this house, that we would coo over her collection of trinkets, coordinate our outfits, share handbags and earrings. I must have done something to give her the impression that this future was possible, and I remembered now that when she had proposed shopping trips to London or Singapore, I had smiled and agreed, because some part of me wanted a mother like that, a mother who wasn't tempering every conversation with some new angle on how terrible the world was. Dolly lifted a three-stringed ruby necklace out of its velvet box. A diamond clasp bound the necklace together. I took it from her and held it with both of my hands. Then I said, ‘Ammoo told me that you arranged my adoption.'

Dolly kneeled in front of the safe and pulled out another box. She popped the button and opened it, and inside was a wide gold collar. I was reminded of a
National Geographic
spread on an African tribe whose women wore thick brass cords to stretch their necks. ‘This story is racist,' my mother had commented, taking the magazine from me. ‘Don't read it.' I shook the memory from my mind and focused on Dolly, attempting to read her expression. I returned the ruby necklace to its box and dabbed at the gold collar. ‘This is nice. It looks old.'

‘It belonged to my mother-in-law.'

‘Ammoo said you set everything up. She called it a mercy.'

Dolly turned back to the safe, so I couldn't see her face when she said, ‘By then she was desperate. Bulbul and I couldn't stand to watch her suffering any more.'

I pictured my mother, and found it was easy to imagine her younger, to cast grief upon her features. ‘Can you tell me where it was – where I was from?'

‘Do you want to wear the gold?'

‘I'm afraid it might be a bit formal,' I said, retracting my hand. Looking closer, I saw how gaudy the piece was, how crudely the jewels had been placed in their setting.

‘You always go simple,' Dolly said. ‘Weddings are for dressing up.'

‘It's just – I don't know the couple very well and we're just going to drop in for an hour.' I hated these things, but Rashid said he had promised the groom's father, someone he did business with.

‘I don't remember anything,' Dolly said, closing the box and returning it to the safe.

‘Was it an orphanage?'

‘No, it was a girl. A girl in need.'

‘I'll wear the ruby,' I said.

She passed the box to me and then I watched as she put everything back in its place, and I wondered if any of the servants knew about the safe, if they had pressed their hands against the door and tried to guess the combination. ‘You don't remember anything else?'

‘No,' she murmured.

I didn't believe her. ‘There's no documentation? Birth certificate, adoption papers?'

‘There was. But it was all lost when we renovated the house.'

She sighed, as if she had told me this story a thousand times. ‘Your parents were upset. We did everything we could to make it easier. Bulbul even greased some palms at the registry and put Joy and Maya down as the mother and father.' She moved to her dressing table, which was crammed
with perfume bottles and small cylinders of lipstick, and began to unravel her hair. I was dismissed. As I turned to go, more in the dark than ever, she said, ‘I can't tell you what to do. But you should stop eating that filth.'

Rashid and I attended the wedding the next evening. I wore the rubies around my neck and tried to hold onto the feeling I had experienced at Sally's confession. I made light conversation with the other wives and ate biryani with a fork and wondered what, after all, was holding the universe together. Afterwards I fell asleep in the car on the way home and stumbled into bed. In the morning Rashid woke early and I started telling him what his mother had said. The air was heavy with his aftershave. ‘No one will talk to me,' I complained. He opened his side of the closet and stood there for a moment, sliding a tie from one of the articulated hangers.

‘Did you hear what I said? I'm not getting anywhere.'

‘Maybe they don't know anything,' he said. He wrapped the tie around his neck.

‘How can they not know? A baby, a whole live person, appeared out of nowhere. I wasn't immaculately conceived.'

‘Why don't you drop it, Zee?' he said, pulling the silk through its loop.

I peeled the comforter off the bed, ready for a fight, but I was at a disadvantage because he looked and smelled so much better than me, so I folded myself back into the blankets and banged my fist against the pillow. Rashid left with a curt goodbye, reminding me to call Nanu because she was having a check-up that afternoon and I should ask about her sugar level. How did he hold such a catalogue of mundane information in his head? No one loved Nanu more than me, but I was hardly going to keep track of her
diabetes. I whispered a curse under my breath as the door slammed shut.

I called my parents – no reply on either phone. I sent them each an identical text message. I waited for what seemed like the entire day, but was probably a few hours. Finally, I went to their apartment and Bashonti opened the door. Ammoo was in the centre of a small tornado of people in the living room and I could smell something frying in the kitchen. I stood on the fringes of the group, catching Abboo's eye a fraction of a moment before being noticed by a woman – one of my mother's friends – who smothered me against her chubby shoulder. ‘It's good you came,' she said. ‘We all need to be together at a time like this.' I nodded, pretending to know what she was talking about. Bashonti emerged from the kitchen and passed around a plate of samosas. I couldn't tell if the moment was a solemn or a happy one, but I was hoping for solemn, because then no one would notice if I looked preoccupied or upset. It was always something I'd hated about people, the way they looked into your face and felt they had to make a comment about your appearance, like ‘You've lost weight' or ‘Are you depressed?' when I wished they would say ‘Tell me why the sperm whale carries oil on the front of its head', which would have been a question I was equipped to answer. Not that the location of the spermaceti was an evolutionary puzzle anyone had thus far been able to solve, least of all me. But as a topic of conversation it was far superior to what I was usually offered.